THE DEAD CHILD.
The peasants going homeward at evening, when the last sunbeams slanted
over the mountains and struck the ruffled surface of the river, did not
hear the cry. The children, picking violets and primroses in the
hedgerow by the small white house, did not hear it. The occasional
tourists who trudged sturdily onward to the rugged pass at the head of
the valley did not hear it.
Only Maurice Dale heard it, and grew white and shivered.
Even to him it had been at first as faint as an echo pulsing through a
dream. He had said to himself that it was a fancy of his brain. And then
he had pulled himself together and listened. And again, as if from very
far off, the little cry had stolen to his ear and faded away. Then he
had said to himself that it was the night wind caught in some cranny of
the house, and striving to get free. He had thrown open his window and
leaned out, and trembled, when he found that the hot night was
breathless, airless, that no leaf danced in the elm that shaded his
study, that the ivy climbing beneath the sill did not stir as he gazed
down at it with straining eyes.
It was not the cry of the wind then. Yet it must be. Or if not that it
must be some voice of nature. But the river had no such thrill of pain,
of reproach in its song. Then he thought it was some night bird,
haunting the eaves of his cottage, or the tangle of wood the country
people called his garden. And he put on his clothes eagerly, descended
the narrow staircase, and let himself out on to the path that curved to
the white gate. But, in the garden there was no sound of birds.
This was a year ago. Maurice remembered very well his long vigil in the
garden, and how he had prayed that he might hear one note, one only, of
a night-jar, or the hoot of an owl in the forest, so that the black
thought just born in his mind might be strangled, and the shadow driven
out of his heart. But his prayer had not been granted. And he knew he
had not deserved that it should be. Towards dawn he went back into his
house again, and on the threshold, just as a pallor glimmered up as if
out of the grass at his feet, he heard the cry again. And he knew that
it came from within the house.
Then the sweat stood on his forehead, and he said to himself, with pale
lips, "It is the cry of the child!"
All the people of Brayfield by the sea were agreed on one point. The new
doctor, Maurice Dale, young as he looked, was clever. He had done
wonders for Mrs. Bird, the rich old lady at Ocean View. He had performed
a quite brilliant amputation on Tommy Lyne, the poor little boy who had
been run down by a demon bicyclist. And then he was well born. It got
about that his father was an Honourable, and all the young ladies of
Brayfield trembled at the thought that he was a bachelor. His looks were
also in his favour. Maurice was pale and tall, with black, smooth hair
parted in the middle, regular features, and large black eyes. The
expression he assumed suited him. It was curiously sad. But, at first,
this apparent pathos was a great success in Brayfield. It was only at a
later period that it was the cause of unkind tittle-tattle. In the
beginning of Maurice's residence at Brayfield eulogy attended it and
applause was never far off. People said that Maurice was impressionable,
and that the vision of pain upon which the medical student's eyes must
look so closely had robbed him of the natural buoyancy of youth. Poor
young man, they thought enthusiastically, he suffers with those who
suffer. And this was considered--and rightly considered--a very
touching trait in Maurice.
Brayfield was well satisfied with its new doctor, and set itself to be
ill for his benefit with a fine perseverance. But, as time went on, the
satisfaction of Brayfield became mingled with curiosity. The new doctor
was almost too melancholy. It would not be true to say that he never
smiled, but his smile was even sadder than his gravity. There was a
chill in it, as there is a chill in the first light of dawn. One or two
particularly impressionable people declared that it frightened them,
that it was uncanny. This idea, once started, developed. It went from
house to house. And so, gradually, a spirit of whispering awe arose in
the little town, and the vision of human pain ceased to be altogether
accountable for the pale sorrow of the young doctor. It was decided that
his habitual depression must take its rise from some more personal
cause, and, upon this decision, gossip naturally ran a wild course.
Since nobody knew anything about Maurice Dale except that his father was
an Honourable, rumour had plenty of elbow-room. It took advantage of the
situation, and Maurice was more talked about than anybody in Brayfield.
And Lily Alston, the daughter of Canon Alston, Rector of Brayfield,
launched out into surmises which, however, she kept to herself.
Lily, at this time, was a curious mixture of romance and religion, of
flightiness and faith. She read French novels all night and went to
early service in the morning. She studied Swinburne and taught in the
Sunday-school with almost equal ardour, and did her duty and pursued a
thousand things outside of her duty with such enthusiasm that she was
continually knocked up. On these continual occasions Maurice Dale was
invariably sent for, and so an intimacy grew up between him and the
Rectory, which contained the Canon, his daughter, and the servants. For
Mrs. Alston was dead, and Lily was an only child. Real intimacy with a
Rectory means, above all things, Sunday suppers after evening church,
and, in time, it became an unalterable custom for Maurice Dale to spend
the twilight of his Sabbaths with the Canon and his daughter. The Canon,
who was intellectual and desolate, despite his daughter, since his
wife's death, liked a talk with Maurice; and Lily, without having fallen
in love with the young doctor, thought him, as she said to herself, "a
wonderfully interesting study."
Lily's wild surmises, already alluded to, were born on one of these
Sabbath evenings in winter, when she, the Canon, and Maurice, were
gathered round the fire after supper.
