Alex sat down with involuntary quickness; then he threw his legs out in front of him and thrust his hands down into his pockets. "Dr.

Lavendar, this is our affair. I'm obliged to you for your kind intentions; but this is our affair. You've told your news, and we have listened respectfully--if I should say gladly you might be shocked. So I only say respectfully. But you have spoken; we have listened. That is all there is to it. The thing is finished. The book is closed. I say thank G.o.d! I don't know what my father says. If he takes my advice, for I've been a good son to him; I never gave him any cause to be ashamed;--if he takes my advice, he'll forget the whole affair.

That's what I mean to do. The book is closed. I shall never think of it again." He got up and walked about with affectation of vast indifference.

"Alex, you will probably never think of anything else," Dr. Lavendar said, half pitifully; and then, sternly, again: "I can't make you accept the opportunity that still is open to you; but I will point it out to you: Come up to Mercer to-morrow with your father and me."

"Mercer!" the younger man cried out, furiously; "you mean to see her buried? To dance on her grave and pull the man out and spit in his face and--" He stopped, his face suddenly purpling, his light eyes staring and rolling; then he stumbled and jerked himself together, and lurched forward into a chair, breathing loudly. The two old men, trembling with horror, ran to him. "Oh, Edward," John Gordon said--"oh, Edward, why did you rouse him? He can't speak of it, he can't think of it. Alex--there!--we'll say no more about it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "LURCHED FORWARD INTO A CHAIR, BREATHING LOUDLY"]

Alex stared at them with gla.s.sy eyes, in silence; his father kept bemoaning himself and imploring his old friend to say no more. "You won't speak of it again, Edward? He goes out of his head with rage.

Promise me not to speak of it any more."

"No, John; no," Dr. Lavendar said, sadly; and as Alex's eyes cleared into bewildered consciousness, the old minister stood a little aside while the father helped the son to his feet and led him away. When he came back, shuffling feebly down the long, darkening room, Dr. Lavendar was still sitting by the fire. "He's quiet now; I--I think he's ashamed. I hope so. But he won't come out of his room."

Dr. Lavendar nodded.

John Gordon spread his purple handkerchief over his white locks, with shaking hands, and then sat down, tumbling back in his chair in a forlorn heap. "Edward," he said, feebly, "tell me about it. It was on Thursday? Had she been sick long?" Then, in a low voice, "She--didn't lack for comforts?"

"No; I think not. The man was as tender with her as--as you might have been. She was sick--I mean in bed--two weeks. She had been ailing for a long time; you remember I spoke to you about it about a month ago.

And again last week."

"You--saw her?"

"Yes."

"More than once?"

"Oh, many times," Dr. Lavendar said, simply; "many times, of course."

John Gordon put out his hand; Dr. Lavendar shook it silently. Then suddenly the old man broke out, in weak, complaining anger: "He wouldn't let me write to her. I would have sent her some money. He wouldn't hear of it. He was awful, Edward. I--I didn't dare."

Dr. Lavendar was silent. It had grown so dark that he could not see the father's face. Suddenly, from behind the leafless trees at the foot of the garden, a smouldering yellow glow of sunset broke across the gloom of the room, and touched the purple cowl and the veined hands covering the aged face. Dr. Lavendar sighed.

"What can I do, Edward? I can't go to-morrow. You see I can't."

"Yes, you can, John."

"He would die; he'd have another attack. His heart is bad, Edward."

"Oh, I'm afraid it is, I'm afraid it is. But John, you do your duty.

Never mind Alex's heart. That isn't your affair."

"Oh, I couldn't possibly go--not possibly," the father protested, nervously.

The glow died out. The room grew dusk and then dark. Mr. Gordon got up and reached to the mantel-shelf for a spill. "Mary used to make the spills for me," he said, vaguely. "Now our Rachel does it, and she doesn't half bend the end over." He lighted the spill, the little flame flickering upon his poor old face peering out from under his purple handkerchief. "Oh, Alex ought not to be so hard. I would go with you to-morrow, Edward, but I can't, you know. I can't." Then, with a shaking hand, he took off the ground-gla.s.s globe and lighted the tall lamp that stood among a litter of papers on the library-table.

