THE HIGHWAY OF THE ANGELS
IT was so late when we started home that the streets were deserted. The
only noise was the hollow sound our own footsteps made on the board
walk. Even that ceased the last half of the way, for we crossed over and
went along the beach, walking close to the curling edges of the tide.
Several times we paused to stand and look at the path the moon made on
the water--wide miles of rippling silver, like a highway for the feet of
passing angels.
I kept thinking of Aunt Elspeth as I looked. It took away my sadness to
feel that she must have passed up that radiant road. And everything--the
white night itself--seemed throbbing with the words, "But Love abides!
Death cannot take that."
I think Richard heard them too, for once as we stood looking back he
said, "Somehow that belief of Uncle Darcy's changes one's conception of
death, just as that moon changes the night and the sea. It takes all
the blackness out. It gives ... Dad ... back to me again. It makes me
feel differently about saying goodbye to you all."
"I wish you didn't have to say goodbye," I exclaimed impetuously. "I
wish that this awful war were over and you could stay right on here."
"Without my having done my part to win it?" he asked in a reproachful
sort of tone.
"You've done your part," I told him. "And a big one. And I want you to
know before you go away what we think about it. Barby wrote to Miss
Crewes all about what you did up in Canada, and said, 'I am telling you
this in order that you may have another Sir Gareth to add to your list
of knightly souls who do their deed and ask no guerdon.' Ever since then
we've thought of _you_, as Sir Gareth."
Even in the moonlight I could see that he was embarrassed. He protested
that we were giving him more credit than he deserved. Then to make light
of the affair he went on about how he hadn't begun to do his part. He
couldn't feel it was done till he'd bombed at least one Hun. "A hundred
Huns" was his slogan, and the number he'd set for himself to get.
We started to walk on again. I was making some teasing remark about his
being a bloodthirsty creature, when I stepped on the end of a broken
oar. It turned with me and almost tripped me up. He put out a steadying
hand, then slipped my arm through his to help me along.
"I know you're tired," he said as we walked on. "You had to rush through
all that sewing this morning, and there was the excitement of the
wedding and tonight--the waiting. It's been a hard day for you."
His voice sounded almost as sympathetic and comforting as Uncle Darcy's.
Away out across the dunes some belated home-goer began whistling. Clear
and sweet the notes came dropping through the still night, as if blown
from a far-off silver flute:
"Till the day when I'll be going down
That long, long trail with you."
Instinctively we both turned to look at that shining path on the water,
as if that were the trail, and stood listening till the last whistled
note died away. Then suddenly Richard put his hand over mine as it lay
on his arm, and held it close. After that there didn't seem to be any
need of words. Somehow his very silence seemed to be saying something to
me. I could feel it thrilling through me as one violin string thrills
to the vibration of another.
I know now, after the experience of that night, that I shall never be
able to write the leading novel of the century, as I have long hoped to
do. I shall never attempt one of any kind now, even a little mediocre
one. And the reason is this:
The greatest thing in the story of any life is that moment of miracle
when love enters in and transfigures it. It is impossible to describe
the coming of Dawn on a mountain-top so that another really feels the
glory of it. If he has witnessed it himself anything one could say seems
inadequate and commonplace. If he has never experienced such a
revelation, all the words in the dictionary couldn't help him to see it.
If I were to put down here the few words Richard said as he was leaving
me at the door, they might seem incoherent and ordinary to anyone else,
but uttered with his arms around me, the touch of his lips on mine--how
_could_ one put into any story the sacredness of such an experience? The
wonder of it, the rapture of it? And even if you did partially succeed,
there would always be people like Tippy, for instance, to purse up their
lips at the attempt, as if to say, "Sentimental!" So I shall never try.
When Tippy, in her bathrobe and with a candle, came down the dark hall
to fumble at the door and let me in, I didn't say a word. I couldn't. I
just walked past her, so awed by the throbbing happiness that filled me
that I couldn't think of anything else, and not for worlds would I have
had her know. If it had been Barby I would have thrown my arms around
her and whispered, "Oh, Barby! I'm so happy!" and she would have held me
close and understood. But I felt that Tippy would say, "Tut, you're too
young to be thinking of such things yet." She has shamed me that way,
making me feel that she considered me a sentimental silly young thing,
several times in the past.
"Well?" she said questioningly, when I did not speak. Her waiting
attitude reminded me that she was expecting me to tell her something.
Then I remembered--about Aunt Elspeth--and I was conscience-smitten to
think I had forgotten her entirely. It seemed ages since we had left
Fishburn Court, with the sadness of her death the uppermost thing in our
mind, but in reality it hadn't been more than a half an hour. But it had
been long enough for the beginning of "a new heaven and a new earth" for
me.
My voice trembled so that I could hardly speak the words--"She's gone."
Then I saw that Tippy attributed my agitation to grief. She questioned
me for details, but there was little to tell. When we left no
arrangements had been made for the funeral.
"How did Uncle Darcy take it?" she asked as we reached the top of the
stairs. I told her, repeating his own words. My voice shook again, but
this time it was because I was remembering the stricken old figure on
the doorstep, pathetic loneliness in every line of it, despite the brave
words with which he tried to comfort himself. A tear started to roll
down Tippy's cheek. She made a dab at it with the sleeve of her
bathrobe.
"Poor old soul!" she exclaimed. "Their devotion to each other was
beautiful. Over sixty years they've been all in all to each other. Pity
they both couldn't have been taken at the same time."
A wonder came over me which I have often felt before. Why is it that
people like Tippy, who show such tenderness for a love-story when it is
flowing to its end in old age, are so unsympathetic with it at its
beginning. What is there about it at the source that Youth cannot
understand or should not talk about?
At my door she waited till I struck a match and lighted my lamp. I
wondered why she held up her candle and gave me such a keen glance as
she said goodnight. When she closed the door behind her and I walked
over to the dressing-table, I was suddenly confronted by the reason. The
face that looked out at me from the mirror was not the face of one who
has just looked on a great sorrow. I was startled by my own reflection.
It had a sort of shining, exalted look. I wondered what she could have
thought.
I hurried with my undressing so that I could put out the lamp and swing
open the casement window that looks down on the sea. The air came cool
and salt against my hot cheeks. The silver radiance that flooded the
harbor streamed in across me as I knelt down with my elbows on the sill
and my hands folded to pray.
Presently I realized with a guilty start that I wasn't following my
usual petitions. I had prayed only for Richard, and then, gazing down on
the beach where we stood such a short time ago, I re-lived that moment
and the ones that followed. The memory was as sacred as any prayer. It
was not for its intrusion that my conscience smote me, but it seemed
wickedly selfish to be forgetting those whom I had knelt purposely to
remember: Father and Barby, all those in peril on the sea, all the
victims of war and the brave souls everywhere, fighting for the peace
of the world. And dear old Uncle Darcy--in the very first hour of his
terrible loneliness--how could I forget to ask comfort for _him_?
Stretching out my arms to that shining space above the water I
whispered, "Dear God, is it _right_ for me to be so happy with such
awful heartache in the world?"
But no answer came to me out of that wonderful glory. All I seemed to
hear was Uncle Darcy's quavering words--"_But love abides! Death cannot
take that!_"
And presently as I kept on kneeling there I knew _that_ was the answer:
"Love that beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things"
is God-given. Heartache and Death may touch every life for a time, but
Love abides through the ages.
[Illustration]