Salome looked out of the kitchen window, and a pucker of distress
appeared on her smooth forehead.
“Dear, dear, what has Lionel Hezekiah been doing now?” she murmured
anxiously.
Involuntarily she reached out for her crutch; but it was a little beyond
her reach, having fallen on the floor, and without it Salome could not
move a step.
“Well, anyway, Judith is bringing him in as fast as she can,” she
reflected. “He must have been up to something terrible this time; for
she looks very cross, and she never walks like that unless she is angry
clear through. Dear me, I am sometimes tempted to think that Judith and
I made a mistake in adopting the child. I suppose two old maids don’t
know much about bringing up a boy properly. But he is NOT a bad child,
and it really seems to me that there must be some way of making him
behave better if we only knew what it was.”
Salome’s monologue was cut short by the entrance of her sister Judith,
holding Lionel Hezekiah by his chubby wrist with a determined grip.
Judith Marsh was ten years older than Salome, and the two women were
as different in appearance as night and day. Salome, in spite of her
thirty-five years, looked almost girlish. She was small and pink and
flower-like, with little rings of pale golden hair clustering all over
her head in a most unspinster-like fashion, and her eyes were big and
blue, and mild as a dove’s. Her face was perhaps a weak one, but it was
very sweet and appealing.
Judith Marsh was tall and dark, with a plain, tragic face and iron-gray
hair. Her eyes were black and sombre, and every feature bespoke
unyielding will and determination. Just now she looked, as Salome had
said, “angry clear through,” and the baleful glances she cast on the
small mortal she held would have withered a more hardened criminal than
six happy-go-lucky years had made of Lionel Hezekiah.
Lionel Hezekiah, whatever his shortcomings, did not look bad. Indeed,
he was as engaging an urchin as ever beamed out on a jolly good world
through a pair of big, velvet-brown eyes. He was chubby and firm-limbed,
with a mop of beautiful golden curls, which were the despair of his
heart and the pride and joy of Salome’s; and his round face was usually
a lurking-place for dimples and smiles and sunshine.
But just now Lionel Hezekiah was under a blight; he had been caught
red-handed in guilt, and was feeling much ashamed of himself. He hung
his head and squirmed his toes under the mournful reproach in Salome’s
eyes. When Salome looked at him like that, Lionel Hezekiah always felt
that he was paying more for his fun than it was worth.
“What do you suppose I caught him doing this time?” demanded Judith.
“I--I don’t know,” faltered Salome.
“Firing--at--a--mark--on--the--henhouse--door--with--new-laid--eggs,”
said Judith with measured distinctness. “He has broken every egg that
was laid to-day except three. And as for the state of that henhouse
door--”
Judith paused, with an indignant gesture meant to convey that the state
of the henhouse door must be left to Salome’s imagination, since the
English language was not capable of depicting it.
“O Lionel Hezekiah, why will you do such things?” said Salome miserably.
“I--didn’t know it was wrong,” said Lionel Hezekiah, bursting into
prompt tears. “I--I thought it would be bully fun. Seems’s if everything
what’s fun ‘s wrong.”
Salome’s heart was not proof against tears, as Lionel Hezekiah very well
knew. She put her arm about the sobbing culprit, and drew him to her
side.
“He didn’t know it was wrong,” she said defiantly to Judith.
“He’s got to be taught, then,” was Judith’s retort. “No, you needn’t
try to beg him off, Salome. He shall go right to bed without supper, and
stay there till to-morrow morning.”
“Oh! not without his supper,” entreated Salome. “You--you won’t improve
the child’s morals by injuring his stomach, Judith.”
“Without his supper, I say,” repeated Judith inexorably. “Lionel
Hezekiah, go up-stairs to the south room, and go to bed at once.”
Lionel Hezekiah went up-stairs, and went to bed at once. He was never
sulky or disobedient. Salome listened to him as he stumped patiently
up-stairs with a sob at every step, and her own eyes filled with tears.
“Now don’t for pity’s sake go crying, Salome,” said Judith irritably. “I
think I’ve let him off very easily. He is enough to try the patience of
a saint, and I never was that,” she added with entire truth.
