But a few minutes had passed since Usher's departure; yet to Sylvester
they represented a great chasm of time,--a living self on the one
side, a dead self on the other. He walked aimlessly about the room in a
curious apathy. That which had been vital to him, his love and reverence
for those two,--father and mother,--had been plucked away from him, and
it seemed merely some reflex action that maintained organic existence.
On the wall facing the fireplace were two companion water-colour
portraits in old-fashioned oval frames. He paused before them and looked
dully from one to the other. These had been his sacred images in the
house, the ikons of his gods. His mother smiled down upon him. Her
hair, banded obliquely on either side over her forehead, gave an idea
of Madonna-like purity to the delicate contours of her face. That of
Botticelli's fair girl-mother betrayed less a soul at war with itself.
And it was not the artist's contemporaneous delight in investing
feminine portraiture with angelic sentimentality that was at fault. The
son remembered her thus in the flesh, though older,--a rare, flower-like
woman, with hands that, when they touched him as a boy, seemed holy.
She was dead. That other, the young man bright and strong, looking
unflinchingly at the world over his absurd black neckcloth, was now an
old man, dying. And all that they left was a heritage of shame.
Their lives had been a hollow, hideous lie,--the lives of his gods. _A
fortiori_, the lives of common mortality were false. He seemed to stand
apart from the world, dispassionately regarding a race corrupt to its
core, and shrinking from the step that would bring him again into its
midst. Without Phariseeism he appeared to be the one clean man in a miry
universe; the sense whereof brought with it something of the appalling.
Whither should he turn without rubbing against contamination?
He moved away from the pictures and looked about the room. The familiar,
old-fashioned furniture, which the old man loved to keep in memory of
her who was once queen of the little space, seemed tainted with the
unutterable. He became aware of a physical feeling of nausea. The room
reeked. He flung open one of the French windows with an instinctive
craving for a breath of the cold December air that was blown across the
dripping lawn.
He brushed aside his hair, and tried to think. He stood as a judge; that
he realised. Those two were brought before the bar, accused of the
sin that his organic temperament pronounced unforgivable. The pleas
in extenuation would be weakness and folly; and weakness and folly he
despised. He was called upon to pass sentence for the shame of which
he himself was the child; and in passing it on the sinful pair he was
condemning himself to a living death. The man did not see that he had
been working all his life towards this doom.
The slamming of the door behind him caused him to turn round with
a start. His Aunt Agatha came towards him, wrapping a woollen shawl
tightly around her lean shoulders.
“Oh, how can you have the windows open on a day like this?” she asked
shivering.
He closed the window in silence and looked at her inquiringly.
“Your father has been awake a long time, dear, and is asking so for you.”
“A long time?” he echoed.
“Yes; before Mr. Usher came. Didn't you know? He addressed the envelope
of the letter he sent down to you. Didn't you get it?”
“Yes. I got it,” said Sylvester.
“What's the matter with you, Syl? Aren't you going to him?”
“Oh, of course,” he replied. “Of course--yes.”
He went out slowly and mounted the stairs with limbs as heavy as lead.
He turned the handle of his father's door and entered. The kind grey
eyes of the old man, propped on his pillows, met him as he crossed the
threshold, and a smile flickered over the wan lips.
“I was afraid you had forgotten me,” whispered the old man, feebly
holding out his hand, which his son pressed in silence.
Ella was standing in the light of the window, medicine bottle and glass
in hand. Until the liquid was poured out, she paid no attention to
Sylvester. Then she came to the bedside and looked across at him
somewhat defiantly before handing the glass to his father.
“What is the use of this solemn little comedy?” said the latter,
whimsically, his voice, a whispered echo of the cheeriness of days past.
“It won't make me any better. Simmons knows it and you know it and I
know it. All the king's horses and all the king's men! And Humpty Dumpty
doesn't want to be set up again. He's been on his wall long enough.”
He drank the draught, however, making a wry face. Ella bent over to wipe
his lips, but he motioned her away with characteristic independence.
“I can do that for myself. I can't do much, but I can do that. You don't
know how she bullies me, Syl.”
“Uncle Matthew wouldn't have the nurse when she came to relieve me,”
explained Ella.
“I want those I love best by me, as now, eh, Syl?” said the old man.
Sylvester did not answer, but stood by the bedside dumb, vainly seeking
some formula of speech whereby to simulate emotion. Ella set the
wine-glass on the table and smoothed the pillows and counterpane, then
lingered by the sick man, looking down upon him with a puckering of the
brow, as a woman will, counting over the little tale of duties specified
by the forth-driven nurse, so as to make certain of no omission. But her
presence there filled Sylvester with dull resentment.
“My father has something particular to say to me,” he said stiffly. “Do
you mind?”