The sea could be heard rolling upon the pebbly beach at a distance, and
the wind played about the skirts of the darkness. The Canon, happily at
ease after his hard day's work, rested in his red armchair puffing at
his well-seasoned pipe. Lily was lying on a big old-fashioned sofa drawn
before the flames, a Persian cat, grave in its cloud of fur, nestling
against her and singing its song of comfort. Maurice Dale sat upright,
pulling at a cigar. It chanced that Lily had been away the week before,
paying a visit in London, and naturally the conversation turned idly
upon her doings.
"I used to love London," the Canon said, with a half sigh. "In the old
days, when I shocked one or two good people here, Lily, by taking your
mother to the playhouses. Somehow I don't care for these modern plays. I
don't think she would have liked them."
"I love London, too," Lily said, in her enthusiastic voice, "but I think
modern plays are intensely interesting, especially Ibsen's."
"They're cruel," the Canon said.
"Yes, father, but not more cruel than some of the older pieces."
"Such as--?"
"I was thinking of 'The Bells.' I saw Irving in it on Friday for the
first time. You've seen it, of course, Mr. Dale?"
Maurice, who had been gazing into the fire, looked up. His lips
tightened for a moment, then he said:
"No, never!"
"What! Though you lived in London all those years when you were a
medical student?"
"I had opportunities of seeing it, of course, but somehow I never took
them--and I dislike the subject of the play greatly now."
There was a certain vehemence in his voice.
"Why?" the Canon asked. "I remember my wife was very fond of it."
"I think it morbid and dangerous. There are troubles enough in life
without adding to them such a hateful notion as a--a haunting; a
horrible thing that--" he looked round with a sort of questioning gaze
in his dark eyes--"that must be an impossibility."
"I don't know," the Canon said, without observing the glance. "I don't
know. A sin may well haunt a man."
"Perhaps. But only as a memory, not as a jingle of bells, not as a
definite noise, like a noise a man may hear in the street any day. That
must be impossible. Now--don't you say so?"
Lily, on her sofa, had noticed the very peculiar excitement of the young
doctor's manner, and that his denial was really delivered in the form of
an ardent interrogation. But the Canon's mind was not so alert after the
strain of pulpit oratory. He was calmly unaware of any personal thrill
in the discussion.
"I would not be sure," he said. "God may have what men would call
supernatural ways of punishment as well as natural ones."
"I decline to believe in the supernatural," Maurice said, rather
harshly.
"Granted that these bells might ring in a man's mind, so that he
believed that his ears actually heard them. That would be just as bad
for him."
"Then, I suppose, he is a madman," Lily said.
Maurice started round on his chair.
"That's a--a rather shocking presumption, isn't it?" he exclaimed.
"Well," the Canon said, knocking the ashes slowly out of his pipe, "if
you exclude the supernatural in such a case, and come upon the natural,
I must say I think Lily is not far wrong. The man who hears perpetually
a non-existent sound connected with some incident of his past will at
any rate soon be on the highway to insanity, I fancy."
Maurice said nothing for a moment, but Lily noticed that he looked
deeply disturbed. His lips were pressed together. His eyes shone with
excitement, and his pale forehead frowned. In the short silence that
followed on the Canon's remark, he seemed to be thinking steadfastly. At
last he lifted up his head with a jerk and said:
"A man may have a strong imagination, without being a madman, Canon. He
may choose to translate a mere memory into a sound-companion, just as
men often choose to play with their fancies in various ways. He may
elect to say to himself, I remember vividly the cry of--" He stopped
abruptly, then went on hastily, "the sound of bells. My mind hears them.
Let me--for my amusement--push on my imagination a step further and see
what will happen. Hark! It's done. My ears can hear now what a moment
ago only my mind could hear. Yes, my ears hear it now."
He spoke with such conviction, and the gesture which he linked with his
words, was so dramatic, that Lily pushed herself up on the pillows of
the sofa, and even the Canon involuntarily assumed an attitude of keen
attention.
"Why, Dale," the latter said after a moment, "you should have been an
actor, not a doctor. Really you led me to anticipate bells, and I only
hear the wind. Lily, didn't you feel as I did, eh?"
Lily had gone a little pale. She looked across at Maurice.
"I don't know that I expected to hear bells, father," she said slowly.
As she said those words, Maurice Dale, for the first time, felt as if a
human being drew very near to his secret. Lily's glance at him asked him
a question. "What was it that pierced through the wind so faintly?" it
seemed to say.
"What then?" the Canon asked.
"I don't know," she replied.
Maurice got up.
"I must go now," he said.
The Canon protested. It was early. They must have one more smoke. But
Maurice could not be induced to stay. As he walked rapidly homeward in
the darkness he told himself again and again that he was a fool. How
could it be? How could she hear the cry? The cry of the child?
That night Lily did not read a French novel. She lay awake. Her fancy
was set on fire by the evening's talk. Her girlish imagination was
kindled. In those dark and silent hours she first began to weave a web
of romance round Maurice, to see him set in a cloud of looming tragedy.
He looked more beautiful to her in this cloud than he had looked before.
Lily thought it might be wicked, but somehow she could not help loving
mental suffering--in others. And the face of Maurice gazed at her in the
blackness beneath a shadowy crown of thorns.
