“And you,” he said, savagely, “you sit by the road-side, with help in your hands, and Christ in your heart, and call your life lost, quarrel with your God, because that mass of selfishness has left you,—because you are balked in your puny hope! Look at these women. What is their loss, do you think? Go back, will you, and drone out your life whimpering over your lost dream, and go to Shakspeare for tragedy when you want it? Tragedy! Come here,—let me hear what you call this.”
He led her through the passage, up a narrow flight of stairs. An old woman in a flaring cap sat at the top, nodding,—wakening now and then, to rock herself to and fro, and give the shrill Irish keen.
“You know that stoker who was killed in the mill a month ago? Of course not,—what are such people to you? There was a girl who loved him,-you know what that is? She’s dead now, here. She drank herself to death,—a most unpicturesque suicide. I want you to look at her. You need not blush for her life of shame, now; she’s dead.—Is Hetty here?”
The woman got up.
“She is, Zur. She is, Mem. She’s lookin’ foine in her Sunday suit. Shrouds is gone out, Mem, they say.”
She went tipping over the floor to something white that lay on a board, a candle at the head, and drew off the sheet. A girl of fifteen, almost a child, lay underneath, dead,—her lithe, delicate figure decked out in a barred plaid skirt, and stained, faded velvet bodice,—her neck and arms bare. The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in its sleep,—the soft, fair hair gathered off the tired forehead. Margaret leaned over her shuddering, pinning her handkerchief about the child’s dead neck.
“How young she is!” muttered Knowles. “Merciful God, how young she is!—What is that you say?” sharply, seeing Margaret’s lips move.
“‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’”
“Ah, child, that is old-time philosophy. Put your hand here, on her dead face. Is your loss like hers?” he said lower, looking into the dull pain in her eyes. Selfish pain he called it.
“Let me go,” she said. “I am tired.”