Part 31 (1/2)

He went away in a state of simple wonderment, deeply marveling at Paul's serenity.

”Extraordinary poise! Where does it come from? No: the boy is happy! He hides it; but it is the one change in him. He has experienced a great relief. Is it possible”--

On his way down the river the doctor continued to muse upon the dignity, the amazingly beautiful behavior of this rising family in whose somewhat commonplace city fortunes he had taken a friendly interest for years. He owned that he had sounded them with too short a line.

Watching with the dying man hours when she was with him alone, Emily Bogardus continued to test his resolution. He never retracted by a look--faithful to the word she had spoken which made them strangers.

It was the slightest sh.e.l.l of mortality that ever detained a soul on earth. The face, small like the face of an old, old child, waxed finer and more spiritual, yet ever more startlingly did it bear the stamp of that individuality which the spirit had held so cheap--the earthly so impenetrated with the spiritual part that the face had become a sublimation. As one sees a sheet of paper covered with writing wither in flame and become a quivering ash, yet to the last attenuation of its fibre the human characters will stand forth, till all is blown up chimney to the stars.

Still, peaceful, implacable in its peace, settling down for the silence of eternity. Still no sign.

The younger ones came and went. The little boy stole in alone and pushed against his grandmother's knee,--she seated always by the bed,--gazed, puzzled, at the strange, still face, and whispered obediently, ”Gran'faver.” There was no response. Once she took the boy and drew him close and placed his little tender hand within the dry, crumpled husk extended on the bedclothes. The eyes unclosed and rested long and earnestly on the face of the child, who yawned as if hypnotized and flung his head back on the grandmother's breast. She bent suddenly and laid her own hand where the child's had been. The eyes turned inward and shut again, but a sigh, so deep it seemed that another breath might never come, was all her answer.

Past midnight of the fourth night's watch Paul was awakened by a light in his room. His mother stood beside him, white and worn. ”He is going,” she said. It was the final rally of the body's resistance. A few moments' expenditure, and that stubborn vitality would loose its hold.--The strength of the soil!

The wife stood aside and gave up her place to the children. Her expression was n.o.ble, like a queen rebuked before her people. There was comfort in that, too. A great, solemn, mutual understanding drew this death-bed group together. Within the sickle's compa.s.s so they stood: the woman G.o.d gave this man to found a home; the son who inherited his father's gentleness and purity of purpose; the fair flower of the generations that father's sacrifice had helped him win; the bud of promise on the topmost bough. Those astonished eyes shed their last earthly light on this human group, turned and rested in the eyes of the woman, faded, and the light went out. He died, blessing her in one whispered word. Her name.

Before daybreak on the morning of the funeral, Paul awoke under pressure of disturbing dreams. There were sounds of hushed movements in the house. He traced them to the door of the room below stairs where his father lay. Some one had softly unlocked that door, and entered. He knew who that one must be. His place was there alone with his mother, before they were called together as a family, and the mask of decency resumed for those ironic rites in the presence of the unaccusing dead.

The windows had been lowered behind closed curtains, and the air of the death chamber, as he entered, was like the touch of chilled iron to the warm pulse of sleep. Without, a still dark night of November had frosted the dead gra.s.s.

The unappeasable curiosity of the living concerning the Great Transition, for the moment appeared to have swept all that was personal out of the watcher's gaze, as she bent above the straightened body.

And something of the peace there dawning on the cold, still face was reflected in her own.

”You have never seen your father before. There he is.” She drew a deep sigh, as if she had been too intent to breathe naturally. All her self-consciousness suddenly was gone. And Paul remembered his dream, that had goaded him out of sleep, and vanished with the shock of waking.

It gave him the key to this long-expected moment of confidence.

”The old likeness has come back,” his mother repeated, with that new quietness which restored her to herself.