Book: Flower of the Dusk

M >> Myrtle Reed >> Flower of the Dusk




Miriam nodded with satisfaction. At last he knew why Constance had taken
her own life.

"If there should be--meeting--past the grave--some day you and I--shall
come together again--with no barrier between us." He put his hand to his
forehead as though he did not quite understand, but hurried on to the
next sentence, for his eyes were failing under the strain.

"I take with me--the knowledge of your love--which has strengthened--and
sustained me--since the day--we first met--and must make--even a
grave--warm and sweet."

[Sidenote: Radiance of Soul]

The light in the room seemed to Miriam to be not wholly of the golden
sunset. Some radiance of soul must have made that clear soft light which
veiled but did not hide. It was sunset, and yet the light was that of a
Summer afternoon.

"And remember this--dead though I am--I love you still--you--and my
little lame baby--who needs me so--and whom--I must leave--because I am
not strong--enough to stay. Through life--and in death--and eternally
yours--Constance."

There was a tense, unbearable silence. Miriam moistened her parched lips
and chafed her cold hands. "At last," she thought. "At last."

[Sidenote: The Assurance]

"She died loving me," said Ambrose North, in a shrill whisper. His eyes
were closed again, for the strain had hurt--terribly. Dimly, he
remembered the other letter. This was not the same, but the other had
been to Barbara, and not to him. He did not stop to wonder how it came
to be in his pocket. It sufficed that some Angel of God, working through
devious ways and long years, had given him at last, face to face, the
assurance he had hungered for since the day Constance died.

In a blinding instant, Miriam remembered that no names had been
mentioned in the letter. He had made a mistake--but she could set him
right. Constance should not triumph again, even in an hour like this.

Ambrose North turned back into the shadow, fearing to face the window.
The woman cowering in the corner advanced steadily to meet him. He saw
her, vaguely, when his eyes became accustomed to the change of lights.

"Miriam!" he cried, transfigured by joy. "She died loving me! I have it
here. It was only because she was not strong--she was ill, and she never
let us know." He held forth the letter with a shaking hand.

"She--" began Miriam.

"She died loving me!" he cried. "Oh, Miriam, can you not see? I have it
here." His voice rang through the house like some far silver bugle
chanting triumph over a field of the slain. "She died loving me!"

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Triumphant Cry]

Barbara had already wakened and she sat up, rubbing her eyes. The attic
was almost dark. She went downstairs hurriedly, forgetting her borrowed
finery until her long train caught on a projecting splinter and had to
be loosened. When she reached her own door she started toward her
mirror, anxious to see how she looked, but that triumphant cry from the
room below made her heart stand still.

White as death and strangely fearful, she went down and into the
living-room, where the last light deepened the shadows and lay lovingly
upon her father's illumined face.

Barbara smiled and went toward him, with her hands outstretched in
welcome. Miriam shrank back into the farthest shadows, shaking as
though she had seen a ghost.

There was an instant's tense silence. All the forces of life and love
seemed suddenly to have concentrated into the space of a single
heart-beat. Then the old man spoke.

"Constance," he said, unsteadily, "have you come back, Beloved? It has
been so long!"

Radiant with beauty no woman had ever worn before, Barbara went to him,
still smiling, and the old man's arms closed hungrily about her. "I
dreamed you were dead," he sobbed, "but I knew you died loving me. Where
is our baby, Constance? Where is my Flower of the Dusk?"

[Sidenote: Burden of Joy]

Even as he spoke, the overburdened heart failed beneath its burden of
joy. He staggered and would have fallen, had not Miriam caught him in
her strong arms. Together, they helped him to the couch, where he lay
down, breathing with great difficulty.

"Constance, darling," he gasped, feebly, "where is our baby? I want
Barbara."

For the sake of the dead and the living, Barbara supremely put self
aside. "I do not know," she whispered, "just where Barbara is. Am I not
enough?"

"Enough for earth," he breathed in answer, "and--for--heaven--too. Kiss
me--Constance--just once--dear--before----"

[Sidenote: The Passing]

Barbara bent down. He lifted his shaking hands caressingly to the
splendid crown of golden hair, the smooth, fair cheeks, the perfect neck
and shoulders, and died, enraptured, with her kiss upon his lips.




