Book: Flower of the Dusk

M >> Myrtle Reed >> Flower of the Dusk




"Please," said Barbara, softly, though she was not at all afraid, "may
we go up into the cupola and ring the golden bells? We have tried so
many times."

There was no answer, but Barbara saw the Angel looking at her with
infinite longing and love. All at once, she knew that the Angel was her
mother.

"Please, Mother dear," said Barbara, "let us go in and ring the bells."

The Angel smiled and stepped aside, pointing to the right with the
Flaming Sword that made a rainbow in the cloud. In the light of it,
they went through the mist, that seemed to be lifting now.

"We're really in the cupola," cried the Boy, in delight. "See, here are
the bells." He took the two heavy golden chains in his hands and gave
one to Barbara.

"Ring!" she cried out. "Oh, ring all the bells at once! Now!"

[Sidenote: Ringing the Bells]

They pulled the two chains with all their strength, and from far above
them rang out the most wonderful golden chimes that anyone had ever
dreamed of--strong and sweet and thrilling, yet curiously soft and low.

With the first sound, the mist lifted and the Angel with the Flaming
Sword came into the cupola and stood near them, smiling. Far out was the
blue sky that bent down to meet a bluer sea, the sand on the shore was
as white as the blown snow, and the sea-birds that circled around the
cupola in the crystalline, fragrant air were singing. The melody blended
strangely with the sound of the surf on the shining shore below.

The Angel with the Flaming Sword touched Barbara gently on the arm, and
smiled. Barbara looked up, first at the Angel, and then at the Boy who
stood beside her. The mist that had always been around him had lifted,
too, and she saw that it was Roger, whom she had known all her life.

Barbara woke with a start. The sound of the golden bells was still
chiming in her ears. "Roger," she said, dreamily, "we rang them all
together, didn't we?" But Roger did not answer, for she was in her own
little room, now, and not in the Tower of Cologne.

She slipped out of bed and her little bare, pink feet pattered over to
the window. She pushed the curtains back and looked out. It was a keen,
cool, Autumn morning, and still dark, but in the east was the deep,
wonderful purple that presages daybreak.

Oh, to see the sun rise over the sea! Barbara's heart ached with
longing. She had wanted to go for so many years and nobody had ever
thought of taking her. Now, though Roger had suggested it more than
once, she had said, each time, that when she went she wanted to go
alone.

[Sidenote: "I'll Try It"]

"I'll try it," she thought. "If I get tired, I can sit down and rest,
and if I think it is going to be too much for me, I can come back. It
can't be very far--just down this road."

She dressed hurriedly, putting on her warm, white wool gown and her
little low soft shoes. She did not stop to brush out her hair and braid
it again, for it was very early and no one would see. She put over her
head the white lace scarf she had worn to the wedding, took her white
knitted shawl, and went downstairs so quietly that Aunt Miriam did not
hear her.

She unbolted the door noiselessly and went out, closing it carefully
after her. On the top step was a very small package, tied with string,
and a letter addressed, simply, "To Barbara." She recognised it as a
book and a note from Roger--he had done such things before. She did not
want to go back, so she tucked it under her arm and went on.

It seemed so strange to be going out of her gate alone and in the dark!
Barbara was thrilled with a sense of adventure and romance which was
quite new to her. This journeying into unknown lands in pursuit of
unknown waters had all the fascination of discovery.

[Sidenote: An Autumn Dawn]

She went down the road faster than she had ever walked before. She was
not at all tired and was eager for the sea. The Autumn dawn with its
keen, cool air stirred her senses to new and abounding life. She went on
and on and on, pausing now and then to lean against somebody's fence, or
to rest on a friendly boulder when it appeared along the way.

Faint suggestions of colour appeared in the illimitable distances
beyond. Barbara saw only a vast, grey expanse, but the surf murmured
softly on the shadowy shore. Crossing the sand, and stumbling as she
went, she stooped and dipped her hand into it, then put her rosy
forefinger into her mouth to see if it were really salt, as everyone
said. She sat down in the soft, cool sand, drew her white knitted shawl
and lace scarf more closely about her, and settled herself to wait.

