Haggard and worn, after a sleepless night, Ralph went down-stairs.
Heavily upon his young shoulders, he bore the burden of his father's
disgrace. Through their kinship, the cowardice and the shirking became
a part of his heritage.
There was nothing to be done, for he could not raise his hand in anger
against his own father. They must continue to live together, and keep
an unbroken front to the world, even though the bond between them had
come to be the merest pretence. He despised his father, but no one
must ever know it--not even the father whom he despised. Ralph did not
guess that his father had read his face.
He saw, now, why Miss Evelina had refused to tell him the man's name,
and he honoured her for her reticence. He perceived, too, the hideous
temptation with which she was grappling when she begged him to leave
her. She had feared that she would tell him, and he must never let her
suspect that he knew.
The mighty, unseen forces that lie beneath our daily living were
surging through Ralph's troubled soul. Love, hatred, shame, remorse,
anger, despair--the words are but symbols of things that work
devastation within.
Behold a man, in all outward seeming a gentleman. Observe his
courtesy, refinement, and consideration, his perfect self-control.
Note his mastery of the lower nature, and see the mind in complete
triumph over the beast. Remark his education, the luxury of his
surroundings, and the fine quality of his thought. Wonder at the high
levels whereon his life is laid, and marvel at the perfect adjustment
between him and his circumstances. Subject this man to the onslaught
of some vast, cyclonic passion, and see the barriers crumble, then
fall. See all the artifice of civilisation swept away at one fell
stroke, and behold your gentleman, transformed in an instant into a
beast, with all a beast's primeval qualities.
Under stress like this Ralph was fighting to regain his self mastery.
He knew that he must force himself to sit opposite his father at the
table, and exchange the daily, commonplace talk. No one must ever
suspect that anything was amiss--it is this demand of Society which
keeps the structure in place and draws the line between civilisation
and barbarism. He knew that he never again could look his father
straight in the face, that he must always avoid his eyes. It would be
hard at first, but Ralph had never given up anything simply because it
was difficult.
It was a relief to find that he was downstairs first. Hearing his
father's step upon the stair, he thought, would enable him to steel
himself more surely to the inevitable meeting. After they had once
spoken together, it would be easier. At length they might even become
accustomed to the ghastly thing that lay between them and veil it, as
it were, with commonplaces.
Ralph took up the morning paper and pretended to read, though the words
danced all over the page. The old housekeeper brought in his
breakfast, and, likewise, he affected to eat. An hour went by, and
still the dreaded step did not sound upon the stair. At length the old
housekeeper said, with a certain timid deference:
"Your father's very late this morning, Doctor Ralph. He has never been
so late before."
"He'll be down, presently. He's probably overslept."
"It's not your father's way to oversleep. Hadn't you better go up and
see?"
Thus forced, Ralph went leisurely up-stairs, intending only to rap upon
the door, which was always closed. Perhaps, with the closed door
between them, the first speech might be easier.
He rapped once, with hesitation, then again, more definitely. There
was no answer. Wholly without suspicion, Ralph opened the door, and
went in.
Anthony Dexter lay upon his bed, fully dressed. On his face was a
smile of ineffable peace. Ralph went to him quickly, shook him, and
felt his pulse, but vainly. The heart of the man made no answer to the
questioning fingers of his son. The eyes were closed and, his hands
trembling now, Ralph forced them open. The contracted pupils gave him
all the information he needed. He found the wineglass, which still
smelled of laudanum. He washed it carefully, put it away, then went
down-stairs.
His first sensation was entirely relief. Anthony Dexter had chosen the
one sure way out. Ralph had a distinct sense of gratitude until he
remembered that death did not end disgrace. Never again need he look
in his father's eyes; there was no imperative demand that he should
conceal his contempt. With the hiding of Anthony Dexter's body beneath
the shriving sod, all would be over save memory. Could he put by this
memory as his father had his? Ralph did not know.
The sorrowful preliminaries were all over before Ralph's feeling was in
any way changed. Then the pity of it all overwhelmed him in a blinding
flood.
Searching for something or some one to lean upon, his thought turned to
Miss Evelina. Surely, now, he might go to her. If comfort was to be
had, of any sort, he could find it there. At any rate, they were
bound, much as his father had been bound to her before, by the logic of
events.
He went uphill, scarcely knowing how he made his way. Miss Evelina,
veiled, as usual, opened the door for him. Ralph stumbled across the
threshold, crying out:
"My father is dead! He died by his own hand!"
