A Singer from the Sea, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [best story books to read TXT] 📗

did not mean to be either. You were tired of misery--men do tire. I would have tired, too, only for my baby. Oh, Roland! Roland! Roland! my love, my husband!"

Then--ah, then. No one can put into mere common words the great mystery of forgiveness. It is not in words. Heart beat against heart, eyes gazed into eyes, souls met upon clinging lips, and the sweet compact of married love was renewed in the clasping of their long-parted hands. They sat down together and spoke in soft, sad voices of the great mistakes of the past. Until the midnight hour they wept and talked together, and then Denasia said:

"In a short time a poor woman who is nursing at the Gilsey House will be here. She is on duty until twelve o'clock, but as soon as she is released she promised to come and sit with me. So you must leave me now, Roland. It is useless to explain to my neighbours our relationship. They would look at you and me and think evilly. I would not blame them if they did. When all is over I will come to you; until then I will remain alone. It is best so."

Nevertheless Roland lingered and pleaded, and when he finally consented to her wish, he left all the money he had in her hands. She looked at the bills with a sad despair. "All these!" she whispered, "all these for a grave and a coffin! There was nothing at all to help him to live."

"Nothing could have saved him, Denasia. He was born under sentence of death. He has been ill all his poor little life. My darling, believe that it is well with him now."

Yet her words and tears troubled him, and he bade her good-night, and then returned so often that the woman Denasia had spoken of passed him in the narrow entry, and he paused and watched her go to his wife's room. Even then he did not hurry to his own home. He went down the side street, and stood looking at the glimmering lamp in the sorrowful place of death until he became painfully aware of the terribly damp, cold wind searching out and chilling life, even to the very marrow of the bones. Then he remembered that he had come out in his dress boots, consequently his feet were wet and numb, and he had a fierce pain under his shoulder. A sudden, uncontrollable fear went to his heart like a death-doom.

He had to walk a long way before he found any vehicle, and when, after what seemed a never-ending period of torture, he reached his room, he knew that he was seriously ill. But the house had settled for the night; he had a reluctance to awaken the servants; he hoped the warmth would give him ease; he was, in fact, quite unacquainted with the terrible malady which had seized him. In the morning he did not appear, and after a short delay Mr. Lanhearne sent him a message.

Roland was, however, by this time in high fever and delirious. The news caused a momentary hesitation and then a positive decision. The hesitation was a natural one--"Should not the young man be sent to the hospital?" The decision came from the cultivated humanity of a good heart--"No. Roland was 'the stranger within the gates,' he was a countryman, he was more than that, he was a Cornishman." In a few moments Mr. Lanhearne had sent for his own physician and a trained nurse, and he went himself to the side of the sick man until help arrived.

Toward night Roland became very restless, and with a distressing effort constantly murmured the word "Denasia." Mr. Lanhearne thought he understood the position exactly, and he had a very pardonable hesitation in granting the half-made request. But the monotonous imploring became full of anguish, and he finally took his daughter into his councils and asked what ought to be done.

"Denasia ought to be here," answered Ada. "I have her address. Let Davis go for her."

"But, my dear! you do not understand that she may--that she is, perhaps, not what we should call a good woman."

"Dear father, who among us all is good? Even Christ said, 'Why callest thou Me good? There is none good save one, that is God.' We know nothing wrong of her with certainty. Why not give her the benefit of the doubt? Are we not compelled to be thus generous with all our acquaintances?"

So Denasia was sent for. She was sitting alone in her comfortless room. The baby was gone away for ever. Thinking of the lonely darkness of the cemetery, with the cold earth piled high above the little coffin, she felt a kind of satisfaction in her own shivering solitude and silence. She was as far as possible keeping with the little form a dreary companionship. Yet she had been expecting Roland and was greatly pained at his apparent neglect.

When Davis knocked at the door she said drearily, "Come in." She thought it was her husband at last.

"Are you Mademoiselle Denasia?" inquired a strange voice.

A quick sense of trouble came to her; she stood up and answered "Yes."

"There is a gentleman at our house, Mr. Tresham; he is very ill indeed. He asks for you constantly. Mr. Lanhearne thinks you ought to come to him at once."

"I am ready."

She spoke with a dreary patience and instantly put on her cloak and hat. Not another word was said. She asked no questions. She had reached that point where women arrest all their feelings and wait. The splendid house, the light, the warmth, all the evidences of a luxurious life about, moved her no more than if she was in a dream. A great sorrow had put her far above these things. She followed the servant who met her at the door without conscious volition. A woman going to execution could hardly have felt more indifference to the mere accidentals of the way of sorrow. And when a door was swung softly open, she saw no one in the room but Roland. Roland helpless, unconscious. Roland even then crying out "Denasia! Denasia!"

