Night had fallen, dull, black, the sky overhung with great masses of
heavy clouds. Like a ghost of herself Marie sat staring out of the
window into the depths of the deserted garden. Still, calm with the
calmness that comes after storm, her unseeing eyes gazed straight
ahead of her. How long she had sat there she knew not. She was
filled with that curious, numb quiet that comes to one when all fear,
all hate, all terror has departed. She was resigned to anything fate
might decree for her.
When she had told Gerome all the bitter truth, he had left her
without a word. Later she had heard vague shuffling sounds in the
hall, the closing of the outer door, his steps crunching on the
gravel. Her staring eyes had tried vainly to pierce the velvet
blackness outside the window. Instinctively she knew what errand had
taken him out into the garden. She could almost hear the thud of
earth falling on the dead face of Von Pfaffen.
The guns still muttered and boomed, lighting the black horizon with
sullen, intermittent flashes. As she sat waiting her whole brief
life unfolded before her. The years at the convent, her unhappiness,
her struggles with poverty, the tragedy, as she saw it now, of her
lost honor, her escape from it all, the new, peaceful life, and then
the coming of wonderful happiness, the happiness of requited love,
the culmination of which was the knowledge that she was to be the
mother of Gerome's child. She knew that, although she had drained
the cup of bitterness and misery to its very dregs, still the
pendulum had swung as far the other way. She had had those few short
months of supreme joy. The price had been a heavy one. But in the
light of retrospection she knew that it was worth it.
Far into the night she sat thinking, dreaming, staring out into the
blackness. Then she heard Gerome's step again on the path, heard him
stumble in the darkness of the hall. After a moment he came in and
sank heavily into a chair. The clouds had lifted, and an ominous red
moon had risen, and by its faint light she could see him sitting, his
chin in his hands. He was thinking, brooding, comparing. Almost as
though he spoke them aloud, she could follow his thoughts.
After the first bitter shock that had sent his idol crashing to earth
he had been shaken, frenzied, filled with a curse for God and man.
But Marie's voice, as she told him more of her story, had calmed him
in spite of himself, and some of the terrible rage and horror he had
felt had been laid with the body of his enemy in the grave he had dug
in the garden. Alone, by the side of that little mound he had
battled with himself, fought as great a fight with his soul as that
being waged by his country. It became plain to him that in a small
way his problem with this woman who was his wife reflected the mighty
struggle going on outside, which was to decide the destiny of
nations. It was as though he stood apart and looked down from some
height on a warring world. Clearly the great issues that were at
stake rose before him, this terrible war, which was to bring about
perpetual peace, establishing now and forever the brotherhood of men,
which was to build anew mankind and the arts of civilization, was a
baptism of blood out of which would arise a new creation. Through
the vision he became aware of the smallness of all things else.
Marie, sitting silently in the chair by the window, timidly broke
into his revery, hesitatingly, as one who fears to waken a dreamer.
"Gerome," she whispered, "Gerome!"
Across the silent garden, up from the distant horizon, came a louder
roll of guns, a fitful crash of bursting shells, and then silence.
He sat motionless, inert, as though he heard only his own thoughts,
as though he were deaf to outward sounds.
After a moment she began again:
"I had no one to tell me--no one to advise me. I was alone, more
alone than you can ever understand. At first just being happy was a
thing so wonderful, I clung to it, desired it above all else in the
world. But there was something more than that." Slowly he turned
his head toward her. She went on, her voice firmer, steadier, "I
realized that another life was to come into the world, for whose
happiness I would be responsible! The glory of it--your child!"
Across the mind of the man sitting motionless in his chair flashed
something of what she had suffered. This child, the symbol of the
love that had seemed so perfect! Perhaps it would be a daughter who
must be spared the sorrows, the privations, the lack of protection,
that had been her mother's undoing. He began to see more clearly
that in his first wild grief and disappointment in her he had failed
to fully understand. She had not succumbed to temptation. What she
had done had never attracted her. She had been like one who wanders
alone in a wilderness, and who falls a prey to wild beasts, or is
overcome by fatigue or hunger. That she had sinned was not her
fault, rather it was her misfortune. He became conscious again of
her voice, low, vibrant.
"In the beginning I withheld the truth from you because I feared to
lose your love. Then when I realized that a new life was to come
into the world, I could not bear that our child should know of its
mother's guilt. I tried to save it the bitterness that knowledge
would bring. Gerome, it was for that!"
His thoughts raced on. She had been tempted, then, not to shield
herself, but because of her great love for him, and to save one who
was wholly innocent, perhaps a lifetime of unhappiness. He listened
while she told him little by little of her starved life, her empty
childhood in the colorless walls of the convent, the far-between
visits of her father, of those short months of happiness in the
little house in the _Blumen Strasse_. Her voice shook a little when
she told of her father's illness and his death, and her terror at
facing the world penniless and alone. She went over all her short
life, her home with the kind old Schultzes, her struggles to find
employment, finally, her singing in the café, her meeting with her
evil genius.
