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The Precipice: A Novel, a novel by Elia W. Peattie |
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Chapter 27 |
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_ CHAPTER XXVII It had been a busy day for Honora. She had been superintending the house-cleaning and taking rather an aggressive part in it herself. She rejoiced that her strength had come back to her, and she felt a keen satisfaction in putting it forth in service of the man who had taken her into community of interest with him when, as he had once put it, she was bankrupted of all that had made her think herself rich. Moreover, she loved the roomy, bare house, with its uncurtained windows facing the mountains, and revealing the spectacles of the day and night. Because of them she had learned to make the most of her sleepless hours. The slow, majestic procession in the heavens, the hours of tumult when the moon struggled through the troubled sky, the dawns with their swift, wide-spreading clarity, were the finest diversions she ever had known. She remembered how, in the old days, she and David had patronized the unspeakably puerile musical comedies under the impression that they "rested" them. Now, she was able to imagine nothing more fatiguing. They had an early supper, for Karl was leaving for a day or two in Denver and had to be driven ten miles to the station. He was unusually silent, and Honora was well pleased that he should be so, for, though she had kept herself so busily occupied all the day, she had not been able to rid herself of the feeling that a storm of memories was waiting to burst upon her. The feeling had grown as the hours of the day went on, and she at once dreaded and longed for the solitude she should have when Karl was gone. She was relieved to find that the little girls were weary and quite ready for their beds. She watched Karl drive away, standing at the door for a few moments till she heard his clear voice calling a last good-bye as the station wagon swept around the pinon grove; then she locked the house and went to her own room. A fire had been laid for her, and she touched a match to the kindling, lighted her lamp, and took up some sewing. But she found herself too weary to sew, and, moreover, this assailant of recollection was upon her again. She had once seen the Northern lights when the many-hued glory seemed to be poured from vast, invisible pitchers, till it spread over the floor of heaven and spilled earthward. Her memories had come upon her like that. Then she faced the fact she had been trying all day not to recognize. It was David's birthday! She admitted it now, and even had the courage to go back over the ways they had celebrated the day in former years; at first she held to the old idea that these recollections made her suffer, but presently she perceived that it was not so. Had her help come from the hills, as Karl had told her it would? She sat so still that she could hear the ashes falling in the fireplace--so still that the ticking of her watch on the dressing-table teased her ears. She seemed to be listening for something--for something beautiful and solemn. And by and by the thing she had been waiting for came. It swept into the house as if all the doors and windows had been thrown wide to receive it. It was as invisible as the wind, as scentless as a star, as complete as birth or death. It was peace--or forgiveness--or, in a white way, perhaps it was love. Suddenly she sprang to her feet. "David!" she cried. "David! Oh, I _believe I understand!_" She went to her desk, and, as if she were compelled, began to write. Afterward she found she had written this:--
"It is your birthday, and I, who am so used to sending you a present, cannot be deterred now. Oh, David, my husband, you who fathered my children, you, who, in spite of all, belong to me, let me tell you how I have at last come, out of the storm of angers and torments of the past year, into a sheltered room where you seem to sit waiting to hear me say, 'I forgive you.' "That is my present to you--my forgiveness. Take it from me with lifted hands as if it were a sacrament; feed on it, for it is holy bread. Now we shall both be at peace, shall we not? You will forgive me, too, _for all I did not do_. "We are willful children, all of us, and night over-takes us before we have half learned our lessons. "Oh, David--"
