The Unhallowed Harvest/Chapter 21
The rectory of Christ Church was a gloomy place that Monday evening. The mistress of the house was ill. She had been failing for weeks—slowly at first, but with terrible rapidity as the days wore on. Now the end was almost in sight. Her interview with Ruth Tracy on the Friday afternoon before had left her at the point of collapse. Then had followed the news of the riot. After that her husband had been brought home, bandaged and bloody, victim of an insensate mob. What wonder that she was overwhelmed, physically and mentally, by crowding calamities? When the doctor came from her room that Friday night he looked grave and doubtful. He had expected the collapse. It had been imminent for weeks, but the severity of it startled him. Not that there was any organic disease, he explained, but these cases of extreme nervous prostration were most difficult to treat. Sedatives had only a temporary effect; medicines of any kind would be of but little avail. Indeed the only real hope lay in extra-professional treatment, particularly along the line of mental suggestion. At best the prognosis of the case had little in it that was encouraging.
Ruth Tracy heard of Mrs. Farrar's serious illness, and sent a trained nurse at once to care for her. She felt that this much, at least, it was her right and her duty to do.
If Sunday had been a sorrowful day in the rector's household, Monday was deadening. The minister himself, owing to certain secondary results of his injury, had been forbidden by his physician to go out. Few people had called at the rectory during the day. He had not yet heard the scandalous gossip of the town that connected his name with Mary Bradley's.
When evening came he, himself, put his children to bed. He heard their pathetic little prayers for their mother. Then he kissed them good-night, and went down to his study with wet eyes.
Later on he ascended again to his wife's chamber. The nurse had gone out for the moment, and he drew a chair up by the side of the bed and sat there. She saw that he had been weeping. She said:
"Why are your eyes wet, Robert?"
"I have been putting the children to bed," he replied, "and they were praying for you. It touched me."
"The precious dears! You'll be very kind to them, and patient with them, won't you, Robert, after I am gone?"
"You're not going, Alice. Not for many, many years yet."
"Don't talk that way, Robert. Please don't. You know how much better it is that I should go now. And when you marry again"
"I'm going to marry you again, dear. We're going to be lovers again, just as we were in the old days."
"But, Robert, I"
"Oh, I know. I've been thoughtless and inconsiderate. I haven't appreciated you at your worth. But you'll find me different after this. I've had some heart-searching days of late."
"No, Robert, you've been very good to me. I've often wondered how you could have been so good, for I've never been able to—to reach you. But I have loved you so—and the children"
"There, sweetheart, never mind now. Don't talk any more to-night. Try to get a little sleep and rest."
With tender fingers he pushed back a stray lock of her hair, and she reached out and found his hand and held it, and, lying so, with his hand clasped in both of hers, she fell asleep.
When the nurse returned he released himself gently from her grasp and went back down-stairs. He glanced at the clock in the hall and saw that it was after nine. A deskful of neglected work awaited him in his study and he felt that he must try to dispose of it. At that moment he heard the door-bell ring, and, knowing that the one young and inexperienced but inexpensive maid now in their employ was still out, he went, himself, to answer it. He found Mary Bradley there. He greeted her cordially and ushered her into the parlor, the shades of which had not yet been drawn. He turned on the lights and placed a chair for her, for he saw, by her face, that she was weary and depressed.
"I had no right to come," she said breathlessly, "but I wanted"
"Yes, you had a right to come," he interrupted her. "I do not know your errand, but I am glad you came. There are some things I want to know that I believe you can tell me."
In her effort to fathom his meaning she forgot her errand.
"What are they?" she inquired.
"Will you tell me this?" he asked. "I have been thinking about it all day. You know I have been trying to bring religion into the lives of the men and women who work, and you see what a dismal failure I have made of it. What has been the matter? Did I go about it in the wrong way? You have been a working woman; surely you can tell me."
"The fault has been theirs, Mr. Farrar, not yours."
"But what blunder did I commit that these people should repudiate both me and my religion? I cannot understand it."
"You committed no blunder. They simply did not want religion."
"Why did they not want it?"
"Because it doesn't promise them good food, and fine clothes, and plenty of leisure."
"But it gives them the promise of an eternity of happiness."
"Eternity is too far away for them. They want their good things in this life. They want to live their lives as they will, to go and come as they choose, to be free from rules that bind them, from laws that oppress them, from customs that restrain them. I, myself, have taught them that that is their right as human beings."
"And have you taught them wisely?"
"I don't know. Oh, I don't know! Who can say what is wise, or right, or good? Surely not I; not I!"
She began to wring her hands in apparent self-reproach. She seemed so distraught that he pitied her. Her face was expressive of an agony that he could but dimly understand.
"God forgive us," he said, "if we have both been wrong. But you came to see me on some special errand. Pardon me for interjecting my own troubles. They seem to me to be mountains high to-night. Perhaps yours are even greater. How can I help you?"
"Oh, I had almost forgotten. I came to warn you. You are in danger."
"What kind of danger is it now?"
"A man has threatened to kill you."
"I am not surprised. Some of those whom I have tried to befriend have turned against me very bitterly."
"But this man has a special grievance."
"Who is he?"
