But he choked it down, and picked his steps through scorched winter
stubble, dead horses, men, wagon-wheels, across the field; thinking, as he
went, of Grey free, his child-love, true, coaxing, coming to his tired
arms once more; of the home on the farm yonder, he meant to buy,--he, the
rough, jolly farmer, and she, busy Grey, bustling Grey, with her loving,
fussing ways. Why, it came like a flash to him! Yet, as it came, tugging
at his heart with the whole strength of his blood, he turned, this poor,
thwarted, passionate little Doctor, and began jogging back to the
locust-woods,--passing many wounded men of his own kith and spirit, and
going back to Gurney.
Because--he was his enemy.
"Thank God, I am not utterly debased!"--grinding the tobacco vehemently in
his teeth.
He walked faster, seeing that the moon was going down, leaving the
battle-field in shadow. Overhead, the sinking light, striking upward from
the horizon, had worked the black dome into depths of fretted silver.
Blecker saw it, though passion made his step unsteady and his eye dim. No
man could do a mean, foul deed while God stretched out such a temple-roof
as that for his soul to live in, was the thought that dully touched his
outer consciousness. But little Grey! If he could go home to her
to-morrow, and, lifting her thin, tired face from the machine, hold it to
his breast, and say, "You're free now, forever!" O God!
He stopped, pulling his coat across his breast in his clenched
hands,--then, after a moment, went on, his arms falling powerless.
"I'm a child! It is of no use to think of it! Never!"--his hard, black
eyes, that in these last few months had grown sad and questioning as a
child's, looking to the north hill, as he strode along, as though he were
bidding some one good-bye. And when he came to the hillock and knelt down
again beside Gurney, there was no malice in them. He was faithful in every
touch and draught and probe. With the wish in his heart to thrust the
knife into the heart of the unconscious man lying before him, he touched
him as though he had been his brother.
Gurney, opening his eyes at last, saw the yellow, haggard face, in its
fringe of black beard, as rigid as if cut out of stone, very near his own.
The grave, hopeless eyes subdued him.
"Take me out of this," he moaned.
"You are going--to the hospital,"--helping some men lift him into an
ambulance.
"Slowly, my good fellows. I will follow you."
He did follow them. Let us give the man credit for every step of that
following, the more that the evil in his blood struggled so fiercely with
such a mortal pain as he went. In Fredericksburg, one of the old
family-homesteads had been taken for a camp-hospital. As they laid Gurney
on a heap of straw in the library, a surgeon passed through the room.
"Story," said Paul, catching his arm, "see to that man: this is your post,
I believe. I have dressed his wound. I cannot do more."
Story did not know the meaning of that. He stuck his eye-glasses over his
hook-nose, and stooped down, being nearsighted.
"Hardly worth while to put him under my care, or anybody's. The fellow
will not live until morning."
"I don't know. I did what I could."
"Nothing more to be done.--Parr's out of lint, did you know? He's enough
to provoke Job, that fellow! I warned him especially about lint and
supporters.--Why, Blecker, you are worn out,"--looking at him closer. "It
has been a hard fight."
"Yes, I am tired; it was a hard fight."
"I must find Parr about that lint, and"--
Paul walked to the window, breathing heavy draughts of the fresh morning
air. The man would not die, he thought. Grey would never be free. No. Yet,
since he was a child, before he began to grapple his way through the
world, he had never known such a cheerful quiet as that which filled his
eyes with tears now; for, if the fight had been hard, Paul Blecker had won
the victory.
Sunday morning dawned cold and windy. Now and then, volleys of musketry,
or a repulse from the Southern batteries on the heights, filled the blue
morning sky with belching scarlet flame and smoke: through all, however,
the long train of army-wagons passed over the pontoon-bridge, bearing the
wounded. About six o'clock some men came out from the camp-hospital.
Doctor Blecker stood on the outside of the door: all night he had been
there, like some lean, unquiet ghost. Story, the surgeon, met the men.
They carried something on a board, covered with an old patchwork quilt.
Story lifted the corner of the quilt to see what lay beneath. Doctor
Blecker stood in their way, but neither moved nor spoke to them.
"Take it to the trenches," said the surgeon, shortly nodding to
them.--"Your Rebel friend, Blecker."