XX

Pardon


[Sidenote: The Burial Service]

Crushed and almost broken-hearted, Barbara sat in the dining-room. The
air was heavy with the overpowering scent of tuberoses. From the room
beyond came the solemn words of the burial service: "I am the
resurrection and the life. He that believeth on me, though he were dead,
yet shall he live."

The words beat unbearably upon her ears. The walls of the room moved as
though they were of fabric, stirred by winds of hell. The floor
undulated beneath her feet and black mists blinded her. Her hands were
so cold that she scarcely felt the friendly, human touch on either side
of her chair.

Roger held one of her cold little hands in both his own, yearning to
share her grief, to divide it in some way; even to bear it for her. On
the other side was Doctor Conrad, profoundly moved. His science had not
yet obliterated his human instincts and he was neither ashamed of the
mist in his eyes nor of the painful throbbing of his heart. His fingers
were upon Barbara's pulse, where the lifetide moved so slowly that he
could barely feel it.

On the other side of the room, alien and apart, as always, sat Miriam.
She wore her best black gown, but her face was inscrutable. Perhaps the
lines were more sharply cut, perhaps the rough, red hands moved more
nervously than usual, and perhaps the deep-set black eyes burned more
fiercely, but no one noticed--or cared.

[Sidenote: The Minister]

The deep voice in the room beyond was vibrant with tenderness. The man
who stood near Ambrose North as he lay in his last sleep had been
summoned from town by Eloise. He did not make the occasion an excuse for
presenting his own particular doctrine, bolstered up by argument, nor
did he bid his hearers rejoice and be glad. He admitted, at the
beginning, that sorrow lay heavily upon the hearts of those who loved
Ambrose North and did not say that God was chastening them for their own
good.

He spoke of Life as the rainbow that brilliantly spans two mysterious
silences, one of which is dawn and the other sunset. This flaming arc
must end, as it begins, in pain, but, past the silence, and, perhaps, in
even greater mystery, the circle must somewhere become complete and
round back to a new birth.

Could not the God who ordained the beginning be safely trusted with the
end? Forgetting the grey mists of dawn in which the rainbow began,
should we deny the inevitable night when the arc bends down at the other
end of the world? Having seen so much of the perfect curve, could we not
believe in the circle? And should we not remember that the rainbow
itself was a signal and a promise that there should be no more sea? Even
so, was not this mortal life of ours, tempered as it is by sorrow and
tears, a further promise that, when the circle was completed, there
should be no more death?

[Sidenote: God's Love]

The deep voice went on, even more tenderly, to speak of God; not of His
power, but of His purpose, not of His justice, but His forgiveness, not
of His vengeance, but of His love. A love so vast and far-reaching that
there is no place where it is not; it enfolds not only our little world,
poised in infinite space like a mote in a sunbeam, but all the shining,
rolling worlds beyond. Every star that rises within our sight and all
the million stars beyond, in misty distances so great as to be
incomprehensible, are guided and surrounded by this same love. It is
impossible to conceive of a place where it is not--even in the midst of
pain, poverty, suffering, and death, God's love is there also. The
minister pleaded with those who listened to him to lean wholly upon this
all-sustaining, all-forgiving love; to believe that it sheltered both
the living and the dead, and to trust, simply, as a little child.

[Sidenote: At the Close of the Service]

In the stillness that followed, Eloise went to the piano. The worn
strings answered softly as her fingers touched the keys. In her full,
low contralto she sang, to an exquisite melody:

"When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree;
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

"I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget."

The deep, manly voice followed with a benediction, then the little group
of neighbours and friends went out with hushed and reverent step, into
the golden Autumn afternoon. Miriam came in, to all outward appearance
wholly unmoved. She stood by him for a moment, then turned away.

Eloise closed the door and Roger and Allan brought Barbara in. She bent
down to her father, who lay so quietly, with a smile of heavenly peace
upon his lips, and her tears rained upon his face. "Good-bye, dear
Daddy," she sobbed. "It is Barbara who kisses you now."

* * * * *

When Ambrose North went out of his door for the last time, on his way to
rest beside his beloved Constance until God should summon them both,
Roger stayed behind, with Barbara. Doctor Conrad had said, positively,
that she must not go, and, as always, she obeyed.

The boy's heart was too full for words. He still kept her cold little
hand in his. "There isn't anything I can say or do, is there, Barbara,
dear?"

