Let us not attempt the picture of Isabel keeping the happy guise of a
wedding guest among her kindred and childhood playmates while her heart
burned with perpetual misery, yearning, and alarm. "My baby, my baby!"
cried her breast, while the babe slept sweetly under faultless care.
Nor need we draw a close portrait of her husband's mind, if mind it
could longer be called. A horror of sleep, a horror of being awake and
aware, remorse, phantoms, voices, sudden blazings of wrath as suddenly
gone, sweating panics, that craven care of life which springs so rank as
the soul decays, and a steady, cunning determination to keep whole the
emptied shell of reputation and rank,--these were the things that filled
his hours by day, by night; these, and a frightful expectance of one
accusing, child-claiming ghost that never came. The air softened to
Indian summer; the ice faded off the pool; a million leaves, crimson and
bronze, scarlet and gold, dropped tenderly upon its silvering breadth
and lay still; and both the joyless master of the larger house and the
merry maid of the cottage asked Heaven impatiently if the pond would
never freeze over again.
It was Saturday afternoon when Giles, asked by Sarah Stebbens where Mr.
Arthur was, told her he was again, as he had been so many times the last
three days, down by the water, sitting at the edge of the overhanging
bank; or, as the Englishman expressed it, "'dreamink the 'appy hours
aw'y.'" So the week passed out; a second came in, and the rector of All
Angels went to his sacred office.
He knew, before he appeared in the chancel, that Mrs. Morris was in her
accustomed place, and Ruth and her father in theirs, and that Leonard
was not yet reported back nor looked for; but exactly as he began to
read, "'Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us, in sundry
places, to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness, and
that we should not dissemble nor cloak them before the face of Almighty
God our heavenly Father'"--a sickness filled Mrs. Morris's frame, a
deathly hue overspread the minister's face, and Leonard came in and sat
beside his father and sister.
Yet the service went on. The people knelt.
"'Almighty and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy
ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires
of our own hearts'"--
Thus far the rector's voice had led, but here it sank, and the old
General's, in a measure, took its place.
Then it rose again, in the confession, "There is no health in us," and
in the supplication, "Have mercy upon us, miserable offenders."
There once more it failed, while the people, faltering with distress,
repeated, "That we may hereafter lead a godly, righteous, and sober
life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen."
At this the farmer with the spectacled daughter stepped nimbly over the
rail and caught Arthur as he rose and staggered. Leonard was hurrying
forward, and half the people kneeling, half standing, when Mrs. Morris
vacantly stopped his way with a face so aghast and words so confused
that he had to give her over to Ruth. Then he hastened on to where
Arthur was being led into the vestry by his physician and others.
But now he was turned back by the doctor, requesting him to dismiss the
congregation; which he did, with the physician's assurance that the
trouble was no more than vertigo, and that Arthur was even now quite
able to proceed home in the farmer vestryman's rockaway. The people
noticed that the physician went with him.
Mrs. Morris followed on foot with the farmer's daughter, and with Ruth
and the General, and Leonard went into town to telegraph Isabel, in her
mother's name, to come home. As he was starting, Mrs. Morris drew Ruth
aside and whispered something about Godfrey. To which Ruth softly
replied, with an affectionate twist in her smile, "It couldn't hurry
him; he's already on the way."
In the room next that in which her son-in-law lay asleep under anodynes
the little mother's odd laugh was turned all to moan. "Oh!--ho--ho!" she
sighed in solitude, "if Arthur could have learned from Godfrey how to
wait, or even if Isabel could but have learned from Ruth how to keep one
waiting!"
She paused at a window that looked over the garden and into the street.
Leonard passed. She turned quickly away, only sighing again,
"Oh!--ho--ho!" Her thought might have been kinder had she known he was
stabbing himself at every step with blame of all this woe.
"I ought to have foreseen," was his constant silent cry. "I am the one
who ought to have foreseen."
Lack of Sunday trains and two failures to connect kept Isabel from
arriving until nightfall of the third day, Wednesday. Arthur knew Mrs.
Morris had telegraphed for her; but to him that was only part of the
play under which he thought he and she were hiding the frightful truth.
On this day he had so outwitted his village physician as to be given the
freedom for which he ravened; liberty to take the air in his garden, as
understood by the doctor, but by him liberty to stand guard down at the
edge of that dark pool which would not freeze over,--liberty to take an
air sweet with the odors of the parting year, but crowded also with
distended eyes and strangling groans.
He was down there in the early starlight when Ruth drove softly into the
garden, bringing Isabel. Warily the mother came out into the pillared
porch, and silently received the house's mistress into her arms.
"He doesn't know," she said. "I couldn't tell him till you should come,
for fear of disappointing him."
The argument seemed strained, but no one said so, and with a whispered
good-night Ruth drove away, and the two went in. As they stole upstairs
they debated how Isabel had best reveal herself. "I'm terribly afraid
that won't work, blessing," said Mrs. Morris; "you'd better let me break
it to him, first."
"No, dearie, I don't think so. I haven't the shadow of a fear"--
"Oh, my darling child, you never have!"
"But I know him so well, mother. We have only to come unexpectedly face
to face and--Oh, I've seen the effect so often!" They entered her room
whispering: "I'll change this dress for the one he last saw me in, and
stand over here by the crib where I stood then, and--Oh, sweet Heaven!
is this my little flower sleeping just as I left her?" With clasped
hands and tearful eyes she bent over the child.