"But something stuck in my mind. Now, this morning, getting ready to prepare my case, defending this boy, I went over to Miss Julia's library. I still remembered what I had seen. I found this picture there—she had that other picture there, hanging on her wall, too. She had them both! One was on the wall and the other on her desk. Now, she had certainly established some connection in her own mind between those two pictures, or else she wouldn't have had them there both right before her."
"Then you, too, know," interrupted Henderson, "the story of those two women—how they brought him up from babyhood—and kept the secret? Why did Miss Julia do that?"
"Because she was a woman."
"But why didn't she tell?"
"Because she was a woman."
"But why—what makes you suppose she ever would care in the first place for this boy when he was a baby?"
"Again, because she was a woman, Judge!"
"She came and told me all about her friendship for Aurora. But she admitted she didn't know who the father of the boy was. Then why should she connect me with this?"
"The same reason, Judge—because she was a woman!
"And when you come to that," he added as he turned toward the door, "that covers our whole talk today. That's why I got you to come here. That's why I'm interested in this case. That's why I've made you try this case yourself, here, now, Judge, before the court of your own conscience. A crime worse than murder has been done here in this town to Aurora Lane—because she was a woman! She's borne the brunt of it—paid all her debts—carried all her awful, unspeakable, unbelievable load—because she was a woman!
"And," he concluded, "if you ask me why I was specially interested in the boy's case and yours and hers—I'll tell you. I gave up—to you—all my hope of success and honor and preferment just so as to help her all I could; to stand between her and the world all I could; to help her and her boy all I could. It was because she was a woman—the very best I ever knew."
It was now ten o'clock of this eventful morning in quiet old Spring Valley. A hush seemed to have fallen on all the town. The streets were well-nigh deserted so far as one might see from the public square. Only one figure seemed animated by a definite purpose.
Miss Julia Delafield came rapidly as she might across the street from the foot of the stair that led up to Judge Henderson's office. She had hobbled up the stair and hobbled down again, and now was crossing the street that led to the courthouse. She came through the little turnstile and tap-tapped her way up the wide brick walk. Her face, turned up eagerly, was flushed, full of great emotions.
Miss Julia was clad in her best finery. She had on a bright new hat—which she had had over from Aurora's shop but recently. She had worn it at the great event of Don Lane's homecoming—worn it to make tribute to her "son." She wore it now in search of that son's father—and she had not the slightest idea in the world who that father in fact might be. Miss Julia's divination was only such stuff as dreams are made on. The father of Don, the unborn father of her unborn beloved—was not yet caught out of chaos, not yet resolved out of time—he was but a creature of her dreams.
So Miss Julia walked haltingly through star dust. It whirled all about her as she crossed the dirty street. Around her spun all the nebulæ of life yet to be. Somewhere on beyond and back of this was a soft, gray, vague light, the light of creation itself, of the dawn, of the birth of time. Perhaps some would have said it was the light shining down through the courthouse hall from the farther open door. Who would deny poor little Miss Julia her splendid dreams?
For Miss Julia was very, very happy. She had found how the world was made and why it was made. And mighty few wise men ever have learned so much as that.
She searched for the father of her first-born—a man tall and splendid and beautiful—a man strong and just and noble. Such only might be the father of her boy.... And she met him at the door of the county treasurer's office, his silk hat slightly rumpled on one side.
"Oh!" she cried, and started back.
She had only been thinking. But here he was. This was proof to Miss Julia's mind that God actually does engage in our daily lives. For here he was!
Now she could bring father and son together; and that would correlate this world of question and doubt with that world of the star dust and the whirling nebulæ.
"Miss Julia!" The judge stopped, suddenly embarrassed. He flushed, which was all the better, for he had been ashen pale.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed. "I was looking for you, all over. I was at your office, but did not find you. Of course you have heard?"
"Heard? No, what was it?"
"Why, the death of Johnnie Adamson—it was the sheriff, just now—Dan Cowles shot him, right in front of Aurora Lane's house. He must have been trying to break in or something. His father was there."
"Why, great heavens!—what are you telling me? The sheriff shot him? Where is Cowles? I must see him."
"He's here in the courthouse now, they say. But it's all over now. Where have you been? I was going over to Aurora's house early this morning, but Mr. Brooks came in. I must go over at once——"
"Come this way, Miss Julia," he interrupted.
He led her into the room he had just left. Racked as he was himself, he knew it would be too cruel an unkindness to tell Miss Julia now of what had befallen Aurora Lane the night before.
