A Touch of Sun and Other Stories Part 3

"It was announced a few days later that Mrs. Benedet and her daughter Helen had gone East on their way to Europe. As Mr. Benedet's health was very bad,--this was only six months before he died,--society wondered; but it has been accustomed to wondering about the Benedets.

"Mrs. Benedet came home at the time of her husband's death and remained for a few months, but Helen was kept away. You know they have continually been abroad for the last seven years, and Helen has never been seen in society here. When you spoke of 'Miss Benedet' I no more thought of her than if she had not been living. Aunt Frances met them last winter at Cannes, and Mrs. Benedet said positively that they had no intention of coming back to California ever to live. Aunt Frances wondered why, with their beautiful homes empty and going to destruction. I have told you the probable reason.

Whether it still exists, G.o.d knows--or what they have done with that man and his dreadful knowledge.

"Helen Benedet may have changed her spiritual ident.i.ty since she made that fatal journey, but she can hardly have forgotten what she did. She must know there is a man who, if he lives, holds her reputation at the mercy of his silence. Money can do a great deal, but it cannot do everything.

"I am tempted to wish that we--your father and I--could share your ignorance, could trust as you do. Better a common awakening for us all, than that I should be the one necessity has chosen to apply the torture to my son.

"The misery of this will make you hate my handwriting forever. But why do I babble? You do not hear me. G.o.d help you, my dear!"

These words, descriptive of her own emotions, Mrs. Thorne on re-reading scored out, and copied the last page.

She did not weep. She ached from the impossibility of weeping. She stumbled away from her desk, tripping in her long robes, and stretched herself out at full length on the floor, like a girl in the first embrace of sorrow.

But hearing Ito's footsteps, she rose ashamed, and took an att.i.tude befitting her years.

The letter was absently sealed and addressed; there was no reason why the shaft should not go home. Yet she hesitated. It were better that she should read it to her husband first.

The sun dropped below the piazza roof and pierced the bamboo lattices with lines and slits of fervid light.

"From heat to heat the day declined."

The gardener came with wet sacking and swathed the black-glazed jardinieres, in which the earth was steaming. The mine whistle blared, and a rattle of miners' carts followed, as the day-shift dispersed to town. The mine did not board its proletariate. At his usual hour the watchman braved the blinding path, and left the evening paper on the piazza floor. There it lay unopened. Mrs. Thorne fanned herself and looked at it. There must be fighting in Cuba; she did not move to see. Other mothers' sons were dying; what was death to such squalor as hers? Sorrow is a queen, as the poet says, and sits enthroned; but Trouble is a slave. Mothers with griefs like hers must suffer in the fetters of silence.

When dinner was over, Ito made his nightly pilgrimage through the house, opening bedroom shutters, fastening curtains back. He drew up the piazza-blinds, and like a stage-scene, framed in post and bal.u.s.trade, and bordered with a tracery of rose-vines, the valley burst upon the view.

Its cool twilight colors, its river-bed of mist, added to the depth of distance. Against it the white roses looked whiter, and the pink ones caught fire from the intense, great afterglow.

The silent couple, drinking their coffee outside, drew a long mutual sigh.

"Every day," said Mrs. Thorne, "we wonder why we stay in such a place, and every evening we are cajoled into thinking there never can be such another day. And the beauty is just as fresh every night as the heat is preposterous by day."

"It's a great strain on the men," said Mr. Thorne. "We lost two of our best hands this week--threw down their tools and quit, for some tomfoolery they wouldn't have noticed a month ago. The bosses irritate the men, and the men get fighting mad in a minute. Not one of them will bear the weight of a word, and I don't blame them. The work is hard enough in decent weather; they are dropping off sick every day. The night-shift boys can't sleep in their hot little houses---they look as if they'd all been on a two weeks'

tear. The next improvement we make I shall build a rest-house where the night-shift can turn in and sleep inside of stone walls, without crying babies and scolding wives clattering around. This heat every summer costs us thousands of dollars in delays, from wear and tear and extra strain--tempers and nerves giving out, men getting frantic and jerking things. I believe it breeds a form of acute mania when it keeps on like this."

"Yes, the point of view changes the instant the sun goes down," said Mrs.

