Book: A Spinner in the Sun

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




Miss Hitty watched the white-haired, inoffensive old man with the
keen scrutiny of an eagle guarding its nest. He did not lean upon
the tidy, nor rest his elbows upon the crocheted mats which protected
the arms of the chair. In short, he conducted himself as a gentleman
should when in the parlour of a lady.

His blue, near-sighted eyes rested approvingly upon Araminta. "How
the child grows!" he said, with a friendly smile upon his kindly old
face. "Soon we shall have a young lady on our hands."

Araminta coloured and bent more closely to her sewing.

"I hope I'm not annoying you?" questioned the minister, after an
interval.

"Not at all," said Miss Mehitable, politely.

"I wanted to ask about some one," pursued the Reverend Mr. Thorpe.
"It seems that there is a new tenant in the old house on the hill
that has been empty for so long--the one the village people say is
haunted. It seems a woman is living there, quite alone; and she
always wears a veil, on account of some--some disfigurement."

Miss Hitty's false teeth clicked, sharply, but there was no other
sound except the clock, which, in the pause, struck four. "I
thought--" continued the minister, with a rising inflection.

Hitherto, he had found his hostess of invaluable assistance in his
parish work. It had been necessary to mention only the name. As
upon the turning of a faucet a stream of information gushed forth
from the fountain of her knowledge. Age, date and place of birth,
ancestry on both sides three generations back, with complete and
illuminating biographical details of ancestry and individual;
education, financial standing, manner of living, illnesses in the
family, including dates and durations of said illnesses, accidents,
if any, medical attendance, marriages, births, deaths, opinions,
reverses, present locations and various careers of descendants, list
of misfortunes, festivities, entertainments, church affiliation past
and present, political leanings, and a vast amount of other personal
data had been immediately forthcoming. Tagged to it, like the
postscript of a woman's letter, was Miss Hitty's own concise,
permanent, neatly labelled opinion of the family or individual, the
latter thrown in without extra charge.

"Perhaps you didn't know," remarked the minister, "that such a woman
had come." His tone was inquiring. It seemed to him that something
must be wrong if she did not know.

"Minty," said Miss Hitty, abruptly, "leave the room!"

Araminta rose, gathered up her patchwork, and went out, carefully
closing the door. It was only in moments of great tenderness that
her aunt called her "Minty."

The light footsteps died away upon the stairs. Tactlessly, the
minister persisted. "Don't you know?" he asked.

Miss Mehitable turned upon him. "If I did," she replied, hotly, "I
wouldn't tell any prying, gossiping man. I never knew before it was
part of a minister's business to meddle in folks' private affairs.
You'd better be writing your sermon and studyin' up on hell."

"I--I--" stammered the minister, taken wholly by surprise, "I only
hoped to give her the consolation of the church."

"Consolation nothing!" snorted Miss Hitty. "Let her alone!" She went
out of the room and slammed the door furiously, leaving the Reverend
Austin Thorpe overcome with deep and lasting amazement.




VI

Pipes o' Pan

Sleet had fallen in the night, but at sunrise, the storm ceased. Miss
Evelina had gone to sleep, lulled into a sense of security by the icy
fingers tapping at her cobwebbed window pane. She awoke in a
transfigured world. Every branch and twig was encased in crystal, upon
which the sun was dazzling. Jewels, poised in midair, twinkled with
the colours of the rainbow. On the tip of the cypress at the gate was
a ruby, a sapphire gleamed from the rose-bush, and everywhere were
diamonds and pearls.

Frosty vapour veiled the spaces between the trees and javelins of
sunlight pierced it here and there. Beyond, there were glimpses of
blue sky, and drops of water, falling from the trees, made a musical,
cadence upon the earth beneath.

Miss Evelina opened her window still more. The air was peculiarly soft
and sweet. It had the fragrance of opening buds and growing things and
still had not lost the tang of the frost.

She drew a long breath of it and straightway was uplifted, though
seemingly against her will. Spring was stirring at the heart of the
world, sending new currents of sap into the veins of the trees, new
aspirations into dead roots and fibres, fresh hopes of bloom into every
sleeping rose. Life incarnate knocked at the wintry tomb; eager,
unseen hands were rolling away the stone. The tide of the year was
rising, soon to break into the wonder of green boughs and violets,
shimmering wings and singing winds.