“But he isn’t bad,” pleaded Salome. “You know he never does anything the
second time after he has been told it was wrong, never.”
“What good does that do when he is certain to do something new and twice
as bad? I never saw anything like him for originating ideas of mischief.
Just look at what he has done in the past fortnight--in one fortnight,
Salome. He brought in a live snake, and nearly frightened you into fits;
he drank up a bottle of liniment, and almost poisoned himself; he took
three toads to bed with him; he climbed into the henhouse loft, and fell
through on a hen and killed her; he painted his face all over with your
water-colours; and now comes THIS exploit. And eggs at twenty-eight
cents a dozen! I tell you, Salome, Lionel Hezekiah is an expensive
luxury.”
“But we couldn’t do without him,” protested Salome.
“_I_ could. But as you can’t, or think you can’t, we’ll have to keep
him, I suppose. But the only way to secure any peace of mind for
ourselves, as far as I can see, is to tether him in the yard, and hire
somebody to watch him.”
“There must be some way of managing him,” said Salome desperately. She
thought Judith was in earnest about the tethering. Judith was generally
so terribly in earnest in all she said. “Perhaps it is because he has
no other employment that he invents so many unheard-of things. If he had
anything to occupy himself with--perhaps if we sent him to school--”
“He’s too young to go to school. Father always said that no child should
go to school until it was seven, and I don’t mean Lionel Hezekiah shall.
Well, I’m going to take a pail of hot water and a brush, and see what I
can do to that henhouse door. I’ve got my afternoon’s work cut out for
me.”
Judith stood Salome’s crutch up beside her, and departed to purify the
henhouse door. As soon as she was safely out of the way, Salome took her
crutch, and limped slowly and painfully to the foot of the stairs. She
could not go up and comfort Lionel Hezekiah as she yearned to do,
which was the reason Judith had sent him up-stairs. Salome had not been
up-stairs for fifteen years. Neither did she dare to call him out on the
landing, lest Judith return. Besides, of course he must be punished; he
had been very naughty.
“But I wish I could smuggle a bit of supper up to him,” she mused,
sitting down on the lowest step and listening. “I don’t hear a sound. I
suppose he has cried himself to sleep, poor, dear baby. He certainly
is dreadfully mischievous; but it seems to me that it shows an
investigating turn of mind, and if it could only be directed into the
proper channels--I wish Judith would let me have a talk with Mr. Leonard
about Lionel Hezekiah. I wish Judith didn’t hate ministers so. I don’t
mind so much her not letting me go to church, because I’m so lame that
it would be painful anyhow; but I’d like to talk with Mr. Leonard now
and then about some things. I can never believe that Judith and father
were right; I am sure they were not. There is a God, and I’m afraid
it’s terribly wicked not to go to church. But there, nothing short of a
miracle would convince Judith; so there is no use in thinking about it.
Yes, Lionel Hezekiah must have gone to sleep.”
Salome pictured him so, with his long, curling lashes brushing his rosy,
tear-stained cheek and his chubby fists clasped tightly over his breast
as was his habit; her heart grew warm and thrilling with the maternity
the picture provoked.
A year previously Lionel Hezekiah’s parents, Abner and Martha Smith, had
died, leaving a houseful of children and very little else. The children
were adopted into various Carmody families, and Salome Marsh had amazed
Judith by asking to be allowed to take the five-year-old “baby.” At
first Judith had laughed at the idea; but, when she found that Salome
was in earnest, she yielded. Judith always gave Salome her own way
except on one point.
“If you want the child, I suppose you must have him,” she said finally.
“I wish he had a civilized name, though. Hezekiah is bad, and Lionel is
worse; but the two in combination, and tacked on to Smith at that, is
something that only Martha Smith could have invented. Her judgment was
the same clear through, from selecting husbands to names.”
So Lionel Hezekiah came into Judith’s home and Salome’s heart. The
latter was permitted to love him all she pleased, but Judith overlooked
his training with a critical eye. Possibly it was just as well, for
Salome might otherwise have ruined him with indulgence. Salome, who
always adopted Judith’s opinions, no matter how ill they fitted her,
deferred to the former’s decrees meekly, and suffered far more than
Lionel Hezekiah when he was punished.
