Book: A Spinner in the Sun

M >> Myrtle Reed >> A Spinner in the Sun




He tapped gently at the door, but there was no answer. He went around
to the back door, but it was closed, and there was no sign that the
place was occupied, except quantities of white chiffon hung upon the
line. Being a man, Ralph did not perceive that Miss Evelina had washed
every veil she possessed.

He went back to the front of the house again and found that the door
was still ajar. She might have gone away, though it seemed unlikely,
or it was not impossible that she might have been taken suddenly ill
and was unable to come to the door.

Ralph went in, softly, as he had often done before. Miss Evelina had
frequently left the door open for him at the hour he was expected to
visit his patient.

He paused a moment in the hall, but heard no sound save slow, deep
breathing. He turned into the parlour, but stopped on the threshold as
if he had been suddenly changed to stone.

Upon the couch lay Miss Evelina, asleep, and unveiled. Her face was
turned toward him--a face of such surpassing beauty that he gasped in
astonishment. He had never seen such wondrous perfection of line and
feature, nor such a crown of splendour as her lustreless white hair,
falling loosely about her shoulders. Her face was as pure and as cold
as marble, flawless, and singularly transparent. Her lips were deep
scarlet and perfectly shaped; the white slender column of her throat
held her head proudly. Long, dark lashes swept her cheek, and the
years had left no lines. Feeling the intense scrutiny, Miss Evelina
opened her eyes, slowly, like one still half asleep.

Her eyes were violet, so deep in colour as to seem almost black. She
stared at Ralph, unseeing, then the light of recognition flashed over
her face and she sat up, reaching back quickly for her missing veil.

"Miss Evelina!" cried Ralph. "Why, oh why!"

"Why did you come in?" she demanded, resentfully. "You had no right!"

"Forgive me," he pleaded, coming to her. "I've often come in when the
door was open. Why, you've left it open for me yourself, don't you
know you have?"

"Perhaps," she answered, a faint colour coming into her cheek. "I had
no idea of going to sleep. I am sorry."

"I thought you might be ill," said Ralph. excusing himself further.
"Believe me, Miss Evelina, I had no thought of intruding. I only came
to help you."

He stood before her, still staring, and her eyes met his clearly in
return. In the violet depths was a world of knowledge and pain
Suffering had transfigured her face into a noble beauty for which there
were no words. Such a face might be the dream of a sculptor, the
despair of a painter, and the ecstasy of a lover.

"Why?", cried Ralph, again.

"Because," she answered, simply, "my beauty was my curse."

Ralph did not see that the words were melodramatic; he only sat down,
weakly, in a chair opposite her. He never once took his eyes away from
her, but stared at her helplessly, like a man in a dream.

"Why?" he questioned, again. "Tell me why!"

"It was in a laboratory," explained Miss Evelina. "I was there with
the man I loved and to whom I was to be married the next day. No one
knew of our engagement, for, in a small town, you know, people will
talk, and we both felt that it was too sacred to be spoken of lightly.

"He was trying an experiment, and I was watching. He came to the
retort to put in another chemical, and leaned over it. I heard the
mass seething and pushed him away with all my strength. Instantly,
there was a terrible explosion. When I came to my senses again, I was
in the hospital, wrapped in bandages. I had been terribly burned--see?"

She loosened her black gown at the throat and pushed it down over her
right shoulder. Ralph shuddered at the deep, flaming scars.

"My arm is worse," she said, quickly covering her shoulder again. "I
need not show you that. My face was burned, too, but scarcely at all.
To this day, I do not know how I escaped. I must have thrown up my arm
instinctively to shield my face. See, there are no scars."

"I see," murmured Ralph; "and what of him?"

The dark eyes gleamed indescribably. "What of him?" she asked, with
assumed lightness. "Why, he was not hurt at all. I saved him from
disfigurement, if not from death. I bear the scars; he goes free."

"I know," said Ralph, "but why were you not married? All his life and
love would be little enough to give in return for that."

Miss Evelina fixed her deep eyes upon Anthony Dexter's son. In her
voice there was no hint of faltering.

"I never saw him again," she said, "until twenty-five years afterward,
and then I was veiled. He went away."

"Went away!" repeated Ralph, incredulously. "Miss Evelina, what do you
mean?"

