East of the Shadows Part 30

"I cannot think of her as dead--she was so bright--so happy. She is dead--and I have lived on all these years. I wonder that I did not know that she was dead. I ought to have known it, for I loved her so.

And all our love lately has been only a dream--and we were so happy.

Oh, why was I not told the truth? why did you not let me die? It would have been kinder than to let me live to find out for myself--that she is gone--and I am all alone."

Philippa slipped down upon her knees beside the couch, and cried pa.s.sionately, "Oh no, you are not all alone--we have been so happy--I have made you happy. Can we not be happy again? I love you so--have you no love for me?"

She was sobbing now, with her face hidden in her hands.

"I do not know," he said. "It is Phil I love--I loved you when I thought that you were Phil. My dear, my dear, how can I disentangle the present from the past?"

"Then do not try," she pleaded, raising her tear-stained face. "Oh, Francis, let us be happy again; let me make you happy. Think of me as Phil if you will--but let us dream again the dream we found so sweet.

I love you so, and I will comfort you. Think of all we had planned.

Shall we not grasp our dream and make it real? If I may be your wife--as you asked me--we will go together to the place where it is always sunshine and you will find that life can hold brightness. I will make it bright for you. You remember it was all arranged, we were to go to the Magical Island--that was what you called it. Do not send me away from you."

He looked at her pityingly. "My dear," he said gently, "it was only a dream--a dream and a delusion. It is not possible--you are only a child, while I am old. You are Jim's girl, and Jim was my boyhood's friend. Your life is all before you, while mine is near the ending--and--it is Phil I love."

"I am no child." She was pleading desperately now for what was slipping from her grasp. "I am no child, but a woman, and I love you--I ask of you nothing more than the right to be with you and care for you. You say you are all alone--then let me comfort you."

He shook his head. "Phil is dead--my life is over--I did not know--and she will forgive me my mistake--she must know I love no one but her.

She was so true--I could not but be true to her--and perhaps I may go to her soon--she will be waiting--and I have lost twenty years of Paradise."

A fierce temptation a.s.sailed Philippa, the fiercest she had ever known or was ever likely to know--to tell him. To tell him the one thing of which as yet he was ignorant--that Phil had not been true, that she had not loved him, that she had been the wife of another man at the time of her death. Surely if he knew this he would turn to her, whom he had loved--if only in a dream--for a little while.

The words were almost past her lips when she stifled them, for the next instant she knew she could never speak them. Out of the wreckage of his life--of all that he held dear--only one thing was left to him, and that was his love for Phil, his faith in her. Could she, who loved him so, destroy the one thing he still possessed simply in the hope to gain what she herself longed for? Could she deal him another blow, and that the hardest, bitterest of all--undermine what had been the very keystone of his life, the one really flawless element in the whole sad story? Her love--the strength of which she boasted--had been sullied by jealousy, dimmed by reservations, a paltry thing beside his; and yet, be that as it might, she knew it was all she had to give. She had given him her whole heart, irrevocably. Let her prove it by her silence now.

He must live out his days, sad as they must be, without the added burden of disillusionment; and for the rest, it was in higher Hands than hers. She resumed her seat presently very quietly and sat watching him.

He lay quite still, evidently thinking deeply; he was, outwardly at least, perfectly calm and composed, but all the vitality, all the animation which had been so marked in his expression a few short hours before, had gone from his face, leaving it set and stern. The years which had pa.s.sed unheeded in their going took toll of him now, and set their seal upon his features, altering them strangely.

The slow minutes pa.s.sed, taking with them all the tattered remnants of her hope; and little by little it seemed to her in her pain that unseen hands were pushing her farther and farther from him, building a barrier between them--a tangible thing which she had only to stretch out her hands to feel, setting her outside his ken.

The man she loved was going from her, leaving in his place a stranger she had never known. Francis had been so near to her in their love, had never glanced at her except with tenderness and welcome; for her his voice had ever taken a deeply tender tone. Who was this stern, aged man who looked at her with veiled eyes, and spoke in a voice she did not know, and which bore little resemblance to the one which had thrilled her to pa.s.sionate devotion?

Never again would she know the rapture of his kiss, the exquisite security of his enfolding arm. The To-come was before her--bleak, grey and bereft; the roseate hues of love's delight lay all in the Gone-by.

Her love was of no avail. It had fluttered back to her, a wounded, helpless thing.

The striking of the clock roused her at last. It was the hour at which she usually bade him good-night, and she rose from her chair.

Following her habit she crossed the room and rang the bell. When she turned again Francis too had risen, and he took a few steps towards her.

"My dear," he said gently, "if I have been selfish in my great sorrow, will you forgive me? Believe me I am not ungrateful for your care and devotion, but it seems to me it would have been a more real kindness to have told me the truth. Perhaps I am wrong--I cannot think clearly to-night--I am very tired, and everything is very dark--perhaps to-morrow will bring light."

He held her hand for a moment and then released it. His eyes wandered to the picture which stood on the easel in its accustomed place. He moved towards it and stood looking down at it in silence.

And so she left him.

It was old Goodie who found him next morning. She entered his room with his cup of tea, prepared just as he liked it, "with two lumps of sugar and a dash of cream"--and then she saw----

He was lying cold and still, his hands folded on his breast, in the peace which pa.s.seth understanding. The morrow had brought light.

"The sorrow ends, for life and death have ceased.

How should lamps flicker when the oil is spent?

The old sad count is clear, the new is clean.

Thus hath a man content."

THE END