The cold hand that clutched her heart took a firmer hold. With acute
self-pity, she perceived her isolation. Of all the world, she alone
was set apart; branded, scarred, locked in a prison house that had no
door. The one release was denied her until she could get away.

Poverty had driven her back. Circumstances outside her control had
pushed her through the door she had thought never to enter again.
Through all the five-and-twenty years, she had thought of the house
with a shudder, peopling it with a thousand terrors, not knowing that
there was no terror save her own fear.

Sorrow had put its chains upon her suddenly, at a time when she had not
the strength to break the bond. At first she had struggled; then
ceased. Since then, her faculties had been in suspense, as it were.
She had forgotten laughter, veiled herself from joy, and walked hand in
hand with the grisly phantom of her own conjuring.

Behind the shelter of her veil she had mutely prayed for peace--she
dared not ask for more. And peace had never come. Her crowning
humiliation would be to meet Anthony Dexter face to face--to know him,
and to have him know her. Not knowing where he was, she had travelled
far to avoid him. Now, seeking the last refuge, the one place on earth
where he could not be, she found herself separated from him by less
than a mile. More than that, she had gone to his house, as she had
gone on the fateful day a quarter of a century ago. She had taken back
the pearls, and had not died in doing it. Strangely enough, it had
given her a vague relief.

Miss Evelina's mind had paused at twenty; she had not grown. The acute
suffering of Youth was still upon her, a woman of forty-five. It was
as though a clock had gone on ticking and the hands had never moved;
the dial of her being was held at that dread hour, while her broken
heart beat on.

She had not discovered that secret compensation which clings to the
commonest affairs of life. One sees before him a mountain of toil, an
apparently endless drudgery from which there is no escape. Having once
begun it, an interest appears unexpectedly; new forces ally themselves
with the fumbling hands. Misfortunes come, "not singly, but in
battalions." After the first shock of realisation, one perceives
through the darkness that the strength to bear them has come also, like
some good angel.

A lover shudders at the thought of Death, yet knows that some day, on
the road they walk together, the Grey Angel with the white poppies will
surely take one of them by the hand. The road winds through shadows,
past many strange and difficult places, and wrecks are strewn all along
the way. They laugh at the storms that beat upon them, take no reck of
bruised feet nor stumbling, for, behold, they are together, and in that
one word lies all.

Sometimes, in the mist ahead, which, as they enter it, is seen to be
wholly of tears, the road forks blindly, and there is nothing but night
ahead for each. The Grey Angel with the unfathomable eyes approaches
slowly, with no sound save the hushed murmur of wings. The dread white
poppies are in his outstretched hand--the great, nodding white poppies
which have come from the dank places and have never known the sun.

There is no possible denial. At first, one knows only that the
faithful hand has grown cold, then, that it has unclasped. In the
intolerable darkness, one fares forth alone on the other fork of the
road, too stricken for tears.

At length there is a change. Memories troop from the shadow to whisper
consolation, to say that Death himself is powerless against Love, when
a heart is deep enough to hold a grave. The clouds lift, and through
the night comes some stray gleam of dawn. No longer cold, the dear
hand nestles once more into the one that held it so long. Not as an
uncertain presence but as a loved reality, that other abides with him
still.

Shut out forever from the possibility of estrangement, for there is
always that drop of bitterness in the cup of Life and Love; eternally
beyond the reach of misunderstanding or change, spared the pitfalls and
disasters of the way ahead, blinded no longer by the mists of earth,
but immortally and unchangeably his, that other fares with him, though
unseen, upon the selfsame road.

From the broken night comes singing, for the white poppies have also
brought balm. Step by step, his Sorrow has become his friend, and at
the last, when the old feet are weary and the steep road has grown
still more steep, the Grey Angel comes once more.

Past the mist of tears in which he once was shrouded, the face of the
Grey Angel is seen to be wondrously kind. By his mysterious alchemy,
he has crystallised the doubtful waters, which once were in the cup of
Life and Love, into a jewel which has no flaw. He has kept the child
forever a child, caught the maiden at the noon of her beauty to
enshrine her thus for always in the heart that loved her most; made the
true and loving comrade a comrade always, though on the highways of the
vast Unknown.

It is seen now that the road has many windings and that, unconsciously,
the wayfarer has turned back. Eagerly the trembling hands reach
forward to take the white poppies, and the tired eyes close as though
the silken petals had already fluttered downward on the lids, for,
radiant past all believing, the Grey Angel still holds the Best Beloved
by the hand, and the roads that long ago had forked in darkness, have
come together, in more than mortal dawn, at the selfsame place.

