Part 2
The pain was intolerable to-night,--almost too bad to bear without shrieking. Dunoisse set his old face into an ivory mask of stern resistance, and his white mustache and arched and still jet-black eyebrows bristled fiercely, and the cold drops of anguish gathered upon the sunken purple-veined temples upon which the silky silver hair was growing sparse and thin. Ouf!... what unutterable relief it would have been to clench his fists, even!... But the poor hands, helpless as a wax doll’s or a wooden puppet’s, refused to obey his will.
He lay rigid and silent, but his brain worked with vivid, feverish activity, and his glance roved restlessly round the white-papered walls of the airy, cleanly room. Shabby frames containing spotted daguerreotypes and faded old _cartes-de-visite_ of friends long dead; some water-color portraits and engravings of battle-scenes, hung there; with some illuminated addresses, a few more modern photographs, a glazed case of Orders and Crosses, a cheap carved rack of well-smoked pipes, and--drawn up against the painted wainscot--an imposing array of boots of all nationalities, kinds and descriptions, in various stages of wear. His small library of classics filled a hanging shelf, while a pair of plain deal bookcases were stuffed with publications in half-a-dozen European languages, chiefly well-known reference-works upon Anatomy and Physiology, Surgery and Medicine; whilst a row of paper-bound, officially-stamped Government publications--one or two of these from his own painstaking, laborious pen--dealt with the organization, equipment and sanitation of Military Field Hospitals, Hospital Ships and Hospital Trains, the clothing, diet and care of sick and wounded, and, in relation to these, the Laws and Customs of grim and ghastly War. And a traveling chest of drawers, a bath, and a portable secretary, battered and ink-stained by half a century of honorable use; with the scanty stock of antique garments hanging in the white-pine press; a meager store of fine, exquisitely darned and mended old-world linen; an assortment of neckties, wonderfully out of date; some old felt wideawakes, and three black velvet caps, with a camel’s hair _bournous_, that had served for many years as a dressing-gown; and the bust of a woman, in marble supported on a slender ebony pedestal set between the windows, completed the inventory of the worldly possessions of old Hector Dunoisse.
All that he owned on earth, these few shabby chattels, these dimmed insignia, with their faded ribbons--this man who had once been greatly rich, and prodigally generous, subsisted now in his helpless age upon a small annuity, purchased when he had been awarded the Nobel Prize. What bitter tears had been wrung from the bright black eyes when he was compelled to accept this charity! But it had to be; the burden of his great humanitarian labors had exhausted his last energies and his remaining funds; and Want had risen up beside his bed of sickness, and laid upon him, who had cheered away her specter from so many pallets, her chill and meager hand.
Ah, how he loved the glaring daguerreotypes, the spotty photographs, the old cheap prints! Far, far more dearly than the Rembrandts and Raphaels, the Watteaus and the three superb portraits by Velasquez that he had sold to the Council of the Louvre, and the Austrian Government and the Trustees of the National Gallery. The cabinets of rare and antique medals, the collection of Oriental porcelain and Royal Sèvres that had been bequeathed to him with the immense private fortune of Luitpold, the long-deceased Prince-Regent of Widinitz, that had also been disposed of under the hammer to supply his needs for funds,--always more funds,--had never possessed one-tenth of the preciousness of these poor trifles. For everything was a memento or token of something done or borne, given or achieved towards the fulfillment of the one great end.
The _chibuk_ with the bowl of gilded red clay, the cherry-stick stem and the fine amber mouthpiece, an officer of the English Guards had forced upon Dunoisse at Balaklava. The inkstand, a weighty sphere of metal mounted on three grape-shot, with a detached fourth for the lid--that was a nine-pound shell from the Sandbag Battery. And the helmet-plate with a silver-plated Austrian Eagle and the brass device like a bomb, with a tuft of green metal oak-leaves growing out of the top, that was a souvenir of the bloody field of Magenta. It had been pressed upon Dunoisse by a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Ensign of Austrian Infantry, whom he had rescued from under a hecatomb of dead men and horses, still living, but blackened from asphyxia, the colors of his regiment yet clutched in his cramped and blackened hands.
