But to-night he was a different man.As he looked at his small son across the schoolroom floor there was terror in his eyes.Nothing could have been easier or more simple than his lifelong assumption that,because God was in His heaven all was right with the world.He had given thanks every evening for the blessings that he had received and every morning for the blessings that he was going to receive,and he had had no reason to complain.He had the wife,the children,the work that he deserved,and his life had been so hemmed in with security that he had had no difficulty in assuring his congregation on every possible occasion that God was good and far-seeing,and that "not one sparrow ."
And now lie was threatened--threatened most desperately.Mrs.Cole was so ill that it was doubtful whether she would live through the night.He was completely helpless.He had turned from one side to another,simply demanding an assurance from someone or something that she could not be taken from him.No one could give him that assurance.Life without her would be impossible;he would not know what to do about the simplest matter.Life without her.oh!but it was incredible!
Like a blind man he had groped his way up to the schoolroom.He did not want to see the children,nor Miss Jones,but he must be moving,must be doing something that would break in upon that terrible ominous pause that the whole world seemed to him,at this moment,to be making.
Then he saw Jeremy.He said:
"Oh!Where's Miss Jones?"
"She's in the next room,"said Jeremy,looking at his father.
"Oh!"He began to walk up and down the schoolroom.Jeremy left his toy village and stood up.
"Is Mother better,Father?"
He stopped in his walk and looked at the boy as though he were trying to recollect who he was.
"No.No--that is--No,my boy,I'm afraid not.""Is she very bad,Father--like the Dean's wife when she had fever?"His father didn't answer.He walked to the end of the room,then turned suddenly as though he had seen something there that terrified him,and hurried from the room.
Jeremy,suddenly left alone,had a desperate impulse to scream that someone must come,that he was frightened,that something horrible was in the house.He stood up,staring at the closed door,his face white,his eyes large and full of fear.Then he flung himself down by Hamlet and,taking him by the neck,whispered:
"I'm frightened!I'm frightened!Bark or something!There's someone here!"
III
Next morning Mrs.Cole was still alive.There had been no change during the night;to-day,the doctor said,would be the critical day.To-day was Sunday,and Mr.Cole took his morning service at his church as usual.He had been up all night;he looked haggard and pale,still wearing that expression as of a man lost in a world that he had always trusted.But he would not fail in his duty."When two or three are gathered together in my name."Perhaps God would hear him.
It was a day of wonderful heat for May.No one had ever remembered so hot a day at so early a time of year.The windows of the church were open,but no breeze blew through the aisles.The relentless blazing blue of the sky penetrated into the cool shadows of the church,and it was as though the congregation sat there under shimmering glass.The waves of light shifted,rose and fell above the bonnets and hats and bare heads,and all the little choir boys fell asleep during the sermon.
The Cole family did not fall asleep.They sat with pale faces and stiff backs staring at their father and thinking about their mother.
Mary and Helen were frightened;the house was so strange,everyone spoke in whispers,and,on the way into church,many ladies had asked them how their mother was.
They felt important as well as sad.But Jeremy did not feel important.He had not heard the ladies and their questions--he would not have cared if he had.People had always called him "a queer little boy,"simply because he was independent and thought more than he spoke.Nevertheless,he had always in reality been normal enough until now.To-day he was really "queer,"was conscious for the first time of the existence of a world whose adjacence to the real world was,in after days,to trouble him so often and to complicate life for him so grievously.The terror that had come down upon him when his father had left him seemed to-day utterly to soak through into the very heart of him.His mother was going to die unless something or somebody saved her.What was dying?Going away,he had always been told,with a golden harp,to sing hymns in a foreign country.
But to-day the picture would not form so easily.There was silence and darkness and confusion about this Death.His mother was going,against her will,and no one could tell him whither she was going.
If he could only stop her dying,force God to leave her alone,to leave her with them all as she had been before.
He fixed his eyes upon his father,who climbed slowly into his pulpit and gave out the text of his sermon.To-day he would talk about the sacrifice of Isaac."Abraham,as his hearers would remember ."and so on.
Jeremy listened,and gradually there grew before his eyes the figure of a strange and terrible God.This was no new figure.He had never thought directly about God,but for a very long time now he had had Him in the background of his life as Polchester Town Hall was in the background.But now he definitely and actively figured to himself this God,this God Who was taking his mother away and was intending apparently to put her into some dark place where she would know nobody.It must be some horrible place,because his father looked so frightened,which he would not look if his mother was simply going,with a golden harp,to sing hymns.Jeremy had always heard that this God was loving and kind and tender,but the figure whom his father was now drawing for the benefit of the congregation was none of these things.
