shrunken veins one wave of blood strong enough to mount to her face,
where the pained color slowly grew until it burned into two bright
spots high upon her cheeks. Those two fierce spots, glowing in the
awful pallor of her face, to me were terrible. I ran to her and,
throwing my arm about her, lowered her light body into the chair close
to the table. Her haughty, old head was bent; one hand still clutched
the lace. I did not know what to do, but it hurt me to the heart to see
her bow her head. Timidly I laid my hand upon her shoulder. She looked
up at me, and in a husky voice she said, with a glance at the lace:
“I owned it once, yes, it was mine! I wore it while I was yet a happy
bride!”
I shivered and turned away, while I mutely prayed that torturing color
might fade from her face before I looked again. I pressed my forehead
to the window, I could see nothing; no tree, no building loomed darkly
through the fog; I could not even see the pavement below me. So far as
sight went, there were but two living creatures in the world, and one
of _them_ longed to leave it!
I was so lonely and so sad, I turned back again. She sat there still,
one hand moving back and forth over the lace. The spots were yet on
her cheeks, but they were not so fiercely bright. I did not know her
like that. I wish she would accuse me of “prancing,” or tell me I “sat
down too quickly,” or “jumped up” when I rose. I wished she would snap
at me--that her dear, old head would lift itself imperiously again. I
had not spoken one word since she told me the lace had been hers, and
so, still silent, I crossed back to her and sat down at her feet and,
hesitatingly, I asked: “Dear Mrs. Worden, is the lace much injured?”
The words acted like magic upon her. In one moment she had the length
of lace passing swiftly between her inquiring fingers, and an instant
later she gave a cry of anger: “Oh! shame! just look at this--the
cruel hurt! and the soil! Why, some vulgar, new, rich, money-flaunting
creature owns this dear lace now! She is ignorant and coarse! Oh, I
know, girl! Don’t you see? She has dragged this delicate web about on
the _bottom_ of her gown! Its beauty was lost in such a position. It
was simply done to show the owner’s utter indifference to expense. I’d
wager something that it has been sent, now, by some maid or companion
to be repaired. Ah! I should have recognized it any way--but look you,
here is the proof that it is mine!”
She held out to me a fold of the lace, and careful examination showed
where a former tear had been exquisitely repaired. I nodded my head and
she went on, her eyes fixed upon the old scar: “As if I could forget!
He did that, my fair-haired giant--man without soul--therefore, husband
without honor! But, truly, he was good to look upon!”
I moved restlessly; she took no notice; evidently I had ceased to
exist for her: “Fickle, changeable as a child, unstable as water! But,
he loved me for a little while. He loved me _then_, the night I wore
this lace to the _rout_. It was falling full and deep about my bare
shoulders, as they rose from the golden yellow of my gown that was
brocaded with a scarlet flower. I wore some diamonds and stood with
others in my hands, hesitating, when he came in--my Philip--and looked
at me reflected in the glass, and, standing behind me, he said, in
the great voice I loved: ‘Burn my body, but you are a handsome woman,
Myra!’ and he kissed me on the shoulder. ’Twas like wine taken on a
cold day; I felt it mounting to my brain! We were at Christmas-tide,
and a bough of holly was hanging above the dressing table. He broke
a bunch of its scarlet berries and dark, bright leaves, and, with a
great jewel, fastened it here, in the lace at my bosom. His fingers
were clumsy and the leaves were sharp as needles, and so my lace was
torn--but what cared I? The sharp leaf-points wounded my neck, too, and
drew more than one drop of blood, but had they come straight from the
heart, I would still have worn the ornament his hand had placed. My
Philip! so much I loved him--loved him! Bibber of wine and companion
of harlots; fair, like a God, yet without soul; so, being soulless,
why should he be cursed for riotously living in the sunlight, and for
following in the train of the scarlet woman--with the laughter of fools
ringing in his ears! The lace is here, the smooth, white shoulders are
shrivelled and bent, the black crown of hair he loved is gone, he is
gone, only the lace and my memory are left!”
I drew softly away from her. I felt as guilty in listening to her
self-communing as I could have felt had I opened and read one of her
letters. I took my cloak, and as I drew it on, I heard her low voice
saying: “You said my tongue was not sharp enough, Philip; that was
because I loved you! _Her_ tongue was sharp, she cursed and flouted
you, and stung and maddened, and tossed you a favor as a bone is tossed
to a dog! She was not even beautiful, your frail one, but she knew well
the ways that lead down to darkness and to death! She led, steeped in
vice and reeling with wine, and you followed because you were without
soul, my Philip!”