"What I said," she replied. "He went away. He came once to the
hospital. As it happened, there was another girl there, named Evelyn
Grey, burned by acid, and infinitely worse than I. The two names
became confused. He was told that I would be disfigured for life--that
every feature was destroyed except my sight. That was enough for him.
He asked no more questions, but simply went away."

"Coward!" cried Ralph, his face white. "Cur!"

Miss Evelina's eyes gleamed with subtle triumph. "What would you?" she
asked unemotionally. "He told me that day of the accident that it was
my soul he loved, and not my body, but at the test, he failed. Men
usually fail women, do they not, in anything that puts their love to
the test? He went away. In a year, he was married, and he has a son."

"A son!" repeated Ralph. "What a heritage of disgrace for a son! Does
the boy know?"

There was a significant silence. "I do not think his father has told
him," said Evelina, with forced calmness.

"If he had," muttered Ralph, his hands clenched and his teeth set, "his
son must have struck him dead where he stood. To accept that from a
woman, and then to go away!"

"What would you?" asked Evelina again. A curious, tigerish impulse was
taking definite shape in her. "Would you have him marry her?"

"Marry her? A thousand times, yes, if she would stoop so low! What
man is worthy of a woman who saves his life at the risk of her own?"

"Disfigured? asked Evelina, in an odd voice.

"Yes," cried Ralph, "with the scars she bore for him!"

There was a tense, painful interval. Miss Evelina was grappling with a
hideous temptation. One word from her, and she was revenged upon
Anthony Dexter for all the years of suffering. One word from her, and
sure payment would be made in the most subtle, terrible way. She
guessed that he could not bear the condemnation of this idolised son.

The old pain gnawed at her heart. Anthony Dexter had come back, she
had had her little hour of triumph, and still she had not been freed.
The Piper had told her that only forgiveness could loosen her chains.
And how could Anthony Dexter be forgiven, when even his son said that
he was a coward and a cur?

"I--" Miss Evelina's lips moved, then became still.

"And so," said Ralph, "you have gone veiled ever since, for the sake of
that beast?"

"No, it was for my own sake. Do you wonder that I have done it? When
I first realised what had happened, in an awful night that turned my
brown hair white, I knew that Love and I were strangers forevermore.

"When I left the hospital, I was obliged, for a time, to wear it. The
new skin was tender and bright red; it broke very easily."

"I know," nodded Ralph.

"There were oils to be kept upon it, too, and so I wore the veil. I
became accustomed to the shelter of it. I could walk the streets and
see, dimly, without being seen. In those days, I thought that,
perhaps, I might meet--him."

"I don't wonder you shrank from it," returned Ralph. His voice was
almost inaudible.

"It became harder still to put it by. My heart was broken, and it
shielded me as a long, black veil shields a widow. It protected me
from curious questions. Never but once or twice in all the twenty-five
years have I been asked about it, and then, I simply did not answer.
People, after all, are very kind."

"Were you never ill?"

"Never, though every night of my life I have prayed for death. At
first, I clung to it without reason, except what I have told you, then,
later on, I began to see a further protection. Veiled as I was, no man
would ever love me again. I should never be tempted to trust, only to
be betrayed. Not that I ever could trust, you understand, but still,
sometimes," concluded Miss Evelina, piteously, "I think the heart of a
woman is strangely hungry for love."

"I understand," said Ralph, "and, believe me, I do not blame you.
Perhaps it was the best thing you could do. Let me ask you of the man.
You said, I think, that he still lives?"

"Yes." Miss Evelina's voice was very low.

"He is well and happy--prosperous?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"Yes."

"Has he ever suffered at all from his cowardice, his shirking?"

"How should I know?"

"Then, Miss Evelina," said Ralph, his voice thick with passion and his
hands tightly clenched, "will you let me go to him? For the honour of
men, I should like to punish this one brute. I think I could present
an argument that even he might understand!"

The temptation became insistent. The sheathed dagger was in Evelina's
hands; she had only to draw forth the glittering steel. A vengeance
more subtle than she had ever dared to dream of was hers to command.

"Tell me his name," breathed Ralph. "Only tell me his name!"

Miss Evelina threw back her beautiful head proudly. "No," she said,
firmly, "I will not. Go," she cried, pointing uncertainly to the door.
"For the love of God, go!"




XXI

The Poppies Claim Their Own

It was dusk, and Anthony Dexter sat in the library. Through the day,
he had wearied himself to the point of exhaustion, but his phantom
pursuer had not tired. The veiled figure of Evelina had kept pace
easily with his quick, nervous stride. At the point on the river
road, where he had met her for the first time, she had, indeed,
seemed to go ahead of him and wait for him there.