"Yes," returned Miss Evelina, quietly. "I have heard. I am
sorry--for you."
"You need not be," flashed Ralph, quickly. "It is for us, my father
and I, to be sorry for you--to make amends, if any amends can be made
by the living or the dead."
Miss Evelina started. He knew, then? And it had not been necessary
for her to draw out the sheathed dagger which only yesterday she had
held in her hand. The glittering vengeance had gone home, through no
direct agency of hers.
"Miss Evelina!" cried the boy. "I have come to ask you to forgive my
father!"
A silence fell between them, as cold and forbidding as Death itself.
After an interval which seemed an hour, Miss Evelina spoke.
"He never asked," she said. Her tone was icy, repellent.
"I know," answered Ralph, despairingly, "but I, his son, ask it.
Anthony Dexter's son asks you to forgive Anthony Dexter--not to let him
go to his grave unforgiven."
"He never asked," said Miss Evelina again, stubbornly.
"His need is all the greater for that," pleaded the boy, "and mine.
Have you thought of my need of it? My name meant 'right' until my
father changed its meaning. Don't you see that unless you forgive my
father, I can never hold up my head again?"
What the Piper had said to Evelina came back to her now, eloquent with
appeal;
_The word is not made right. I'm thinking 't is wrong end to, as many
things in this world are until we move and look at them from another
way. It's giving for, that's all. When you have put self so wholly
aside that you can he sorry for him because he has wronged you, why,
then you have forgiven_.
She moved about restlessly. It seemed to her that she could never be
sorry for Anthony Dexter because he had wronged her; that she could
never grow out of the hurt of her own wrong.
"Come with me," said Ralph, choking. "I know it's a hard thing I ask
of you. God knows I haven't forgiven him myself, but I know I've got
to, and you'll have to, too. Miss Evelina, you've got to forgive him,
or I never can bear my disgrace."
She let him lead her out of the house. On the long way to Anthony
Dexter's, no word passed between them. Only the sound of their
footfalls, and Ralph's long, choking breaths, half sobs, broke the
silence.
At the gate, the usual knot of curious people had gathered. They were
wondering, in undertones, how one so skilful as Doctor Dexter had
happened to take an overdose of laudanum, but they stood by,
respectfully, to make way for Ralph and the mysterious, veiled woman in
black. The audible whispers followed them up to the very door: "Who is
she? What had she to do with him?"
As yet, Anthony Dexter's body lay in his own room. Ralph led Miss
Evelina in, and closed the door. "Here he is," sobbed the boy. "He
has gone and left the shame for me. Forgive him, Miss Evelina! For
the love of God, forgive him!"
Evelina sighed. She was standing close to Anthony Dexter now without
fear. She had no wish to torture him, as she once had, with the sight
of her unveiled face. It was the man she had loved, now--the emotion
which had made him hideous to her was past and gone. To her, as to him
the night before, death seemed the solution of all problems, the
supreme answer to all perplexing questions.
Ralph crept out of the room and closed the door so softly that she did
not hear. She was alone, as every woman some day is; alone with her
dead.
She threw back her veil. The morning sun lay strong upon Anthony
Dexter's face, revealing every line. Death had been kind to him at
last, had closed the tortured eyes, blotted out the lines of cruelty
around his mouth, and changed the mask-like expression to a tender calm.
A hint of the old, loving smile was there; once again he was the man
she had loved, but the love itself had burned out of her heart long
ago. He was naught to her, nor she to him.
The door knob turned, and, quickly, she lowered her veil. Piper Tom
came in, with a soft, slow step. He did not seem to see Miss Evelina;
one would have said he did not know she was in the room. He went
straight to Anthony Dexter, and laid his warm hand upon the cold one.
"Man," he said, "I've come to say I forgive you for hurting Laddie.
I'm not thinking, now, that you would have done it if you had known.
I'm sorry for you because you could do it. I've forgiven you as I hope
God will forgive you for that and for everything else."
Then he turned to Evelina, and whispered, as though to keep the dead
from hearing: "'T was hard, but I've done it. 'T is easier, I'm
thinking, to forgive the dead than the living." He went out again, as
silently as he had come, and closed the door.
Was it, in truth, easier to forgive the dead? In her inmost soul,
Evelina knew that she could not have cherished lifelong resentment
against any other person in the world. To those we love most, we are
invariably most cruel, but she did not love him now. The man she had
loved was no more than a stranger--and from a stranger can come no
intentional wrong.
