Part 20

His question cut me like a knife. For I had kept back part of our life's story, the bitter part, when uncle had enquired about our children. We only brought one of them, I had said--but hoped he might see Harold later on. Which was true enough, so true, alas!

"I don't need you," uncle said abruptly as a servant's head appeared at the door. "I'll go to him," he announced to me--"I'll go to Gordon. I hope I don't forget what's becoming in a Southern gentleman--besides, he's come far enough. You wait here--I'd know him in a thousand, unless he's enough sight plainer than he used to be. Always did have a hankerin' for him, I believe, like a nigger for a watermelon. You wait here, Helen," and he made his way, straightening himself with all the old-time dignity, upon his courtly errand.

It was the following evening, the evening of a day that had been filled with unmixed gladness to me and Gordon. If it had not been for that one skeleton closet--which I need not name--the whole house of life would have been one big banqueting hall to his heart and mine. More than once, through that happy day, I noticed Gordon's laughter die away in silence and the brightness leave his eye as there evidently floated before him the vision of the one absent face. Indeed, he said as much to me, that all the gladness only threw into darker contrast the abiding cloud that was always in our sky.

But uncle had been so lovely to us both this day; and we had just finished dinner at some resort he had discovered where Southern dishes, new and old, were to be had in all their glory. We were all seated now in uncle's room; and the dear old man was directing all his powers of persuasion upon my husband.

"It's the purest play I ever saw in my life," he urged, one hand holding Gordon by the knee; "it's as good as a sermon. I've heard heaps o' sermons that didn't do me as much good as 'The Old Homestead,' I tell you."

"I was never at the theatre in my life," my husband made reply, "except twice I went to see Irving--and I don't altogether believe in it."

"This is far better'n Irving," uncle urged; "and you'll preach better after it."

"I don't feel much in the mood for theatres," Gordon responded; "my days for merriment are past, I fear," which came with a smile that showed he didn't quite believe it.

"That's the very time to go," insisted uncle; "that's when you want to get the cobwebs blown out of you--and this'll do it all right."

"I'll leave it to Helen," Gordon suddenly exclaimed; "if she wants to go, I'll give in."

Five minutes before, I can frankly say, I had hoped Gordon would carry his point. The theatre, that particular night, had no charm for me. Yet now that Gordon had left the matter in my hands, some mysterious impulse settled my resolve at once. Nobody need tell me that women, true women, live far from the unseen. For my resolve was taken on the instant, so suddenly and confidently that it amazed myself.

"We'll go," I said quietly. "The play sounds good; I'm sure I've heard of it before--and I want to see it, Gordon."

Three-quarters of an hour later we were seated five or six rows from the footlights, watching the haymakers gathered about the moss-grown bucket that gives its charm to the opening scene of "The Old Homestead." But the play had not proceeded far before I began to regret bitterly that we had not stayed away. When it dawned on me that the plot centred about an absent boy, a son for whom a father sought in vain, I knew that Gordon's Gethsemane was deepened by every word and act. This particular kind of anguish was realistic enough to us both, without any representation so vivid. Yet we had to sit there, uncle alternately laughing and weeping at our side, and witness the rehearsal of all we knew so well. I was sitting beside Gordon; and I covertly got a hold of his hand, pressing it silently to let him know my heart was aching too. I found myself, almost before I knew it, leaning forward in an agony of interest and suspense as the great emotions of a parent's love and loneliness were set forth in terrible reality. It was as if Gordon's heart and mine were both laid bare that night; and I found myself wondering if all this meant to any others in that crowded throng what it meant to us.

Uncle was enraptured at our fixity; he knew not the source of our deadly interest. "Didn't I tell you?" he whispered to Gordon as the tension came near its height; "ever see anything like that before? Isn't that true to life, eh?"

Gordon never spoke, his eyes looking far beyond, as fixed as though set on death itself.

"Isn't that true to life?" uncle repeated, accustomed to being answered.

"Yes, oh, God, yes--yes, it's true," I heard poor Gordon falter as he bowed forward and covered his face with his hands. Uncle, dumb with wonder now, uttered never a word. I prayed for strength.

The tide ebbed and flowed, as is the way in plays, laughter and tears following each other in quick succession. A wave of mirth--about the pillar box incident, I think, when the old man imagines the collector is robbing the mails--had just overswept the audience when Gordon whispered to me that he could stand it no longer.

"Don't go yet, Gordon," I whispered; "I think he's going to find him," and I saw his face white with the pallor of the dead.

He made no reply; but, clutching his hat, he rose to go, swaying unsteadily where he stood.

I began reaching for my wraps and was just rising to follow. He paused to wait for me, holding out his hand, I think--of this I am not sure. But just before we turned to go, my eyes were cast in one farewell glance upon the stage. My head reeled; my heart stood still; my lips clave together, parched and dry.

