Several women, overwrought and terrified by the misery written on the man’s face, arose to their feet, and cried out loudly:
“He’ll fall!”
The pulpit steps were behind him, and he balanced just a second, but regained his equilibrium, resting his left hand on the stone pillar around which the pulpit was built.
“And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost be ascribed all honor, might, majesty, dominion, and power henceforth and for ever. Amen.”
Like an aged, feeble man, he turned to descend the pulpit steps. His left hand grasped the rail, which was too wide to give him much support. He took 331 one step downward; then, his white head and shoulders suddenly disappeared from the view of the congregation. There was a scuffling sound, and a thud. The congregation stood up; many rushed from their pews. The guilty wife had heard every word. She had seen him descend the steps, and had turned to fly, dreading to meet him, afraid to look him in the face, now that she knew what he really thought of her. But the sound of his fall awakened all her wifely instincts, and she rushed into the sight of all.
“John! John!” she cried, as she bent over the huddled mass of humanity on the stairs. She was too weak to help him. He had fainted, but was reviving slowly.
The men who reached the pulpit thrust her to one side roughly, and carried the rector into the vestry. Fortunately, there were medical men in the congregation, and he was transferred to their charge, Mary standing by, wringing her hands and weeping. Her face was distorted with pain; for her grief was blended with rage and humiliation. How contemptuously all these people treated her—Smith, the church-warden, a grocer, and Harris, the coal-merchant. Their cringing respect to her had always been amusing in its servility; but now she was as dust beneath their feet. They turned their backs, and ignored her existence.
The physicians took pity on her, and sent her to 332 the rectory to make preparations to receive her husband, whose consciousness did not return completely. In falling, he had struck his head against a jagged piece of carving on the pulpit rails, and there was an ugly wound in his temple.
Netty had already fled home from the church, and Dick, quite unconscious of the progress of affairs, was upstairs, quietly reading in snatches, and dreaming of Dora—dreams that were interspersed with misgivings and a shuddering fear of the future. In his present state of health, the prospect of jail did not seem so amusing as he had pretended to Dora.
Netty came rushing up to him with the news of what had happened in the church. He was deeply agitated, though not so astonished as his sister. The awakening of his father’s conscience had always been an eventuality to be reckoned with; and the awakening had come.