Long afterward, she shuddered up out of her unconsciousness. The fire had burned itself out; the lamp was sputtering for lack of oil. Somewhere in the distance a coyote called. She was dripping with cold sweat, and had hardly strength to find the thing that would warm her and to get off her clothes and creep into bed. At first she was afraid to put out the light. It seemed as if, should she do so, the very form and substance of Terror would come and grip her. But after a time, slowly, wave upon wave, the sea of Peace rolled over her--submerging her. She reached out then and extinguished the light and let herself sink down, down, through the obliterating waters of sleep--waters as deep, as cold, as protecting as the sea. "Into the Eternal Arms," she breathed, not knowing why. But when she awakened the next morning in response to the punctual gong, she remembered that she had said that. "Into the Eternal Arms." She came down to breakfast with the face of one who has eaten of the sacred bread of the spirit. * * * * * The next two days passed vaguely. A gray veil appeared to hang between her and the realities, and she had the effect of merely going through the motions of life. The children caused her no trouble. They were, indeed, the most normal of children, and Mrs. Hays, their old-time nurse, had reduced their days to an agreeable system. Honora derived that peculiar delight from them which a mother may have when she is not obliged to be the bodily servitor and constant attendant of her children. She was able to feel the poetry of their childhood, seeing them as she did at fortunate and picturesque moments; and though their lives were literally braided into her own,--were the golden threads in her otherwise dun fabric of existence,--she was thankful that she did not have the task of caring for them. It would have been torture to have been tied to their small needs all day and every day. She liked far better the heavier work she did about the house, her long walks, her rides to town, and, when Karl was away, her supervision of the ranch. Above all, there was her work at the village. She could return from that to the children for refreshment and for spiritual illumination. In the purity of their eyes, in the liquid sweetness of their voices, in their adorable grace and caprice, there was a healing force beyond her power to compute. During these days, however, her pleasure in them was dim, though sweet. She had been through a mystic experience which left a profound influence upon her, and she was too much under the spell of it even to make an effort to shake it off. She slept lightly and woke often, to peer into the velvet blackness of the night and to listen to the deep silence. She was as one who stands apart, the viewer of some tremendous but uncomprehended event. The third day she sent the horses for Karl, and as twilight neared, he came driving home. She heard his approach and threw open the door for him. He saw her with a halo of light about her, curiously enlarged and glorified, and came slowly and heavily toward her, holding out both hands. At first she thought he was ill, but as his hands grasped hers, she saw that he was not bringing a personal sorrow to her but a brotherly compassion. And then she knew that something had happened to David. She read his mind so far, almost as if it had been a printed page, and she might have read further, perhaps, if she had waited, but she cried out:-- "What is it? You've news of David?" "Yes," he said. "Come in." "You've seen the papers?" he asked when they were within the house. She shook her head. "I haven't sent over for the mail since you left, Karl. I seemed to like the silence." "There's silence enough in all patience!" he cried. "Sixteen hundred voices have ceased." "I don't understand." "The Cyclops has gone down--a new ship, the largest on the sea." "Why, that seems impossible." "Not when there are icebergs floating off the banks and when the bergs carry submerged knives of ice. One of them gored the ship. It was fatal." "How terrible!" For a second's space she had forgotten the possible application to her. Then the knowledge came rushing back upon her. She put her hands over her heart with the gesture of one wounded. "David?" she gasped. Karl nodded. "He was on it--with Mary. They were coming back to America. He had been given the Norden prize, as you know,--the prize you earned for him. I think he was to take a position in some Eastern university. He and Mary had gone to their room, the paper says, when the shock came. They ran out together, half-dressed, and Mary asked a steward if there was anything the matter. 'Yes, madam,' he said quietly, just like that, 'I believe we are sinking.' You'll read all about it there in those papers. Mary was interviewed. Well, they lowered the boats. There were enough for about a third of the passengers. They had made every provision for luxury, but not nearly enough for safety. The men helped the women into the boats and sent them away. Then they sat down together, folded their arms, and died like gentlemen, with the good musicians heartening them with their music to the last. The captain went down with his ship, of course. All of the officers did that. Almost all of the men did it, too. It was very gallant in its terrible way, and David was among the most gallant. The papers mention him particularly. He worked till the last helping the others off, and then he sat down and waited for the end." Honora turned on her cousin a face in which all the candles of her soul were