Even the _bournous_, the voluminous long-sleeved, hooded garment of gray-white camel’s hair, bordered with delicate embroideries of silver and orange-red floss silk--that had its touching history; that had been also the legacy of one who had nothing else to give.
“He was an Arab of pure blood, a pious Moslem, Sergeant-Major in the First Regiment of Spahis, a chief in his own right. He fell in the assault upon the Hill of Cypres. Towards the end of the day, when the sun had set upon Solferino’s field of carnage, and the pale moon was reflected in the ponds of blood that had accumulated in every depression of the ravaged ground, we found him, riddled with bullets, pierced with wounds, leaning with his back against a little tree, his bleeding Arab stallion standing by him as he prayed in the words of the Prophet: ‘_Lord, grant me pardon, and join me to the companionship on high!_...’ He died two nights later upon a heap of bloody straw in the Church of Santa Rosalia at Castiglione. This had been strapped in the roll behind his saddle--his young bride had embroidered the gold and silken ornaments; in the field it had served him as a covering, and until the dead-cart came to remove the corpse,--as a pall.”
More relics yet. The broken lock of a Garibaldian musket from Calatifimi. The guard of a Papal soldier’s saber from Castel Fidardo, brown with Sardinian blood.
More still.... The gilded ornament from the staff-top of a Prussian Eagle--a souvenir of Liebenau, or was it Hühnerwasser? A Uhlan lance-head from Hochhausen. An exploded cartridge gathered on the field of Alcolea, where the Spanish Royalists were beaten in 1868. And a French _chassepot_ and a Prussian needle-gun, recalling the grim tragedy of 1870 and the unspeakable disaster of Sedan. While a fantastically chased cross of Abyssinian gold, and a Bersagliere’s plume of cocks’ feathers, their glossy dark green marred with dried blood, were eloquent of the massacre of the Italian troops at Dagoli, in ’87.
What memories were this old man’s!
III
Old Hector could have told you that such crowded, thronging memories aggravate the dull, throbbing ache of loneliness to torment. To re-read letters written in faded ink by beloved hands that lie moldering under-ground, or are very far removed from us; or to brood upon the soulless image of a soulful face that, dead or living, we may never see with our earthly eyes again, does but exquisitely intensify the agony of loss. We who are old and wise should know better than to seek to quench the heart’s thirst at such bitter Desert wells. Nevertheless, our eyes turn to the faded portrait, our hands touch the spring of the tarnished locket half-a-hundred times a day.
* * * * *
Upon the pillow beside the worn white head there invariably lay a stained and shabby Russia-leather letter-case, white at the edges with wear. It was fastened by a little lock of dainty mechanism, and the fine thin chain of bright steel links that was attached to it went round the old man’s neck. He turned his head that his cheek might rest against the letter-case, and a slow tear over-brimmed an underlid, and fell and sparkled on the dull brownish leather that had once been bright and red. A silver plate, very worn and thin, bore an engraved date and a brief direction:
=BURY THIS WITH ME=
It would be done by-and-by, he knew; for who would rob a dead old man of his dearest treasure? Moreover, the contents of the leather case were valueless in ordinary eyes.
Just a package of letters penned in a fine, delicate, pointed, old-fashioned gentlewoman’s handwriting to the address of M. Hector Dunoisse in half-a-dozen European capitals, and several cities and posting-towns of Turkey and Asiatic Russia; their condition ranging from the yellowed antiquity of more than fifty years back to the comparative newness of the envelope that bore the London postmark of the previous 22nd of December, and the Zeiden stamp of three days later. For once a year, at Christmas-tide, was celebrated old Hector Dunoisse’s joy-festival--when such a letter came to add its bulk to the number in the leather case.