I crept out of the door and left the bowed, weary, old woman patiently
examining the torn meshes of two webs. One her web of lace, the other
her web of life. And as I stole through the chilly, gaunt, old house
not one of its faint voices--and it had many--whispered to me: “It is
nearly over--a little while and you will come no more! A little while
and she will have gone, and there will be no one, and nothing here only
the old, old house, and we, its voices!”
Some very busy days followed--long rehearsals every morning, and a new
part, of greater or lesser length, every night; and it must have been a
fortnight later when, being out of the bill, I put a bit of work in my
pocket, took a book in my hand, and thus prepared for finding my old
friend either in or out, started to make her a visit.
As I approached her door, I heard her talking, and said to myself, she
must be over by the fire-place, her voice is so indistinct.
I tapped, but received no answer. Just then there came a pause in the
talk within, and I tapped again; this time more loudly, but, to my
surprise, I received no invitation to enter, though the talking was
resumed in another moment.
I felt somewhat hurt, and turned to go away, but something restrained
me, and I thought I would first make _quite sure_ that she knew of my
presence, I would knock loudly. As I raised my hand to do so, I heard a
groan. That was enough for me; I waited no longer for permission, but
opened the door and stepped in, and there amazement held me motionless;
I no not know how long, for this room, whose orderliness had always
been of that precise and rigid kind suggesting daily measurements
with a foot-rule, was now in complete confusion. Chairs out of place,
garments here and there, and the usually spotless hearth a mass of gray
ashes and fallen black cinders.
And that small, rumpled heap of clothing at the foot of the bed,
with white hair tossed and tangled--was that--could that be my Mrs.
Worden?--she whose habits of neatness and purity were carried to the
extremities; she who on a bitter winter morning, as on every other
morning, sought such cramped privacy as her gaunt, old screen could
secure for her, in the farthest, bleakest corner of her room, and
there, with unskimped thoroughness, went through with the same process
of grooming she had indulged in sixty years before, when she had
had her maids to help her, after which she put herself into a sort
of bolster case, with a hole in the far end for the passage of her
head--and in this blue linen bag she became her own housemaid, and when
the toilet of the room was finished to the points of its very fingers
she again retired to the privacy of her screen and finally emerged
“clothed and in her right mind,” as she used to say, when she appeared
in her worn, old black gown, her black silk apron, her snow-white
collar and small cuffs, and her bit of white tulle, by way of cap, upon
her satin-smooth hair--and was this she, was this her room?
Suddenly Mrs. Worden drew down the arm which had been resting across
her face, and, looking at me, exclaimed: “Oh, Betty, you are so late!
Is breakfast ready now? My head aches, Betty; you never kept me waiting
so long before!”
She rolled her head from side to side, and moaned a little, and while
I threw off my wraps I recalled, with a heavy heart, the words of Mrs.
Bulkley: “She’s breakin’ up; old Myra Worden is breakin’ fast.”
I hastened to reduce the room to something like order, to mend the fire
and prepare some tea and rather doubtful toast, and when I had placed
her in her chair and her eyes took in the familiar picture of the
lake, they cleared perceptibly. She nodded her head and murmured: “Yes,
my dearies, yes! I’m waiting for the sign, you won’t be long now! no,
not long, not long!”
I came to her, then, with the tea and the toast, and was delighted when
she called me “you girl” again, and hoped she would scold me about the
fire I had made, but she scolded me no more forever.
She had asked so many times for breakfast, yet now she could not
eat one morsel, but she drank her tea like one famishing. While I
arranged her bed, she babbled on, and most of the time she talked to
her children. Once, however, she declared that if Sally stole another
cracker she would throw her from the window, and vowed no one in town
would be fool enough to pick her and her vocabulary up.
When I was smoothing her white hair into something like its usual
order, one lock escaped my fingers and fell forward on her chest.
She saw it and cried out: “They have cut it off, oh, curse them!
curse them! Betty, do you see? It’s gone, and--” she paused, looking
curiously at the thin, glittering strand of hair--“and, Betty, either
I’ve gone mad or it’s quite white! Oh, Betty, I _can’t_ understand!”
And so, as Betty--some long-dead Betty from her past--I put the
suffering woman back into her great skeleton of a bed, and smoothed her
brow and wet her lips times uncountable, wondering at the heat in her
dry, parchment-like skin, while I tried to decide what ought to be done
in this emergency.
