“YE SHALL NOT UNDERSTAND.”
Whatever happens to anybody it will be turned to beautiful results,
And nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
--_Walt Whitman._
Two years had passed since Colonel Layton died. Renewed health and
beauty had come to the Butterfly, who still contentedly earned and
ate her own bread. Self-dependence has many rewards for its faithful
disciples, not least among them being the conscious dignity that
belongs to usefulness, and expresses itself in the greater ease and
calmer assurance of bearing. Being a factor instead of a cipher gives a
woman new value in her own eyes, as well as in the eyes of others.
If Chrissalyn could see into the world to follow this, Cartice wondered
why she had had no glimpse of her husband. She had not, she said, and
didn’t want to. She hoped she never would see any one who had been
near to her--it would be too terrible. She insisted on keeping all
knowledge of her queer experiences from Prescott. His sniffs and sneers
of ridicule would be too much for her, nor did Cartice feel equal to
them either. According to Phillips Brooks there are two kinds of
cowardice, that of the conservative, and that of the radical, both of
them fatal to freedom of thought. The former is afraid of being called
an innovator, the latter fears to be thought conservative. One pliantly
conforms to established methods; the other strikes defiance of them.
Neither of them are free.
Perhaps Prescott was of the second. Perhaps he fought what he called
superstition lest he be forced to believe in spite of himself. At any
rate his two friends, perhaps the loyalest he had, were not bold enough
to take him into their confidence. The intolerant always pay this
penalty. They shut out confidence; they make people afraid of them;
they keep light and good away from them, and drive angels themselves
from their gates.
Cartice had a notion that the Butterfly and Prescott loved each other.
Being something of which the gods themselves must approve, she could
not understand the Butterfly’s reticence on the subject, for the winged
creature said not a word in regard to it. In spite of his aggressive
character and some other deplorable defects, Prescott was a man to be
proud of.
The three were much together. Prescott was the Butterfly’s tireless
escort everywhere, and they were usually anxious to have Cartice with
them, and often they came together to pass a few hours with her in the
evening, as she was invariably alone, Doring finding places more to
his taste than the one he called home. Some of Prescott’s friends said
more than once that he was growing gentler and kinder, both on paper
and off.
One evening the three friends were together in Cartice’s apartment.
Prescott’s face was radiant, with a light never seen there before. It
refined and softened his rugged features, making his countenance sweet
and sunny.
“He has spoken,” thought Cartice, “and this is the light of love that
has naught to fear.”
“Children,” he said, after a time, with an unusual sweetness and
confidence that became him well, “dear children, I am going to have
happiness.”
Both looked at him in affectionate inquiry.
“What kind of happiness?” asked the Butterfly, in a low voice, for
there was that in his face which made them feel they were upon holy
ground.
“I don’t know! I don’t know! That’s the inexplicable part of it. Yet
it seems so near I can almost reach out my hands and grasp it. This
feeling has been upon me all day, and grows stronger every moment. I
never experienced anything like it before. I don’t know why or whence
it comes, nor can I explain it well; but I feel it. Yes, I am very near
to something good--near to happiness at last.”
His voice sank low, and its tones had a thrilling sweetness, a
holy joy. His companions listened in silence, under a spell, their
astonishment too vast for words. This was strange talk to come from him.
As in reverie he went on, after a pause, “All my life I have wondered
how it would seem to be happy--really happy--if only for one hour.
Misery I know well; but happiness and I have never met. Now, it is
so near that I am already in its sunshine.” And he smiled, with the
wonderful light on his face, and the smile was strangely sweet and
beautiful.
The Butterfly shook herself out of the seriousness that was upon her,
and said:
“You are going to have money--plenty of money--all unexpected as it
comes in stories, and then--then you must give a big supper and Cartice
and I will wear our prettiest gowns and be queens of the feast.”
He looked at her and smiled again, but did not even hear her chatter,
for his soul was revelling in soundless melody. The exaltation was
still on his face when he and Chriss bade Cartice good-night.
It was ten o’clock next day when Mrs. Doring reached the _Register_
office. The entrance was full of men, with frightened faces, one of
whom motioned to her to stop. Obeying, she stood in her tracks, chilled
with a sense of disaster, until he reached her.
“You must not come in,” he said. “There has been an accident at the
elevator, and--Prescott is dead.”
In silence she turned away. “And this was the happiness he felt so
near to him--this?” she gasped. “Yes; it was so near, yet he did not
understand, and we did not understand. And it was this! It was this!”
Prescott and death were irreconcilable. He was typical of life, force
and action. Who could think of him as out of the conflict, as voiceless
and silent? How could they ever learn to speak of him as one who was
but is not?
“Saw you nothing, Chrissalyn--nothing that portended this?” Cartice
asked.
“Nothing.”
“Yet we had a sign, and were too blind to see it. His glorified
face last night, and his strange feeling that happiness was near to
him--these were signs, though we understood them not.”
From the first a sense of the unreality of what had occurred came to
Mrs. Doring and never left her. She followed the sable carriage of the
dead to the cemetery, and returned to find his chair vacant, his pen
idle, his presence gone forever, yet it was not like reality,--none of
it. She shed no tears, nor was she sad. After the first startled moment
she was at peace, though she knew not why.
Later she understood, as will all of us after a little time. Now we
weep and moan over sorrow, questioning it all, resenting it all; but a
day is coming when we shall see and know and understand, and in that
day we shall re-name many things, having until then miscalled them.
