Emily's conscience smote her the more that night. How terrible this deception of her was! All at once there came to her a thought cuttingly vivid. People did die suddenly; no doubt about that; even an extremely living woman like Cora Benton ceased without warning. "Suppose I'd die suddenly, myself!" Emily gasped. "Suppose I should die without ever telling her the truth! She'd have this house for herself then; she might quarrel with her father; she might turn him out of it in some evil moment. She might even tell him some time what I let her think. To-morrow morning," Emily decided, "first thing, I'll tell her the truth." She lay unhappily trying to screw herself up to the necessary intensity of determination.
In the morning, however, Martha didn't come down to breakfast. Emily went up to her room. She said she was tired, and Emily saw at once she had been crying. She offered to bring her up something, but Martha refused shortly. She said she was going to get up; she wouldn't stay in bed. Not one least hint of the conciliatory mood of the evening before was left. Emily was afraid of her, afraid of the bitter things that might come slashing out of her mouth. If only she knew what she had been crying about! Was it because the companionship of the evening had seemed as pleasant as unattainable? Had she been by any chance thinking how happy she might have been with Johnnie? Or had she been mourning the lover who had destroyed himself in her mind? Emily came downstairs and set about her morning work hesitant, cautious, and perplexed.
Even as they sat side by side in the crowded church, Emily was conscious of the hardness of her mood. Mrs. Benton might reasonably have asked to have a sermon preached over her body in the great hall she had built, but she had commanded that the service should be in the small Congregational church. Emily, when she went to that church, always thought of Jim's mother—rather than Bob's—and of his father, whose heroic death was but a mildly interesting tale to Martha. The crowded service promised at first to be all that Mrs. Benton had hoped it never would be, but the minister, when he began speaking, showed more sense than Emily had ever thought him capable of. She saw Johnnie almost immediately lift his bewildered head to listen.
"Our sister," he said, "lies here silent. Her works praise her. Which one of us," he asked, "can lift a voice to contradict them? Dare we dispute with the bathing beach? Shall we try arguing with the memorial hall?" He named over her civic accomplishments, scarcely mentioning the flowers that were to bloom all over the county in the spring—they, Emily thought, might have suggested to the scoffing, or the conscience-smitten, a certain joyous derision. "There had been women more gentle than she," he said, frankly, "But the gentle women had dammed no river. There had been women more popular, but the popular had built no bridges. What she had built, she had built well. Let the town, now, if it could, reach the standard of excellence which she had set. Her example of doing things exactly right was a heritage not to be despised in these shoddy days."
But of all her works, he averred, the beach had the clearest voice and the holiest. "Wash ye! Make ye clean!" the prophets of God had been crying, through all the generations. And now the beach took up the song, inviting all the children to throw themselves into the cleanness of joy and to dive deep into the transparency of living. It was the element of cleanness that she had made precious to the children of the town. How many small boys of the town cared where their winter clothes were put away for the summer? But how many of them would there be who weren't conscious all the winter just where their bathing suits were put away waiting for the summer? The snow would scarcely be melted on the south slopes of the lawns until children began shaking out their bathing suits and counting the weeks until swimming began. The dancing feet of the young, and the music of their youth, praised this woman all the winter months. And in the summer, tanned and barefooted memorials of her would soon be running down all the shaded streets to the river. And healthy dripping tributes to her wisdom would be trudging home late to meals. When there were no longer any children to love swimming, he said suddenly, he hoped the town would build a stone memorial to its benefactress.
He sat down.
The church sighed its agreement.
The coffin, unopened, was carried away. Johnnie said afterwards that the minister had sense.