To lie, helpless and lonely and old, and racked by pain, and to keep on
believing in the Divine goodness, requires a caliber of mental strength
proportionately equal to the weakness of the sufferer. But it was too
late in the day for Dunoisse to doubt.
And here was his dear Moon swimming into view, rising from the
translucent depths of a bottomless lagoon of sapphire ether, red Mars
glowing at her pearly knee. A childlike content softened the lines that
pain and bitterness had graven on the old ivory face. He nodded, well
pleased.
“There you are! I see you! You have come as punctually as you always
do, making my pain the easier to bear,” he murmured brokenly to the
planet. “You shine and look at me and understand; unlike men and women
who talk, and talk, and comprehend nothing! And you are old, like my
love; and changeless, like my love; while yet my love, unlike you, is
eternal; it will endure when you have passed away with Time. Dear Moon!
is she looking at you too? Does she ever think of me? But that is a
great question you never answer. I can only lie and wait, and hope and
long ... in vain? Ah, God! If I could but know for certain that it has
not been in vain!...”
Then, with a rush of furious crimson to the drawn cheeks and the
knitted forehead, the barrier of his great and dauntless patience
broke down before his pent-up passion’s flood. His features were
transfigured; the venerable saint became an aged, rebellious Lucifer.
Words crowded from his writhing lips, despair and fury blazed in his
great black eyes.
“How long, O God, implacable in Thy judgments,” he cried, “must I lie
here, a living soul immured in a dead body, and wait, and yearn, and
long? ‘Give thanks,’ say the priests, ‘that you have your Purgatory in
this world.’ Can there be any torture in Purgatory to vie with this I
am enduring? Has Hell worse pains than these? None! for Despair and
Desolation sit on either side of me. I rebel against the appointments
of the Divine Will. I doubt the Love of God.”
Rigor seized him, his racked nerves vibrated like smitten harp-strings,
sweat streamed upon his clammy skin, the beating of his heart shook him
and shook the bed, a crushing weight oppressed his panting lungs.
“It is so long, so very long!--sixteen years that I have lain here,”
he moaned. “I was content at first, or could seem so. ‘Let me but live
while she lives and die when she dies!--’ had always been my prayer. I
pray so still--yes, yes! but the long waiting is so terrible. When I
had health and strength to labor incessantly, unrestingly, then I could
bear my banishment. Through the din and shock of charging squadrons,
the rattle of musketry and the roar of artillery, the ceaseless roll
of the ambulances and the shrieks of mangled men, one cannot hear
the selfish crying of the heart that starves for love. Even in times
of peace there was no pause, no slackening. To organize, administer,
plan, devise, perfect,--what work, what work was always to be done! Now
the work goes on. I lie here. They defer to me, appeal to me, consult
me--oh, yes, they consult me! They are very considerate to the old man
who is now upon the shelf.”
He laughed and the strange sound woke an echo that appalled him. It
sounded so like the crazy laugh of a delirious fever-patient, or of
some poor peasant wretch driven beyond his scanty wits by the horror
and the hideousness of War. He shook with nervous terror now, and
closed his eyes tightly that he might shut out all the familiar things
that had suddenly grown strange.
“Let me die, my God! I cannot bear Life longer!” he said more calmly.
“Let her find me crouching upon the threshold of Paradise like a
faithful hound, when she comes, borne by Thy rejoicing Angels to claim
her glorious reward. I am not as courageous as I boasted myself; the
silence and the emptiness appal me. Let me die!--but what then of my
letter that comes once a year?” he added in alarm. “No, no! I beseech
Thee, do not listen to me, a sinful, rebellious old grumbler. I am
content--or I would be if the time were not so long.”
Something like a cool, light finger seemed as if drawn across his
burning eyelids. He opened them and smiled. For a long broad ray of
pure silvery moonshine, falling through the high southeast window upon
the white marble bust that stood upon the ebony pedestal against its
background of mountain-peaks and sky, reached to the foot of his bed,
and rising higher still, had flowed in impalpable waves of brightness
over the helpless feet, and covered the stiff white hands, and now
reached his face.