He would be fastidiously particular about his toilet upon that day of days, he who was always so scrupulously neat. His silken white hair would be arranged after the most becoming fashion, his cheeks and chin would be shaved to polished marble smoothness, his venerable mustache waxed with elaborate care. He would be attired in his best white flannel suit, crowned with his newest velvet cap, and adorned with all his Orders; while pastilles would be set burning about the room, fresh flowers would be placed, not only on the tiny altar with its twinkling waxlights and colored plaster presentment of the Stable at Bethlehem, but before a photograph in a tortoise-shell-and-silver frame that always stood upon a little table, beside his chair or bed. About the ebony pedestal of the marble bust that stood in the shallow bay of the southeast window a garland would be twined of red-berried holly and black-berried ivy, and delicately-tinted, sweet-scented hyacinths, grown under glass.... And then the hands of a nursing Sister or of a mere hireling would open the letter, and hold the feebly-written sheet before Dunoisse’s burning eyes, and they would weep as they read, until their bright black flame was quenched in scalding tears.
Do you laugh at the old lover with his heart of youthful fire, burning in the body that is all but dead? You will if you who read are young. Should you be at your full-orbed, splendid prime of womanhood or manhood, you will smile as you pity. But those who have passed the meridian of life will sigh; for they are beginning to understand; and those who are very old will smile and sigh together, and look wise--so wise! Because they have found out that Love is eternally young.
Oh, foolish Youth!--that deems the divine passion to be a matter of red lips meeting red lips, bright eyes beaming into bright eyes, young heart beating against young heart. Intolerant, splendid Prime, that leaps to the imperious call of passion and revels in the delirious pleasures of the senses. For you love is the plucking of the ripe, fragrant, juicy fruit; the rose-tinted foam upon the sparkling wine that brims the crystal goblet; the crown of rapture; the night of jeweled stars and burning kisses that crowns the fierce day of Desire.
And ah! wise Age, experienced and deep, where Youth is all untaught, and Prime but a little more scholar-wise, and Middle Age but a beginner at the book.... For you Love is the jewel in the matrix of the stone; the sacred lamp that burns unquenched within the sealed-up sepulcher; the flame that glows in the heart’s core the more hotly that snows of years lie on the head, and the icy blood creeps sluggishly through the clogged arteries; the sustenance and provender and nourishment of Life no less than the hope that smiles dauntlessly in the face of Death. For to die is to follow whither she has gone,--to meet with him again. Can those who seek to disprove the Being of their Creator with the subtle brain He forged be in the truest sense of the word--lovers? I say No! For Love is an attribute of the Divine.
Those written sheets in the locked case of dulled crimson leather, attached to the fine steel chain, told no tale of love....
Ah! the womanly, gracious letters, breathing warm friendship and kindly interest in the long-unseen, how diligently the old man had tried to read between their fine clear lines the one thing that he never found for all his searching. How devoutly they had been kept and cherished, how delicately and reverently handled.... But for seven long years now they had lain undisturbed in their receptacle, only seeing light when it was opened with the little key that hung upon the steel chain, so that the newest letter of all might be added to the treasured store.
Of late years, how brief they had become! From the three crowded sheets of more than fifty years back, to the single sheet of ten years--the quarter-sheet of five years ago--a mere message of kind remembrance, ending with the beloved name. It had been tragedy to Dunoisse, this slow, gradual shortening of his allowance of what was to him the bread of life. He could not understand it. Had he offended her in some way? He dared to write to her and ask, by aid of the paid secretary who typed from his painstaking dictation in a language which she did not understand. And the reply came in the caligraphy of a stranger. He realized then what he had never before dreamed possible, that his worshiped lady had grown old.... A photograph accompanied the letter. He recognized, with a joyful leap of the heart, that the sweet, placid, aged face with the delicate folds of a fine lace shawl framing it, was beautiful and gracious still. Thenceforward, in a tortoiseshell-and-silver frame, it stood upon the little table beside the bed.
