The Girl Who Had No God/Part 11
CHAPTER XII.
—11—
It was only an hour or so before dawn when Huff got to the hall. There were no trains between midnight and morning. And Talbot's car, which he might have used, had been long delayed by his burst tire. He took a suburban trolley line for perhaps half the distance and walked the rest.
At four o'clock in the morning he pressed the arbor button, and old Henriette, grumbling at this second disturbance of her rest, roused Elinor again.
Time was precious. Huff, having rung the announcing bell, made his way up through the dew to the house. And so it was that Elinor, opening the house door, met him face to face. As she recoiled from him, he closed the door.
"I have brought you a message from Boroday," be said swiftly. "I've been a fool and a scoundrel and—it's about all up."
Elinor hardly realized what he was saying. The light of horror had hardly died out of her eyes. To her, Walter, once her lover, now typified all of suffering and nearness to death that lay in old Hilary's room upstairs.
"The first train leaves the city at six o'clock," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "It is hardly likely they will be out so soon, but under some pretext or other they will search the house this morning."
"How can I leave the house now? Upstairs in father's room—"
"I know," he put in hastily. "I know all about it. Elinor, I am sorry, I am wildly sorry. It's no excuse to say I was crazy. but I was."
"If I go away," Elinor said, with white lips, "how will they manage about him? The nurse needs so many things, and I—I see that she has them."
A flame leaped into the boy's eyes.
"If you care for him like that—what are you going to do about it? Even if he cares for you, you cannot marry him. If he ever found out about you—"
"He will never marry me. And—he does know."
The fact that Ward knew the truth about Elinor and the band brought back to him their common peril. He thrust aside, for the time at least, his passion and his despair; and calmly directed his energies toward preparing the house for the inevitable search.
So systematic had old Hilary been that there were few papers to destroy. Such of the ledgers as were incriminating he burned in the furnace. Elinor's box of jewels he carried upstairs and placed on the library table. Such settings as had remained from the country club raid, after the gems had been taken out, he melted together in old Hilary's crucible and placed the gold and platinum nugget in Elinor's box.
He had set the safe to a simple combination and closed it. Except for its size, and for the protective wiring buried in its walls, it might have been a family safe, built by a nervous and elderly gentleman living is the country to hold his silver spoons.
It was too late by that time to bury the box as Boroday had suggested. Huff did the next best thing. He buried it carefully in Elinor's garden, under a clump of crimson phlox.
Elinor worked hurriedly, but with hopeless eyes. Her preparations consisted in little more than putting on the clothing in which she meant to travel. In this new life on which she was entering she wanted little to remind her of the old. A letter to Henriette contained enough money to pay off the servants and the household accounts, in another envelope she folded the deed to the house and a note conveying it to Henriette.
"You can sell it," she wrote. "Good-by, dear Henriette. I shall never forget you, and if ever is is possible, be sure I shall see you again."
The time came, just before dawn, when she and Walter stood again face to face in the library.
Huff was going at once. It was not Boroday's plan that any of them should further incriminate Elinor by accompanying her to the train. At a sound of steps on the stairs, Huff started.
"The nurse going down, probably for ice," she explained.
"He is getting better, isn't he?"
"Yes, but he still suffers at times."
When the steps had died away, Elinor slowly drew off her engagement ring, and held it out to him across the table. Although he was watching her, he made no move to take it, and she laid it down between them on the table.
"I don't think we need talk about it, Walter," she said simply. "There is nothing to say, is there?"
"I suppose not," he returned bitterly. He added: "If only you will try not to hate me, Elinor."
"I do not hate you. But if he had died—"
Huff came swiftly around the table and taking both her hands in his, held them to his throat with a despairing gesture.
"If I didn't know that it would make you more unhappy," he said slowly. "I'd kill myself today."
"Walter!"
"I tell you now. It won't change matters any, but perhaps it will change your memory of me. Ever since I've known you I've had one dream. You were to marry me and I was going to turn straight. I could have done it with your help. But now—"
He dropped her hands and turned away. Elinor watched him wistfully. The one thing he wanted she could not give. There could be no compromise between them. It must he all or nothing, and she had given her all to someone else.
In the doorway he turned and looked back at her with haggard eyes. It was as if he were impressing on his memory every light and shadow of her face; every line of her straight young figure. Then he went out into that darkest hour of the night that precedes the dawn.
For the first time since his injury Ward's mind was quite clear. He had not been able to sleep, and the nurse had been reading to him. Strange reading, too, for the assistant rector of Saint Jude's. The books old Hilary had kept on his bedside still lay there.
Even the nurse, accustomed to many books for many men, was gently outraged.
Ward lay in his bed, his eyes half closed, listening intently. At last the nurse put down the book.
"Why, it's frightful, it's outrageous, it's blasphemous! Do you really think I should read you any more of them?"
Ward smiled feebly.
"If you are afraid of the effect on you."
"Not at all," said the nurse almost sharply, and picked up the book again.
Ward lay back on his pillows and listened to the age-old arguments.
Ho it was on such literature as this that Elinor had been reared! How fair a plant to have grown thus in the dark! And as the nurse droned on, Ward came to realize how natural and how inevitable had been her development. Reared in such soil, what might he himself not have become; and more than that, would he have been one-half so sweet, to tender, so—good?
Toward dawn the nurse slept in her chair. Her cap had fallen a little crooked, and the beautifying hand of sleep had touched away the small furrows between her eyes. Plain she was, but kindly and full of gentleness. Ward, lying awake, watched her. She was no longer very young. He thought of the children who should have clung to her broad, flat bosom and felt the touch of her tender hand.