"The reason I came to you first," said Miss Julia—"before I went to Aurora—was about the boy—about Don. You see, he confessed—the half-wit did—before he was killed. The sheriff and others and his own father heard him say that he had killed Tarbush, don't you see? He'd gone wild, don't you see—he was a maniac. It was a madman killed Tarbush. Why, Don didn't do it—Itoldyou he couldn't have done it! Didn't I?
"So now it's all cleared—and I'm so glad!" she concluded, breathless.
"What's all this you are telling me, Miss Julia? Why, this is basic evidence—it does end the case! But you say there were witnesses to this confession?" A vast relief came into Judge Henderson's ashen face.
"Yes, yes, the sheriff and Eph Adamson and Nels Jorgens—they all heard him. And the poor boy—his body's in the justice's office now. They've sent a messenger after his mother—poor thing—oh, poor woman that she is!"
"Where is Adamson now—where's the sheriff?"
"As I said, the sheriff is here in the building somewhere. Old Eph Adamson won't speak to anyone. He seems half out of his own mind now. But he doesn't blame the sheriff. They say he's sorry for Aurora. Why?
"So you see," said Miss Julia, leaping over a vast sea of intervening facts, "everything's all right now." And she sighed a great soft sigh of complete content. "Of course Don didn't do it. I knew that all along."
"Where's Anne—my ward?" asked Judge Henderson suddenly. "I want to speak to her a moment."
"I don't know," said Miss Julia. But she smiled, and all her choicest dimples came out in fine array. "I shouldn't wonder if she was in jail! Now I've got to go over to Aurora's. All this news, you know——"
But Miss Julia did not hasten away. To the contrary, she seemed not unwilling to linger yet a time—unconsciously. The truth was that all her heart was happy, with the one supreme happiness possible for her in all her life. For a second time she was here, standing face to face with her hero. So she sighed and smiled and dimpled and talked over this thing and that—until at length she turned and caught sight of the two pictures, the one on the wall, the other on the desk—which both men had left there, forgotten.
"Why, what's this?" said she. "I gave Mr. Brooks this one this morning," she said. "He might at least have returned it to me. He said he wanted to borrow it for a little while. Was he here?"
"He just went away," said Judge Henderson uneasily. "He was here just now."
Miss Julia was taking up the little photograph and looking from it to the lithograph with soft eyes.
"Isn't it fine?" said she. "Fine!" But she did not say which one of the two faces she saw before her was most in her mind.... And then in the little room with its dusty windows and its tumbled books and map-hung walls, Miss Julia leaped to the great fundamental conclusion of her own life.
She saw out far into the time of star dust and the soft vague light and the whirling nebulæ. She saw all the great truths—saw the one great truth for any woman—saw her hero standing here—the dream father of her own dream child.... But Miss Julia never grasped the real, the inferior, the human truth at all. On the contrary, she made a vast and very beautiful mistake. She had assigned a dream father to her dream son, but no more. That Judge William Henderson was the father indeed of Dieudonné Lane she no more suspected than she suspected herself to be his actual mother. So, therefore, it had been only a path of dreams that Horace Brooks had followed when he saw her look from the boy's to the father's face. It was only a path of dreams now that again her eyes followed, as she looked from the portrait of the youth to the man who stood before her. Ah! Miss Julia. Poor, little, happy Miss Julia!
"So now, Judge," said she at last, "you can clear him, after all. It will be so fine for you to do that—so dramatic—so fitting, won't it?"
If Judge Henderson could have spoken, perhaps he would have done so; but she misunderstood his choking silence. She was miles away from the actual truth; and never was to know it in all her life.
"Don hadn't any father," said she. "His father's dead long ago, or Aurora would have told me. He's in his grave—and she'll not open it even for me, who have loved her so much. But if he had had a father..." Her voice ceased wistfully.
Judge Henderson coughed, his hands at his throat. She did not see his face.
"... If only he could have had a father like—this!"
Her own little hand fell gently—ever so gently—on the lithographed face of the great man, her hero, her champion—who always was to be such for her. It was the boldest act of all her quiet life. Her hand was very gentle, but as it fell, perhaps it dealt the heaviest blow to the vanity, the egotism, the innate selfishness of the man ever he had known, even in this swift series of blows he was now receiving. For once remorse, regret, understanding smote him sore. He saw how little he had earned what life had given him. He saw—himself!