"O God," prayed Evelina, for the first time, "help me to forgive!"
She threw back her veil once more. They were face to face at last,
with only a prayer between. His mute helplessness pleaded with her and
Ralph's despairing cry rang in her ears. The estranging mists cleared,
and, in truth, she put self aside.
Intuitively, she saw how he had suffered since the night he came to her
to make it right, if he could. He must have suffered, unless he were
more than human. "Dear God," she prayed, again, "oh, help me forgive!"
All at once there was a change. The light seemed thrown into the
uttermost places of her darkened soul. She illumined, and a wave of
infinite pity swept her from head to foot. She leaned forward, her
hands seeking his, and upon Anthony Dexter's dead face there fell the
forgiving baptism of her tears.
In the hall, as she went out, she encountered Miss Mehitable. That
face, too, was changed. She had not come, as comes that ghoulish
procession of merest acquaintances, to gloat, living, over the helpless
dead.
At the sight of Evelina, she retreated. "I'll go back," murmured Miss
Mehitable, enigmatically. "You had the best right."
Evelina went down-stairs and home again, but Miss Mehitable did not
enter that silent room.
The third day came, and there was no resurrection. Since the miracle
of Easter, the world has waited its three days for the dead to rise
again. Ralph sat in the upper hall, just beyond the turn of the stair,
and beside him, unveiled, was Miss Evelina.
"It's you and I," he had pleaded, "don't you see that? Have you never
thought that you should have been my mother?"
From below, in Thorpe's deep voice, came the words of the burial
service: "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth on me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live."
For a few moments, Thorpe spoke of death as the inevitable end of life,
and our ignorance of what lies beyond. He spoke of that mystic veil
which never parts save for a passage, and from behind which no word
ever comes. He said that life was a rainbow spanning brilliantly the
two silences, that man's ceasing was no more strange than his
beginning, and that the God who ordained the beginning had also
ordained the end. He said, too, that the love which gave life might
safely be trusted with that same life, at its mysterious conclusion.
At length, he struck the personal note.
"It is hard for me," Thorpe went on, "to perform this last service for
my friend. All of you are my friends, but the one who lies here was
especially dear. He was a man of few friendships, and I was privileged
to come close, to know him as he was.
"His life was clean, and upon his record there rests no shadow of
disgrace." At this Ralph, in the upper hall, buried his face in his
hands. Miss Evelina sat quietly, to all intents and purposes unmoved.
"He was a brave man," Thorpe was saying; "a valiant soldier on the
great battlefield of the world. He met his temptations face to face,
and conquered them. For him, there was no such thing as cowardice--he
never shirked. He met every responsibility like a man, and never
swerved aside. He took his share, and more, of the world's work, and
did it nobly, as a man should do.
"His brusque manner concealed a great heart. I fear that, at times,
some of you may have misunderstood him. There was no man in our
community more deeply and lovingly the friend of us all, and there is
no man among us more noble in thought and act than he.
"We who have known him cannot but be the better for the knowing. It
would be a beautiful world, indeed, if we were all as good as he. We
cannot fail to be inspired by his example. Through knowing him, each
of us is better fitted for life. We can conquer cowardice more easily,
meet our temptations more valiantly, and more surely keep from the sin
of shirking, because Anthony Dexter has lived.
"To me," said Thorpe, his voice breaking, "it is the greatest loss,
save one, that I have ever known. But it is only through our own
sorrow that we come to understand the sorrow of others, only through
our own weaknesses that we learn to pity the weakness of others, and
only through our own love and forgiveness that we can ever comprehend
the infinite love and forgiveness of God. If any of you have ever
thought he wronged you, in some small, insignificant way, I give you my
word that it was entirely unintentional, and I bespeak for him your
pardon.
"He goes to his grave to-day, to wait, in the great silence, for the
final solution of God's infinite mysteries, and, as you and I believe,
for God's sure reward. He goes with the love of us all, with the
forgiveness of us all, and with the hope of us all that when we come to
die, we may be as certain of Heaven as he."
Perceiving that his grief was overmastering him, Thorpe proceeded
quickly to the benediction. In the pause that followed, Ralph leaned
toward the woman who sat beside him.
"Have you," he breathed, "forgiven him--and me?"
Miss Evelina nodded, her beautiful eyes shining with tears.
"Mother!" said Ralph, thickly. Like a hurt child, he went to her, and
sobbed his heart out, in the shelter of her arms.