salome looked out of the kitchen window, and a pucker of distress appeared on her smooth forehead.
“dear, dear, what has lionel hezekiah been doing now?” she murmured anxiously.
involuntarily she reached out for her crutch; but it was a little beyond her reach, having fallen on the floor, and without it salome could not move a step.
“well, anyway, judith is bringing him in as fast as she can,” she reflected. “he must have been up to something terrible this time; for she looks very cross, and she never walks like that unless she is angry clear through. dear me, i am sometimes tempted to think that judith and i made a mistake in adopting the child. i suppose two old maids don’t know much about bringing up a boy properly. but he is not a bad child, and it really seems to me that there must be some way of making him behave better if we only knew what it was.”
salome’s monologue was cut short by the entrance of her sister judith, holding lionel hezekiah by his chubby wrist with a determined grip.
judith marsh was ten years older than salome, and the two women were as different in appearance as night and day. salome, in spite of her thirty-five years, looked almost girlish. she was small and pink and flower-like, with little rings of pale golden hair clustering all over her head in a most unspinster-like fashion, and her eyes were big and blue, and mild as a dove’s. her face was perhaps a weak one, but it was very sweet and appealing.
judith marsh was tall and dark, with a plain, tragic face and iron-gray hair. her eyes were black and sombre, and every feature bespoke unyielding will and determination. just now she looked, as salome had said, “angry clear through,” and the baleful glances she cast on the small mortal she held would have withered a more hardened criminal than six happy-go-lucky years had made of lionel hezekiah.
lionel hezekiah, whatever his shortcomings, did not look bad. indeed, he was as engaging an urchin as ever beamed out on a jolly good world through a pair of big, velvet-brown eyes. he was chubby and firm-limbed, with a mop of beautiful golden curls, which were the despair of his heart and the pride and joy of salome’s; and his round face was usually a lurking-place for dimples and smiles and sunshine.
but just now lionel hezekiah was under a blight; he had been caught red-handed in guilt, and was feeling much ashamed of himself. he hung his head and squirmed his toes under the mournful reproach in salome’s eyes. when salome looked at him like that, lionel hezekiah always felt that he was paying more for his fun than it was worth.
“what do you suppose i caught him doing this time?” demanded judith.
“i—i don’t know,” faltered salome.
“firing—at—a—mark—on—the—henhouse—door—with—new-laid—eggs,” said judith with measured distinctness. “he has broken every egg that was laid to-day except three. and as for the state of that henhouse door—”
judith paused, with an indignant gesture meant to convey that the state of the henhouse door must be left to salome’s imagination, since the english language was not capable of depicting it.
“o lionel hezekiah, why will you do such things?” said salome miserably.
“i—didn’t know it was wrong,” said lionel hezekiah, bursting into prompt tears. “i—i thought it would be bully fun. seems’s if everything what’s fun ‘s wrong.”
salome’s heart was not proof against tears, as lionel hezekiah very well knew. she put her arm about the sobbing culprit, and drew him to her side.
“he didn’t know it was wrong,” she said defiantly to judith.
“he’s got to be taught, then,” was judith’s retort. “no, you needn’t try to beg him off, salome. he shall go right to bed without supper, and stay there till to-morrow morning.”
“oh! not without his supper,” entreated salome. “you—you won’t improve the child’s morals by injuring his stomach, judith.”
“without his supper, i say,” repeated judith inexorably. “lionel hezekiah, go up-stairs to the south room, and go to bed at once.”
lionel hezekiah went up-stairs, and went to bed at once. he was never sulky or disobedient. salome listened to him as he stumped patiently up-stairs with a sob at every step, and her own eyes filled with tears.
“now don’t for pity’s sake go crying, salome,” said judith irritably. “i think i’ve let him off very easily. he is enough to try the patience of a saint, and i never was that,” she added with entire truth.
“but he isn’t bad,” pleaded salome. “you know he never does anything the second time after he has been told it was wrong, never.”
“what good does that do when he is certain to do something new and twice as bad? i never saw anything like him for originating ideas of mischief. just look at what he has done in the past fortnight—in one fortnight, salome. he brought in a live snake, and nearly frightened you into fits; he drank up a bottle of liniment, and almost poisoned himself; he took three toads to bed with him; he climbed into the henhouse loft, and fell through on a hen and killed her; he painted his face all over with your water-colours; and now comes this exploit. and eggs at twenty-eight cents a dozen! i tell you, salome, lionel hezekiah is an expensive luxury.”
“but we couldn’t do without him,” protested salome.