She sat on the stairs until she fell asleep herself, her head pillowed
on her arm. Judith found her there when she came in, severe and
triumphant, from her bout with the henhouse door. Her face softened into
marvelous tenderness as she looked at Salome.
“She’s nothing but a child herself in spite of her age,” she thought
pityingly. “A child that’s had her whole life thwarted and spoiled
through no fault of her own. And yet folks say there is a God who is
kind and good! If there is a God, he is a cruel, jealous tyrant, and I
hate Him!”
Judith’s eyes were bitter and vindictive. She thought she had many
grievances against the great Power that rules the universe, but the most
intense was Salome’s helplessness--Salome, who fifteen years before
had been the brightest, happiest of maidens, light of heart and foot,
bubbling over with harmless, sparkling mirth and life. If Salome could
only walk like other women, Judith told herself that she would not hate
the great tyrannical Power.
Lionel Hezekiah was subdued and angelic for four days after that affair
of the henhouse door. Then he broke out in a new place. One afternoon he
came in sobbing, with his golden curls full of burrs. Judith was not in,
but Salome dropped her crochet-work and gazed at him in dismay.
“Oh, Lionel Hezekiah, what have you gone and done now?”
“I--I just stuck the burrs in ‘cause I was playing I was a heathen
chief,” sobbed Lionel Hezekiah. “It was great fun while it lasted; but,
when I tried to take them out, it hurt awful.”
Neither Salome nor Lionel Hezekiah ever forgot the harrowing hour that
followed. With the aid of comb and scissors, Salome eventually got the
burrs out of Lionel Hezekiah’s crop of curls. It would be impossible to
decide which of them suffered more in the process. Salome cried as hard
as Lionel Hezekiah did, and every snip of the scissors or tug at the
silken floss cut into her heart. She was almost exhausted when the
performance was over; but she took the tired Lionel Hezekiah on her
knee, and laid her wet cheek against his shining head.
“Oh, Lionel Hezekiah, what does make you get into mischief so
constantly?” she sighed.
Lionel Hezekiah frowned reflectively.
“I don’t know,” he finally announced, “unless it’s because you don’t
send me to Sunday school.”
Salome started as if an electric shock had passed through her frail
body.
“Why, Lionel Hezekiah,” she stammered, “what put such and idea into your
head?”
“Well, all the other boys go,” said Lionel Hezekiah defiantly; “and
they’re all better’n me; so I guess that must be the reason. Teddy
Markham says that all little boys should go to Sunday school, and that
if they don’t they’re sure to go to the bad place. I don’t see how you
can ‘spect me to behave well when you won’t send me to Sunday school.
“Would you like to go?” asked Salome, almost in a whisper.
“I’d like it bully,” said Lionel Hezekiah frankly and succinctly.
“Oh, don’t use such dreadful words,” sighed Salome helplessly. “I’ll see
what can be done. Perhaps you can go. I’ll ask your Aunt Judith.”
“Oh, Aunt Judith won’t let me go,” said Lionel Hezekiah despondingly.
“Aunt Judith doesn’t believe there is any God or any bad place. Teddy
Markham says she doesn’t. He says she’s an awful wicked woman ‘cause she
never goes to church. So you must be wicked too, Aunt Salome, ‘cause you
never go. Why don’t you?”
“Your--your Aunt Judith won’t let me go,” faltered Salome, more
perplexed than she had ever been before in her life.
“Well, it doesn’t seem to me that you have much fun on Sundays,”
remarked Lionel Hezekiah ponderingly. “I’d have more if I was you. But I
s’pose you can’t ‘cause you’re ladies. I’m glad I’m a man. Look at Abel
Blair, what splendid times he has on Sundays. He never goes to church,
but he goes fishing, and has cock-fights, and gets drunk. When I grow
up, I’m going to do that on Sundays too, since I won’t be going to
church. I don’t want to go to church, but I’d like to go to Sunday
school.”
