THE TRAGEDY IN THE STORM.
Edward returned to Ilexhurst that evening conscious of a mental
uneasiness. He could not account for it except upon the hypothesis of
unusual excitement. His mind had simply failed to react. And yet to his
sensitive nature there was something more. Was it the conversation with
Eldridge and the sudden dissipation of his error concerning Gerald, or
did it date to the meeting in the club? There was a discord somewhere.
He became conscious after awhile that he had failed to harmonize with
his new acquaintances and that among these was Col. Montjoy. He seemed
to feel an ache as though a cold wind blew upon his heart. If he had not
made that unfortunate remark about the negro! He acquitted himself very
readily, but he could not forget that terrible silence. "I have great
sympathy for the negro," he had said. What he meant was that, secure in
her power and intelligence, her courage and advancement, the south could
safely concede much to the lower class. That is what he felt and
believed, but he had not said it that way. He would say it to-morrow to
Col. Montjoy and explain. Relief followed the resolution.
And then, sitting in the little room, which began to exert a strange
power over him, he reviewed in mind the strange history of the people
whose lives had begun to touch his. The man downstairs, sleeping off the
effects of the drug, taken to dull a feverish brain that had all day
struggled with new problems; what a life his was! Educated beyond the
scope of any single university, Eldridge had said, and yet a child, less
than a child! What romance, what tragedies behind those restless eyes!
And sleeping down yonder by the river in that eternal silence of the
city of the dead, the old lawyer, a mystery living, a mystery dead! What
a depth of love must have stirred the bosom of the man to endure in
silence for so many years for the sake of a fickle girl! What
forgiveness! Or was it revenge? This idea flashed upon Edward with the
suddenness of an inspiration. Revenge! What a revenge! And the woman,
was she living or dead? And if living, were her eyes to watch him,
Edward Morgan, and his conduct? Where was the father and why was the
grandfather ignorant or silent? Then he turned to his own problem. That
was an old story. As he sat dreaming over these things his eyes fell
upon the fragmentary manuscripts, and almost idly he began to read the
briefs upon them.
One was inscribed, "The Storm," and it seemed to be the bulkiest.
Opening it he began to read; before he knew it he was interested. The
chapter read:
"Not a zephyr stirred the expectant elms. They lifted their arms against
the starlit sky in shadowy tracery, and motionless as a forest of coral
in the tideless depths of a southern sea.
"The cloud still rose.
"It was a cloud indeed. It stretched across the west, far into north and
south, its base lost in the shadow, its upper line defined and advancing
swiftly, surely, flanking the city and shutting out the stars with its
mighty wings. Far down the west the lightning began to tear the mass,
but still the spell of silence remained. When this strange hush is
combined with terrific action, when the vast forces are so swift as to
outrun sound, then, indeed, does the chill of fear leap forth.
"So came on the cloud. Now the city was half surrounded, its walls
scaled. Half the stars were gone. Some of the flying battalions had even
rushed past!
"But the elms stood changeless, immovable, asleep!
"Suddenly one vivid, crackling, tearing, defending flash of intensest
light split the gloom and the thunder leaped into the city! It awoke
then! Every foundation trembled! Every tree dipped furiously. The winds
burst in. What a tumult! They rushed down the parallel streets and
alleys, these barbarians; they came by the intersecting ways! They
fought each other frantically for the spoils of the city, struggling
upward in equal conflict, carrying dust and leaves and debris. They were
sucked down by the hollow squares, they wept and mourned, they sobbed
about doorways, they sung and cheered among the chimneys and the
trembling vanes. They twisted away great tree limbs and hurled them far
out into the spaces which the lightning hollowed in the night! They
drove every inhabitant indoors and tugged frantically at the city's
defenses! They tore off shutters and lashed the housetops with the poor
trees!
"The focus of the battle was the cathedral! It was the citadel! Here was
wrath and frenzy and despair! The winds swept around and upward, with
measureless force, and at times seemed to lift the great pile from its
foundations. But it was the lashing trees that deceived the eye; it
stood immovable, proud, strong, while the evil ones hurled their
maledictions and screamed defiance at the very door of God's own heart.