“I was on the point of going,” she replied, somewhat surprised at
feeling hurt by his tone, for she had thought that the successive
emotional shocks of the past four and twenty hours had killed all
feeling within her for ever. Recovering herself, she bent over the old
man, kissed him, and crossed to the door. Sylvester met her there and
accompanied her into the passage and closed the door behind him.
“How much does my father know of Roderick Usher's affairs?”
She looked at him bravely enough.
“Nothing. I believe he guesses. I have told him he was summoned abroad
suddenly.” She moved away.
“Stop,” said he. “There is something else.” She drew a step nearer. “I
can't bear much more,” she said quietly.
“It may relieve your mind to know that I have withdrawn the charge
entirely. He is perfectly free.”
She stared at him for a moment, then grew deadly white and fainted. The
girl's overtaxed strength had given way at last. Sylvester caught her
in his arms and prepared to carry her to her room not far off along the
passage; but at that moment Miss Agatha Lanyon with Simmons turned the
corner, and he gave Ella into their charge.
“I'm staying with my father,” he said to Simmons. “Come in later.”
On the other side of his father's door he forgot the recent scene. Of
what importance was a girl's fainting compared with the death hovering
in this chamber and the death enthroned in his heart? He approached the
bed. Matthew looked up at him wistfully.
“You can't expect me to live for ever, you know. I really have had
enough of it, so don't fret.”
A thrush fluttered against the window for a moment. Matthew started.
“What was that?”
“Only a bird beating against the pane, attracted by the fire, perhaps.”
“We do that all our lives long. The invisible barrier. Oh, it's time to
go, Syl, when a man begins to moralise. The moral always comes at the
end of the story. Sit down on the bed, my son. I want to talk to you.”
Sylvester obeyed. An expression of pain crossed his face. The old man's
undismayed serenity moved his admiration. He would have given worlds to
have uttered the cry of grief and love that would have been possible an
hour ago.
“You are a brave man, father,” he forced himself to say.
“No; a coward. A pitiable old coward. You received my letter this
morning?”
“Yes. It is all right.”
“You found a cheque yesterday--thought it forged--stopped Ella's
marriage?”
“Yes, and brought her back with me.”
“But you will believe that I wrote the cheque?”
“If you wish me to,” said Sylvester.
There was a silence broken only by the crackling of the fire and the
sobbing of the wind outside among the bare trees. Matthew gazed at the
patch of sky framed by the window--it was one of his little obstinacies
to have the fullest daylight in his room--and watched the scudding
clouds. Presently, without turning,--
“Syl,” he said.
“Yes, father.”
“Something is breaking my heart. It has been the dream of my life to
leave you a little fortune to make you independent, but I have lost it
all, nearly all.”
“You must not be distressed at that,” replied Sylvester. “I am earning
a good income and am putting by money. In twenty years I shall be a
wealthy man.”
Matthew turned a face of intense anxiety, and it was some seconds before
he could speak in his feeble voice.
“But Woodlands will have to go. It is heavily mortgaged,--a debt I owe
to Usher. Forgive me, Syl; I tried so hard to keep it. You'll find Usher
and Roderick in my will, you the residuary legatee; but there will be
nothing. I will explain a little.”
He paused, thinking of some explanation, a debt incurred to Usher long
ago. But Sylvester, imagining the story to be the one of sickening shame
he had just heard, sought to save the old man unnecessary pain.
“Don't say anything. Usher has told me.”
Matthew looked at him wide-eyed.
“Usher told you?”
“Yes.”
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“From the beginning?”
“Yes. This morning.”
“You were threatening Roderick with a prosecution?”
“Yes. When I learned that he was--my brother, I instructed my solicitor
to withdraw the charge.”
“Merciful God, have pity on me!” murmured the old man, with closed eyes.
The tremendous irony of existence crushed him. To save his son this
knowledge, he had endured over thirty years of abject humiliation. The
son by his own act had brought the knowledge upon himself. It is an
awful thing when a strong man comes face to face with the futile result
of all his strength.
Presently he opened his eyes and looked wearily at Sylvester.
“Forgive me, Syl. Don't judge after the penalty has been paid. Even
common law cannot sentence a man twice for the same offence. And I 've
served my time, and so did she. My God! we served it twice over. And no
one knew or pitied us. I would have killed myself cheerfully to spare
you the knowledge.”
His voice weakened, and he murmured an inaudible sentence, then lay back
exhausted on his pillows. Sylvester looked at the kind, strong face,
now so ashen and aged, and a gleam was revealed to him of the spirit's
tragedy beneath; confused and blurred, it is true, but still a gleam
that filled him with vague disquietude. It dimly suggested possibilities
of life beyond the jealously guarded gates of his soul.
“You must have pity, my son,” whispered Matthew.