Salome listened in agony. Every word of Lionel Hezekiah’s stung her
conscience unbearably. So this was the result of her weak yielding to
Judith; this innocent child looked upon her as a wicked woman, and,
worse still, regarded old, depraved Abel Blair as a model to be
imitated. Oh! was it too late to undo the evil? When Judith returned,
Salome blurted out the whole story. “Lionel Hezekiah must go to Sunday
school,” she concluded appealingly.
Judith’s face hardened until it was as if cut in stone.
“No, he shall not,” she said stubbornly. “No one living in my household
shall ever go to church or Sunday school. I gave in to you when you
wanted to teach him to say his prayers, though I knew it was only
foolish superstition, but I sha’n’t yield another inch. You know exactly
how I feel on this subject, Salome; I believe just as father did. You
know he hated churches and churchgoing. And was there ever a better,
kinder, more lovable man?”
“Mother believed in God; mother always went to church,” pleaded Salome.
“Mother was weak and superstitious, just as you are,” retorted Judith
inflexibly. “I tell you, Salome, I don’t believe there is a God. But, if
there is, He is cruel and unjust, and I hate Him.”
“Judith!” gasped Salome, aghast at the impiety. She half expected to see
her sister struck dead at her feet.
“Don’t ‘Judith’ me!” said Judith passionately, in the strange anger that
any discussion of the subject always roused in her. “I mean every word I
say. Before you got lame I didn’t feel much about it one way or another;
I’d just as soon have gone with mother as with father. But, when you
were struck down like that, I knew father was right.”
For a moment Salome quailed. She felt that she could not, dare not,
stand out against Judith. For her own sake she could not have done so,
but the thought of Lionel Hezekiah nerved her to desperation. She struck
her thin, bleached little hands wildly together.
“Judith, I’m going to church to-morrow,” she cried. “I tell you I am,
I won’t set Lionel Hezekiah a bad example one day longer. I’ll not take
him; I won’t go against you in that, for it is your bounty feeds and
clothes him; but I’m going myself.”
“If you do, Salome Marsh, I’ll never forgive you,” said Judith, her
harsh face dark with anger; and then, not trusting herself to discuss
the subject any longer, she went out.
Salome dissolved into her ready tears, and cried most of the night.
But her resolution did not fail. Go to church she would, for that dear
baby’s sake.
Judith would not speak to her at breakfast, and this almost broke
Salome’s heart; but she dared not yield. After breakfast, she limped
painfully into her room, and still more painfully dressed herself. When
she was ready, she took a little old worn Bible out of her box. It had
been her mother’s, and Salome read a chapter in it every night, although
she never dared to let Judith see her doing it.
When she limped out into the kitchen, Judith looked up with a hard face.
A flame of sullen anger glowed in her dark eyes, and she went into the
sitting-room and shut the door, as if by that act she were shutting her
sister for evermore out of her heart and life. Salome, strung up to the
last pitch of nervous tension, felt intuitively the significance of
that closed door. For a moment she wavered--oh, she could not go against
Judith! She was all but turning back to her room when Lionel Hezekiah
came running in, and paused to look at her admiringly.
“You look just bully, Aunt Salome,” he said. “Where are you going?”
“Don’t use that word, Lionel Hezekiah,” pleaded Salome. “I’m going to
church.”
“Take me with you,” said Lionel Hezekiah promptly. Salome shook her
head.
“I can’t, dear. Your Aunt Judith wouldn’t like it. Perhaps she will let
you go after a while. Now do be a good boy while I am away, won’t
you? Don’t do any naughty things.” “I won’t do them if I know they’re
naughty,” conceded Lionel Hezekiah. “But that’s just the trouble; I
don’t know what’s naughty and what ain’t. Prob’ly if I went to Sunday
school I’d find out.”
Salome limped out of the yard and down the lane bordered by its asters
and goldenrod. Fortunately the church was just outside the lane,
across the main road; but Salome found it hard to cover even that short
distance. She felt almost exhausted when she reached the church and
toiled painfully up the aisle to her mother’s old pew. She laid her
crutch on the seat, and sank into the corner by the window with a sigh
of relief.
She had elected to come early so that she might get there before the
rest of the people. The church was as yet empty, save for a class of
Sunday school children and their teacher in a remote corner, who paused
midway in their lesson to stare with amazement at the astonishing sight
of Salome Marsh limping into church.
