A Village Ophelia and Other Stories Part 8

"It has been cold, so cold to-day. I left Elsie asleep, and went to the office of the ---- Magazine with an article I wrote a month or so ago.

The truth is, Elsie should have a doctor, and I have no money to pay him. I was almost sure Mr. ---- would take this. He was out, and I waited a long time in vain, and finally walked back in the wind and blowing dust, chilled to the heart. I wished to write in the afternoon, but I was so beaten with the weather that I threw myself on the bed by Elsie to try to collect my thoughts. It was no use. I found my eyes and mind wandering vaguely about the room. I was staring at the paper frieze of garlanded roses, and the ugly, dingy paper below it of a hideous lilac. What fiend ever suggested to my landlady the combination of crimson roses and purplish paper? How I hate my environments! Poverty and sybaritism go as ill together as roses and purple paper, but I have always been too much given up to the gratification of the eyes and of the senses. How well I remember in my first girlhood, how I used to fill bowls with roses, lilacs and heliotrope, in the country June, and putting beneath my cheek a little pillow, whose crimson silk gave me delight, shut my eyes in my rough, unfinished little room, and the vales of Persia and the scented glades of the tropics were mine to wander through. Yes, a dreamer's Paradise, for I was only sixteen then, and untroubled by any thoughts of Love; yet sometimes Its shadow would enter and vaguely perplex me, a strange shape, waiting always beyond, in the midst of my glowing gardens, and I sighed with a prescient pain. How have I known Love since those days? As yet it has brought me but two things--Sorrow and Expectation. In that fragmentary love-time that was mine, I well remember one evening after he left me, that I threw myself on the floor, and kissing the place where his dear foot had been set, I prayed, still prostrate, the prayer I have so often prayed since. I begged of G.o.d to let me barter for seven perfect days of love, all the years that He had, perhaps, allotted to me. But my hot lips plead in vain against the dusty floor, and it was to be that instead; he was to leave me while love was still incomplete. But I know we shall meet again, and I wait. He loved me, and does not that make waiting easy?

"My book _must_, it _shall_ succeed. It shall wipe out the stain on my birth, it shall be enough to the world that I am what I am. To-night I shall write half the night. No, there is Elsie. To-morrow, then, all day. I shall not move from the desk. Oh! I have pierced my heart, to write with its blood. It is an ink that ought to survive through the centuries. Yet if it achieve my purpose for me, I care not if it is forgotten in ten years.

"_February_ 12, 18--.

"I have seen him to-day, the only man I have ever loved. He loves me no more. It is ended. What did _I_ say? I do not remember. I knew it all, the moment he entered the room. When he went, I said: 'We shall never meet again, I think. Kiss me on the lips once, as in the old days.'

"He looked down at me curiously. He hesitated a moment--then he bent and kissed my mouth. The room whirled about me. Strange sounds were in my ears; for one moment he loved me again. I threw myself in a chair, and buried my face in my hands. I cried out to G.o.d in my desperate misery.

It was over, and he was gone--he who begged once for a kiss, as a slave might beg for bread!

"And now in all this world are but two good things left me, my Art and little Elsie. Oh! my book, I clung to it in that bitter moment, as the work which should save my reason to live for the child."

"_February_ 18, 18--

"I have written continuously. I drugged myself with writing as if it were chloral, against the stabs of memory that a.s.saulted me. There will be chapters I shall never read, those that I wrote as I sat by my desk the day after the 12th, the cold, gray light pouring in on me, sometimes holding my pen suspended while I was having a mortal struggle with my will, forcing back thoughts, driving my mind to work as though it were a brute. I conquered through the day. My work did not suffer; as I read it over I saw that I had never written better, in spite of certain pains that almost stopped my heart. But at night! ah! if I had had a room to myself, would I have given myself one moment of rest that night? Would I not have written on until I slept from fatigue?

"But that could not be. Elsie moved restlessly; the light disturbed her.

For a moment I almost hated her plaintive little voice, G.o.d forgive me!

and then I undressed and slipped into bed, and so quietly I lay beside her, that she thought I slept. I breathed evenly and lightly--I ought to be able to countefeit sleep by this, I have done it times enough.

"Well, it is of no avail to re-live that night. I thought there was no hope left in me, but I have been cheating myself, it seems, for it fought hard, every inch of the ground, for survival that night, though now I am sure it will never lift its head again.

