"The years!" he broke out with the old fiery intenseness; "count the
years--haven't I counted them?--and the days, and the hours--waiting,
always waiting. Oh, Helen, it's been long--it's been so long. But
what could I do?--what could any gentleman have done, when I passed my
word that---- If your husband----"
I laid my finger on his lips; then leaned up and kissed them. And our
speech flowed back, half of it almost incoherent, into the sweeter
channels that laved the happy past in which we were both content to
dwell. Much of it was of my mother, my sainted mother, for whom life's
conflict had so long been over--and uncle's tears were mingled with my
own.
"There's only one thing I reproach you for now, Helen," the gentle
voice began, when the dusk had deepened into dark; "one thing you
should have done--and that would have made our happiness complete."
"What's that, uncle?" I asked, greatly wondering.
"You should have brought Gordon with you--the only difference there
was, was with him, you know. Surely he doesn't think I'm one of those
old vipers that carries things till death?" his voice less steady than
before.
"He's here," I said softly; "he's down-stairs."
Uncle sprang to his feet as if the years had withheld their enfeebling
hand. "Bring him up--send for him at once," he ordered, as though
commanding a regiment of soldiers. "Ring the bell--where's that
boy?--are the servants all asleep? These rascally dogs they've got in
the North--I wouldn't give Moses or any good nigger for a bushel of
them. And are your children--is the little girl with him now?"
His question cut me like a knife. For I had kept back part of our
life's story, the bitter part, when uncle had enquired about our
children. We only brought one of them, I had said--but hoped he might
see Harold later on. Which was true enough, so true, alas!
"I don't need you," uncle said abruptly as a servant's head appeared at
the door. "I'll go to him," he announced to me--"I'll go to Gordon. I
hope I don't forget what's becoming in a Southern gentleman--besides,
he's come far enough. You wait here--I'd know him in a thousand,
unless he's enough sight plainer than he used to be. Always did have a
hankerin' for him, I believe, like a nigger for a watermelon. You wait
here, Helen," and he made his way, straightening himself with all the
old-time dignity, upon his courtly errand.
It was the following evening, the evening of a day that had been filled
with unmixed gladness to me and Gordon. If it had not been for that
one skeleton closet--which I need not name--the whole house of life
would have been one big banqueting hall to his heart and mine. More
than once, through that happy day, I noticed Gordon's laughter die away
in silence and the brightness leave his eye as there evidently floated
before him the vision of the one absent face. Indeed, he said as much
to me, that all the gladness only threw into darker contrast the
abiding cloud that was always in our sky.
But uncle had been so lovely to us both this day; and we had just
finished dinner at some resort he had discovered where Southern dishes,
new and old, were to be had in all their glory. We were all seated now
in uncle's room; and the dear old man was directing all his powers of
persuasion upon my husband.
"It's the purest play I ever saw in my life," he urged, one hand
holding Gordon by the knee; "it's as good as a sermon. I've heard
heaps o' sermons that didn't do me as much good as 'The Old Homestead,'
I tell you."
"I was never at the theatre in my life," my husband made reply, "except
twice I went to see Irving--and I don't altogether believe in it."
"This is far better'n Irving," uncle urged; "and you'll preach better
after it."
"I don't feel much in the mood for theatres," Gordon responded; "my
days for merriment are past, I fear," which came with a smile that
showed he didn't quite believe it.
"That's the very time to go," insisted uncle; "that's when you want to
get the cobwebs blown out of you--and this'll do it all right."
"I'll leave it to Helen," Gordon suddenly exclaimed; "if she wants to
go, I'll give in."
Five minutes before, I can frankly say, I had hoped Gordon would carry
his point. The theatre, that particular night, had no charm for me.
Yet now that Gordon had left the matter in my hands, some mysterious
impulse settled my resolve at once. Nobody need tell me that women,
true women, live far from the unseen. For my resolve was taken on the
instant, so suddenly and confidently that it amazed myself.
"We'll go," I said quietly. "The play sounds good; I'm sure I've heard
of it before--and I want to see it, Gordon."
Three-quarters of an hour later we were seated five or six rows from
the footlights, watching the haymakers gathered about the moss-grown
bucket that gives its charm to the opening scene of "The Old
Homestead." But the play had not proceeded far before I began to
regret bitterly that we had not stayed away. When it dawned on me that
the plot centred about an absent boy, a son for whom a father sought in
vain, I knew that Gordon's Gethsemane was deepened by every word and
act. This particular kind of anguish was realistic enough to us both,
without any representation so vivid. Yet we had to sit there, uncle
alternately laughing and weeping at our side, and witness the rehearsal
of all we knew so well. I was sitting beside Gordon; and I covertly
got a hold of his hand, pressing it silently to let him know my heart
was aching too. I found myself, almost before I knew it, leaning
forward in an agony of interest and suspense as the great emotions of a
parent's love and loneliness were set forth in terrible reality. It
was as if Gordon's heart and mine were both laid bare that night; and I
found myself wondering if all this meant to any others in that crowded
throng what it meant to us.
