CHAPTER VII

STOP--LOOK--LISTEN

Old David was going to die. The sunshine knew it and danced over him caressingly, touching his hands, his face, his hair each day, as if for the last time. It spilled pretty pools of gold on the floor and painted the walls with golden patches. And the plants at the window ledge knew it, two primroses and a pot of yellow jonquils, and for that reason they bloomed constantly, perfuming the air with a delicate freshness.

Old David was going to die, but because those who watched him practised an art of cheerful concealment, it was a very happy time for him, quite the happiest time he had known since boyhood.

Propped up in bed, he watched all that went on about him, and he looked at the flowers in the window. He knew who had sent the flowers and, when he appeared, Simon Hart had to bear the scrutiny of a pair of old eyes that surveyed him unwaveringly from the pillow. When Rachel brought the visitor around to the bedside, a look of sly satisfaction radiated from the old man's features. Interest and an eager zest for life still flourished in him; though Death held him hand and foot he was too true a poet to heed the approach of so material a guest. The last days of his life were enveloped in ineffable peace. Wrapped about in comforts, he had no knowledge of the tragedy of Rachel's existence, but rested in the serene belief that Heaven itself provided him with doctors, medicines, luxuries. His poor darkened brain worked with incredible slowness, and it was touching to behold him enjoying a dainty meal that Rachel had contrived to provide for him. Smiling and fresh, with a napkin tucked under his chin, he would point out such food on the tray as appealed to his fancy; then she would lift it to his lips, feeding him as one feeds a bird. And often the poor child's face was far paler than his and her hands trembled with hunger.

Only her absorbing, desperate love for him sustained her. For this grandfather, who in the enthusiasm of his heart was so like a little child, Rachel willingly would have laid down her life. No sacrifice was beyond her; and as the old man's soul was enveloped in that atmosphere of rare and delicate perceptions that heralds the final liberation, her soul, through its love, was permitted entrance into the same region of mysterious joys; so that up to the last moment they bore each other company.

Sometimes, troubled by the thickness of his speech, old David looked at his young companion with piteous eyes; but the condition was the result of weakness, she assured him; later the words would come. To amuse him she searched the papers for humorous anecdotes and even invented funny little stories of her own. Then how they laughed together! The room reëchoed with such merry peals it seemed Death took the hint and kept at a distance. Indeed, the old man entering that world of which we know nothing, and the young girl surrounded by the evils of this, by their very innocence and helplessness held at bay all the menacing powers of darkness, and under that attic roof, in the midst of a sordid city, they lived a life more profound and universal than its thousands of passionate men and women thronging the streets below.

When Simon Hart called, as he did every evening, it seemed to him that all the needs of the sick man were met. He sent flowers and fruit for old David, but a sense of delicacy kept him from offering Rachel financial assistance. Though he had disliked particularly asking a favour of his cousin, Julia Burgdorf, through her influence he was able to obtain for the young girl piece-work in an establishment that made a specialty of hand-painted trifles. This appealed to him as the most considerate way of helping her. Little did he realize that nursing left Rachel scant opportunity for the painting which required concentration. But by forcing herself to do without rest and almost without food, by employing every spare moment in doing all sorts of simple, ill-paid work that could be carried on at home, such as the directing of circulars and envelopes, mending and sewing for the neighbours, the impossible thing was accomplished. In quarters, half-dollars, dollars, the necessary money was swept together to cover the needs of the sick man. It was one of those prodigious, superhuman struggles constantly attempted by love. But of this struggle, though he came daily to the apartment, Simon Hart realized little. With the instinctive dread that characterizes persons of supersensitive nature, he had trained himself not to see to the bottom of things, not to investigate hearts too deeply. While watching Rachel with melancholy, ambiguous eyes, he was practically blind to the difficulty of her situation.