Thorne. "I am glad I did not send my letter. Will you let me read it to you, Henry?"

"Not now; let us enjoy the peace of G.o.d while it lasts." He stretched himself on his back on the rattan lounge, and folded his hands on that part of his person which ill.u.s.trated, geographically speaking, the great Continental Divide. The locked hands rose softly up and down. His wife fanned him in silence.

He turned his head and looked at her; her tired eyes, the dragged lines about her mouth, disturbed his sense of rest. He took the fan from her and returned her attention vigorously. "Please don't!" she said with a little teased laugh. She rearranged the lock he had blown across her forehead. His larger help she needed, but he had seldom known how to pet her in little ways.

"I think you ought to let me read it to you," she said. "There is nothing so difficult as telling the truth, even about one's self, and when it's another person"--

"That's what I claim; she is the only one who can tell it."

"This is a case of first aid to the injured," she sighed. "I may not be a surgeon, but I must do what I can for my son."

Then there was silence; the valley grew dimmer, the sky nearer and more intense.

"Yes, the night forgives the day," after a while she said; "it even forgets. And we forget what we were, and what we did, when we were young.

What is the use of growing old if we can't learn to forgive?" she vaguely pleaded; and suddenly she began to weep.

The rattle of a miner's cart broke in upon them; it stopped at the gate.

Mr. Thorne half rose and looked out; a man was hurrying up the walk. He waved with his cane for him to stop where he was. Messengers at this hour were usually bearers of bad news, and he did not choose that his wife should know all the troubles of the mines.

The two men conversed together at the gate; then Mr. Thorne returned to explain.

"I must go over to the office a moment, and I may have to go to the power-house."

"Is anybody hurt?"

"Only a pump. Don't think of things, dear. Just keep cool while you can."

"For pity's sake, there is a carriage!" Mrs. Thorne exclaimed. "We are going to have a visitor. Fancy making calls after such a day as this!"

Mr. Thorne hurried away with manlike prompt.i.tude in the face of a social obligation. The mistress stepped inside and gave an order to Ito.

As she returned, a lady was coming up the walk. She was young and tall, and had a distant effect of great elegance. She held herself very erect, and moved with the rapid, swimming step peculiar to women who are accustomed to the eyes of critical a.s.semblages. Her thin black dress was too elaborate for a country drive; it was a concession to the heat which yet permitted the wearing of a hat, a filmy creation supporting a pair of wings that started up from her beautiful head like white flames. But Mrs. Thorne chiefly observed the look of tense preparation in the face that met hers.

She retreated a little from what she felt to be a crisis of some sort, and her heart beat hard with acute agitation.

"Mrs. Thorne?" said the visitor. "Do I need to tell you who I am? Has any one forewarned you of such a person as Helen Benedet?"

The two women clasped hands hurriedly. The worn eyes of the elder, strained by night-watchings, drooped under the young, dark ones, reinforced by their splendor of brows and lashes.

"It was very sweet of you to come," she said in a lifeless voice.

"Without an invitation! You did not expect me to be quite so sweet as that?"

Mrs. Thorne did not reply to this challenge. "You are not alone?" she asked gently.

"I am alone, dear Mrs. Thorne. I am everything I ought not to be. But you will not mind for an hour or two? It's a great deal to ask of you, this hot night, I know."

"You must not think of going back to-night." Mrs. Thorne glanced at the hired carriage from town. "Did you come on purpose, this dreadful weather, my dear? I am very stupid, but I've only just come myself."

"Oh, you are angelic! I heard at Colfax, as we were coming up, that you were at the mine. I came--by main strength. But I should have come somehow. Have you people staying with you? You look so very gay with your lights--you look like a whole community."

"We have no lights here, you see; we are anything but gay. We were talking of you only just now," Mrs. Thorne added infelicitously.

The other did not seem to hear her. She let her eyes rove down the lengths of empty piazza. The close-reefed awnings revealed the stars above the trees, dark and breezeless on the lawn. The matted rose-vines clung to the pillars motionless.

"What a strange, dear place!" she murmured. "And there is no one here?"

"No one at all. We are quite alone. We really must have you."

"I will stay, then. It's perfectly fearful, all I have to say to you. I shall tire you to death."

Ito, appearing, was ordered to send away the lady's carriage.