Night brought no relief. By a singular fatality, he could see her in
darkness as plainly as in sunshine, and even when his eyes were
closed, she hovered persistently before him. Throughout his drugged
sleep she moved continuously; he never dreamed save of her.

In days gone by, he had been certain that he was the victim of an
hallucination, but now, he was not so sure. He would not have sworn
that the living Evelina was not eternally in his sight. Time and
time again he had darted forward quickly to catch her, but she
swiftly eluded him. "If," he thought, gritting his teeth, "I could
once get my hands upon her----"

His fists dosed tightly, then, by a supreme effort of will, he put
the maddening thought away. "I will not add murder to my sins," he
muttered; "no, by Heaven, I will not!"

By a whimsical change of his thought, he conceived himself dead and
in his coffin. Would Evelina pace ceaselessly before him then? When
he was in his grave, would she wait eternally at the foot of it, and
would those burning eyes pierce the shielding sod that parted them?
Life had not served to separate them--could he hope that Death would
prove potent where Life had failed?

Ralph came in, tired, having done his father's work for the day. The
room was wholly dark, but he paused upon the threshold, conscious
that some one was there.

"Alone, father?" he called, cheerily.

"No," returned Anthony Dexter, grimly.

"Who's here?" asked Ralph, stumbling into the room. "It's so dark, I
can't see."

Fumbling for a match, he lighted a wax candle which stood in an
antique candlestick on the library table. The face of his father
materialised suddenly out of the darkness, wearing an expression
which made Ralph uneasy.

"I thought," he said, troubled, "that some one was with you."

"Aren't you here?" asked Anthony Dexter, trying to make his voice
even.

"Oh," returned Ralph. "I see."

With the candle flickering uncertainly between them, the two men
faced each other. Sharp shadows lay on the floor and Anthony
Dexter's profile was silhouetted upon the opposite wall. He noted
that the figure of Evelina, pacing to and fro, cast no shadow. It
seemed strange.

In the endeavour to find some interesting subject upon which to talk,
Ralph chanced upon the fatal one. "Father," he began, "you know that
this morning we were speaking of Miss Evelina?"

The tone was inquiring, but there was no audible answer.

"Well," continued Ralph, "I saw her again to-day. And I saw her
face." He had forgotten that his father had seen it, also, and had
told him only yesterday.

Anthony Dexter almost leaped from his chair--toward the veiled figure
now approaching him. "Did--did she show you her face?" he asked with
difficulty.

"No. It was an accident. She often left the front door open for me
when I was attending--Araminta--and so, to-day, when I found it open,
I went in. She was asleep, on the couch in the parlour, and she wore
no veil."

At once, the phantom Evelina changed her tactics. Hitherto, she had
walked back and forth from side to side of his vision. Now she
advanced slowly toward him and as slowly retreated. Her face was no
longer averted; she walked backward cautiously, then advanced. From
behind her veil, he could feel her burning, accusing eyes.

"Father," said Ralph, "she is beautiful. She is the most beautiful
woman I have ever seen in all my life. Her face is as exquisite as
if chiselled in marble, and you never saw such eyes. And she wears
that veil all the time."

Anthony Dexter's cold fingers were forced to drum on the table with
apparent carelessness. Yes, he knew she was beautiful. He had not
forgotten it for an instant since she had thrown back her veil and
faced him. "Did--did she tell you why?" he asked.

"Yes," answered Ralph. "She told me why."

A sword, suspended by a single hair, seemed swaying uncertainly over
Anthony Dexter's head--a two-edged sword, sure to strike mercilessly
if it fell. Ralph's eyes were upon him, but not in contempt. God,
in His infinite pity, had made them kind.

"Father," said Ralph, again, "she would not tell the name of the man,
though I begged her to." Anthony Dexter's heart began to beat again,
slowly at first, then with a sudden and unbearable swiftness. The
blood thundered in his ears like the roar of a cataract. He could
hardly hear what Ralph was saying.

"It was in a laboratory," the boy continued, though the words were
almost lost. "She was there with the man she loved and whom she was
pledged to marry. He was trying a new experiment, and she was
watching. While he was leaning over the retort to put in another
chemical, she heard the mass seethe, and pushed him away, just in
time to save him.