"Dead?"
"Yes."
"Story, I did what I could?"
"Of course. Past help.--When are we to be taken out of this trap,
eh?"--going on.
"I did what I could."
As the Doctor's parched lips moved, he looked up. How deep the blue was!
how the cold air blew his hair about, fresh and boisterous! He went down
the field with a light, springing step, as he used, when a boy, long ago,
to run to the hay-field. The earth was so full of health, life, beauty, he
could have cried or laughed out loud. He stopped on the bridge, seeing
only the bright, rushing clouds, the broad river, the sunlight,--a little
way from him in the world, little Grey.
"I thank Thee," baring his head and bending it,--the words died in an
awestruck whisper in his heart,--"for _Thy_ great glory, O Lord!"
* * * * *
"Will you come a little farther? Let a few months slip by, and let us see
what a March day is in the old Pennsylvania hills. The horrors of the war
have not crept hither yet, into these hill-homesteads. Never were crops
richer than those of '61 and '62, nor prices better. So the barns were
full to bursting through the autumn of those years, and the fires were big
enough to warm you to your very marrow in winter.
Even now, if young Corporal Simpson, or Joe Hainer, or any other of the
neighbors' boys come home wounded, it only spices the gossip for the
apple-butter-parings or spelling-matches. Then the men, being Democrats,
are reconciled to the ruin of the country, because it has been done by the
Republicans; and the women can construct secret hiding-places in the
meat-cellar for the dozen silver teaspoons and tea-pot, in dread of
Stuart's cavalry. Altogether, the war gives quite a zest to life up here.
Then, in these low-hill valleys of the Alleghanies the sun pours its
hottest, most life-breeding glow, and even the wintry wind puts all its
vigor into the blast, knowing that there are no lachrymose, whey-skinned
city-dyspeptics to inhale it, but full-breasted, strong-muscled women and
men,--with narrow brains, maybe, but big, healthy hearts, and _physique_
to match. Very much the same type of animal and moral organization, as
well as natural, you would have found before the war began, ran through
the valley of Pennsylvania and Virginia.
One farm, eight or ten miles from the village where the Gurneys lived,
might be taken as a specimen of these old homesteads. It lay in a sort of
meadow-cove, fenced in with low, rolling hills that were wooded with oaks
on the summits,--sheep-cots, barns, well-to-do plum and peach orchards
creeping up the sides,--a creek binding it in with a broad, flashing band.
The water was frozen on this March evening: it had plenty of time to
freeze, and stay there altogether, in fact, it moved so slowly, knowing it
had got into comfortable quarters. There was just enough cold crispiness
in the air to-night to make the two fat cows move faster into the stable,
with smoking breath, to bring out a crow of defiance from the chickens
huddling together on the roost; it spread, too, a white rime over the
windows, shining red in the sinking sun. When the sun was down, the
nipping northeaster grew sharper, swept about the little valley, rattled
the bare-limbed trees, blew boards off the corn-crib that Doctor Blecker
had built only last week, tweaked his nose and made his eyes water as he
came across the field clapping his hands to make the blood move faster,
and, in short, acted as if the whole of that nook in the hills belonged to
it in perpetuity. But the house, square, brick, solid-seated, began to
glow red and warm out of every window,--not with the pale rose-glow of
your anthracite, but fitful, flashing, hearty, holding out all its hands
to you like a Western farmer. That's the way our fires burn. The very
smoke went out of no stove-pipe valve, but rushed from great mouths of
chimneys, brown, hot, glowing, full of spicy smiles of supper below. Down
in the kitchen, by a great log-fire, where irons were heating, sat Oth,
feebly knitting, and overseeing a red-armed Dutch girl cooking
venison-steaks and buttermilk-biscuit on the coal-stove beside him.
"Put jelly on de table, you, mind! Strangers here fur tea. Anyhow it ort
to go down. Nuffin but de best ob currant Miss Grey 'ud use in her
father's house. Lord save us!"--in an underbreath. "But it's fur de honor
ob de family,"--in a mutter.