[Sidenote: Sunrise on the Sea]

The deep purple softened with rose. Tints of gold came far down on the
horizon line. Barbara drew a long breath of wonder and joy. Out in the
vastness dark surges sang and crooned, breaking slowly into white foam
as they approached the shore. Rose and purple melted into amethyst and
azure, and, out beyond the breakers, the grey sea changed to opal and
pearl.

Mist rose from the far waters and the long shafts of leaping light
divided it by rainbows as it lifted. Prismatic fires burned on the
boundless curve where the sky met the sea. Wet-winged gulls, crying
hoarsely, came from the night that still lay upon the islands near
shore, and circled out across the breakers to meet the dawn.

Spires of splendid colour flamed to the zenith, the whole east burned
with crimson and glowed with gold, and from that far, mystical arc of
heaven and earth, a javelin of molten light leaped to the farthest hill.
The pearl and opal changed to softest green, mellowed by turquoise and
gold, the slow blue surges chimed softly on the singing shore, and
Barbara's heart beat high with rapture, for it was daybreak in earth and
heaven and morning in her soul.

She sat there for over an hour, asking for nothing but the sky and sea,
and the warm, sweet sun that made the air as clear as crystal and
touched the Autumn hills with living flame. She drew long breaths of the
wind that swept, like shafts of sunrise, half-way across the world.

[Sidenote: The Boy in the Tower]

At last she turned to the package that lay beside her, and untied the
string, idly wondering what book Roger had sent. How strange that the
Boy in the Tower should be Roger, and yet, was it so strange, after all,
when she had known him all her life?

Before looking at the book, she tore open the letter and read it--with
wide, wondering eyes and wild-beating heart.

[Sidenote: Roger's Letter]

"Barbara, my darling," it began. "I found this
book to-night and so I send it to you, for it is
yours as much as mine.

"I think my father's wish has been granted and his
love has been bequeathed to me. I have known for a
long time how much I care for you, and I have
often tried to tell you, but fear has kept me
silent.

"It has been so sweet to live near you, to read to
you when you were sewing or while you were ill,
and sweeter than all else besides to help you
walk, and to feel that you leaned on me, depending
on me for strength and guidance.

"Sometimes I have thought you cared, too, and
then I was not sure, so I have kept the words
back, fearing to lose what I have. But to-night,
after having read his letters, I feel that I must
throw the dice for eternal winning or eternal
loss. You can never know, if I should spend the
rest of my life in telling you, just how much you
have meant to me in a thousand different ways.

"Looking back, I see that you have given me my
ideals, since the time we made mud pies together
and built the Tower of Cologne, for which, alas,
we never got the golden bells. I have loved you
always and it has not changed since the beginning,
save to grow deeper and sweeter with every day
that passed.

"As much as I have of courage, or tenderness, or
truth, or honour, I owe to you, who set my
standard high for me at the beginning, and oh, my
dearest, my love has kept me clean. If I have
nothing else to give you, I can offer you a clean
heart and clean hands, for there is nothing in my
life that can make me ashamed to look straight
into the eyes of the woman I love.

"Ever since we went to that wedding the other day,
I have been wishing it were our own--that you and
I might stand together before God's high altar in
that little church with the sun streaming in, and
be joined, each to the other, until death do us
part.

"Sweetheart, can you trust me? Can you believe
that it is for always and not just for a little
while? Has your mother left her love to you as my
father left me his?

"Let me have the sweetness of your leaning on me
always, let me take care of you, comfort you when
you are tired, laugh with you when you are glad,
and love you until death and even after, as he
loved her.

"Tell me you care, Barbara, even if it is only a
little. Tell me you care, and I can wait, a long,
long time.

"ROGER."