"But then," she added hastily, and flushed to the roots of her hair—"I beg your pardon. That could not have been, of course. Don's father—the way he was born—why,Don'sfather couldn't have been a man likeyou! We all know that."
Miss Julia hobbled on away now to find her friend, Aurora Lane. She did not know the story of the night before. Miss Julia was very, very happy. She had her boy and his father after all—and both were above reproach! And she never told, not in all her life—and she never knew, not in all her life. And as she hobbled now up the walk beyond the little gate—somewhat repentant that her own eagerness had kept her away thus long from Aurora, she felt no remorse in her heart that she had not told Aurora Lane the real secret of her own life. "Because," remarked Miss Julia, to herself, like any woman, "there is one secret she has never told me—she has never told me who was Don's father!"
Poor little Miss Julia! Ah, very happy, very happy, little Miss Julia! Because she was a woman.
Judge Henderson, haggard, shaken, turned and walked down one of the halls which traversed the courthouse building. In the central space, where the two halls crossed at right angles, was a curving stair leading up to the courtrooms and the offices of the immediate servants of justice. As he stood here he saw again the tall figure of Horace Brooks approaching. He walked even more stooped forward than was usually his case, shambling, his feet turned out at wide angles. His great face in its fringe of red beard hung forward—but it bore now nothing but smiles. It showed nothing of triumph over the man he saw standing here waiting, humble and broken. He himself had said that he lacked birth and breeding. If so, whence got he this strange gentleness which marked his face now, as he stepped up to Judge Henderson—the man who but now had stood between him and success—who must always, so long as he lived, stand between him and happiness—the man whom he had beaten?
"Judge," said Horace Brooks, "I reckon about the best thing we can do is to go right on up to the court and get this thing cleaned up. You've heard the news by now?"
Henderson nodded. "Yes, just now."
"Well, that softens up a lot of things, doesn't it? It will make things easier for everyone concerned—a whole lot easier for you and me, Judge. Now we can ask for the quashing of this indictment and the court can't help granting it. Cowles is there. He's just gone up. Adamson is with him."
So they went up before the court, and the judge listened to the story of the sad-faced officer and the sad-faced old man with him. And presently the clerk at his side inscribed in the records: "The State vs. Dieudonné Lane, murder in the first degree. Indictment quashed on motion of Assistant State's Attorney."
"You will discharge the prisoner from custody, Mr. Sheriff," said the judge.
"I'd like to say, if it please the Court," said Cowles, drawing a large and adequate handkerchief from his pocket and blowing a large and adequate nose, "that last night, at the time of the—the disturbance which these gentlemen here helped me to quell—this same young man that's just been discharged—why, he helped me as much as anybody."
"What do you mean?" demanded the judge severely. "You let him out of your custody when he was under commitment?"
"Yes, your Honor. I may have been short in some of my duties, your Honor. I let a woman—a young woman—go in there last night to see him for a few minutes. When she went out I must have forgot to lock the door. What they said, now, it must have stirred me up some way. When the mob formed and came to the jail the prisoner had walked out. But right at the worst of it, there he was. And after it he went on back to jail alone. When I got back he was in his cell. The door wasn't locked even then. My wife wasn't there.
"I reckon, your Honor, we've all of us sort of made a general mistake," concluded Dan Cowles deprecatingly. "I allowed I'd tell this Court about it."
So, amid the frowning silence of the court, and the silence as well of all who heard this, the two attorneys, the sheriff and Ephraim Adamson walked on down the winding stairs.
Adamson saw coming across the courthouse yard the figure of an angular woman, dressed in calico, a sun-bonnet on her head, a sodden handkerchief in her hand. He walked on hurriedly to meet her. At the very spot where so lately he and his son had stood to challenge the world to combat, he took this gaunt old woman in his arms, in the sunlight before all the world. "Mother!" said he.
And at about this same time—since after all the world and life and swift keen joy of living must go on just the same—two young persons stood not far distant from that scene; stood not in the full light of the sun, stood not in the wisdom and sadness of middle age, but in youth—in youth and the glory and splendor of the vast, ineffable, indispensable illusion. The dim twilight which lighted them might have been the soft, vague light of the world's own dawning—the same which poor Miss Julia had seen that very day.
Cowles hastened away from the door after he had thrown back the bolts—the bolts and bars which had been laughed at by love all this time. The young man came out into the stone-floored hall where Anne Oglesby stood waiting for him—all beautiful and fresh and clean and sweet—fragrant as a very flower in her worthiness for love.