"You see how it is, Edward, don't you? I can't possibly go."

"You will be sorry if you don't, John."

"I'll be sorry anyhow," he burst out. "I'm always sorry. I've been sorry all my life. My children are my sorrow."

III

Algy Keen, his face swollen with crying, his black hair limp and uncurled, sat on the edge of the bed in the back room of a dingy Mercer lodging-house. The windows had been left open after Mary had been taken away, so that the room was cold; and there were still two chairs facing each other,--a certain distance apart. The room was in dreary order, and there was the scent of flowers in the chill air. The bed was tumbled, for the forlorn man had dropped down upon it to rest. But he was too tired to rest, and was sitting up again, dangling his stockinged feet on the shabby carpet and talking to Dr. Lavendar. He snuffled, and his poor, weak lips shook, and he rubbed the back of his trembling hand across his nose. Algy had had broken nights for a fortnight, and the last three days and nights of Mary's life he had almost no sleep at all; these two days when she lay dead in their bare room he had slept and wept and slept again; and now, when he and Dr.

Lavendar had come back from the funeral, he sat on the edge of the bed and whimpered with weakness and grief.

"Well, sir, she was a good girl," he said. "I don't care what anybody says, she was a good girl. I ain't saying that things was just right, to begin with. But that wasn't Mary's fault. No; she was a good girl.

And her folks treated her bad. They'd always treated her mean bad. My goodness! if they'd 'a' let me come to see her respectable, as you would any of your lady friends, 'stead of skulkin' 'round--... _I can't stand the smell of those flowers_," he broke out, in a high, crying voice; "I left them all out there at the cemetery, and I smell them here--I smell them here," he moaned, trembling.

"I like to smell them," Dr. Lavendar said. "They mean the old friendship for Mary. Mrs. King sent them. She's our doctor's wife in Old Chester. She always liked Mary."

"I don't see how she could help it," Algy said, his face crumpling with tears. "Well, she was a good girl. And she was a good wife, sir, too.

I tell you, you never saw a better wife. I used to come home tired, and there'd be my slippers out for me. Yes, sir; she never missed it.

And she was always pleasant, too; you mayn't call just being pleasant, religion, but I--"

"I do," Dr. Lavendar interposed.

"Well, so do I," Algy said, his face lightening a little. "I call it a better religion than her folks showed. Well, now, sir, I loved Mary"--he stopped and cried, openly--"I loved her (I didn't need that h.e.l.l-hound of a brother to come after me)--yes, I was just as fond of her; and yet there was times when I come home at night--not--not quite--well, maybe a little--you know?"

"Yes," said Dr. Lavendar.

"But, my G.o.d, sir, Mary was pleasant. It isn't every woman that would be pleasant then, is it?"

"No, it isn't, Algy."

"Course, next day she'd tell me I done wrong. (She never told me so at the time--Mary had sense.) And I always said: 'Well, yes, Mary, that's so. And I'll never do it again.' But she was pleasant. Course I don't mean she was lively. She used to remember--well, that we'd made a mistake. _You_ know? And she used to kind a brood on it. She talked to you considerably about it, I guess. She said you comforted her. She said you said that maybe her--her mistake had brought her to be kind o' more religious--saved her, as you might say."

"I said that she had come to know her Saviour through His forgiveness."

"I don't think Mary needed any forgiveness," the poor husband said, with tearful resentment; "I think her folks needed it."

"I'm sorry for them," Dr. Lavendar said. "They have got to remember that they might have been kinder. That's a hard thing to have to remember."

The young man nodded. "I hope they'll remember it, hard!"

"They will," said Dr. Lavendar, sighing.

"I spent my last cent on Mary," Algernon rambled on. "I got her a good coffin--a stylish coffin. The plate was solid silver. The man wanted me to take a plated one. I says 'no,' I says; 'I don't get plated things for my wife if it takes my last cent.' Well, it just about took it. But I don't care. Her people threw her off, and I did for her. I spent my last cent."

"You took her from them in the first place, Algernon," the old minister said. "Don't forget that you sinned."

"Well, you said she was forgiven," the other broke out, angrily. "I guess G.o.d's more easy than some people."

"He is."

"Well, then," Algy said, resentfully; "what's the use of talking?"