[Sidenote: The Pity of It]

"No," she sobbed. "That is the pity of it. There is never anything to be
said or done."

"I wish I could take it from you and bear it for you," he said, simply.
"Some way, we seem to belong together, you and I."

They sat in silence until the others came back. Eloise came straight to
Barbara and put her strong young arms around the frail, bent little
figure.

"Will you come with me, dear?" she asked. "We can get a carriage easily
and I'd love to have you with me. Will you come?"

For a moment, Barbara hesitated. "No," she said, "I must stay here. I've
got to live right on here, and I might as well begin to-night."

Allan took from his pocket several small, round white tablets, and gave
them to Barbara. "Two just before going to bed," he said. "And if you're
the same brave girl that you've been ever since I've known you, you'll
have your bearings again in a short time."

[Sidenote: By the Open Fire]

Roger stayed to supper, but none of them made more than a pretence of
eating. The odour of tuberoses still pervaded the house and brought,
inevitably, the thought of death. Afterward, Barbara sat by the open
fire with one hand lying listlessly in Roger's warm, understanding
clasp. In the kitchen, Miriam vigorously washed the few dishes. She had
put away the fine china, the solid silver knife and fork, the remnant of
table damask, and the Satsuma cup.

"Shall I read to you, Barbara?" asked Roger.

"No," she answered, wearily. "I couldn't listen to-night."

The hours dragged on. Miriam sat in the dining-room alone, by the light
of one candle, remorsefully, after many years, face to face with
herself.

She wondered what Constance would do to her now, when she went to bed
and fearfully closed her eyes. She determined to cheat Constance by
sitting up all night, and then realised that by doing so she would only
postpone the inevitable reckoning.

Miriam felt that a reckoning was due somewhere, on earth, or in heaven,
or in hell. Mysterious balances must be made before things were right,
and her endeavours to get what she had conceived to be her own just due
had all failed.

She wondered why. Constance had wronged her and she was entitled to pay
Constance back in her own coin. But the opportunity had been taken out
of her hands, every time. Even at the last, her subtle revenge had been
transmuted into further glory for Constance. Why?

The answer flashed upon her like words of fire--"_Vengeance is mine;
I will repay._"

Then, suddenly, from some unknown source, the need of confession came
pitilessly upon her soul. Her lined face blanched in the candle-light
and her worn, nervous hands clutched fearfully at the arm of her chair.

[Sidenote: The Still Small Voice]

"Confess," she repeated to herself scornfully as though in answer to
some imperative summons. "To whom?"

There was no answer, but, in her heart, Miriam knew. Only one of the
blood was left and to that one, if possible, payment must be made. And
if anything was due her, either from the dead or the living, it must
come to her through Barbara.

Miriam laughed shrilly and then bit her lips, thinking the others might
hear. Roger heard--and wondered--but said nothing.

After he went home, Barbara still sat by the fire, in that surcease
which comes when one is unable to sustain grief longer and it steps
aside, to wait a little, before taking a fresh hold. She could wonder
now about the letter, in her mother's writing, that she had picked up
from the floor, and which her father had found, and very possibly read.
She hesitated to ask Miriam anything concerning either her father or her
mother.

[Sidenote: Miriam's Confession]

But, while she sat there, Miriam came into the room, urged by goading
impulses without number and one insupportable need. She stood near
Barbara for several minutes without speaking; then she began, huskily,
"Barbara----"

The girl turned, wearily. "Yes?"

"I've got something to say and I don't know but what to-night is as good
a time as any. Neither of us are likely to sleep much."

Barbara did not answer.

"I hated your mother," said Miriam, passionately. "I always hated her."

"I guessed that," answered Barbara, with a sigh.

"Your father was in love with me when she came from school, with her
doll-face and pretty ways. She took him away from me. He never looked at
me after he saw her. I had to stand by and see it, help her with her
pretty clothes, and even be maid of honour at the wedding. It was hard,
but I did it.

"She loved him, in a way, but it wasn't much of a way. She liked the
fine clothes and the trinkets he gave her, but, after he went blind, she
could hardly tolerate him. Lots of times, she would have been downright
cruel to him if I hadn't made her do differently.

"The first time they came here for the Summer, she met Laurence Austin,
Roger's father, and it was love at first sight on both sides. They used
to see each other every day either here or out somewhere. After you were
born, the first place she went was down to the shore to meet him. I know,
for I followed.