"And now, as I said, there is nothing left in all earth for me but my sister and my Art. "_Poete, prends ton luth_."

"_May_ 10, 18--.

"My book is a success, that is, the world calls it a success; but in all the years to come he will never love me again, therefore to me it is a failure, having failed of its purpose, its reason for being. What does he care for the fame it has brought me, since he no longer loves me?

"Had it only come a year ago!

"I went to see Mrs. ---- to-day, and I started to hear his voice in the hall, as I sat waiting in the dim drawing-room. He was just going out, having been upstairs, Mrs. ---- said, to look at the children's fernery; and I, as I heard that voice, I could have gone out and thrown myself at his feet across the threshold, those cadences so stole into my heart and head, bringing the old madness back. I had one of the sharp attacks of pain at the heart, and Mrs ---- sent me home in the carriage. Elsie is in the country, well and strong. I am so glad. These illnesses frighten her sorely. I am perhaps growing thin and weak, but I cannot die, alas!

Let the beauty go. I no longer care to preserve it.

"When I reached home, I lay in the twilight for some time on the sofa, not having strength to get up to my room. There is, there can be, no possible help or hope in my trouble, no fruition shall follow the promises Spring time held for me.

"Oh, G.o.d! if there be a G.o.d! but why do I wish to pray? Have I not prayed before, and not only no answer was vouchsafed, but no sensation of a listening Power, a loving Presence, a.s.suaged my pain. Yet, human or brute, we must make our groans, though futile, when we are in the grasp of a mortal agony.

"_June_ 20, 18--.

"I have been thankless. I have been faithless. Let me bless G.o.d's name, for He has heard my prayer at last, and he will let me die--very soon.

"It was so cool in the doctor's office this morning. The vines about the window made lovely shadows on the white curtains and the floor. The light was soft. His round, ruddy German face was almost pale as he stammered out technical terms, in reply to my questions.

"'Oh, Mees!' he said, throwing up his fat hands. 'You ask so mooch! Den, if I frighten you, you faints, you gets worse. No, no, I will not have it!'

"But at last, rea.s.sured by my calmness, he told me, as I leaned on the back of his high office chair. A month more, or perhaps two. Not very much pain, he thought. But certain. And I, faithless, have believed the good G.o.d did not listen when I prayed!

"Little Elsie is safe and happy with our aunt. Already she seldom talks of me. Yet I have had her, my care, my charge, for almost six years.

Children soon forget. There will be a little money for her education, and Aunt wishes to adopt her. There is nothing that I need grieve to leave behind.

"If he had still loved me, if it were circ.u.mstance that kept our lives apart, I could send for him then; but to die in arms that held me only out of compa.s.sion--glad to relinquish their burden as soon as might be--no, I must go without seeing his face again.

"And to-night I can only feel the great gladness that it is to be.

Suppose I knew that there were twenty-five more such years as these!

Suppose it should be a mistake, and I had to live!

I looked from these last written words to the photograph. My eyes were blurred, but Tom only leaned back, motionless as before, apathetic as before.

"How long--" I began, tentatively.

"She lived a week after that," Callender replied, in his dry, emotionless voice.

"And the man?"

"He was my brother," replied Callender. "She never saw him again. He married Miss Stockweis about a month after."

I thought of Ralph Callender, cold, correct, slightly bored, as I have always known him, of Miss Stockweis, a dull, purse-proud blonde.

I seized the poor little photograph and raised it reverently to my lips.

"Forgive me, Tom," I said, slightly abashed. (I never could control my impulses.) "The best thing you can do is to thank G.o.d for her death.

Think of a woman like that--"

"Thank you," said Tom wearily. "Yes, I _am_ glad."

And then I grasped the thin brown hand in my own for a moment, and felt it respond faintly to my clasp.

We sat as quietly as before in the cheerful, smoke-filled room, I puffing slightly at my Ajar, and Tom's sleepless eyes fixed absently on the wall; and then presently I went to the window and watched the dull gray dawn creep over the still sleeping city.

"Well, here's another day," I said with a sigh, turning back to the room. "I must go, old fellow."

There was no reply. Startled, I bent over the chair, and looked in the face, scarcely more ivory-white than before. And then I saw that for Callender there would be no more days.

THE END.