"There was an explosion, and she was terribly burned. He was not
touched, mind you--she had saved him. They took her to the hospital,
and wrapped her in bandages. He went there only once. There was
another girl there, named Evelyn Grey, who was so badly burned that
every feature was destroyed. The two names became confused, and a
mistake was made. They told him she would be disfigured for life,
and so he went away."

The walls of the room swayed as though they were of fabric. The
floor undulated; his chair rocked dizzily. Out of the accusing
silence, Thorpe's words leaped to mock him:

_The honour of the spoken word still holds him. He asked her to
marry him and she consented . . . he was never released from his
promise . . . did not even ask for it. He slunk away like a
cur . . . sometimes I think there is no sin but shirking. . . I can
excuse a liar . . . I can pardon a thief . . . I can pity a
murderer . . . but a shirk, no_.

"Father," Ralph was saying, "you do not seem to understand. I
suppose it is difficult for you to comprehend such cowardice--you
have always done the square thing." The man winced, but the boy did
not see it.

"Try to think of a brute like that, Father, and be glad that our name
means 'right.' She saved him from terrible disfigurement if not from
death. Having instinctively thrown up her right arm, she got the
worst of it there, and on her shoulder. Her face was badly burned,
but not so deeply as to be scarred. She showed me her shoulder--it
is awful. I never had seen anything like it. She said her arm was
worse, but she did not show me that."

"He never knew?" asked Anthony Dexter, huskily. Ralph seemed to be
demanding something of him, and the veiled figure, steadily advancing
and retreating, demanded more still.

"No," answered Ralph, "he never knew. He went to the hospital only
once. He had told her that very day that he loved her for the
beautiful soul she had, and at the test, his love failed. He never
saw her again. He went away, and married, and he has a son. Think
of the son, Father, only think of the son! Suppose he knew it! How
could he ever bear a disgrace like that!"

"I do not know," muttered Anthony Dexter. His lips were cold and
stiff and he did not recognise his own voice.

"When she understood what had happened," Ralph continued, "and how he
had deserted her for ever, after taking his cowardly life from her as
a gift, her hair turned white. She has wonderful hair. Father--it's
heavy and white and dull--it does not shine. She wore the veil at
first because she had to, because her face was healing, and before it
had wholly healed she had become accustomed to the shelter of it.
Then, too, as she said, it kept people away from her--she could not
be tempted to love or trust again."

There was an interval of silence, though the very walls seemed to be
crying out: "Tell him! Tell him! Confess, and purge your guilty
soul!" The clock ticked loudly, the blood roared in his ears. His
hands were cold and almost lifeless; his body seemed paralysed, but
he heard, so acutely that it was agony.

"Miss Evelina said," resumed Ralph, "that she did not think he had
told his son. Do you know what I was thinking, Father, while she was
talking? I was thinking of you, and how you had always done the
square thing."

It seemed to Anthony Dexter that all the tortures of his laboratory
had been chemically concentrated and were being poured out upon his
head. "Our name means 'right,'" said the boy, proudly, and the man
writhed in his chair.

For a moment, the ghostly Evelina went to Ralph, her hands
outstretched in disapproval. Immediately she returned to her former
position, advancing, retreating, advancing, retreating, with the
regularity of the tide.

"I begged her," continued Ralph, "to tell me the man's name, but she
would not. He still lives, she said, he is happy and prosperous and
he has not suffered at all. For the honour of men, I want to punish
that brute. Father, do you know that when I think of a cur like
that, I believe I could rend him with my own hands?"

Anthony Dexter got to his feet unsteadily. The mists about him
cleared and the veiled figure whisked suddenly out of his sight. He
went up to Ralph as he might walk to the scaffold, but his head was
held high. All the anguish of his soul crystallised itself into one
passionate word:

"Strike!"

For an instant the boy faced him, unbelieving. Then he remembered
that his father had seen Miss Evelina's face, that he must have known
she was beautiful--and why she wore the veil. "Father!" he cried,
shrilly. "Oh, never you!"

Anthony Dexter looked into the eyes of his son until he could bear to
look no more. The veiled figure no longer stood between them, but
something else was there, infinitely more terrible. As he had
watched the beating of the dog's bared heart, the man watched the
boy's face. Incredulity, amazement, wonder, and fear resolved
themselves gradually into conviction. Then came contempt, so deep
and profound and permanent that from it there could never be appeal.
With all the strength of his young and knightly soul, Ralph despised
his father--and Anthony Dexter knew it.