“i could. but as you can’t, or think you can’t, we’ll have to keep him, i suppose. but the only way to secure any peace of mind for ourselves, as far as i can see, is to tether him in the yard, and hire somebody to watch him.”
“there must be some way of managing him,” said salome desperately. she thought judith was in earnest about the tethering. judith was generally so terribly in earnest in all she said. “perhaps it is because he has no other employment that he invents so many unheard-of things. if he had anything to occupy himself with—perhaps if we sent him to school—”
“he’s too young to go to school. father always said that no child should go to school until it was seven, and i don’t mean lionel hezekiah shall. well, i’m going to take a pail of hot water and a brush, and see what i can do to that henhouse door. i’ve got my afternoon’s work cut out for me.”
judith stood salome’s crutch up beside her, and departed to purify the henhouse door. as soon as she was safely out of the way, salome took her crutch, and limped slowly and painfully to the foot of the stairs. she could not go up and comfort lionel hezekiah as she yearned to do, which was the reason judith had sent him up-stairs. salome had not been up-stairs for fifteen years. neither did she dare to call him out on the landing, lest judith return. besides, of course he must be punished; he had been very naughty.
“but i wish i could smuggle a bit of supper up to him,” she mused, sitting down on the lowest step and listening. “i don’t hear a sound. i suppose he has cried himself to sleep, poor, dear baby. he certainly is dreadfully mischievous; but it seems to me that it shows an investigating turn of mind, and if it could only be directed into the proper channels—i wish judith would let me have a talk with mr. leonard about lionel hezekiah. i wish judith didn’t hate ministers so. i don’t mind so much her not letting me go to church, because i’m so lame that it would be painful anyhow; but i’d like to talk with mr. leonard now and then about some things. i can never believe that judith and father were right; i am sure they were not. there is a god, and i’m afraid it’s terribly wicked not to go to church. but there, nothing short of a miracle would convince judith; so there is no use in thinking about it. yes, lionel hezekiah must have gone to sleep.”
salome pictured him so, with his long, curling lashes brushing his rosy, tear-stained cheek and his chubby fists clasped tightly over his breast as was his habit; her heart grew warm and thrilling with the maternity the picture provoked.
a year previously lionel hezekiah’s parents, abner and martha smith, had died, leaving a houseful of children and very little else. the children were adopted into various carmody families, and salome marsh had amazed judith by asking to be allowed to take the five-year-old “baby.” at first judith had laughed at the idea; but, when she found that salome was in earnest, she yielded. judith always gave salome her own way except on one point.
“if you want the child, i suppose you must have him,” she said finally. “i wish he had a civilized name, though. hezekiah is bad, and lionel is worse; but the two in combination, and tacked on to smith at that, is something that only martha smith could have invented. her judgment was the same clear through, from selecting husbands to names.”
so lionel hezekiah came into judith’s home and salome’s heart. the latter was permitted to love him all she pleased, but judith overlooked his training with a critical eye. possibly it was just as well, for salome might otherwise have ruined him with indulgence. salome, who always adopted judith’s opinions, no matter how ill they fitted her, deferred to the former’s decrees meekly, and suffered far more than lionel hezekiah when he was punished.
she sat on the stairs until she fell asleep herself, her head pillowed on her arm. judith found her there when she came in, severe and triumphant, from her bout with the henhouse door. her face softened into marvelous tenderness as she looked at salome.
“she’s nothing but a child herself in spite of her age,” she thought pityingly. “a child that’s had her whole life thwarted and spoiled through no fault of her own. and yet folks say there is a god who is kind and good! if there is a god, he is a cruel, jealous tyrant, and i hate him!”
judith’s eyes were bitter and vindictive. she thought she had many grievances against the great power that rules the universe, but the most intense was salome’s helplessness—salome, who fifteen years before had been the brightest, happiest of maidens, light of heart and foot, bubbling over with harmless, sparkling mirth and life. if salome could only walk like other women, judith told herself that she would not hate the great tyrannical power.
lionel hezekiah was subdued and angelic for four days after that affair of the henhouse door. then he broke out in a new place. one afternoon he came in sobbing, with his golden curls full of burrs. judith was not in, but salome dropped her crochet-work and gazed at him in dismay.
“oh, lionel hezekiah, what have you gone and done now?”
“i—i just stuck the burrs in ‘cause i was playing i was a heathen chief,” sobbed lionel hezekiah. “it was great fun while it lasted; but, when i tried to take them out, it hurt awful.”
neither salome nor lionel hezekiah ever forgot the harrowing hour that followed. with the aid of comb and scissors, salome eventually got the burrs out of lionel hezekiah’s crop of curls. it would be impossible to decide which of them suffered more in the process. salome cried as hard as lionel hezekiah did, and every snip of the scissors or tug at the silken floss cut into her heart. she was almost exhausted when the performance was over; but she took the tired lionel hezekiah on her knee, and laid her wet cheek against his shining head.