"Miss Grey" waited within. Not patiently: sure pleasure was too new for
her. She smoothed her crimson dress, pushed back the sleeves that the
white dimpled arms might show, and then bustled about the room, to tidy it
for the hundredth time. A bright winter's room: its owner had a Southern
taste for hot, heartsome colors, you could be sure, and would bring heat
and flavor into his life, too. There were soft astral lamps, and a charred
red fire, a warm, unstingy glow, wasting itself even in long streams of
light through the cold windows. There were bright bits of Turnerish
pictures on the gray walls, a mass of gorgeous autumn-leaves in the soft
wool of the carpet, a dainty white-spread table in the middle of the room,
jars of flowers everywhere, flowers that had caught most passion and
delight from the sun,--scarlet and purple fuchsias, heavy-breathed
heliotrope. Yet Grey bent longest over her own flower, that every
childlike soul loves best,--mignonette. She chose some of its brown sprigs
to fasten in her hair, the fragrance was so clean and caressing. Paul
Blecker, even at the other end of the field, and in the gathering
twilight, caught a glimpse of his wife's face pressed against the pane. It
was altered: the contour more emphatic, the skin paler, the hazel eyes
darker, lighted from farther depths. No glow of color, only in the meaning
lips and the fine reddish hair.
Doctor Blecker stopped to help a stout little lady out of a buggy at the
stile, then sent the boy to the stable with it: it was his own, with
saddle-bags under the seat. But there was a better-paced horse in the
shafts than suited a heavy country-practice. The lady looked at it with
one eye shut.
"A Morgan-Cottrell, eh? I know by the jaw,"--jogging up the stubble-field
beside him, her fat little satchel rattling as she walked. Doctor Blecker,
a trifle graver and more assured than when we saw him last, sheltered her
with his overcoat from the wind, taking it off for that purpose by the
stile. You could see that this woman was one of the few for whom he had
respect.
"Your wife understands horses, Doctor. And dogs. I did not expect it of
Grey. No. There's more outcome in her than you give her credit
for,"--turning sharply on him.
He smiled quietly, taking her satchel to carry.
"When we came to Pittsburg, I said to Pratt, 'I'll follow you to New York
in a day or two, but I'm going now to see Paul Blecker's little wife.
_She_'s sound, into the marrow.' And I'll tell you, too, what I said to
Pratt. 'That is a true marriage, heart and soul and ways of thinking. God
fitted those two into one another.' Some matches, Doctor Blecker, put me
in mind of my man Kellar, making ready the axes for winter's work, little
head on big heft, misjoined always: in consequence, thing breaks apart
with no provocation whatever. "When God wants work done down here, He
makes His axes better,--eh?"
There was a slight pause.
"Maybe, now, you'll think I take His name in vain, using it so often. But
I like to get at the gist of a matter, and I generally find God has
somewhat to do with everything,--down to the pleasement, to me, of my
bonnet: or the Devil,--which means the same, for he acts by leave.--Where
_did_ you get that Cottrell, Doctor? From Faris? Pha! pha! Grey showed me
the look in his face this morning, innocent, _naïf_, as all well-blooded
horses' eyes are. Like her own, eh? I says to Pratt, long ago,--twenty he
was then,--'When you want a wife, find one who laughs out from her heart,
and see if dogs and horses kinsfolk with her: that's your woman to marry,
if they do.'"
They had stopped by the front-steps for her to finish her soliloquy. Grey
tapped on the window-pane.
"Yes, yes, I see. You want to go in. But first,"--lowering her voice,--"I
was at the Gurney house this evening."
"You were?" laughed the Doctor, "And what did you do there?"
"Eh? What? Something is needed to be done, and I--Yes, I know my
reputation,"--her face flushing.
"You strike the nails where they are needed,--what few women do, Mrs.
Sheppard," said the Doctor, trying to keep his face grave. "Strike them on
the head, too."
"Umph!"
No woman likes to be classed properly,--no matter where she belongs.
"I never interfere, Doctor Blecker; I may advise. But, as I was going to
say, that father of Grey's seemed to me such a tadpole of a man, rooting
after tracks of lizards that crept ages ago, while the country is going to
mash, and his own children next door to starvation, I thought a little
plain talk would try if it was blood or water in his veins. So I went over
to spend the day there on purpose to give it to him."
