"Denasia ought to be here," answered Ada. "I have her address. Let Davis go for her."
"But, my dear! you do not understand that she may--that she is, perhaps, not what we should call a good woman."
"Dear father, who among us all is good? Even Christ said, "Why callest thou Me good? There is none good save one, that is G.o.d." We know nothing wrong of her with certainty. Why not give her the benefit of the doubt? Are we not compelled to be thus generous with all our acquaintances?"
So Denasia was sent for. She was sitting alone in her comfortless room. The baby was gone away for ever. Thinking of the lonely darkness of the cemetery, with the cold earth piled high above the little coffin, she felt a kind of satisfaction in her own shivering solitude and silence. She was as far as possible keeping with the little form a dreary companionship. Yet she had been expecting Roland and was greatly pained at his apparent neglect.
When Davis knocked at the door she said drearily, "Come in." She thought it was her husband at last.
"Are you Mademoiselle Denasia?" inquired a strange voice.
A quick sense of trouble came to her; she stood up and answered "Yes."
"There is a gentleman at our house, Mr. Tresham; he is very ill indeed. He asks for you constantly. Mr. Lanhearne thinks you ought to come to him at once."
"I am ready."
She spoke with a dreary patience and instantly put on her cloak and hat. Not another word was said. She asked no questions. She had reached that point where women arrest all their feelings and wait. The splendid house, the light, the warmth, all the evidences of a luxurious life about, moved her no more than if she was in a dream. A great sorrow had put her far above these things. She followed the servant who met her at the door without conscious volition. A woman going to execution could hardly have felt more indifference to the mere accidentals of the way of sorrow. And when a door was swung softly open, she saw no one in the room but Roland. Roland helpless, unconscious. Roland even then crying out "Denasia! Denasia!"
The physician, Mr. Lanhearne, and his daughter stood by the fireside, and when Denasia entered Ada went rapidly to her side.
"We are glad you have come," she said kindly. "You see how ill Mr.
Tresham is. You are his countrywoman--his friend, I think?"
"I--am--his--wife."
She said the words with a pathetic pride, and Ada wondered why they hurt her so terribly. Like four swords they pierced her heart and cut away from it hope and happiness. She went back to her father"s side, and leaned her head on his shoulder, and felt like one holding despair at bay. And oh, how grateful to her was the secret silence of the night! Then she wept as a little child weeps who has lost its way. By her anguish and her sense of loss for ever she was taught that Roland had become nearer and dearer than she had ever suspected. And the knowledge was a revelation of sorrow. Her delicate conscience shivered in the shadow of a possible wrong and the bitterness of the might-have-been she was to fight without ceasing.
She felt no anger toward Denasia, however. Denasia was only the hidden rock on which her frail, unknown love-bark had struck and gone down.
And she was constrained to admit that, so far as she herself was concerned, Roland was innocent. She had, indeed, often felt hurt at his restraint and want of response. In her pure, simple heart she had called it pride, shyness, indifference; but she understood now that this poor, weak soul had at least not lacked honour.
So that there was in this apparently peaceful, comfortable home two vital conflicts going on: the struggle of a n.o.ble soul to slay love, the struggle of unpitying death to slay life. About the ninth day Roland, though weak, had some favourable symptoms, and there were good hopes of his recovery. He talked with Denasia at intervals, and a.s.sured of her forgiveness and love, slept peacefully with his hand in his wife"s hand.
A few days later, however, he appeared to be much depressed. His dark, sunken eyes gazed wistfully at Mr. Lanhearne, and he asked to be alone with him for a little while. "I am going to die," he said, with a face full of vague, melancholy fear. The look was so childlike, so like that of an infant soul afraid of some perilous path, that Mr.
Lanhearne could not avoid weeping, though he answered:
"No, my dear Roland. The doctor says that the worst is over."
Roland smiled with pleasure at the fatherly dropping of the formal "Mr.," but he reiterated the a.s.sertion with a more decided manner. "I am going to die. Will you see that my wife goes back to England to her father and mother?"
"I will. Is there anything else?"
"No. She knows all that is to be done. Comfort her a little when I am dead."
"My dear Roland, we are going to Florida as soon as you are able."
"I am going to a country much farther off. I will tell you how I know.
All my life long a figure formless, veiled, and like a shadow has come to me at any crisis. When I was striving for honours at my college it whispered, "you will not succeed." When I went to my first business desk it brought me the same message. The night before I sailed for America it stood at my bedside, and I heard the one word, "failure."
This afternoon it told me, "you have come to the end of your life."
Then my soul said, "Oh, my enemy, who art thou?" And there grew out of the dimness the likeness of a face."
