“What is it!” she asked, looking up at David. “I think she fainted,” he said. “Ben is dead—is drowned.”
“Ah!” cried Rose in horror and sympathy and put her hand on Mary's heart.
“And Roger,” said David. “Roger, too!”
XXIII. SCANDAL
THE bodies were recovered, had been recovered before George Tunnison started on the long trip back to Riverbank. It seemed that Ben could not swim, and when the skiff turned over he grasped Roger, and they both went down. The river was covered with floating ice. Tunnison, according to his own account, did what he could, but if the two came up it must have been to find the floating ice between them and the air. They were beyond resuscitation when they were found. Of Mary the doctor's verdict was fatty degeneration of the heart; any shock would have killed her.
In the sad days and weeks that followed Rose Hinch was the comforter, offering no words but making her presence a balm. She neither asked nor suggested that she come, but came and made her home in the manse. It is difficult to express how she helped David and 'Thusia and doubly bereaved Alice and querulous old Mr. Fragg over the hard weeks. She was Life Proceeding As It Must. It might almost be said that she was the normal life of the family, continuing from where sorrow had wrenched David and 'Thusia and Alice and the grandfather from it, and, by mute example, urging them to live again. Her presence was comfort. Her manner was a sweet suggestion that life must still be lived. She made the grandfather's bed in Roger's room, for a room vacated by death is an invitation to sorrow; she began the sewing where it had been dropped, and 'Thusia and Alice, because Rose sewed, took their needles. Work was what they needed. They missed Mary every hour, and David missed her most, for she had been his ablest assistant in his town charities, but the greater work thrown on him by her going was the best thing to keep his mind off the loss that caused it, and Rose Hinch intentionally refrained from giving her usual aid in order that the work might fill his time the more. Lucille Hardcome alone—no one could have made Lucille understand—doubled her assistance. The annoyance her ill-considered help caused him was also good for David; it too helped him to forget other things.
Grandfather Fragg died within the year. Rose had long since left the manse, unwilling to be an expense after she was no longer needed, and had taken up her nursing again, for she was always in demand. As each six months ended David carried a new note to Lucille, and had a new battle with her, for she wanted no note; she urged him to consider the loan a gift. This he would not listen to. He had cut his expenses to the lowest possible figure, and was able to pay Lucille a little each time now—fifty dollars, or twenty-five, or whatever sum it was possible to save. He managed to keep out of debt. Alice, who had rightly asked new frocks and this and that when Ben was alive, seemed to want nothing whatever. She did not mope but she seemed to consider her life now ordered, not completed, but to be as it now was. She was dearer to David and 'Thusia than ever, and they did not urge her to desert them. In time she would, they hoped, forget and be young again, but she waited too long, and they let her, and she was never to leave them. Her indifference to things outside the manse and the church permitted David to save a few dollars he might otherwise have spent on her. So few were they that what he was able to pay Lucille represented it.
For some time after the tragedy that had come so suddenly David had no heart to take up the question he had discussed with the banker. Burton, of course, said nothing when not approached, regarding the increase in David's stipend. He did mention to David, however, the desired increase in Lucille's subscription, and with the death of Mary Derling this increase became more desirable than ever. Old Sam Wiggett and, after his death, Mary, had been the most liberal supporters of the church. It was found, when Mary's will was read, that she had left the church ten thousand dollars as an endowment. Of this only the interest could be used, and her contributions, with what Ben gave, had amounted to far more—to several hundred dollars more.