Next day, at the early service, she was inattentive to the ministrations
of religion. Her father seemed a puppet at its prayers, the choir a row
of surpliced dolls, the organ an empty voice. Only at the end, when
silence fell on the kneeling worshippers, did she wake with a start of
contrition to the knowledge of her impiety, and blush between her little
hands at her concentration upon the suspected sorrow of the young
doctor. But in that night and that morning Lily ran forward towards
Maurice, set her feet upon the line that divides men from women. She
knew that she had done so only when she next encountered him. Then, as
their eyes met she was seized with a painful idea of guilt, bred by an
absurd feeling that he could see into her mind, and know how all her
thoughts had been crowding about him. It is a dangerous symptom that
sensation of one's mind being visible to another as a thing observed
through glass. Lily did not understand her danger, but she was full of a
turmoil of uneasiness. Maurice noticed it and felt conscious also, as if
some secret understanding existed between him and Lily, yet there was
none, there could be none.
In conclave the individually stupid can sometimes almost touch
cleverness. Brayfield only began to talk steadily about Lily and the
young doctor from the day of this meeting of self-consciousnesses which
had, as it chanced, taken place on the pavement of the curved parade by
the sea. Till that day the little town had attributed to Maurice
hopelessness, to Lily simply friendship for a sad young man. Now its
members talked the usual gossip that attends the flirtations of the
sincere, but added to it a considerable divergence of opinions as to the
likelihood of Maurice's conversion from despair. Lily, they were all
decided, began to love Maurice. But some believed and some denied, that
Maurice began to love Lily. This would have been hard for Lily had she
noticed it, but her fanciful and enthusiastic mind was concentrated on
one thing only and her range of vision was consequently narrowed. She
was incessantly engaged in trying to trace the footsteps of the doctor's
misery, of which she was now fully convinced. And indeed, since that
Sabbath evening already described, Maurice had scarcely endeavoured to
play any part of ordinary happiness to her. Her partial penetration of
his secret quickly brought a sense of relief to him. There was something
consoling in the idea that this little girl divined his loneliness of
soul, if not its reason.
By degrees they grew quietly so accustomed to the silent familiarity
existing between their ebbing and flowing thoughts; they were--without a
word spoken--so thoroughly certain of the language their minds were
uttering to each other, that when their lips did speak at length, the
words that came were like a continuance of an already long conversation.
Lily was, once more, knocked up, and the Canon called in Maurice to
prescribe. He arrived in the late afternoon and was taken by the Canon
into Lily's little sitting-room, where she lay on a couch by the fire. A
small, shaded, reading lamp defined the shadows craftily.
"Now, Dale," the Canon said, "for goodness' sake tell her to be more
orderly and to do less--mind and body. She behaves as if life was a
whirlpool. She swims stupendously, tell her to float--and give her a
tonic."
And he went out of the room shaking his head at the culprit on the
couch.
When the door had shut upon him, Maurice came up to the fire in silence
and looked at Lily. She smiled at him rather hopelessly, and then
suddenly she said:
"Poor dear father! To ask you to make me take life so easily!"
That remark was the first onward gliding of their minds in speech, the
uttered continuance of the hitherto silent colloquy between them.
Maurice sat down. He accepted the irony of the situation suggested by
the Canon without attempt at a protest.
"Life can never be easy, if one thinks," he said. Then, trying to adopt
the medical tone, he added:
"But you think too much. I have often felt that lately."
"Yes," she said.
Her eyes were bent on him with a scrutiny that was nearly ungirlish.
Maurice tried not to see it as he put his fingers on her wrist. She
added:
"I have felt that about you too."
Maurice had taken out his watch. Without speaking he timed the
fluttering pulsation of her life, then, dropping her hand and returning
the watch to his pocket:
"Your too eager thoughts were of me?" he asked.
"Yes, but yours were not of me."
"Not always," he said, with an honesty that pleased her.
And again Lily saw above his face the shadowy crown of thorns. She was
really unwell and ready to be unstrung. Perhaps this made her say
hastily, as she shifted lower on her cushions:
"I'm partly ill to-day because you let me see how horribly you are
suffering."
"Yes," Maurice said heavily. "I let you see it. Why's that?"
There was nothing like a shock to either of them in the directness of
their words. They seemed spoken rightly at the inevitable time. No
thought of question, of denial, was entertained by them. Maurice sat
there by her and dropped his mask utterly.
"Miss Alston, I am a haunted man," he said.
And, in a moment, as he spoke, he seemed to be old. Lily said nothing.
She twisted between her little fingers the thin rug that covered her,
and was angry with herself because, all of a sudden, she wanted to cry.
"And I am beginning to wonder," Maurice went on, "how much longer I can
bear it, just how long."
Lily cleared her throat. It struck her as odd that she did not feel
strange with this man who looked so old in the thin light from the lamp.
Indeed, now that the mask had entirely fallen from him, he seemed more
familiar to her than ever before.
"I suppose we must bear everything so long as God chooses," she said.
"No, so long as we choose."
"But how?"
"To live to bear it. I cannot be haunted after I am dead. That can't
be."
He lifted his head and looked at her with a sort of pale defiance, as
if he would dare her to contradict him. Lily confronted the horror of
his eyes, and a shudder ran over her. The thorns had pierced more deeply
even than she had believed as she lay awake in the night. Just then a
door banged and a footstep approached on the landing.
