Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 54

Later in the day he did see Salvers, and as they were parting he alluded to the subject of his health.

"I am under a pledge to tell you," he said, lightly, "that I am suffering from loss of appet.i.te and prolonged sleeplessness. I don't especially object to the absence of appet.i.te, but there is something unpleasant about walking the floor all night. I don't want to become a chloral fiend. Can't you suggest a new opiate?"

"Rest," responded Salvers, shortly. "Take a holiday and cut for Florida."

"Impossible. Too much work on hand."

Salvers regarded him intently.

"The next thing, you'll take to bed," he said, irritably, "and I'll have all the ladies of your congregation besieging my office door." He added: "I am going to send you a prescription immediately."

"All right. Thanks. I stop at Brentano's."

He entered the book-shop, and came out in a few moments with a package under his arm. As he stepped to the sidewalk a lady in a rustling gown descended from her carriage and paused as she was pa.s.sing him.

"I was just going in for a copy of your sermons," she said. "I am distributing quite a number. By the by, have you ever found out who the _Scientific Weekly_ writer really is?"

He looked at her gravely.

"I have a suspicion," he answered, "but suspicions are unjustifiable things at best."

He walked home rapidly, unlatched his outer door, and entered his study.

Going to his desk, he took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and, unlocking a drawer, drew out several ma.n.u.scripts, which he glanced over with a half-humorous expression. One was the ma.n.u.script of the volume of addresses he had lately published, the other of the articles which had appeared in the pages of the _Scientific Weekly_. They were both in his handwriting, but one showed the impa.s.sioned strokes of a younger pen, and belonged to the time when he had written under the veil of anonymity, that it might not interfere with the plan of his great work.

Now the great work lay at the bottom of the last drawer, with its half-finished sheets yellowed and sown with dust, while the lighter articles had risen after a silence of ten years to a.s.sault his unstable present with the convictions of his past.

He crossed to the fireplace and laid both ma.n.u.scripts upon the coals.

They caught, and the leaves curled upward like tongues of flame, illuminating the faded text with scrolls of fire. Then they smouldered to gray spectres and floated in slender spirals up the yawning chimney.

The next day a storm set in, and pearl-gray clouds swollen with snow drove from the northwest. The snow fell thickly through the day, as it had fallen through the night, blown before the wind in fluttering curtains of white, and coating the gray sidewalks, to drift in fleecy mounds into the gutters.

In the evening, when he came in to dinner, he received an urgent message from Mrs. Ryder, which had been sent in the morning and which he had missed by being absent from luncheon. Her child had died suddenly during the night from an attack of croup.

Without removing his coat, he turned and started to her at once, his heart torn by the thought of her suffering.

As he ascended the steps the door was opened by Ryder, who came out and grasped his hand, speaking hurriedly, with a slight huskiness in his voice.

"She has been expecting you," he said, leading him into the hall. "Come up to her immediately. I can do nothing with her. My G.o.d! I would have given my right hand to have spared her this." The sincerity in his voice rang true, and there were circles of red about his eyes.

They went up-stairs, and Ryder opened the door of the nursery, and, motioning him inside, closed it softly after him. The room was faintly lighted, the chill curtain of falling snow veiling the windows. On the little bed, where he had seen it sleeping several months ago, the child was lying, its flaxen curls ma.s.sed upon the embroidered pillow; but the flush of health on the little face had given place to a waxen pallor, and the tiny hands that had tossed restlessly in sleep were still beneath white rose-buds. A faint odor of medicine clung about the room, but the disorder of dying had been succeeded by the order of death.

Mrs. Ryder, sitting near the window, her profile dark against the storm, turned her heavy eyes upon him, and then, rising, came towards him. He caught her extended hands and held them firmly in his own. At that instant the past seemed predominant over the present--and the grief more his own than another's.

"You have come at last," she said. "Help me. You must help me. I cannot live unless you do. Give me some comfort--anything!"

His face was almost as haggard as her own.

"What would comfort you?" he asked.

She turned from him towards the little bed, and, falling on her knees beside it, burst into pa.s.sionate weeping.

"It was all I had!" she cried. "All I had! O G.o.d! How cruel!"

He laid his hand upon her shoulder, not to stay her tears, but to suggest sympathy. Beyond her the sweet, grave face of the dead child lay wreathed in rose-buds.

At his touch she rose and faced him.

"Tell me that I shall see him again!" she cried. "Tell me that he is not dead--that he is somewhere--somewhere! Tell me that G.o.d is just!"

His lips were blue, and he put up his hand imploring mercy; then he opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came.

She clung to him, sobbing.

"Pray to G.o.d for me," she said.

He staggered for a moment beneath her touch. Then he knelt with her beside the little bed and prayed.

When he walked home through the storm an hour later he reeled like a drunken man, and, despite the cold, his flesh was on fire.

As he entered his door the wind drove a drift of snow into the hall, and the water dripping from his coat made shining pools on the carpet.

He went into his study and slammed the door behind him. The little dog sleeping on the rug came to welcome him, and he patted it mechanically with a nerveless hand. His face was strained and set, and his breath came pantingly. In a sudden revolution the pa.s.sion which he believed buried forever had risen, reincarnated, to overwhelm him. He lived again, more vitally because of the dead years, the death of a child who was his and the grief of a woman who was his also. He, who had believed himself arbiter of his fate, had awakened to find himself the slave of pa.s.sion--a pa.s.sion mighty in its decay, but all victorious in its resurrection. He shivered and looked about him. The room, the fire, the atmosphere seemed thrilled with an emotional essence. He felt it in his blood, and it warmed the falling snow beyond the window. Before the consuming flame the apathy of years was lost in smoke. A memory floated before him. He was sitting again in that silent room, driving the heavy pen, listening to the breathing of his dying child, watching the still droop of Mariana's profile, framed by dusk. He felt her sobbing upon his breast, her hands clinging in pain when he lifted her from beside her dead--and his. He heard again her cry: "Tell me that I shall see her!

Tell me that G.o.d is just!" The eternal cry of stricken motherhood.

Whatever the present or the future held, these things were locked within the past. He might live them over or live them down, but unlive them he could not. They had been and they would be forever.

The door opened and the servant came in.

"If you please, father, there is a lady to see you."

He looked up, startled.

"A lady? On such a night?"

"She came in a carriage, but she is very wet. Will you see her at once?"

"Yes, at once."

He turned to the door. It opened and closed, and Mariana came towards him.

She came like a ghost, pale and still as he had seen her in his memory, with a veil of snow clinging to her coat and to the feathers in her hat.

Her eyes alone were aflame.

He drew back and looked at her.

"You?" he said.