"Yes. Well?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I see. Then you tried Joseph?"
"No, he is in able hands. That Loo is a thorough-pacer,--after my own
heart.--Talking of your family, my dear," as Grey opened the door. "Loo
will do better for them than you. Pardon me, but a lot of selfish men in a
family need to be treated like Pen here, when his stomach is sour. Give
them a little wholesome alkali: honey won't answer."
Grey only laughed. Some day, she thought, when her father had completed
his survey of the coal-formation, and Joseph had induced Congress to stop
the war, people would appreciate them. So she took off Mrs. Sheppard's
furs and bonnet, and smoothed the two black shiny puffs of hair, passing
her husband with only a smile, as a stranger was there, but his
dressing-gown and slippers waited by the fire.
"Paul may be at home before you," she said, nodding to them.
Grey had dropped easily through that indefinable change between a young
girl and a married woman: her step was firmer, her smile freer, her head
more quietly poised. Some other change, too, in her look, showed that her
affections had grown truer and wider of range than before. Meaner women's
hearts contract after marriage about their husband and children, like an
India-rubber ball thrown into the fire. Hers would enter into his nature
as a widening and strengthening power. Whatever deficiency there might be
in her brain, she would infuse energy into his care for people about
him,--into his sympathy for his patients; in a year or two you might be
sure he would think less of Paul Blecker _per se_, and hate or love fewer
men for their opinions than he did before.
The supper, a solid meal always in these houses, was brought in. Grey took
her place with a blush and a little conscious smile, to which Mrs.
Sheppard called Doctor Blecker's attention by a pursing of her lips, and
then, tucking her napkin under her chin, prepared to do justice to venison
and biscuits. She sipped her coffee with an approving nod, dear to a young
housekeeper's soul.
"Good! Grey begins sound, at the foundations, in cooking, Doctor. No
shams, child. Don't tolerate them in housekeeping. If not white sugar,
then no cake. If not silver, then not albata. So you're coming with me to
New York, my dear?"
Grey's face flushed.
"Paul says we will go."
"Sister there? Teaching, did you say?"
Doctor Blecker's moustache worked nervously. Lizzy Gurney was not of his
kind; now, more than ever, he would have cut every tie between her and
Grey, if he could. But his wife looked up with a smile.
"She is on the stage,--Lizzy. The opera,--singing;--in choruses only,
now,--but it will be better soon."
Mrs. Sheppard let her bit of bread fall, then ate it with a gulp. Why,
every drop of the Shelby blood was clean and respectable; it was not easy
to have an emissary of hell, a tawdry actress, brought on the carpet
before her, with even this mild flourish of trumpets.
The silence grew painful. Grey glanced around quickly, then her Welsh
blood made her eyelids shake a little, and her lips shut. But she said
gently,--
"My sister is not albata ware,--that you hate, Mrs. Sheppard. She is no
sham. When God said to her, 'Do this thing,' she did not ask the neighbors
to measure it by their rule of right and wrong."
"Well, well, little Grey,"--with a forbearing smile,--"she is your
sister,--you're a clannish body. Your heart's all right, my
dear,"--patting the hard nervous hand that lay on the table,--"but you
never studied theology, that's clear."
"I don't know."
Mrs. Blecker's face grew hot; but that might have been the steam of the
coffee-urn.
"We'll be just to Lizzy," said her husband, gravely. "She had a hurt
lately. I don't think she values her life for much now. It is a hungry
family, the Gurneys,"--with a quizzical smile. "My wife, here, kept the
wolf from the door almost single-handed, though she don't understand
theology. You are quite right about that. When I came home here two months
ago, she would not be my wife; there was no one to take her place, she
said. So, one day, when I was in my office alone, Lizzy came to me,
looking like a dead body out of which the soul had been crushed. She had
been hurt, I told you:--she came to me with an open letter in her hand. It
was from the manager of one of the second-rate opera-troupes. The girl can
sing, and has a curious dramatic talent, her only one.
"'It is all I am capable of doing,' she said. 'If I go, Grey can marry.
The family will have a sure support.'
"Then she folded the letter into odd shapes, with an idiotic look.
"'Do you want me to answer it?' I asked.
