BECAUSE SHE WAS A WOMAN
The blessed change in the weather came on apace. The sultry air softened
and became more life-giving. Folk moved into the open, sat out upon the
steps of the front galleries, rich and poor alike, willing to take the
air. There was an unusual silence, an unwonted scarcity of callings back
and forth across the fences. The people of the town did not care to
revive the memories of the last two days.
But the narrow little porch in front of the millinery shop on Mulberry
Street held no occupant. There was a light within, but the blinds were
close drawn. None who passed could hear any sound.
Aurora Lane had sat for hours, almost motionless, at the side of the
table where customarily she worked. She made no pretense to read in her
Bible now. Her little white bed was unrumpled by any pressure of her
body bowed at its side in prayer, although it was her hour now for these
things.
She was trying to think. Her mind had been crushed. She sat dazed. It
seemed to her an age since these women--these strangely kind-hearted,
newly charitable women--had been here. Or, had she only dreamed that
they were here? Had it been a passage of angels she herself had
witnessed here?
She had told Miss Julia not to let Don come to see her just yet. So,
though she had heard the great news of his release, she had not met him.
"I'll have to think, Julia," she said. "I don't know what I'll do. I
must be alone."
The window of her shop was still unmended. The red hat which had been so
long, in one redressing or another, the sign of her wares, now was bent
and broken beyond all possibility of restoration. The walls were bare,
the furniture was broken. It was wreck and ruin that lay about her, as
dully she still was conscious.
Twenty years of it--and this was the climax! What place was there left
for her in all the world? As she sat, hour after hour, alone, Aurora
Lane was thinking of the dark pool under the bridge, of how cool and
comforting it might be. Her bosom rose, torn now and then with deep,
slow sobs, like the ground swell of a sea moved by some vast, remote,
invisible cause. She had been sobbing thus for some twenty-four hours.
She had not moved about very much today in her household, had not often
left her chair here at the table. The mob had destroyed most of her
pitiful store of gear, so there was small choice left her.
Somewhere she had found, deep down in a trunk tray, an old and faded
garment, its silken sleeves so worn that the creases were now open--a
blouse which she had put away long, long ago--twenty years and more ago.
She wore it as best she might; and over the neck where the silk was gone
she had cast a white shawl, also of silk, a thing likewise come down,
treasured, from her meager girlhood days. This would serve her, so she
thought, until she could find heart to go to bed and endeavor to find
sleep.... Yes. They may have been of her own mother's wedding finery.
Yes. Perhaps she one day had planned they might be parts of her own
wedding gear.... But she had had no wedding.
She had done her hair, with Miss Julia's weeping aid, as simply as might
be--as she had when she was younger. It lay now in long, heavy, deep
rolls, down the nape of her white neck, along the sides of her head,
covering her little ears, still shapely. Her face was white as death,
but still it held traces in its features, sharpened and refined, of what
once was a tender and joyous beauty of its own--a beauty now high and
spiritual. In her time Aurora Lane had been known far and wide as a very
beautiful girl; self-willed, yes; wild--but beautiful. She did not
remember these things now, not in the least; and there was no mirror
left unbroken in the place.
The evening waxed on, approaching nine of the clock, at which time good
folk began to turn up the porch chairs against the wall so that the
rain might not hurt them if it came, and to draw back into the stuffy
rooms and to prepare for the use of the stuffy beds. Fathers of families
now drank deeply at the pitcher of ice water left on the center table.
One little group after another, visible here and there on the porches or
the stairs along the little street, lessened and gradually disappeared.
One by one the lights went out all over the town. By ten o'clock the
town would have settled down to slumber. It was Monday, and on Monday
night not even the most ardent swains frequent hammocks or front parlors
at an hour so late as ten o'clock in our town, Saturday night and the
Lord's day being more especially set apart for these usages.
But the light in Aurora Lane's house still burned. She did not know how
late it was. The clock on the mantel was silent, for it had been broken
by the men who had been there the night before. She sat motionless as a
woman of stone. Not even her boy was there--not even Miss Julia was
there. She was alone--with her future, and with her past.
It must have been toward midnight when at length Aurora Lane raised her
head, turned a little. She had heard a sound! A sharp pang of terror
caught at her--sheer, unreasoning terror. Were they coming again? But
no, it was not the sound of many footfalls, not the sound of many
voices.
What came to her now was a single sound, not made up of others--a low,
definite sound. And it was not at her door in front--it was at the side
of the house--it was at her window!
It was a slight sound--a sort of tapping rhythmically repeated--a
signal!
