Down the aisle just under the tower Opal Verrons paused for an instant
startled, thinking of prison walls, and of the dead man lying at
Saybrook Inn that night. Suddenly the words of the telegram flashed
across her: "What disposition do you want made of the body?" The body!
The body! Oh! Her eyes grew wide with horror. She ought to
answer that telegram and give them his home address. But why should
she? What had she to do with him now? Dead. He was Dead. He had
passed to another world. She shuddered. She looked around and shrank
back toward Shafton, but Laurie was wrapt in the vision of Saint
Cecilia seated at the organ under the single electric light that the
janitor had left burning over her head. She resembled a saint with a
halo more than ever, and his easily excited senses were off chasing
this new flower of fancy.
Behind the organ pipes the session sat with the reputation of a man in
their ruthless fingers, tossing it back and forth, and deliberating
upon their own damning phrases, while the minister sat with stern white
face, and sought to hold them from taking an action that might brand a
human soul forever. Marilyn needed no more than those harsh words to
know that her friend of the years was being weighed in the balance.
Many a Sabbath afternoon in his childhood had Mark Carter spent with
her playing the stone block play of David and Jonathan, and then eaten
bread and milk and apple sauce and sponge cake with her and heard the
evening prayers and songs and said good-night with a sweet look of the
Heavenly Father's child on his handsome little face. Many a time as an
older boy had he sung hymns with her and listened to her read the
Bible, and talked it over with her afterward. He had not been like that
when she went away. Could he so have changed? And Cherry Fenner! The
little girl who had been but ten years old when she went away to
college, Cherry a precocious little daughter of a tailor in Economy,
who came over to take music lessons from her. Cherry at the Blue Duck!
And with Mark! Could it be true? It could not be true! Not in the sense
that Mr. Harricutt was trying to make out. Mark might have been there,
but never to do wrong. The Blue Duck was a dance hall where liquor was
sold on the quiet, and where unspeakable things happened every little
while. Oh, it was outrageous! Her fingers made the bells crash out her
horror and disgust, and her appeal to a higher power to right this
dreadful wrong. And then a hopeless sick feeling came over her, a
whirling dizzy sensation as if she were going to faint, although she
never fainted. She longed to drop down upon the keys and wail her heart
out, but she might not. Those awful words or more like them were going
on behind the organ there, and the door was open--or even if the door
was not open they could be heard, for the room behind the organ was
only screened by a heavy curtain! Those two strangers must not hear! At
all costs they must not hear a thing like this! They did not know Mark
Carter of course, but at any rate they must not hear! It was like
having him exposed in the public square for insult. So she played on,
growing steadier, and more controlled. If only she could know the rest!
Or if only she might steal away then, and lie down and bear it alone
for a little! So this was what had given her father such a white drawn
look during his sermon! She had seen that hard old man go across the
lawn to meet him, and this was what he was bringing her father to bear!