“oh, lionel hezekiah, what does make you get into mischief so constantly?” she sighed.
lionel hezekiah frowned reflectively.
“i don’t know,” he finally announced, “unless it’s because you don’t send me to sunday school.”
salome started as if an electric shock had passed through her frail body.
“why, lionel hezekiah,” she stammered, “what put such and idea into your head?”
“well, all the other boys go,” said lionel hezekiah defiantly; “and they’re all better’n me; so i guess that must be the reason. teddy markham says that all little boys should go to sunday school, and that if they don’t they’re sure to go to the bad place. i don’t see how you can ‘spect me to behave well when you won’t send me to sunday school.
“would you like to go?” asked salome, almost in a whisper.
“i’d like it bully,” said lionel hezekiah frankly and succinctly.
“oh, don’t use such dreadful words,” sighed salome helplessly. “i’ll see what can be done. perhaps you can go. i’ll ask your aunt judith.”
“oh, aunt judith won’t let me go,” said lionel hezekiah despondingly. “aunt judith doesn’t believe there is any god or any bad place. teddy markham says she doesn’t. he says she’s an awful wicked woman ‘cause she never goes to church. so you must be wicked too, aunt salome, ‘cause you never go. why don’t you?”
“your—your aunt judith won’t let me go,” faltered salome, more perplexed than she had ever been before in her life.
“well, it doesn’t seem to me that you have much fun on sundays,” remarked lionel hezekiah ponderingly. “i’d have more if i was you. but i s’pose you can’t ‘cause you’re ladies. i’m glad i’m a man. look at abel blair, what splendid times he has on sundays. he never goes to church, but he goes fishing, and has cock-fights, and gets drunk. when i grow up, i’m going to do that on sundays too, since i won’t be going to church. i don’t want to go to church, but i’d like to go to sunday school.”
salome listened in agony. every word of lionel hezekiah’s stung her conscience unbearably. so this was the result of her weak yielding to judith; this innocent child looked upon her as a wicked woman, and, worse still, regarded old, depraved abel blair as a model to be imitated. oh! was it too late to undo the evil? when judith returned, salome blurted out the whole story. “lionel hezekiah must go to sunday school,” she concluded appealingly.
judith’s face hardened until it was as if cut in stone.
“no, he shall not,” she said stubbornly. “no one living in my household shall ever go to church or sunday school. i gave in to you when you wanted to teach him to say his prayers, though i knew it was only foolish superstition, but i sha’n’t yield another inch. you know exactly how i feel on this subject, salome; i believe just as father did. you know he hated churches and churchgoing. and was there ever a better, kinder, more lovable man?”
“mother believed in god; mother always went to church,” pleaded salome.
“mother was weak and superstitious, just as you are,” retorted judith inflexibly. “i tell you, salome, i don’t believe there is a god. but, if there is, he is cruel and unjust, and i hate him.”
“judith!” gasped salome, aghast at the impiety. she half expected to see her sister struck dead at her feet.
“don’t ‘judith’ me!” said judith passionately, in the strange anger that any discussion of the subject always roused in her. “i mean every word i say. before you got lame i didn’t feel much about it one way or another; i’d just as soon have gone with mother as with father. but, when you were struck down like that, i knew father was right.”
for a moment salome quailed. she felt that she could not, dare not, stand out against judith. for her own sake she could not have done so, but the thought of lionel hezekiah nerved her to desperation. she struck her thin, bleached little hands wildly together.
“judith, i’m going to church to-morrow,” she cried. “i tell you i am, i won’t set lionel hezekiah a bad example one day longer. i’ll not take him; i won’t go against you in that, for it is your bounty feeds and clothes him; but i’m going myself.”
“if you do, salome marsh, i’ll never forgive you,” said judith, her harsh face dark with anger; and then, not trusting herself to discuss the subject any longer, she went out.
salome dissolved into her ready tears, and cried most of the night. but her resolution did not fail. go to church she would, for that dear baby’s sake.
judith would not speak to her at breakfast, and this almost broke salome’s heart; but she dared not yield. after breakfast, she limped painfully into her room, and still more painfully dressed herself. when she was ready, she took a little old worn bible out of her box. it had been her mother’s, and salome read a chapter in it every night, although she never dared to let judith see her doing it.
when she limped out into the kitchen, judith looked up with a hard face. a flame of sullen anger glowed in her dark eyes, and she went into the sitting-room and shut the door, as if by that act she were shutting her sister for evermore out of her heart and life. salome, strung up to the last pitch of nervous tension, felt intuitively the significance of that closed door. for a moment she wavered—oh, she could not go against judith! she was all but turning back to her room when lionel hezekiah came running in, and paused to look at her admiringly.
