Part 32 (1/2)

What the Piper had said to Evelina came back to her now, eloquent with appeal;

_The word is not made right. I'm thinking 't is wrong end to, as many things in this world are until we move and look at them from another way. It's giving for, that's all. When you have put self so wholly aside that you can he sorry for him because he has wronged you, why, then you have forgiven_.

She moved about restlessly. It seemed to her that she could never be sorry for Anthony Dexter because he had wronged her; that she could never grow out of the hurt of her own wrong.

”Come with me,” said Ralph, choking. ”I know it's a hard thing I ask of you. G.o.d knows I haven't forgiven him myself, but I know I've got to, and you'll have to, too. Miss Evelina, you've got to forgive him, or I never can bear my disgrace.”

She let him lead her out of the house. On the long way to Anthony Dexter's, no word pa.s.sed between them. Only the sound of their footfalls, and Ralph's long, choking breaths, half sobs, broke the silence.

At the gate, the usual knot of curious people had gathered. They were wondering, in undertones, how one so skilful as Doctor Dexter had happened to take an overdose of laudanum, but they stood by, respectfully, to make way for Ralph and the mysterious, veiled woman in black. The audible whispers followed them up to the very door: ”Who is she? What had she to do with him?”

As yet, Anthony Dexter's body lay in his own room. Ralph led Miss Evelina in, and closed the door. ”Here he is,” sobbed the boy. ”He has gone and left the shame for me. Forgive him, Miss Evelina! For the love of G.o.d, forgive him!”

Evelina sighed. She was standing close to Anthony Dexter now without fear. She had no wish to torture him, as she once had, with the sight of her unveiled face. It was the man she had loved, now--the emotion which had made him hideous to her was past and gone. To her, as to him the night before, death seemed the solution of all problems, the supreme answer to all perplexing questions.

Ralph crept out of the room and closed the door so softly that she did not hear. She was alone, as every woman some day is; alone with her dead.

She threw back her veil. The morning sun lay strong upon Anthony Dexter's face, revealing every line. Death had been kind to him at last, had closed the tortured eyes, blotted out the lines of cruelty around his mouth, and changed the mask-like expression to a tender calm.

A hint of the old, loving smile was there; once again he was the man she had loved, but the love itself had burned out of her heart long ago. He was naught to her, nor she to him.

The door k.n.o.b turned, and, quickly, she lowered her veil. Piper Tom came in, with a soft, slow step. He did not seem to see Miss Evelina; one would have said he did not know she was in the room. He went straight to Anthony Dexter, and laid his warm hand upon the cold one.

”Man,” he said, ”I've come to say I forgive you for hurting Laddie.

I'm not thinking, now, that you would have done it if you had known.

I'm sorry for you because you could do it. I've forgiven you as I hope G.o.d will forgive you for that and for everything else.”

Then he turned to Evelina, and whispered, as though to keep the dead from hearing: ”'T was hard, but I've done it. 'T is easier, I'm thinking, to forgive the dead than the living.” He went out again, as silently as he had come, and closed the door.

Was it, in truth, easier to forgive the dead? In her inmost soul, Evelina knew that she could not have cherished lifelong resentment against any other person in the world. To those we love most, we are invariably most cruel, but she did not love him now. The man she had loved was no more than a stranger--and from a stranger can come no intentional wrong.

”O G.o.d,” prayed Evelina, for the first time, ”help me to forgive!”

She threw back her veil once more. They were face to face at last, with only a prayer between. His mute helplessness pleaded with her and Ralph's despairing cry rang in her ears. The estranging mists cleared, and, in truth, she put self aside.

Intuitively, she saw how he had suffered since the night he came to her to make it right, if he could. He must have suffered, unless he were more than human. ”Dear G.o.d,” she prayed, again, ”oh, help me forgive!”

All at once there was a change. The light seemed thrown into the uttermost places of her darkened soul. She illumined, and a wave of infinite pity swept her from head to foot. She leaned forward, her hands seeking his, and upon Anthony Dexter's dead face there fell the forgiving baptism of her tears.

In the hall, as she went out, she encountered Miss Mehitable. That face, too, was changed. She had not come, as comes that ghoulish procession of merest acquaintances, to gloat, living, over the helpless dead.

At the sight of Evelina, she retreated. ”I'll go back,” murmured Miss Mehitable, enigmatically. ”You had the best right.”

Evelina went down-stairs and home again, but Miss Mehitable did not enter that silent room.

The third day came, and there was no resurrection. Since the miracle of Easter, the world has waited its three days for the dead to rise again. Ralph sat in the upper hall, just beyond the turn of the stair, and beside him, unveiled, was Miss Evelina.

”It's you and I,” he had pleaded, ”don't you see that? Have you never thought that you should have been my mother?”