This was the moment for which he nightly waited in secret fear, and
breathless expectation and desire. Would the miracle happen, this
night of all the nights? Would it visit him to bless or leave him
uncomforted? He trembled with the desperate eagerness that might defeat
its end.
The moon was full and rode high in the translucent heavens. To the
lonely watcher the celestial orb suggested the likeness of a crystal
Lamp, burning with a light of inconceivable brilliance in a woman’s
white uplifted hand. He knew whose hand. His black eyes softened into
lustrous, dreamy tenderness, a smile of welcome curved about his lips,
as the moon-rays illuminated the marble features of the bust that stood
in the bay.
The face of the bust was the same as the old, beautiful face of the
photographic portrait that stood in its tortoise-shell-and-silver
frame upon the little table by his bed. You saw it as the sculptured
presentment of a woman still young, yet past youth. Slenderly framed,
yet not fragile, the slight shoulders broad, the long rounded throat
a fitting pedestal for the high-domed, exquisitely proportioned head.
Upon her rich, thick waving hair was set a little cap: close-fitting,
sober, with a double-plaited border enclosing the clear, fine, oval
face, a little thin, a shade worn, as by anxiety and watching.
The face--her face!--was not turned towards the bed. It bent a little
aside as though its owner pondered. And that the fruit of such
reflection would be Action, swift, unflinching, prompt, direct--no one
could doubt who observed the purpose in the wide arching brows; the
salient, energetic jut of the rather prominent, slightly-aquiline nose,
with its high-bred, finely-cut nostrils; the severity and sweetness
that sat throned upon the lips; the rounded, decisive chin that
completed the womanly-fair image. A little shawl or cape was pinned
about her shoulders; to the base of the pure column of the throat she
was virginally veiled and covered.
* * * * *
And if the chief impression she conveyed was Purity, the dominant note
of her was Reflection. For the eyes beneath the thick white eyelids
were observant; the brain behind the broad brows pondered, reviewed,
decided, planned.... It seemed as though in another moment she must
speak; and the utterance would solve a difficulty; reduce confusion
into sanest order, throw light upon darkness; clear away some barrier;
devise an expedient, formulate a rule....
There was not a line of voluptuous tenderness, not one amorous dimple
wherein Cupid might play at hiding, in all the stern, sweet face. She
thought, and dreamed, and planned. And yet, ...
And yet the full-orbed eyes, gray-blue under their heavy, white,
darkly-lashed eyelids as the waters of her own English Channel, could
melt, could glad, for he had seen!... The sensitive, determined mouth
could quiver into exquisite tenderness. The most cherished memory of
this old man was that it had once kissed him.
Ah! if you are ignorant how the memory of one kiss can tinge and
permeate life, as the single drop of priceless Ghazipur attar could
impart its fragrance to the limpid waters in the huge crystal block
skilled Eastern artificers hollowed out for Nur Mahal to bathe in,--you
are fortunate; for such knowledge is the flower of sorrow, that has
been reared in loneliness and watered with tears. This one red rose
made summer amidst the snows of a nonagenarian’s closing years. He felt
it warm upon his mouth; he heard his own voice across the arid steppes
of Time crying to her passionately:
“Oh, my beloved! when we meet again I shall have deserved so much of
God, that when I ask Him for my wages He will give me even you!”
What had he not done since then, what had he not suffered, how much had
he not sacrificed, to keep this great vow? Had he not earned his wages
full forty years ago? Yet God made no sign, and she had gone her ways
and forgotten.
It was only in pity,--only in recognition of his being, like herself,
the survivor of a vanished generation, almost the only human link
remaining to bind this restless Twentieth Century with the strenuous,
splendid days of the early Victorian era, that she had written to him
once a year.
Only in pity, only in kindness was it, after all?
This one thing is certain, that at rare, irregular intervals, he reaped
the fruit of his long devotion--his unswerving, fanatical fidelity--in
the renewal of that lost, vanished, unforgettable moment of exquisite
joy.