"Father," whispered the boy, hoarsely, "it was never you! Tell me it
isn't true! Just a word, and I'll believe you! For the sake of our
manhood, Father, tell me it isn't true!"

Anthony Dexter's head drooped, his eyes lowered before his son's.
The cold sweat dripped from his face; his hands groped pitifully,
like those of a blind man, feeling his way in a strange place.

His hands fumbled helplessly toward Ralph's and the boy shrank back
as though from the touch of a snake. With a deep-drawn breath of
agony, the man flung himself, unseeing, out of the room. Ralph
reeled like a drunken man against his chair. He sank into it
helplessly and his head fell forward on the table, his shoulders
shaking with that awful grief which knows no tears.

"Father!" he breathed. "Father! Father!"

Upstairs, Anthony Dexter walked through the hall, followed, or
occasionally preceded, by the ghostly figure of Evelina. Her veil
was thrown back now, and seemed a part of the mist which surrounded
her. Sometimes he had told a patient that there was never a point
beyond which human endurance could not be made to go. He knew now
that he had lied.

Ralph's unspoken condemnation had hurt him cruelly. He could have
borne words, he thought, better than that look on his son's face.
For the first time, he realised how much he had cared for Ralph; how
much--God help him!--he cared for him still.

Yet above it all, dominant, compelling, was man's supreme
passion--that for his mate. As Evelina moved before him in her
unveiled beauty, his hungry soul leaped to meet hers. Now,
strangely, he loved her as he had loved her in the long ago, yet with
an added grace. There was an element in his love that had never been
there before--the mysterious bond which welds more firmly into one,
two who have suffered together.

He hungered for Ralph--for the strong young arm thrown about his
shoulders in friendly fashion, for the eager, boyish laugh, the
hearty word. He hungered for Evelina, radiant with a beauty no woman
had ever worn before. Far past the promise of her girlhood, the
noble, transfigured face, with its glory of lustreless white hair,
set his pulses to throbbing wildly. And subtly, unconsciously, but
not the less surely, he hungered for death.

Anthony Dexter had cherished no sentiment about the end of life; to
him it had seemed much the same as the stopping of a clock, and of as
little moment. He had failed to see why such a fuss was made about
the inevitable, though he had at times been scientifically interested
in the hysterical effect he had produced in a household by announcing
that within an hour or so a particular human clock might be expected
to stop. It had never occurred to him, either, that a man had not a
well-defined right to stop the clock of his own being whenever it
seemed desirable or expedient.

Now he thought of death as the final, beautiful solution of all
mundane problems. If he were dead, Ralph could not look at him with
contempt; the veiled--or unveiled--Evelina could not haunt him as she
had, remorselessly, for months. Yes, death was beautiful, and he
well knew how to make it sure.

By an incredibly swift transition, his pain passed into an exquisite
pleasure. The woman he loved was walking in the hall before him; the
son he loved was downstairs. What man could have more?

"For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast--
Oh thou soul of my soul, I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!"

The wonderful words sang themselves over in his consciousness. He
smiled and the unveiled Evelina smiled back at him, with infinite
tenderness, infinite love. To-night he would sleep as he had not
slept before--in the sleep that knows no waking.

He had the tiny white tablets, plenty of them, but the fancy seized
him to taste this last bitterness to the full. He took a wine glass
from his chiffonier--those white, blunt fingers had never been more
steady than now. He lifted the vial on high and poured out the
laudanum, faltering no more than when he had guided the knife in an
operation that made him famous throughout the State.

"Evelina," he said, his voice curiously soft, "I pledge you now, in a
bond that cannot break!" Was it fancy, or did the violet eyes soften
with tears, even though the scarlet lips smiled?

He drank. The silken petals of the poppies, crushed into the peace
that passeth all understanding, began their gentle ministry. He
made his way to his bed, put out his candle, and lay down. The
Spirit of the Poppies stood before him--a woman with a face like
Evelina's, but her garments were scarlet, and Evelina always wore
black.

In the darkness, he could not distinguish clearly. "Evelina," he
called, aloud, "come! Come to me, and put your hand in mine!"

At once she seemed to answer him, wholly tender, wholly kind. Was he
dreaming, or did Evelina come and kneel beside him? He groped for
her hand, but it eluded him.

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