The big building, shadowy from the great elms around it, was very still.
A faint murmur came from the closed room behind the pulpit where the
rest of the Sunday school was assembled. In front of the pulpit was a
stand bearing tall white geraniums in luxuriant blossom. The light
fell through the stained-glass window in a soft tangle of hues upon the
floor. Salome felt a sense of peace and happiness fill her heart. Even
Judith’s anger lost its importance. She leaned her head against
the window-sill, and gave herself up to the flood of tender old
recollections that swept over her.
Memory went back to the years of her childhood when she had sat in this
pew every Sunday with her mother. Judith had come then, too, always
seeming grown up to Salome by reason of her ten years’ seniority. Her
tall, dark, reserved father never came. Salome knew that the Carmody
people called him an infidel, and looked upon him as a very wicked man.
But he had not been wicked; he had been good and kind in his own odd
way.
The gentle little mother had died when Salome was ten years old, but so
loving and tender was Judith’s care that the child did not miss anything
out of her life. Judith Marsh loved her little sister with an intensity
that was maternal. She herself was a plain, repellent girl, liked by
few, sought after by no man; but she was determined that Salome should
have everything that she had missed--admiration, friendship, love. She
would have a vicarious youth in Salome’s.
All went according to Judith’s planning until Salome was eighteen,
and then trouble after trouble came. Their father, whom Judith had
understood and passionately loved, died; Salome’s young lover was killed
in a railroad accident; and finally Salome herself developed symptoms of
the hip-disease which, springing from a trifling injury, eventually left
her a cripple. Everything possible was done for her. Judith, falling
heir to a snug little fortune by the death of the old aunt for whom she
was named, spared nothing to obtain the best medical skill, and in vain.
One and all, the great doctors failed.
Judith had borne her father’s death bravely enough in spite of her agony
of grief; she had watched her sister pining and fading with the pain of
her broken heart without growing bitter; but when she knew at last that
Salome would never walk again save as she hobbled painfully about on
her crutch, the smouldering revolt in her soul broke its bounds, and
overflowed her nature in a passionate rebellion against the Being who
had sent, or had failed to prevent, these calamities. She did not rave
or denounce wildly; that was not Judith’s way; but she never went to
church again, and it soon became an accepted fact in Carmody that Judith
Marsh was as rank an infidel as her father had been before her; nay,
worse, since she would not even allow Salome to go to church, and shut
the door in the minister’s face when he went to see her.
“I should have stood out against her for conscience’ sake,” reflected
Salome in her pew self-reproachfully. “But, O dear, I’m afraid she’ll
never forgive me, and how can I live if she doesn’t? But I must endure
it for Lionel Hezekiah’s sake; my weakness has perhaps done him great
harm already. They say that what a child learns in the first seven years
never leaves him; so Lionel Hezekiah has only another year to get set
right about these things. Oh, if I’ve left it till too late!”
When the people began to come in, Salome felt painfully the curious
glances directed at her. Look where she would, she met them, unless
she looked out of the window; so out of the window she did look
unswervingly, her delicate little face burning crimson with
self-consciousness. She could see her home and its back yard plainly,
with Lionel Hezekiah making mud-pies joyfully in the corner. Presently
she saw Judith come out of the house and stride away to the pine wood
behind it. Judith always betook herself to the pines in time of mental
stress and strain.
Salome could see the sunlight shining on Lionel Hezekiah’s bare head as
he mixed his pies. In the pleasure of watching him she forgot where she
was and the curious eyes turned on her.
Suddenly Lionel Hezekiah ceased concocting pies, and betook himself to
the corner of the summer kitchen, where he proceeded to climb up to the
top of the storm-fence and from there to mount the sloping kitchen roof.
Salome clasped her hands in agony. What if the child should fall? Oh!
why had Judith gone away and left him alone? What if--what if--and then,
while her brain with lightning-like rapidity pictured forth a dozen
possible catastrophes, something really did happen. Lionel Hezekiah
slipped, sprawled wildly, slid down, and fell off the roof, in a
bewildering whirl of arms and legs, plump into the big rain-water
hogshead under the spout, which was generally full to the brim with
rain-water, a hogshead big and deep enough to swallow up half a dozen
small boys who went climbing kitchen roofs on a Sunday.