But in another year or two heavy news reached him. She had grown feeble, barely able to trace with the gently-guided pen the well-loved initials at the foot of the written page! The shock of this unlooked-for, appalling revelation made him very ill. He was not himself for months,--never quite again what he had been.... A day was coming when ... the letters might come no more. Her initials were so faintly traced upon the last one that--that----
No, no! God was too kind to let her die before him. He clenched his toothless gums as he would have liked to clench his paralyzed hands, and clung desperately to his belief in the Divine Love.
IV
To lie, helpless and lonely and old, and racked by pain, and to keep on believing in the Divine goodness, requires a caliber of mental strength proportionately equal to the weakness of the sufferer. But it was too late in the day for Dunoisse to doubt.
And here was his dear Moon swimming into view, rising from the translucent depths of a bottomless lagoon of sapphire ether, red Mars glowing at her pearly knee. A childlike content softened the lines that pain and bitterness had graven on the old ivory face. He nodded, well pleased.
“There you are! I see you! You have come as punctually as you always do, making my pain the easier to bear,” he murmured brokenly to the planet. “You shine and look at me and understand; unlike men and women who talk, and talk, and comprehend nothing! And you are old, like my love; and changeless, like my love; while yet my love, unlike you, is eternal; it will endure when you have passed away with Time. Dear Moon! is she looking at you too? Does she ever think of me? But that is a great question you never answer. I can only lie and wait, and hope and long ... in vain? Ah, God! If I could but know for certain that it has not been in vain!...”
Then, with a rush of furious crimson to the drawn cheeks and the knitted forehead, the barrier of his great and dauntless patience broke down before his pent-up passion’s flood. His features were transfigured; the venerable saint became an aged, rebellious Lucifer. Words crowded from his writhing lips, despair and fury blazed in his great black eyes.
“How long, O God, implacable in Thy judgments,” he cried, “must I lie here, a living soul immured in a dead body, and wait, and yearn, and long? ‘Give thanks,’ say the priests, ‘that you have your Purgatory in this world.’ Can there be any torture in Purgatory to vie with this I am enduring? Has Hell worse pains than these? None! for Despair and Desolation sit on either side of me. I rebel against the appointments of the Divine Will. I doubt the Love of God.”
Rigor seized him, his racked nerves vibrated like smitten harp-strings, sweat streamed upon his clammy skin, the beating of his heart shook him and shook the bed, a crushing weight oppressed his panting lungs.
“It is so long, so very long!--sixteen years that I have lain here,” he moaned. “I was content at first, or could seem so. ‘Let me but live while she lives and die when she dies!--’ had always been my prayer. I pray so still--yes, yes! but the long waiting is so terrible. When I had health and strength to labor incessantly, unrestingly, then I could bear my banishment. Through the din and shock of charging squadrons, the rattle of musketry and the roar of artillery, the ceaseless roll of the ambulances and the shrieks of mangled men, one cannot hear the selfish crying of the heart that starves for love. Even in times of peace there was no pause, no slackening. To organize, administer, plan, devise, perfect,--what work, what work was always to be done! Now the work goes on. I lie here. They defer to me, appeal to me, consult me--oh, yes, they consult me! They are very considerate to the old man who is now upon the shelf.”
He laughed and the strange sound woke an echo that appalled him. It sounded so like the crazy laugh of a delirious fever-patient, or of some poor peasant wretch driven beyond his scanty wits by the horror and the hideousness of War. He shook with nervous terror now, and closed his eyes tightly that he might shut out all the familiar things that had suddenly grown strange.
“Let me die, my God! I cannot bear Life longer!” he said more calmly. “Let her find me crouching upon the threshold of Paradise like a faithful hound, when she comes, borne by Thy rejoicing Angels to claim her glorious reward. I am not as courageous as I boasted myself; the silence and the emptiness appal me. Let me die!--but what then of my letter that comes once a year?” he added in alarm. “No, no! I beseech Thee, do not listen to me, a sinful, rebellious old grumbler. I am content--or I would be if the time were not so long.”