For a few moments there was a silence painful and profound. Roland closed his eyes, and from under their lids stole two large tears--the last he would ever shed. And Mr. Lanhearne was so awed and troubled he could scarcely say:
"A face! Whose face, then, Roland?"
"My own! My own!" and he spoke with that patience of accepted doom which, while it carries the warrant of death, has also death"s resignation and dignity.
After this revelation there was a decided relapse, and after a few more days of suffering, of hope, and despair had pa.s.sed, the end came peacefully from utter exhaustion. Mr. Lanhearne was present, but it was into Denasia"s eyes that Roland gazed until this sad earth was lost to vision, and the dark, tearless...o...b.., once so full of light and love, were fixed and dull for evermore.
"It is all past! It is all over!" cried Denasia, "all over, all over!
Oh, Roland! Roland! My dear, dear love!" and Mr. Lanhearne led her fainting with sorrow from the place of death.
And in another room, in a little sanctuary of holy dreams and loving purposes, Ada knelt in a transport of divine supplication, praying for the dying, praying for the living, consecrating her own wounded heart to the service of all women wearing for any reason the crown of sorrow, or drinking of the cup of Gethsemane, or treading alone the painful road which leads from Calvary to paradise. For herself asking only with a sublime submission--
"Nearer, my G.o.d, to Thee; E"en though it be a cross That raiseth me!"
CHAPTER XIV.
SORROW BRINGS US ALL HOME.
"Look in my face. My name is Might-have-been: I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell."
"Was _that_ the landmark?
"But lo! the path is missed; I must go back And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring Which once I stained ...
Yet though no light be left, nor bird now sing As here I turn, I"ll thank G.o.d, hastening, That the same goal is still on the same track."
--ROSETTI.
Roland Tresham was buried beside his son, and the friends and the places that had known him knew him no more. There were only strangers to lay him in the grave. His wife was too worn out with watching and grief to leave her bed; his sister was far away. Mr. Lanhearne and two or three gentlemen whose acquaintance Roland had made at the club of which Mr. Lanhearne was a member paid the last pitiful rites, and then left him alone for ever.
Ada sat with the sorrowful widow. Her innocent heart was greatly troubled lest her interest in Roland, though known only to herself, had been an unintentional wrong. In every possible way she strove to atone for Roland"s happiness in her home and her own happiness in Roland"s presence. When she mentally contrasted these conditions with the miserable conditions of the deserted wife and dying child, she felt as if it would be impossible to balance the unkind and unmerited difference. That she was not specially drawn to Denasia only forced from her a more generous concern for the unhappy woman. And when death or sorrow tears from life the mask of daily custom, then, without regard to the accidents of birth, we behold ourselves, all alike sad seekers among the shadows after light and peace.
And undoubtedly sympathy is like mercy; it blesses those who give it as well as those who receive. As Ada and Denas talked of the great mysteries of life and death, their souls felt the thrill of comradeship. Denas was usually reticent about her own life, yet she opened her heart to Ada, and as the two women sat together the day after the funeral, the poor widow spent many hours in excusing the dead and in blaming herself.
She spoke honestly of her vanity, of her desire to get the better of Elizabeth by taking her brother from her, of the satisfaction she felt in mortifying the pride of the Burrells and the Treshams--even of her impatience and ill-temper with Roland because he was not able to conquer the weaknesses which were as natural to him as the blood in his body or the thought in his brain; because he could not alter the adverse circ.u.mstances which, as soon as they touched American soil, began to close around them.
"And my great grief is this," she cried, wringing her long, wasted hands: "he has died before his time and he has gone so far away that he neither sees my repentance nor hears my words of remorseful sorrow."
"Would you desire the dead to see your sorrow, Mrs. Tresham?" said Ada. "Sorrow is for the living, not for the dead."
"Oh, it is not enough to be seen by the living! I want the dead to know that I grieve! When I have wept on my mother"s breast and knelt at my father"s feet, I shall still long for poor Roland to know that I am sorry for the cross looks and cross words and all the petty discomforts which drove him from me--drove him to death before his time; that is the cruellest thing of all."
Mr. Lanhearne entered the room as she spoke, and he sat down and answered her: "To die before one"s time, before one has seen and heard, and enjoyed and suffered the full measure of life, may seem hard, Mrs. Tresham, but there is something in this respect much harder. I have just been with a man who has lived after his time. The grave has swallowed up all his loves and all his joys, and he alone is left of his family and friends. Over such lingering lives thick, dark shadows fall, I can a.s.sure you. They have the loneliness of the grave without its quiet sleep and its freedom from unkindness and suffering.