Aurora Lane stopped breathing--her heart stopped in her bosom. The face
was icy white which she turned toward the window back of which she heard
this sound, this signal. She thought she had gone mad. She believed that
at last her mind had broken under all the trials that had been heaped
upon it. Then her eyes began to move about, startled, like those of a
wild deer, seeking which way to leap.
It seemed to her she heard now another sound in addition, a sort of low
call, a word.... Yes, it was her name:
"Aurora! Aurora!"
What could it mean? It was some visitor come there in insult--it could
be no more than that. And yet what impiousness, what mockery! Because,
what she heard, she had heard before! It had been twenty years since,
and more--but she had heard it then.
Resolved suddenly to brave the worst, whatever it might be, she rose and
swiftly stepped to the side door which made out upon the narrow yard.
A man was standing near the door, now turning away from the window--a
tall man, slouching down like an old man.
"Who's there?" she cried, intending to call out aloud to give the alarm,
but failing to raise her voice above a whisper, such was her fear. Yes,
it was someone come here to offer yet another insult.
But the man came into the field of light which shone around her through
the door--came closer, reaching out his hands to her. She heard him
struggling with his own voice, trying to speak. At last: "Aurora!
Aurora! Let me in! Will you let me in?"
She threw open the door so that the light might come. But it was late.
The town slept. No one saw the light. No one saw the man who entered her
door.
He came on slowly, bending down, groaning, almost sobbing, it seemed to
her. He entered the room, sank down into a chair. He was that pitiable
thing, a man with his nerves set loose by cataclysm of the emotions.
Not less than this had William Henderson met this day. It had shortened
actually his physical stature, had altered every line in his face. He
was twenty years and more older now than when she had seen him last. In
one short day William Henderson had burned down to a speck in the cosmic
plan. He had learned for himself how little is any man. And vanity torn
out by the roots--a megalomaniac egotism done away by a capital
operation--a life-long self-content, an ingrown selfishness, all
wrenched out at once--that sort of thing takes its toll in the doing.
William Henderson was paying his debts all at once--with interest
accrued, as Hod Brooks had said to him. It was an old, old, ashen-faced
man who turned to her at last, as he came into the little lighted room.
Neither had spoken since he came within. The door now was closed back of
him. No one without could have any inkling of what went on within this
little room.... The drawn curtains ... the low light ... the man ... the
woman ... midnight! All which had been here twenty years before for
setting, that same now was here! And if there was ruin now of what here
once was fresh and fair, if ruin lay about them now, who had wrought
that ruin?
... Yes, it had been here. It was at this very place--when she was just
starting, struggling, young--all the vague, soft, mysterious, compelling
impulses of youth and life just now hers--so strange, so strong, so
sweet, so ineffable, so indispensable, so little understood....
That had been his signal! And when he had rapped before--when he was
young and comely, not old and ashen--she could no more have helped
opening the door than the white wisps from the cottonwoods could cease
to pass upon the air in their ancient seeking, blown by the spirit of
life, coming from thither, passing thence, under an impulse soft, sweet,
gentle, unsought but irresistible.
"Will!" she said at length. "Will, what's wrong? What have you done?
What does this mean?" In some sense, swiftly, the past seemed back
again, its twenty years effaced, so that she thought in terms of other
days.
He raised his head. "What, you speak to me? You said 'Will'? Oh, Aurie,
Aurie, don't!--I can't stand it. I'm not good enough for this."
"What's happened?" she insisted. "Why are you here?"
He sat, his lips loosely working now, his eyes red, his face flabby, his
gray hair tumbled on his temples. It was as though all life's excesses
and indulgences had culminated and taken full revenge on him in this one
day.
"And you can say that to me?" he murmured. It was very difficult for him
to talk. He was broken--he was gone--he was just an old man--a shell, a
rim, a ruin of a man, now seeing himself as he actually had been all
these years--God knows, a pitiable sight, that, for many and many a man
of us all.
"I'm--I'm afraid, Will! Last night--it broke me, someway--I don't think
much more can happen.... I can't think--I can't pull together,
someway.... I was going down to the bridge tonight.... But I thought of
Don."
"But you couldn't think of _me_, Aurora?--Have you ever, in all these
years?"
She made him no answer at all.
"No. You could only hate the thought of me," he said. "What a coward
I've been, what a cur! Ah, what a coward I've been all these years!"
"I wish you wouldn't, Will," she said. Dazed, troubled, she was trying
to think in terms of the present; trying, as she had said, to pull
together. "You are Don's father.... Well, you were a man, Will," she
added, sighing. "I was only a woman."
She had neither sarcasm nor resentfulness in her words. It was simply
what she had learned by herself, in her own life, without any great
horizon in the world.