"Hush, it's father," Lily whispered.
And the Canon entered to ask the condition of the patient. Maurice
prescribed and went away. In the windy evening as he walked, he was
conscious of a large change dawning over his life. Either the spirit of
prophecy--which comes to many men even in modern days--was upon him, or
hope, which he believed quite dead in him, stirred faintly in his dream.
In either event he saw that on the black walk of his life there was the
irregular, and as yet paltry, line of some writing, some inscription. He
could not read the words. He only knew that there were some words to be
read. And one of them was surely Lily's name.
He did not meet her until the evening of the following Sunday when, as
usual, he went to supper at the Rectory. Lily was better and had been to
church. The Canon was delighted and thanked Maurice for his skill in
diagnosis and in treatment.
"You cure every one," he said.
Lily and Maurice exchanged a glance. He saw how well she understood that
he felt the words to be an irony though they were uttered so
innocently. After supper, just as the Canon, with his habitual Sunday
sigh of satisfaction, was beginning to light his pipe, Sarah, the
parlour maid, came in with a note. The Canon read it and his sigh moved
onwards to something not unlike a groan. He put his filled pipe down on
the mantelpiece.
"What is it, father?" asked Lily.
"Miss Bigelow," he replied laconically.
"On a Sunday. Oh, it's too bad!"
"It can't be helped," the Canon said. "Excuse me, Dale, I have to go
out. But--stay--I shall be back in half an hour."
And he went out into the hall, took his coat and hat and left the house.
Miss Bigelow was his cross. She was a rich invalid, portentously
delicate, full of benefactions to the parish and fears for the welfare
of her soul. She kept the Canon's charities going royally, but, in
return, she claimed the Canon's ghostly ministrations at odd times to an
extent that sometimes caused the good man's saintly equanimity to
totter. Hating doctors and loving clergymen, Miss Bigelow was forever
summoning her distracted father confessor to speed that parting
guest--her soul, which however, never departed. She remarked in
confidence to those about her, that she had endured "a dozen deathbeds."
The Canon had sat beside them all. He must now take his way to the
thirteenth.
As soon as the hall door banged Maurice looked up at Lily.
"Poor, dear father," she murmured.
"I am glad," Maurice said abruptly.
The remark might have been called rude, but it was so simply made that
it had the dignity belonging to any statement of plain truth. Neither
rude nor polite, it was merely a cry of fact from an overburdened human
soul. Lily felt that the words were forced from the young doctor by some
strange agitation that fought to find expression.
"You wish--you wish--" she began.
Then she stopped. The flood of expression that welled up in her
companion's face frightened her. She trembled at the thought of the
hidden thing, the force, that could loose such a sea.
"What is it?" she said like a schoolgirl--or so, a moment afterwards,
she feared.
"I ought not to tell you," Maurice said, "I ought not, but I must--I
must."
He had got up and was standing before her. His back was to the fire, and
a shadow was over his face.
"I want to tell you. You have made me want to. Why is that?"
He spoke as if he were questioning his own intellect for the reason, not
asking it of her. And she did not try to answer his question.
"I suppose," he continued, "it is because you are the only human being
who has partially understood that there is something with me that sets
me apart from all my kind, from all the others."
"With you?" Lily said.
She felt horribly frightened and yet strong and earnest.
"Yes, with me," he answered. "I told you that I was a haunted man. Miss
Alston, can you, will you bear to hear what it is that is with me, and
why it comes. It is a story that, perhaps, your father might forbid you
to read. I don't know. And, if it was fiction, perhaps he would be
right. But--but--I think--I wonder--you might help me. I can't see how,
but--I feel--"
He faltered suddenly, and seemed for the first time to become
self-conscious and confused.
"Tell me, please," Lily said.
She felt rather as if she were beginning to read some strange French
story by night. Maurice still stood on the hearth.
"It is a sound that is with me," he said. "Only that; never anything
else but that."
"A sound," she repeated.
She thought of their conversation about the bells.
"Yes, it is a cry--the cry of a child."
"Yes?"
"That's nothing--you think? Absurd for a man to heed such a trifle?"
"Why do you think it comes?"
Maurice hesitated. His eyes searched the face of the little girl with an
almost hard gaze of scrutiny, as if he were trying to sum up the
details of her nature.
"Long ago--before I came here, before I was qualified, I was cruel,
bitterly cruel to a child," he said at last, speaking now very coldly
and distinctly.
His eyes were on Lily. Had she made just then any movement of horror or
of disgust, had an expression betokening fear of him come into her eyes,
Maurice knew that his lips would be sealed, that he would bid her
good-night and leave her. But she only looked more intent, more
expectant. He went on.
"I was bitterly cruel to my own child," he said.
Then Lily moved suddenly. Maurice thought she was going to start up. If
she had intended to she choked the impulse. Was she shocked? He could
not tell. She had turned her face away from him. He wondered why, but he
did not know that those last words had given to Lily an abrupt and fiery
insight into the depths of her heart.
