Margarita's Soul Part 34

Dr. McGee, even then a famous physician and devotedly attached to her, worked day and night over her, but it was useless; the over-strained, busy heart had given way and she lived only three days, growing feebler with every hour.

I was sitting beside her in the afternoon, trying to be cheerful, trying to cheer her with those futile subterfuges we are forced to, trying to get it all clear in my own troubled mind, when she smiled whimsically at me and begged me to spare myself such pain.

"A nurse is the last person to need such talk, dear Mr. Jerrolds," she whispered to me, and as the good deaconess who had been her first helper in her chosen work burst into tears and stumbled from the room, she put out her hand and I took it silently.

"What you have been--what you have been, Harriet!" I muttered unsteadily, and then her eyes met mine.

"What have I been?" her lips barely formed the words, "do you know?"

There in her soft brown eyes I saw at last--at once. G.o.d knows I never guessed before. They met mine so calmly, so honestly, so fearlessly--alas, they could be fearless now!

"And I have been such a fool--such a brute!"

"Hush! you never knew," she whispered, "you could not help it, my dear. It was so from the very first--when you saw my diary."

"But I might--I might have----"

Again she smiled whimsically.

"O no," she said quietly, "there was no chance for me, of course. I never dreamed of it, my dear. But--but I wanted you to know it. There has never been anybody but you."

I tried to speak, but could not, and again, but the words dried on my lips. Then I saw that she was sleeping--from exhaustion, probably, and sat by her in silence till the deaconess came back, red-eyed, and sent me away. I bent over her and kissed her cheek, before I left, and I am sure that her lips moved and that the hand I had held while she slept pressed mine faintly. But she did not open her eyes, and in the morning the message came that she had drifted easily away, in that same sleep before dawn.

Gone--and I never knew, never faintly surmised, never considered!

Gone--and there had never been anybody but me!

Ah, Peggy, there had need be _Someone_ that knows, to make good the pity of it, the cruelty of it, the senseless waste of it!

But we three, whom she gave so generously to each other, whom, in turn, she tended back to life, into whose lives she has grown as a tree grows, can we call her love wasted?

Nor is it among us alone that her memory flourishes. No woman in all those mountain parishes she loved so well faces her dark hour of travail without blessing her name and the name of her messengers, whom, in the endowment called in memorial of her, Margarita sends to them, to tend them and the children they bear, as Harriet helped her and hers. She lies among them, a stone's throw from the corner-stone she laid nearly twenty years ago, now, and many visitors have never seen the tablet that lies along her grave--so thick the flowers are always lying there.

"Mother says you are not to look so sad, Jerry dear, because it isn't me that Freddy's marrying!" says Peggy softly, behind me, and I come back to the present, with a jerk.

"Not Freddy, perhaps," I answer with pretended severity, "but some other young sprig no better than Freddy, and then poor old Jerry may go hang!"

She slips her firm little hand--Margarita's hand--into mine shyly.

"Now, Jerry, how silly you are!" she says, looking carefully to see if I am teasing her or by any chance in earnest.

"How can I marry a young sprig, when I am going to marry you?"

"Since when?" I inquire sardonically.

"Why, Jerry!"

Her big eyes open wide, she plants herself before me and stares accusingly.

"You know very well--you can't have forgotten? You and I and little Jerry and Miss Jencks are going round the world when I am sixteen! To j.a.pan, and see the wistaria and the cherry blossoms and the five hundred little stone Buddha-G.o.ds that get all wet with spray and the red bridge n.o.body may walk on!"

"Anywhere else?"

"Yes, to Vevay and see where Mr. Boffin used to live and old Joseph that told you when you were all grown big and went back,

"_C'est moi, Monsieur, qui suis Joseph: j' ai nettoye les premieres bottes de Monsieur!_"

How well I remember those first formidable boots, and my manly feelings when I clumped them down in the hall before my door for Joseph to clean! Jerry and Peggy and I are going over every foot of the old grounds--the school, where the little fellows still sport their comfortable, round capes; the way, well trodden still, I'll wager, to the old _patisserie_ with its tempting windows of indigestible joys; the natatorium where we dived like frogs; the English church where we learned the Collects and eyed the young ladies' school gravely till it blushed individually and collectively; the famous field where I fought the grocer's boy who cried "_a bas les Anglais!_" three days running. (He beat me, incidentally.)

I find that all the old memories come back very sweetly: I had a happy childhood, on the whole, one that never lacked love and sympathy.

Believe me, ye parents, who think that these days will soon be forgotten, they make a difference, these idle memories, and life is inexpressibly richer if those early days are rich in pleasant little adventures and cheery little experiences, cheerily shared! I have more to remember than Roger, whose early boyhood was, though far wealthier than mine, strangely poorer from the lack of just this mellow glow over and through it.

And Margarita's? We shall never know what filled those silent, childish hours of hers, alone with the dogs and the gulls. Her quaint lonely games, her towers of sand and sh.e.l.l, her musings by the tide, her dreams on the sun-warmed rocks--I fancy I see them all in watching Peggy. She cannot tell herself.

"I began to live," she says, "when I met Roger."

"You have lived a great deal, since, have you not, Margarita?" I say, a little wistfully, perhaps, she is so splendid and so complete, and one seems so broken and colourless and middle-aged beside her.

"A great deal. Yes, I suppose so," she answers, and her eye rests quickly but surely on Roger, on each of the yellow heads, then on the dark one, and then, at last, on me.

"You have given up a great deal for those handsome heads, Margarita,"

I go on, under the spur of some curious impulse, "did you never regret it? You had the world at your feet, Madame used to say, and you gave it up ..."

She looks at me with the only eyes in the world that can make me forget Peggy's, and gives me both her hands (one with a flashing, cloudy star sapphire burning on it) in that free, lovely gesture so characteristic of her.

"Don't, Jerry!" she says in her sweet, husky voice, and Roger hearing it, turns slightly from his guests and gives her a swift, strong look.

The gay wedding crowd melts away, the clatter of the wine-gla.s.ses is the wash of pebbles on the beach, her hand in mine seems wet with flying spray, as she speaks in that rich, vibrating voice, for me alone:

"I had the world at my feet--yes, Jerry dear, and I nearly lost it, did I not? I did not know, you see. And I have it now, Jerry, I have it now!" (O, Susan of the bank account, who need not marry to get away from home, will that look come to your eyes and glow there till your face is too bright for an elderly bachelor to bear? Indeed, I hope it may!)

"There is only one world for a woman, Jerry," says Margarita softly, "and no one can be happy, like me, till she lives in it--the hearts that love her. His and theirs--and yours, dear Jerry, O always yours!"

His and Theirs and Mine!

Amen to that, my dear, and surely if there is _Someone_ that knows, He knows that what you say is true!