His sense of loneliness, always painful, was aggravated now, and in her presence he was tormented by an inexpressible need of intimate companionship. He could not bear to have her leave the room; he was jealous of the doctor and Emily Short, since they took something of her from him. And how little he received!--a word when he came and when he left and now and then a smile. When Rachel cast on him a smile from swiftly-parted tremulous lips, a smile that vanished ere it had scarce taken form, Simon's restlessness increased and his desire for affection became a feverish demand. Fortunate for her that it was himself rather than another who saw her placed as she was. And reflecting that many a man of the ravening-wolf type, in his place would have sought to take advantage of her poverty, of her unprotected state, he grew hot with anger. But she stood small chance of meeting such a one, and after all Emily Short was a defence. Then the idea of marrying the girl presented itself, looming mirage-like on the horizon of his mind, and he felt that he was becoming ridiculous. He saw himself with the eyes of that world in which Julia Burgdorf and his business associates were the chief figures. The victim of a little unknown waif--not merely her victim, her slave. In order to break the spell he forbade himself to go to see her, and, that he might keep to the resolution, he started without warning on a trip to Bermuda.

At first Nora Gage, influenced by shrewd calculations, acted in an unexpected fashion. During the fortnight that old David lay between life and death, Nora each day doled out a little money to Rachel. But later, as the invalid began to improve, she stole into his room a hundred times a day and noted the gathering life in his face with eyes as watchful as a snake's. Sometimes she even extended a hand and tested his pulse. Devotion to comfort was the ruling motive of Nora's life, and, foreseeing a future wherein comfort was threatened, fear seized upon her very vitals; and an agitation spread outward through the whole bulk of her flesh. Nor was her situation undeserving of sympathy. In vain Emily Short promised to reimburse her for all expenditures on old David's account when the fall trade in hats should open; Nora was sceptical of the security, as she was sceptical, finally, of Simon Hart's intentions.

"He don't mean a thing, I'm sure of it," she muttered. "The idea of thinking he'd marry her! I've been a fool." And Nora sighed heavily as the alluring vision of the permanent home she had intended to demand in Simon Hart's house, in return for the assistance she had rendered old David, vanished in thin air.

Her generosity came abruptly to an end. The doctor might order new medicines and old David, with the innocent egotism of the sick, demand the comforts to which he had become accustomed, Nora was unmoved. Gloating, she waited for Rachel to make an appeal. But the other, aware of the nature with which she had to deal, was silent.

"Proud--proud to the end! Well, let her starve," Nora soliloquized, and took herself to the public parks,--anywhere to escape the atmosphere of gloom and terror that for her pervaded the apartment.

Simon Hart's continued absence awoke in Rachel a troubled amazement, the more, as her grandfather constantly asked for him and she had to invent excuses for his non-appearance; but she had little time for reflection as the household in the Street of Masts was now put to sad shifts. Poor folk are ever separated from want by the meagrest of protections. They are like soldiers cowering behind a crumbling embankment. Time, bringing the ever recurrent needs, is their indefatigable enemy, and when these needs are multiplied, as in sickness, with small chance for patching the wall, they can ill withstand the siege. Finally there came an evening when Emily Short, with a look of shame on her open countenance, repaired to a certain shop around the corner, and thereafter no day passed when old David lacked for any comfort, as no day passed when some article was not missing from the bare little rooms.

"Let me go just this once," Rachel besought one evening early in February, confronting the toy-maker, who was preparing to go out. "If you wait to go around there--you know where I mean--you'll be late at Madame Stedenthal's. You know she said eight o'clock; and you wouldn't want to miss getting that order."

"But I don't like to have you," Emily protested.

Rachel motioned toward the room: "Run along. Grandfather's asleep; I'll slip out and be back before he 'wakes." ...

She quitted the shop, pressing a hand to her burning cheeks. Then, thrilled by the consciousness of the silver in her pocket, she hurried forward. She had gone only a few steps when someone touched her arm. She turned and saw Simon Hart.

Manifestly he had been following her: on his face was stamped a look of commiseration and embarrassment.

At once her old imperious pride was alive. Shrinking fiercely from the observation and sympathy of this man, she spoke curtly:

"I'm very glad to have met you. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll say good-night; Grandfather is alone."

She swung round so that he could no longer see her deeply wounded face; he saw only her hat and part of her veil and her long shabby cloak.

