She stood within my circling arms quite still for an instant, then suddenly her hard face broke into convulsive weeping. She thrust me from her, gasping: “Don’t—don’t! I say!” and fled to him, while I rushed from the house bearing my ill-news.
Everyone was shocked, and one was wounded, that Sandy had not asked his help. He did not understand the sturdy pride of the old pair who accepted nothing they had not earned and asked of the world but one thing, and that was a decent privacy to suffer in.
Three of the actors went at once to the house, the one who had felt hurt, a gentle and kindly soul, acting as spokesman. They offered help to her and burial for Sandy, but they were met with such invective and imprecation as fairly stunned them, and though, by their secret help, they later on saved poor MacIlhenny from the Potter’s Field, they were compelled to beat a retreat before his frenzied widow.
With bitter sarcasm she invited one to enter and “bring a brush and see if he could find in that house one crumb of bread!” She told them exactly “how many weeks a man could live upon a kit of tools pawned one by one;” she reviled them as “thieves” for stealing her husband’s “great thoughts and ideas of acting;” jeered at them for “cowards,” that they had not “dared to stab him,” though they had “dogged his steps with evil intent many a dark night;” hailed them as “hypocrites,” because they hid their joy and, pretending grief, came here and offered “decent burial”—and as they slowly withdrew, she stood upon her doorstep and called after them: “Hypocrites! hypocrites! You starved him to slow death—and he was broken-hearted!”
The word seemed to catch her own ear. She paused—slowly she repeated, “broken-hearted!” Then suddenly she caught the clue—flung her gaunt arms wide—she lifted her tortured eyes to the sky, and with a burst of bitter triumph, cried: “But a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt Thou not despise!”
And hearing that splendid declaration—that so thrills with hope!—those who had all unintentionally worked her woe, bowed their heads and breathed a quick—Amen!
John Hickey: Coachman