The physician, Mr. Lanhearne, and his daughter stood by the fireside, and when Denasia entered Ada went rapidly to her side.

"We are glad you have come," she said kindly. "You see how ill Mr. Tresham is. You are his countrywoman--his friend, I think?"

"I--am--his--wife."

She said the words with a pathetic pride, and Ada wondered why they hurt her so terribly. Like four swords they pierced her heart and cut away from it hope and happiness. She went back to her father's side, and leaned her head on his shoulder, and felt like one holding despair at bay. And oh, how grateful to her was the secret silence of the night! Then she wept as a little child weeps who has lost its way. By her anguish and her sense of loss for ever she was taught that Roland had become nearer and dearer than she had ever suspected. And the knowledge was a revelation of sorrow. Her delicate conscience shivered in the shadow of a possible wrong and the bitterness of the might-have-been she was to fight without ceasing.

She felt no anger toward Denasia, however. Denasia was only the hidden rock on which her frail, unknown love-bark had struck and gone down. And she was constrained to admit that, so far as she herself was concerned, Roland was innocent. She had, indeed, often felt hurt at his restraint and want of response. In her pure, simple heart she had called it pride, shyness, indifference; but she understood now that this poor, weak soul had at least not lacked honour.

So that there was in this apparently peaceful, comfortable home two vital conflicts going on: the struggle of a noble soul to slay love, the struggle of unpitying death to slay life. About the ninth day Roland, though weak, had some favourable symptoms, and there were good hopes of his recovery. He talked with Denasia at intervals, and assured of her forgiveness and love, slept peacefully with his hand in his wife's hand.

A few days later, however, he appeared to be much depressed. His dark, sunken eyes gazed wistfully at Mr. Lanhearne, and he asked to be alone with him for a little while. "I am going to die," he said, with a face full of vague, melancholy fear. The look was so childlike, so like that of an infant soul afraid of some perilous path, that Mr. Lanhearne could not avoid weeping, though he answered:

"No, my dear Roland. The doctor says that the worst is over."

Roland smiled with pleasure at the fatherly dropping of the formal "Mr.," but he reiterated the assertion with a more decided manner. "I am going to die. Will you see that my wife goes back to England to her father and mother?"

"I will. Is there anything else?"

"No. She knows all that is to be done. Comfort her a little when I am dead."

"My dear Roland, we are going to Florida as soon as you are able."

"I am going to a country much farther off. I will tell you how I know. All my life long a figure formless, veiled, and like a shadow has come to me at any crisis. When I was striving for honours at my college it whispered, 'you will not succeed.' When I went to my first business desk it brought me the same message. The night before I sailed for America it stood at my bedside, and I heard the one word, 'failure.' This afternoon it told me, 'you have come to the end of your life.' Then my soul said, 'Oh, my enemy, who art thou?' And there grew out of the dimness the likeness of a face."

For a few moments there was a silence painful and profound. Roland closed his eyes, and from under their lids stole two large tears--the last he would ever shed. And Mr. Lanhearne was so awed and troubled he could scarcely say:

"A face! Whose face, then, Roland?"

"My own! My own!" and he spoke with that patience of accepted doom which, while it carries the warrant of death, has also death's resignation and dignity.

After this revelation there was a decided relapse, and after a few more days of suffering, of hope, and despair had passed, the end came peacefully from utter exhaustion. Mr. Lanhearne was present, but it was into Denasia's eyes that Roland gazed until this sad earth was lost to vision, and the dark, tearless orbs, once so full of light and love, were fixed and dull for evermore.

"It is all past! It is all over!" cried Denasia, "all over, all over! Oh, Roland! Roland! My dear, dear love!" and Mr. Lanhearne led her fainting with sorrow from the place of death.

And in another room, in a little sanctuary of holy dreams and loving purposes, Ada knelt in a transport of divine supplication, praying for the dying, praying for the living, consecrating her own wounded heart to the service of all women wearing for any reason the crown of sorrow, or drinking of the cup of Gethsemane, or treading alone the painful road which leads from Calvary to paradise. For herself asking only with a sublime submission--


"Nearer, my God, to Thee;
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me!"



CHAPTER XIV.


SORROW BRINGS US ALL HOME.

"Look in my face. My name is Might-have-been: