Thin and pale, but with the likeness of God shining in her dark eyes—there was the bruise-like colour of great exhaustion under each eye—Mrs. Joyce sat wearily stitching at her warehouse needle-work.
Jem Joyce, the drunken, reprobate husband, was serving a six weeks sentence for his old crime, drunken disorderliness in the streets, and assaulting the police. His time would soon be up. The fearsome wife had recalled the fact, that very day, though she could not be sure of the actual date.
As she worked now her voice whispered low in song:—
Low, soft, yearning in its passionate longing for her Lord’s Return, she began again to hum her lay, when a step sounded somewhere near. So keenly had her imagination been aroused by her song, and by her long, yearning-dwelling on the theme of the song, that she, almost unconsciously to herself, rose to her feet, her work and needle held lightly in her hand, her face turned towards the door. For one instant, her imagination had suggested the step to have been her Lord’s.
The next moment she turned deadly pale. She had recognized the step. It was her husband’s.
She had just time to drop back into her chair, and, tremblingly, to resume her work, when the brute entered. He was drunk—viciously, murderously drunk.
He began to curse her, the moment he crossed the threshold. He called her foul names that brought the flush of a great shame—for him, not for herself—to her cheeks. He sneered at her religion, and blasphemed the name of her Lord.
Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. She prayed for grace to be silent, for she feared to aggravate him. Suddenly, he shook his fist in her face, and hissed:—
“Curse you! You ——! Do you know I’ve only come back to you to settle all my scores. I’ve come to——”
His foaming, blaspheming rage choked him, and he leaped forward, (she had drawn back from his clenched fist) and caught her by the throat.
She could not cry out. She thought his purpose was to strangle her. He glared murderously back into her eyes, which his awful grip was forcing from their sockets. He shook her fiercely, hurling hideous blasphemies at her all the time. Then he essayed to put his real purpose in view, and drawing himself up, and drawing her, at the same time, towards himself, he hurled himself forward to dash her head against the wall of the room.
It was his head that struck the wall. His hands clutched air. He fell head-long stunned, bleeding, and—presently, he was dead.
The room was very still. Awesomely silent.
Margaret Joyce was in the air, with her Lord!