"Miss Beckett--Rachel!" he exclaimed, in a note of despairing appeal. "May I not go up to see your grandfather? I have been away--I have just returned. I did not wait; I was so anxious," he concluded. And he looked anxious.

She paused. After all, her grandfather would be pleased to see him. Already her short-lived resentment that he had witnessed her humiliation was merged in bodily languor.

They mounted the stairs and as he saw how she clung to the railing with her hand, Simon Hart was seized afresh with surprise and horror. The pencilings of fatigue under her eyes accentuated her pallor and this morbid diminution in her beauty, lent her a poignant charm. She laid a hand on the door.

Amazed at the change in the dismantled room, which was no less than the change in her, he stood rooted to the threshold. Then he dropped his head in his hands.

Rachel, who suffered a faint return of embarrassment, refrained from looking at him.

"There," she said nervously, laying aside her wraps, "now I'll go and see if Grandfather's awake."

He was beside her: "Rachel, why--why didn't you let me know?"

"Let you know what?" and she stood back against the wall, striving to repell him with her eyes.

"That you were in want--in need. You could have written--" he floundered helplessly; then swept on almost in tears--"Didn't you know that I would help you gladly--thankfully? Oh where were my eyes! And you have been struggling!--Oh God, forgive me." He drew her bended wrist against his breast, and the shudders of his frame went to hers.

She tried to withdraw the hand. "I don't understand."

"So thin--" he continued, perusing her face, "so thin; almost starved. And no one to help you--not anyone. And I left you; I didn't even write--"

He did not finish the sentence. He was on his knees, kissing the hem of her dress.

She stared at him in a trance of amazement and at that moment a voice sounded from the room across the passage.

"Rachel, be that ye? Why don't ye come in here?"

Simon Hart rose to his feet. "Let me help you, Rachel."

She moved her lips, though no sound passed them. He threw his hands on her shoulders and his eyes into the depths of hers. "I ask nothing that you cannot give," he said with mournful softness. "I know that you do not--love me--but later, if you became my wife--"

She shook her head, trying to twist free.

"If you were my future wife," he amended, "I could give your grandfather every care."

He had struck the right note.

Perceiving it, desperately he followed up his advantage. Later he would feel shame, but not now with her frightened breath on his face and her lips so close. His gentleness was transformed into boldness. Love wrought madness in him who had never before known its mystery or its power.--"He should lack for nothing."

At that moment her grandfather's voice, high-pitched, querulous, sounded from the other room.

"I hear ye, Rachel--both of ye; why don't ye come in here?"

Slowly her frozen look gave place to one of tense questioning. "He shall lack for nothing? you promise it?"

Simon Hart bowed his head: "I promise."

"Very well, then;" and all the life and youth dropped from her voice.

"Shall I go in to him?" he asked, stunned by his victory.

She nodded.

He moved to the door. Then retracing his steps, he passed his arms about her and pressed her to him. "You shall never regret this, Rachel. Oh, how I love you!" he muttered, with his lips on her head.

Pushing the hair back from her temples as if its weight annoyed her, in the silent room she paced restlessly. Presently she paused and looked her problem in the face. She was alone, powerless, penniless. But for herself she was not afraid!--and she folded her arms on her breast,--but for him who was dying?

Her arms fell.

The doctor had said that he might linger months, even years. And oh the relief, the unspeakable happiness, of being able to give him every luxury! She smiled; then sickened. The very blood in her veins repudiated the sacrifice. It was long since she had thought of Emil St. Ives as she had been accustomed to think of him during the blissful time at Pemoquod Point. Now the memory of him suddenly beat all over her weakened frame. She belonged to her love as the wood belongs to the flame. Wringing her hands together, she cast herself on the couch. And over and over her in a flood waves of pain, of joy, of despair, of triumph, of agony, of gladness, of self-immolation, of selfishness rolled and rolled.

Out of her ordeal she emerged, brought to a sense of the immediate present by hearing her name called. She stood up. But even through her misery she was conscious of the amazing strength of her grandfather's voice.

She ran to him.