"At that time," Maurice said, still speaking very distinctly and
quietly, "I was desperately ambitious. I was bitten by the viper whose
poison, stealing through all a man's veins, is emulation. My only
desire, my only aim in life was to beat all the men of my year, to
astonish all the authorities of the hospital to which I was attached by
the brilliance of my attainments and my achievements, I was ambition
incarnate, and such mad ambition is the most cruel thing in the world.
And my child interfered with my ambition. It cried, how it cried!"
He was becoming less definitely calm.
"It cried through my dreams, my thoughts, my endeavours, my
determinations. Do you know what a weapon a sound can be, Miss Alston?
Perhaps not. A sound can be like a sword and pierce you, like a bludgeon
and strike you down. A little sound can nestle in your life, and change
all the colour and all the meaning of it. The cry of the living child
was terrible to me, I thought then. But--then--I had never heard the cry
of the dead child. You see I wanted to forget something. And the tiny
cry of the child recalled it. There were no words in the cry, and yet
there were words,--so it seemed to me--telling over a past history. This
history--well, I want to say to you--"
Lily had now put a guard on watch over against her impulsive nature.
When Maurice stopped speaking she was able to look towards him again and
murmur:
"Say all you want to."
"Thank you," he said, almost eagerly. "If you knew--Miss Alston, before
this time, when I was a very young student, I had fallen into one of the
most fatal confusions of youth. I had made a mistake as to the greatest
need of my own nature. I had, for a flash of time, thought my greatest
need was love."
"And it wasn't," the girl said, with a note of wonder in her voice.
"No, it was success, to outstrip my fellows. But I thought it was love,
and I followed my thought and I sacrificed another to my thought. My
child's mother died almost in giving her to me, and, in dying, made me
promise to keep the child always with me. I kept that promise. I was a
young student, very poor. My love had been secret. Now I was alone with
this helpless child. I left my own lodgings and took others. I brought
it there, and its presence obliged me to shut my doors against my own
family and against my friends. To keep the door shut I put forward the
excuse of my ambition. I said that I was giving myself up to work and I
shut myself in with the child. I was its nurse as well as its father. I
thought I should be sufficient for it. But it missed--her, whom I
scarcely missed."
"You had not loved her?"
Maurice bent his head.
"I had made a mistake, as I said. I had only thought so. Long before she
died I had almost hated her for crippling my ambition. She was swept out
of my path. But the child was left crying for her."
"Yes. I know."
"Its wail came eternally between me and my great desire. When I sat down
to work the sound--which I could not quiet--perplexed my brain. When I
lay down to get, in sleep, power for fresh work, it struck through my
dreams. I heard it when the stars were out over London, and in the dawn,
when from my lodging windows I could see the first light on the Thames.
Miss Alston, at last it maddened me."
Lily was pale. She scarcely knew of what she was expectant.
"I had tried to comfort the child. I had failed. Now I determined to
forget it, to shut it out from my working life. At last, by force of
will, I almost succeeded. I read, I wrote, I analysed the causes of
disease, the results of certain treatments as opposed to the results of
others. And sometimes I no longer heard my child, no longer knew whether
it wailed and wept or whether it was silent. But one evening--"
Maurice stopped. His face was very white and his eyes burned with
excitement.
"One evening," he repeated, speaking almost with difficulty, and with
the obstinate note in his voice of one telling a secret half against his
will and better judgement, "I could not work. The wail of the child was
so loud, so alarmed, so full of a fear that seemed to my imagination
intelligent, and based on a knowledge of something I did not know, that
my professional instinct was aroused. At first I listened, sitting at my
writing table. Then I got up and softly approached the folding doors.
Beyond them, in the dark, the child lamented like one to whom a nameless
horror draws near. Never had I known it to weep like this; for this was
no cry after a mother, no cry of desire, no cry even of sorrow. It was a
half-strangled scream of terror, I did not go into the room, but as I
listened, I knew--"
He faltered.
"Yes," Lily said.
"As I listened I knew what the cry meant. Miss Alston, is it not strange
that even a baby who scarcely knows life knows so well--death?"
"Death!"
"Yes, recognises its coming, shrinks from it, fears it with the terror
of a clear intelligence. Is it not very strange?"
"Death!" Lily repeated.
She too was pale. Maurice continued in a low voice.
"I understood the meaning of the cry, and I did not enter the inner
room. No, I walked back to my writing table, put my hands over my
ears--to deaden the cry--and gave myself again to work. How long I
worked I don't know, but presently I heard a loud knocking at the door
of my room. I sprang up and opened it. My landlady stood outside.
"'What do you want?' I asked.
"The good woman's face was grave.
"'Sir, I know that child must be ill,' she said.
"'Ill--why? What do you mean?'
"'Oh, sir, its crying is awful. It goes right through me.'
"I pushed the woman out almost roughly.
"'It is not ill,' I said. 'It is only restless. Leave me. Don't you see
I am working?'
"And I shut the door sharply. I sat down again at my table and toiled
till dawn. I remember that dawn so well. At last my brain had utterly
tired. I could work no longer. I pushed away my papers and got up. The
room was misty--so I thought--with a flickering grey light. The dirty
white blind was drawn half up. I looked out over the river, and from it
I heard the dull shout of a man on a black barge. This shout recalled to
me my child and the noise of its lament. I listened. All was silent.
There was no murmur from the inner room. And then I remember that
suddenly the silence, for which I had so often longed and prayed,
frightened me. It seemed full of a dreadful meaning. I waited a moment.