"In vain. In a far up niche stood a weather-beaten saint--the warden.
The hand of God upheld him and kept the citadel while unseen forces
swung the great bell to voice his faith and trust amid the gloom!
"Then came the deluge, huge drops, bullets almost, in fierceness,
shivering each other until the street-lamps seemed set in driving fog
through which the silvered missiles flashed horizontally--a storm
traveling within a storm.
"But when the tempest weeps, its heart is gone. Hark! 'Tis the voice of
the great organ; how grand, how noble, how triumphant! One burst of
melody louder than the rest breaks through the storm and mingles with
the thunder's roar.
"Look! A woman! She has come, whence God alone may know! She totters
toward the cathedral; a step more and she is safe, but it is never
taken! One other frightened life has sought the sanctuary. In the grasp
of the tempest it has traveled with wide-spread wings; a great white sea
bird, like a soul astray in the depths of passion. It falls into the
eddy, struggles wearily toward the lights, whirls about the woman's head
and sinks, gasping, dying at her feet. The God-pity rises within her,
triumphing over fear and mortal anguish. She stands motionless a moment;
she does not take the wanderer to her bosom, she cannot! The winds have
stripped the cover from the burden in her arms! It is a child's coffin,
pressed against her bosom. The moment of safety is gone! In the next a
man, the seeming incarnation of the storm itself, springs upon her,
tears the burden from her and disappears like a shadow within a shadow!
"Within the cathedral they are celebrating the birth of Christ, without,
the elements repeat the scene when the veil of the temple was rended.
* * * * *
"The storm had passed. The lightning still blazed vividly, but silently
now, and at each flash the scene stood forth an instant as though some
mighty artist was making pictures with magnesium. A tall woman, who had
crouched, as one under the influence of an overpowering terror near the
inner door, now crept to the outer, beneath the arch, and looked
fearfully about. She went down the few steps to the pavement. Suddenly
in the transient light a face looked up into hers, from her feet; a face
that seemed not human. The features were convulsed, the eyes set. With a
low cry the woman slipped her arms under the figure on the pavement,
lifted it as though it were that of a child and disappeared in the
night. The face that had looked up was as white as the lily at noon; the
face bent in pity above it was dark as the leaves of that lily scattered
upon the sod."
Edward read this and smiled, as he laid it aside, and continued with the
other papers. They were brief sketches and memoranda of chapters;
sometimes a single sentence upon a page, just as his friend De
Maupassant used to jot them down one memorable summer when they had
lingered together along the Riviera, but they had no connection with
"The Storm" and the characters therein suggested. If they belonged to
the same narrative the connections were gone.
Wearied at last he took up his violin and began to play. It is said that
improvisers cannot but run back to the music they have written.
"Calvary" was his masterpiece and soon he found himself lost in its
harmonies. Then by easy steps there rose in memory, as he played, the
storm and Gerald's sketch. He paused abruptly and sat with his bow idle
upon the strings, for in his mind a link had formed between that sketch
and the chapter he had just read. He had felt the story was true when he
read it. The lawyer had said John Morgan wrote from life. Here was the
first act of a drama in the life of a child, and the last, perhaps, in
the life of a woman.
And that child under the influence of music had felt the storm scene
flash upon his memory and had drawn it. The child was Gerald Morgan.
Edward laid aside the violin for a moment, went into the front room,
threw open the shutters and loosened his cravat. Something seemed to
suffocate him, as he struggled against the admission of this
irresistible conclusion. Overwhelmed with the significance of the
discovery, he exclaimed aloud: "It was an inherited memory."
But if the boy had been born under the circumstances set forth in the
sketch, who was the man, and why should he have assaulted the woman who
bore the child's coffin? And what was she doing abroad under such
circumstances? The man and the woman's object was hidden perhaps
forever. But not so the woman; the artist had given her features, and as
for the other woman, the author had said she was dark. There was in
Gerald's mind picture no dark woman; only the girl with the coffin, the
arch above and the faint outlines of bending trees!