Sitting there, touched by the soft moonlight, motionless, calm,
without a shadow of the tears that had so long been her refuge, she
told her story with the simple directness of a child.
Seeing her, hearing her story in its completeness, realizing some of
the pity that Christ must have felt for the penitent Magdalene, more
of the bitterness died in Gerome's heart. Had he not, in his blind
fury, judged too hastily this woman, whose weakness and ignorance had
made her the victim of unscrupulous force and who had kept her sin
secret through the generous motive of saving him and his unborn
child, sorrow, shame? Perhaps, after all, if regarded in its true
light, her soul was as pure as he had believed.
Secure in his own strength, firm in his own knowledge of right and
wrong, had he not condemned her too quickly?
The muttering of the guns on the distant horizon again reminded him
of the struggle his country was undergoing. If strength could
reproach weakness for being overwhelmed by a force greater than
itself, then Belgium, ravished, devastated, bleeding Belgium,
deserved the reproach of the world, rather than its pity.
The night was lifting; he looked at her silhouetted against the gray
square of the window. Her white dress was crumpled and torn, her
yellow hair hung loose over her shoulders. She seemed to him a
symbol of Belgium, ravished, buffeted, beaten.
The greater part of human unhappiness is the result of
misunderstanding. This terrible war, some of the horrors of which
were printed indelibly on his soul, had come because of the
misunderstanding that existed between man and his brother. Titanic
force in combat with Titanic force simply destroyed itself. If the
world was to endure, the great problems of man must be answered by
some other means. There would be a New Heaven and a New Earth to
take the place of those that had passed away. Out of the ashes of
this war must rise a new era. Old traditions were falling away.
Superstition with regard to the Divine Right of Kings, that Old Man
of the Sea, which mankind had carried on his back for so long,
retarding his efforts, using his strength and substance, would be
cast aside forever, and with the freedom of unimpeded, reborn youth,
man would rise to that plane of development which was to fulfill his
destiny.
Surely then, since the life and history of each individual was a
world in itself, he and this woman who was his wife could begin
again, awaken into a resurrection that would break the shackles of
prejudice and tradition and with that mutual understanding which
comes after such a storm as that through which they had passed, work
out their destinies with a more certain knowledge of the things in
life which really make for happiness.
He rose to his feet and came and stood before her. Silently she
waited, motionless, still. Her sentence was about to be pronounced.
She was ready.
"Listen," he said at last; "out there the old world is destroying
itself in a flood of fire and hate. Old ideals are passing away.
Ambition, greed, love, even hope itself is tottering into
nothingness."
Hopelessly she echoed his words.
"Nothingness!"
"Marie, I have been thinking all night, and because of the sorrow and
suffering through which I have gone, things seem clearer than ever
before. My rage has been terrible. My unhappiness almost
unbearable. When you told me what you had done, I thought life was
not worth living another day. I had determined that both of us must
die. But all that has passed away. After this great struggle which
is going on between the nations of the earth is over, something new
and better must come. Shall we be part of it, begin life afresh, and
see if, after all, there is not some happiness left for us?"
Her face was transfigured with a great light.
"You can say that to me?" she asked.
He took both her hands in his, his voice gentle, through his
suffering and hers.
"Shall there be a resurrection that shall be built on perfect
understanding?"
"Gerome," she whispered.
The vigil he had kept with his soul through this long and terrible
night, the task he had made for himself when he buried Von Pfaffen's
body in the garden, the knowledge of her ordeal, of her lifting of
herself above the weakness that had threatened to engulf her, the
strength that had made her confess when there had been no need of
confession, had shown him what the new life for both of them might
mean.
"A resurrection," he went on, "where it shall be clear that the world
can live only so long as love shall live."
She lifted her eyes to his.
"'Love shall wipe away all tears,'" she whispered, almost as though
she were uttering a prayer.
Gerome held her hands against his breast.
"You and I, dear," he said earnestly, "shall we start anew, and when
we reach the far horizon look back on this hour as a story that is
told? For to understand all is to forgive all!"
The traces of her bitter suffering were still on her face, but she
looked at him happily.
"An hour ago," she said softly, "I thought I had nothing left to live
for, but the doors of life are just opening. Look----" Together
they turned toward the window.
Toward the West, the clouds hung black and ominous, the last
draperies of departing night, from whence came the persistent thunder
of the guns, where men strove, destroying the old world in a hell of
blood and steel. But on the Eastern horizon, turning all the hills
to ruddy gold, was the rising sun.
Somewhere in a hidden thicket a bird twittered on its nest.
She looked up into his face, the light of her great love shining in
her eyes, and whispered almost as though it were a prophecy:
"I can see the light of a new day!"
THE END