There are those who think that they have seen the face of her whom men
call Tragedy. They see an old man, and his quivering lips are still
whispering the name of her whom they used to touch so passionately. In
his trembling hand is a letter, faded, brown, tear-stained. He reads and
reads, though he might have thrown it away thirty years ago, and not a
word would have been lost, so deeply are they cut in his heart. “Look!”
say they, “he is praying still for her return,” and the colonel would
start in fright, so sure would he be that they had seen him. “Surely,”
say they, “this is Tragedy.” It is not. It is her cousin, Hope.
They see a woman, and she, too, is waiting, but the man stands by her
side. Each of her myriad dreams used to fly to him; now they cannot; they
are dead. They are dead, and so is he—the man she loved—tho’ many years
after she is buried, his pulse will be strong and his step elastic. A
catafalque, gilded, perhaps, but within a dead thing lies—a human heart,
and it is her husband! It used to beat for her joyfully in the days when
she needed it sorely, but, oh, not so sorely as now! It will never thrill
for her again. Then these wise men look up and say: “Love has died, and
yet his body remains unburied. Is not this Tragedy?” It is not. It is but
an older sister.
They follow the tracks of one who has fled far back into the blackest
cavern of the darkest woods, fled with a little babe in her arms, fled
to hide her shame. Its father is not there, though he swore never so
faithlessly to be a loyal lover, and then a loving husband to her who
holds the little one in her arms, kissing it, and then despising it, and
then kissing it again and again. She loves this child of shame while
he—he breaks the vows which once he intended to keep. Then the wise men
turn and say: “Truth is dead and will not live until God awakes and
asks Lucifer who defiled this lily of His own garden in the pool of his
passion. Is not this Tragedy?” It is not, but it is her shadow. She is
near now. Come and see her form.
Runs a boy, blowing kisses to the butterflies, and teaching the honey
bees where to search for the flowers, whence the sweetest nectar may be
drawn. Thus clearly has he discovered all else save her who is seeking
him. Lo! He is a youth now, and daily he hears her whisperings in his
ears, and sometimes so close does she come that her gentle touch may be
felt on his cheek, and her soft fingers rest lightly on his shoulder.
Many years he lived, but love came not into his life. At last he is
white-haired and knows—that he is old. His gasp and his heavy breathing,
his pulse—they are feeling it anxiously. They know that it is taking two
steps backward and one forward. They need not feel his brow nor his feet.
They, too, at last are cold. Then they say: “This is Tragedy! A man dying
who has never seen love—surely this is Tragedy!”
It is.
Such were the thoughts of Colonel Masters as, with a slow and halting
gait, he had wandered down to the burnt district and reached the Battery,
now overgrown with weeds. The great game was over! With the hand of a
past master, he had played his cards—and lost. Was it his fault?
So now, when his plans were in ruins and his eyes in tears, when his
heart was breaking, and his back bending low beneath the burden of
accumulating toils, he murmured slowly:
“Return ye, O memories; return ye and quickly come like a whisper of
God from His far off garden of joy! Die not in all the years that shall
elapse before I shall burn new kisses upon new lips—kisses long feigned
and passion-wrapt, nor let your spirit of love grow dim, nor your spirit
of power abate! Come ye, as in time past, ye have come—sweeping away the
clouds that gather over the head of earth’s lonely pilgrim, stilling the
breakers that form in madness on life’s reefs, hushing the storms that
roar and howl and threaten in the darkness! Still may ye come, ye echoes
of the voice of God, bidding me be true, pleading with me to hope and
trust, gently lifting my thoughts to the blue empyrean above, where there
shall be no more night!”
“Colonel Masters!”
He looked up in astonishment.
“I have been looking for you all over the city, sir,” the young telegraph
boy explained.
With trembling hand the white-haired editor took the brown message. His
lips quivered as he tore it open. Would it be some new sorrow?
Col. Masters, Charleston, S. C.:
Columbia razed. The Cause is lost. Father killed in battle.
HELEN.
“Oh, God, it is not true—it cannot be true!” The massive form of the
great man shook as a tower that is falling, and his face seemed to be
fast taking on the lines of the ghastly few who survived the black hole
of Calcutta.
“Forgive me, Colonel, but we read the message at the office!”
In his soul, the rosy-lipped dawn was kissing away the dewy tears of a
long, weary night, and Ioskeha had claimed Attacoa.
But the boy was looking at him in amazement. Great wells of joy were
evidently springing up in his heart. A new man was being formed before
the lad’s eyes. Slowly the stature increased; the stoop of the shoulders
that had labored despairingly disappeared. Only a deadly pallor told of
the past.
“Go!” he cried to the lad. “Quick, go!”
Then he leaned heavily against the twisted iron rail of the Battery
promenade, that some cannon ball had struck spitefully.
“It is a lie,” he said, slowly, but his face was burnished with joy.
“It’s too good to be true!”
How long had seemed the waiting till God should shift the scene! And
how vain the straining of the eyes for the faintest movement of the
proscenium! He had used to think as a student that he understood how slow
the Unchanging One was in doing things, but he had not then put it away
in his heart, nor meditated over it in sorrow. He had almost ceased to
expect another act, though he believed in it, and it hurt him when the
curtain quivered as if it were lifting at last.
Sometimes he wished he knew that the play was over altogether and that
he was on the untrodden way homeward; but when the melancholia passed he
heard distinctly the rumble of the scenery behind the curtain, and it was
as if the footlights were already aglow. Once there had been music while
he waited. It was when Helen, her daughter, came to visit Charleston.
Yet her coming would only add tragedy to the denouement. It introduced
another complication into a play already tangled, but it lightened the
burden of his accumulating toils.
Now at last the curtain had risen and the final scheme stood revealed.
The old actors who had begun the play with him had all vanished save one,
and the stage was almost empty. The chairs were there—vacant—chairs that
other playgoers had loved in previous acts. He, almost alone, had been
chosen by the great Playwright, to live and be, and perhaps triumph.