"When your father asked where she was, I lied to him, not only then, but
many times. I wasn't screening her--I was shielding him. It went on for
over a year, then she took the laudanum. She left four notes--one to me,
one to your father, one to you, and one to Laurence Austin. I never
delivered that, even though she haunted me almost every night for five
years. After he died, she still haunted me, but it was less often, and
different.

"When you sent me into your father's room after that letter he had in
his pocket, I took time to read it. She said, there, that she didn't
trust me, and that I had always loved your father. It was true enough,
but I didn't know she knew it.

"After you took the letter out, I put in the one to Laurence Austin. I'd
opened it and read it some little time back. I thought it was time he
knew her as she was, and I never thought about no name being mentioned
in it.

"When he tore off the bandages, he read that letter, and never knew that
it wasn't meant for him. Then, when you came in in that old dress of
your mother's, he thought it was her come back to him, and never knew
any different."

There was a long pause. "Well?" said Barbara, wearily. It did not seem
as if anything mattered.

"I just want you to know that I've hated your mother all my life, ever
since she came home from school. I've hated you because you look like
her. I've hated your father because he talked so of her all the time,
and hated myself for loving him. I've hated everybody, but I've done my
duty, as far as I know. I've scrubbed and slaved and taken care of you
and your father, and done the best I could.

"When I put that letter into his pocket, I intended for him to know that
Constance was in love with another man. I'd have read it to him long ago
if I'd had any idea he'd believe me. When he thought it was for him,
I was just on the verge of telling him different when you came in and
stopped me. You looked so much like your mother I thought Constance had
taken to walking down here daytimes instead of back and forth in my room
at night.

"I suppose," Miriam went on, in a strange tone, "that I've killed
him--that there's murder on my hands as well as hate in my heart.
I suppose you'll want to make some different arrangements now--you
won't want to go on living with me after I've killed your father."

[Sidenote: A Wonderful Joy]

"Aunt Miriam," said Barbara, calmly, "I've known for a long time almost
everything you've told me, but I didn't know how father got the letter.
I thought he must have found it somewhere in the desk or in his own
room, or even in the attic. You didn't kill him any more than I did, by
coming into the room in mother's gown. What he really died of was a
great, wonderful joy that suddenly broke a heart too weak to hold it.
And, even though I've wanted my father to see me, all my life long, I'd
rather have had it as it was, and he would, too. I'm sure of that.

"He told me once the three things he most wanted to see in the world
were mother's letter, saying that she loved him, then mother herself,
and, last of all, me. And for a long time his dearest dream has been
that I could walk and he could see. So when, in the space of five or
ten minutes, all the dreams came true, his heart failed."

"But," Miriam persisted, "I meant to do him harm." Her burning eyes were
keenly fixed upon Barbara's face.

"Sometimes," answered the girl, gently, "I think that right must come
from trying to do wrong, to make up for the countless times wrong comes
from trying to do right. Father could not have had greater joy, even in
heaven, than you and I gave him at the last, neither of us meaning to do
it."

[Sidenote: Human Sympathy and Love]

The stern barrier that had reared itself between Miriam and her kind
suddenly crumbled and fell. Warm tides of human sympathy and love came
into her numb heart and ice-bound soul. The lines in her face relaxed,
her hands ceased to tremble, and her burning eyes softened with the mist
of tears. Her mouth quivered as she said words she had not even dreamed
of saying for more than a quarter of a century:

"Will you--can you--forgive me?"

All that she needed from the dead and all they could have given her came
generously from Barbara. She sprang to her feet and threw her arms
around Miriam's neck. "Oh, Aunty! Aunty!" she cried, "indeed I do, not
only for myself, but for father and mother, too. We don't forgive
enough, we don't love enough, we're not kind enough, and that's all
that's wrong with the world. There isn't time enough for bitterness--the
end comes too soon."

[Sidenote: At Peace]

Miriam went upstairs, strangely uplifted, strangely at peace. She was no
longer alien and apart, but one with the world. She had a sense of
universal kinship--almost of brotherhood. That night she slept, for the
first time in more than twenty years, without the fear of Constance.

And Constance, who was more sinned against than sinning, and whose
faithful old husband had that day lain down, in joy and triumph, to rest
beside her in the churchyard, came no more.