Then I walked softly across the room to the folding doors. They were
closed, I opened them furtively and looked into the bedroom. It was
nearly dark. Approaching the bed I could scarcely discern the tiny white
heap which marked where the child lay among the tumbled bedclothes. I
bent down to listen to the sound of its breathing. I could not hear the
sound. Then I caught the child in my arms and carried it over to the
sitting-room window so that the dawn might strike upon its little face.
The face was discoloured. The heart was not beating. Miss Alston, while
I worked, my child had died in a convulsion. It had striven against
death, poor feeble baby, and had had no help from its father. My
medical skill might have eased its sufferings. Might have saved it. But
I had deliberately closed my ears to its appeal for love, for
assistance. I had let it go. I should never hear it again."
Maurice had spoken the last words with excitement. Now he paused. With
an obvious effort he controlled himself and added calmly:
"I buried my child and gave myself again to work. My examination was
close at hand. I passed it brilliantly. But I shuddered at my success.
Those lodgings by the river had become horrible to me. I left them, took
a practice in a remote Cumberland valley, and withdrew myself from the
world, from all who had known me. In this retirement, however, I had a
companion of whose presence at first I was unaware. The dead child
followed me, the child of whom now I feel myself to have been the
murderer."
"No--no--not that!" Lily whispered. But he did not seem to hear her.
"One night," he continued, "in my lonely house in the valley I was
awakened by some sound. I sat up in bed and listened. All was black
around me, and at first all was quiet too. I lay down again to sleep.
But as I touched the pillow I heard a faint murmur that seemed to come
from far away. I said to myself that it was a fancy of my mind but again
it came. Then I thought it was the wind caught in some cranny of my
house. I opened my window and leaned out. But there was no wind in the
trees. What was the noise then? The cry of a bird perhaps. Yes, it must
be that. Yet did any note of a bird have a thrill of pain in it? I
hurried on some clothes and let myself out into the garden. I would hear
that bird again. I would convince myself of its presence. But in the
garden I could hear nothing save the thin murmur of the stream that
threaded the valley. So I returned to the house, and at the door I was
greeted by a little cry from within. Miss Alston, it was the cry of my
dead child, full of pain and of eternal reproach. I shut the door,
closing myself in with my fate, and since that night I have been a
haunted man. Scarcely a day has passed since then, scarcely a night has
gone by without my hearing that appeal for help which once I
disregarded, which now I can never reply to. I fled from the valley, in
a vain hope of leaving that voice behind me. I came here. But the
child's spirit is here too. It is forever with me."
He stopped abruptly, then he added, "I can even hear it now, while I
look at you, while I touch your hand."
His burning eyes were fixed on Lily's face. His burning hand closed on
hers as if seeking assistance.
"What am I to do?" he said, and for the first time his voice broke and
failed.
"Pray!" she whispered.
"I have prayed. But God forgives only those who reverse their evil
acts. Mine can never be reversed. I can never be kind to my child to
whom I have been bitterly cruel. There is no help for me, none. Yet I
had a feeling that--that you might help me."
"If I could!" the girl cried with a blaze of sudden eagerness. Her heart
leaped up at the words, leaped up from its depth of pity for Maurice to
a height of almost fiery enthusiasm.
"But how?" he said.
Then his face hardened and grew stern.
"No," he said, "there can be no help for me, none in this world."
The drawing-room door opened and the Canon appeared.
"Miss Bigelow has not died for the thirteenth time," he said, coming up
to the fire.
When the Canon kissed his daughter that night, after Maurice Dale had
gone home, he seemed struck by a new expression in her face.
"Why, how excited you look, child!" he said, "what is it?"
But Lily returned his kiss hastily and ran away without a word. Once in
her room she locked the door--for no reason except that she must mark
the night by some unwonted action--put on her dressing-gown and threw
herself down on her bed. Her mind was alive with thoughts. Her
imagination was in flames. For so much had come upon her that evening.
In the first place she understood that she loved Maurice. She knew
that, when he spoke the words, "My child," and jealousy of an unknown
woman struck like some sharp weapon to her heart. She realised that he
did not love her, yet so great was her simple unselfishness, that she
did not dwell on the knowledge, or blame for an instant the selfishness
which concentrated Maurice's mind so entirely upon himself and his own
sorrow. Her only anxiety was how to help him. Her only feeling was one
of tender pity for his agony. And yet, for Lily was a girl of many
fancies and full of the wilful side-thoughts of women, she found room in
her nature for a highflown sense of personal romance which now wrapped
her round in a certain luxury of complacency. She moved in a strange
story that was true, a story that she might have read with a quickening
of the pulses. She and Maurice, whom she loved, moved in it together
heroine and hero of it. And none knew the story but themselves. And then
she burst into silent tears, calling herself cruel for having this
moment of half joy in the tragedy of another. She pushed down into the
depths of Maurice's misery. And then, with a clearer mind, she sat up on
the bed. It was dead of night now. Was he listening in the silence to
that haunting cry that was destroying him? She wondered breathlessly.
