Part 48 (1/2)
It was a lovely moon-lighted midnight when they set out, the four of them, to walk from the gate across the park to the Old House. Like shadows they flitted over the green sward, all silent as shadows.
Scarcely a word was spoken as they went, and the stray syllable now and then, was uttered softly as in the presence of the dead. Suddenly but gently opened in Juliet's mind a sense of the wonder of life. The moon, having labored through a heap of cloud into a lake of blue, seemed to watch her with curious interest as she toiled over the level sward. The air now and then made a soundless sigh about her head, like a waft of wings invisible. The heavenly distances seemed to have come down and closed her softly in. All at once, as if waked from an eternity of unconsciousness, she found herself, by no will of her own, with no power to say nay, present to herself--a target for sorrow to shoot at, a tree for the joy-birds to light upon and depart--a woman, scorned of the man she loved, bearing within her another life, which by no will of its own, and with no power to say nay, must soon become aware of its own joys and sorrows, and have no cause to bless her for her share in its being. Was there no one to answer for it? Surely there must be a heart-life somewhere in the universe, to whose will the un-self-willed life could refer for the justification of its existence, for its motive, for the idea of it that should make it seem right to itself--to whom it could cry to have its divergence from that idea rectified! Was she not now, she thought, upon her silent way to her own deathbed, walking, walking, the phantom of herself, in her own funeral? What if, when the bitterness of death was past, and her child was waking in this world, she should be waking in another, to a new life, inevitable as the former--another, yet the same? We know not whence we came--why may we not be going whither we know not? We did not know we were coming here, why may we not be going there without knowing it--this much more open-eyed, more aware that we know we do not know? That terrible morning, she had come this way, rus.h.i.+ng swiftly to her death: she was caught and dragged back from Hades, to be there-after--now, driven slowly toward it, like an ox to the slaughter! She could not avoid her doom--she _must_ encounter that which lay before her. That she shrunk from it with fainting terror was nothing; on she must go! What an iron net, what a combination of all chains and manacles and fetters and iron-masks and cages and prisons was this existence--at least to a woman, on whom was laid the burden of the generations to follow! In the lore of centuries was there no spell whereby to be rid of it? no dark saying that taught how to make sure death should be death, and not a fresh waking? That the future is unknown, a.s.sures only danger! New circ.u.mstances have seldom to the old heart proved better than the new piece of cloth to the old garment.
Thus meditated Juliet. She was beginning to learn that, until we get to the heart of life, its outsides will be forever fretting us; that among the mere garments of life, we can never be at home. She was hard to teach, but G.o.d's circ.u.mstance had found her.
When they came near the brow of the hollow, Dorothy ran on before, to see that all was safe. Lisbeth was of course the only one in the house.
The descent was to Juliet like the going down to the gates of Death.
Polwarth, who had been walking behind with Ruth, stepped to her side the moment Dorothy left her. Looking up in her face, with the moonlight full upon his large features, he said,
”I have been feeling all the way, ma'am, as if Another was walking beside us--the same who said, 'I am with you always even to the end of the world.' He could not have meant that only for the few that were so soon to follow Him home; He must have meant it for those also who should believe by their word. Becoming disciples, all promises the Master made to His disciples are theirs.”
”It matters little for poor me,” answered Juliet with a sigh. ”You know I do not believe in Him.”
”But I believe in Him,” answered Polwarth, ”and Ruth believes in Him, and so does Miss Drake; and if He be with us, he can not be far from you.”
With that he stepped back to Ruth's side, and said no more.
Dorothy opened the door quickly, the moment their feet were on the steps; they entered quickly, and she closed it behind them at once, fearful of some eye in the night. How different was the house from that which Juliet had left! The hall was lighted with a soft lamp, showing dull, warm colors on walls and floor. The dining-room door stood open; a wood-fire was roaring on the hearth, and candles were burning on a snowy table spread for a meal. Dorothy had a chamber-candle in her hand. She showed the Polwarths into the dining-room, then turning to Juliet, said,
”I will take you to your room, dear.”
”I have prepared your old quarters for you,” she said, as they went up the stair.
With the words there rushed upon Juliet such a memory of mingled dreariness and terror, that she could not reply.
”You know it will be safest,” added Dorothy, and as she spoke, set the candle on a table at the top of the stair. They went along the pa.s.sage, and she opened the door of the closet. All was dark.
She opened the door in the closet, and Juliet started back with amazement. It was the loveliest room! and--like a marvel in a fairy-tale--the great round moon was s.h.i.+ning gloriously, first through the upper branches of a large yew, and then through an oriel window, filled with lozenges of soft greenish gla.s.s, through which fell a lovely picture on the floor in light and shadow and something that was neither or both. Juliet turned in delight, threw her arms round Dorothy, and kissed her.
”I thought I was going into a dungeon,” she said, ”and it is a room for a princess!”
”I sometimes almost believe, Juliet,” returned Dorothy, ”that G.o.d will give us a great surprise one day.”
Juliet was tired, and did not want to hear about G.o.d. If Dorothy had done all this, she thought, for the sake of reading her a good lesson, it spoiled it all. She did not understand the love that gives beyond the gift, that mantles over the cup and spills the wine into the s.p.a.ces of eternal hope. The room was so delicious that she begged to be excused from going down to supper. Dorothy suggested it would not be gracious to her friends. Much as she respected, and indeed loved them, Juliet resented the word _friends_, but yielded.
The little two would themselves rather have gone home--it was so late--but staid, fearing to disappoint Dorothy. If they did run a risk by doing so, it was for a good reason--therefore of no great consequence.
”How your good father will delight to watch you here sometimes, Miss Drake,” said Polwarth, ”if those who are gone are permitted to see, walking themselves unseen.”
Juliet shuddered. Dorothy's father not two months gone and the dreadful little man to talk to her like that!
”Do you then think,” said Dorothy, ”that the dead only seem to have gone from us?” and her eyes looked like store-houses of holy questions.
”I know so little,” he answered, ”that I dare hardly say I _think_ any thing. But if, as our Lord implies, there be no such thing as that which the change appears to us--nothing like that we are thinking of when we call it _death_--may it not be that, obstinate as is the appearance of separation, there is, notwithstanding, none of it?--I don't care, mind: His will _is_, and that is every thing. But there can be no harm, where I do not know His will, in venturing a _may be_. I am sure He likes His little ones to tell their fancies in the dimmits about the nursery fire.
Our souls yearning after light of any sort must be a pleasure to him to watch.--But on the other hand, to resume the subject, it may be that, as it is good for us to miss them in the body that we may the better find them in the spirit, so it may be good for them also to miss our bodies that they may find our spirits.”
”But,” suggested Ruth, ”they had that kind of discipline while yet on earth, in the death of those who went before them; and so another sort might be better for them now. Might it not be more of a discipline for them to see, in those left behind, how they themselves, from lack of faith, went groping about in the dark, while crowds all about them knew perfectly what they could not bring themselves to believe?”