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

I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell."

"Was that the landmark?

. . . . . . . . . .

"But lo! the path is missed; I must go back
And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring
Which once I stained ...
Yet though no light be left, nor bird now sing
As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening,
That the same goal is still on the same track."
--ROSETTI.

Roland Tresham was buried beside his son, and the friends and the places that had known him knew him no more. There were only strangers to lay him in the grave. His wife was too worn out with watching and grief to leave her bed; his sister was far away. Mr. Lanhearne and two or three gentlemen whose acquaintance Roland had made at the club of which Mr. Lanhearne was a member paid the last pitiful rites, and then left him alone for ever.

Ada sat with the sorrowful widow. Her innocent heart was greatly troubled lest her interest in Roland, though known only to herself, had been an unintentional wrong. In every possible way she strove to atone for Roland's happiness in her home and her own happiness in Roland's presence. When she mentally contrasted these conditions with the miserable conditions of the deserted wife and dying child, she felt as if it would be impossible to balance the unkind and unmerited difference. That she was not specially drawn to Denasia only forced from her a more generous concern for the unhappy woman. And when death or sorrow tears from life the mask of daily custom, then, without regard to the accidents of birth, we behold ourselves, all alike sad seekers among the shadows after light and peace.

And undoubtedly sympathy is like mercy; it blesses those who give it as well as those who receive. As Ada and Denas talked of the great mysteries of life and death, their souls felt the thrill of comradeship. Denas was usually reticent about her own life, yet she opened her heart to Ada, and as the two women sat together the day after the funeral, the poor widow spent many hours in excusing the dead and in blaming herself.

She spoke honestly of her vanity, of her desire to get the better of Elizabeth by taking her brother from her, of the satisfaction she felt in mortifying the pride of the Burrells and the Treshams--even of her impatience and ill-temper with Roland because he was not able to conquer the weaknesses which were as natural to him as the blood in his body or the thought in his brain; because he could not alter the adverse circumstances which, as soon as they touched American soil, began to close around them.

"And my great grief is this," she cried, wringing her long, wasted hands: "he has died before his time and he has gone so far away that he neither sees my repentance nor hears my words of remorseful sorrow."

"Would you desire the dead to see your sorrow, Mrs. Tresham?" said Ada. "Sorrow is for the living, not for the dead."

"Oh, it is not enough to be seen by the living! I want the dead to know that I grieve! When I have wept on my mother's breast and knelt at my father's feet, I shall still long for poor Roland to know that I am sorry for the cross looks and cross words and all the petty discomforts which drove him from me--drove him to death before his time; that is the cruellest thing of all."

Mr. Lanhearne entered the room as she spoke, and he sat down and answered her: "To die before one's time, before one has seen and heard, and enjoyed and suffered the full measure of life, may seem hard, Mrs. Tresham, but there is something in this respect much harder. I have just been with a man who has lived after his time. The grave has swallowed up all his loves and all his joys, and he alone is left of his family and friends. Over such lingering lives thick, dark shadows fall, I can assure you. They have the loneliness of the grave without its quiet sleep and its freedom from unkindness and suffering. Let me advise you, as soon as you can bear the journey, to go to your own people. It was your husband's desire."

"I know it was, sir. I have fought hunger and sorrow and death like a cat. But there is no need to continue the fight. I will go to the good father and mother that God gave me. I will weep no more rebellious tears. I will surrender myself and wait for His comfort. I am but a poor, suffering woman, but I know the hand that has smitten me."

And Ada bowed her head and repeated softly:


"They are most high who humblest at God's knees
Lie loving God, and trusting though He smite."


Then they spoke of the sea-journey, and Denas wished to go away as soon as possible. "I shall get some money as soon as I arrive in London," she said. "Lend me sufficient to pay my passage there."

"You have no occasion to borrow money, Mrs. Tresham," said Mr. Lanhearne. "There is a sum due your husband which will be quite sufficient to meet all your expenses home. I will send a man to secure you a good berth. Shall it be for Saturday next?"

"I can go to-morrow very well."

"No, you cannot go to-morrow, Mrs. Tresham," answered Ada. "You must have proper clothing to travel in. If you will permit me, I will attend to this matter for you at once."

