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Flower of the Dusk

<h2>X</h2> <h3>In the Garden</h3> <div class="sidenote">A Summer Evening</div> The subtle, far-reaching fragrance of a Summer night came through the open window. A cool wind from the hills had set the maple branches to murmuring and hushed the incoming tide as it swept up to the waiting shore. Out in the illimitable darkness of the East, grey surges throbbed like the beating of a troubled heart, but the shore knew only the drowsy croon of a sea that has gone to sleep. Golden lilies swung their censers softly, and the exquisite incense perfumed the dusk. Fairy lamp-bearers starred the night with glimmering radiance, faintly seen afar. A cricket chirped just outside the window and a ghostly white moth circled around the evening lamp. Roger sat by the table, with Keats's letters to his beloved Fanny open before him. The letter to Constance, so strangely brought back after all the intervening years, lay beside the book. The ink was faded and the paper [127]was yellow, but his father's love, for a woman not his mother, stared the son full in the face and was not to be denied. Was this all, or—? His thought refused to go further. Constance North had died, by her own hand, four days after the letter was written. What might not have happened in four days? In one day, Columbus found a world. In another, electricity was discovered. In one day, one hour, even, some immeasurable force moving according to unseen law might sway the sun and set all the stars to reeling madly through the unutterable midnights of the universe. And in four days? Ah, what had happened in those four days? <div class="sidenote">A Recurring Question</div> The question had haunted him since the night he read the letter, when he was reading to Barbara and had unwittingly come upon it. Constance was dead and Laurence Austin was dead, but their love lived on. The grave was closed against it, and in neither heaven nor hell could it find an abiding-place. Ghostly and forbidding, it had sent Constance to haunt Miriam's troubled sleep, it had filled Ambrose North's soul with cruel doubt and foreboding, and had now come back to Roger and Barbara, to ask eternal questions of the one, and stir the heart of the other to new depths of pain. He had not seen Barbara since that night and she had sent no message. No beacon [128]light in the window across the way said "come." The sword that had lain, keen-edged and cruel, between Constance and her lover, had, by a single swift stroke, changed everything between her daughter and his son. Not that Barbara herself was less beautiful or less dear. Roger had missed her more than he realised. When her lovely, changing face had come between his eyes and the musty pages of his law books, while the disturbing Bascom pup cavorted merrily around the office, unheard and unheeded, Roger had ascribed it to the letter that had forced them apart. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> The woollen slippers muffled Miss Mattie's step so that Roger did not hear her enter the room. Preoccupied and absorbed, he was staring vacantly out of the window, when a strong, capable hand swooped down beside him, gathering up the book and the letter. <div class="sidenote">Tremendous Power</div> "I don't know what it is about your readin', Roger," complained his mother, "that makes you blind and deaf and dumb and practically paralysed. Your pa was the same way. Reckon I'll read a piece myself and see what it is that's so affectin'. It ain't a very big book, but it seems to have tremendous power." She sat down and began to read aloud, in a curiously unsympathetic voice which grated abominably upon her unwilling listener: "'Ask yourself, my Love, whether you are [129]not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the letter you must write immediately and do all you can to console me in it—make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me—write the softest words and kiss them, that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself, I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form; I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.' "Ain't that wonderful, Roger? Wants to get drunk on poppies and kiss the writin' and thinks after that he'll be made into a butterfly. Your pa couldn't have been far from bein' a butterfly when he bought this book. There ain't no sense in it. And this—why, it's your pa's writin', Roger! I ain't seen it for years." Miss Mattie leaned forward in her chair and brought the letter to Constance close to the light. She read it through, calmly, without haste or excitement. Roger's hands gripped the arms of his chair and his face turned ashen. His whole body was tense. <div class="sidenote">A Moment's Pain</div> Then, as swiftly as it had come, the moment passed. Miss Mattie took off her spectacles and leaned back in her chair [130]with great weariness evident in every line of her figure. <div class="sidenote">Crazy as a Loon</div> "Roger," she said, sadly, "there's no use in tryin' to conceal it from you any longer. Your pa was crazy—as crazy as a loon. What with buyin' books so steady and readin' of 'em so continual, his mind got unhinged. I've always suspected it, and now I know. "Your pa gets this book, and reads all this stuff that's been written about 'Fanny,' and he don't see no reason why he shouldn't duplicate it and maybe get it printed. I knew he set great store by books, but it comes to me as a shock that he was allowin' to write 'em. Some of the time he sees he's crazy himself. Didn't you see, there where he says, 'I hope you do not blame me because I went mad'? 