East Angels

She tried to put her hand up. But it fell lifelessly back.

This sign of weakness struck him to the heart,--what if she should die!

Women so slight in frame, and with that fair, pure whiteness like the inside of a sea-sh.e.l.l, were often strangely, inexplicably delicate.

Her eyes had closed again. He held her closely; but now, save for the holding, he would not touch her. For it seemed to him that if he should allow himself to yield to his longing wish and put his lips down upon hers, she might die there, after a moment, in his arms. It would be taking advantage; in her present state of physical weakness her will might not be able to help her as it had helped her before; she was powerless to resist, and she loved him,--oh yes, he knew it fully now, she loved him. But as soon as she should become conscious that she had yielded, then the reaction would come. Between her love and her sense of duty, this proud will of hers had held the balance. It seemed to him that if he should break down by force that balance, her life might go as well.

He went on therefore, he bore her through the garden towards the house.

Her face in its stillness had now an expression that frightened him, it was like the la.s.situde of a person who has struggled to the utmost, and then given up.

The Doctor and Celestine were waiting at the lower door.

Winthrop refused their aid, he carried Margaret up the stairs to her own room, and laid her down upon the bed.

"I will wait below, Doctor. Come and tell me, please, what you make out."

The Doctor had divined a good deal during this last quarter of an hour, in this stricken woman, this abruptly speaking man, he felt the close presence of something he fully believed in, old though he was--overwhelming love; placed as they were, it could bring only unhappiness. He had no confidence whatever in Winthrop, simply because he was a man. In such situations men were selfish (he himself should have been no better); of course at the time they did not call it selfishness, they called it devotion. But in Margaret his confidence was absolute. And it was with a deep, tender pity for her, for all she had still to go through, that he now bent over her.

Winthrop had gone down-stairs; he paced to and fro in the stone-flagged hall below. The door stood open, the deep soft blue of the Florida sky filled the square frame. "If only she doesn't die!" This was the paralyzing dread that held him like a suffocation. He kept thinking how like a dead person she had looked as he laid her down. "If she comes to,--revives, I will go away, and stay away." In his fear, he could consent to anything.

The Doctor came down after a while. They were two men together, so their words were few; they were just enough to answer the purpose. "I think I can a.s.sure you that she will come out of it safely," the Doctor said.

"She seems unaccountably weak, she will have to keep her bed for a while; but I am almost positive that it is not going to be one of those long illnesses which sometimes follow attacks of this sort."

"But at best it's rather serious, isn't it?" Winthrop asked.

The Doctor looked at him. "Yes," he answered, gravely.

"If you would let me know from time to time? This is my New York address. It will be more satisfactory to hear directly from you. You can tell her I have gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes; back to New York."

"Oh," said Reginald Kirby. Then, "Ah," he added, this time with the accepting falling inflection.

Winthrop was behaving much better than he had thought he would. All the same, it was now the part of every one to speed him on his way. "I will write with great regularity," he said, extending his hand in good-by. "I will write three times a week," he added, with heartiness; he wanted to do something for the man, and this was all he could do.

He returned to his patient. Winthrop went out to order the horses.

He came back while the negroes were making ready. The lower door still stood open, the house was very quiet; he stole up-stairs and listened for a moment near Margaret's room. There was no sound within; he had the man's usual fear--non-comprehension--of a woman's illness. "Why are they so quiet in there?" he thought; "why don't they speak? _What_ are they doing to her?"

But there was a very good reason for the stillness; the Doctor had given Margaret a powerful sedative, and he and Celestine were waiting for the full effect.

Winthrop at length left the door; he realized that this was not a good beginning in the carrying out of his promise to himself.

As he pa.s.sed down the hall on his way to the stairs he happened to have a glimpse into a room whose door stood partly open; here, ranged in order, locked and ready, were Margaret's trunks, prepared for the journey to Fernandina.

Well, if he was to get away at all, he must go at once!

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

Two weeks pa.s.sed before the Doctor would allow Margaret to begin her night without an opiate, which

At the beginning of the third week the pale woman in the darkened room began to recover some vitality; she spoke to them, she asked to have the curtains drawn aside; she refused their opiates, even the mildest. The Doctor, relieved, went up to Gracias to see his other patients.

That night, about one o'clock, Margaret spoke. "Celestine?"

A tall figure appeared from a dark corner.

"I told you not to sit up to-night; I feel perfectly well."

"There's a lounge here, Miss Margaret. I can lay down nice as can be."

"No, you are not to stay; I do not wish it."

Celestine demurred; but as Margaret held to her point, she yielded finally, and went out. Some minutes after the door had closed, with a slow effort Margaret raised herself. Then she sat resting for a while on the edge of her bed. Her hair, braided by Celestine in two long plaits whose soft ends curled, gave her the look of a school-girl; but the face was very far from that of a school-girl, in the faint light of the night-lamp the large sad eyes and parted lips were those of a woman. She rose to her feet at last, feet fair on the dark carpet, her long white draperies, bordered with lace, clung about her. With a step that still betrayed her weakness, she crossed the room to a desk, unlocked it, and took something out,--a little picture in a slender gilt frame. She stood looking at this for a moment, then she sank down beside the lounge, resting her arm and head upon it, and holding her poor treasure to her heart. She held it closely, the sharp edge of the frame made a deep dent there. She was glad that it hurt her, that it bruised the white flesh and left a pain. At first her eyes remained dry. Then her wretchedness overcame her, and she began to cry; being a woman, she must cry. Her life stretched out before her,--if only she were old! But she might live forty years more--forty years! "And I have sent him away from me. Oh, how can I bear it!"--this was what she was saying to herself again and again.

