“Mayn’t I wait for you?” said Tom.
“No, dear. I shall be tidying up and putting things straight. You’d better go home. But I wish you’d send the carriage back for me in about an hour. I’m rather tired, and then you can take your coat.”
Tom got up and put on his coat.
“Is there anything I can do, May?” asked her father.
“You might just come in and speak to Mrs. Lambert. Yes, do that; she would like it.”
The two went back into the sick room, and Tom out into the night. Something in what had taken place impressed him profoundly. What was that power which the old man felt, which was able to ease his last lonely moments? How could words be of any avail, when that last horrible, ghastly parting of soul and body came? Tom, like all healthy, vigorous people, felt an intense physical loathing at the thought of death. It was terrible and unnatural that this beautiful machine should in a moment become a dead thing, something to be buried away out of sight. How could words make death seem death no longer, but the beginning of life? For the swindling greengrocer and his increased balance, which to him appeared to be the direct effect of grace, but to Tom to have had a much more sublunary and intelligible connection with his taking the pledge, there was an explanation which he could appreciate, but this was altogether different. The test was a real test; certain words had for a man round whom the inevitable loneliness of death lay like a cold, blinding mist, a comfort which made him face it with calmness, and to May, as to him, they must have been the expression of something very real. For the first time in his life he had seen, in an aspect that could not be mistaken, the consolation of religious beliefs. The most severe test conceivable had been applied, and a belief in a Power stronger than death had proved itself stronger than death. And Tom, in whom unfamiliarity with such phenomena had bred, not contempt, but absolute want of interest, was much puzzled. Somehow the tragic, simple scene which he had just been through was more convincing than a hundred volumes full of the triumphant sufferings of martyrs.
Tom suddenly felt rather vexed and hurt in his mind. Why did this mean so much to May and to others, and so little to him? If the power of that Life and Death was all-embracing, why had it not touched him? Why had the belief in which he had been brought up passed from him so utterly, being remembered now only as he remembered nursery rhymes and childish stories?
May came back an hour later, just in time to dress for dinner, and in spite of the love and trust which existed between them, neither of them spoke of that which troubled them. May was longing to say to him, “Tom, how is it that this means nothing to you? It was for you He lived and died,” but a very natural reticence prevented her. She saw that Tom was rather upset about something, and this was not the time for it. Such a subject must come spontaneously, inevitably, and meanwhile she was content to bide her time, trusting in the Power which never yet failed. But they both felt at that moment that something had come between them.
Just as they were going down to dinner Tom said to her—
“I am glad you went, May; you made it easier for the poor old fellow. How real it all is to you!”