"It would have made no difference what you did," the doctor replied dryly.
"Nothing would have made any difference. There was the millionth part of a chance, and it was not for him."
As they stood looking down at the dead face, it seemed to Isabelle that suddenly he had become a person, this dead child, with his lost millionth of a chance,--not merely one of the invalids sleeping in the room. For this brief moment when life had ceased to beat in his frail body, and before decay had begun, there was an individuality given him that he had never achieved in life.
"Poor little fellow!" Isabelle murmured softly. "He must have suffered so much." Then with that common consolation with which the living evade the thought of death, she added, "He has escaped more pain; it is better so, perhaps!"
"No--that is wrong!"
Renault, standing beside the bed, his arms folded across his breast, looked up from the dead child straight into the woman"s eyes.
"That is false!" he cried with sudden pa.s.sion. "Life is GOOD--all of it--for every one."
He held her eyes with his glance while his words reverberated through her being like the CREDO of a new faith.
When another nurse had come to relieve Isabelle, she left the ward with the doctor. As they went through the pa.s.sageway that led to the house, Renault said in his usual abrupt tone:--
"You had better run home, Mrs. Lane, and get some sleep. To-morrow will be another hard day."
She wheeled suddenly and faced him.
"How dare you say that life is good for any other human being! What do _you_ know of another"s agony,--the misery that existence may mean, the daily woe?"
Her pa.s.sionate burst of protest died in a sob.
"I say it because I believe it, because I _know_ it!"
"No one can know that for another."
"For animals the account of good and evil may be struck, the pains set against the satisfactions that life offers. When we judge that the balance is on the wrong side, we are merciful,--put the creature out of its misery, as we say. But no human being is an animal in that sense. And no human being can cast his balance of good and evil in that mechanical way--nor any one else for him!"
"But one knows for himself! When you suffer, when all is blank within and you cry as Job cried,--"would G.o.d it were morning, and in the morning would G.o.d it were night!" then life is _not_ good. If you could be some one else for a few hours, then you might understand--what defeat and living death--"
Oh, if she could tell! The impulse to reveal surged in her heart, that deep human desire to call to another across the desert, so that some one besides the silent stars and the wretched Self may know! Renault waited, his compelling eyes on her face.
"When you have lost the most in your life--hope, love! When you have killed the best!" she murmured brokenly. "Oh, I can"t say it! ... I can never say it--tell the whole."
Tears fell, tears of pity for the dead child, for herself, for the fine-wrought agony of life.
"But I know!" Renault"s voice, low and calm, came as it were from a shut corner of his heart. "I have felt and I have seen--yes, Defeat, Despair, Regret--all the black ghosts that walk."
Isabelle raised her eyes questioningly.
"And it is because of that, that I can raise my face to the stars and say, "It is good, all good--all that life contains." And the time will come when you will repeat my words and say to them, "Amen.""
"That I could!"
"We are not animals,--there is the Unseen behind the Seen; the Unknown behind the Observed. There is a Spirit that rises within us to slay the ghosts, to give them the lie. Call upon it, and it will answer.... For Peace is the rightful heritage of every soul that is born."
"Not Peace."
"Yes,--I say Peace! Health, perhaps; happiness, perhaps; efficiency, perhaps. But Peace always lies within the grasp of whomsoever will stretch out his hand to possess it." ...
As they stopped at the house door and waited in the deep silence of the dark morning, Renault put his hands on Isabelle"s shoulders:--
"Call to it, and it will come from the depths! ... Goodnight."
There in the still dawning hour, when the vaulted heavens seemed brooding close to the hills and the forests, these two affirmations of a creed rang in Isabella"s soul like the reverberating chords of some mystic promise:--
"Life is good ... all of it ... for every one!" And, "Peace is the rightful heritage of every soul. It lies within the grasp of whomsoever will stretch out his hand to possess it."
It was still within her.
CHAPTER LX
When Isabelle woke, the morning sun fretted the green shutters. She was tired in every limb,--limp, content to lie in bed while Mrs. Strong lighted the fire, threw open the shutters, and brought breakfast and the mail.