"'Yes, I do. Tell him I'll go. Grey can be happy then, and the others will
have enough to eat. I never was of any use before.'
"I knew that well enough. I sat down to write the letter.
"'You will be turned out of church for this,' I said.
"She stood by the window, her finger tracing the rain-drops on the pane,
for it was a rainy night. She said,--
"'They won't understand. God knows.'
"So I wrote on a bit, and then I said,--for I felt sorry for the girl,
though she was doing it for Grey,--I said,--
'"Lizzy, I'll be plain with you. There never was but one human being loved
you, perhaps. When he was dying, he said, "Tell my wife to be true and
pure." There is a bare possibility that you can be both as an
opera-singer, but he never would believe it. If you met him in heaven, he
would turn his back on you, if you should do this thing.'
"I could not see her face,--her back was towards me,--but the hand on the
window-pane lay there for a long while motionless, the blood settling blue
about the nails. I did not speak to her. There are some women with whom a
physician, if he knows his business, will never meddle when they grow
nervous; they come terribly close to God and the Devil then, I think. I
tell you, Mrs. Sheppard, now and then one of your sex has the vitality and
pain and affection of a thousand souls in one. I hate such women,"
vehemently.
"Men like you always do," quietly. "But I am not one of them."
"No, nor Grey, thank God! Whoever contrived that allegory of Eve and the
apple, though, did it well. If the Devil came to Lizzy Gurney, he would
offer no meaner temptation than 'Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil.'"
"'_Allegory_'--eh? You forget your story, I think, Doctor Blecker,"--with
a frown.
The Doctor stopped to help her to jelly, with a serious face, and then
went on. "She turned round at last. I did not look up at her, only said,--
"'I will not write the letter.'
"'Go on,' she said.
"I wrote it, then; but when I went to give it to her, my heart failed me.
"'Lizzy,' I said, 'you shall not do this thing.'
"She looked so childish and pitiful, standing there!
"'You think you are cutting yourself off from your chance of love through
all time by it,--just for Grey and the others.'
"Her eyes filled at that; she could not bear the kind word, you see.
"'Yes, I do, Doctor Blecker,' she said. 'Nobody ever loved me but Uncle
Dan. Since he went away, I have gone every day to his house, coming nearer
to him that way, growing purer, more like other women. There's a picture
of his mother there, and his sister. They are dead now, but I think their
souls looked at me out of those pictures and loved me.'
"She came up, her head hardly reaching to the top of the chair I sat on,
half smiling, those strange gray eyes of hers.
"'I thought they said,--"This is Lizzy: this is the little girl Daniel
loves." Every day I'd kneel down by that dead lady's chair, and pray to
God to make me fit to be her son's wife. But he's dead now,' drawing
suddenly back, 'and I am going to be--an opera-singer.'
"'Not unless by your own free will,' I said.
"She did not hear me, I think, pulling at the fastening about her throat.
"'Daniel would say it was the Devil's calling. Daniel was all I had. But
he don't know. I know. God means it. I might have lived on here, keeping
myself true to his notions of right: then, when I went yonder, he would
have been kind to me, he would have loved me,'--looking out through the
rain, in a dazed way.
"'The truth is, Lizzy,' I said, 'you have a power within you, and you want
to give it vent; it's like a hungry devil tearing you. So you give up your
love-dream, and are going to be an opera-singer. That's the common-sense
of the matter.'
"I sealed the letter, and gave it to her.
"'You think that?'
"That was all she answered. But I'm sorry I said it; I don't know whether
it was true or not. There,--that is the whole story. I never told it to
Grey before. You can judge for yourselves."
"My dear," said Mrs. Sheppard, "let me go with you to see your sister in
New York. Some more coffee, please. My cup is cold."
* * * * *
A clear, healthy April night: one of those bright, mountain-winded nights
of early spring, when the air is full of electric vigor,--starlight, when
the whole earth seems wakening slowly and grandly into a new life.