And though the proper clothing was a very prosaic comfort, it was a tangible one to Denas. She was grateful to find herself clothed in that modest, sombre decency which her condition claimed; to have all the small proprieties of the season and the circumstances, all the toilet necessities which are part of the expression of a refined nature. For the poor lady who pitifully lamented the calamity which had "reduced her to elegance" indicated no slight deprivation; proper clothing for the occasions of life being both to men and women one of those great decencies demanded by an austere and suitable self-respect.

Faithfully did this good father and daughter fulfil to the last tittle the demands of their almost super-sensitive hearts and consciences, and if they sighed with relief when the duty was over, the sigh only proved the duty to have been beyond the line of self-satisfaction and a real sacrifice to the claims of a common humanity. Mr. Lanhearne then turned his thoughts gladly toward Florida. He felt that the invasion of so much strange sorrow into his home had altered its atmosphere, and that he was human enough to be a little weary in well-doing. Ada was also glad to escape the precincts haunted by the form and the voice which it pained her conscience to remember and pained her heart to forget. So in a few more days the large brown house was closed and dark, and "the tender grace of a day that was dead" was gone for evermore. The land of sunshine was before them, and many of their friends were already there to give them welcome; yet Ada's soul kept repeating, with a ceaseless, uncontrollable monotony, one sad lament--

"Ah, but alas! for the smile that never but one face wore!
Ah, for the voice that has flown away like a bird to an unknown
shore!
Ah, for the face--the flower of flowers--that blossoms on earth no
more!"

She tried to hush this inner voice, to reason it into silence, to dull its aching echo with song or speech or notes of loftier tones; but it would not be quieted. And when she was left alone, when there was no one near to comfort or strengthen, a great silence fell upon her. For she indulged no stormy sorrow; her grief was a still rain that fertilised and made fragrant her higher self. In her maiden heart she had had a dream of being crowned with bride-flowers, and lo! it was rue, and thyme gone to seed, and dead primroses that garlanded her sad, unspoken love. But she wore them with a sweet, brave submission, not affecting to disbelieve that time would surely heal love's aching pain. For she knew that goodness was omnipotent to save and to comfort.

In the mean time, as the Lanhearnes sailed southward Denas sailed eastward, and in less than a couple of weeks half the circumference of the world was between the lives so strangely and sorrowfully brought together. Denas landed in Liverpool early in the morning, and without delay went to London. She had business with Elizabeth, and she felt constrained and restless until it should be accomplished. She hesitated about going to the house in which she had spent with Roland so many happy and sorrowful days, but when she entered the cab the direction to it sprang naturally from her lips.

And there was already in her heart that tender fear that she might forget, the fear that all who have loved and lost have trembled to recognise, the fact that her sorrow might have an end, that she might learn to dispense with what was once her life, that a little vulgar existence with its stated meals and regular duties and petty pleasures would ever fill the void in her love and life made by Roland's death.

So she tried, in the very place of her sweet bride memories, to bring back the first passion of her widowed grief. She tried to fill the empty chair with Roland's familiar form and the silent space with his happy voice. Alas! other thoughts would intrude; considerations about Elizabeth's attitude, about her home, about her future. For she knew that this part of her life was finished; that nothing could ever bring back its conditions. They had been absolutely barren conditions. Her duties as a wife and a mother were over. Her career as a singer was over. No single claim of friendship or interest from its past bound her. When she had seen Elizabeth these last years of her being and doing would be a shut book. Nothing but her change of name and, perhaps, a little money would remain to testify that Denas Penelles had ever been Denasia Tresham.

Do as she would, she could not keep these thoughts apart from her memories of her lover and her husband. She arrested her mind continually and bade herself remember the days of her gay bridal, or else those two lonely graves far beyond the western sea; and then, ere she was aware, her memories of the past had become speculations about the future. And she was abashed by this arid, incurable egotism in the most secret place of her soul. She felt it making itself known continually in her hard determination to make the best of things; she knew that it was this feeling which was determined to close the death chamber, to deny all torturing memories; which said, in effect, "what is finished is finished, and