And she recalled the conversation about "The Bells." Was Mathias truly
haunted? or was he mad? She asked herself that, putting Maurice
eventually behind footlights in his place. Was there really a veritable
cry, allowed to come out of the other world to Maurice? or did his
diseased brain work out his retribution? She could not tell. Indeed she
scarcely cared just then. In either event, the result upon him was the
same and was terrible. In either event, the outcome might be what she
dared not name even to herself. And, though he did not love her, he
turned to her for help. Lily flushed in the thought of this. Almost more
than if she had his heart it seemed to have his cry for assistance. She
must answer it effectually. She must. But how? And then she sprang up
and began to pace the room. How to help him. Slowly, and with a minute
examination, she went in memory through his story, with its egoism, its
cruelty, its ambition, its punishment, its childlike helplessness of
to-night, and of many nights. She recalled each word that he had spoken
until she came to almost the last, "I have prayed. But God forgives only
those who reverse their evil acts. Mine can never be reversed. I can
never be kind to my child--" Just there she stopped. Maurice's words
flew against what Lily's religion taught her of the Great Being who can
pardon simply and fully so long only as the sinner entirely and deeply
repents. But she accepted them as true for Maurice. There was the point
to be faced. She felt that his nature, haunted indeed or betrayed by its
own weakness, but still loved by her, could only be restored to peace if
he could fulfil the impossible, reverse--as he expressed it--that act
of his past. Ah, that cry of the little dying, helpless child, of his
little child. Lily could almost hear it too, the tears came into her
eyes. How could she still it? How could she lay the little spirit to
rest forever? Peace for child, peace for father, sinned against and
sinner--she felt she would gladly sacrifice her own life, her own peace,
to work the miracle of comfort on dead and living. Yes, she could give
up her love,--if--. Suddenly Lily threw herself down on her bed and
buried her burning face deep in the pillows. A thought had come to her,
so strange that she wondered whether it were not wicked. The hot red
colour surged over her with this thought, and all the woman in her
quivered as she asked herself whether, in this life of sorrows and of
abnegations, it could ever be that the grief and the terror of another
could be swept away by one who, in the endeavour to bring solace, must
obtain intense personal happiness. In books it is ever self-sacrifice
that purges and persuades, martyrdom of the senses that renews and
relieves. Lily was ready indeed to be a martyr for the man she loved.
But the strange way she saw of being his possible saviour lay only in a
light of the sun forever on herself.
She wept and saw the light, herself and Maurice walking in it together,
till the church bell chimed in the morning, and the tide came up in the
sunshine to murmur that it was day.
* * * * *
Maurice Dale was puzzled. He noticed a change in Lily so marked that
even his self-centred nature could not fail to observe it. This girl,
whom he had thought pretty, fanciful, tenderhearted and gently
sympathetic, who had attracted his confession by her quick and feminine
receptiveness, now seemed developed into a woman of strength and
purpose, full of calm and of dignity. Her shining eyes were more
steadfast than of old, her manner was less changeful, less enthusiastic,
but more reliant. Brayfield wondered what had come to Miss Alston.
Maurice wondered too, dating the transformation accurately from the
night when he unburdened his soul in search of the help, which, after
all, no human being could give to him. It was strange, he thought, that
a man's terror, a man's weakness, should endow a weak girl with
confidence and with power. It was too strange, and he laughed at himself
for supposing that he had anything to do with the new manifestation of
Lily's nature. Nevertheless she began to attract him more than he had
believed possible. The nightmare in which his life was encircled grew
less real when he was with her. There was virtue in her that went out to
him. He came to desire always to be with her and yet he could not say to
himself that he loved her with the passion of man for woman. Rather was
the desire that he felt for her like that of a criminal towards a place
of refuge, of a coward towards an asylum of safety. Sometimes he longed
that she might share his trouble, selfishly longed that in her ears
might ring the cry of pain that tormented his.
One day, when they were together on a down that overlooked the sea, he
told her this.
"I wish it too," she answered softly.
"You are all unselfishness, as I am all selfishness," he said,
condemning himself, and nearer to loving her than ever before.
The sails went by along the wintry sea, and the short afternoon faded
quickly into a twilight that was cold in its beauty like a pale primrose
in frost. They were descending slowly towards the little town that lay
beneath them in the shadows.
"I have no voice to trouble my life,--no dead voice, that is," Lily
said.
"No dead voice?" Maurice asked. "And the living?"
"Oh, in most lives there is some one voice that means almost too much,"
Lily answered slowly.
Maurice stopped.
"Whose voice means so much to you?" he said.
"Why do you care to ask?"
"Is it mine?"
The girl had stopped too. Her face was set towards the sea and its great
sincerity, which murmurs against the lies and the deceptions of many
lives that defile the land, and takes so many more to itself that they
may persist no longer in their evil doing. And perhaps it was her vision
of the sea that swept from Lily any desire to be a coquette, or to be
maidenly,--that is, false. She looked from the sea into Maurice's eyes.
"Yes," she answered. "It is yours."
"You love me then, Lily?"
"Yes, I love you, Maurice."
There was no tremor in her voice. There was no shame in her eyes. Alone
in her chamber on the night of Maurice's confession she had flushed and
trembled. Now she stood before him and made this great acknowledgement
simply and fearlessly. And yet she knew that he did not love her with
the desire of man to the woman whom he chooses out of the world to be
his companion. She was moved by a resolve that was very great to ignore
all that girls think most of at such a moment. Maurice took a step
towards her. How true and how strong she looked.