Upon the beauty of the crystalline March morning, the memory of the
Winter sorrow still lay. The bare, brown earth was not wholly hidden
by the mantle of sleet and snow, yet there was some intangible Easter
close at hand. Miss Evelina felt it, stricken though she was.

From a distant thicket came a robin's cheery call, a glimmer of blue
wings flashed across the desolate garden, a south wind stirred the
bending, icy branches to a tinkling music, and she knew that Spring had
come to all but her.

Some indefinite impulse sent her outdoors. Closely veiled, she started
off down the road, looking neither to the right nor the left. Miss
Hitty saw her pass, but graciously forbore to call to her; Araminta
looked up enquiringly from her sewing, but the question died on her
lips.

Down through the village she went, across the tracks, and up to the
river road. It had been a favourite walk of hers in her girlhood.
Then she had gone with a quick, light step; now she went slowly, like
one grown old.

Yet, all unconsciously, life was quickening in her pulses; the old
magic of Spring was stirring in her, too. Dark and deep, the waters of
the river rolled dreamily by, waiting for the impulse which should send
the shallows singing to the sea, and stir the depths to a low,
murmurous symphony.

Upon the left, as she walked, the road was bordered with elms and
maples, stretching far back to the hills. The woods were full of
unsuspected ravines and hollows, queer winding paths, great rocks, and
tiny streams. The children had called it the enchanted forest, and
played that a fairy prince and princess dwelt therein.

The childhood memories came back to Evelina with a pang. She stopped
to wipe away the tears beneath her veil, to choke back a sob that
tightened her throat. Suddenly, she felt a presentiment of oncoming
evil, a rushing destiny that could not be swerved aside. Frightened,
she turned to go back; then stopped again.

From above, on the upper part of the road, came the tread of horse's
feet and the murmur of wheels. Her face paled to marble, her feet
refused to move. The heart within her stood portentously still. With
downcast eyes she stood there, petrified, motionless, like a woman
carved in stone and clothed in black, veiled impenetrably in chiffon.

At a furious pace, Anthony Dexter dashed by, his face as white as her
chiffon. She had known unerringly who was coming; and had felt the
searing consciousness of his single glance before, with a muttered
oath, he had lashed his horse to a gallop. This, then, was the last;
there was nothing more.

The sound of the wheels died away in the distance. He had the pearls,
he had seen her, he knew that she had come back. And still she lived.

Clear and high, like a bugle call, a strain of wild music came from the
enchanted forest. Evelina threw back her head, gasping for breath; her
sluggish feet stirred forward. Some forgotten valour of her spirit
leaped to answer the summons, as a soldier, wounded unto death, turns
to follow the singing trumpets that lead the charge.

Strangely soft and tender, the strain came again, less militant, less
challenging. Swiftly upon its echo breathed another, hinting of peace.
Shaken to her inmost soul by agony, she took heed of the music with the
precise consciousness one gives to trifles at moments of unendurable
stress. Blindly she turned into the forest.

"What was it?" she asked herself, repeatedly, wondering that she could
even hear at a time like this. A bird? No, there was never a bird to
sing like that. Almost it might be Pan himself with his syrinx,
walking abroad on the first day of Spring.

The fancy appealed to her strongly, her swirling senses having become
exquisitely acute. "Pipes o' Pan," she whispered, "I will find and
follow you." To see the face of Pan meant death, according to the old
Greek legend, but death was something of which she was not afraid.

Lyric, tremulous, softly appealing, the music came again. The bare
boughs bent with their chiming crystal, and a twig fell at her feet,
Sunlight starred the misty distance with pearl; shining branches swayed
to meet her as she passed.

Farther in the wood, she turned, unconsciously in pursuit of that
will-o'-the-wisp of sound. Here and there out of the silence, it came
to startle her; to fill her with strange forebodings which were not
wholly of pain.

Some subliminal self guided her, for heart and soul were merged in a
quivering ecstasy of torture which throbbed and thundered and
overflowed. "He saw me! He saw me! He saw me! He knew me! He knew
me! He knew me!" In a triple rhythm the words vibrated back and forth
unceasingly, as though upon a weaver's shuttle.

