Part 10 (1/2)

Where was the weight under which I had staggered, mentally, all these years? Whence came the peace that had so suddenly descended upon me?

In an instant it had pa.s.sed, and I could only remember my bitter mood of ten years as if it had been a dream that I had lived so long unconsoled by that great healer, Time.

As the torturing jealousy dropped from me, a gentle sadness took its place. In an instant my mind was made up. I would go back.

This idea, which had never come to me in ten years, seemed now perfectly natural. I would return at once to that far off village where, for a brief hour, I had dwelt in a ”Fool's Paradise,” through which my way had lain but a brief span, and where I had pa.s.sed, like the fabled bird, that ”floats through Heaven, but cannot light.”

I remember but little of the journey home, save that it was long, and that I slept much. But whether it was months or years I never knew. I seemed to be making up what I had lost in ten years. Time occupied itself in restoring the balance I had taken so much pains to upset.

It was night when I reached the place at last.

I found it as I had left it. Had a magic sleep settled there it could not have been less changed.

I was recognized in the small bare office of the one tavern. I felt that my sudden appearance surprised no one. But I did not wonder why.

Oddly enough, I never asked a question. I had not even questioned myself as to what I expected to find. Years afterward I was convinced, in reviewing the matter, that my soul had known from the first.

I dined alone, quite calmly, after which I stepped out into the starlight. I turned up the hill, and struck into the familiar road I had so often travelled in the old days. It led toward the river, and along the steep bank of the rapid noisy stream. The chill wind of an early autumn night moaned sadly in the tall trees, and the dead leaves under my feet rustled a sad accompaniment to my thoughts, which at last, unhooded, flew back to the past.

Below rushed the river, whose torrent had ever been an accompaniment to all my recollections of her--as inseparable from them as the color of her eyes, or the tones of her voice.

I could not but contrast my present calm with the mad humor in which I had last rushed down the slope I was so quietly climbing. As I went forward, I began to ask myself, ”Why?” I could not answer that, but I began to hurry.

Suddenly I stopped.

The moon had emerged above the trees on the opposite side of the river. It struck and illumined something white above me. I was standing exactly where I had stood on that fatal tenth of August, so many years before.

I came to my senses as if by an electric shock.

At last everything was clear to me. At last I understood whence had gone all my vanity and jealousy. At last I understood the spell of peace that had settled on me in that moonlit tenth of August, in that far off city.

My burden had pa.s.sed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death with her--for I was standing at the door of her tomb!

I did not question. I knew, I comprehended.

In no other way could I have found such calm.

Though I flung myself on the s.h.i.+ning marble steps that led in the moonlight up to the top of the knoll where the tomb stood, I had no tears to shed.

The present floated still further away.

Even the rush of the torrent died out of my ears.

Once more it seemed to me that lovely day in May when we three had marched, shoulder to shoulder, down the city street--that spring day in the early sixties, when the North was sending her flower to fight for a united country.

Again I felt the warm suns.h.i.+ne on my head.

Once more I heard the ringing cheers, saw the floating flags, and the faces of women who wept as well as women who smiled in the throngs that lined the street.