Uncle was enraptured at our fixity; he knew not the source of our
deadly interest. "Didn't I tell you?" he whispered to Gordon as the
tension came near its height; "ever see anything like that before?
Isn't that true to life, eh?"
Gordon never spoke, his eyes looking far beyond, as fixed as though set
on death itself.
"Isn't that true to life?" uncle repeated, accustomed to being answered.
"Yes, oh, God, yes--yes, it's true," I heard poor Gordon falter as he
bowed forward and covered his face with his hands. Uncle, dumb with
wonder now, uttered never a word. I prayed for strength.
The tide ebbed and flowed, as is the way in plays, laughter and tears
following each other in quick succession. A wave of mirth--about the
pillar box incident, I think, when the old man imagines the collector
is robbing the mails--had just overswept the audience when Gordon
whispered to me that he could stand it no longer.
"Don't go yet, Gordon," I whispered; "I think he's going to find him,"
and I saw his face white with the pallor of the dead.
He made no reply; but, clutching his hat, he rose to go, swaying
unsteadily where he stood.
I began reaching for my wraps and was just rising to follow. He paused
to wait for me, holding out his hand, I think--of this I am not sure.
But just before we turned to go, my eyes were cast in one farewell
glance upon the stage. My head reeled; my heart stood still; my lips
clave together, parched and dry.
"Oh, Gordon," I cried, bleating, "look, Gordon, look," swimming towards
him even as I pointed at the stage.
His towering figure turned where he stood; and his burning eyes, aglow
with the passion that was rending him, leaped to where I still pointed
with outstretched hand. Then I straightened myself too, as one might
gather his soul for the Judgment Day, and joined my gaze with his. The
eyes of all in the house were upon us, I suppose--but I shall never
know. We stood together, oblivious to all except the destiny of weal
or woe that waited us, looking, both looking, as the eye of the Eternal
itself might look. We could not--we dared not--be sure, lest we might
court the bitterness of death. The light was not bright enough, or
true enough--for us to stake our souls. We feared exceedingly; and for
each other; wherefore neither spoke any word.
The scene was the great Broadway scene, where the anguished father
finds his son at last. And the tattered youth upon whom that
father--that acting father--gazed, on him our eyes were set in dreadful
silence, in questioning that involved our souls. We could not--we
dared not--know; but suddenly the old man on the stage--oh! the
perjured wastery of simulated love like that--broke forth with a wild
outcry of love and rapture as he leaped towards the soiled and wasted
prodigal before him.
And then--and then--mingling with the father's chant, there came from
the bowed and broken wanderer one single note; a little cry, a muffled
plaint of penitence and hope. It was such a little sound, subdued and
faltering as became a broken heart, and it was almost lost in the
father's louder strain--but I heard it, and my soul laid hold of God.
Only a stifled cry--but it was the same I had heard when I first came
out of the valley and my new-born baby boy lay helpless at my breast;
the same I had heard a thousand times when he was hurt or wronged and
toddled in to me with the boyish story of his grief; the same I had
heard when he came home that night and told me of his sin; the same I
had heard when he bent above his sleeping sister and kissed her a long
farewell.
"Oh, Gordon," I said, fainting, "it's Harold--it's our Harold!"
He knew it too. And he left me where I was, half conscious in uncle's
arms. I see it all again, dismantled though I was, as in a dream. The
curtain dropped just as uncle's arm received me, as Gordon glided
towards the narrow half-hidden passageway leading to the stage. Slowly
it fell, right down close to the floor, shutting out the last fragment
of the vision that had flooded our hearts with heaven. Ah, me! no one
there--not even uncle--knew that for us life's curtain had really
risen, the play, the wonderful play of life, only just begun.
The orchestra had softly started some subdued and sympathetic air; I
knew not, nor yet do know, what strain it was--but it fell on my
reviving heart with the sweetness of such music as angels make--and my
eyes flew after Gordon as he was swallowed up of the shadowy passageway
that led back to that mysterious region where actors are men and women,
players now no more. I think somebody, some hireling who knew not what
he did, tried to turn Gordon from his course--as well have tried to
stop Niagara. I fancy I caught a glimpse of him as he swept the
intruder by--his eye was flashing, fearful in its purpose of love and
power, as though he were asserting his claim to life itself.
He never stopped--this was described to me afterwards--till he stood
beside the pair of actors, the old man and the young, already repairing
to the dressing-room behind. And the old man's face, so they told me,
was a study to behold as he was swiftly brushed aside, dispossessed,
the unreality swallowed up of Life as Gordon took the tattered form
into the arms that long emptiness had clothed with almost savage
strength.
"Oh, my son! Oh, Harold, my son, my son!" was Gordon's low cry that
all about could hear; for the stillness of the grave was on every
heart. "Come, come, we'll go to mother," came a moment later as he
turned and tried to lead Harold gently away.
I do not know all the son said to the father. But Gordon told me after
how Harold clung to him as though he were hiding for his life, speaking
no word, but burying his face as though none must see the shame--or the
holy gladness; and in a minute or two, though I know not how long it
was, some one in authority said that the play must go on, that the
audience would be impatient and indignant.
