THE WOMAN AT THE END OF THE PATH
He stopped, noticing that the chairs were pushed back. There was an
unmistakeable air of boredom, though one or two of the men still smoked
thoughtfully. One of these, indeed--the high church rector--even came
back with a question, to the undisguised apprehension of several
brothers.
"You have formulated a certain fashion of belief, Mr. Linford, one I
dare say appealing to minds that have not yet learned that even reason
must submit to authority; but you must admit that this revelation of God
in the human heart carries no authoritative assurance of immortality."
Bernal had been sitting in some embarrassment, dismayed at his own
vehemence, but this challenge stirred him.
"True," he answered, "but let us thank God for uncertainty, if it take
the place of Christian belief in a sparsely peopled heaven and a crowded
hell."
"Really, you know--"
"I know nothing of a future life; but I prefer ignorance to a belief
that the most heinous baby that ever died in sin is to languish in a
state of damnation--even 'in a wide sense' as our good friend puts it."
"But, surely, that is the first great question of all people in all
ages--'If a man die shall he live again?'
"Because there has never been any dignified conception of a Supreme
Being. I have tried to tell you what my own faith is--faith in a God
wiser and more loving than I am, who, being so, has devised no mean
little scheme of revenge such as you preach. A God more loving than my
own human father, a God whose plan is perfect whether it involve my
living or dying. Whether I shall die to life or to death is not within
my knowledge; but since I know of a truth that the God I believe in must
have a scheme of worth and dignity, I am unconcerned. Whether his plan
demand extinction or immortality, I worship him for it, not holding him
to any trivial fancy of mine. God himself can be no surer of his plan's
perfection than I am. I call this faith--faith the more perfect that it
is without condition, asking neither sign nor miracle."
"And life is so good that I've no time to whine. If this _ego_ of mine
is presently to become unnecessary in the great Plan, my faith is still
triumphant. It would be interesting to know the end, but it's not so
important as to know that I am no better--only a little wiser in certain
ways--than yesterday's murderer. Living under the perfect plan of a
perfect Creator, I need not trouble about hidden details when so many
not hidden are more vital. When, in some far-off future, we learn to
live here as fully and beautifully as we have power to, I doubt not that
in the natural ways of growth we shall learn more of this detail of life
we call 'death'--but I can imagine nothing of less consequence to one
who has faith.
"I saw a stanza the other day that tells it well:
"'We know not whence is life, nor whither death,
Know not the Power that circumscribes our breath.
But yet we do not fear; what made us men,
What gave us love, shall we not trust again?'"
While quoting the lines his eyes had been straight ahead, absently
dwelling upon the space between the slightly parted doors that gave into
the next room. But even as he spoke, the last line faltered and halted.
His glance slowly stiffened out of widening eyes to the face it had
caught there--a face new, strange, mesmeric, that all at once enchained
him soul and body. With a splendid, reckless might it assailed him--left
him dazed, deaf, speechless.
It was the face of Nancy, for the first time all its guards down. Full
upon him flamed the illumined eyes that made the face a yielding
radiance; lifted a little was the chin of gentle curves, the under lip
caught as if in that quivering eagerness she no longer breathed--the
face of Nancy, no longer wondering, Nancy at last compelled and
compelling. A moment the warm light flashed from each to each.
He stopped in a sudden bewilderment, looking blankly, questioningly at
the faces about him. Then out of the first chaos came the sense of
having awakened from some long, quiet sleep--of having suddenly opened
his eyes upon a world from which the morning mists had lifted, to see
himself--and the woman who stood always at the end of that upward
path--face to face for the first time. One by one his outer sensations
returned. At first he heard a blurred murmuring, then he became aware
that some of the men were looking at him curiously, that one of them had
addressed him. He smiled apologetically.
"I beg your pardon. I--I couldn't have been listening."
"I merely asked," repeated Floud, "how you expect to satisfy humanity
with the vague hope that you would substitute for the Christian promise
of eternal life."
He stared stupidly at the questioner.
"I--I don't know." He passed a hand slowly upward over his forehead.