Grey, going with her husband and Mrs. Sheppard down Broadway, from their
hotel, had a fancy that the world was so cheerfully, heartily at work,
that the night was no longer needed. Overhead, the wind from the yet
frozen hills swept in such strong currents, the great city throbbed with
such infinite kinds of motion, and down in the harbor yonder the rush of
couriers came and went incessantly from the busy world without. Grey was a
country-girl: in this throbbing centre of human life she felt suddenly
lost, atom-like,--drew her breath quickly, as she clung to Paul's arm. The
world was so vast, was hurrying on so fast. She must get to work in
earnest: why, one must justify her right to live, here.
Mrs. Sheppard, as she plodded solidly along, took in the whole blue air
and outgoing ocean, and the city, with its white palaces and gleaming
lights.
"People look happy here," she said. "Even Grey laughs more, going down the
streets. Nothing talks of the war here."
Paul looked down into the brown depths of the eyes that were turned
towards him.
"It is a good, cheery world, ours, after all. More laughing than crying in
it,--when people find out their right place, and get into it."
Mrs. Sheppard said, "Umph?" Kentuckians don't like abstract propositions.
They stopped before a wide-open door, in a by-street. _Not_ an
opera-house; one of the haunts of the "legitimate drama," Yet the posters
assured the public in every color, that _La petite Élise_, the beautiful
_débutante_, etc., etc., would sing, etc., etc. Grey's hand tightened on
her husband's arm.
"This is the place,"--her face burning scarlet.
A pretty little theatre: softly lighted, well and quietly filled. Quietly
toned, too, the dresses of the women in the boxes,--of that neutral,
subdued caste that showed they belonged to the grade above fashion. People
of rank tastes did not often go there. The little Kentuckian, with her
emphatic, sham-hating face, and Grey, whose simple, calm outlook on the
world made her last year's bonnet and cloak dwindle into such irrelevant
trifles, did not misbecome the place. Others might go there to fever out
_ennui_, or with fouler fancies. Grey did not know. The play was a simple
little thing; its meaning was pure as a child's song; there was a good
deal of fun in it. Grey laughed with everybody else; she would ask God to
bless her to-night none the worse for that. It had some touches of pathos
in it, and she cried, and saw some men about her with the smug
New-York-city face doing the very same,--not just as she did, but
glowering at the footlights, and softly blowing their noses. Then the
music came, and _La petite Élise_. Grey drew back where she could not see
her. Blecker peered through his glass at every line and motion, as she
came out from the eternal castle in the back scene. Any gnawing power or
gift she had had found vent, certainly, now. Every poise and inflection
said, "Here I am what I am,--fully what God made me, at last: no more, no
less." God had made her an actress. Why, He knows. The Great Spirit of
Love says to the toad in your gutter,--"Thou, too, art my servant, in
whom, fulfilling the work I give, I am well pleased."
_La petite Élise_ had only a narrow and peculiar scope of power, suited to
vaudevilles: she could not represent her own character,--an actress's
talent and heart being as widely separated, in general, as yours are. She
could bring upon the stage in her body the presentment of a _naïve_,
innocent, pathetic nature, and use the influence such nature might have on
the people outside the orchestra-chairs there. It was not her own nature,
we know. She dressed and looked it. A timid little thing, in her
fluttering white slip, her light hair cut close to her head, in short
curls. So much for the actress and her power.
She sang at last. She sang ballads generally, (her voice wanting
cultivation,) such as agreed with her _rôle_. But it was Lizzy Gurney who
sang, not _la petite Élise_.
"Of course," a society-mother said to me, one day, "I do _not_ wish my
Rosa should have a great sorrow, but--how it would develop her voice!" The
bonnet-worshipper stumbled on a great truth.
So with Lizzy: life had taught her; and the one bitter truth of
self-renunciation she had wrung out of it must tell itself somehow. No
man's history is dumb. It came out vaguely, an inarticulate cry to God and
man, in the songs she sang, I think. That very night, as she stood there
with her gray eyes very sparkling and happy, (they were dramatic eyes, and
belonged to her brain,) and her baby-hands crossed archly before her, her
voice made those who listened quite forget her: _la petite Élise_ took
them up to the places where men's souls struggle with the Evil One and
conquer. A few, perhaps, understood that full meaning of her song: if
there was one, it was well she was an actress and sang it.