For nearly an hour she went blindly in search of the music, pausing now
and then to listen intently, at times disheartened enough to turn back.
She had a mad fancy that Death was calling her, from some far height,
because Anthony Dexter had passed her on the road.

Now trumpet-like and commanding, now tender and appealing, the mystic
music danced about her capriciously. Her feet grew weary, but the
blood and the love of life had begun to move in her, too, when her
whole nature was unspeakably stirred. She paused and leaned against a
tree, to listen for the pipes o' Pan. But all was silent; the white
stillness of the enchanted forest was like that of another world. With
a sigh, she turned to the left, reflecting that a long walk straight
through the woods would bring her out on the other road at a point near
her own home.

Exquisitely faint and tender, the call rang out again. It was like
some far flute of April blown in a March dawn. "Oh, pipes o' Pan,"
breathed Evelina, behind her shielding veil; "I pray you find me! I
pray you, give me joy--or death!"

Swiftly the music answered, like a trumpet chanting from a height.
Scarcely knowing what she did, she began to climb the hill. It was a
more difficult way, but a nearer one, for just beyond the hill was her
house.

Half-way up the ascent, the hill sloped back. There was a small level
place where one might rest before going on to the summit. It was not
more than a little nook, surrounded by pines. As she came to it, there
was a frightened chirp, and a flock of birds fluttered up from her
feet, leaving a generous supply of crumbs and grain spread upon the
earth.

Against a great tree leaned a man, so brown and shaggy in his short
coat that he seemed like part of the tree trunk. He was of medium
height, wore high leather gaiters, and a grey felt hat with a long red
quill thrust rakishly through the band. His face was round and rosy
and the kindest eyes in the world twinkled at Evelina from beneath his
bushy eyebrows. At his feet, quietly happy, was a bright-eyed, yellow
mongrel with a stubby tail which wagged violently as Evelina
approached. Slung over the man's shoulder by a cord was a
silver-mounted flute.

From his elevated position, he must have seen her when she entered the
wood, and had glimpses of her at intervals ever since. It was evident
that he thoroughly enjoyed the musical hide-and-seek he had forced her
to play while he was feeding the birds. His eyes laughed and there
were mischievous dimples in his round, rosy cheeks.

"Oh," cried Evelina, in a tone of dull disappointment.

"I called you," said the Piper, gently, "and you came."

She turned on her heel and walked swiftly away. She went downhill with
more haste than dignity, turned to her right, and struck out through
the woods for the main road.

The Piper watched her until she was lost among the trees. The birds
came back for their crumbs and grain and he stood patiently until his
feathered pensioners had finished and flown away, chirping with
satisfaction. Then he stooped to pat the yellow mongrel.

"Laddie," he said, "I'm thinking there's no more gypsying for us just
now. To-morrow, we will not pack our shop upon our back and march on,
as we had thought to do. Some one needs us here, eh, Laddie?"

The dog capered about his master's feet as if he understood and fully
agreed. He was a pitiful sort, even for a mongrel. One of his legs
had been broken and unskilfully set, so he did not run quite like other
dogs.

"'T isn't a very good leg, Laddie," the Piper observed, "but I'm
thinking 't is better than none. Anyway, I did my best with it, and
now we'll push on a bit. It's our turn to follow, and we 're fain,
Laddie, you and I, to see where she lives."

Bidding the dog stay at heel, the Piper followed Miss Evelina's track.
By dint of rapid walking, he reached the main road shortly after she
did. Keeping a respectful distance, and walking at the side of the
road, he watched her as she went home. From the safe shelter of a
clump of alders just below Miss Mehitable's he saw the veiled figure
enter the broken gate.

"'T is the old house, Laddie," he said to the dog; "the very one we
were thinking of taking ourselves. Come on, now; we'll be going.
Down, sir! Home!"




VII

"The Honour of the Spoken Word"

Anthony Dexter sat in his library, alone, as usual. Under the lamp,
Ralph's letters were spread out before him, but he was not reading.
Indeed, he knew every line of them by heart, but he could not keep his
mind upon the letters.

Between his eyes and the written pages there came persistently a veiled
figure, clothed shabbily in sombre black. Continually he fancied the
horror the veil concealed; continually, out of the past, his cowardice
and his shirking arose to confront him.

A photograph of his wife, who had died soon after Ralph was born, had
been taken from the drawer. "A pretty, sweet woman," he mused. "A
good wife and a good mother." He told himself again that he had loved
her--that he loved her still.

