Part 10 (1/2)

The room was getting darker; he was putting out the candles. It was too dark already to see his face. With fascination she began to watch his hand. How steady it was as it moved among the boughs, extinguis.h.i.+ng the lights. Out they went one by one and back into their darkness returned the emblems of darker ages--the Forest Memories.

A solitary taper was left burning at the pinnacle of the Tree under the cross: that highest torch of love s.h.i.+ning on everything that had disappeared.

He quietly put it out.

Yet the light seemed not put out, but instantly to have travelled through the open parlor door into the adjoining room, her bedroom; for out of that there now streamed a suffused red light; it came from the lamp near the great bed in the shadowy corner.

This lamp poured its light through a lampshade having the semblance of a bursting crimson peony as some morning in June the flower with the weight of its own splendor falls face downward on the gra.s.s. And in that room this soft lamp-light fell here and there on crimson winter draperies. He had been living alone as a bachelor before he married her. After they became engaged he, having watched for some favorite color of hers, had had this room redecorated in that shade. Every winter since she had renewed in this way or that way these hangings, and now the bridal draperies remained unchanged--after the changing years.

He replaced the taper against the wall and came over and stood before her, holding out his hands to help her rise.

She arose without his aid and pa.s.sed around him, moving toward her bedroom. With arms outstretched guarding her but not touching her, he followed close, for she was unsteady. She entered her bedroom and crossed to the door of his bedroom; she pushed this open, and keeping her face bent aside waited for him to go in. He went in and she closed the door on him and turned the key. Then with a low note, with which the soul tears out of itself something that has been its life, she made a circlet of her white arms against the door and laid her profile within this circlet and stood--the figure of Memory.

Thus sometimes a stranger sees a marble figure standing outside a tomb where some story of love and youth ended: some stranger in a far land,--walking some afternoon in those quieter grounds where all human stories end; an autumn bird in the bare branches fluting of its mortality and his heart singing with the bird of one lost to him--lost to him in his own country.

On the other side of the door the silence was that of a tomb. She had felt confident--so far as she had expected anything--that he would speak to her through the door, try to open it, plead with her to open it. Nothing of the kind occurred.

Why did he not come back? What bolt could have separated her from him?

The silence began to weigh upon her.

Then in the tense stillness she heard him moving quietly about, getting ready for bed. There were the same movements, familiar to her for years. She would not open the door, she could not leave it, she could not stand, no support was near, and she sank to the floor and sat there, leaning her brow against the lintel.

On the other side the quiet preparations went on.

She heard him take off his coat and vest and hang them on the back of a chair. The b.u.t.tons made a little sc.r.a.ping sound against the wood.

Then he went to his dresser and took off his collar and tie, and he opened a drawer and laid out a night-s.h.i.+rt. She heard the creaking of a chair under him as he threw one foot and then the other up across his knee and took off his shoes and socks. Then there reached her the soft movements of his bare feet on the carpet (despite her agony the old impulse started in her to caution him about his slippers). Then followed the brus.h.i.+ng of his teeth and the deliberate bathing of his hands. Then was audible the puff of breath with which he blew out his lamp after he had turned it low; and then,--on the other side of the door,--just above her ear his knock sounded.

The same knock waited for and responded to throughout the years; so often with his little variations of playfulness. Many a time in early summer when out-of-doors she would be reminded of it by hearing some bird sounding its love signal on a piece of dry wood--that tap of heart-beat. Now it crashed close to her ear.

Such strength came back to her that she rose as lightly as though her flesh were but will and spirit. When he knocked again, she was across the room, sitting on the edge of her bed with her palms pressed together and thrust between her knees: the instinctive act of a human animal suddenly chilled to the bone.

The knocking sounded again.

”Was there anything you needed?” she asked fearfully.

There was no response but another knock.

She hurriedly raised her voice to make sure that it would reach him.

”Was there anything you wanted?”

As no response came, the protective maternal instinct took greater alarm, and she crossed to the door of his room and she repeated her one question:

”Did you forget anything?”

Her mind refused to release itself from the iteration of that idea: it was some _thing_--not herself--that he wanted.

He knocked.