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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 c.o.c.k-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 superst.i.tion, 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 G.o.d; mother always went to church," pleaded Salome.
"Mother was weak and superst.i.tious, just as you are," retorted Judith inflexibly. "I tell you, Salome, I don"t believe there is a G.o.d. 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 pa.s.sionately, 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sembled. In front of the pulpit was a stand bearing tall white geraniums in luxuriant blossom. The light fell through the stained-gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.sistance 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?