"It was pretty hard sometimes," said she, after a time, slowly. "I had
to contrive so much. Putting the boy through college--it began to cost
more the last four years--so much more than we had supposed it would.
You know, sometimes I was almost----" She flushed and paused.
"What was it, Aurie?"
"At one time not long ago, the bills were so large that we had to
pay--it was so hard to get the money, I was almost on the point of going
to you--for him, you know--and to ask you for a little help. But that's
all over now."
"Oh, I ought to have come through--I ought to have owned it all up!"
"Yes, Will, you ought."
"Why did you keep it--why didn't you name me? I always thought, for a
long time, that you would, that you must."
"I don't know. Don't ask me anything. But at least, Don's out now. Thank
God! he's clear--he's innocent, and they all know it now. They can't
keep him down, can they? He won't have as hard a time as I've had? He'll
succeed, won't he? He must, after it all!"
"Yes," said the man, shaking as in a palsy, "after it all, he ought to,
and I pray he may." But he could talk no more.
"And he's such a fine boy! I don't see how you could----"
"How I could disown him? Yesterday?"
She nodded. "I can't understand that. I never could. I can't see how you
could hesitate. I--I wish you hadn't. I--I can't forgive that." Her
voice rose slightly at last, a spot of color came into her pallid cheek.
"I didn't have the courage to come through square, and that's the truth
about it. I've never had, all along. Maybe a man doesn't have the same
feeling that a woman does about a child--I don't know. But I was worse
than the average man--more selfish. I got caught up in politics, in
business. Success?--well, I saw how hard it is. I thought I had to keep
down the past. Well, it's over now. But as for you----"
"I lived it down for a good many years. Don's twenty-two now."
"But how could you keep that secret--what made you? Why didn't you go
into court and force me to do my duty to my own flesh and blood--and to
you?"
"I don't know," she answered. "I told you, I don't know. Maybe I was
proud. Maybe I thought I'd wait till you shamed your own self into
coming. I'm glad you've come now, at last. I don't know--maybe I thought
some day you would."
"I'm not Judge Henderson!" he broke out bitterly. "I'm Arthur
Dimmesdale! I ought to be in the pillory, on the gallows, before this
town. I'm a thief and a coward, and I deserve no pity, neither of man
nor of God himself. You've carried all the blame, when I was the one to
blame. And I can't see why you didn't tell, Aurie--what made you keep it
all a secret?"
"I don't know," said she simply again. "I don't know. It seemed--it
seemed somehow to me--_sacred_--what was between us! It was--Don! I have
never told anyone. I was waiting, hoping you'd come--for your own sake.
Why should I rob you of your chance?"
"Thank God that you did keep the secret!" he broke out at length. "It's
all the chance I have left to be a man. At least I'll confess the
truth."
"Why, Will, what do you mean? I'll never tell. I told you I wouldn't--I
swore I wouldn't.
"I'll be going away before long, Will," she added. "I can't stay here
now. I suppose Don and I will go away somewhere. I'm glad he's found a
good girl. Ah!--Anne, she's splendid.... I'm not going to make any
objections to his marrying _her_. And, you see, I'll know that you came
here. And some time he will know--who was his father. He doesn't, yet.
In justice, some time he will. God will attend to that, not any of us."
"All the world shall know it, Aurora!" said the man at her side. "I saw
them a little while ago, walking together. He was listening to the
drums. He was looking at the Flag--and so was she. They are up at my
house now. They're happy. God bless them."
"But they don't know--you've not told?"
"No, I've been walking out in the country--all evening. I was up
there--on the road to the Calvary Cemetery. I'm going to tell Don the
truth tomorrow.
"But look at your house--your poor little home." He cast about him a
gaze which took in the ruin that had been made of all her belongings.
"Oh, my God, Aurora! It was my own fault. It was _I_ who made that mob a
possible thing. And you were a good woman. You've been a good woman all
the time. I never knew before what a splendid thing a woman can be.
Why--strong!... And you called me 'Will' just now. What made you do
that?"
"I don't know," said Aurora Lane. "I suppose a woman never does quite
forget the--the first man of--of her life."
"But how sweet it all was," he broke out, "in spite of it all, in spite
of everything! Oh, Aurie, don't you remember when I'd come and tap there
on the window--and you'd come and let me in? I don't deserve even that
memory ... a woman like you--and a man like me. But I can't forget it.
And you let me come in now--that's my one last joy left for all my life.
Why, it's the one thing I can never think of again without a shudder.
Yes, I've come without your asking--and you--you've let me in.
"Aurie," he went on, "that's what leaves me so helpless. I know what I
deserve--but I don't want to be despised.... I want more than I deserve!
