_L'ENVOI._
"Fair love that led home."
Judith Moore did not die. She had fallen asleep that day with her
fingers trembling about Andrew's sunburnt hair. He held her tenderly
till a deeper sleep weighted down those clinging hands, and they fell.
He watched by her, without movement, almost without breathing, with the
look on his face as of one who battles with Death, pitting all the
splendid vitality of his being against the enemy, casting the mantle of
his brave soul, strong will and perfect love about the trembling will
and failing heart that were so nearly vanquished.
Indeed, so completely did Andrew identify himself during those silent
hours with the woman he loved, that ever after she had some fleeting
touches of his courage, and he had always an intuitional tenderness
towards a woman's illogical weakness.
The fusion of these two natures took place not in those sweet after
hours of passion, lint in that silent room, into which now and then
there peeped a white-capped nurse or a black-a-vised little man, who
saw always a great mass of fading pink blooms, a pair of broad
shoulders in shabby velveteen bent tenderly over the shadowy outline of
a little head sunk deep in the pillow.
After this supreme crisis there came a week or two of slow
convalescence, and then a wedding that no one thought much of,
regarding it merely as one of the prescribed formalities, like the
buying of the railroad tickets, necessary before Andrew could take her
away--away back to the village in the valley, to the old stone
farm-house, to the homely flowers, the lindens on the hill, to Rufus
and Miss Myers, where, for a time, she was not a wife at all, only a
poor little wind-tossed song-bird blown to their bosoms for a refuge.
But that all changed.
Andrew wooed again a charming, capricious woman, walking by her
adoringly over the old bricked walks beneath the horse-chestnuts, his
very soul trembling with the love her voice and touch awakened: and she
was playfully proud of her power, until suddenly some quick sense of
the dominance of the love she aroused frightened her, and she turned to
hide from him in his arms, tremblingly afraid, no longer asking love,
but pleading against it.
Time passes with them. The old farm-house has had some architectural
additions--a tiny conservatory, a long dining-room, with quaint porches
and latticed windows: for Andrew and his wife appreciate too keenly the
beauties of their home to mar its character by modernizing it. Andrew
has learned to wear evening clothes as easily as he does his old
velveteens, and--_O si sic omnia!_--himself often buys the little
high-heeled shoes in which Judith's heart delights, for Judith never
put off the old Eve of her harmless vanities.
Every winter Andrew and his wife go to town for a while, and visitors
come to the farm-house who fairly electrify the village with their
"cranks."
The best known of these is a little black-a-vised man with big
diamonds, a profane tongue and a guilty but "thankful 'eart." He
cherishes, so he says, a hopeless passion for Miss Myers, and indeed
Miss Myers likes the new _régime_ very well, for she was never ousted
from the house-keeping department, and if it was a glory and a credit
to manage well for Andrew and herself, how much greater it is to cast
honour over a board where such fine people as Judith's friends sit
daily.
Andrew is secretly very proud that all these fine folk should come and
see how happy Judith is. Only once did he have any difference with any
of them. That was when Judith first regained her strength and her old
manager came to see her. He had a brand-new scheme for Judith's
benefit in his brain. She was to sing in grand concerts, and he had
all her tour mapped out. He was good enough to say Andrew could come
along. Andrew held brief and bitter speech with him, and then went to
Judith. He could see how strong the old glamour yet was. He took her
in his arms, and after a long, tender discussion she gave him the
promise he was pleading for, never more to sing in public, a decision
which made Andrew her slave forever, although it wrung his heart to see
what this renunciation cost her. He felt it was right. Poor,
high-strung Judith needed a steady hand upon the rein of her eager
spirit, else it would have soon carried her beyond her strength. And
so, ringing about an old farm-house, or through the chestnut woods, or
below the lindens on the hill-side, there often sounds a voice once
echoed by the _bravos_ of the world. Perhaps the aspiration it awakens
in one strong soul is better applause.
So Andrew and Judith live on, they two and Miss Myers, as nearly happy
as mortals may be. Heaven would be entirely illogical if such as they
two had no heartaches.
Sometimes Judith steals away from Miss Myers and Andrew and thinks of
the old days, the first efforts, the hopes, the fears, the strife and
the success--the glorious success that might have been many times
repeated: that might, as base metals might be transmuted into gold,
have become fame. A nasty heartache gnaws in her breast, her face
pales, her eyes grow wide and eager. At such times Andrew knows well
the struggle that rends her tender heart, and he soon searches her out:
and upon his breast, beneath the spell of his worship her restless
spirit quiets itself to peace. What might be a tragedy of distrust is
made a bond of stronger union by perfect confidence. But Judith's face
will always bear the traces of these times.
When a coal is carried from the Divine Fire and laid upon mortal lips,
it must be blown into a flame to illumine the world, or it sears the
lips it touches. The gods will not have their gifts disregarded. They
care little that the mortal breath may be too weak to sustain the
flame, though it perish in the effort. Indeed, the gods forgive that,
and sometimes spare a little of their glory to gild a grave. But let
the breath they demand be stolen for our own sighs or sobs, or stifled
by dear-bought kisses, and they give swift recompense of pain. Judith
had borne that smart.
Andrew, too, has unfulfilled dreams, as Judith knows when she sees his
eyes grow wistful as they rest upon the faces of children. And Judith
goes to him then, and lays her head upon his arm with an apology so
poignant, a love so perfect in her grey eyes, that he forgets
everything in the marvel that this woman is his. And thus with each of
them, the little shadows only serve to enhance the sunshine. Their
life is a glorious reality; their love a poem. Together they know no
pain from the past, no regret for the present, no fear for the future.
They sometimes even dare to dream that their love will bestow upon them
its own immortality--that through eternity they will be as they are
now, together and happy.