BLIND BENNER'S TRIBUTE.
The two weeks of Gill's absence ran into six and he had not come back. Lizzī wrote to the address he gave, and the letter was returned to her. Gossip said he had deserted her, but she said to her broken heart, "John is dead."
She recalled his fond good-by and his promise to return, with or without his mother's approval of his marriage, at the end of two weeks. She remembered his cavalier appearance as he rode by the Block and waved her a farewell. She heard still the sound of his horse's hoofs in the long bridge. She knew he had considerable money on his person, and supposed some one had murdered him for it. She was left a widow, indeed.
Yet she held her peace and bore herself proudly as ever. Her eyes did not quail before the cold stare of the matrons. Her honest heart sustained her. It did not cry out, "Shame! shame!" So she did not seclude herself, nor was she forward. When necessity called her into the streets, she courageously faced her old acquaintances and bore with patience their scorn. Two women were kind to her and sad for her, but were not oppressive in their attentions. These were Mrs. Hornberger and Gret Reed. Yet she did not seek the comfort of their sympathy, nor once become weak enough to ask them to believe in her. Appearances were against her, but she never intimated that she could produce legal proof of her innocence. Her heart cried out in woe, "I am bereft," and there was no solace for her, grieving for her dead husband. She could not weep, because the tears would be misconstrued.
Her father's kind words had been a great support to her.
"Ye may have gone wrong, Lizzī, but I'll ne'er believe it till ye tell it me."
The deep tenderness of his tones had touched her where the tears lay, and they rose, overflowing the obstruction her will had built against their flood. She fell at his feet. It was Saturday night, and he sat in his split-bottomed chair, resting. She laid her head on his knee, and sobbed and wept convulsively. His shaking hand stroked caressingly her soft black hair, and he murmured low lullaby words as if soothing a child. His conviction had been unhesitatingly expressed, but his sympathy could not find suitable language except in a song that was used to hush a crying infant.
He was seventy years old. His hair and beard were pure white. His broad chest and square shoulders told the story of his vigorous age. It was not to frown that he contracted his eyebrows, but to narrow his vision, while he fixed a gentle look on his daughter, for whom his heart ached, but in whom he believed. No, he did not frown on her. He never did shadow her babyhood, her childhood, her dawning womanhood, nor now would he her approaching motherhood, by scowl of his. He sat bowing above his daughter, not casting a stone at her, but quivering over her head a blessing of trust.
His wife tottered down the stairs, and Lizzī made a movement as if to arise, but he kept her at his knee.
Mrs. McAnay was not a hard woman, but she had to the full measure her sex's vindictiveness against the woman who is weak and it was difficult for her not to relieve her mind of what she considered its just sentiments towards her daughter. Yet she pitied Lizzī. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and gazed wonderingly at the father and daughter. Peter did not speak and Lizzī remained on her knees. Mrs. McAnay slowly approached her child and bent over her.