"Then come, my son," said Gordon; "get your clothes on, Harold, and
we'll go--your mother, your mother knows it's you," his face radiant, I
ween, as it turned upon his boy.
But Harold wouldn't--the play must be finished, he said, and he must
take his part. Harold's face was resolute, his father said, his words
full of determination, when he avowed his purpose to stay till his work
was done. And really--it was one of the most amusing sides of my
husband's character I ever saw--when Gordon told me this his face
fairly shone with pride. "The lad wouldn't forsake his duty," he said,
as proudly as if Harold had been a foreign missionary instead of a
play-actor; it was too funny to hear Gordon, with the views I knew him
to hold about the theatre, belauding Harold because he wouldn't leave
his post even at such a time as that.
So his father came back and resumed his place beside me. No word
escaped his lips, but his eyes spoke the language of Everlasting Life
as they were fixed a moment on my own. Uncle gazed at him--I suppose
everybody did--but he knew that question or answer had no place in an
hour such as this. And the curtain rolled up again--ah, me! how
different now--and my hand was once more in Gordon's; but now I could
feel the strain of gratitude and gladness that his happy heart was
chanting. Our eyes were fixed on Harold only; I heard his voice amid
that closing revelry--and my wild heart leaped in my bosom as though my
son were born to me anew.
We were home at last. In the hotel, I mean, in Gordon's room and
mine--for uncle had gone to rest. Only a little tiny bit of a room it
was--but it was home; for we had Harold--and Dorothy was asleep in an
adjoining room.
Gordon went out for a little. He said he wanted to enquire about
trains--but I knew why he left us alone together. Gordon was an
eloquent minister--but I was Harold's mother. And there are queens and
priestesses, as well as kings and priests, unto God. Which Gordon knew.
It was while he and I were still alone with each other that Harold
broke out with bitter plaint of penitence, so full of gusty sorrow, of
self-reproach, of broken vows and purposes. I shall not, must not,
write it down. It was all holy to me, and shall ever be; for the
breath of spring was in it, and I knew then that God had brought him
back, all back, the broken heart sick of the sin and shame that he now
hated and deplored. My son was alive again, I knew in that moment;
lost had he been indeed--but God had kept aglow his memory of the
Home-light that never had gone out.
"I couldn't tell this to anybody else," the faltering voice said as his
face was hidden on my bosom--"not even to father--what I'm going to
tell you now. But I'm going to----"
"Tell it to God, my son," and I kissed the quivering lips.
Gordon came back just after that. I think he must have known our souls
had come close to each other and to Him. For a great peace was on his
face--and yet it shone with a kind of human happiness that I thought
was truly spiritual. He simply didn't seem to think there was anything
that needed reproach, or explanation, or forgiveness. He talked with
Harold about his old friends, his old games, his old pursuits; and
about what we would do, and see, before we returned to Hertford. Then
pretty soon he said it was time we were all in bed, and, in the most
natural way, that we would have worship before we separated. So he
took the Bible. But, before he opened it, he started one of the old
familiar psalms, just as we had always done at home.
"We'll sing the one hundred and twenty-sixth," he said, with something
of grandeur in his manner that reminded me of Harold's grandfather; for
that is one of the sublimities of the Scottish race. I have heard both
Gordon and his father declare that something could be found in the
psalms to suit every occasion, no matter what. But I wondered what
could express the emotion of such a time as this. "We'll sing the one
hundred and twenty-sixth," Gordon repeated, already pitching the key to
the "grave sweet melody" of a tune that bore the happy name of St.
Andrew's. And we sat in silence as he sang
"When Zion's bondage God turned back
As men that dreamed were we;
Then filled with laughter was our mouth
Our tongue with melody."
Harold's head was bowed; my eyes were fixed on Gordon. For my heart
was busy with the thrilling memory of that long distant night when I
first had heard the power of that earnest voice, first learned the
grandeur of these mighty songs. Gordon seemed unconscious of our
presence. His eyes were lifted up, beyond the things of time: he was
like one lost among the hills, transported by their grandeur.
Something more than human ecstasy throbbed through his voice when he
sang the verse:
"As streams of water in the south
Our bondage, Lord, recall;
Who sow in tears, a reaping time
Of joy enjoy they shall."
Then he read some selection from the Scriptures. It was very short;
and he read it slowly, his eyes never lifted from the page. When he
prayed, he talked with God--all I can remember was the way he said "Our
Father."
It was long after midnight when he and I went to our rest--we sat
talking for hours and hours, and Harold was asleep in the room next to
ours. Just before we put out our light Gordon suddenly turned to me,
and his face was as youthful as when I saw it first.
"Helen, let us go and tuck Harold in--so he won't be cold."
I smiled, for I couldn't but remember Harold's age, but I threw a
wrapper about me and Gordon and I went in together. We tucked him in,
one on either side; I don't know whether Harold knew or not, but he
played the part of childhood once again--when we kissed him good-night
he turned a little in his sleep and smiled.