"Really I can hardly trouble about those matters--there's so much life
to live. I think I knew a moment ago, but I seem to have forgotten,
though it's doubtless no great loss. I dare say it's more important to
be unafraid of life than to be unafraid of death."
"You were full of reasons a moment ago," reminded Whittaker--"some of
them not uninteresting."
"Was I? Oh, well, it's a small matter--I've somehow lost hold of it." He
laughed awkwardly. "It seems to have come to me just now that those who
study an apple until it falls from its stem and rots are even more
foolish than those who pluck and eat."
Again he was silent, with a great hidden impatience for them to be gone.
But Whittaker, the wicked Unitarian, detained them still a moment
longer.
"How hardly we should believe in a God who saved every one!" he breathed
softly to the remains of his cigar.
"Humph! Such a God would be a mere mush of concession!" retorted Floud,
the Baptist.
"And how true," pursued the unruffled Unitarian, "that we cannot worship
a 'mere mush of concession'--how true that our God must hate what we
hate, and punish what we would punish. We might stomach a God who would
save orthodox burglars along with orthodox bishops, but not one who
saved unbaptised infants and adults of unsound doctrine. Dear, dear,
yes! We must have a God with a little human spite in Him or He seems to
be spineless."
"A hopeless cynic," declared the soft voice of the Catholic--"it's the
Unitarianism working out of him, mind you!"
"So glad to have met you!" continued the same good man to Bernal. "Your
words are conducive to thought--you're an earnest, decent lad at all
events."
But Bernal scarcely heard them or identified the speakers. They were to
him but so many noisy wheels of the vast machine, each revolving as it
must. His whole body seemed to send electric sparks of repulsion out to
them to drive them away as quickly as might be. All his energies were
centred to one mighty impulse.
At last the door closed and he stood alone with the disordered table and
the pushed back chairs, doggedly gathering himself. Then he went to the
doors and with a hand to each, pushed them swiftly apart.
She stood at the farther side of the room. She seemed to have fled
there, and yet she leaned toward him breathless, again with the under
lip caught fast in its quivering--helpless, piteously helpless. It was
this that stayed him. Had she utterly shrunk away, even had he found her
denying, defiant--the aroused man had prevailed. But seeing her so, he
caught at the back of a chair as if to hold himself. Then he gazed long
and exultingly into the eyes yielded so abjectly to his. For a moment it
filled him to see and know, to be certain that she knew and did not
deny. But the man in him was not yet a reasoning man--too lately had he
come to life.
He stepped eagerly toward her, to halt only when one weak white hand
faltered up with absurd pretension of a power to ward him off. Nor was
it her hand that made him stop then. That barrier confessed its
frailness in every drooping line. Again it was the involuntary
submission of her whole poise--she had actually leaned a little further
toward him when he started, even as her hand went up. But the helpless
misery in her eyes was still a defense, passive but sufficient.
Then she spoke and his tension relaxed a little, the note of helpless
suffering in her voice making him wince and fall back a step.
"Bernal, Bernal, Bernal! It hurts me so, hurts me so! It's the
Gratcher--isn't it hurting you, too? Oh, it must be!"
He retreated a little, again grasping the back of the chair with one
hand, but there was no restraint in his voice.
"Laugh, Nance, laugh! You know what laughing does to them!"
"Not to this one, Bernal--oh, not to this one!"
"But it's only a Gratcher, Nance! I've been asleep all these years. Now
I'm awake. I'm in the world again--here, do you understand, before you.
And it's a glad, good world. I'm full of its life--and I've money--think
of that! Yesterday I didn't know what money was. I was going to throw it
away--throw it away as lightly as I threw away all those good, precious
years. How much it seems now, and what fine, powerful stuff it is! And
I, like a sleeping fool, was about to let it go at a mere suggestion
from Allan."
He stopped, as if under the thrust of a cold, keen blade.
[Illustration: "He gazed long and exultingly into the eyes yielded so
abjectly to his."]