"Don!" she said, and held out her arms, running toward him.
"Oh, Anne! Anne!"
His arms went about her. And this time there was no one there to see.
Number five roared eastward through the town that day on time. No one stepped down from the train, and no one took passage on it. Spring Valley had dropped back into its customary uneventfulness so far as the outer world might tell. It was but a little hamlet on the long line of fields and trees that lies along the way of Number Five.
Hurrying on toward the vast confusion of the metropolis, Number Five gave up its tenants to be lost in the cosmic focus of the great city, where all about were the lights and the anxious faces. The city, with its tall, dentated outline against the sky—wonderful, beautiful, alluring; the city with its unceasing strife, its vast and brooding peace, where walk side by side the ablest men, the most beautiful women of all the world, all keyed to the highest pitch of effort, all living at white heat of emotion and passion, of joy and of sorrow—the city and its ways—we may not know these unless we, too, embark on Number Five.
In the silk-lined recesses of one of the city's greatest hostelries, where anything in the world may be bought, there sat, soon after the arrival of Number Five at the metropolis, the traveling man, Ben McQuaid of Spring Valley, and a little milliner from a town east of Spring Valley which Ben McQuaid "made" in his regular travel for his "house." He had bought for her now the most expensive viands, the most confusing and inspiring wines that all the city could offer. Soft-footed servants were attending them both. They were having their little fling. To the city that was a matter of small consequence.
Nor, when it comes to that, was all the city itself of so much consequence. The great fact is that, while Ben McQuaid and the little milliner were speeding east on Number Five, at midday, when the dusty maples of Spring Valley still were motionless under the heat of the inland summer day—old Nels Jorgens' wife was walking across the way with a covered dish in her hands.... In the dish, you say, there was only some crude cottage cheese for Aurora Lane? Was that all you saw? Seek again: for you, too, are human and neither may you escape the great things of life, nor ought you to miss its great discoveries.
Mrs. Nels Jorgens had on no hat. Her gown was God knows what—gingham or calico or silk or cloth of gold, who shall say? She was a woman of fifty-eight. Her sunken stomach protruded far below her flattened and withered bosom as she walked. Her stringy hair was gray and uncomely. But her face—now her face—have you not seen it? Perhaps not in the city. But the little supper in the city (not yet come to the time of sack-cloth) was by no means so great a thing as the service of Mrs. Nels Jorgens, the wagon-maker's wife, when she carried across to Aurora Lane a dish of something for her luncheon.
And others came. From the byways of this late cruel-hearted village came women, surely not cruel-hearted after all. They seemed to have some common errand. They were paying off the debt of years, though what they brought was not in silver dishes and there was no bubbling wine. So far from calling this a merciless, ignorant town, a hopeless town, at noon of that day, had you been there and seen these women and their ways, you would have called it charitable, kindly, beautiful; though after all it was and had been only human.
Over the breathless maples there seemed now to hang a stratum of another atmosphere, as sensible, as appreciable, as though a physical thing itself. The sympathy of Spring Valley was awake at last—after twenty years!
"'Rory, I just thought I'd come over and bring you a dish of this—I had some already made. I said to myself, says I, if we can eat this all the time, maybe you can just once"—it was the old jest, humble but kind. It sounded wondrous sweet to Aurora Lane—after twenty years.
After these had gone away again, a little awed by the white, sad dignity of Aurora Lane—even nature seemed to relent. Ben McQuaid and the little milliner were cooled by swiftly revolving electric fans yonder in the city. But along in the evening of this summer day in Spring Valley the leaves of the maples were stirred by softly moving breezes done by nature's hand.
"Aaron," said old Silas Kneebone to his crony, "seems like we're goin' to get a change of weather. Maybe the hot spell's broke at last."
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Silas," said his friend suddenly, straightening up on his staff. "I'll tell you what I'll do with you, Silas. Even if itisgoin' to be cool before long—I'll just take you over to the drug store and buy you a drink of ice-cream sody at the fountain!"
"Time comes," he continued after a time, "when a fellow's been feelin' kind of stirred up, some way—when he feels just like he didn't care a hang for no expense. Ain't that the truth?"
The blessed change in the weather came on apace. The sultry air softened and became more life-giving. Folk moved into the open, sat out upon the steps of the front galleries, rich and poor alike, willing to take the air. There was an unusual silence, an unwonted scarcity of callings back and forth across the fences. The people of the town did not care to revive the memories of the last two days.