* * * * *
Now another serious event confronted Mrs. Doring. She had done her
best to save her husband from himself but could not. Now she saw
clearly at last, after much striving to bring compatibility out of
incompatibility, that their union was a sham, a pretence, a lie, which
if persisted in could only bring destruction to both of them. The
conviction came to her that it must end.
Few experiences are bitterer or sadder for a sensitive, proud,
high-spirited woman, than to face a domestic calamity like this. To see
the love upon which she had founded her dearest hopes turn to ashes;
to have what she once thought happiness become a burden so intolerable
that it must be cast down, acknowledging disappointment, defeat and
humiliation before the world, is, indeed, a bitter cup.
The coarse, the malicious, the undeveloped have sneers, jeers and
taunts for this order of sufferer; but the enlightened, the truly moral
bow before her reverently, not only because she has suffered, but
because she stands for a great principle.
That the separation must be legal as well as actual, she saw would be
best for both. Though the laws of their state were as humane as most
others, still they had not evolved beyond the point, where in order to
secure freedom from irksome marital bonds one of the parties must make
a damaging charge against the other.
In talking it over with her husband she said, “We can arrange that as
decently as the law will permit. If I make the application, I shall put
it on the most inoffensive ground possible. If that is not agreeable to
you, I will leave you and you can charge me with desertion.”
Doring determined to do at once what he had long been arranging to do
slyly, which was to go away himself, and as a Parthian arrow announced
that he had intended to do so for sometime, but not alone.
It was a curious ending of the most delicate and important relation in
life. Cartice gathered his effects together, packing everything with
careful hands. When he went she watched him out of sight, and out of
her life. Late into the night she still sat at the window, with a white
face and eyes that stared into the darkness yet saw only the scenes of
the past.
When Louis Doring boarded the train that evening he knew that within
awaited him the sharer of his future fortunes.
His story can soon be told. It was the natural outcome of his weak,
selfish, stubborn and vain character. A few months later, deserted by
the companion he had taken with him, penniless and alone in a southern
city, he fell a victim to a malignant fever and passed out of life.
Cartice saw a brief mention of his death in a daily newspaper of the
city in which it occurred. Accompanied by the faithful Butterfly she
went at once, arriving there in time to put his mortal part out of
sight with the decency custom requires.
These two loving hearts, both bruised from sad experiences, sat
together late that night, talking of the curious events we call life
and death. What they knew of one made it almost as terrible as the
other.
“Ah, Butterfly, dear,” said Cartice, “I envy the women who have lost
husbands worth lamenting. Such tears would be sweet, not bitter.”
“You call me a seeress, sometimes,” said Chrissalyn, “and perhaps I
am, for I have been looking off into the future--a future that is very
far away, indeed--and I see you, and you are happy. At least I read it
so, for there is light all about you, and your face is like a picture
of joy, it is so bright. And you are more beautiful than the sun, of
whose radiance your clothes are made. But I am not with you, and it is,
oh! so far away--so far that it looks to be even on the other side of
death though that is a queer way to put it. Yes, you will be great and
renowned some day as well as happy; but the road there is so long--I
don’t understand it--as long as several lives put together, I should
say.”
“And you, child of the far-away eyes, see you naught for yourself?”
“No; I never do; but I have a firm belief that I am yet to have satin
couches and plenty of time to rest on them.”
Splendor be it observed, was her deal of bliss, which was natural, she
being a butterfly.
That night while her friend slept, Mrs. Doring sat by the open window
thinking of the cold, still form she had seen put out of sight that
day, and wondering with a chill sense of awe where now was the soul
that had been represented by it. The moonlight whitened everything, and
added its electric beauty and pale sadness to the loneliness of the
night. She recalled other nights when that form had pulsated near her,
and yet her spirit had been as lonely as now.
What did it all mean, the loving and the suffering, the dreaming and
the awakening, the meeting and the parting? The road together had been
long and hard, yet here was the end--the same end to which all roads
lead--but what was the purpose of it all?
The problem of life; what can it be but the development of the
individual, the unfolding of the soul, that marvelous, persistent,
god-like thing of whose unlimited possibilities we are but beginning
to dream? And all that we do and have done to us, enjoy and suffer,
think and dream, hope and aspire, make to that end, and are necessary
and therefore good.
Memories came to her from a remote past, that antedated her birth--or
so it seemed, for their origin was not within her earthly experiences.
Yet surely they were memories, for one and all met with recognition.
Faces she had loved came and smiled their sympathy and fondness.
Familiar voices spoke to her--voices whose heavenly sweetness mortal
ear hath not heard. Snatches of songs, celestial in their thrilling
melody, floated by. Scenes restful and beautiful unrolled themselves
for a moment and were gone. But it was the inner eyes which saw and the
inner ears that heard.
Yes, she knew them all, for they were her people, her very own people,
of whom she was always dreaming, and for whom she was always searching.
They had come to comfort her. See, all smiled, not one wept, and their
words and songs were joyous.
“My own people! My dear people, I shall yet find you,--I am finding
you,” she said, glancing at the Butterfly’s pretty face, with its crown
of sunshiny hair on the pillow, and thinking of Prescott, with his head
like carven granite and eyes of fire; and others, with some of whom
she had clasped hands but once, yet knew them as her own.
But what of the new-made narrow mound in the cemetery? It presented
itself at the end of every life, mutely asking an explanation of its
existence. This was the wall against which the race of man has ever
beaten the wings of inquiry. There it always stands, unresponsive and
forbidding, the grim silence, like the shores that shut in the sea,
saying, “Thus far shalt thou come and no farther.”
Yet above and beyond the awe and wonder that filled her soul, was that
curious sense of the unreality of death which had come when Prescott
went away and still remained.