'Mad' is the refined word for crazy. "Then he goes on about eatin' husks and bein' starved. That's what I told him when he insisted on havin' oatmeal cooked for his breakfast every mornin'. I told him humans couldn't expect to live on horse-feed, but, la sakes! He never paid no attention to me. I could set and talk by the hour just as I'm talkin' to you and he wasn't listenin' any more'n you be." "I am listening, Mother," he assured her, in a forced voice. He could not say with what joyful relief. "Maybe," she went on, "I'd 'a' been more [131]gentle with your pa if I'd realised just what condition his mind was in. There's a book in the attic full of just such writin' as this. I found it once when I was cleaning, but I never paid no more attention to it. I surmised it was somethin' he was copyin' out of another book that he'd borrowed from the minister, but I see now. The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. If I'd 'a' knowed what it was then, maybe I couldn't have bore it as I can now." Seizing his opportunity, Roger put the book and the letter aside. Miss Mattie slipped out of its wrapper the paper which Roger had brought to her from the post-office that same night, and began to read. Roger sat back in his chair with his eyes closed, meditating upon the theory of Chance, and wondering if, after all, there was a single controlling purpose behind the extraordinary things that happened. <div class="sidenote">Inner Turmoil</div> Miss Mattie wiped her spectacles twice and changed her position three times. Then she got another chair and moved the lamp closer. At last she clucked sharply with her false teeth—always the outward evidence of inner turmoil or displeasure. "What's the matter, Mother?" "I can't see with these glasses," she said, fretfully. "I can see a lot better without 'em than I can with 'em." "Have you wiped them?" [132] "Yes, I've wiped 'em till it's a wonder the polish ain't all wore off the glass." "Put them up close to your eyes instead of wearing them so far down on your nose." "I've tried that, but the closer they get to my eyes, the more I can't see. The further away they are, the better 't is. When I have 'em off, I can see pretty good." "Then why don't you take them off?" "That sounds just like your pa. Do you suppose, after payin' seven dollars and ninety cents for these glasses, and more'n twice as much for my gold-bowed ones, that I ain't goin' to use 'em and get the benefit of 'em? Your pa never had no notion of economy. They're just as good as they ever was, and I reckon I'll wear 'em out, if I live." "But, Mother, your eyes may have changed. They probably have." <div class="sidenote">Miss Mattie's Eyes</div> Miss Mattie went to the kitchen and brought back a small, cracked mirror. She studied the offending orbs by the light, very carefully, both with and without her spectacles. "No, they ain't," she announced, finally. "They're the same size and shape and colour that they've always been, and the specs are the same. Your pa bought 'em for me soon after you commenced readin' out of a reader, and they're just as good as they ever was. It must be the oil. I've noticed that it gets poorer every time the price goes up." She [133]pushed the paper aside with a sigh. "I was readin' such a nice story, too." "Shan't I read it to you, Mother?" "Why, I don't know. Do you want to?" "Surely, if you want me to." "Then you'd better begin a new story, because I'm more'n half-way through this one." "I'll begin right where you left off, Mother. It doesn't make a particle of difference to me." "But you won't get the sense of it. I'd like for you to enjoy it while you're readin'." "Don't worry about my enjoying it—you know I've always been fond of books. If there's anything I don't understand, I can ask you." "All right. Begin right here in True Gold, or Pretty Crystal's Love. This is the place: 'With a terrible scream, Crystal sprang toward the fire escape, carrying her mother and her little sister in her arms.'" <div class="sidenote">Two Sighs</div> For nearly two hours, Roger read, in a deep, mellow voice, of the adventures of poor, persecuted Crystal, who was only sixteen, and engaged to a floor-walker in 'one of the great city's finest emporiums of trade.' He and his mother both sighed when he came to the end of the installment, but for vastly different reasons. "Ain't it lovely, Roger?" "It's what you might call 'different,'" he