Part 35 (1/2)
He saw her again, and in her wasted, helpless form, her hollow cheeks, her bloodless face, with its weary, hopeless look, her mortal weakness, he clearly recognized his _sombre rivals_, _Grief and Death_; and with a look of indomitable resolution he raised his hand and vowed that he would enter the lists against them. If it were within the scope of human will he would drive them from their prey.
His aunt met him in the hall and whispered, ”Be gentle.”
”Remain here,” was his low reply. ”I have also sent for Dr. Markham;”
and he entered.
Grace reached out to him both her hands as she said, ”Oh, Alford, you are barely in time. It is a comfort beyond all words to see you before--before--” She could not finish the sinister sentence.
He gravely and silently took her hands, and sat down beside her.
”I know I disappoint you,” she continued. ”I've been your evil genius, I've saddened your whole life; and you have been so true and faithful!
Promise me, Alford, that after I'm gone you will not let my blighted life cast its shadow over your future years. How strangely stern you look!”
”So you intend to die, Grace?” were his first, low words.
”Intend to die?”
”Yes. Do you think you are doing right by your father in dying?”
”Dear, dear papa! I have long ceased to be a comfort to him. He, too, will be better when I am gone. I am now a hopeless grief to him.
Alford, dear Alford, do not look at me in that way.”
”How else can I look? Do you not comprehend what your death means to _me_, if not to others?”
”Alford, can I help it?”
”Certainly you can. It will be sheer, downright selfishness for you to die. It will be your one unworthy act. You have no disease: you have only to comply with the conditions of life in order to live.”
”You are mistaken,” she said, the faintest possible color coming into her face. ”The bullet that caused Warren's death has been equally fatal to me. Have I not tried to live?”
”I do not ask you to _try_ to live, but to _live_. Nay, more, I demand it; and I have the right. I ask for nothing more. Although I have loved you, idolized you, all these years, I ask only that you comply with the conditions of life and live.” The color deepened perceptibly under his emphatic words, and she said, ”Can a woman live whose heart, and hope, and soul, if she has one, are dead and buried?”
”Yes, as surely as a man whose heart and hope were buried long years before. There was a time when I weakly purposed to throw off the burden of life; but I promised to live and do my best, and I am here to-day.
You must make me the same promise. In the name of all the past, I demand it. Do you imagine that I am going to sit down tamely and shed a few helpless tears if you do me this immeasurable wrong?”
”Oh, Alford!” she gasped, ”what do you mean?”
”I am not here, Grace, to make threats,” he said gravely; ”but I fear you have made a merely superficial estimate of my nature. Hilland is not. You know that I would have died a hundred times in his place. He committed you to my care with his last breath, and that trust gave value to my life. What right have you to die and bring to me the blackness of despair? I am willing to bear my burden patiently to the end. You should be willing to bear yours.”
”I admit your claim,” she cried, wringing her hands. ”You have made death, that I welcome, a terror. How can I live? What is there left of me but a shadow? What am I but a mere semblance of a woman? The snow is not whiter than my hair, or colder than my heart. Oh, Alford, you have grown morbid in all these years. You cannot know what is best. Your true chance is to let me go. I am virtually dead now, and when my flickering breath ceases, the change will be slight indeed.”
”It will be a fatal change for me,” he replied, with such calm emphasis that she shuddered. ”You ask how you can live. Again I repeat, by complying with the conditions of life. You have been complying with the conditions of death; and I will not yield you to him. Grief has been a far closer and more cherished friend than I; and you have permitted it, like a shadow, to stand between us. The time has now come when you must choose between this fatal shadow, this useless, selfish grief, and a loyal friend, who only asks that he may see you at times, that he may know where to find the one life that is essential to his life. Can you not understand from your own experience that a word from you is sweeter to me than all the music of the world?--that smiles from you will give me courage to fight the battle of life to the last? Had Hilland come back wounded, would you have listened if he had reasoned, 'I am weak and maimed--not like my old self: you will be better off without me'?”
”Say no more,” she faltered. ”If a shadow can live, I will. If a poor, heartless, hopeless creature can continue to breathe, I will. If I die, as I believe I must, I will die doing just what you ask. If it is possible for me to live, I shall disappoint you more bitterly than ever. Alford, believe me, the woman is dead within me. If I live I shall become I know not what--a sort of unnatural creature, having little more than physical life.”
”Grace, our mutual belief forbids such a thought. If a plant is deeply shadowed, and moisture is withdrawn, it begins to die. Bring to it again light and moisture, the conditions of its life, and it gradually revives and resumes its normal state. This principle applies equally to you in your higher order of existence. Will you promise me that, at the utmost exertion of your will and intelligence, you will try to live?”
”Yes, Alford; but again I warn you. You will be disappointed.”