"I'm damned," growled a fellow in the pit, "if she a'n't a good little
thing!" when the song was ended. There was not a soul in the house that
did not think the same. Yet the girl turned fiercely towards the
side-scenes, hearing it, and pitied herself at that,--that she, a woman,
should stand before the public for them to examine and chatter over her
soul and her history, and her very dress and shoes. But that was gone in a
moment, and Lizzy laughed,--naturally now. Why, they were real friends,
heart-warm to her there: when they laughed and cried with her, she knew
it. Many of their faces she knew well: that pale lady's in the third box,
who brought her boys so often, and gave them a bouquet to throw to
Lizzy,--always white flowers; and the old grandfather yonder, with the
pretty, chubby-faced girls. The girl's thought now was earnest and
healthful, as everybody's grows, who succeeds in discovering his real
work. They encored her song: when she began, she looked up and balked
suddenly, her very neck turning crimson. She had seen Doctor Blecker. "A
tawdry actress!" She could have torn her stage-dress in rags from her.
Then her tone grew low and clear.
There was a young couple just facing her with a little child, a dainty
baby-thing in cap and plume. Neither of them listened to Lizzy: the mother
was tying the little fellow's shoe as he hoisted it on the seat, and the
father was looking at _her_. "I missed my chance," said Lizzy Gurney, in
her heart. "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight!" A tawdry
actress. She might have stayed at home yonder, quiet and useless: that
might have been. Then she thought of Grey, well beloved,--of the other
house, full of hungry mouths she was feeding. Looking more sharply at
Doctor Blecker while she sang, she saw Grey beside him, drawn back behind
a pillar. Presently she saw her take the glass from her husband and lean
forward. There was a red heat under her eyes: she had been crying. They
applauded Lizzy just then, and Grey looked around frightened, and then
laughed nervously.
"How beautiful she is! Do you see? Oh, Paul! Mrs. Sheppard, _do_ you
see?"--tearing her fan, and drawing heavy breaths, moving on her seat
constantly.
"She never loved me heartily before," thought Lizzy, as she sang. "I never
deserved it. I was a heartless dog. I"--
People applauded again, the old grandfather this time nodding to the
girls. There was something so cheery and healthy and triumphant in the low
tones. Even the young mother looked up suddenly from her boy, listening,
and glanced at her husband. It was like a Christmas-song.
"She never loved me before. I deserve it."
That was what she said in it. But they did not know.
Doctor Blecker looked at her, unsmiling, critical. She could see, too, a
strange face beside him,--a motherly, but a keen, harsh-judging face.
"Grey," said Mrs. Sheppard, "I wish we could go behind the scenes. Can we?
I want to talk to Lizzy this minute."
"To tell her she is at the Devil's work, Mrs. Sheppard, eh?"
Doctor Blecker pulled at his beard, angrily.
"Suppose you and I let her alone. We don't understand her."
"I think I do. God help her!"
"We will go round when the song is over," said Grey, gently.
Lizzy, scanning their faces, scanning every face in pit or boxes,
discerned a good will and wish on each. Something wholesome and sound in
her heart received it, half afraid.
"I don't know," she thought.
One of the windows was open, and out beyond the gas-light and smells of
the theatre she could see a glimpse of far space, with the eternal stars
shining. There had been once a man who loved her: he, looking down, could
see her now. If she had stayed at home, selfish and useless, there might
have been a chance for her yonder.
Her song was ended; as she drew back, she glanced up again through the
fresh air.
They were curious words the soul of the girl cried out to God in that dumb
moment:--"Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." Yet in that moment a
new feeling came to the girl,--a peace that never left her afterwards.
An actress: but she holds her work bravely and healthily and well in her
grasp, with her foot always on a grave, as one might say, and God very
near above. And it may be, that, when her work is nearer done, and she
comes closer to the land where all things are clearly seen at last in
their real laws, she will know that the faces of those who loved her wait
kindly for her, and of whatever happiness has been given to them they will
not deem her quite unworthy.
Perhaps they have turned Lizzy out of the church. I do not know. But her
Friend, the world's Christ, they could not make dead to her by shutting
him up in formula or church. He never was dead. From the girding sepulchre
he passed to save the spirits long in prison; and from the visible church
now he lives and works out from every soul that has learned, like Lizzy,
the truths of life,--to love, to succor, to renounce.
* * * * *