But the narrow little porch in front of the millinery shop on Mulberry Street held no occupant. There was a light within, but the blinds were close drawn. None who passed could hear any sound.
Aurora Lane had sat for hours, almost motionless, at the side of the table where customarily she worked. She made no pretense to read in her Bible now. Her little white bed was unrumpled by any pressure of her body bowed at its side in prayer, although it was her hour now for these things.
She was trying to think. Her mind had been crushed. She sat dazed. It seemed to her an age since these women—these strangely kind-hearted, newly charitable women—had been here. Or, had she only dreamed that they were here? Had it been a passage of angels she herself had witnessed here?
She had told Miss Julia not to let Don come to see her just yet. So, though she had heard the great news of his release, she had not met him. "I'll have to think, Julia," she said. "I don't know what I'll do. I must be alone."
The window of her shop was still unmended. The red hat which had been so long, in one redressing or another, the sign of her wares, now was bent and broken beyond all possibility of restoration. The walls were bare, the furniture was broken. It was wreck and ruin that lay about her, as dully she still was conscious.
Twenty years of it—and this was the climax! What place was there left for her in all the world? As she sat, hour after hour, alone, Aurora Lane was thinking of the dark pool under the bridge, of how cool and comforting it might be. Her bosom rose, torn now and then with deep, slow sobs, like the ground swell of a sea moved by some vast, remote, invisible cause. She had been sobbing thus for some twenty-four hours.
She had not moved about very much today in her household, had not often left her chair here at the table. The mob had destroyed most of her pitiful store of gear, so there was small choice left her.
Somewhere she had found, deep down in a trunk tray, an old and faded garment, its silken sleeves so worn that the creases were now open—a blouse which she had put away long, long ago—twenty years and more ago. She wore it as best she might; and over the neck where the silk was gone she had cast a white shawl, also of silk, a thing likewise come down, treasured, from her meager girlhood days. This would serve her, so she thought, until she could find heart to go to bed and endeavor to find sleep.... Yes. They may have been of her own mother's wedding finery. Yes. Perhaps she one day had planned they might be parts of her own wedding gear.... But she had had no wedding.
She had done her hair, with Miss Julia's weeping aid, as simply as might be—as she had when she was younger. It lay now in long, heavy, deep rolls, down the nape of her white neck, along the sides of her head, covering her little ears, still shapely. Her face was white as death, but still it held traces in its features, sharpened and refined, of what once was a tender and joyous beauty of its own—a beauty now high and spiritual. In her time Aurora Lane had been known far and wide as a very beautiful girl; self-willed, yes; wild—but beautiful. She did not remember these things now, not in the least; and there was no mirror left unbroken in the place.
The evening waxed on, approaching nine of the clock, at which time good folk began to turn up the porch chairs against the wall so that the rain might not hurt them if it came, and to draw back into the stuffy rooms and to prepare for the use of the stuffy beds. Fathers of families now drank deeply at the pitcher of ice water left on the center table. One little group after another, visible here and there on the porches or the stairs along the little street, lessened and gradually disappeared. One by one the lights went out all over the town. By ten o'clock the town would have settled down to slumber. It was Monday, and on Monday night not even the most ardent swains frequent hammocks or front parlors at an hour so late as ten o'clock in our town, Saturday night and the Lord's day being more especially set apart for these usages.
But the light in Aurora Lane's house still burned. She did not know how late it was. The clock on the mantel was silent, for it had been broken by the men who had been there the night before. She sat motionless as a woman of stone. Not even her boy was there—not even Miss Julia was there. She was alone—with her future, and with her past.
It must have been toward midnight when at length Aurora Lane raised her head, turned a little. She had heard a sound! A sharp pang of terror caught at her—sheer, unreasoning terror. Were they coming again? But no, it was not the sound of many footfalls, not the sound of many voices.
What came to her now was a single sound, not made up of others—a low, definite sound. And it was not at her door in front—it was at the side of the house—it was at her window!
It was a slight sound—a sort of tapping rhythmically repeated—a signal!
Aurora Lane stopped breathing—her heart stopped in her bosom. The face was icy white which she turned toward the window back of which she heard this sound, this signal. She thought she had gone mad. She believed that at last her mind had broken under all the trials that had been heaped upon it. Then her eyes began to move about, startled, like those of a wild deer, seeking which way to leap.