Yet behind his thought was sure knowledge. The woman who had entered
the secret fastnesses of his soul, and before whom he had trembled, was
the one whom he had seen in the dead garden, frail as a ghost, and
again on the road that morning.

Dimly, and now for the first time, there came to his perception that
recognition of his mate which each man carries in his secret heart when
he has found his mate at all. Past the anguish that lay between them
like a two-edged sword, and through the mists of the estranging years,
Evelina had come back to claim her own.

He saw that they were bound together, scarred in body or scarred in
soul; crippled, mutilated, or maimed though either or both might be,
the one significant fact was not altered.

He knew now that his wife and the mother of his child had stood
outside, as all women but the one must ever stand. Nor did he guess
that she had known it from the first and that heart-hunger had hastened
her death.

Aside from a very deep-seated gratitude to her for his son, Anthony
Dexter cherished no emotion for the sake of his dead wife. She had
come and gone across his existence as a butterfly crosses a field,
touching lightly here and there, but lingering not at all. Except for
Ralph, it was as though she had never been, so little did she now exist
for him.

Yet Evelina was vital, alive, and out of the horror she had come back.
To him? He did not believe that she had come definitely to seek
him--he knew her pride too well for that. His mind strove to grasp the
reason of her coming, but it eluded him; evaded him at every point.
She had not forgotten; if she had, she would not have given back that
sinuous necklace of discoloured pearls.

By the way, what had he done with the necklace? He remembered now. He
had thrown it far into the shrubbery, for the pearls were dead and the
love was dead.

"First from the depths of the sea and then from the depths of my love."
The mocking words, written in faded ink on the yellowed slip of paper,
danced impishly across the pages of Ralph's letters. He had a curious
fancy that if his love had been deep enough the pearls would not have
turned black.

Impatiently, he rose from the table and paced back and forth restlessly
across the library. "I'm a fool," he growled; "a doddering old fool.
No, that's not it--I've worked too hard."

Valiantly he strove to dispel the phantoms that clustered about him. A
light step behind him chimed in with his as he walked and he feared to
look around, not knowing it was but the echo of his own.

He went to a desk in the corner of the room and opened a secret drawer
that had not been opened for a long time. He took out a photograph,
wrapped in yellowed tissue paper, and went back to the table. He
unwrapped it, his blunt white fingers trembling ever so slightly, and
sat down.

A face of surpassing loveliness looked back at him. It was Evelina, at
the noon of her girlish beauty, her face alight with love. Anthony
Dexter looked long at the perfect features, the warm, sweet, tempting
mouth, the great, trusting eyes, and the brown hair that waved so
softly back from her face; the all-pervading and abiding womanliness.
There was strength as well as beauty; tenderness, courage, charm.

"Mate for a man," said Dexter, aloud. For such women as Evelina, the
knights of old did battle, and men of other centuries fought with their
own temptations and weaknesses. It was such as she who led men to the
heights, and pointed them to heights yet farther on.

Insensibly, he compared Ralph's mother with Evelina. The two women
stood as far apart as a little, meaningless song stands from a great
symphony. One would fire a man with high ambition, exalt him with
noble striving--ah, but had she? Was it Evelina's fault that Anthony
Dexter was a coward and a shirk? Cravenly, he began to blame the
woman, to lay the burden of his own shortcomings at Evelina's door.

Yet still the face stirred him. There was life in those walled
fastnesses of his nature which long ago he had denied. Self-knowledge
at last confronted him, and would not be put away.

"And so, Evelina," he said aloud, "you have come back. And what do you
want? What can I do for you?"

The bell rang sharply, as if answering his question. He started from
his chair, having heard no approaching footsteps. He covered the
photograph of Evelina with Ralph's letters, but the sweet face of the
boy's mother still looked out at him from its gilt frame.

The old housekeeper went to the door with the utmost leisure. It
seemed to him an eternity before the door was opened. He stood there,
waiting, summoning his faculties of calmness and his powers of control,
to meet Evelina--to have out, at last, all the shame of the years.

But it was not Evelina. The Reverend Austin Thorpe was wiping his feet
carefully upon the door-mat, and asking in deep, vibrant tones: "Is the
Doctor in?"

Anthony Dexter could have cried out from relief. When the white-haired
old man came in, floundering helplessly among the furniture, as a
near-sighted person does, he greeted him with a cordiality that warmed
his heart.

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