“I have no sense that makes me be a hypocrite,” she said. “The man cheated me—he was within an hour or two of making me the most pitiful creature. As it was he made me the laughing-stock of the world. No one thought of my misfortune in being married to an impostor, a criminal, and having my life ruined by him. Every one took it for granted that I was a poor weak creature, on the look-out for a husband and ready to jump at the first suitor who turned up. What could I long for but his death? What chance should I have of doing anything in the world so long as he was alive and married to me? What could I long for but his death? At first it was mine that I longed for; but then I saw that to long for his was more sensible—more in keeping with the will of Heaven.”
“The will of Heaven! How can you talk like that, Priscilla?”
“If God has any idea of justice—of right and wrong—as we have been taught to regard right and wrong by those who assure us that they have been let into some of His secrets—it could not be His will that I should have my life wrecked by that man. I felt that I was born for something better, and so I hoped that he would die. Now that by the goodness of God he is dead, shall I not be grateful? Oh, what fools! standing here on the roadside discussing a delicate point in theology instead of talking over the good news!”
He looked at her for a few stern moments, and then thrust into her hand a bundle of papers.
“Read them for yourself,” he said. “I am going into the town. I don’t want to be by while you are chuckling over the death of a man—a man who died as the noblest man might be proud to die—trying to save his fellow creatures from destruction. Read those papers for yourself, and then ask God to forgive you for your dreadful words.”
“He died like a hero,” she murmured, taking the papers; and then she smiled again.
Her father was striding down the hill; the self-respecting gait of the churchwarden was his—the uncompromising stride of the man who worshipped the Conventional, and never failed to go to church for this purpose, returning to eat a one o’clock dinner of roast sirloin and Yorkshire pudding.
She watched him for some time, and the smile had never left her face. Then she looked strangely at the bundle of papers which he had flung at her—his action had suggested flinging them—in his wrath at her utterance of all that had been in his own heart for more than a year.
She glanced at the papers. They were Canadian, she saw, and they were profuse in the display of strong lettering in the headlines of the columns that met her eyes. It seemed as if the half-column of headlines was designed to exhibit the resources of the typefounders. She saw, without unfolding the papers, that they referred to a wreck that had taken place off the coast of Nova Scotia, great stress being laid on the fact that sixteen lives were lost, and that a man who had tried to carry a line ashore from the wreck had been swept away to destruction. “A Hero’s Death!” was the headline that called attention to this detail.
She folded the papers back into their creases. She felt that she could not do full justice on the open road to the matter with which they dealt. She must hurry home and read every line in the seclusion of her own room. In the same spirit she had occasionally hurried to her home with a new novel by a favourite author under her arm. Nothing must disturb her. She must be allowed to gloat over every line—to dwell lovingly upon the bold lettering of the headings, “A Hero’s Death!”