* * * * *
The glow of the narrator's cigar waxed, a pin-point of light in a world
of dimness and mystery. Subdued breathing made our silence rhythmic.
When I found my voice, it was hardly more than a whisper.
"Good God! What a tragedy!"
"Tragedy? You think it so?" The Little Red Doctor's gnarled face gleamed
strangely behind the tiny radiance. "Dominie, you have a queer notion of
this life and little faith in the next."
"'She met death as a tryst,'" murmured the old librarian. "And he!
'Trailing clouds of glory!' The triumph of that victory over fate! One
would like to have seen the meeting between them, after the waiting."
The Little Red Doctor rose. "When some brutal and needless tragedy of
the sort that we medical men witness so often shakes my faith in my
kind, I turn to think of those two in the splendor of their last meeting
on earth, the man with the courage to face death, the woman with the
courage to face life."
He strode over to the table and lifted the newspaper, which had slipped
to the floor unnoticed. The girlish face turned toward us its
irresistible appeal, yearning out from amidst the lurid indignities
of print.
"You heard from her afterward?" I asked.
"Often. The sister died and left her nothing to live for but her
promise. Always in her letters sounded the note of courage and of
waiting. It was in the last word I had from her--received since her
death--set to the song of some poet, I don't know who. You ought to
know, Mr. Sheldon."
His deep voice rose to the rhythm.
"Ah, long-delayed to-morrow! Hearts that beat
Measure the length of every moment gone.
Ever the suns rise tardily or fleet
And light the letters on a churchyard stone.--
And still I say, 'To-morrow we shall meet!'"
"May Probyn," the librarian identified. "Too few people know her. A
wonderful poem!"
Silence fell again, folding us and our thoughts in its kindly refuge.
Rising, I crossed to the window and drew the curtain aside. A surging
wind had swept the sky clear, all but one bank of low-lurking, western
cloud shot through with naming crimson. In that luminous setting the
ancient house across Our Square, grim and bleak no longer to my eyes,
gleamed, through eyes again come to life, with an inconceivable glory.
Behind me in the shadow, the measured voice of the witness to life and
death repeated once more the message of imperishable hope:
"And still I say, 'To-morrow we shall meet.'"