temporised, with a smile. [134] "Just think of that poor little thing havin' her house set afire by a rival suitor just after she had paid off the mortgage by savin' out of her week's wages! Do you suppose he will ever win her?" "I shouldn't think it likely." "No, you wouldn't, but the endin' of those stories is always what you wouldn't expect. It's what makes 'em so interestin' and, as you say, 'different.'" Roger did not answer. He merely yawned and tapped impatiently on the table with his fingers. <div class="sidenote">Nine o'Clock</div> "What time is it?" she asked, adjusting her spectacles carefully upon the ever-useful and unfailing wart. "A little after nine." "Sakes alive! It's time I was abed. I've got to get up early in the mornin' and set my bread. Good-night." "Good-night, Mother." "Don't set up long. Oil is terrible high." "All right, Mother." Miss Mattie went upstairs and closed her door with a resounding bang. Roger heard her strike a match on a bit of sandpaper tacked on the wall near the match-safe, and close the green blinds that served the purpose of the more modern window-shades. Soon, a deep, regular sound suggestive of comfortable slumber echoed and re-echoed [135]overhead. Then, and then only, he dared to go out. <div class="sidenote">A Light in the Window</div> He sat on the narrow front porch for a few minutes, deeply breathing the cool air and enjoying the beauty of the night. Across the way, the little grey house seemed lonely and forlorn. The upper windows were dark, but downstairs Barbara's lamp still shone. "Sewing, probably," mused Roger. "Poor little thing." As he watched, the lamp was put out. Then a white shadow moved painfully toward the window, bent, and struck a match. Star-like, Barbara's signal-light flamed out into the gloom, with its eager message. "She wants me," he said to himself. The joy was inextricably mingled with pain. "She wants me," he thought, "and I must not go." "Why?" asked his heart, and his conscience replied, miserably, "Because." For ten or fifteen minutes he argued with himself, vainly. Every objection that came forward was reasoned down by a trained mind, versed in the intricacies of the law. The deprivations of the fathers need not always descend unto the children. At last he went over, wondering whether his father had not more than once, and at the same hour, taken the same path. <div class="sidenote">Two Hours of Life</div> Barbara was out in the garden, dreaming. For the first time in years, when she had work [136]to do, she had laid it aside before eleven o'clock. But, in two hours, she could have made little progress with her embroidery, and she chose to take for herself two hours of life, out of what might prove to be the last night she had to live. When Roger opened the gate, Barbara took her crutches and rose out of her low chair. "Don't," he said. "I'm coming to you." She had brought out another chair, with great difficulty, in anticipation of his coming. Her own was near the moonflower that climbed over the tiny veranda and was now in full bloom. The white, half-open trumpets, delicately fragrant, had more than once reminded him of Barbara herself. "What a brute I'd be," thought Roger, with a pang, "if I had disappointed her." "I'm so glad," said Barbara, giving him a cool, soft little hand. "I began to be afraid you couldn't come." "I couldn't, just at first, but afterward it was all right. How are you?" "I'm well, thank you, but I'm going to be made better to-morrow. That's why I wanted to see you to-night—it may be for the last time." Her words struck him with chill foreboding. "What do you mean?" "To-morrow, some doctors are coming down from the city, with two nurses and a few other [137]things. They're going to see if I can't do without these." She indicated the crutches with an inclination of her golden head. "Barbara," he gasped. "You mustn't. It's impossible." "Nothing is impossible any more," she returned, serenely. "That isn't what I meant. You mustn't be hurt." <div class="sidenote">A Wonderful World</div> "I'm not going to be hurt—much. It's all to be done while I'm asleep. Miss Wynne, a lady from the hotel, brought Doctor Conrad to see me. Afterward, he came again by himself, and he says he is very sure that it will come out all right. And when I'm straight and strong and can walk, he's going to try to have father made to see. A fairy godmother came in and waved her wand," went on Barbara, lightly, "and the poor became rich at once. Now the lame are to walk and the blind to see. Is it not a wonderful world?" "Barbara!" cried Roger; "I can't bear it. I don't want you changed—I want you just as you are." "Such impediments as are placed in the path of progress!" she returned. Her eyes were laughing, but her voice had in it a little note of tenderness. "Will you do something for me?" "Anything—everything." "It's only this," said Barbara, gently. "If [138]it should turn out the other way, will you keep father from being lonely? Miss Wynne has promised that he shall never want for anything, and, at