"My son, Leighton Dane Temple, I baptize thee in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
Other than baptismal drops fell on the boy's head, as with unsteady lips
and brimming eyes Father Temple bent over him; and the hand that
administered the rite clung tenderly to the damp curls. The room was
very dim and still, the atmosphere heavy with the breath of tuberoses
clustered on the pillow, and the figure sitting at the foot of the cot
with her arms folded, manifested by sound or motion no more interest
than a stone image. On the mantel shelf was the tin box bearing her
name, and many days before letters, newspapers, and money had testified
to the truth of her husband's statements, but to its contents she made
no allusion, allowed none. Their estrangement was too complete to be
bridged even by words when avoidance was possible. Occasionally, as he
entered or left the room, she acknowledged his salutation by a slight
inclination of her head; but usually sullen silence and apparent
unconsciousness of his presence showed how bitterly she resented a
presentation of facts that pleaded his exculpation. She hugged her
wrongs, and any attempt to minimize his guilt infuriated her. Her ruined
life was an acrid dead sea, into which no sweetness could fall, and she
clung to its most loathsome aspects with a grim stubbornness unnatural
and incomprehensible in women of a different type. The boy's death had
seemed imminent more than once, and though he rallied again and again,
the sands were surely near the end, running low.
Two weeks after his baptism, Father Temple secured for him and his
mother rooms at an old farmhouse on Long Island, not very far from a
railroad village.
To the weary child, sick of city heat, city din, and all the complex
elements that make tenement life an affliction to sensitive natures,
there seemed a foretaste of that heaven to which he was hastening, in
the cool, vine-laced porch where wrens nested, the elm-shaded yard, blue
with larkspurs, and the green-carpeted orchard of low-spreading apple
and towering cherry trees, that formed a quivering loom of boughs
casting gilt network of braided sunbeams on purple heads of clover.
Outside the picket fence that enclosed the fruit trees a meadow rolled
seaward, and in one of its deep dimples a small clear pond shone like a
mirror whereon an enormous willow trailed its branches and watched
itself grow old. Across this meadow ox-eye daisies ran riot, so densely
massed, so tall, they seemed great stretches of snow, and only when the
wind swept them into billows were green stems discernible.
Father Temple had found convenient quarters in the neighboring village,
and each day he walked to the little farm, where the feverishly bright
eyes of the boy glowed with more intense brilliance at his approach.
Leighton's sensitive nature responded to every spiritual appeal his
father attempted, as though some subtle, dormant chord of sympathy once
set in vibration would never cease to thrill. Sometimes, watching the
happy, rapt expression on her child's face as the priest read or talked
or prayed with him, a jealous rage seized the mother, shaking her into
fierce revolt, and she shut her eyes, set her teeth, put her hands to
her ears, and mutely fought down her fury. On such occasions, conscious
of her suffering, he shortened his visit, carrying away an accession of
heartache over the utter hopelessness of any form of reconciliation.
On the morning of the anniversary of his marriage, as he walked along
the lane leading to the farmhouse, a flood of reminiscences drowned all
the intervening years, and once more he stood under the stars at the
Post, holding Nona in his arms. Could she forget the date? Would the
sweet, warm wind of tender memory fresh from the happy day their love
had sanctified, breathe no melting magic on her frozen nature? Until
recently he had shared the current belief--"_tout comprendre c'est tout
pardonner_"--because of the limitless, patient, condoning affection
inhering in true wifehood, but the teamster's daughter was a law unto
herself, and taught him that some women, who love most intensely and
faithfully, forgive not at all.
As he entered the sick room he detected in Leighton's usually gentle
voice a note of fretfulness. His mother stood beside the bed, holding a
cluster of daisies, which he had rejected.
"My darling, I gathered them where they grew finest, and these are as
pretty indoors as out on the meadow."
She laid them beside him, but he turned his face away.
"There's father! He will understand."
She moved away to the window and stood with face averted. Father Temple
took the child's outstretched hand.
"Father, why can't I be carried out yonder, where the daisies are spread
like sheets? I want to lie down a little while, and feel them cover me,
and listen to the bees--and out there I can breathe easier. Mother will
not let me, says I might catch cold; as if the sunshine could make me
worse. Why can't I go?"
"My son, I fear you had a bad night, and your mother is a better judge
than I, because she never leaves you. If she approved, I would gladly
take you to the daisies."
"She refused to move me down here, but you brought me."
"It was the doctor, not I, who induced her to consent."
"Oh, I want to go where the daisies are calling me! Don't you see how
they turn and beckon and----" His feeble voice broke in a sob.
"Mother's man must have his milk punch," said Nona, going into the next
room to prepare it.
Instantly the boy whispered:
"Father, pick me up, and carry me; quick!"
After a moment Father Temple went into the adjoining apartment. His wife
stood shaking the milk into froth, and her glance slipped from his face
with no more evidence of recognition than if she had looked at the wall.
"Nona, there has been a dreadful change since yesterday. The time will
soon come when you can find comfort only in remembering you denied him
nothing. Well wrapped up, a few moments in the sunshine will not harm
him."
She passed him without reply, and when the milk punch had been given,
she stooped suddenly and kissed her child twice. His wasted arms crept
feebly to her neck.
"Please, mother--the daisies."
"If I let you go a little while, you must not ask to stay."
She buttoned his flannel dressing-gown about his throat, wrapped him in
her shawl, and put on his little grey cloth cap.
Taking a light blanket from the bed, Father Temple lifted the emaciated
form, cradled him tenderly in his arms, and bore him across the orchard.