I felt that a doctor should be summoned, but I stood in absolute awe
of her will, her commands, and I knew her fixed determination never to
have a physician’s care. She held “she _could_ not die, no matter what
her ailments, until she had ‘the sign,’ and that when ‘the sign’ had
once been given no power on earth could keep her here.”
So I dared not summon proper help; my next thought had been, naturally
enough, of Mrs. Bulkley, the only friend of the old days left to her,
but as fate would have it, Mrs. Bulkley was absent from the city on
business that would detain her two or three days. Had I not heard my
friend Mary rejoicing the night before over the very “high Jinks” the
boarders were hoping to enjoy during that absence?
Then indeed my spirits sank, and I could only sit there and watch over
her until she became calmer, and then I thought I would slip out and
tell my landlady and get her to advise me what to do. And so the hours
passed slowly by, and I looked them in the face with young, impatient
eyes, and never noted their dread solemnity. For all my anxiety for the
woman who was “breakin’ fast,” I had no faintest suspicion that she was
_already broken_--that each time the clock struck off the afternoon
hours--the four, or five, or six--it was, for the ancient woman in her
gaunt, old bed, the _last time_.
To know that we are doing a thing for the _last_ time lends a touching
grace to even the commonest act; but I was blind with that black
density of blindness that can come only upon the very young, and
therefore the very ignorant, and I only waited for the chance to slip
away and ask for help for her.
She had been quiet for some time, and I softly rose and tried to leave
the room, but she stopped me. “Do not go, girl Clara,” she calmly
said, and I, rejoiced, went back to her. She was quite reasonable
again, expressed a small want or two, wished to be lifted higher that
she might see the lake better; and when all had been accomplished,
she asked me if I would stay the night with her. Then, with great
diffidence, I told her I thought she should have a doctor first; she
raised her hand and looked at me with such imperious fire in her black,
old eyes that I silenced myself and stood quite meekly before her,
while in a few sharp words she disposed of the “doctor” question.
“Pray, what was wrong any way? She supposed she had wandered a little
in her speech. Well, what of it? All Cleveland called her mad. I must
have heard that often enough? Why, then, a doctor to-day in special? As
for Mrs. Bulkley, if she or anyone else entered this room, she would
find strength to put her on the proper side of the door. Ah! she would,
she was not so helpless, etc.”
In terror, lest she should again bring on her fever, I yielded to every
demand, and so peace came again.
In the long silence that followed, I noticed that the wind was rising
fast, that each blast was stronger and longer than the one preceding
it, and that the old house trembled ominously under each fierce gust.
The shadows, that earlier in the day had been content to linger in
the corners, had with stealthy boldness advanced till they had filled
the room with darkness, through which I heard the faint, fluttering
breathing of the sick woman in her great bed, and the shrill scream
of the wind as it swept across the lake to hurl itself upon the
challenging city.
I rose at last to light the lamp, and lifting it, was about to place
it back of the tall head-board of the bed, that its direct rays might
not disturb the possible sleeper, when by chance the light fell full
upon the painted face of the laughing, little Phil. The effect was
wonderful; it seemed a face alive. The roguish eyes, the merry smile
betraying the whitely even teeth, the little brown hand holding back
the panting dog. He was joyous life personified, and I stood there
wondering where the laughing child had found the courage to meet death
so bravely; and, as if in answer to my thought, the faint voice of
his mother came from the old bed, saying: “Yes, he was very brave, my
man-child Philip, brave, brave! You know I saw it all. Aye, it was a
good glass, a strong glass, and I saw. She was afraid, though she was
the older, and her poor, blue eyes were strained and wild, and her
quivering lips were white like her cheeks. But my Philip held her hand
and stood still, while many raced madly to and fro. At one great,
approaching wave I saw his lips move and I felt he cried, ‘Mammy!’
I, too, thought it was the end, but as it broke and surged away they
were still standing hand in hand, and I knew Eternity in the moment I
stood waiting there, waiting for that which came! There were cries and
groans about me. The mighty wave seemed for one second to stand quite
still, then with blinding, crushing force it struck its awful blow! It
was enough; the solid deck sank swiftly from beneath their feet, the
water rushed between their frightened, little lips into their laboring
lungs, and it was over! With uplifted faces, and hands tight-clasped
together, they went down before my tortured eyes! Ah, God! ’twas hard;
in one hour my life made desolate! Yet will I worship Thee, forever!