Through the east windows the sun streamed in solidly, flooding the counterpane, warming the faded roses of the wall paper. A bit of the north range of hills, the flat summit of Belton"s Top with a glittering ice-cap, she could see above the gray gable of the barn. The sky was a soft, cloudless blue, and the eaves were busily dripping in a drowsy persistency.
She liked to lie there, watching the sun, listening to the drip, her letters unopened, her breakfast untouched. She was delightfully empty of thoughts. But one idea lay in her mind,--she should stay on, here, just here. Since she had packed her trunk the Sunday before, a great deal seemed to have happened,--a s.p.a.ce had been placed between the outer world that she had restlessly turned back towards and herself. Some day she should go back to that other world--to Molly and John and all the rest.
But not now--no!...
As she lay there, slowly the little things of the past weeks since she had travelled the cold road from White River--the impressions, the sights, the ideas--settled into her thought, pushing back the obstinate obsessions that had possessed her for months. The present began to be important, to drive out the past. Outside in the street some one whistled, the bells of the pa.s.sing sleds jangled, a boy"s treble halloa sounded far away,--unconscious voices of the living world, like the floating clouds, the noise of running water, the drip of the melting snow on the eaves,--so good it all was and real! ...
Margaret had found that Peace the doctor had spoken of, Margaret whose delicate curving lips had always seemed to her the symbol of discontent, of the inadequacy of life. Margaret had found it, and why not she? ... That explained the difference she felt these days in Margaret. There had always been something fine and sweet in the Southern woman, something sympathetic in her touch, in the tone of her voice even when she said cynical things.
Now Margaret never said bitter things, even about the wretched Larry. She had always been a listener rather than a talker, but now there was a balm in her very presence, a touch upon the spirit, like a cool hand on the brow. Yes! She had found that rightful heritage of Peace and breathed it all around her, like warmth and light.
Margaret came in with the noon mail, which she had collected from the box in the post-office. As she tossed the papers and letters on the bed, Isabelle noticed another of the oblong letters in the familiar handwriting from Panama....
"Or is it that?" she asked herself for a moment, and then was ashamed. The smile, the clear look out of the deep eyes, the caressing hand that stroked her face, all said no,--it was not that! And if it were, it must be good.
"So you are going to stay with us a while longer, Isabelle.... I shall unpack your trunk and hide it," Margaret said with smiling conviction.
"Yes,--I shall stay, for the present.... Now I must get into my clothes.
I"ve been lazing away the whole morning here--not even reading my letters!"
"That"s right," Margaret drawled. "Doing nothing is splendid for the temperament. That"s why the darkies have such delightful natures. They can sit whole days in the sun and never think a thought." With her hand on the door she turned: "You must send for Molly,--it will be good for her to forget the dancing lessons and frocks. My children will take her down to Mill Hill and make a boy of her."
"Well,--but she will be a nuisance, I am afraid. She is such a young lady."...
At last Isabelle tore open a letter from her husband, one that Margaret had just brought. It was concise and dry, in the economical epistolary style into which they had dropped with each other. He was glad to hear that her rest in the country was doing her good. If it agreed with her and she was content, she had better stay on for the present. He should be detained in the West longer than he had expected. There were important suits coming on against the railroad in which he should be needed, hearings, etc. At the close there was an unusually pa.s.sionate sentence or two about "the public unrest and suspicion," and the President and the newspapers. "They seem to like the smell of filth so much that they make a supply when they can"t find any."
Broils of the world! The endless struggle between those who had and those who envied them what they had. There was another side, she supposed, and in the past Cairy had been at some pains to explain that other side to her.
Her husband must of course be prejudiced, like her father; they saw it all too close. However, it was a man"s affair to settle, unless a woman wished to play Conny"s role and move her husband about the board. Broils! How infinitely far away it seemed, all the noise of the world! ... She began to dress hurriedly to report at the hospital for the afternoon. As she glanced again at her husband"s letter, she saw a postscript, with some sc.r.a.ps of St. Louis gossip:--