It seemed to her she heard now another sound in addition, a sort of low call, a word.... Yes, it was her name:
"Aurora! Aurora!"
What could it mean? It was some visitor come there in insult—it could be no more than that. And yet what impiousness, what mockery! Because, what she heard, she had heard before! It had been twenty years since, and more—but she had heard it then.
Resolved suddenly to brave the worst, whatever it might be, she rose and swiftly stepped to the side door which made out upon the narrow yard.
A man was standing near the door, now turning away from the window—a tall man, slouching down like an old man.
"Who's there?" she cried, intending to call out aloud to give the alarm, but failing to raise her voice above a whisper, such was her fear. Yes, it was someone come here to offer yet another insult.
But the man came into the field of light which shone around her through the door—came closer, reaching out his hands to her. She heard him struggling with his own voice, trying to speak. At last: "Aurora! Aurora! Let me in! Will you let me in?"
She threw open the door so that the light might come. But it was late. The town slept. No one saw the light. No one saw the man who entered her door.
He came on slowly, bending down, groaning, almost sobbing, it seemed to her. He entered the room, sank down into a chair. He was that pitiable thing, a man with his nerves set loose by cataclysm of the emotions.
Not less than this had William Henderson met this day. It had shortened actually his physical stature, had altered every line in his face. He was twenty years and more older now than when she had seen him last. In one short day William Henderson had burned down to a speck in the cosmic plan. He had learned for himself how little is any man. And vanity torn out by the roots—a megalomaniac egotism done away by a capital operation—a life-long self-content, an ingrown selfishness, all wrenched out at once—that sort of thing takes its toll in the doing.
William Henderson was paying his debts all at once—with interest accrued, as Hod Brooks had said to him. It was an old, old, ashen-faced man who turned to her at last, as he came into the little lighted room.
Neither had spoken since he came within. The door now was closed back of him. No one without could have any inkling of what went on within this little room.... The drawn curtains ... the low light ... the man ... the woman ... midnight! All which had been here twenty years before for setting, that same now was here! And if there was ruin now of what here once was fresh and fair, if ruin lay about them now, who had wrought that ruin?
... Yes, it had been here. It was at this very place—when she was just starting, struggling, young—all the vague, soft, mysterious, compelling impulses of youth and life just now hers—so strange, so strong, so sweet, so ineffable, so indispensable, so little understood....
That had been his signal! And when he had rapped before—when he was young and comely, not old and ashen—she could no more have helped opening the door than the white wisps from the cottonwoods could cease to pass upon the air in their ancient seeking, blown by the spirit of life, coming from thither, passing thence, under an impulse soft, sweet, gentle, unsought but irresistible.
"Will!" she said at length. "Will, what's wrong? What have you done? What does this mean?" In some sense, swiftly, the past seemed back again, its twenty years effaced, so that she thought in terms of other days.
He raised his head. "What, you speak to me? You said 'Will'? Oh, Aurie, Aurie, don't!—I can't stand it. I'm not good enough for this."
"What's happened?" she insisted. "Why are you here?"
He sat, his lips loosely working now, his eyes red, his face flabby, his gray hair tumbled on his temples. It was as though all life's excesses and indulgences had culminated and taken full revenge on him in this one day.
"And you can say that to me?" he murmured. It was very difficult for him to talk. He was broken—he was gone—he was just an old man—a shell, a rim, a ruin of a man, now seeing himself as he actually had been all these years—God knows, a pitiable sight, that, for many and many a man of us all.
"I'm—I'm afraid, Will! Last night—it broke me, someway—I don't think much more can happen.... I can't think—I can't pull together, someway.... I was going down to the bridge tonight.... But I thought of Don."
"But you couldn't think ofme, Aurora?—Have you ever, in all these years?"
She made him no answer at all.
"No. You could only hate the thought of me," he said. "What a coward I've been, what a cur! Ah, what a coward I've been all these years!"
"I wish you wouldn't, Will," she said. Dazed, troubled, she was trying to think in terms of the present; trying, as she had said, to pull together. "You are Don's father.... Well, you were a man, Will," she added, sighing. "I was only a woman."
She had neither sarcasm nor resentfulness in her words. It was simply what she had learned by herself, in her own life, without any great horizon in the world.
"It was pretty hard sometimes," said she, after a time, slowly. "I had to contrive so much. Putting the boy through college—it began to cost more the last four years—so much more than we had supposed it would. You know, sometimes I was almost——" She flushed and paused.