Hast Thou not said, ‘the sea shall give up its dead’? Aye, and for that
great promise I worship and bow down! By the word of the Lord were the
heavens made. The word of the Lord is true!”
The thin, curiously faint voice sank into silence for a few moments.
I placed the lamp as I had intended, and seated myself by her bedside
again. She faced the lake--the curtains drawn entirely away from the
window. I faced her, leaning slightly against the bed. Her eyes were
nearly closed, but her lips were moving, and presently she said, as if
continuing a conversation: “No, you do not care for her. No! because
her golden head is high, and she holds the broken necklace in her
hand. Why broken? Did he have second sight, that artist? Did he know,
and was the broken necklace in her hand meant as a warning to me?
You care for my man-child, because he laughs. You do not care for my
‘gift-of-God,’ because of an air, a manner; you are wrong. ’Tis but a
way, a trick of movement. On my breast, with love-tightened, little
arms about my neck, she was as sweetly lovable as the meekest little
maiden in the land. And when they knelt in prayer, with folded hands,
her head was bowed as humbly! Oh!” she suddenly cried, “Oh! not to have
their sweet bodies to love and caress and care for, not to have their
eager minds to guard, to direct, to develop!”
She moaned piteously, and then, giving a great sigh, she added: “But
His word is true, and there is the sign to wait for”--and so sank into
a long silence.
I was watching her closely, and suddenly she seemed to cease to
breathe. I rubbed her hands; I called her loudly. She feebly opened her
eyes and turned them toward the cupboard in the corner. I flew to it,
and searching eagerly, I found two or three bottles there, one marked
cordial. I administered some as quickly as I could, and saw her revive,
but from that moment I was frightened, and I noted every word she spoke
and every movement that she made. Her first words made me shiver. She
said: “I am not afraid, girl Clara, but I must have the sign. I cannot
go without it.”
After a pause, while I resumed my seat facing her, she said: “It’s
very good of you to stay with me. Strange, after so many years alone,
to have companionship at the last. Old Myra Worden watched over by an
actress! Verily, the world does move!” A pause, and then she babbled
on: “Ever since the night you came to me out of the storm and tried to
be kind to me, I have known you were some way connected with the sign.
You admired my treasures there, you loved my old laces, and sometimes I
thought--I almost thought that you liked me.”
“Dear Mrs. Worden,” I cried, “I love you very much!” and I lifted the
hand I was holding to my lips and kissed it. I felt her start, her
black, old eyes flashed wide open, she gave me a piercing glance and
exclaimed: “What?--what’s that you say--you say--you----?”
I repeated with tears in my eyes: “I say, I love you very much,” and
again I pressed my lips upon her cold and trembling hand. She closed
her eyes; she pressed her thin lips close, but could not hide their
quivering, and presently, in almost a whisper, she murmured: “Fifty and
odd years since those words were used to me. ’Tis almost like a foreign
tongue. But, oh, my girl, my girl! it’s mighty pleasant hearing.
You--You--”
“I love you--I love you very much,” I slowly and lowly repeated, and
she nodded her head at each word, and, smiling faintly, sank into
quietude. The time was long, the clock struck more than once, and she
had not moved. My hand was holding hers. I feared to release it lest I
might disturb her. The fire was long out, and I was cold. I wondered
if she was asleep. I had twice been deceived on that subject, and
dare not venture an opinion. I longed for dawn. Leaning on the bed,
holding her hand closely in mine, I raised my tired eyes and began
dully following the involved design carved upon the high head-board.
I do not know just when I lost the design, but I felt no shock when I
realized that I was looking at the lake, though I had not turned round.
I wondered faintly how it could be, but I went on gazing quietly across
the heaving, tossing, gray, repellant waste, and in the changes that
followed I heard certain words, but whether those words were spoken by
myself or fell from the lips of the ancient woman at my side, I shall
never know. I only know I heard--I saw.
At first the sky was dull and gray and heavy, like the lake; but as
I looked far, far off, where the sky and water met, there came a
whiteness of the purity of snow, and it grew and spread and filled up
all the sky so far as eye could reach, and then I heard a voice say,
faint and low: “Can it be mist?”
And at the words the whiteness became lambent with living fire. As
sheet-lightning plays across the summer sky, so this soft fire flashed
on, in, through, up, down and across the milky wonder, while the
lake--oh, marvelous! The heavy gray was gone, the water clear, pure,
brilliant, vast--lay like a mighty crystal, and the voice murmured: “As
a sea of glass!”