“you look just bully, aunt salome,” he said. “where are you going?”
“don’t use that word, lionel hezekiah,” pleaded salome. “i’m going to church.”
“take me with you,” said lionel hezekiah promptly. salome shook her head.
“i can’t, dear. your aunt judith wouldn’t like it. perhaps she will let you go after a while. now do be a good boy while i am away, won’t you? don’t do any naughty things.” “i won’t do them if i know they’re naughty,” conceded lionel hezekiah. “but that’s just the trouble; i don’t know what’s naughty and what ain’t. prob’ly if i went to sunday school i’d find out.”
salome limped out of the yard and down the lane bordered by its asters and goldenrod. fortunately the church was just outside the lane, across the main road; but salome found it hard to cover even that short distance. she felt almost exhausted when she reached the church and toiled painfully up the aisle to her mother’s old pew. she laid her crutch on the seat, and sank into the corner by the window with a sigh of relief.
she had elected to come early so that she might get there before the rest of the people. the church was as yet empty, save for a class of sunday school children and their teacher in a remote corner, who paused midway in their lesson to stare with amazement at the astonishing sight of salome marsh limping into church.
the big building, shadowy from the great elms around it, was very still. a faint murmur came from the closed room behind the pulpit where the rest of the sunday school was assembled. in front of the pulpit was a stand bearing tall white geraniums in luxuriant blossom. the light fell through the stained-glass window in a soft tangle of hues upon the floor. salome felt a sense of peace and happiness fill her heart. even judith’s anger lost its importance. she leaned her head against the window-sill, and gave herself up to the flood of tender old recollections that swept over her.
memory went back to the years of her childhood when she had sat in this pew every sunday with her mother. judith had come then, too, always seeming grown up to salome by reason of her ten years’ seniority. her tall, dark, reserved father never came. salome knew that the carmody people called him an infidel, and looked upon him as a very wicked man. but he had not been wicked; he had been good and kind in his own odd way.
the gentle little mother had died when salome was ten years old, but so loving and tender was judith’s care that the child did not miss anything out of her life. judith marsh loved her little sister with an intensity that was maternal. she herself was a plain, repellent girl, liked by few, sought after by no man; but she was determined that salome should have everything that she had missed—admiration, friendship, love. she would have a vicarious youth in salome’s.
all went according to judith’s planning until salome was eighteen, and then trouble after trouble came. their father, whom judith had understood and passionately loved, died; salome’s young lover was killed in a railroad accident; and finally salome herself developed symptoms of the hip-disease which, springing from a trifling injury, eventually left her a cripple. everything possible was done for her. judith, falling heir to a snug little fortune by the death of the old aunt for whom she was named, spared nothing to obtain the best medical skill, and in vain. one and all, the great doctors failed.
judith had borne her father’s death bravely enough in spite of her agony of grief; she had watched her sister pining and fading with the pain of her broken heart without growing bitter; but when she knew at last that salome would never walk again save as she hobbled painfully about on her crutch, the smouldering revolt in her soul broke its bounds, and overflowed her nature in a passionate rebellion against the being who had sent, or had failed to prevent, these calamities. she did not rave or denounce wildly; that was not judith’s way; but she never went to church again, and it soon became an accepted fact in carmody that judith marsh was as rank an infidel as her father had been before her; nay, worse, since she would not even allow salome to go to church, and shut the door in the minister’s face when he went to see her.
“i should have stood out against her for conscience’ sake,” reflected salome in her pew self-reproachfully. “but, o dear, i’m afraid she’ll never forgive me, and how can i live if she doesn’t? but i must endure it for lionel hezekiah’s sake; my weakness has perhaps done him great harm already. they say that what a child learns in the first seven years never leaves him; so lionel hezekiah has only another year to get set right about these things. oh, if i’ve left it till too late!”
when the people began to come in, salome felt painfully the curious glances directed at her. look where she would, she met them, unless she looked out of the window; so out of the window she did look unswervingly, her delicate little face burning crimson with self-consciousness. she could see her home and its back yard plainly, with lionel hezekiah making mud-pies joyfully in the corner. presently she saw judith come out of the house and stride away to the pine wood behind it. judith always betook herself to the pines in time of mental stress and strain.
