One evening, late in the summer, the melancholy recluse, who might have
forgotten, so seldom did he speak, the sound of his own voice, strolled
out to evade the intensity of the heat in the hope of a breath of air
from the river. But no, it lay like a sheet of glass, blank of
incident--no breeze, no cloud, a pallid monotony of twilight. He had
passed through the lawn and came out upon the levee which in the dead
levels of that country seems of considerable elevation. He loitered
along the summit, finding in the higher ground some amelioration of the
motionless atmosphere, for it ceased to harass him, and with his heavy
brooding thoughts for company he walked on and on, till at length he was
aroused by the perception that in his absorption he had passed the
limits of his own domain, and was trespassing on the precincts of a
neighboring plantation. This fact was brought to his notice by seeing a
bench on the levee which he had not caused to be placed there, and
behind it was a mass of Cherokee rose hedge, the growth of which he did
not approve on these protective embankments. On it were many waxy white
blooms, closing with the waning day, amidst the glossy, deeply green
foliage, and seated on the bench was a lady gowned in fleecy white.
He scarcely gave her a glance, and with a sense of intrusion he gravely
lifted his hat as he was turning away. But she sprang up precipitately
and came toward him.
“Oh, Randal, _Randal_,” she exclaimed in a voice of poignant sympathy,
and said no more. She had burst into a tempest of sobs and cries, and as
he came toward her and held out his hand, he felt her tears raining down
on it as she pressed it between both her soft palms.
“Oh, I know you don’t--you _can’t_--care for my sympathy,” Hildegarde
sobbed out brokenly. “It is nothing to you or to _him_, but Randal, he
was not a man for _one_ friend, one mourner. Everybody loved him that
knew him.”
She had collapsed in her former place on the bench, her arm over its
back, her head bent upon it, her slender figure shaken by her sobs.
“But he would care for your sympathy, he would value your tears, shed
for his sake,” Randal said, suddenly. He walked to the bench and sat
down beside her. “Only a few hours before--before--he was speaking to me
of you. How lovely----”
He paused in embarrassment, remembering Adrian’s protest how gladly he
would see his brother make her the chatelaine of Duciehurst,--oh,
dreams, dreams!--all shattered and gone!
“Did he--did he, really?”
She lifted her eyes, swimming with tears and irradiated with smiles,
that seemed to shine in the dull twilight.
“Oh, how I treasure the words!” Then after a long pause--“I was afraid
to speak to you, Randal. I do everything wrong!”
“You? You do everything right,” he declared.
“I am all impulse, you know,” she explained.
“Which is so much better than being all design,” he interpolated.
“And so I speak without consideration, and might--might hurt people’s
feelings.”
“Never--never in the world,” he insisted.
“I am so glad you forgive it, if it is intrusiveness. But I am staying
down here at my aunt’s; she has been very ill. And I have so longed to
say just one word to you--to call you by telephone--or,--something. I
would see your solitary light burning across the lake, so late, so
late--you know we have been watchers here, too,--and I would think of
you, shut in with your sorrow, and no human pity can comfort you. So I
could only send my prayers for you. Did you feel my prayers?”
They were very real to her in her simple faith, very important,
necessarily efficacious.
“No,” he said, honestly. But as her face fell he added: “Perhaps they
will be answered.”
“Oh, assuredly,” she cried, tremulously, and her sincerity touched him.
“Whenever your light shines late from your east window remember that I
am praying that you may have the grace to turn your thoughts joyfully to
the blessed memories you have of your brother, and the happy hours that
were in mercy vouchsafed to you, and what he was to you, and what you
were to him, and what you will be to each other on the day of the great
Reunion. So that you may have strength to take up your duties in life
again, in usefulness and contentment--like the man you were born to be,
and the man you are. Then shall my prayers be answered, and the memory
of your brother will become a blessing, and not a blight.”
There was some responsive chord in that manly heart of his vibrating
strongly to this appeal. Only the next day, struggling with an averse
distaste and wincing from the sights and sounds of the former routine,
he went out to supervise the weighing of the cotton in the fields, now
beginning to open with a fair promise. He felt strangely grateful for
the hearty greetings of the laborers, and an humble appeal to right some
little injustice only within his power made his hands seem strong, and
renewed his sense of a duty in the world.
The next day, collapsing on his resolution, it was difficult to force
himself to take out his fine horse and drive as of yore to the
neighboring town, attending a meeting of the planters of the vicinity,
all agog, always, on the subject of the operations of the levee board.