"Oh, Gordon," I cried, bleating, "look, Gordon, look," swimming towards him even as I pointed at the stage.

His towering figure turned where he stood; and his burning eyes, aglow with the passion that was rending him, leaped to where I still pointed with outstretched hand. Then I straightened myself too, as one might gather his soul for the Judgment Day, and joined my gaze with his. The eyes of all in the house were upon us, I suppose--but I shall never know. We stood together, oblivious to all except the destiny of weal or woe that waited us, looking, both looking, as the eye of the Eternal itself might look. We could not--we dared not--be sure, lest we might court the bitterness of death. The light was not bright enough, or true enough--for us to stake our souls. We feared exceedingly; and for each other; wherefore neither spoke any word.

The scene was the great Broadway scene, where the anguished father finds his son at last. And the tattered youth upon whom that father--that acting father--gazed, on him our eyes were set in dreadful silence, in questioning that involved our souls. We could not--we dared not--know; but suddenly the old man on the stage--oh! the perjured wastery of simulated love like that--broke forth with a wild outcry of love and rapture as he leaped towards the soiled and wasted prodigal before him.

And then--and then--mingling with the father's chant, there came from the bowed and broken wanderer one single note; a little cry, a muffled plaint of penitence and hope. It was such a little sound, subdued and faltering as became a broken heart, and it was almost lost in the father's louder strain--but I heard it, and my soul laid hold of God. Only a stifled cry--but it was the same I had heard when I first came out of the valley and my new-born baby boy lay helpless at my breast; the same I had heard a thousand times when he was hurt or wronged and toddled in to me with the boyish story of his grief; the same I had heard when he came home that night and told me of his sin; the same I had heard when he bent above his sleeping sister and kissed her a long farewell.

"Oh, Gordon," I said, fainting, "it's Harold--it's our Harold!"

He knew it too. And he left me where I was, half conscious in uncle's arms. I see it all again, dismantled though I was, as in a dream. The curtain dropped just as uncle's arm received me, as Gordon glided towards the narrow half-hidden passageway leading to the stage. Slowly it fell, right down close to the floor, shutting out the last fragment of the vision that had flooded our hearts with heaven. Ah, me! no one there--not even uncle--knew that for us life's curtain had really risen, the play, the wonderful play of life, only just begun.

The orchestra had softly started some subdued and sympathetic air; I knew not, nor yet do know, what strain it was--but it fell on my reviving heart with the sweetness of such music as angels make--and my eyes flew after Gordon as he was swallowed up of the shadowy passageway that led back to that mysterious region where actors are men and women, players now no more. I think somebody, some hireling who knew not what he did, tried to turn Gordon from his course--as well have tried to stop Niagara. I fancy I caught a glimpse of him as he swept the intruder by--his eye was flashing, fearful in its purpose of love and power, as though he were asserting his claim to life itself.

He never stopped--this was described to me afterwards--till he stood beside the pair of actors, the old man and the young, already repairing to the dressing-room behind. And the old man's face, so they told me, was a study to behold as he was swiftly brushed aside, dispossessed, the unreality swallowed up of Life as Gordon took the tattered form into the arms that long emptiness had clothed with almost savage strength.

"Oh, my son! Oh, Harold, my son, my son!" was Gordon's low cry that all about could hear; for the stillness of the grave was on every heart. "Come, come, we'll go to mother," came a moment later as he turned and tried to lead Harold gently away.

I do not know all the son said to the father. But Gordon told me after how Harold clung to him as though he were hiding for his life, speaking no word, but burying his face as though none must see the shame--or the holy gladness; and in a minute or two, though I know not how long it was, some one in authority said that the play must go on, that the audience would be impatient and indignant.

"Then come, my son," said Gordon; "get your clothes on, Harold, and we'll go--your mother, your mother knows it's you," his face radiant, I ween, as it turned upon his boy.

But Harold wouldn't--the play must be finished, he said, and he must take his part. Harold's face was resolute, his father said, his words full of determination, when he avowed his purpose to stay till his work was done. And really--it was one of the most amusing sides of my husband's character I ever saw--when Gordon told me this his face fairly shone with pride. "The lad wouldn't forsake his duty," he said, as proudly as if Harold had been a foreign missionary instead of a play-actor; it was too funny to hear Gordon, with the views I knew him to hold about the theatre, belauding Harold because he wouldn't leave his post even at such a time as that.

So his father came back and resumed his place beside me. No word escaped his lips, but his eyes spoke the language of Everlasting Life as they were fixed a moment on my own. Uncle gazed at him--I suppose everybody did--but he knew that question or answer had no place in an hour such as this. And the curtain rolled up again--ah, me! how different now--and my hand was once more in Gordon's; but now I could feel the strain of gratitude and gladness that his happy heart was chanting. Our eyes were fixed on Harold only; I heard his voice amid that closing revelry--and my wild heart leaped in my bosom as though my son were born to me anew.