As he sat in his wheeled-chair upon the Promenade of Zeiden, as he lay
upon his bed, he would feel, drawing nearer, nearer, the almost bodily
presence of a Thought that came from afar. A delicate thrilling ecstasy
would penetrate and vivify the paralyzed nerves of his half-dead body,
the blood would course in the frozen veins with the ardent vigor of
his prime. He would see her, his beloved lady, in a halo of pale
moonlight, bending to comfort--descending to bless. Once more he would
kneel before her; yet again he would take the beloved hands in his, and
draw them upwards to his heart. And their lips would meet, and their
looks would mingle, and then.... Oh! then the waking to loneliness, and
silence, and pain.
V
He was prone, when the visitations of her almost tangible Thought of
him were interrupted by periods of unconsoled waiting, to doubt the
actuality of his own experience. That was the worst agony of all, to
which the sharpest physical torments were preferable, when in the long,
dreary, miserable nights a mocking voice would whisper in his reluctant
ear:
“You have been deceived. She never thinks of you. Driveling old dotard!
she has long forgotten that night at Scutari. Why in the name of
Folly do you cling to your absurd conviction that she loved you then,
that she loves you still? You have been deceived, I say. Curse her,
blaspheme God, and die!”
“Be silent, be silent!” Dunoisse would say to the invisible owner of
the mocking, jeering voice. “If I had the use of this dead right hand
to make the sign of the Cross, you would soon be disposed of. For I
know who and what you are, very well!”
And he would clamp his lean jaws sternly together, and look up to the
carved walnut Crucifix with the Emblems of the Passion, that hung upon
the wall beside his bed. And the thin, nagging voice would die away in
a titter, and another Voice would whisper in the innermost shrine of
his deep heart:
“My son, had I the use of My Arms when I hung upon the cross of
Calvary? Yet, nailed thereon beyond the possibility of human movement,
did I not pluck the sting from Death, and rise victorious over the
Grave, and tread down Satan under My wounded Feet? Answer, My little
son?”
And Dunoisse would whisper, falteringly:
“Lord, it is true! But Thou wert the Son of God most High, and I am
only a helpless, suffering, desolate old man, worn out and worthless
and forgotten!”
The Voice would answer:
“Thou art greater than a thousand Kings. Thou art more glorious than
an Archangel, of more value than all the stars that shine in the
firmament--being a man for whom Christ died! Be of good courage. This
trial will not last long. Believe, endure, pray!... Hast thou forgotten
thy compact with Me?”
Dunoisse would cry out of the depths with a rending sob:
“No! but it is a sin of presumption to seek to make bargains with God.
The compact was impious.”
The Voice would say:
“Perhaps, yet thou didst make it: and thou hast kept it. Shall I be
less faithful than thou?”
Dunoisse would falter:
“I should have loved Thee for Thyself above any creature Thou hast
made. To serve Thee for the love of even a perfect woman, was not this
wrong?”
“It may be so!” the Voice would answer, “and therefore I have visited
thee with My rods and scourgings. Yet, if I choose woman for My Means
of Grace, what is that to thee?”
Dunoisse would not be able to answer for weeping. The Voice would
continue:
“Moreover, it may be that in loving this woman, My servant, thou hast
loved Me. For she is pure, and I am the Fountain of Purity; she is
charitable, and I am Charity itself. She is beautiful of soul, beloved
and loving, and I am unspeakable Beauty, and boundless, measureless
Love. Be courageous, little son of Mine! Believe, and hope, and
pray!...”
Dunoisse would stammer with quivering lips:
“I believe!... I hope!... Lord, grant me strength to go on believing
and hoping!”
Then he would fall peacefully asleep upon a pillow wet with tears. Or
he would lie awake and let his memory range over the prairies of dead
years that stretched away so far behind....
* * * * *
Will you hear some of the things that this old man remembered? Listen,
then, if it be only for an hour. That is a little space of time, you
say, and truly. Yet I gave my youth and most of the things that men and
women cherish, to buy this hour, dear, unknown friend!--of you.