Then something took place that is talked of in Carmody to this day, and
even fiercely wrangled over, so many and conflicting are the opinions on
the subject. Salome Marsh, who had not walked a step without assistance
for fifteen years, suddenly sprang to her feet with a shriek, ran down
the aisle, and out of the door!
Every man, woman, and child in the Carmody church followed her, even to
the minister, who had just announced his text. When they got out, Salome
was already half-way up her lane, running wildly. In her heart was room
for but one agonized thought. Would Lionel Hezekiah be drowned before
she reached him?
She opened the gate of the yard, and panted across it just as a tall,
grim-faced woman came around the corner of the house and stood rooted to
the ground in astonishment at the sight that met her eyes.
But Salome saw nobody. She flung herself against the hogshead and looked
in, sick with terror at what she might see. What she did see was Lionel
Hezekiah sitting on the bottom of the hogshead in water that came
only to his waist. He was looking rather dazed and bewildered, but was
apparently quite uninjured.
The yard was full of people, but nobody had as yet said a word; awe and
wonder held everybody in spellbound silence. Judith was the first to
speak. She pushed through the crowd to Salome. Her face was blanched
to a deadly whiteness; and her eyes, as Mrs. William Blair afterwards
declared, were enough to give a body the creeps.
“Salome,” she said in a high, shrill, unnatural voice, “where is your
crutch?”
Salome came to herself at the question. For the first time, she realized
that she had walked, nay, run, all that distance from the church alone
and unaided. She turned pale, swayed, and would have fallen if Judith
had not caught her.
Old Dr. Blair came forward briskly.
“Carry her in,” he said, “and don’t all of you come crowding in, either.
She wants quiet and rest for a spell.”
Most of the people obediently returned to the church, their sudden
loosened tongues clattering in voluble excitement. A few women assisted
Judith to carry Salome in and lay her on the kitchen lounge, followed
by the doctor and the dripping Lionel Hezekiah, whom the minister had
lifted out of the hogshead and to whom nobody now paid the slightest
attention.
Salome faltered out her story, and her hearers listened with varying
emotions.
“It’s a miracle,” said Sam Lawson in an awed voice.
Dr. Blair shrugged his shoulders. “There is no miracle about it,” he
said bluntly. “It’s all perfectly natural. The disease in the hip has
evidently been quite well for a long time; Nature does sometimes work
cures like that when she is let alone. The trouble was that the muscles
were paralyzed by long disuse. That paralysis was overcome by the force
of a strong and instinctive effort. Salome, get up and walk across the
kitchen.”
Salome obeyed. She walked across the kitchen and back, slowly, stiffly,
falteringly, now that the stimulus of frantic fear was spent; but still
she walked. The doctor nodded his satisfaction.
“Keep that up every day. Walk as much as you can without tiring
yourself, and you’ll soon be as spry as ever. No more need of crutches
for you, but there’s no miracle in the case.”
Judith Marsh turned to him. She had not spoken a word since her question
concerning Salome’s crutch. Now she said passionately:
“It WAS a miracle. God has worked it to prove His existence for me, and
I accept the proof.”
The old doctor shrugged his shoulders again. Being a wise man, he knew
when to hold his tongue.
“Well, put Salome to bed, and let her sleep the rest of the day. She’s
worn out. And for pity’s sake let some one take that poor child and put
some dry clothes on him before he catches his death of cold.”
That evening, as Salome Marsh lay in her bed in a glory of sunset light,
her heart filled with unutterable gratitude and happiness, Judith came
into the room. She wore her best hat and dress, and she held Lionel
Hezekiah by the hand. Lionel Hezekiah’s beaming face was scrubbed clean,
and his curls fell in beautiful sleekness over the lace collar of his
velvet suit.
“How do you feel now, Salome?” asked Judith gently.
“Better. I’ve had a lovely sleep. But where are you going, Judith?”
“I am going to church,” said Judith firmly, “and I am going to take
Lionel Hezekiah with me.”