Part 21 (1/2)
”And have no more music? And--and--oh, it's cruel. _Why_ had you to find it out? It didn't matter anyway when it was all done with. Why _did_ you have to know? ... And you haven't any money. You must let me help you. Let me do that--just that. Can't you forget it all enough for that? Surely you've liked me--for what you've liked in me, let me help you. Great heavens, if I thought of you alone out there, without money--_Must_ you go?”
Haldane was fast losing control of himself. With an effort he pulled himself together and tried to smile.
”You're right to go,” he said. ”Right. You wouldn't want anything to do with me now.”
He looked up at her, though loath to meet her eyes. There was a wonderful pity in her face. ”Don't!” he cried, sharply, not understanding.
”I want to say this,” he broke out again, almost roughly. ”I never guessed that she knew how I felt toward her. I wasn't cruel or beastly--I was kind. They say that's cruelty, too. I tried--my G.o.d!
how I tried!--never to let her know the truth. That's all I can say for myself; ... you'd better go.”
She was so silent that at last he faced her again. She was crying softly, and, it appeared, without bitterness. Haldane stared at her curiously.
”I wanted to know that--that last you said,” Mrs. Locke gasped, with difficulty. ”I--I--I've been thinking it all over in my room. It's very hard to say--please let me go on with it just as I can, I--I've said I wanted to hear that last. But I knew it--in my heart--all the time.
I knew you couldn't be cruel to a living thing. And--and--somehow-- it changed--things. I've had such a terrible struggle all alone. I've tried to pray over it and--oh, I'm afraid I'm very wrong and very wicked--I almost know I am.” Her voice sank to a whisper. ”But--oh, Leonard ... somehow I just seemed to feel inside me just how you felt, just how--it was with you those two years. Oh, it's a dreadful thing to say, isn't it? Poor Ida! She was so good to me, and yet sometimes--”
The trembling old woman's voice faltered and broke.
Haldane's eyes were full of tears. A great light was slowly breaking for him. He dared not speak.
”Don't think I'm a wicked old woman, Leonard; I never even guessed--till I came here--how I felt. And then you were like a son--my son--the boy I wanted so, and--I loved the music so, and being with you, more than anything I ever knew--it doesn't seem as if--”
Haldane put his hand on hers gently, ”As if you could go away now?”
She turned to him with a little sad smile, and in her face was a sweet dignity.
”Yes, I cannot go--now, my son.”
THE YEARLY TRIBUTE
BY ROSINA HUBLEY EMMET
”For science is a cruel mistress. She exacts a yearly tribute of flesh and blood like the dragons of ancient pagan mythology.”
The eminent scientist paused momentarily here and viewed the earnest young faces before him. In this poetic figure of speech he saw fit to present to them the hards.h.i.+ps of the life they had chosen to embark upon. It was a hot June morning, and the heavy scent of syringa came in through the high uncurtained windows of the lecture-hall. All the students stared with reverence at this distinguished stranger, who had come a long distance to speak to the graduating cla.s.s; and one of its members sighed deeply and turned his eyes to the window, and watched some maple leaves moving languidly against the blue sky. The lecturer heard his sigh, saw him fall into abstraction, realized the peculiar character of his face; and marked him as a man who would serve to the end, possibly becoming one of the victims of that cruel mistress.
Pilchard and Swan had stopped to rest in the middle of the plaza. The black Mexican night was falling and a few stars blossomed in the sky, but there was no abatement in the heat which had held since sunrise; rather, indeed, the thickness of the atmosphere seemed intensified.
The two Americans, who had spent a whole year in Mexico and become accustomed to the climate, attempted to make themselves comfortable.
Pilchard sank to a dilapidated bench and lighted a cigarette; and Swan, not having even sufficient spirit to smoke, stretched himself bodily on the flat stones which paved the plaza, and placed his old hat upon his upturned face.
Both young men seemed depressed, and without speaking they listened to the moaning of the ocean which heaved and glistened in the distance; and when Pilchard finally said, ”So poor Murphy is gone too,” and Swan responded, ”His troubles are over, poor fellow,” it showed how completely they had been absorbed in the same thought.
”And Mulligan last week,” Pilchard continued, ”and all the others who went before, and Peele taken sick this afternoon. Swan, we're the only white men left.”
”And we've only got ten days left.”
”Oh, I guess we can do it, so long as we're out of the swamp.”