lit. "Oh, Karl, how wonderful! How beautiful!" He said nothing for amazement. "In that half-hour," she went on, speaking with such swiftness that he could hardly follow her, "all his thoughts streamed off across the miles of sea and land to me! I felt the warmth of them all about me. It was myself he was thinking of. He came back to me, his wife! I was alone, waiting for something, I couldn't tell what. Then I remembered it was his birthday, and that I should be sending him a gift. So I sent him my forgiveness. I wrote a letter, but for some reason I have not sent it. It is here, the letter!" She drew it from her bosom. "See, the date and hour is upon it. Read it." Karl arose and held the letter in a shaking hand. He made a calculation. "The moments correspond," he said. "You are right; his spirit sought yours." "And then the--the drowning, Karl. I felt it all, but I could not understand. I died and was dead for a long time, but I came up again, to live. Only since then life has been very curious. I have felt like a ghost that missed its grave. I've been walking around, pretending to live, but really half hearing and half seeing, and waiting for you to come back and explain." "I have explained," said Karl with infinite gentleness. "Mary is saved. She was taken up with others by the Urbania, and friends are caring for her in New York. She gave a very lucid interview; a feeling one, too. She lives, but the man she ruined went down, for her sake." "No," said Honora, "he went down for my sake. He went down for the sake of his ideals, and his ideals were mine. Oh, how beautiful that I have forgiven him--and how wonderful that he knew it, and that I--" She spoke as one to whom a great happiness had come. Then she wavered, reached out groping hands, and fell forward in Karl's arms. * * * * * For days she lay in her bed. She had no desire to arise. She seemed to dread interruption to her passionate drama of emotion, in which sorrow and joy were combined in indeterminate parts. From her window she could see the snow-capped peaks of the Williston range, rising with immortal and changeful beauty into the purple heavens. As she watched them with incurious eyes, marking them in the first light of the day, when their iridescence made them seem as impalpable as a dream of heaven; eyeing them in the noon-height, when their sides were the hue of ruddy granite; watching them at sunset when they faded from swimming gold to rose, from rose to purple, they seemed less like mountains than like those fair and fatal bergs of the Northern Atlantic. She had read of them, though she had not seen them. She knew how they sloughed from the inexhaustible ice-cap of Greenland's bleak continent and marched, stately as an army, down the mighty plain of the ocean. Fair beyond word were they, with jeweled crevasses and mother-of-pearl changefulness, indomitable, treacherous, menacing. Honora, closing weary eyes, still saw them sailing, sailing, white as angels, radiant as dawn, changing, changing, lovely and cold as death. Mind and gaze were fixed upon their enchantment. She would not think of certain other things--of that incredible catastrophe, that rent ship, crashing to its doom, of that vast company tossed upon the sea, of those cries in the dark. No, she shut her eyes and her ears to those things! They seemed to be the servitors at the doors of madness, and she let them crook their fingers at her in vain. Now and then, when she was not on guard, they swarmed upon her, whispering stories of black struggle, of heart-breaking separation of mother and child, of husband and wife. Sometimes they told her how Mary--so luxurious, so smiling, so avid of warmth and food and kisses--had shivered in that bleak wind, as she sat coatless, torn from David's sheltering embrace. They had given her elfish reminders of how soft, how pink, how perfumed was that woman's tender flesh. Then as she looked the blue eyes glazed with agony, the supple body grew rigid with cold, and down, down, through miles of water, sank the man they both had loved. No, no, it was better to watch the bergs, those glistering, fair, white ships of death! Yes, there from the window she seemed to see them! How the sun glorified them! Was the sun setting, then? Had there been another day? "To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow--" Darkness was falling. But even in the darkness she saw the ice-ships slipping down from that great frozen waste, along the glacial rivers, past the bleak _lisiere_, into the bitter sea, and on down, down to meet that other ship--that ship bearing its mighty burden of living men--and to break it in unequal combat. Oh, could she never sleep! Would those white ships never reach port! Did she hear Karl say he had telegraphed for Kate Barrington? But what did it matter? Neither Kate nor Karl, strong and kind as they were, could stem the tide that bore those ships along the never-quiet seas. _ |
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