The tone wrung the young man's heart like a material grip. It was the
first sign of returning power of sensation. He cleared his throat and
said constrainedly,--
“Don't talk like that, father. I am your son and must always honour
you.”
Matthew again turned his head and watched the grey sky. He knew his son
to be a stern man, and the austere sound of his words chilled him more
than the death he felt approaching.
“What can I do?” he murmured, dispirited. “It was a long, long penance.
Don't turn from me, my son.”
“But--father,” said Sylvester, brokenly, “everything seems to have left
me.”
The numbness had gone, and the whole sensitive man writhed in sudden
pain, with loss of faith. His mother, whom he had deemed holy as a
saint, his wife whom he had worshipped as a star,--both to have been
false wives, women of shame! The old torture revived, intensified
tenfold. The sight of the once revered being who lay dying in utter
sadness before his eyes, and for whom the old love was now fighting
within him for mastery, raised the torture's poignancy to such a pitch
that at last it broke through the reserve of a lifetime and found vent
in a great cry,--
“My own wife was unfaithful to me. How, can I judge my mother?”
A flush of life entered the dying man's cheeks. He turned quickly; his
eyes were luminous.
“Constance? I did not think you knew--till the other night. And then I
hoped against hope.”
“Did you know? How long? I only learned it after her death--Leroux's
last illness. My God! does all the country-side know?”
“No, Syl. I alone.”
He sought his son's hand on the coverlet, and then continued in the
calm, assured tone that Sylvester knew had given strength and comfort to
so many. The voice had grown suddenly strong.
“She came to me herself, and told me, a soul-stricken woman,--just
after. She loved the man, Syl, and had always loved him. Circumstances
estranged them, they thought for ever. And then--she was a brave woman,
Syl--she fancied she could make a good man's life happy,--yours. But
the mistake was cleared up, and he returned. She loved him,--my boy, we
can't kill love,--but she was proud of her honour and scorned running
from temptation; relied on her strength too far, until one day, only one
day, Syl, it failed her, in a whirl of madness. She came to me to ask
what she should do. I have never seen such frantic grief in a human
soul. And a good many have brought their troubles to me,” he added with
one of his rare smiles.
“That is true,” said Sylvester. And a sudden impulse made him add, “God
bless you!”
For the thought, of a soul in pain flying instinctively to the sympathy
of those kind eyes brought a gush of tenderness. He saw him again as
the wise counsellor, the generous friend, the child-hearted lover of all
things, great and small.
“And you told her--?” he queried in a low voice, deeply moved.
“A greater judge than I set the precedent. She was the truest wife to
you thereafter.”
“Tell me, father,” said Sylvester, huskily, “when was it? Dorothy?”
“Your own flesh and blood,” said the old man, gripping his hand. “My
poor boy, how you must have suffered!”
He lay back again, prostrated by his sustained effort of speech, and
closed his eyes. Sylvester leaned forward, half reclining on the bed,
still holding his father's hand. And as he sat there silent, a veil
seemed to be drawn from before his vision.
“She--Constance must have suffered,” he said at last.
Matthew opened his eyes and met his son's gaze wistfully.
“Don't we all? If the stainless like you suffer, what of us poor sinners
who struggle towards the light! Think of the agony of that pure and
delicate soul who bore you, my son. Pray for all poor souls, Syl.”
His voice had grown singularly faint. The tears leaped to Sylvester's
eyes. He tried to speak, but his throat was clogged with unaccustomed
sobs. With instinctive ashamedness he buried his face in the pillow next
to his father, still holding his hand. He lay there a long time, his
heart aching with the returning love as a limb to which the tourniquet
has been applied aches with the returning blood. Once the old man
whispered a prayer for the son's forgiveness, and when Sylvester pressed
his hand, relapsed into his half-sleep as if reassured. Time went by.
Presently Sylvester heard him murmuring in a scarcely audible voice.
Gradually the sense of the words came to him. The old man was repeating
scraps of verse:--
“Freres humains, qui apres nous vivez,
N'avez les cueurs contre nous endurciz,
Car, si pitié de nous pouvres avez,
Dieu en aura plustost de vous merciz.
Ne soyez done de nostre confrairie,
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre!”
There was a great pathos in the broad English accent with which he
murmured the old French words, and for the first time in all his life
Sylvester understood them. He raised his head and saw his father's lips
moving dumbly. After a little the voice came again, broken and faint,
and only by a word here and there could he gather the meaning. It was
from Swinburne's “Garden of Proserpine:”
“... Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea,”
He repeated the couplet two or three times. He had never been a great
reader of poetry, but of some half-dozen poems he was particularly fond,
and had made them his own, and had woven them into the texture of his
life. Among them were such dissimilar things as Villon's “Ballade,”
Macaulay's “Battle of Ivry,” Tennyson's “Brook,” “The Ancient Mariner,”
and Sylvester had often smiled indulgently at this little anthology, his
father's simple spiritual equipment. Especially had he wondered at his
assimilation of this poem of Swinburne's, so remote in feeling from his
steadfast outlook upon life, and his intolerance of cowardly shrinking
from its responsibilities.