We were home at last. In the hotel, I mean, in Gordon's room and mine--for uncle had gone to rest. Only a little tiny bit of a room it was--but it was home; for we had Harold--and Dorothy was asleep in an adjoining room.

Gordon went out for a little. He said he wanted to enquire about trains--but I knew why he left us alone together. Gordon was an eloquent minister--but I was Harold's mother. And there are queens and priestesses, as well as kings and priests, unto God. Which Gordon knew.

It was while he and I were still alone with each other that Harold broke out with bitter plaint of penitence, so full of gusty sorrow, of self-reproach, of broken vows and purposes. I shall not, must not, write it down. It was all holy to me, and shall ever be; for the breath of spring was in it, and I knew then that God had brought him back, all back, the broken heart sick of the sin and shame that he now hated and deplored. My son was alive again, I knew in that moment; lost had he been indeed--but God had kept aglow his memory of the Home-light that never had gone out.

"I couldn't tell this to anybody else," the faltering voice said as his face was hidden on my bosom--"not even to father--what I'm going to tell you now. But I'm going to----"

"Tell it to God, my son," and I kissed the quivering lips.

Gordon came back just after that. I think he must have known our souls had come close to each other and to Him. For a great peace was on his face--and yet it shone with a kind of human happiness that I thought was truly spiritual. He simply didn't seem to think there was anything that needed reproach, or explanation, or forgiveness. He talked with Harold about his old friends, his old games, his old pursuits; and about what we would do, and see, before we returned to Hertford. Then pretty soon he said it was time we were all in bed, and, in the most natural way, that we would have worship before we separated. So he took the Bible. But, before he opened it, he started one of the old familiar psalms, just as we had always done at home.

"We'll sing the one hundred and twenty-sixth," he said, with something of grandeur in his manner that reminded me of Harold's grandfather; for that is one of the sublimities of the Scottish race. I have heard both Gordon and his father declare that something could be found in the psalms to suit every occasion, no matter what. But I wondered what could express the emotion of such a time as this. "We'll sing the one hundred and twenty-sixth," Gordon repeated, already pitching the key to the "grave sweet melody" of a tune that bore the happy name of St. Andrew's. And we sat in silence as he sang

"When Zion's bondage God turned back As men that dreamed were we; Then filled with laughter was our mouth Our tongue with melody."

Harold's head was bowed; my eyes were fixed on Gordon. For my heart was busy with the thrilling memory of that long distant night when I first had heard the power of that earnest voice, first learned the grandeur of these mighty songs. Gordon seemed unconscious of our presence. His eyes were lifted up, beyond the things of time: he was like one lost among the hills, transported by their grandeur. Something more than human ecstasy throbbed through his voice when he sang the verse:

"As streams of water in the south Our bondage, Lord, recall; Who sow in tears, a reaping time Of joy enjoy they shall."

Then he read some selection from the Scriptures. It was very short; and he read it slowly, his eyes never lifted from the page. When he prayed, he talked with God--all I can remember was the way he said "Our Father."

It was long after midnight when he and I went to our rest--we sat talking for hours and hours, and Harold was asleep in the room next to ours. Just before we put out our light Gordon suddenly turned to me, and his face was as youthful as when I saw it first.

"Helen, let us go and tuck Harold in--so he won't be cold."

I smiled, for I couldn't but remember Harold's age, but I threw a wrapper about me and Gordon and I went in together. We tucked him in, one on either side; I don't know whether Harold knew or not, but he played the part of childhood once again--when we kissed him good-night he turned a little in his sleep and smiled.

XXX

_EDEN IN THE ATTIC_

I sometimes wonder what the other guests thought of our behaviour at breakfast the next morning. Uncle was simply ridiculously happy, even boisterously so. And he wouldn't hear to any dissent from the project that possessed his mind. We must all go South with him, and that was the end of it. He and Aunt Agnes had never had a difference in all their married life, he said, but the trouble would begin right there if he went back without us! And he settled the whole thing an hour later by suddenly appearing, after a very mysterious absence, and flaunting in our faces the tickets for the entire party. They were taken via the Old Dominion Line; and the little sea voyage would be the very thing for all of us,--and Harold had assured him that a release from his company could be easily arranged. So Gordon left it to me again--and I left it to Harold, and Harold elected to see his mother's old Virginia home. Dorothy lent loud approval.

Thirty-six hours later we were in the dear old Southern town, driving from the old familiar station along the old familiar street. My heart was full; its burden was partly sadness, altogether song.