"What was it, Aurie?"
"At one time not long ago, the bills were so large that we had to pay—it was so hard to get the money, I was almost on the point of going to you—for him, you know—and to ask you for a little help. But that's all over now."
"Oh, I ought to have come through—I ought to have owned it all up!"
"Yes, Will, you ought."
"Why did you keep it—why didn't you name me? I always thought, for a long time, that you would, that you must."
"I don't know. Don't ask me anything. But at least, Don's out now. Thank God! he's clear—he's innocent, and they all know it now. They can't keep him down, can they? He won't have as hard a time as I've had? He'll succeed, won't he? He must, after it all!"
"Yes," said the man, shaking as in a palsy, "after it all, he ought to, and I pray he may." But he could talk no more.
"And he's such a fine boy! I don't see how you could——"
"How I could disown him? Yesterday?"
She nodded. "I can't understand that. I never could. I can't see how you could hesitate. I—I wish you hadn't. I—I can't forgive that." Her voice rose slightly at last, a spot of color came into her pallid cheek.
"I didn't have the courage to come through square, and that's the truth about it. I've never had, all along. Maybe a man doesn't have the same feeling that a woman does about a child—I don't know. But I was worse than the average man—more selfish. I got caught up in politics, in business. Success?—well, I saw how hard it is. I thought I had to keep down the past. Well, it's over now. But as for you——"
"I lived it down for a good many years. Don's twenty-two now."
"But how could you keep that secret—what made you? Why didn't you go into court and force me to do my duty to my own flesh and blood—and to you?"
"I don't know," she answered. "I told you, I don't know. Maybe I was proud. Maybe I thought I'd wait till you shamed your own self into coming. I'm glad you've come now, at last. I don't know—maybe I thought some day you would."
"I'm not Judge Henderson!" he broke out bitterly. "I'm Arthur Dimmesdale! I ought to be in the pillory, on the gallows, before this town. I'm a thief and a coward, and I deserve no pity, neither of man nor of God himself. You've carried all the blame, when I was the one to blame. And I can't see why you didn't tell, Aurie—what made you keep it all a secret?"
"I don't know," said she simply again. "I don't know. It seemed—it seemed somehow to me—sacred—what was between us! It was—Don! I have never told anyone. I was waiting, hoping you'd come—for your own sake. Why should I rob you of your chance?"
"Thank God that you did keep the secret!" he broke out at length. "It's all the chance I have left to be a man. At least I'll confess the truth."
"Why, Will, what do you mean? I'll never tell. I told you I wouldn't—I swore I wouldn't.
"I'll be going away before long, Will," she added. "I can't stay here now. I suppose Don and I will go away somewhere. I'm glad he's found a good girl. Ah!—Anne, she's splendid.... I'm not going to make any objections to his marryingher. And, you see, I'll know that you came here. And some time he will know—who was his father. He doesn't, yet. In justice, some time he will. God will attend to that, not any of us."
"All the world shall know it, Aurora!" said the man at her side. "I saw them a little while ago, walking together. He was listening to the drums. He was looking at the Flag—and so was she. They are up at my house now. They're happy. God bless them."
"But they don't know—you've not told?"
"No, I've been walking out in the country—all evening. I was up there—on the road to the Calvary Cemetery. I'm going to tell Don the truth tomorrow.
"But look at your house—your poor little home." He cast about him a gaze which took in the ruin that had been made of all her belongings. "Oh, my God, Aurora! It was my own fault. It wasIwho made that mob a possible thing. And you were a good woman. You've been a good woman all the time. I never knew before what a splendid thing a woman can be. Why—strong!... And you called me 'Will' just now. What made you do that?"
"I don't know," said Aurora Lane. "I suppose a woman never does quite forget the—the first man of—of her life."
"But how sweet it all was," he broke out, "in spite of it all, in spite of everything! Oh, Aurie, don't you remember when I'd come and tap there on the window—and you'd come and let me in? I don't deserve even that memory ... a woman like you—and a man like me. But I can't forget it. And you let me come in now—that's my one last joy left for all my life. Why, it's the one thing I can never think of again without a shudder. Yes, I've come without your asking—and you—you've let me in.
"Aurie," he went on, "that's what leaves me so helpless. I know what I deserve—but I don't want to be despised.... I want more than I deserve! I've always had more than I deserved. It's about all any man can say. It's life itself, I suppose. I don't know what it is. But, Aurie, Aurie, I do see a thousand things now I never saw before."
