Storm drew a deep breath. At least, George had no shadow of a suspicion as to the real cause of her death.
“Don’t talk about it!” he implored. “I’ve reproached myself a hundred times with not being at hand, but how could I know?”
“Forgive me! You couldn’t, of course. No one could have anticipated it. It was to be, that’s all one could say, though God only knows why! You were not to blame.”
He threw his arms across the other’s shoulders in an affectionate, consoling clasp, and in his mild, candid eyes Storm read only pity, sorrow and an abiding trustfulness.
Chapter VIII.
The Truth
“I am the resurrection and the life——” The white-frocked minister’s voice rose solemnly above the subdued rustlings and sighing whispers in the little vine-wreathed church, and the stirring ceased. A robin peered in curiously at one of the open windows from his perch on a maple bough and chirped inquiringly, and the scent of lilacs was wafted in from the rector’s garden to mingle with the heavier fragrance of lilies and white roses heaped about the casket at the altar steps.
It was such a small casket, almost like that of a child, and fairly buried beneath the weight of the floral offerings which banked it; a varied collection of offerings, for the costliest of hot-house set pieces mingled with sheaves of home-grown blossoms, and rare orchids nestled beside humble wild violets, but each had their place.
The congregation, too, was a heterogeneous one. Rich and poor, smart and shabby, the country club colony and the villagers met in a common democracy to do honor to their dead friend.
“The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away——” The minister went on to the end, and then the voices of a hidden choir chanted softly: “Lord, thou hast been our refuge: from one generation to another . . . .”
In the front pew Norman Storm rested his sleek head upon his black-gloved hand, and George Holworthy beside him cleared his throat huskily. In the moment of stillness which followed the Psalm, a woman’s sob rose from somewhere back in the church, the sound jangling in Storm’s ears like a touch upon naked nerves.