ALONE.
About 4 of the afternoon my father, who had lain for some hours in a
state bordering on stupor, and whose breathing had latterly become
harsh and difficult, rose suddenly in his bed and called to me in a
strong voice. I was by his side in a moment and lifted him up as he
signified I should do. A mortal whiteness was in his face and I saw
the end was approaching.
“I have no fear,” he said, in a sort of sick ecstasy. “I can be true
to myself at the last, thank God! The soul triumphs over the body.”
He swayed in my arms, clutched at me and dragged himself erect again.
“My brain--my brain! Something seems to swerve in it! Quick! Before
it’s too late!”
He held on to me. At the last moment the latent determination of his
character trod weakness under and proved the soul masterful. With all
his functions withering in the blighting breath of the destroyer, his
spirit stood out fearless and courageous, a conqueror by its mere
individuality.
It had darkened early, and candles were lighted in the room and the
blind pulled down. Outside the wind tore at the crazy lattice, or,
finding entrance, moaned to and fro in the gusty passages. It
threatened to be a night of storm and sweeping rain. And all its wild
and dismal surroundings were in keeping with the ghastly figure lying
against me. Yet, if there was one in that lonely chamber who shrunk
and feared, it was I, not that other so verging on his judgment, with
so many and such heavy responsibilities to answer for. God forgive
him!
“I triumph, Renalt,” he said, feeding the effort of speech with quick,
drawn gasps. “This later craven has never been I--I was strong to
carry out a purpose, even if it led me to the gallows. Some
white-livered devil usurped. Out with the worm at last! I triumph and
abide by that I did in the righteousness of wrath. But you--you! Let
me say it--quick--I was fast on the coward grip. Oh, a bitter, bitter
curse on the treacherous beast who unmanned me! Only to you, Renalt, I
pray and ask for pardon. I thought--all the time--I had killed the
boy--the braces--I never knew. He--he, that reptile,
suggested--perhaps Modred had--found and kept the cameo. I went up
blindly--came down blindly--I was drunk--bestial--I could remember
nothing.”
He moaned and would have clasped his hands to me but for weakness. At
the last the paralysis of his limbs had departed and he could move.
Disease loosened its clutch, it seemed, in the presence of the death
it had invoked.
“Renalt--I remembered nothing--but I feared--and, fearing, I saw the
odium rest on you and did not speak. It was I gave you to that living
death--I who submitted to that fiend’s dictating, because he struck at
me through the sordid passion that had mastered my better nature.
Renalt----”
“Father--hear me! Am I speaking distinctly? Listen. I forgive you
all.”
It seemed as if a flush passed across his face. He pressed my hand
feebly and dropped his head.
“Now,” he muttered; “come the crash of doom! To all else I am ready to
answer. Call the----”
Like a glass breaking, his voice snapped and immediate silence befell.
He had not stirred in my arms; but now I felt the whole surface of his
body moving, as it were, of itself with a light ruffling shudder.
Suddenly he seemed to shrink into himself, rather than away from me,
so that he cowered unsupported on the bed. I fell back and looked at
his face. His head moved softly from side to side, the eyes following
something, unseen of me, hither and thither about the room. In a
moment they contracted and fixed themselves horribly on one point, as
if the things had come to the bed foot and were softly mounting it. In
the same instant on my dull and appalled senses broke the low booming
voice of the wheel circling in its black pit far below, and I knew
that in the phantom sound no material force spoke, but that the heart
of the dying man was transmitting its terrors to me.
Then I saw my father sink slowly back, drawing, as he did so, the
sheet up and over his face, as if to shut out the sight, and all the
time the convulsive fluttering of my own breath alone stirred the
tense silence that reigned about us.
I must have remained in this position many minutes, fixed and
motionless in a trance of fear, when the stealthy noise below seemed
to cease suddenly as it had begun. At that I leaped to my feet with a
strangled cry and tore the bedclothes away from the face. The eyes
stared up at me as if I were the secret presence; the jaw was dropped;
the whole body collapsed and sunk into the sheets. He had died without
a sound--there--in a moment; had died of that that was beyond human
speech; of something to which no dreadful human cry could give
expression.
* * * * *
Wading near knee deep in the flooded meadows, sense and reason
returned to me by slow degrees. Then a wan streak of sunrise gaped
like a dead man’s wound on the stormy horizon, and a new day was
breaking to wind and deluge that seemed endless.
Ah, surely I had been tried beyond mortal endurance. So I thought, not
knowing what was yet to come; what tension the soul’s fetters can be
put to without breaking.
The sodden day broadened and found me still wandering. Once during the
morning I crept back to the house of terror, and, standing without its
door, summoned the old woman, who had come of herself to attend to
dead Peggy’s laying out, and told her of my father’s death and
directed her to a second task.
Later in the day, I told myself, I would return; by and by when the
dead should be decently composed for rest and their expression should
have resumed something of its normal cast. Then I hurried forth again
and sought forgetfulness in the keen rush of air and wide reality of
the open country.
Walking, resting on some gate or stile; seeking a wayside tavern for
food and drink--always I kept steadily away from me the slightest
reflection on any of the last words spoken by my father. I could not
bear that my thoughts should so much as approach them. I had greatly
suffered, been greatly wronged, yet let my mind dwell insistently on
the thought that these evils were of the past, never more to vex me
out of reason should I look steadily forward, shutting my ears, like
the prince in the fairy tale, to the spectral voices that would fain
provoke me to an answer.
It was growing near that dusky period of the short day when if one
lifts one’s eyes from the ground the sky seems closing in upon the
earth! Worn out and footsore, I had rounded toward the city from its
eastern side and was traversing the now lonely stretch of by-path that
leads from the station, when I saw a woman and little child going on
in front of me haltingly. As I came up they drew aside to let me pass,
and I cried out, “Zyp!” and stopped in astonishment and a little fear.
She faced round upon me, breathing quickly, and put one hand to her
bosom in a startled manner that was quite foreign to her.
“Renny,” she whispered, with a fading smile on her white face--pitiful
heaven, how white and worn it had become! And burst into tears the
next moment.
Shocked beyond measure at her appearance, her woeful reception of me,
I stepped back all amazed. She mistook my action and held out an
imploring arm to me. The little weird girl at her side half buried
herself in her mother’s skirts and peered up at me with deep eyes set
in a tangle of hair.
“Renny!” cried Zyp; “oh, you won’t throw me off? You won’t refuse to
hear me?”
“Come away,” I said, hoarsely; “to some quiet road, where we can talk
undisturbed. You are not too tired?”
“Too--oh, I’m wearied to death. Why not the mill? Renny, why not the
mill?”
“Zyp, not now--not at present. I’ll tell you by and by. See, I’ll take
the little girl on one arm and you can cling to the other.”
She pushed the child forward with a forlorn sigh. It whimpered a
little as I lifted it, but I held it snug against my shoulder, and its
soft breath on my cheeks seemed to melt the hard core of agony in my
brain.
Soon I had them in a quiet spot and seated upon a fallen log. There,
holding the child against me, I looked in the eyes of the mother and
could have wept.
“Zyp, Zyp! What is it?”
A boisterous clap of wind tumbled her dark hair as I spoke. What was
it? Her lustrous head was strewed with ashy threads, as if the
clipping fate had trimmed some broken skein of life over it; her eyes
were like fathomless pools shrunk with drought; an impenetrable sorrow
was figured in her wasted face. This was the shadow of Zyp--not the
sweet substance--and moving among ghosts and shadows my own life
seemed stumbling toward the grave.