TIME’S REVENGE.
“Tears from the depth of some divine despair,
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In thinking of the days that are no more.”
TENNYSON.
A crisp, cold morning in December, brilliant with the gleam of sunlight
falling on a thin, soft carpeting of newly fallen snow.
Along the wide, handsome street leading to the Inebriate Asylum, walks
a lady, leading by the hand a laughing, bright-eyed little boy. Her
slow, languid step scarcely keeps pace with his, and she keeps fast
hold of his hand to restrain his impatience.
“And we shall see papa?” he says to her now and then brightly, and with
a shudder she answers:
“Yes, Charlie, we shall see papa.”
As she pauses at the gates of the Inebriate Asylum and lifts a
shrinking gaze toward the elegant building, a gentleman steps out on
the wide porch, and stands idly a moment, gazing out on the sunny
street.
He is equipped for a walk, in overcoat and gloves, and holds his hat in
his hand, the winter sunlight falling goldenly on his curly, chestnut
locks, and the tawny mustache, whose graceful curve does not hide the
sweet seriousness of his mobile lips.
Mrs. Essex, coming slowly up the steps, looks at this man carelessly,
then starts and looks again, while a nervous thrill shakes her whole
frame.
He is springing lightly down the steps, and meets her midway, lifting
his hat as to a stranger, and passing on.
But before he reaches the gate he turns back, overtaking her at the top
of the steps.
“I beg pardon,” with stately deference. “I did not recognize you in the
first moment--time has changed you--but surely this must be Mrs. Essex?”
“Doctor Verne,” she answers tremulously, and half extends her hand. He
does not seem to see it, and it drops to her side again.
“You are quite well, I hope,” he says stiffly.
“Quite well, I thank you.”
“And this is your little son? He resembles Charlton, I think,” looking
at Charlie with grave interest. “Mrs. Essex, I am sorry you will not
find your husband as well as when you visited him yesterday--he told me
you came--and I think it best to tell you--forgive my frankness--that
he is rapidly sinking. No excitement with him, please.”
“I will remember,” she answers and turns from him, going down the wide
hallway, a slender, pathetic figure in trailing black, for her loved
and lost ones. He stands still, where she left him, watching her, the
bitter waters of memory rising to flood tide in his heart.
And this is their meeting. How different from their parting. He
remembers her as she was then--so young, so fair, so happy, in the
morning of her life, and now--ah, what a story is written on her
blanched cheek, on the hopeless curve of the sweet lips, in the large,
dark, melancholy eyes.
Relentless time had avenged his wrongs, had pressed to the lips of her
nearest and dearest the soul-destroying glass. She had drained to its
very dregs the bitter cup of sorrow. It was time he should forgive her,
but he turned and went his way with a chill at his heart that was not
born of the winter’s cold.
* * * * *
And Vivian. She has no time to recur to the dead past now. She is in
her husband’s room, bending down to listen to the failing voice that
welcomes her and the child. He lies still, clinging to her hand, his
large, wistful eyes roving from her grave, white face to the little
child flitting restlessly about the room--the little one to whom he is
leaving the heritage of the drunkard’s child--a dishonored name, and
the danger of an inherited appetite for strong drink.
“Viva, dear,” he cries out entreatingly, “I wish you would give the
child to Max.”
Starting with surprise, she asks: “Why?”
“Don’t you understand, Viva? Our little boy is so apt to inherit my
fatal appetite, and Doctor Verne is so strong and wise, he can help
him--save him from himself.”
“Charlton will be my son’s guardian,” she replies. “He will not lack
for loving care.”
“I know, dear,” he answers uneasily. “Charlton is a good brother,
but--he is very lenient to the habit of drinking. Indeed, I have known
him to indulge too much himself sometimes. So he is not quite a safe
guardian for the child.”
Viva makes no comment, and he drops the subject with a weary sigh.
“I wish Charlton would come and see me, Viva. Perhaps he can find it in
his heart to forgive me some of my sins, now that I am going so fast.
Can you forgive me, too, all your wrongs, Viva?”
“Freely,” she answers, with the ineffable goodness of a woman’s heart.
“That is a blind answer, dear. If you knew all----”
He stops, a spasm of pain distorting his ghastly features.
“Do not worry over it, Earle. I forgive, without knowing,” she answers
still very gently. “What is past cannot matter now.”
“It always matters, when wrong has been done, that things should be set
right again--doesn’t it? I once did not think so, Viva, but things grow
clearer to me now, and there is something I must confess to you, dear,
before I die. Promise me, Viva, that when you know it you will not hate
my memory.”
“I promise, Earle.”
“God bless you, Viva. To-morrow, then, you will--come to me, and--I--I
will tell you the dark secret I have kept so long. Madame Orne has not
told you?”
“No.”
“To-morrow, then. I am so very tired to-day. Somehow I have been
getting tired a long, long time, only I did not understand what it
meant, and I kept staving off the weakness with strong drink. Do you
know I have been told by Doctor Landelle--Max’s friend, you know--that
if I had not happened in here that day as I did, I must soon have died
in the street from exhaustion. Think of it.”
She shudders through all her slender frame.
“Do not talk any more,” she remonstrates kindly, “your voice is a mere
whisper. I will go now and let you sleep. Charlton shall come to you
this evening, without fail.”
“And you--to-morrow?”
“Yes, to-morrow,” she replies, answering his wistful smile.
When Charlie kisses papa farewell there is something in that wistful
white face that moves her to stoop and kiss him also. Afterward she is
glad that she obeyed that sudden impulse.
Out in the wide hall her spoiled child breaks from her gentle hold, and
clambering up the stairs disappears in the upper regions.
Vivian follows in haste, and finds him taking refuge in the little
room we knew in earlier days as “the den.” It wears the same familiar
look, though all else is changed. But, oh, horror! little Charlie has
mounted a chair, and, with fearless baby fingers, extracts from the
top of a cabinet the grinning skull that presides over the room in
awful majesty. At his mother’s reproachful cry it drops from his grasp
and rolls over the floor to her feet, dislodging from its cavity a
crumpled, yellowish paper.
Something familiar in the faded handwriting on it attracts her. She
picks it up and looks over it with startled eyes.
“Mine!” cries Charlie, trying to secure the treasure.
“No, it is mine, pet,” Vivian answers hoarsely. She thrusts it into her
pocket and leads him away, her face as white as death, her eyes wild
with misery.
* * * * *
She comes back, as she had promised, on the morrow, but Earle Essex is
too tired still to tell her the secret he had promised--too tired even
to lift his heavy eyes to her beloved face. For between the midnight
and the dawn Max and Charlton had held his hands in theirs, and gone
with him down to the shores of the dark river across whose gloom and
blackness glimmered the light of that promise to repentant sinners:
“Whosoever believeth in me I will in no wise cast out.”