salome could see the sunlight shining on lionel hezekiah’s bare head as he mixed his pies. in the pleasure of watching him she forgot where she was and the curious eyes turned on her.
suddenly lionel hezekiah ceased concocting pies, and betook himself to the corner of the summer kitchen, where he proceeded to climb up to the top of the storm-fence and from there to mount the sloping kitchen roof. salome clasped her hands in agony. what if the child should fall? oh! why had judith gone away and left him alone? what if—what if—and then, while her brain with lightning-like rapidity pictured forth a dozen possible catastrophes, something really did happen. lionel hezekiah slipped, sprawled wildly, slid down, and fell off the roof, in a bewildering whirl of arms and legs, plump into the big rain-water hogshead under the spout, which was generally full to the brim with rain-water, a hogshead big and deep enough to swallow up half a dozen small boys who went climbing kitchen roofs on a sunday.
then something took place that is talked of in carmody to this day, and even fiercely wrangled over, so many and conflicting are the opinions on the subject. salome marsh, who had not walked a step without assistance for fifteen years, suddenly sprang to her feet with a shriek, ran down the aisle, and out of the door!
every man, woman, and child in the carmody church followed her, even to the minister, who had just announced his text. when they got out, salome was already half-way up her lane, running wildly. in her heart was room for but one agonized thought. would lionel hezekiah be drowned before she reached him?
she opened the gate of the yard, and panted across it just as a tall, grim-faced woman came around the corner of the house and stood rooted to the ground in astonishment at the sight that met her eyes.
but salome saw nobody. she flung herself against the hogshead and looked in, sick with terror at what she might see. what she did see was lionel hezekiah sitting on the bottom of the hogshead in water that came only to his waist. he was looking rather dazed and bewildered, but was apparently quite uninjured.
the yard was full of people, but nobody had as yet said a word; awe and wonder held everybody in spellbound silence. judith was the first to speak. she pushed through the crowd to salome. her face was blanched to a deadly whiteness; and her eyes, as mrs. william blair afterwards declared, were enough to give a body the creeps.
“salome,” she said in a high, shrill, unnatural voice, “where is your crutch?”
salome came to herself at the question. for the first time, she realized that she had walked, nay, run, all that distance from the church alone and unaided. she turned pale, swayed, and would have fallen if judith had not caught her.
old dr. blair came forward briskly.
“carry her in,” he said, “and don’t all of you come crowding in, either. she wants quiet and rest for a spell.”
most of the people obediently returned to the church, their sudden loosened tongues clattering in voluble excitement. a few women assisted judith to carry salome in and lay her on the kitchen lounge, followed by the doctor and the dripping lionel hezekiah, whom the minister had lifted out of the hogshead and to whom nobody now paid the slightest attention.
salome faltered out her story, and her hearers listened with varying emotions.
“it’s a miracle,” said sam lawson in an awed voice.
dr. blair shrugged his shoulders. “there is no miracle about it,” he said bluntly. “it’s all perfectly natural. the disease in the hip has evidently been quite well for a long time; nature does sometimes work cures like that when she is let alone. the trouble was that the muscles were paralyzed by long disuse. that paralysis was overcome by the force of a strong and instinctive effort. salome, get up and walk across the kitchen.”
salome obeyed. she walked across the kitchen and back, slowly, stiffly, falteringly, now that the stimulus of frantic fear was spent; but still she walked. the doctor nodded his satisfaction.
“keep that up every day. walk as much as you can without tiring yourself, and you’ll soon be as spry as ever. no more need of crutches for you, but there’s no miracle in the case.”
judith marsh turned to him. she had not spoken a word since her question concerning salome’s crutch. now she said passionately:
“it was a miracle. god has worked it to prove his existence for me, and i accept the proof.”
the old doctor shrugged his shoulders again. being a wise man, he knew when to hold his tongue.
“well, put salome to bed, and let her sleep the rest of the day. she’s worn out. and for pity’s sake let some one take that poor child and put some dry clothes on him before he catches his death of cold.”
that evening, as salome marsh lay in her bed in a glory of sunset light, her heart filled with unutterable gratitude and happiness, judith came into the room. she wore her best hat and dress, and she held lionel hezekiah by the hand. lionel hezekiah’s beaming face was scrubbed clean, and his curls fell in beautiful sleekness over the lace collar of his velvet suit.
“how do you feel now, salome?” asked judith gently.
“better. i’ve had a lovely sleep. but where are you going, judith?”
“i am going to church,” said judith firmly, “and i am going to take lionel hezekiah with me.”
