The greatest situations in life are invariably incomplete, inexorably
limited by the very stress of feeling that should make them effective
and convincing, as, for instance, it does on the stage, where effect is
duly studied and considered irrespective of the sensitiveness of the
human mind that shrinks from making a display of its deeper emotions.
Because of the intensity of their feeling and the natural reserve that
prompted them to its concealment, the meeting between husband and wife
was commonplace in the extreme. For years they had been apart, nursing
resentment one against the other. Each had failed the other in the
great essentials of married life. Both had made mistakes, and both had
been unrelenting. But death makes an extraordinary difference in human
affairs, even when it is merely the overshadowing of death's wings,
which, hovering for a while, pass on, the time being not yet fulfilled.
The fear, the almost certainty that death would claim her husband had
melted for ever the hardness in Zoe Lawless' heart. She was prepared,
had been prepared from the moment she determined to leave Cape Town in
search of him, to forgive every injury that she had suffered at his
hands,--to accept him as he was for her love's sake, unconditionally, as
he had once told her was the only way possible to complete
reconciliation. He had less to forgive; but he also had come to regard
life differently since he had stood on the borderland of the Great
Eternal,--to realise its limitations and insufficiencies, the pettiness
of ill-feeling, the seriousness of the huge human blunder that is called
unkindness. The overshadowing of death's wings had softened him, had
given him pause to think.
When the door opened in response to his querulously uttered invitation,
and Zoe entered with her flowers in her hand, he looked towards her with
a quick, sharp glance of inquiry. Behind the look was a certain fierce
shyness, a diffidence which he strove to conceal. She approached the
bed, placed the bloemetjes on the coverlet close to his hand and sat
down in the chair she had occupied on the only other occasion that she
had been permitted inside the room.
"I am so glad you are better," she said.
He removed his gaze from her face and played with the flowers.
"You've been long enough in coming to see me," he returned ungraciously.
"The doctor was afraid I might excite you," she explained.
"Rot!" he ejaculated.
He pulled the flowers about and did not look at her.
"It's been a near thing with me," he went on, "I've had a closer look at
death than I'm likely to get again, and come through... It didn't seem
to matter, somehow." He still played with the flowers. "It would have
squared things, perhaps, if I'd made you a widow."
She leant towards him, and spoke in a low voice, reproachfully.
"You know it wouldn't have squared things. It would have deprived both
of us of the chance to make amends."
"Still making a matter of conscience of it?" he said cynically.
She put her hand quickly on his, and so stayed the restless fingers in
their destructive task.
"Hugh! That isn't kind."
"No," he agreed. "But you see, it's easy for you to do the right thing
under given circumstances."
"Oh! my dear!" she said. And then: "Easy! If you knew what it cost me
to reconcile myself to the thought of sharing in nursing you with that
woman... I was prepared to do that. Oh yes! I know the rights of that
story now, but I didn't when I left Cape Town."
Lawless flushed darkly.
"I don't deserve that you should come near me, Zoe... I behaved to you
like a cad."
"You didn't behave well," she returned. "I wonder why you acted as you
did. When Colonel Grey told me the story, I felt that you must hate me
to let me think that... It made me bitter. Afterwards, when death came
so very close, such matters appeared less important, trivial even... I
ceased to think of them."
"It makes a difference," he said.
His hand twisted under hers until the palm came uppermost; his fingers
closed upon her fingers, gripping them tightly. A little thrill of
happiness ran through her. It was many a long year since his hand had
gripped hers like that. He turned his face suddenly and looked at her.
"You are cold," he complained, but his eyes smiled with a look of
complete satisfaction. "You punish me by staying out of my room
altogether until I become violent, commit an assault on a very harmless
person, and practically send for you. And now you are here--you permit
me to hold your hand."
She laughed and flushed warmly.
"I'm leaving it all to you," she said softly. "I want to leave it to
you... You ought to understand."
"When I was sick," he said whimsically, "I suffered from delusions. The
most amazing as well as the pleasantest of these fancies was that one
day you came and sat beside my bed where you are sitting now, only,
inexplicably, your arms were about me, and your face was close to mine
upon the pillow. I was out of my body then. I think I should have
slipped away altogether but for those restraining arms. I've lain often
and tried to will the vision back, but it never reappeared."
He turned in the bed and lifted himself slightly on his elbow.
"You are far more elusive than that fancy of mine," he grumbled.
He gripped the hand he held tighter, and pulled her towards him.
"I thought you weren't conscious," she said, stooping lower. "I didn't
guess you knew..."
"Zoe! my dear! my dear!" he cried, his face close to hers. "All these
years without you! ... How have I borne it? I have been a wanderer on
the face of the earth,--a rudderless ship that has drifted with the
current, that has had no helm to answer to, no one on the look-out. I
wonder that I didn't go aground a dozen times. I should have got
aground if there had not been the flame of my love for you alight in my
heart to show me the danger places when I came to them. You have been
my guiding star throughout the years. I never thought that we should
meet, much less come together again; but I've always borne your
goodness, your purity, in mind as things that counted, that kept a man
from breaking himself on the reckless impulses of his own selfishness.
I've been a limited, carnal-minded cad. But whatever brief passion has
possessed me, I have never loved anyone but you. Zoe, I hate myself
when I think of the past. I want to get away and hide myself--from
you."
"Don't think of it," she said soothingly. "We've done with all that."
He looked at her wonderingly.
"What made you follow me out here?" he asked. "What brought you to this
place, believing what you believed of me? ... It puzzles me to
understand."
She put out her other hand and laid it upon his shoulder and pushed him
gently but firmly back upon the pillow.
"Why trouble about understanding?" she asked. "I don't understand
myself. It was just love drew me." She spoke lower. "Whatever you
have done, whatever you have been, I have never ceased to love you."
He turned his face aside weakly. There were tears in his eyes. He
endeavoured unsuccessfully to hide them from her. She put her arms
about him, and gathered the shrunken, suffering figure to her bosom.
Then she laid her head beside his on the pillow and drew his face close
to hers...