‘If I come at eleven!’ Oliver said, with a gasp.
‘She said you would understand. I don’t know as I do. I think they’d a deal better let you alone. What good can you do her?’
Here seemed a help, an advocate--and Oliver looked at him with an eagerness that was almost supplication. ‘That is what I think,’ he said; ‘what good can I do her? It can only agitate her and hasten the end.’
‘Well,’ said the young man, ‘it’s none of my business. Mother and the rest will have it their own way. But as for hastening the end, that’s the best thing that could happen, for she do nothing but feel bad lingering there. At eleven o’clock: and to look sharp, for the parson will be waiting, mother says. ‘Good-morning!’ the youth said, turning quickly and going off down the stairs. He began to whistle after a few steps, then stopped, briefly, with an oh! of recollection, as if remembering that to whistle was indecorous in the present position of affairs.
Oliver went back to his cold and empty rooms with a sense that life was over and his heart dead within him. It seemed to fall down to some impossible depths, down to a grave of silence and darkness. He shut the door mechanically, and went back and sat down where he had been sitting before, and stared with blank eyes in front of him into the vacant air. God had not interposed to deliver him. But why, he asked himself, should God have interposed? God had not been consulted or referred to in all this connection--in anything that had passed--and why, unasked, undesired, should He step in now like a heathen god or a tutelary deity to set all right? Oliver did not feel that he could make any appeal even to Him who was all righteousness and purity to help him out of the consequences of his own folly and sin. Oh, yes, it was true many men had done as much whom no judgment overtook, who lived fair before the world, and had no shame put upon them, and forgot that they had ever stepped aside from the paths of virtue. He had himself almost forgotten--almost--till contact with a purer life and the gift of it to be his companion, and all the happiness to which he had so little right, had brought compunction to his soul. He remembered now how he had told Grace that he had not been a good man: and how she had stopped him as the father in the parable stopped the Prodigal in his confession--she had stopped him, putting her pure hand upon his lips, throwing her whiteness over him like a mantle. But there had been judgment waiting behind. Justice had been standing watching his futile attempts at escape, with a face immovable, holding her scales. He had been weighed and found---- ah, no one but himself knew how entirely wanting! And now here was the price to pay. He had promised and he could not escape.