"Stop here," Gordon suddenly said to the driver as we turned on to a street neither of us was likely to forget. "Come, Helen," as he held out his hand to help me from my seat.

I knew. It was under that very elm, just opposite the church, I had first come face to face with love--even if I did have a pitcher in my hand, _going for the cream_.

"Drive on," said Gordon; "we'll join you later," and the carriage rolled away.

We followed, slowly; sometimes looking up into the deep shade of the bending elms, sometimes into each other's faces; with much of speech we walked--of silence, sweeter silence, more.

Soon a turn in the road brought us in full view of uncle's house. There it stood, ivy-clad, the same stately, frowning structure, looking forth at us as calmly as though we had gone away but yesterday. There was the magnolia tree beside the steps of stone, not now in bloom but still spreading forth in umbrageous beauty. And there, just beyond, flowing still, its copious stream unfailing, rolled the shining river; rolling on, as time rolls on, unhasting, unresting, bearing all its burdens in silence to the sea. The years had passed and fled, yet the selfsame wavelets could be seen--oh, parable of Time! And the bridge was there; repaired and strengthened some, yet the same bridge it was on which I had seen the love-lorn pair seek the shelter of the dark. And I felt a shudder thrill my frame as I descried the very pier that had been the scene of the tragedy but for which Gordon had never made his noble protest; but for which, our long years of exile had never been. I looked away.

Aunt Agnes was at the door as we climbed the steps of stone. She led me in and closed it tight before she told me, with love's speech of silentness, all the joy of welcome that was in her heart. She was thinking, and I was thinking, of the absent one--oh! why these ever-absent ones?--whose face was now withdrawn forever. I roamed the hall; I wandered about the broad porch; I drank my fill of the library, dearest of them all--my mother's face met me at every turn. And I wondered, with passionate hope that it might be so, if she knew that her child had returned to the scene of girlhood days once more; if she knew how laden with the spoils of time I came, rich in the harvest that love and sorrow give, anointed by the holy hand of suffering, by life's fleeting vanities beguiled no more.

"Show Harold through the house, Helen," uncle said to me when supper was over and the first tumult had subsided; "let him see the old place from cellar to attic. It will be his some day, I reckon," and his tone and glance left no doubt as to what he meant.

I did as he directed, partly. All but the attic. Not yet must any enter there but me. I soon restored Harold to the merry circle--and then my steps turned, almost reverently, towards that upper room. It did not take me long, what I had to do, for love's task is soon accomplished. And I knew it would not be in vain--I knew that Gordon would not fail me. Yet my heart beat fast as I turned at the attic door and looked back once more before I went down-stairs. Everything was perfect--and the gentle breeze was ruffling the curtain of the tiny window.

They were all in bed when Gordon and I betook ourselves to the room set apart for us. It was just above the parlour, the largest and most imposing apartment in all that roomy house. A large mahogany bed was planted, immovable, in the centre; hand-carving, richly wrought, made the ceiling and mantel things of beauty; oil-paintings hung upon the lofty wall; soft draperies bedecked the windows.

We closed the door and Gordon looked about the splendid room. I began unpacking a valise that lay upon the floor.

Suddenly he came over and stood beside me. One hand touched my shoulder and I looked up.

"We're not going to sleep here," he said quietly.

"Why?" I asked. "Where?" although I knew, and my bounding heart bespoke my joy.

"You know--come," with which he took up the valise and led the way aloft.

The roof was low and I think Gordon really bowed his head a little as we passed within that attic door. The same discarded articles, finding their limbo here, stood about the walls. But the fire was crackling on the hearth; the coverings on the bed were snowy white; the silver toilet-set on the old bureau was the same I had laid there so stealthily years before. And on the little table in the corner was a bowl of the choicest roses, their fragrance floating through the room.

I looked at Gordon. Perhaps I was just a little disappointed that he did not speak. His eyes rested on the fire, turned to the roses, lingering long.

"That's the same fire," he said slowly.

"Oh, Gordon," and I laughed; "how can you say that?"

"The very same," he persisted; "it never has gone out. And the roses too; they're the very same--they've never faded."

"I thought you'd want to come here," I said, stupidly enough; but I knew not what else to say. "You know, you said--long ago, when you first came here--you said you always loved an attic."

"Yes," he said simply, his eyes fixed on me; "yes, I do."

"Why?" I asked, though I knew it was such a foolish question.

He stood a long time silent in the firelight, his eyes never moving from my face. "Because it's nearest heaven," he answered low; "come, Helen"--and his arms were open wide.

THE END

* * * * *

By Robert E. Knowles

_The Attic Guest_

_The Web of Time_

_The Dawn at Shanty Bay_ Decorated and Illustrated by Griselda M. McClure.

_The Undertow_ A Tale of Both Sides of the Sea

_St. Cuthbert's_ A Parish Romance