She still sat, white, dumb. Only, now, her head began to move, slowly, from side to side. He caught the evidence of negative, and a new resolution came to him at last.
"Let it all go!" he said at length—and now indeed he was on his knees at her side. "What I have lost is nothing. I'll never ask for office until I have lived here twenty years, openly, as you have. I must have loved you! I did—I do! I do! I wish I were fit to love you now. Because, in twenty years more.... The years pass, Aurie. Won't they pass? My sentence——"
His gray head was bent down low in her lap now, as her son's had been at this very place but a day before. Her hands—hands stained with needle work, rough on the finger ends, the taper gone there into a little square—were the same long shapely hands that had touched his hair at another time. The eyes that looked down at him now under long, soft, dark lashes were the same. But they were more brooding—tender, yes, but more sad, more wise. There was no passion in her gaze, in her touch. What was hatred or revenge to her?
His face was hid deep in his hands as he knelt. It lay there in that haven, the lap of woman, the place of forgiveness—and of hope, as some vague memory seemed to say to him. Indeed, all the wisdom and all the mercy and all the hope of a world or of a universe of worlds were in the low voice of Aurora Lane as she stroked back his hair—the gray hair of an old man, who knelt beside her. It was the ancient pitying instinct of woman that was in her touch. Hardly she knew she touched him, so impersonal was it all to her.
"Will, you poor boy, you poor boy! Oh, poor boy!" He heard her voice once more. Suddenly he raised his head, he sprang up, he stood before her.
"You do forgive me!" A sort of triumph was in the eager note of his voice. "You say 'poor boy!' You do forgive me!" He advanced toward her.
But Aurora also had risen quickly. Now, suddenly, some shock came to her, vivifying, clarifying. The needle of her heart swung on the dial of Today.
"Forgive you!" she exclaimed, her color suddenly gone high. "Forgive you—what do you mean?—what do youmean?"
"You said you pitied me——"
"Pity you, yes, I do. I'm sorry for you from the bottom of my heart. I'd be sorry to see any man go through what you've got to face. Yes,pityyou—but—love you? What do you mean? Is that what you mean?Respectyou—is that what you mean? Oh, no! Oh, no! Use for you, in any way in the world?—Oh, no! Oh, no! Don't mistake.Pity—that's all! Don't I know what it means to descend into hell? And that's what you must do."
"But, Aurie—Aurie—you just said——"
"I said I was sorry for you, and so I am, in all my heart. But he's our boy. I've paid my share in anguish. So must you."
"Haven't I? Haven't I?"
"Not yet! You're only beginning. It takes twenty years.—Oh, not of hidden and secret repentance—butopenrepentance, before all the world! And square living. And your prayer to God each night for twenty years for understanding and forgiveness!
"Go out and earn it," she said, walking to the door and opening it. "Pity?—yes. Love? No—no—no! I've no use for you. I don't need you now. My boy doesn't need you—we're able to stand alone. We'vesucceeded! You? You're a failure—you're a broken-down, used-up, hopeless failure—so much, I'm sorry for you, sorry.
"You didn't really think I'd ever take you back, did you, Will?" she went on, eager to be fair even now. "I was onlysorryfor you, that's all. God knows, I'm sorry for any human being, woman or man, that has to go through hell as I have. Twenty years? That'll leave you old, Will. But—go serve it, in this town, as I have! And God have mercy on your soul!"
She flung the door yet wider, and stumbling, he began to grope toward it. The black wall of the night lay beyond.
Slowly the color faded from the cheeks of the woman now left alone yet again. She sank down, crumpling, white, her face marble clear, her eyes staring straight ahead at what picture none may ask. Then, as the white column of her throat fluttered again, she beat one hand slightly against the other, ere she crushed them both together in her lap, ere she flung them wide above her.
"God! God!" cried Aurora Lane. "If it wasn't right, why did He say, 'Suffer little children'? It was in the Book ... little ... little children ... the Kingdom of Heaven!"
It was more than an hour before she, too, rose and, stepping toward the door, looked out again into the night. A red light showed here or there. Homes—the homes of our town.
The Broken GateThe Man Next DoorThe Magnificent AdventureLet Us Go AfieldOut of DoorsThe Story of the CowboyThe Girl at the Halfway House
The Broken GateThe Man Next DoorThe Magnificent AdventureLet Us Go AfieldOut of DoorsThe Story of the CowboyThe Girl at the Halfway House