But now he comprehended that his father was a weary, weary man, and that
one of the most beautiful of all utterances to the weary man's heart had
brought him comfort.
“Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light;
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight;
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal;
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.”
The murmuring voice ended the poem. Sylvester drew the old man's
withered brown hand to his lips.
“Forgive me for not understanding, father,” he said brokenly. “I am glad
I know. I love you and my mother more than I have ever done. Would to
God I had been a tenderer son to you!”
Matthew's clasp tightened, and a smile hovered over his face. He knew
that the awkward words came from his son's heart.
“We understand each other, Syl. '_Tout comprendre_, et cetera.... I am
happy. I have never been so happy in all my life--'the burden has fallen
from me--fallen into the sea.' I'm sleepy, Syl--stay by me--it comforts
me.”
So Sylvester, still holding the dear hand in a warm clasp, and fearing
to move lest he should disturb the quiet slumber into which the old
man had fallen, remained by his father's side, his face hidden in the
pillow. And as he lay, there was accomplished one of those integral
spiritual changes that can only be wrought once in the lifetime of a man
here and there. The White Dove of the Divine Pity overshadowed him with
its wings, and he saw deeply into the mysteries of life. He beheld the
unutterable pathos of man, his clogged aspirations, his heroic weakness,
his piteous fortitude, his everlasting struggles. It was revealed to him
that there may be more of the warm spiritual essence of humanity, in a
single passionate sin than in a hundred austere virtues.
His father, mother, Constance, Leroux, Ella, all of whom he, the
upright, stainless man, had condemned, stood before him clothed in a
new light; and by reason of their warm humanity, their struggles, their
sufferings, they stood higher in the scale of being than he.
He saw the loves of those two whom he had so cherished unfold in tragedy
before his vision. They were two rare natures, he understood, fitted
only one for the other, too fine for commoner clay. He knew the agony
of the first early struggle, the eternal conflict between love and that
which the world accepts as duty; the mother's heart torn asunder between
the child of her body and the man of her heart's core; the ignoble
husband a thing of horror in her thoughts. Then came their life
together; the perfect union; the sweet community of noble end; but every
step to happiness dogged by the footfall of pain. What must they have
suffered, the two sensitives, with minds (in the son's fancy) of gods
and hearts of little children! He remembered that there were times
when his mother would stand by the window, lost to external things, and
strain her vision through infinite space; and he knew now it was the
yearning for the child that she had forsaken.
And then she died, the pure gold of her spirit worn thin by suffering.
He remembered his father's ashen face; how he clung unspeaking to him,
even as he himself in after years had clung to Dorothy. Then came
the proud man's lonely penance; Usher's arrival with Roderick. He had
wronged the man and wronged the boy; but what unwearying efforts to
redeem in full! The weight of the burden fell upon Sylvester, and he
knew its heaviness. He knew the scrupulous gentleman's revolt against
the forced intimacy with the underbred egotist, lost to self-respect,
the rapacious blackmailer, the vampire that sucked his heart's blood.
He knew the sordid cares of money that had fallen on the old man, his
struggles to leave his own son an independent fortune and the family
home, and at the same time to carry out his chivalrous vow to give an
exact equivalent to the wife's deserted child; the agony of effort to
spare his son the knowledge. And all that had left untouched his tender,
generous heart, which all men loved. A new reverence arose within
Sylvester's soul.
And that other,--Constance? Had she not struggled, silently,
indomitably, filling his existence with wifely devotion, battling night
and day with the hydra-headed love that seemed unconquerable? Had she
not fought and suffered and triumphed? And Leroux? Had he not shared in
the battle and the suffering and the victory? Had she not, Ella, too,
bravely striven, seeking light through the darkness that he had cast
about her? And Roderick? Who was he that he should judge his fellow?
The fierce hate died for ever in Sylvester's heart. The bewildering
knowledge of man's infinite weakness, man's infinite strength and
endurance, stirred his inmost soul with unutterable pity.
*****
A touch on the shoulder aroused him. Instinctively he sought to free
his hand; but the clasp that held it was singularly stiff and cold. He
lifted his head with a start and looked round. Ella was standing behind
him. Then he freed himself and leaped to his feet. Their eyes met, then
turned to the figure on the bed. He bent over, looked intently into his
father's face, felt his heart. The erring, beautiful life had ended in
his sleep.
Without a word spoken, they straightened the limbs and smoothed the bed,
the girl crying silently. As soon as this was done, she whispered,--
“I will leave you.”
But to her great wonder, he took her hand and raised it to his lips.
“No,” he said; “stay.”