Then, because, curiously enough, everything of gentleness and tenderness reminded him of Elinor, his thoughts swung round to her. He closed his eyes, and dreamed the dream that had been with him, subconsciously, all the night. To take her in his arms, and by teaching her love, teach her infinite love; by showing mercy and forgiveness and great tenderness, to lead her by these. His attribute, to the Christ—this was his dream.
And because it brought hope and healing and great peace, after a time he slept. Elinor, standing alone in the house outside his door, took courage from his even breathing and ventured in. So light was his sleep that she dared not touch him. She knelt very quietly by the bed, and kissed the corner of his pillow.
•••••••
Ward spent his Sabbatical year in Oxford. He had thought to find peace by exchanging one form of activity for another, but with the less arduous duties of his work there he had more time to think. He found the old pain even greater; his restlessness grew on him. In the three years since Elinor's flight he had done many things. He had left Woffingham for New York, and could feel his usefulness now only bounded by his strength.
But the old zest of life was gone. He was restless, heavier of spirit. There had been times when he had thought that he was forgetting, only to discover, through a stray resemblance, while his heart pounded and his blood raced, that his forgetting was only the numbness of suffering.
Once, on the Strand in London, he came face to face with Boroday. Ward would never forget that meeting, its quick hope which died into the old ache at Boroday's words.
"I have not seen her," he said. "I am always looking. Perhaps she is wise, to break with us all. Still, we loved her. I have never married, and she was like my own child."
He had taken a clerkship in London, he said. While, of course, he did not say so, Ward read between his words that he was done with the old life for good. He held out his hand and the Russian took it.
"If I hear anything," Boroday said, "I'll let you know. Once or twice she wrote me; from Liverpool once, after she landed, and again from here. Then the police closed up the Dago's place, which was the only way she knew to reach me. I've never heard since."
"Then yon think she may be in England?" Ward asked eagerly.
The Russian shrugged his shoulders.
"Perhaps. If she is living. She was not strong. Sometimes I wonder—"
So, after all, Ward took an extra pang away with him from the chance meeting. What if, after all, his watching and waiting meant nothing? If she were gone, beyond earthly finding? Death for him might be a beginning only, a door to eternity, but all the philosophy and hope of his faith did not fill his empty human arms. That night he walked the London streets until dawn.
He come back from Oxford at the end of his course there. Home was calling, and work, blessed work, that brings forgetfulness.
On the last Sunday before he sailed he attended service in Saint Paul's. He knew the church well. In those earlier days when philosophy had taken his young brain by storm and his faith had rocked, he had gone to Saint Paul's. Something in the very solidity of the old church, in its antiquity, in the nearness of those dead-and-gone great ones of the earth who had lived and died secure in his teachings, had steadied him.
And now, when it was his heart that failed, and not his soul, he went there.
It was there that he found Elinor. She was just in front of him, in the prim garb of an English army nurse. And it was no resemblance that roused his first interest. What he saw was only a slender girl, kneeling, and evidently in tears. She was very thin; he saw that, and her shoulders heaved convulsively. But as the service went on she grew quieter. When she rose from her knees at last, she was quite calm.
It was then that he knew her.
Ward watched her with an ache in his throat. She looked frail, sad. Always in his mind he had pictured her in her summer garden, a flower herself among her flowers, or as she had looked that night in old Hilary's library, the night when, to save him, she had told him the shameful truth about herself. And now he found her here, wearing the garb of service, and on her knees!
So fearful was he of losing her that he stayed close as the congregation moved slowly out of the church. She did not intend to go; he saw that. She stepped out of the crowd and waited. He thought it probable that she was seeking what he himself had once sought—a quiet hour under a holy roof.
And so it was that they came face to face again. She put her hand to her throat, with the familiar gesture, when she saw him. For a moment neither of them spoke. The ordinary greetings were out of place, and what was there to say?
It was Ward who spoke at last.
"It doesn't seem quite possible, Elinor," he said.
She had never been "Elinor" to him save in his thoughts. But neither of them noticed.
"I am sorry you have found me. I have tried so hard to bury myself."
It was increasingly hard for him to speak. All the things that had lain in his heart for three years clamored for speech.
"You are—quite well again?"
"Perfectly. But you? You are thinner."
"I have worked hard and, of course, I have suffered. It was not easy—to tear myself away from the few friends I had—"
And then, at last, he broke into speech, rapid, incoherent. He blamed himself for his hardness that night in old Hilary's library, he condemned himself for a thousand things. She listened, rather bewildered, with the old wistfulness in her eyes.
"Why should you say such things?" she asked at last, when he stopped from sheer panic. "You were right. I was a criminal. I have been learning things since then. You were always kind to me. I have never forgotten."
"Kind!" He almost groaned.
She held out her hand. "I must go now. My time is not my own." She glanced down at her uniform. "Do you remember what you said to me once about the brotherhood of man? I have been trying to live up to that."
Ward took her hand. It was very cold.
"Do you remember that?"
"I remember almost everything you told me. Even the things, that night, while I was watching the clock. I remember them all."
The church was empty, save for a verger here and there, busy about his duties. Quite suddenly Ward lost his composure.
"And I—I remember everything too. Your smile, your eyes that night when 1 was carried into the house—oh, my dear, my dear, you are written on my heart."
He bent over, shaken and pale, and kissed the palm of her hand.
"It is you who are good," he said huskily. "I, who talked smugly of virtue and tenderness and pity, and who let you go out of my life—I care for you more than I care for anything in this world. I want you—I want you."
Elinor's eyes turned toward the high altar with its cross. Always, when she looked at it, she had seen the cross at Saint Jude's, and the dawn, and sparrows drinking out of the wet gutter at her feet.
"I want you," said Ward, and waited, frightened.
But her eyes came back to him, clear and full of promise.
"I have always loved you," she said simply. "I will go with you. And your God shall be my God."
(THE END.)