Barbara's heart sang with the joy of the morning. She opened the little
worn book, with its yellow, tear-stained pages, and read it all, up to
the very last line.

"Oh!" she cried aloud, in pity. "Oh! oh!"

Fully understanding, she put it aside, closing the faded cover
reverently on its love and pain. Then she turned to Roger's letter, and
read it again.

[Sidenote: First Flush of Rapture]

Dreaming over it, in the first flush of that mystical rapture which
makes the world new for those to whom it comes, as light is recreated
with every dawn, she took no heed of the passing hours. She did not know
that it was very late, nor that Aunt Miriam, much worried, had asked
Roger to go in search of her. She knew only that love and morning and
the sea were all hers.

The tide was coming in. Each wave broke a little higher upon the
thirsting shore. Far out on the water was a tiny dark object that moved
slowly shoreward on the crests of the waves. Barbara stood up, shading
her eyes with her hand, and waited, counting the rhythmic pulse-beats
that brought it nearer.

She could not make out what it was, for it advanced and then receded, or
paused in a circling eddy made by two retreating waves. At last a high
wave brought it in and left it, stranded, at her feet.

[Sidenote: A Fragment]

Barbara laughed aloud, for, broken by the wind and wave and worn by
tide, a fragment of one of her crutches had come back to her. The bit of
flannel with which she had padded the sharp end, so that the sound would
not distress her father, still clung to it. She wondered how it came
there, never guessing that it was but the natural result of Eloise's
attempt to throw it as far as Allan had thrown the other, the day he
took them away from her.

A great sob of thankfulness almost choked her. Here she stood firmly on
her own two feet, after twenty-two years of helplessness, reminded of it
only by a fragment of a crutch that the sea had given back as it gives
up its dead. She had outgrown her need of crutches as the tiny
creatures of the sea outgrow their shells.

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!"

The beautiful words chanted themselves over and over in her
consciousness. The past, with all its pain and grieving, fell from her
like a garment. She was one with the sun and the morning; uplifted by
all the world's joy.

[Sidenote: The True Lover]

Her blood sang within her and it seemed that her heart had wings. All of
life lay before her--that life which is made sweet by love. She felt
again the ecstasy that claimed her in the Tower of Cologne, when she and
the Boy, after a lifetime of waiting, had rung all the golden bells at
once.

And the Boy was Roger--always had been Roger--only she did not know.
Into Barbara's heart came something new and sweet that she had never
known before--the deep sense of conviction and the everlasting peace
which the True Lover, and he alone, has power to bestow.

It was part of the wonder of the morning that when she turned, startled
a little by a muffled footstep, she should see Roger with his hands
outstretched in pleading and all his soul in his eyes.

Barbara's face took on the unearthly beauty of dawn. Her blue eyes
deepened to violet, her sweet lips smiled. She was radiant, from her
feet to the heavy braids that hung over her shoulders and the shimmering
halo of soft hair, that blew, like golden mist, about her face.

Roger caught her mood unerringly--it was like him always to understand.
He was no longer afraid, and the trembling of his boyish mouth was lost
in a smile. She was more beautiful than the morning of which she seemed
a veritable part--and she was his.

[Sidenote: Flower of the Dawn]

"Flower of the Dawn," he cried, his voice ringing with love and triumph,
"do you care? Are you mine?"

She went to him, smiling, with the colour of the fiery dawning on her
cheeks and lips. "Yes," she whispered. "Didn't you know?"

Then the sun and the morning and the world itself vanished all at once
beyond his ken, for Barbara had put her soft little hand upon his
shoulder, and lifted her love-lit face to his.


THE END.



* * * * *




Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Page 4, "instrusted" changed to "intrusted" (china intrusted)

Page 272, "checks" changed to "cheeks" (fair cheeks)

Page 275, "venegeance" changed to "vengeance" (not of His vengeance)

Page 321, "anenomes" changed to "anemones" (and anemones)

Page 326, "assunder" changed to "asunder" (hopelessly put asunder)

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.