Presently this lambent whiteness began to throb and thrill with color;
streams of pink and rose, of amber, blue or violet, played up and down
the sky--a green so vivid, so acutely pure, that the voice, speaking
from the great book, said: “A rainbow like unto an emerald.”
Between me and that great background of living, opulent color I dimly
saw a movement in the air, and then it thickened with crowding,
opaque, white shapes, even as one has seen the air thicken with the
white movement of the snow-flakes--so now, from horizon to zenith
and to horizon again, all the air was filled with the swift-moving,
never-resting, great, white-winged host, and ere the cry in my throat
could escape my lips, these unnumbered ones fell apart into two vast
bodies, while between them there lay straight across the bosom of the
crystal waters a broad path of glittering light.
My heart was plunging wildly against my ribs when I heard the voice,
so low, saying: “The sea knew Him--knew His voice--His touch! How the
waves must have rushed upon the sand to kiss the precious foot-prints
His sacred feet had made!” And while these words were uttered, out,
far out, upon the glittering path arose a radiance, even then intense,
almost beyond the power of mortal eye to bear; my swift lids fell to
shield my dazzled sight. Yet one moment more I gazed and saw--I say I
_saw_ that supernatural radiance taking form and substance and assuming
the attitude of most majestic humanity.
I could bear no more; I threw the sick woman’s hand from me to clutch
at my own strangling throat, and all was gone! I saw the carved
head-board--nothing more!
Shaking like a leaf, I turned my head toward Mrs. Worden’s face, and
dimly I understood that, by some route of nerves, _her_ vision had
been conveyed to my brain. She sat there against her pillows gasping,
her nostrils quivering, her black eyes fairly blazing. She passed
her tongue across her parched lips, and I heard the low voice say:
“It cannot be--no, it cannot! for He has said no man shall look upon
His face! But it might be, perhaps, that! Oh! I can raise my eyes no
higher--the light is blinding--and yet, and yet--oh! ’tis He! It is the
Master!”
Her hands were clasped upon her breast, her body shaken by her laboring
heart--while in terror of that recognition--her soft, white hair
crisped itself, and moved upon her brow and hollow temples, while in
a husky whisper she repeated: “’Tis _He_!--the All-Beautiful! Do I
not see His sacred feet, beneath the falling robe press the gently
yielding, watery path? Can He have come in fulfillment of the great
promise?”
Then, with a piercing cry, she stretched out her arms pleadingly,
saying: “Master! Master! I may not look upon the glory of Thy face, but
Thou wilt hear me! Oh! Thou lover of little children--pause--pause!
They lie so near Thee, but one step away! Thou wilt not pass them by!
Summon them, Son of Mary! always pitiful to mothers, pity me! and
summon them! Ah! the Hand is raised--the Blessed Hand, irradiating
Light--is raised, and there--there--Oh King of Kings!--they are there!
Hand clasped in hand--at the Beloved Master’s knee--they smile at
me! they raise their little hands, and, Power Supreme! _they make the
sign!_”
The room rang with her wild, triumphant cry of joy! She flung her frail
arms wide, and repeated: “The sign! The sign!” then, “Yes, my dearies,
mother’s coming! We will fall down and worship, and then we will all go
on together!”
Her arms dropped suddenly--her black eyes closed--and she fell sidewise
into my arms; and even in the very moment of placing her upon her
pillow I cast one glance through the uncovered window and saw but the
sullen sky bending low over the still more sullen lake.
She never opened her eyes again, and as she lay there so still, so
white, I could not but notice how gentle her face had grown, and
bending down for the first and last time, I kissed her tenderly. A slow
smile came about her lips, and she spoke for the last time, when she
said softly, happily: “The sign! _It is_ the sign!”
A moment later there was a long sigh, broken by a shiver, and then
stillness, perfect stillness, and I whispered: “They have all gone on
together!”
“In Paris Suddenly----”
“In Paris Suddenly----”
I saw it in the _Herald_ this morning: “In Paris suddenly, Madame de
B----.” Nothing remarkable about that announcement. Nothing to affect
the general reader, but to me the letters were luminous.
“In Paris suddenly, Madame Miriam de B----.” The creep is in my blood
yet, for you see, I met Madame Miriam de B---- once, and if I were to
live in this world even unto a hundred years, I should not forget that
brief meeting.