Part 39 (1/2)
”To save you from just this, Amalia. To save you from the touch of my hand--this is the crime I have fought against.”
”No. To love is not crime.”
”To dare to love--with the curse on my head that I feel as Cain felt it--is crime. In the Eye he saw it always--as I--I--see it. To touch you--it is like bringing the crime and curse on you, and through your beautiful love making you suffer for it. See, Amalia? It was all I could do to go out of your life and say nothing.” His voice trembled and his hand quivered as it rested on her hair. ”I sat here to fight it. My heart--my heart that I have not yet learned to conquer--was pulling me back to you. I was faint and old. I could walk no farther until the fight was won. Oh, Amalia--Amalia! Leave me alone, with the curse on my head! It is not yours.”
”No, and it is not yours. You have repent. I do not believe that poem my mother is thinking so great. It is the terror of the ancient ones, but to-day, no more. Take this. It is for you I bring it. I have wear it always on my bosom, wear it now on yours.”
She quickly unclasped from her neck a threadlike chain of gold, and drew from her bosom a small ivory crucifix, to which it was attached.
Reaching up, she clasped it around his neck, and thrust the cross in his bosom. Then, thinking he meant to protest, she seized his hands and held them, and her words came with the impetuous rush of her thoughts.
”No charm will help, Amalia. I killed my friend.”
”Ah, no, 'Arry King! Take this of me. It is not as you think for one charm I give it. No. It is for the love of Christ--that you remember and think of it. For that I wear it. For that I give it to you. If you have repent, and have the Christ in your heart, so are you high--lifted above the sin, and if they take you--if they put the iron on your hands--Ah, I know, it is there you go to give yourself up,--if they keep you forever in the prison, still forever are you free. If they put you to the death to be satisfied of the law, then quickly are you alive in Paradise with Christ. Listen, it is for the love that you give yourself up--for the sorrowfulness in your heart that you have killed your friend? Is not? Yes. So is good.
See. Look to the hills, the high mountains, all far around us?
They are beautiful. They are yours. G.o.d gives you. And the sky--so clear--and the bright sun and the spring life and the singing of the birds? All are yours--G.o.d gives. And the love in your heart--for me?
G.o.d gives, yes, and for the one you have hurt? Yes. G.o.d gives it.
And for the Christ who so loves you? Yes. So is the love the great life of G.o.d in you. It is yours. Listen. Go with the love in your heart--for me,--it will not hurt. It will be sweet to me. I carry no curse for you, as you say. It is gone. If I see you again in this world--as may be--is joy--great joy. If I see you no more here, yet in Paradise I will see you, and there also it will be joy, for it is the love that is all of life, and all of eternity, and lives--lives!”
Again he held her to his heart in a long embrace, and, when at last he walked down the trail into the desert, he still felt her tears on his cheek, her kisses on his lips, and her heart against his own.
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER XXVI
THE LITTLE SCHOOL-TEACHER
On a warm day in May, a day which opens the crab-apple blossoms and sets the bees humming, and the children longing for a chance to pull off shoes and stockings and go wading in the brook; on such a day the door of the little schoolhouse stood open and the sunlight lay in a long patch across the floor toward the ”teacher's desk,” and the breeze came in and tossed a stray curl about her forehead, and the children turned their heads often to look at the round clock on the wall, watching for the slowly moving hands to point to the hour of four.
It was a mixed school. Children of all ages were there, from naughty little Johnnie Cole of five to Mary Burt and Hilton Le Moyne of seventeen and nineteen, who were in algebra and the sixth reader. It was well known by the rest of the children why Hilton Le Moyne lingered in the school this year all through May and June, instead of leaving in April, as usual, to help his uncle on the farm. It was ”Teacher.” He was in love with her, and always waited after school, hoping for a chance to walk home with her.
Poor boy! Black haired, red cheeked, and big hearted, he knew his love was hopeless, for he was younger than she--not so much; but there was Tom Howard who was also in love with her, and he had a span of sorrel horses which he had raised and broken himself, and they were his own, and he could come at any time--when she would let him--and take her out riding.
Ah, that was something to aspire to! Such a team as that, and ”Teacher” to sit by his side and drive out with him, all in her pretty flat hat with a pink rose on it and green ribbons flying, and her green parasol over her head--sitting so easily--just leaning forward a bit and turning and laughing at what he was saying, and all the town seeing her with him, and his harness s.h.i.+ning and new, making the team look as splendid as the best livery in town, and his buggy all painted so bright and new--well! The time would come when he too would have such an outfit. It would. And Teacher would see that Tom Howard was not the only one who could drive up after her in such style.
Little Teacher was tired to-day. The children had been restless and noisy, and her heart had been heavy with a great disappointment. She had been carefully saving her small salary that she might go when school closed and take a course at the ”Art Inst.i.tute” in ”Technique.”
For a long time she had clung to the idea that she would become an ill.u.s.trator, and a great man had told her father that ”with a little instruction in technique” his daughter had ”a fortune at the tips of her fingers.” Only technique! Yes, if she could get it!
Father could help her, of course, only father was a painter in oils and not an ill.u.s.trator--and then--he was so driven, always, and father and mother both thought it would be best for her to take the course of study recommended by the great man. So it was decided, for there was Martha married and settled in her home not far away from the Inst.i.tute, and Teacher could live with her and study. Ah, the long-coveted chance almost within her reach! Then--one difficulty after another intervened, beginning with a great fire in the fall which swept away Martha's home and all they had acc.u.mulated, together with her husband's school, rendering it necessary for the young couple to go back to Leauvite for the winter.
”Never mind, Betty, dear,” Martha had encouraged her. ”We'll return in the spring and start again, and you can take the course just the same.”
But now a general financial stringency prevailed all over the country.
”It always seems, when there's a 'financial stringency,' that portraits and paintings are the things people economize on first of all,” said Betty.