"I dare not ask you to share my life," he said. "It is too shadowed, too
sad. I have not the right."
"If you will ask me, I will share it."
She put her hand into his. He felt as if her soul lay in it. They walked
on. Already the evening was dark around them.
Canon Alston was a little surprised, merely because he was a father, and
fathers are always a little surprised when men love their children. But
he liked Maurice heartily and gave his consent to the marriage. Miss
Bigelow ordered a valuable wedding-present, and resolved to live until
over the marriage day at least. And Brayfield gossiped and gloried in
possessing a legitimate cause for excitement.
As for Lily, she was strangely happy with a happiness far different from
that of the usual betrothed young girl. She loved Maurice deeply.
Nevertheless she did not blind herself to the fact that he was still
unhappy, restless, self-engrossed and often terror-stricken, although he
tried to appear more confident than of old, and to assume a gaiety
suitable to his situation in the eyes of the world. She knew he could
never be entirely free to love so long as the cry of the child rang in
his ears. And he told her that, strangely enough, since their engagement
it had become more importunate. Once he even tried to break their
contract.
"I cannot link my life with another's," he said desperately. "Who
knows--when you are one with me, you may be haunted as I am. That would
be too horrible."
It was a flash of real and heartfelt unselfishness. Lily felt herself
thrill with gratitude. But she only said:
"I am not afraid."
On another occasion--this was about a month after they became
engaged--Maurice said:
"Lily, when shall we be married?"
She glanced up at him, and saw that he was paler even than usual, and
that his face looked drawn with fatigue.
"Whenever you wish," she answered.
"Let it be soon," he said. And then he broke out almost despairingly:
"I cannot bear this much longer. Lily, what can it mean? There is
something too strange. Ever since you and I have been betrothed the
curse that is laid upon me has been heavier, the cry of the child has
been more incessantly with me. I hear it more plainly. It is nearer to
me. It is close to me. In the night sometimes I start up thinking the
child is even beside me on the pillow, complaining to me in the
darkness. I stretch out my hand. I feel for its little body. But there
is nothing--nothing but that cry of fear, of pain, of eternal reproach.
Why does the spirit persecute me now as it never persecuted me before?
Is it because it believes that you will make me happier? Is it because
it wishes to deny me all earthly joy? Sometimes I think that, once we
are actually husband and wife the cry will die away. Sometimes I think
that then it will never leave me even for a moment. If that were so,
Lily, I should die, or I should lose my reason."
He covered his face with his hands. He was trembling. Lily put her soft
hand against his hands. A great light had come into her eyes as he
spoke.
"Let us be married, Maurice," she said. "Perhaps the little child wants
me."
He looked up at her and his dark eyes seemed to pierce her, hungry for
help.
"Wants you?" he said. "How can that be? No, no. It cries against my
thought of happiness, against my desire for peace."
"We must give it peace. We must lay it to rest."
"No one can do that. If I have not the power to redeem my deed of
wickedness, how can you, how can any one living redeem it for me?"
Lily looked away from him. Her cheeks were burning with a blush. A
tingling fire seemed to run through all her veins and her pulses beat.
"There is some way of redemption for every one," she said.
But he answered gloomily:
"Your religion teaches you to say that, Lily, perhaps to believe it. But
there is no way. The dead cannot return to earth that we may give them
tenderness instead of our former cruelty. No--no!"
"Maurice--trust me. Let us be married--soon."
That night, before she went to bed, Lily knelt down and prayed until the
night was old. She asked what thousands of women have asked since the
world was young. But surely never woman before had so strange a reason
for her request. And when at length she rose from her knees she felt
that time must bring the gift she had prayed for, unselfishly, and with
her whole heart.
A month afterwards, on a bright spring morning, Maurice and Lily were
married. It was a great occasion for Brayfield. The church was
elaborately decorated by the many young ladies who had secretly longed
to be the brides of the interesting doctor. Crowds assembled within and
without the building. Miss Bigelow rose from her fourteenth death-bed in
a purple satin gown and a bonnet prodigious with feathers and testified
to the possibility of modern resurrection in a front pew. Flowers, rice,
wedding marches filled the air. But people remarked that the bridegroom
looked like a man who went in fear. Even when he was on the doorstep of
the church in the throng of curious sightseers he moved almost as one
whom a dream attends, who sees the pale figures, who hears the faint
voices that inhabit and make musical a vision of the night. The bride
too, had no radiant air of a young girl fulfilling her girlish destiny
and giving herself up to a protector, to one stronger, more able to
fight the world than a woman who loves and fears. Her face, too, was
pale and grave, even--some thought--a little stern. As she passed up the
church she glanced at no one, smiled at no friend. Her eyes were set
steadfastly towards the altar where Maurice waited. And when, after the
ceremony, she came down the church to the sound of music her eyes were
fixed on her husband. She took no heed of any one else, for her hand
pressed upon his arm, felt that he was trembling. And her ears seemed to
hear through all the jubilant music, through all the murmur of the
gazing crowd, a cry, far away, yet more distinct than any sound of
earth, thin, piercing, full of appeal to her--the spirit-cry of the
child.