When Sunday came, with, oh, how faint a spirit, he took his downcast way
to the little neighborhood church, built in a dense grove, full of
shadows and the sentiment of holy peace, called St. John’s in the
Wilderness, and his broken and contrite heart seemed all poignantly
lacerated anew and bleeding, and found no comfort. It had all the agony
of renunciation to think of his brother--his own other self, his twin
existence--as translated to that far, spiritual sphere, which we cannot
realize, or formulate aught of its conditions. His brother, alive, well,
strong, loving and beloved, fighting his way dauntlessly through
inadequate resources and restrictions, making and building of his own
inherent values a place for himself in the world--that vital presence
quenched! That loyal, generous, gentle heart to beat never again. It was
a thought to make the senses reel. He wondered that reason did not fail
before its contemplation. He felt his eyes grow hot and burn in their
sockets, and only mechanically and from force of habit could he follow
the service. Once, as his unseeing gaze turned restlessly from the
chancel they fell upon Hildegarde, seated in her uncle’s pew. Her eyes
were downcast, her face was sweetly solemn. A sense of calm radiated
from her expression, her look of aloofness from the world. There arose
in his mind the thought of Adrian’s faith in her genuine graces of
character, which belittled even her charm and beauty, his wish that she
might share the splendor of Ran’s restoration to fortune, when it should
come full-handed to them, that she might grace the high estate of the
lady of Duciehurst--oh, poor Duciehurst! He could but look upon her with
different eyes for the thought. It was as a bond between them.
He had regained his composure, grave and dejected--all unlike his former
self--by the time the sermon was ended, and he waited for her at the
door; together they walked silently to her uncle’s home under the deep
rich shadows of the primeval woods.
Even trifles are of moment in the stagnation of interest in a country
neighborhood. Some vague rumor of the little incident that these two had
been thus seen publicly together penetrated beyond the purview of the
parishioners of St. John’s in the Wilderness. The association of names
came thus to the ears of Paula Floyd-Rosney, and urged her to an action
which she had been contemplating, but had relegated to a future
propitious opportunity. It forced precipitancy upon her. If she intended
to move at all time must be taken into account, and the untoward chance
of interference with her plans. She was now indeed the arbiter of her
own destiny, she told herself. Her suit for divorce had been abated by
reason of the death of Floyd-Rosney, and she was in the enjoyment of
one-half of his princely estate in Mississippi--where the right of dower
has been annulled and a child’s part substituted as the share of the
wife--and also the “widow’s third” in Tennessee, for he had died
intestate. She was young, and her spirits rebounded with the prospect of
the rehabilitation of her happiness. Her heart bore, it is true, some
sorry scars which it would carry to the judgment day. But she could not
feel, she could not even feign, grief for her husband’s fate; she knew
it was liberation for her and his child. She had donned, in deference to
the urgency of Mrs. Majoribanks, a fashionable version of widow’s weeds,
and she had intended to allow the traditional time of mourning to expire
before she made haste to gather the treasures of youth and love that she
had so recklessly thrown away. She had not even regret for the disaster
of Duciehurst. She regarded its destruction as the solution of a
problem. She would not have wished to win in the lawsuit the estate she
felt was morally and equitably the property of her former lover. It was
delightful to her to be in the position to bestow, and not to receive.
She was in case to make brave amends for her fickle desertion of Ran
Ducie at the summons of wealth and splendor. She would go back to him a
prize beyond computation--the woman he loved and had always loved, but
endowed like a princess and looking like a queen. The expectation
embellished her almost out of recognition; her closest friends and
casual guests--for she had returned to her own home, from which she had
fled--could but exclaim as her beauty expanded. “How I loved him!” she
would whisper to herself, and sometimes she wondered if those five dread
years under the yoke were not heavy payment for the fortune she was
bringing him. The consciousness of this great wealth made her the more
confident, the more plausible in the letter she wrote him. Though she
had feared supplantation, it was only because he might be in ignorance
of her attitude toward him.
It took the form of a letter of condolence. She declared she yearned to
express her deep sympathy for him, although she had felt he might not
care to hear from her on account of her connection with the hand that
struck the blow which had so sorely afflicted him. But she conjured him,
by their love for each other, so precious in the days that were past, to
forbear thinking of her in that wise. The villain who had gone had no
hold on her heart. He had destroyed her life. She could confess to
Randal now that every day of the years and every hour of the days had
been one long penance for her faithless desertion of him, her casting
away his precious heart, worth more than all the gold of Ophir. She had
never regretted it but once, and that was always, and unceasingly. She
was possessed, she supposed,--or rather, consider that she was so young,
so unsophisticated, so blinded by the glare of wealth and dizzy with the
specious wiles of the world. Oh, to live the old days over again! But he
must not hate her--he must not associate her with the name as detestable
to her as to him. He must remember, instead, how sweet was the simple
story of their love, and date his thoughts of her from its emotions. One
thing she begged of him--let her hear from him, and soon.
In all her formulations of the possible result of this letter she never
anticipated the event. She had been prepared for delay. Some little time
he must have to decide upon his course, his phrases, complicated as the
whole incident was with the memory of the murderous Floyd-Rosney. When
by return mail she noted the large white missive, with her name in his
well-remembered, decided, dashing chirography, her heart plunged, and
for a moment she almost thought it had ceased to beat. Her hands
trembled violently as she tore open the envelope. Within was her own
letter and on the reverse side of the last sheet were penned these
words:
“This letter should be in your own possession. The story to which you
allude I read to the last page, and the book is closed.”