XXI

The Perils of the City


"Roger," remarked Miss Mattie, laying aside her paper, "I don't know as
I'm in favour of havin' you go to the city. Can't you get the Judge
another dog?"

"Why not, Mother?" asked Roger, ignoring her question.

"Because it seems to me, from all I've been readin' and hearin' lately,
that the city ain't a proper place for a young person. Take that
minister, now, that those folks brought down for Ambrose North's
funeral. I never heard anything like it in all my life. You was there
and you heard what he said, so there ain't no need of dwellin' on it,
but it wasn't what I'm accustomed to in the way of funerals." Miss
Mattie's militant hairpins bristled as she spoke.

"I thought it was all right, Mother. What was wrong with it?"

[Sidenote: Everything Wrong]

"Wrong!" repeated Miss Mattie, in astonishment. "Everything was wrong
with it! Ambrose North wasn't a church-member and he never went more'n
once or twice that I know of, even after the Lord chastened him with
blindness for not goin'. There was no power to the sermon and no cryin'
except Barbara and that Miss Wynne that sang that outlandish piece
instead of a hymn.

"Why, Roger, I was to a funeral once over to the Ridge where the corpse
was an unbaptized infant, and you ought to have heard that preacher
describin' the abode of the lost! The child's mother fainted dead away
and had to be carried out of the church, it was that powerful and
movin'. That was somethin' like!"

It was in Roger's mind to say he was glad that the minister had not made
Barbara faint, but he wisely kept silent.

[Sidenote: Life in the City]

"That's only one thing," Miss Mattie went on. "What with religion bein'
in that condition in the city, and the life folks live there, I don't
think it's any fit place for a person that ain't strong in the faith,
and you know you ain't, Roger. You take after your pa.

"I was readin' in _The Metropolitan Weekly_ only last week a story about
a lovely young orphan that was caught one night by a rejected suitor and
tied to the railroad track. Just as the train was goin' to run over her,
the man she wanted to marry come along on the dead run with a knife and
cut her bonds. She got off the track just as the night express come
around the curve, goin' ninety-five miles an hour.

[Sidenote: Miss Mattie's Fears]

"This man says to her, 'Genevieve, will you come to me now, and let me
put you out of this dread villain's power forever?' Then he opened his
arms and the beautiful Genevieve fled to them as to some ark of safety
and laid her pale and weary face upon his lovin' and forgivin' heart.
That's the exact endin' of it, and I must say it's written beautiful,
but when I wake up in the night and think about it, I get scared to have
you go.

"You ain't so bad lookin', Roger, and you're gettin' to the age where
you might be expected to take notice, and what if some designing female
should tie you to the railroad track? I declare, it makes me nervous to
think of it."

Roger did not like to shake his mother's faith in _The Metropolitan
Weekly_, but he longed to set her fears at rest. "Those things aren't
true, Mother," he said, kindly. "They not only haven't happened, but
they couldn't happen--it's impossible."

"Roger, what do you mean by sayin' such things. Of course it's true, or
it wouldn't be in the paper. Ain't it right there in print, as plain as
the nose on your face? You can see for yourself. I hope studyin' law
ain't goin' to make an infidel of you."

"I don't think it will," temporised Roger. "I'll keep a close watch for
designing females, and will avoid railroad tracks at night."

Miss Mattie shook her head doubtfully. "That ain't a goin' to do no
good, Roger, if they once get set after you. I've noticed that the
villain always triumphs."

"But only for a little while, Mother. Surely you must have seen that?"

[Sidenote: The Villain Foiled]

She settled her steel-bowed spectacles firmly on the wart and gazed at
him. "I believe you're right," she said, after a few moments of
reflection. "I can't recall no story now where the villain was not
foiled at last. Let me see--there was _Lovely Lulu, or the Doctor's
Darling_, and _Margaret Merriman, or the Maiden's Mad Marriage_, and
_True Gold, or Pretty Crystal's Love_, and _The American Countess, or
Hearts Aflame_, and this one I was just speakin' of, _Genevieve
Carleton, or the Brakeman's Bride_. In every one of 'em, the villain got
his just deserts, though sometimes they was disjointed owin' to the
story bein' broke off at the most interestin' point and continued the
followin' week."

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