the most, it couldn't be long until he was with me again, but, in the meantime, would you, Roger? Would you try to take my place?" "Nobody in the world could ever take your place, but I'd try—God knows I'd try. Barbara, I couldn't bear it, if——" "Hush. There isn't any 'if.' It's all coming right to-morrow." <div class="sidenote">Beauty of a Saint</div> The full moon had swung slowly up out of the sea, and the misty, silvery light touched Barbara lovingly. Her slender hands, crossed in her lap, seemed like those of a little child. Her deep blue eyes were lovelier than ever in the enchanted light—they had the calmness of deep waters at dawn, untroubled by wind or tide. Around her face her golden hair shimmered and shone like a halo. She had the unearthly beauty of a saint. "Afterward?" he asked, with a little choke in his voice. "I'll be in plaster for a long time, and, after that, I'll have to learn to walk." "And then?" "Work," she said, joyously. "Think of having all the rest of your life to work in, with no crutches! And if Daddy can see me—" she stopped, but he caught the wistfulness in [139]her tone. "The first thing," she continued, "I'm going down to the sea. I have a fancy to go alone." "Have you never been?" "I've never been outside this house and garden but once or twice. Have you forgotten?" All the things he might have done came to Roger, remorsefully, and too late. He might have taken Barbara out for a drive almost any time during the last eight years. She could have been lifted into a low carriage easily enough and she had never even been to the sea. A swift, pitying tenderness made his heart ache. "Nobody ever thought of it," said Barbara, soothingly, as though she had read his thought, "and, besides, I've been too busy, except Sundays. But sometimes, when I've heard the shore singing as the tide came in, and seen the gulls fly past my window, and smelled the salt mist—oh, I've wanted it so." "I'd have taken you, if I hadn't been such a brute as to forget." <div class="sidenote">More than the Sea</div> "You've brought me more than the sea, Roger. Think of all the books you've carried back and forth so patiently all these years. You've done more for me than anybody in the world, in some ways. You've given me the magic carpet of the Arabian Nights, only it was a book, instead of a rug. Through your [140]kindness, I've travelled over most of the world, I've met many of the really great people face to face, I've lived in all ages and all countries, and I've learned to know the world as it is now. What more could one person do for another than you have done for me?" "Barbara?" It was Miriam's voice, calling softly from an upper window. "You mustn't stay up late. Remember to-morrow." "All right, Aunty." Her answer carried with it no hint of impatience. "I forgot that we weren't in the house," she added, to Roger, in a low tone. "Must I go?" To-night, for some reason, he could not bear even the thought of leaving her. "Not just yet. I've been thinking," she continued, in a swift whisper, "about my mother and—your father. Of course we can't understand—we only know that they cared. And, in a way, it makes you and me something like brother and sister, doesn't it?" "Perhaps it does. I hadn't thought of that." <div class="sidenote">The Barrier Broken</div> All at once, the barrier that seemed to have been between them crashed down and was forgotten. Mysteriously, Roger was very sure that those four days had held no wrong—no betrayal of another's trust. His father would not have done anything which was not absolutely right. The thought made him straighten himself proudly. And the mother of the girl [141]who leaned toward him, with her beautiful soul shining in her deep eyes, could have been nothing less than an angel. "To-morrow"—began Roger. <div class="sidenote">"To-morrow is Mine"</div> "To-morrow was made for me. God is giving me a day to be made straight in. To-morrow is mine, but—will you come and stay with father? Keep him away from the house and with you, until—afterward?" "I will, gladly." Barbara rose and Roger picked up her crutches. "You'll never have to do that for me again," she said, as she took them, "but there'll be lots of other things. Will you take in the chairs, please?" A lump was in his throat and he could not speak. When he came out, after having made a brief but valiant effort to recover his self-control, Barbara was standing at the foot of the steps, leaning on her crutches, with the moon shining full upon her face. Roger went to her. "Barbara," he said, huskily, "my father loved your mother. For the sake of that, and for to-morrow, will you kiss me to-night?" Smiling, Barbara lifted her face and gave him her lips as simply and sweetly as a child. "Good-night," she said, softly, but he could not answer, for, at the touch, the white fire burned in his blood and the white magic of life's Maytime went, singing, through his soul. [142] <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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