A magnetic current of happiness had penetrated his paralyzed frame, for when she leaned over him, he addressed her with a tongue no longer trammelled.

"I told ye he'd come back," he exulted. "I heared ye when ye both come in and I knew it was him. Now ain't ye got anything to tell me, Rachel?" And he smiled up at her slyly.

"I don't know what you mean, Grandfather," she said.

"I mean--What have ye two been talkin' about in t'other room?" he broke off. "I know it was about somethin' important; and he don't deny it," with a gesture toward Simon.

Simon Hart stood with one hand resting on the table. Rachel avoided his glance.

"He said perhaps you'd tell me," urged the old man. "Now, what is it?"

She was silent.

"What is it?" he repeated. "Did he ask you to marry him?" and he plucked at her hand.

"Yes, he did."

"I knew it--I knew it," he cried excitedly. "And you said you would, didn't you, Rachel?" he asked, peering at her anxiously. "Somehow I should like to feel as if it was settled," he added wistfully.

Then she understood. In spite of his cheerfulness, old David knew quite well that he was going to die; and so great was his love for her, it had triumphed over the barriers imposed by his disease. With his poor clouded faculties he was trying to make provision for her.

Unable to stand, she rested her forehead on the pillow. He touched her hair and suddenly her heart expanded. All her thought was for him now. The danger that had threatened him was averted. They could not take him away from her, they could not carry him away and place him in a spotless, terrible ward, on a little bed, to die among strangers. Instead, she would be able to care for him until the end came. It was enough. What more could she ask? And tightening her grip on his sleeve, she wept the tears which the constant, torturing thought of weeks, the unwearying, ceaseless attempts to earn money, had not wrung from her. In an ecstasy of tenderness, she received the old man back from the verge of a lonely, unattended death.

Simon Hart had dropped into a chair. His elbow was among the medicine vials; his hand over his face. Old David looked doubtfully from one to the other; after an instant, exerting himself, he caught at Simon's free hand and placed Rachel's in it. "There!" he sighed, and while they watched him, he settled back on the pillows, his lids drooping. Exhausted, he fell asleep, his parted lips giving to his face the aloof expression of death.

It was as if he had been waiting the consummation of this one hope, for after that he sank rapidly. During the anguished days that followed, Rachel never permitted herself to question the step she had taken. She expected to fulfil her promise, meanwhile she preferred not to calculate the price of her sacrifice. She thought only of her grandfather, and if she had been told to die in order to save him, she would have been dead.

Simon Hart had lost standing in his own eyes. He tried to view the situation complacently, to find in it cause for self-justification. Then came the conviction that he must release her. For the present, however, let the engagement stand. It quieted the old man's fears and left Rachel free to receive at his hands the assistance she otherwise would have hesitated to accept.

Upon his advice a trained nurse was secured and lodgings in the neighbourhood were found for Nora Gage. As the last hours of old David's existence approached, Simon began to nourish timid hopes, for Rachel appeared to regain confidence in him. In spite of the part he had played, she relied on him, and drew comfort from his eyes in which she detected so much sympathy.

The physician had made his last visit; her grandfather would scarcely last until dawn. His eyes, partly concealed by their flaccid lids, held that look which is not to be misunderstood; his head on its strained and swollen neck lay twisted to the side on the pillow; the fingers of one hand, already cold, plucked constantly at the coverlid with that melancholy, mechanical movement of the dying, as if his spirit, longing to be free, would fain rid itself of all encumbrances. The left side, instead of the right, was now stricken.

A few minutes before sunrise, there came a change. He had lain so quiet for many hours that they thought he slept, but suddenly Rachel perceived that his eyes were wide open and that he was listening intently to the wind whistling in the space between the houses. Its rushing passage produced a last flicker in the fantastic mind.

"The cars! We're whirlin'--" His mouth opened in astonishment. "Stop, look, listen!" he muttered faintly, turning his eyes to hers. Then the air ceased to undulate, grew quiet, above his still and amazed face.

The first golden beams of the sun peeped in at the windows as old David's soul, in the majesty of its innocence, passed from earth.