Old Hector could have told you that such crowded, thronging memories
aggravate the dull, throbbing ache of loneliness to torment. To re-read
letters written in faded ink by beloved hands that lie moldering
under-ground, or are very far removed from us; or to brood upon the
soulless image of a soulful face that, dead or living, we may never see
with our earthly eyes again, does but exquisitely intensify the agony
of loss. We who are old and wise should know better than to seek to
quench the heart’s thirst at such bitter Desert wells. Nevertheless,
our eyes turn to the faded portrait, our hands touch the spring of the
tarnished locket half-a-hundred times a day.
* * * * *
Upon the pillow beside the worn white head there invariably lay a
stained and shabby Russia-leather letter-case, white at the edges with
wear. It was fastened by a little lock of dainty mechanism, and the
fine thin chain of bright steel links that was attached to it went
round the old man’s neck. He turned his head that his cheek might rest
against the letter-case, and a slow tear over-brimmed an underlid,
and fell and sparkled on the dull brownish leather that had once been
bright and red. A silver plate, very worn and thin, bore an engraved
date and a brief direction:
=BURY THIS WITH ME=
It would be done by-and-by, he knew; for who would rob a dead old man
of his dearest treasure? Moreover, the contents of the leather case
were valueless in ordinary eyes.
Just a package of letters penned in a fine, delicate, pointed,
old-fashioned gentlewoman’s handwriting to the address of M. Hector
Dunoisse in half-a-dozen European capitals, and several cities and
posting-towns of Turkey and Asiatic Russia; their condition ranging
from the yellowed antiquity of more than fifty years back to the
comparative newness of the envelope that bore the London postmark of
the previous 22nd of December, and the Zeiden stamp of three days
later. For once a year, at Christmas-tide, was celebrated old Hector
Dunoisse’s joy-festival--when such a letter came to add its bulk to the
number in the leather case.
He would be fastidiously particular about his toilet upon that day of
days, he who was always so scrupulously neat. His silken white hair
would be arranged after the most becoming fashion, his cheeks and chin
would be shaved to polished marble smoothness, his venerable mustache
waxed with elaborate care. He would be attired in his best white
flannel suit, crowned with his newest velvet cap, and adorned with
all his Orders; while pastilles would be set burning about the room,
fresh flowers would be placed, not only on the tiny altar with its
twinkling waxlights and colored plaster presentment of the Stable at
Bethlehem, but before a photograph in a tortoise-shell-and-silver frame
that always stood upon a little table, beside his chair or bed. About
the ebony pedestal of the marble bust that stood in the shallow bay
of the southeast window a garland would be twined of red-berried holly
and black-berried ivy, and delicately-tinted, sweet-scented hyacinths,
grown under glass.... And then the hands of a nursing Sister or of a
mere hireling would open the letter, and hold the feebly-written sheet
before Dunoisse’s burning eyes, and they would weep as they read, until
their bright black flame was quenched in scalding tears.
Do you laugh at the old lover with his heart of youthful fire, burning
in the body that is all but dead? You will if you who read are young.
Should you be at your full-orbed, splendid prime of womanhood or
manhood, you will smile as you pity. But those who have passed the
meridian of life will sigh; for they are beginning to understand; and
those who are very old will smile and sigh together, and look wise--so
wise! Because they have found out that Love is eternally young.
Oh, foolish Youth!--that deems the divine passion to be a matter of
red lips meeting red lips, bright eyes beaming into bright eyes, young
heart beating against young heart. Intolerant, splendid Prime, that
leaps to the imperious call of passion and revels in the delirious
pleasures of the senses. For you love is the plucking of the ripe,
fragrant, juicy fruit; the rose-tinted foam upon the sparkling wine
that brims the crystal goblet; the crown of rapture; the night of
jeweled stars and burning kisses that crowns the fierce day of Desire.
And ah! wise Age, experienced and deep, where Youth is all untaught,
and Prime but a little more scholar-wise, and Middle Age but a beginner
at the book.... For you Love is the jewel in the matrix of the stone;
the sacred lamp that burns unquenched within the sealed-up sepulcher;
the flame that glows in the heart’s core the more hotly that snows of
years lie on the head, and the icy blood creeps sluggishly through the
clogged arteries; the sustenance and provender and nourishment of Life
no less than the hope that smiles dauntlessly in the face of Death. For
to die is to follow whither she has gone,--to meet with him again. Can
those who seek to disprove the Being of their Creator with the subtle
brain He forged be in the truest sense of the word--lovers? I say No!
For Love is an attribute of the Divine.
Those written sheets in the locked case of dulled crimson leather,
attached to the fine steel chain, told no tale of love....
Ah! the womanly, gracious letters, breathing warm friendship and kindly
interest in the long-unseen, how diligently the old man had tried to
read between their fine clear lines the one thing that he never found
for all his searching. How devoutly they had been kept and cherished,
how delicately and reverently handled.... But for seven long years now
they had lain undisturbed in their receptacle, only seeing light when
it was opened with the little key that hung upon the steel chain, so
that the newest letter of all might be added to the treasured store.
Of late years, how brief they had become! From the three crowded
sheets of more than fifty years back, to the single sheet of ten
years--the quarter-sheet of five years ago--a mere message of kind
remembrance, ending with the beloved name. It had been tragedy to
Dunoisse, this slow, gradual shortening of his allowance of what was
to him the bread of life. He could not understand it. Had he offended
her in some way? He dared to write to her and ask, by aid of the paid
secretary who typed from his painstaking dictation in a language which
she did not understand. And the reply came in the caligraphy of a
stranger. He realized then what he had never before dreamed possible,
that his worshiped lady had grown old.... A photograph accompanied
the letter. He recognized, with a joyful leap of the heart, that the
sweet, placid, aged face with the delicate folds of a fine lace shawl
framing it, was beautiful and gracious still. Thenceforward, in a
tortoiseshell-and-silver frame, it stood upon the little table beside
the bed.
But in another year or two heavy news reached him. She had grown
feeble, barely able to trace with the gently-guided pen the
well-loved initials at the foot of the written page! The shock of
this unlooked-for, appalling revelation made him very ill. He was not
himself for months,--never quite again what he had been.... A day was
coming when ... the letters might come no more. Her initials were so
faintly traced upon the last one that--that----
No, no! God was too kind to let her die before him. He clenched his
toothless gums as he would have liked to clench his paralyzed hands,
and clung desperately to his belief in the Divine Love.