If the man whose picture she held upon her heart could have heard the words she spoke to him that night--the unspeakable tenderness of her love for him, the strength, the unconscious violence almost, of its sweet overwhelming tide--no bolts, no bars, no promises even, could have kept him from her.

But he could not hear. Only that Unseen Presence who knows all our secrets, our pitiful, aching secrets--only this Counsellor heard Margaret that night. This silent Friend of ours is always merciful, more merciful than man would ever be; for the unhappy wife, now p.r.o.ne on the couch, shaken with sobs; now lying for the moment forgetful of reality, her eyes full of adoring dreams; now starting up with the flush of exaltation, of self-sacrifice--only to fall back again in stubborn despair--for all these changes the Presence had no rebuke; the torturing longing love, the misery, the relapses into sullen rebellion, and then the slow, slow return towards self-control again, all these it beheld with pity the most tender. For it knew that this was a last struggle, it knew that this woman, though torn and crushed, would in the end come out on the side of right--that strange hard bitter right, which, were this world all, would be plain wrong. And Margaret herself knew it also, yes even now miserably knew (and rebelled against it), that she should come out on that hard side; and from that side go forward. It would be blindly, wretchedly; there could be for her no hope of happiness, no hope even of resignation; she scorned pretenses and subst.i.tutes, and lies were to her no better because they were pious lies. She could endure, and she must endure; and that would be all. She could see no farther before her now than the next step in her path, small and near and dreary; thus it would always be; no wide outlook but a succession of little steps, all near and all dreary. So it would continue, and with always the same effort. And that would be her life.

She did not come fully to this now, her love still tortured her. And then at last the merciful Presence touched her hot eyes and despairing heart, and with the picture still held close, she sank into a dreamless lethargy.

When Celestine ventured to steal softly in before dawn, she found her charge like a figure of snow on the floor, the lamplight s.h.i.+ning across the white throat, the only place where its ray touched her.

The New England woman bent over her noiselessly. Then she lifted her. As she did so the little picture dropped; she had no need to take it up to know whose face was there. "Poor child?"--this was the gaunt old maid's, mute cry. She had the pity of a woman for a woman.

She placed Margaret in bed; then lifting the picture with a delicate modesty which there was no one there to see, she put it hurriedly back in her hand without looking at it, and laid the hand where it had been, across the fair breast. "When she comes to, first thing she'll remember it and worry. And then she'll find it there, and think n.o.body knows.

She'll think she went back to bed herself." Thus she guarded her.

Grim old Celestine believed ardently, like the Doctor, in love. But like the Doctor, too, she believed that marriage was indissoluble; the Carolina High-Churchman and the Vermont Calvinist were agreed in this.

Mistakes were plenty, of course; but when once they had been made, there was no remedy in this life; of this she was sure. But how if one happened to be bound upon the rack meanwhile--a woman whom one loved?

The dress-maker, after looking at Margaret again, went off to a dark corner to "offer prayer." But for the first time in her life she found no words ready; what, indeed, should she pray for? That Margaret might die? She was too fond of her for that. That Lanse might be taken? That had a murderous sound, even if you called it "taken." That Margaret's love might cease? But she knew very well that it would not. So all she said was, "O Lord, _help_ her!" very fervently. Then she got up, and set about applying restoratives.

A week later, when Margaret had left her room for the first time, Celestine, at work there, restoring for her own satisfaction that speckless order in which her soul delighted, found upon the hearth, mixed with the ashes, some burned bent metal fragments that had once been gilded--the top of a little frame; she knew then that the last sacrifice had been accomplished. A small one, a detail; but to women the details are hardest.

The Doctor had kept Winthrop strictly informed of Mrs. Harold's health.

At first the letters were all the same. But after a while he had written that he was glad to say that she was better. For a long time to come, however (he added), any over-pressure would be sure to exhaust her, and then, in case of a second attack, he should not be able to answer for the consequences. Later he wrote that Mrs. Harold's strength would not now be taxed by any more "untoward interruptions;" she had made her intended journey to Fernandina, he was glad to say, and had returned in safety, Mr. Harold having returned with her. Everything was now comfortably arranged at East Angels; Mr. Harold had the west rooms, and the men he had brought with him--he had three at present--seemed to understand their duties fairly well. Mr. Harold was carried every evening into Mrs. Rutherford's sitting-room, which was an agreeable change for all. Mrs. Rutherford herself had improved wonderfully since her nephew's arrival.

Concerning these letters of his to Evert Winthrop the Doctor felt such a deep sense of responsibility that, short as they were, he wrote them and rewrote them, inspecting each phrase from every possible point of view before his old-fas.h.i.+oned quill finally set it down.

This last result of his selection of the fittest, Winthrop received one morning at breakfast. He read it; then started out and went through his day as usual, having occupations and engagements to fill every hour. But days end; always that last ten minutes at night will come, no matter how one may put it off. Winthrop put off his until after midnight; but one o'clock found him caught at last; he was alone before his fire, he could no longer prevent himself from taking out that letter and brooding over it.

He imagined East Angels, he imagined Lanse; he imagined him in Aunt Katrina's pleasant room, with the bright little evening fire sparkling on the hearth, with Aunt Katrina herself beaming and happy, and Margaret near. Yes, Lanse had everything, he had always had everything. He had never worked an hour in his life; he had pleased himself invariably; he had given heed to no one and yielded to no one; and now when he was forced at last by sheer physical disability to return home, all comfort, all devotion awaited him there, bestowed, too, by the very persons he had most neglected and wronged. "Unjust! unjust!"--this was his bitter comment.