"Stephen Lamar."
"What is his special grievance?"
"He is" She hesitated.
"He is what, Mrs. Bradley?"
"He is jealous of you."
"On whose account?"
"On mine."
"Why should he be jealous of me? Is it not Barry Malleson who is contending with him for your favor?"
"I have told Barry that he must not think of me again."
"And are you then so deeply in love with Lamar?" He said it regretfully, almost reproachfully. He could not reconcile himself to the thought of a union between such a man as Lamar and such a woman as this.
She drew herself up proudly. "No!" she cried. "I am not in love with him. I hate him! I despise him!"
He stared at her in astonishment. What new mystery was this? What additional catastrophe was impending? In what fresh web of calamity was he becoming entangled?
"But why," he asked, "should Lamar be jealous of me? Why should he want to kill me? What have I done to call forth such a feeling on his part?"
"Nothing, Mr. Farrar; nothing; nothing! I have done it all."
"What have you done?"
"I told him a thing that angered him."
"What did you tell him?"
She knew, by the look in his eyes, that he would brook no evasion or denial of his demand. Nor had she, any longer, any desire either to evade or deny. They were only the big things of life that mattered now. And this was the big thing, the tremendous thing of her life, and something that he had a right to know, and that he ought to know. She flung her arms wide as if to unlock her heart and let her secret out.
"I told him that I loved you!" she cried. "I told him that I was not ashamed of it! I told him that I gloried in it!"
She looked at the minister defiantly, as though daring him to contradict her. Her face was very white, and her hands were clenched and moving. He was speechless, astounded. He rose to his feet and stared at the woman incredulously. When, at last, he found his voice he said:
"But, Mrs. Bradley, it is not true. Why did you say it? It can't be true! It must not be true!"
"Oh, but it is true!" she protested. "It's the truest thing that ever was or will be. And it's because he knows it's true that he wants to kill you. The coward! The monster!"
Her voice had grown high and shrill. Her eyes flashed with alternate hate, devotion and despair. Her whole body was quivering with the intensity of her emotion. It was apparent to the rector that a point had been reached beyond which both questionings and reproof would be not only futile but disastrous. Her imperative need now was to be soothed and comforted. He passed around the table to her and laid his hand on her shoulder. His touch had quieted others, perhaps it would quiet her. His hope was not vain. Under the magic pressure of his hand she suddenly found her anger gone, and the tempest in her hot heart stilled. A wave of deep contrition swept in upon her, and she sank, penitent and sobbing, at his feet.
"Forgive me!" she moaned. "I have been so wicked and so weak, and so utterly unjust to you. I shall not trouble you any more. I'm going away, where you will never see me nor hear of me again. But," and she lifted her pallid, tear-wet face to his, "it is true, true, true that I have loved you."
Gently, reverently, with white-hearted courtesy, he bent over her, took her hands, and lifted her to her feet.
"May our dear Lord look kindly on you," he said, "and inspire you with that love for Him which alone can quiet and satisfy the unruly heart."
"You are—very good," she replied; "very good! I will—go—now."
She released her hands from his and drew them across her eyes as if to banish some vision that enthralled her, and turned toward the door. But at the first step her physical strength failed her, she tottered and would have fallen, so limp and nerveless was she, had he not sprung to her side and held her to her feet. Once again, as on that night at the bridge, she felt the pressure of his arm about her. It revived her, strengthened her, thrilled her through with new and exultant life. So, supported and revivified, she moved with him across the room toward the hall.
"Thank you!" she said. "It was foolish of me to be faint. But I am very strong now. Good-night!"
"No," he replied, "I cannot let you go alone. You are not fit. Sit here and I will call a cab, and I'll send the nurse to stay with you till it comes."
His will was still her law and she obeyed. So he placed her in a chair and hurried away. But, when he was gone, she was seized with a sudden desire to escape—before he should return—before others should come and find her there—before her courage should utterly fail. She rose, hurried down the hall, pushed back the snap-lock of the door which she opened and closed behind her, went down the steps to the walk, and started to cross the rectory lawn to the street.
A man stepped out from the shadows beneath the parlor bay, gripped her shoulder, and swung her around till she faced him. By the light of the full moon she saw that it was Stephen Lamar. His eyes were blazing with murderous passion. His voice, as he spoke, was thick and hoarse.
"I tracked you here," he said. "I saw you—through the window. I told you—if you did it once more—I'd kill you both. I'm going—to do it."
Before she could move, or speak, or scream, there came a flash, a report, a wisp of curling smoke; she staggered, fell, lay prone on the rectory lawn, and there she died.
He turned and went up the steps to the door from which she had just emerged, and tried to open it, and found it locked. He threw his weight against it, but it would not yield.
Two men, standing at the street-corner, engaged in conversation, heard the pistol-shot, and saw the woman as she fell. They ran, and met the man as he lurched down the rectory steps. For a moment he held them at bay at the point of his revolver. Then he turned the weapon on himself and fired two shots in quick succession. He fell plunging to the earth. On his sprawling body and distorted face the light of the full moon struck. But, where Mary Bradley lay, the shadow of the spire of Christ Church rested, like the shadow of the hand of a pitying God.