I've always had more than I deserved. It's about all any man can say.
It's life itself, I suppose. I don't know what it is. But, Aurie, Aurie,
I do see a thousand things now I never saw before."
She still sat, white, dumb. Only, now, her head began to move, slowly,
from side to side. He caught the evidence of negative, and a new
resolution came to him at last.
"Let it all go!" he said at length--and now indeed he was on his knees
at her side. "What I have lost is nothing. I'll never ask for office
until I have lived here twenty years, openly, as you have. I must have
loved you! I did--I do! I do! I wish I were fit to love you now.
Because, in twenty years more.... The years pass, Aurie. Won't they
pass? My sentence----"
His gray head was bent down low in her lap now, as her son's had been at
this very place but a day before. Her hands--hands stained with needle
work, rough on the finger ends, the taper gone there into a little
square--were the same long shapely hands that had touched his hair at
another time. The eyes that looked down at him now under long, soft,
dark lashes were the same. But they were more brooding--tender, yes, but
more sad, more wise. There was no passion in her gaze, in her touch.
What was hatred or revenge to her?
His face was hid deep in his hands as he knelt. It lay there in that
haven, the lap of woman, the place of forgiveness--and of hope, as some
vague memory seemed to say to him. Indeed, all the wisdom and all the
mercy and all the hope of a world or of a universe of worlds were in the
low voice of Aurora Lane as she stroked back his hair--the gray hair of
an old man, who knelt beside her. It was the ancient pitying instinct of
woman that was in her touch. Hardly she knew she touched him, so
impersonal was it all to her.
"Will, you poor boy, you poor boy! Oh, poor boy!" He heard her voice
once more. Suddenly he raised his head, he sprang up, he stood before
her.
"You do forgive me!" A sort of triumph was in the eager note of his
voice. "You say 'poor boy!' You do forgive me!" He advanced toward her.
But Aurora also had risen quickly. Now, suddenly, some shock came to
her, vivifying, clarifying. The needle of her heart swung on the dial of
Today.
"Forgive you!" she exclaimed, her color suddenly gone high. "Forgive
you--what do you mean?--what do you _mean_?"
"You said you pitied me----"
"Pity you, yes, I do. I'm sorry for you from the bottom of my heart. I'd
be sorry to see any man go through what you've got to face. Yes, _pity_
you--but--love you? What do you mean? Is that what you mean? _Respect_
you--is that what you mean? Oh, no! Oh, no! Use for you, in any way in
the world?--Oh, no! Oh, no! Don't mistake. _Pity_--that's all! Don't I
know what it means to descend into hell? And that's what you must do."
"But, Aurie--Aurie--you just said----"
"I said I was sorry for you, and so I am, in all my heart. But he's our
boy. I've paid my share in anguish. So must you."
"Haven't I? Haven't I?"
"Not yet! You're only beginning. It takes twenty years.--Oh, not of
hidden and secret repentance--but _open_ repentance, before all the
world! And square living. And your prayer to God each night for twenty
years for understanding and forgiveness!
"Go out and earn it," she said, walking to the door and opening it.
"Pity?--yes. Love? No--no--_no_! I've no use for you. I don't need you
now. My boy doesn't need you--we're able to stand alone. We've
_succeeded_! You? You're a failure--you're a broken-down, used-up,
hopeless failure--so much, I'm sorry for you, sorry.
"You didn't really think I'd ever take you back, did you, Will?" she
went on, eager to be fair even now. "I was only _sorry_ for you, that's
all. God knows, I'm sorry for any human being, woman or man, that has to
go through hell as I have. Twenty years? That'll leave you old, Will.
But--go serve it, in this town, as I have! And God have mercy on your
soul!"
She flung the door yet wider, and stumbling, he began to grope toward
it. The black wall of the night lay beyond.
Slowly the color faded from the cheeks of the woman now left alone yet
again. She sank down, crumpling, white, her face marble clear, her eyes
staring straight ahead at what picture none may ask. Then, as the white
column of her throat fluttered again, she beat one hand slightly
against the other, ere she crushed them both together in her lap, ere
she flung them wide above her.
"God! God!" cried Aurora Lane. "If it wasn't right, why did He say,
'Suffer little children'? It was in the Book ... little ... little
children ... the Kingdom of Heaven!"
It was more than an hour before she, too, rose and, stepping toward the
door, looked out again into the night. A red light showed here or there.
Homes--the homes of our town.
By Emerson Hough
The Broken Gate
The Man Next Door
The Magnificent Adventure
Let Us Go Afield
Out of Doors
The Story of the Cowboy
The Girl at the Halfway House