CHAPTER XVIII
Bill and Isabel led Jap from the room as the doctor drew the sheet over Flossy's face. Together the three left the cottage. In dazed silence they walked past the row of modest homes until the business street was reached. Across Main street they went, in stony silence, the girl clinging to an arm of each of her escorts. In front of the elm-shaded residence of Tom Granger, now stark and bare in its late autumn undress, they paused. Isabel, unheedful of the passing crowd, threw her arms around Jap's neck and kissed him passionately. A moment he held her in his arms, his tearless eyes burning. And in her awakened woman's heart, she knew that he was looking through her, beholding the trio of adored ones whose influence had made his heart a fitting habitation for her own. And in that consciousness Isabel Granger experienced no twinge of jealousy.
Silently she walked up the brick-paved path to the stately old house, as Jap and Bill turned back toward Main street. When they reached the office, they locked the door behind them. With the mechanical action of automata, they climbed to their stools and threw the belated issue of the Herald into type.
"Bill, can you do it?" Jap asked at length.
"I'll do my best," Bill said huskily. And his tears wet the type as he set up a brief obituary notice.
The morning of the funeral broke clear and sunny, as fall days come. The air was clear and sounds echoed for long distances. It was a joyous new day, and yet a threnody swept through its music. Something of this Jap and Bill felt as they hurried to the house of Death. Judge Bowers met them at the door. His face was red and overcast. He shifted uneasily.
"I sent for you, because we have to fix things decently for Flossy."
"Decently?" echoed Bill.
"Why, yes. Ma and me got the caskets and all that. Everything's 'tended to, but the service. You know Flossy was a free-thinker, and never belonged to no church."
"Well, what of it?" Bill said shortly.
"We have got to get somebody to preach a sermon," asserted the Judge, his flaccid face showing real concern. "I don't see how we are going to manage it. It looks queer to ask anybody to preach over a non-professor."
"Why do it then?" Bill's tone was enigmatic, as he followed Jap into the little parlor where the effects of the Judge's work were apparent.
Side by side stood the caskets, each one holding a jewel more precious than any diadem. Jap sat down between them, dumb to the greetings of the friends who came for a last look at the two set faces, and there he sat until the afternoon. The room was half filled with people when the Judge aroused him by a sharp grip on his arm.
"Come on, Jap," he whispered huskily, "they have come for them."
"Who?" asked Jap, tonelessly.
"The hearses," said the Judge, his flabby cheeks trembling.
Jap walked outside and climbed into the carriage with Bill, and together they went to the church where Ellis had met his townsmen for the last time. It was the handsome new church whose claim on her brother's generosity had called forth from Flossy such righteous resentment. Mechanically the two young men followed the usher to the pew that had been set apart for them. Vaguely Jap smiled at Isabel as she passed him, clinging to the arm of her father. As in a dream, he followed her slender form as she took her accustomed place at the organ. Clutching the arm of the seat, he sat there, deaf, dumb and blind, until the wailing notes of the organ appraised him that the service was beginning.
He turned his head as a heavy, rolling sound reached him, and looked upon the most heart-shaking sight in the history of the town: two coffins traveling up the aisles to meet at the altar. Sick and faint, he turned his head away. Bill's arm crept around him, while Bill sobbed aloud.
Frozen to silence, Jap stared at the boxes containing all that linked him to his past. Stony-eyed, he gazed at the masses of flowers, casually admiring the gorgeous chrysanthemums and the pink glory of the carnations. He even read, with calm curiosity, the card of sympathy hanging from one of the floral offerings on Flossy's casket. Then he sank into blunt indifference until he was aroused by Bill's start.
He looked up dully. The minister was praying—and his prayer was for forgiveness for Flossy.
"She was a wanderer from grace," the ominous voice droned, "but Thou who didst forgive the thief on the cross wilt grant her mercy."
Bill clasped his hands fiercely over Jap's arm. His breath hissed through his set teeth. Jap sat upright, his gray eyes searching the face of the man of God, as he drawled through a flock of platitudes, promising in the end that on the last great day Flossy and her son would be called by the trump to arise, purified and forgiven.
Wiping his forehead complacently, he sat down.
Jap Herron arose to his feet and walked to the coffin of the only mother he had ever known. Facing the assembly, he said in low, clear tones:
"Friends of mine, friends of Flossy and her boy, and friends of Ellis Hinton, you have listened to this minister. Now you must listen to me. I knew Flossy. Some of you knew her, but none as I did. She had no religion, he says. Flossy Hinton's life was a religion. What is religion? Love, faith and works. Dare any of you claim that she had not all of these? If such soul as hers needs help to carry it through the ramparts of heaven, then God help all of you.
"She will not sleep until a trumpet calls her! No! Alive and vital and everlasting, her soul is with us now. Did Ellis Hinton sleep? He has never been away. He has dwelt right here, in the hearts of all who loved him. Friends, dry your eyes if you grieve for the sins of Flossy."
Raising his hand above the casket, as if in benediction, and looking into the face beneath the glass, he said brokenly:
"A saint she lived among us. In heaven she could be no more."
The descending sun shot a ray of white light across the church, as it sank below the opaque designs in the gorgeous memorial window that flanked the choir. A moment later it would be crimson, then purple, then amber; but for an instant it filtered through pure, untinted glass. Creeping stealthily, the white ray reached the space in front of the altar and rested a moment on the still face within the casket. To Jap it seemed that the lips that had always smiled for him relaxed into a smile of transcendent beauty. Entranced he looked, forgetting all else. Then the strength of his young manhood crumbled. The hinges of his knees gave way, and he sank to the floor.
Bill sprang to his side and carried him to a seat. Isabel, half distracted, started from her place at the organ. As she passed, the white face in the coffin met her eyes. She stopped. A tide of feeling swept her back, back from Jap, whose limp form called her. The song that Flossy had loved came singing to her lips. Inspired in that moment, she stood beside the coffin and sang, as never before, the words that had comforted Flossy in her years of loneliness:
"Somewhere the stars are shining,
Somewhere the song birds dwell.
Cease then thy sad repining!
God lives, and all is well."
Her face was glorified. She sang to that silent one, and to the world that had been hers. In a dream she sang on, as the mother and her boy were taken from her sight, sang on while the people silently departed. "Somewhere, somewhere," she sang,
"Beautiful isle of Somewhere,
Isle of the true, where we live anew,
Beautiful isle of Somewhere."
Her voice broke as uncontrollable sobs rent her slender body, and she sank against the shoulder of her father and followed Bill from the church. Half-a-dozen kindly hands were carrying Jap outside.
The long line of carriages had already started on its way to the little plot of ground where two fern-lined graves awaited the loved ones of Ellis Hinton. The horses of the remaining carriage pawed the ground restlessly in the sharp November air.
"Better take him to his room in a hurry," Dr. Hall commanded. "The boy has been through too much. I was afraid of this."
"You can't take him to that dreary office," Isabel pleaded. "Papa, tell Dr. Hall what to do."
And, as always, she had her way. In the sunny south room above the library, with the shadows of the stark elms doing grotesque dances on the window panes, with Isabel and her mother hovering in tender solicitude over him, Jap Herron tossed for weeks in the delirium of fever, calling always for Flossy.