"Allan--Allan!" he repeated dazedly while the look of pain deepened in
the woman's eyes. He stared back at her dumbly. Then another awakening
became visible in him and he laughed awkwardly.
"It's funny, Nance--funny--and awful! Do you know that not until I spoke
his name then had a thought of Allan come to me? Can you comprehend it?
I can't now. But it's the truth. I woke up too suddenly.
Allan--Allan--." It sounded as if he were trying to recall some
forgotten personality. "Oh, Allan!"
The last was more like a cry. He fell into the chair by which he had
stood. And now the woman erected herself, coming forward to stand before
him, her head bowed, her hands convulsively interlocked.
"Do you see it all, Bernal? Is it plain now? Oh, how it tortured
me--that last Gratcher--the one we make in our own image and yet make to
be perfect. It never hurt me before, but now I know why. It couldn't
hurt me so long as I looked it straight in the eye--but just now my eyes
had to fall before it, and all in a second it was tearing me to pieces.
That's the only defense against this last Gratcher, Bernal, to look it
in the eyes unafraid. And oh, it hurts so--and it's all my own miserable
fault!"
"No, it's your goodness, Nance." He spoke very quietly now. "Only the
good have a Gratcher that can't be laughed away. My own was late in
coming. Your Gratcher has saved us."
He stood up and took her unresisting hands in both his own. They rested
there in peace, yielding themselves like tired children to caring arms.
"Now I shall be healed," she said.
"It will take me longer, Nance. My hurt is more stubborn, more
complicated. I can't help it. Something in me resists. I see now that I
know too much--too much of you, too much of--"
She saw that he must have suffered some illumination upon Allan. There
was a look of bitter comprehension in his face as he broke off. She
turned away from it.
When, an hour later, Allan came in, he found them chatting easily of the
few people of St. Antipas that Bernal had met. At the moment, they were
discussing Mrs. Wyeth, whose face, Bernal declared, was of a rare
perfection. Nance turned to her husband.
"You must thank Bernal," she said, "for entertaining your guests this
afternoon."
"He wouldn't if he knew what I said--or how it must have bored them. One
thing, Nance, they won't meet here again until you swear I've gone!"
"Bernal's heart is right, even if his theology doesn't always please
me," said his brother graciously, examining some cards that lay on the
table. "I see Mrs. Wyeth has called," he continued to Nancy, looking up
from these.
"Yes. She wanted me to see her sister, poor Mrs. Eversley, who is ill at
her house. I promised to look in to-morrow."
"I've just been telling Nance how beautiful I think Mrs. Wyeth is," said
Bernal. "She's rare, with that face of the low-browed Greek. It's one of
the memories I shall take back to my Eve-less Eden."
"She _is_ beautiful," said Nancy. "Of course her nose is the least bit
thin and long, but it rather adds zest to her face. Now I must dress for
dinner."
When Nancy had gone, Bernal, who had been speaking with a marked
lightness of tone, turned to Allan with an equally marked seriousness.
"Old chap, you know about that money of mine--of Grandfather's?"
Allan instantly became attentive.
"Of course, there's no hurry about that--you must take time to think it
over," he answered.
"But there _is_ hurry! I shouldn't have waited so long to make up my
mind.
"Then you _have_ made up your mind?" questioned his brother, with
guarded eagerness.
"Definitely. It's all yours, Allan. It will help you in what you want to
do. And not having it will help me to do what I want to do--make it
simpler, easier. Take it--and for God's sake be good to Nancy."
"I can't tell you how you please me, Bernal. Not that I'm avid for
money, but it truly seems more in accord with what must have been
grandfather's real wish. And Nancy--of course I shall be good to
her--though at times she seems unable to please me."
There was a sanctified displeasure in his tone, as he spoke of Nancy. It
caused Bernal to turn upon him a keen, speculative eye, but only for a
moment. And his next words had to do with matters tangible. "To-morrow
I'll do some of the business that can be done here. Then I'll go up to
Edom and finish the transfers that have to be made there." After a brief
hesitation, he added: "Try to please _her_ a bit, Allan. That's all."