Something like a cool, light finger seemed as if drawn across his burning eyelids. He opened them and smiled. For a long broad ray of pure silvery moonshine, falling through the high southeast window upon the white marble bust that stood upon the ebony pedestal against its background of mountain-peaks and sky, reached to the foot of his bed, and rising higher still, had flowed in impalpable waves of brightness over the helpless feet, and covered the stiff white hands, and now reached his face.
This was the moment for which he nightly waited in secret fear, and breathless expectation and desire. Would the miracle happen, this night of all the nights? Would it visit him to bless or leave him uncomforted? He trembled with the desperate eagerness that might defeat its end.
The moon was full and rode high in the translucent heavens. To the lonely watcher the celestial orb suggested the likeness of a crystal Lamp, burning with a light of inconceivable brilliance in a woman’s white uplifted hand. He knew whose hand. His black eyes softened into lustrous, dreamy tenderness, a smile of welcome curved about his lips, as the moon-rays illuminated the marble features of the bust that stood in the bay.
The face of the bust was the same as the old, beautiful face of the photographic portrait that stood in its tortoise-shell-and-silver frame upon the little table by his bed. You saw it as the sculptured presentment of a woman still young, yet past youth. Slenderly framed, yet not fragile, the slight shoulders broad, the long rounded throat a fitting pedestal for the high-domed, exquisitely proportioned head. Upon her rich, thick waving hair was set a little cap: close-fitting, sober, with a double-plaited border enclosing the clear, fine, oval face, a little thin, a shade worn, as by anxiety and watching.
The face--her face!--was not turned towards the bed. It bent a little aside as though its owner pondered. And that the fruit of such reflection would be Action, swift, unflinching, prompt, direct--no one could doubt who observed the purpose in the wide arching brows; the salient, energetic jut of the rather prominent, slightly-aquiline nose, with its high-bred, finely-cut nostrils; the severity and sweetness that sat throned upon the lips; the rounded, decisive chin that completed the womanly-fair image. A little shawl or cape was pinned about her shoulders; to the base of the pure column of the throat she was virginally veiled and covered.
* * * * *
And if the chief impression she conveyed was Purity, the dominant note of her was Reflection. For the eyes beneath the thick white eyelids were observant; the brain behind the broad brows pondered, reviewed, decided, planned.... It seemed as though in another moment she must speak; and the utterance would solve a difficulty; reduce confusion into sanest order, throw light upon darkness; clear away some barrier; devise an expedient, formulate a rule....
There was not a line of voluptuous tenderness, not one amorous dimple wherein Cupid might play at hiding, in all the stern, sweet face. She thought, and dreamed, and planned. And yet, ...
And yet the full-orbed eyes, gray-blue under their heavy, white, darkly-lashed eyelids as the waters of her own English Channel, could melt, could glad, for he had seen!... The sensitive, determined mouth could quiver into exquisite tenderness. The most cherished memory of this old man was that it had once kissed him.
Ah! if you are ignorant how the memory of one kiss can tinge and permeate life, as the single drop of priceless Ghazipur attar could impart its fragrance to the limpid waters in the huge crystal block skilled Eastern artificers hollowed out for Nur Mahal to bathe in,--you are fortunate; for such knowledge is the flower of sorrow, that has been reared in loneliness and watered with tears. This one red rose made summer amidst the snows of a nonagenarian’s closing years. He felt it warm upon his mouth; he heard his own voice across the arid steppes of Time crying to her passionately:
“Oh, my beloved! when we meet again I shall have deserved so much of God, that when I ask Him for my wages He will give me even you!”
What had he not done since then, what had he not suffered, how much had he not sacrificed, to keep this great vow? Had he not earned his wages full forty years ago? Yet God made no sign, and she had gone her ways and forgotten.
It was only in pity,--only in recognition of his being, like herself, the survivor of a vanished generation, almost the only human link remaining to bind this restless Twentieth Century with the strenuous, splendid days of the early Victorian era, that she had written to him once a year.
Only in pity, only in kindness was it, after all?