For a moment Mary stood with downcast eyes; then, looking up, gave a
start.
“Oh—I beg your pardon! I was told I should find Captain Smith in this
room,” said she, making for the door.
Just then the evening sun, which was slowly sinking in the west, burst
from behind a cloud, and poured a stream of light in the room. She
looked again. A clean-shaven face of chiselled marble, as clear-cut and
as pale. Could it be he?
“I am Captain Smith—or was—”
“I did not know you without your beard.”
“The doctor had it taken off to get at the wound in my cheek.”
“I can hardly believe you are the same person. But for your eyes, I—
_They_ tell me you are the same. I had hoped—”
Mary sank into a chair.
“I beg your pardon. In my surprise, I forgot the courtesy due a lady.”
“I am not come as a lady, but as a woman. Turn away your eyes if you
will; but hear me. Why do you hate me so? What have I done? You loved me
once. At least you told me so; and as for myself—but I shall not
trouble you with that. We plighted our faith. I broke my word, I
acknowledge that. But do you deny the claims of conscience? Not if you
are the man you have always seemed. Did it cost me nothing? It broke my
heart, and—you-ou—know-ow-ow—it. You need not sneer! Alice knows it,
and my mother, too, if you do not know—or care. Look at me, and
remember the fresh-hearted young girl you knew four years ago—and told
her—you would—love her—al-al-al-always!”
Mary covered her face with her hands, and the tears streamed down her
cheeks, but with a supreme effort she suppressed her sobs.
The captain of the Myrmidons was silent.
At last, Mary, drying her eyes, arose, tottering, from her seat.
“And so I have come in vain! Once before I humbled myself in the dust
before you—and you spurned me—”
The captain shook his head wearily.
“Yes, spurned me, and in the presence of others; so that even that poor
dying man found it in his heart to pity me. And you, too, are dying, yet
have not the mercy of a stranger and an enemy. You bade me read Homer,
and taught me to admire Achilles, yet even his flinty heart was melted
by the tears of Priam.”
The adamantine lips trembled.
“I have read the passage again and again, and wondered how you, as brave
in battle, could be so much more pitiless than he. And Priam was a man,
I a woman; Priam was his enemy, while I—”
A slight tremor shook his frame.
“At least, I am not that!”
She bowed her head for a moment; then, lifting her clasped hands and
impassioned and despairing eyes to heaven:
“Merciful Father, have I not suffered enough! Must it be that from this
time forth I shall know no peace,—haunted forever by the cold glitter
of those implacable eyes, that were once—”
“Mary!”
She started. Had she heard aright?
“Mary, my beloved!”
She gave two cries; for she had heard—and she saw—one of exultant joy,
the other of frenzied despair.
Found—and lost!
Falling upon her knees by the bedside, she buried her face in her hands.
He laid his hand upon her head.
Then the great sobs, long pent up, burst forth,—
“Mary!”
His words were too precious to be lost, and she mastered herself to
listen.
“Mary, I have been a monster!”
She seized his hand.
“Can you ever forgive me?”
She covered it with tearful kisses.
“I don’t deserve this; but oh, how I have loved you all these years!”
“Oh, don’t tell me that, don’t tell me that!” And a moan burst forth
from her very heart.
“I am too weak to talk. Charley will tell you why I was so bitter. He
knows all. Ask him.”
She drew up a chair, and, sitting beside him, tried to smile, as she
stroked back the chestnut hair from his forehead.
“Wonderful!” said she.
He looked up.
“I wish Lucy could see you without your beard, you are so much like her.
And Edmund, too. Wonderful!” repeated she, drawing back for a better
look. “And Mr. Poythress, too! Father and son were never more alike.
Look!” And she handed him a little broken mirror that hung upon the
wall.
She looked at him to see what he thought. And a thrill of terror shot
through her heart. She had nursed men before who had been shot through
the lungs. She pressed her handkerchief to his lips.
It was soaked with blood.
The door opened softly. “A lady and a gentleman from Richmond,” said the
surgeon. “Will you see them now? Yes?”
Charley entered first. As soon as she saw him Mary threw herself upon
his breast, and hung upon his neck with convulsive, half-suppressed
sobs, then greeted Mrs. Poythress in the same way. Then she ran back to
Charley. “He has forgiven me!”
“No, Charley; she has forgiven me. And you came! I knew you would. And
she, too!”
Mrs. Poythress, sitting on the edge of the bed, held one of his hands,
Charley the other. Mary sat stroking back the chestnut hair. The room
was dark; for a little cloud floated across the face of the sun, whose
lower edge was just kissing the rim of the hill that rises between
Massanetta and the west.
“How is the baby?” asked he, with a faint smile, and gently pressing
Charley’s hand. “What did—Alice—name him?”
“Alice left that to me. He was christened—Theodoric.”
“True as steel! I die happy! Charley—my Mary has—forgiven me my
selfish anger. If there is any other person—that I have wronged—tell
her—my last breath—”
The cloud passed on, and the last soft rays of that setting October sun
flashed upon his pallid face.
Mrs. Poythress sprang to her feet. Bending over him with clasped hands,
she poured upon him one long look of passionate interrogation.
He tried to speak. His eyes glanced from face to face, as though
beseeching help. Mrs. Poythress turned to Charley. He stood with his
eyes fixed upon the floor. She sprang in front of him, and placing a
hand upon either shoulder, and drawing him close to her, with
wide-staring, eager eyes, that would wring an answer from him, looked
into his:
“Charley?”
“Yes,” said he.
She turned to the bed.
He had heard; and an ineffable tenderness had come into his face,
softening, sweeping away, with the rush of unspeakable love, the hard
lines that years of suffering had wrought. ’Twas a boy’s face once
more—’twas Edmund’s—’twas—?
She stood before him with outstretched arms, eager with certainty,—held
motionless by a slender thread of doubt.
He tried to speak. And again—
At last, with one supreme effort, and borne upon his last breath, a
murmured word broke the stillness of the room. One little word,—but
that the sweetest, tenderest, that tongue of man can utter,—
“Mother!”
“My Dory!” and she fell upon his neck. And the snowy hair and the
chestnut, intermingled, lay, motionless, on one pillow!
And which of the two shall we pity?
He seemed to hear that name. At any rate, a beaming look—a serenely
exultant smile—
I remember hurrying, once, to the roar of a battle which was over before
our command reached the field. The combatants were gone. The wounded,
even, had been removed. Only the Silent lay there, upon their gory bed.
Wandering a little way from the road, while our troops halted, I saw a
fair young boy (he was not over sixteen years of age) seated upon the
ground, and leaning back against a young white oak, with his rifle
across his lap. Struck with his rare beauty, I drew nearer.
The boy sat still.
I spoke to him.
He did not move.
I stooped and touched his damask cheek.
’Twas cold!
Kneeling in front of him, I saw a bullet-hole in his coat, just over his
heart!
But, even then I could hardly believe. His head, thrown back, rested
naturally against the tree. His parted lips showed two rows of pearly
teeth. His uplifted eyes, which seemed to have drawn their azure from
that sky upon which they were so intently fixed, wide open, were lit
with a seraphic smile—
As though, peering, with his last look, into that blue abyss, he saw
beckoning angels there!
Such a smile illumined poor Dory’s face. The heroic spirit had fled. The
tumultuous, high-beating heart was still!
And who among us all—who, at least, from whom the sweet bloom—the rosy
hopes of youth are gone—who among us, knowing what life really is,
would dare awaken its fierce throbbings again?
And the seraphic smile lingered, lit up by the farewell rays of that
October sun.
And the sun went down behind Massanetta’s hill!
THE END.