The mother preceded them, opened and closed the gate, and, when they
reached the meadow, she withdrew to the brink of the pond, sat down
under the ancient willow, and locked her hands in her lap. Close by, on
a knoll, the blanket had been spread; Leighton was laid upon it, and
feebly stretching his arms drew the daisies over him until they veiled
the shrunken figure, and only the wan face and golden curls were
visible. In a pale-blue sky the sun shone hot; white butterflies swam
lazily to and fro, like drifting blossoms from interstellar gardens; a
sheep bell tinkled now and then, and from the south, a freshening wind
bore echoes of the ceaseless chant of the heaving sea.
Out of the flowery coverlet Leighton's hand stole, feeling for his
father's fingers, and a happy light shone in the boy's violet eyes, but
his breathing had grown quick and painfully labored. Suddenly he
struggled up, leaning against his father's shoulder.
"What ails the sun? Mother! Where's mother?"
One of those swift, ghostly fogs that spring without warning from the
ocean was sweeping inland, and as sunlight smote the advancing pillars
of mist it seemed transmuted into battlements and towers of some city of
silver. Strained maternal ears had caught the boy's faint cry, and Nona
knelt, clasping him close, resting his head on her bosom. His wide and
wondering eyes were fixed on the strange, shining wall drawing swiftly
nearer.
"The gates of heaven! Mother, mother----"
A moment later the chill waves of mist flowed over them, blotting out
the sun.
Under that grey pall, daisy-dotted, the blue eyes closed; the pure,
lovely face, still smiling, lay white against his mother's cheek.
* * * * *
Not always comes imperial death as pacificator; now and then the flame
of vengeance leaps through the shroud of shadows, and sometimes open
graves typify wider, deeper chasms that know no closing. There are
natures who prefer total surrender rather than any sharing of that which
they hold dearest; and of such was the pallid, dry-eyed mother, lying
hour after hour on the bed where her fragile boy slept his last sleep.
His head rested on her right arm, and with her left hand she had drawn
his icy fingers inside her dress, trying to warm them on the breast
where in infancy they toyed. Since the moment she had snatched him from
the meadow couch of daisies and borne him unaided to the farmhouse, no
one was allowed to touch him, and the angel who called and guided the
young soul to God was more welcome than the human father daring to claim
him. During the long night of her last vigil, the priest, pacing an
adjoining room, wondered at the stern repression of her grief; and only
once, through the half-open door, came a frantic cry, ending in a low,
quivering wail.
"Mother's man! Mother's own pretty--pretty--darling baby! Oh----"
An hour later, when he ventured to re-enter the room, he knew the one
passionate outbreak signalled her final surrender. She had lifted the
little wasted form from the bed and laid him in a coffin resting on a
low table; covering all but the delicate, chiselled face and shining
hair with a thick shroud of daisies.
Now, with hands locked in her lap, she sat leaning her head against the
coffin. Tears he could not repress fell as the father bent down to the
casket, but she put her arm across it, barring him.
"Don't! You must not touch my baby."
Sinking to his knees he put his hand on the fingers lying in her lap.
"Oh, Nona! Eleven years ago to-night!"
She pushed his hand aside, and when he bowed his head on her knee, she
moved her chair back to avoid the touch.
"My wife----"
"No. I am no man's wife. I can't forget, and I don't wish to forgive,
even if I could. I want you to understand that I would rather see my
darling where he is than have him live for you to come between us. The
Nona you knew died ten years ago, when insulted, and slandered, and
despised I washed and ironed for money to clothe and feed my little
fatherless one--my own beautiful little baby."
She laid her hand on the cold head and fondled the golden rings of hair,
but no moisture dimmed the large, mournful eyes that defied her
husband's pleading.
A moment later she added, in a stinging tone:
"After to-morrow you will have no excuse to intrude upon me; with a
childless, hopeless, desperate woman you can meddle no more, and I shall
contrive to save myself the intolerable sight of your face. In your tin
box you will find the money I have not touched, but the papers I burned
to-night; because in the grave--my baby's grave--certificates of
legitimacy are not required. I wish no record retained of any
association or tie with you, and henceforth I want to hear neither from
nor of you. For ten years what heart I had left beat only for my baby,
and his precious little hands will always hold it tight in his coffin.
After to-morrow my work waits for me, and your path and mine will cross
no more."
Up and down the room Father Temple walked, striving to master his
emotion. Pausing in front of her, he asked very tenderly:
"May I know where and what is the work my son's mother has selected?"
"It is everywhere; the struggle of the poor to loosen the strangling
clutch of the rich on their throats; the cruel war which will end only
with the downfall of aristocrats, when millionaires will be hunted like
other criminals, when cowardly sons of rich army officers can dare to
marry publicly the daughters of their regimental teamsters, and when a
pure woman, because she is pure, will be as much respected as a crowned
head. You preach 'he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.' We
have a different doctrine, a broader gospel. When justice reigns there
will be no poor, no hoarded surplus of dishonest riches, no 'benevolent
fund' doled out by 'philanthropic' pharisees to the workers whose labor
created it. In that day, no poor girls in reeking tenements will be
goaded by the sight of fashionable society women, who drink, and smoke,
and gamble, and loll half clad in opera boxes, and hug their lap dogs
and their lovers instead of their children. In that day society lines
will vanish, and only two classes exist--workers and drones, governed by
beehive laws. To aid in this is all I care for now--all that remains for
me--and my work will be well done."
She had spoken in a cold, defiant tone, keeping her eyes on the coffin
and her fingers on the child's curls, but after a moment a spasm of
anguish shook her mercilessly, and, rising, she pointed to the door,
saying, between strangling sobs:
"Leave me, and shut the door. I have all I can bear now. Leave me alone
with my little one."