The Helpers

"'Twas no use at all, Miss Constance; 'twas her last word she said to you this morning, when she asked you to try once more with Owen for the childer's sake. When you'd gone she turned her face to the wall, and we never knew when her soul went out."

"Was Owen there?"

"He was; and it's sober he was for the first time in many a day. He took it hard; them Welsh are flighty people, anyway."

"He ought to take it hard," said Constance, with as near an approach to vindictiveness as the heart of compassion would sanction. "Has everything been done?"

Margaret nodded. "The neighbors were that kind; and it's poor hard-working people they are, too."

"I know," said Constance. She was making ready to go out, and she found her purse and counted its keepings. They were as scanty as her will to help was plenteous. Myra's check had been generous, but the askings were many, and there was no more than the sweet savor of it left. "I'm sure I don't know what Owen will do," she went on. "I suppose there isn't money enough to bury her."

Margaret had taken off her hat and jacket and she was suddenly impelled to go to work. The lounge-cover was awry, and in the straightening of it she said: —

"Don't you be worrying about that, now, Miss Constance. It was Owen himself that was giving me the money for the funeral when I was leaving."

"Owen? Where did he get it? He hasn't had a day's work for a month."

Margaret was smoothing the cover and shaking the pillows vigorously. "Sure, that's just what I was thinking" (slap, slap), "but I've his money in my pocket this blessed minute. So you just go and say a sweet word to the childer, Miss Constance, and don't you be worrying about anything."

Connie's hand was on the door-knob, but she turned with a sudden sinking of the heart, and a swift impulse that sent her across the room to Margaret's side.

"Margaret, you gave Owen that money before he gave it to you. Where did you get it?"

Margaret left off beating the pillows and slipped upon her knees to bury her face in one of them.

"I knew you'd be asking that," she sobbed, and then: "Haven't I been working honest every day since Christmas? And does it be taking all I earn to keep me, I'd like to know?"

Constance went down on her knees beside the girl, and what she said was to One who was merciful even to the Magdalenes. When she rose the pain of it was a little dulled, and she went back to the charitable necessities in a word.

"Is there any one to watch with her to-night, Margaret?"

The girl lifted a tear-stained face, and the passionate Irish eyes were swimming, and Constance turned away because her loving compassion was greater than her determination to be judicially severe.

"I'm one," Margaret answered; "and Mrs. Mulcahey'll come over when her man gets home."

"Very well. I'll go over and give the children their suppers and put them to bed. I'll stay till you come, and you can bring Tommie to take me home."

Constance went upon her mission heavy-hearted; and in the hovel across the river found comfort in the giving of comfort. The David children were all little ones, too young to fully realize their loss; and when they had been fed and hushed to sleep, and one of David's fellow workmen had taken the husband away for the night, Constance sat down in the room with the dead to wait for Margaret. For a heart less pitiful or a soul less steadfast, the silence of the night and the solitary watch with the sheeted figure on the bed might have been unnerving; but in all her life Constance had never had to reckon with fear. Hence, when the door opened behind her without a preliminary knock, and a footstep crossed the threshold, she thought it was one of the neighbors and rose softly with her finger on her lip. But when she saw who it was, she started back and made as if she would retreat to the room where the children were.

"You!" she said. "Why are you here?"

"I beg your pardon." Jeffard said it deferentially, almost humbly. "I didn't expect to find you here; I was looking for – for the man, you know. What has become of him?"

The hesitant pause in the midst of the explanation opened the door for a swift suspicion, – a suspicion too horrible to be entertained, and yet too strong to be driven forth. There was righteous indignation in her eyes when she went close to him and said: —

"Can you stand here in the presence of that" – pointing to the sheeted figure on the bed – "and lie to me? You expected to meet Margaret Gannon here. You have made an appointment with her – an assignation in the house of the dead. Shame on you!"

It should have crushed him. It did for the moment. And when he rallied it was apparently in a spirit of the sheerest hardihood.

"You are right," he said; "I did expect to meet Margaret. With your permission, I'll go outside and wait for her."

She flashed between him and the door and put her back to it.

"Not until you have heard what I have to say, Mr. Jeffard. I've been wanting to say it ever since Tommie told me, but you have been very careful not to give me a chance. You know this girl's story, and what she has had to fight from day to day. Are you so lost to every sense of justice and mercy as to try to drag her back into sin and shame after all her pitiful strugglings?"

"It would seem so," Jeffard retorted, and his smile was harder than his words. "It is quite conceivable that you should believe it of the man who once took your charity and made a mock of it. May I go now?"

"Oh, no, not yet; not until you have promised me to spare and slay not, for this once. Think of it a moment; it is the price of a human soul! And it is such a little thing for you to concede."

The hard smile came and went again.

"Another man might say that Margaret has come to be very beautiful, Miss Elliott."

The indignation was gone out of her eyes, and her lips were trembling.

"Oh, how can you be so hard!" she faltered. "Will nothing move you?"

He met the beseeching with a steady gaze that might have been the outlooking of a spirit of calm superiority or the cold stare of a demon of ruthlessness. The mere suggestion of the alternative made her hot and cold by turns.

"I wonder that you have the courage to appeal to me," he said, at length. "Are you not afraid?"

"For Margaret's sake I am not afraid."

"You are very brave – and very loyal. Do you wonder that I was once moved to tell you that I loved you?"

"How can you speak of that here – and now!" she burst out. "Is there no measure of the hardness of your heart? Is it not enough that you should make me beg for that which I have a right to demand?"

He went apart from her at that to walk softly up and down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, – to walk for leaden-winged minutes that seemed hours to Constance, waiting for his answer. At the final turn he lifted the sheet from the face of the dead woman and looked long and earnestly, as one who would let death speak where life was dumb and inarticulate. Constance watched him with her heart in a turmoil of doubt and fear. The doubt was of her own making, as the fear was of his. She had thought that this man was known to her, in his potentialities for good or evil, in his stumblings upon the brink of the abyss, and in his later plunge into the depths of wrongdoing; but now that she was brought face to face with him, her prefigurings took new shapes and she feared to look upon them. For the potentialities had suddenly become superhuman, and love itself stood aghast at the possibilities. In the midst of it he stood before her again.

"What is it that you would have me do?" he asked.

The tone of it assured her that her battle was fought and won; but at the moment of victory she had not the strength to make terms with him.

"You know what you ought to do," she said, with eyes downcast.

"The 'oughts' are sometimes terribly hard, Miss Elliott. Haven't you found them so?"

"Sometimes." She was finding one of them sufficiently hard at that moment to compel the admission.

"But they are never impossible, you would say, and that is true also. You asked me a few moments ago if there was nothing that would move me, and I was tempted. But that is past. Will you suffer me to go now?"

She stood aside, but her hand was still on the latch of the door.

"You have not promised," she said.

"Pardon me; I was hoping you would spare me. The cup is of my own mixing, but the lees are bitter. Must I drain them?"

"I – I don't understand," she rejoined.