East Angels: A Novel

"I suppose you mean, then, that Dick Bogardus is Antony?" said Lanse, working away at his fish-net. He had learned to make his nets rapidly now, and was extremely proud of his handiwork; he gave away the results of his labors to "fishermen of good moral character;" – it was necessary that they should be moral.

At the moment when Garda was entering the rectory, Margaret, at East Angels, was coming down the stone stairway on her way to the lower door, where the phaeton and Telano were waiting; she was about to drive to Gracias. As she paused a moment on the bottom step to button her gloves, a long shadow darkened the flags at her feet; she looked up; Adolfo Torres was standing at the open portal. After making one of his formal bows he came towards her; a motion of his hand begged her to remain where she was. "I thought you would be going there," he said. "I have therefore brought these – will you take them for me?" Flowers were abundant in Gracias, but the roses he held towards her were extraordinarily beautiful; all crimson or pink, they glowed with color, and filled the hall with a rich cinnamon scent.

"I will take them if you wish, Adolfo," Margaret answered. "But they are – they are very – "

The roses looked indeed as if intended for a joyous occasion; they were sumptuous, superb.

"You mean that they are bright. I know it; I intended them to be so." He still held them towards her.

"Wait a while," she said.

His face changed. "I know you are my friend," he murmured, as if he were saying it to convince himself. His eyes had dropped to his rejected blossoms.

She could see that he was passionately angry, and making one of his firm efforts to hold himself in control. "I will take them if you wish it," she said, gently, and she extended her hand. "I leave it to you. They are wonderfully beautiful, I see that."

"They came from Cuba; I have been watching them growing for nineteen months – for this."

"It is a house of mourning, you know, that I am going to," she said. "It was, as you say, nineteen months ago – a long time; but the remembrance will be very fresh at the rectory this afternoon."

His anger suddenly left him, he raised his eyes from his roses to her face, and smiled. "It's always fresh to me!" he answered. The glow in his dark countenance, as he brought this out, appalled her, it was like a triumph – triumph over death. He walked to the door and tossed the roses into the sunshine outside. "You are right," he said. "I can afford to wait – now!" And, with a quick salutation, he pulled his hat down over his brows and walked away.

Telano drove Margaret up the water-road to Gracias. It was late in the afternoon when she reached the rectory; Dr. Kirby was watching for her, he came down to the gate to meet her.

"She has gone to her room," he said; "we have persuaded her to go and lie down for a while, as she has done nothing but cry since first seeing the Moores. – I am afraid it will be even worse when she sees you," he added, as they went up the path.

Crossing the veranda, he stopped with his hand on the door, looking at his companion for a moment before entering.

There was no one in the world whom the Doctor now admired so much as he admired Margaret Harold; for the past two years he had secretly given her his unswerving help and support. He thought hers, among women, the most courageous and noble nature he had ever known. And the sweetest, also – ah, yes, in its hidden depths, overwhelmingly, enchantingly sweet! The delicacy of her physical constitution, too (and she did not grow stronger), her nearness to breaking down at times – these things had endeared her to the Doctor greatly; for it touched him to see, month after month, her fair youthfulness growing a little less youthful, her sweet face more faint in color, while at the same time, hour by hour, he saw her perform her full task so completely, in all its details as well as its broader outlines. He knew that she constantly suffered, and that it must be so. With his own eyes he saw how she endured. As a physician, if nothing else, he was aware how infrequent is quiet effort, maintained evenly, day after day, in a sex which can upon occasion perform single actions that rise to the height of the superhuman, and are far beyond the endeavors of any man. But here was a woman capable of the steady effort; it was not merely that she had remained with her husband, had allowed him to take possession again of her life and her home; she had made this home as pleasant to him and to Aunt Katrina as so quiet a place could be made to two such persons. She never secluded herself, she was always ready to talk, she brought others to amuse them; she read aloud, she played backgammon and checkers, she tied the ends of the fish nets and kept an account of them. She accepted and acted upon all Lanse's suggestions regarding her dress; she smiled frankly over his succinct stories, which, as has already been mentioned, were invariably good – Aunt Katrina generally managing to comprehend them by about the next day; in addition she directed the complicated household so that no jars made themselves felt; and during all this time, these long two years, no one had heard a syllable from her lips that was sharp in sound; nay, more, that was not sweet.

There are women who are capable of sacrificing themselves, with the noblest unselfishness in great causes, who yet, as regards the small matters of every-day life, are rather uncomfortable to live with; so much so, indeed, that those who are under the same roof with them are driven to reflect now and then upon the merits of the ancient hermitages and caves to which in former ages such characters were accustomed to retire. These being out of fashion, however, the relatives can only wish (with a certain desperation of fancy) that their dear self-sacrificing companions might imbibe from somewhere, anywhere, such a dose of selfishness as should render their own lives more comfortable; and, as a sequence, that of the household, as well.

The Doctor had had these saints as his patients more than once, he knew them perfectly. But here was a woman who had sacrificed her whole life to duty, who felt constantly the dreary ache of deprivation; but who yet did not think in the least, apparently, that these things freed her from the kindly efforts, the patience, the small sweet friendly attempts which made home comfortable.

The Doctor had been witness to all this, as he had been witness also that day in the orange grove, when Evert Winthrop lifted this same woman in his arms, where she lay speechless, tortured by the pain of parting with him.

Her pain was the same now – he knew that; but she had learned to bear it. Unspeakably he honored her.

And now this woman had come to see Garda in her trouble, Garda who was so infinitely dear to him, though in another way. He felt, as he stood there with his hand upon the door-knob, that he must for once – for once – acknowledge the difference between these two natures; he could not be content with himself without it. "I know you will be very good to her," he said – "our poor Garda, our dear little girl; she is suffering greatly, and we must tide her over it as well as we can. Yes, tide her over it; for you and I know, Mrs. Harold, that deep as her sorrow is – undoubtedly is, poor child! – it will pass."

He opened the door, and Margaret entered. Then he closed it from the outside, and made his escape. He felt like a traitor; yet he had had to say it – he had had to say it!

But the next moment he was taking himself to task as he walked violently homeward across the plaza. "Don't you want it to pass, you great idiot, that sorrow of hers? How much good can a woman do sitting all her life upon a tomb? she can't even be ornamental there, in my humble opinion. No; it's a thorough waste, a thorough waste!" He entered his old house, still revolving these reflections; he came bursting in upon Ma.

"Ma," he announced, as the little old lady in her neat widow's cap looked up in surprise – he spoke with emphasis, as he was still suffering sharply from having had, as it were, to denounce Garda – "I am convinced, Ma, that it would have been infinitely better for you, infinitely, if you had married again."

"Mercy on us, Reginald!" said astonished little Ma.

Margaret entered Garda's room with a noiseless step, the Moores had thought it better that she should go alone. The blinds had been closed, but a gleam of the sunset entered between the slats, and made a line of gold across the floor; the motionless figure on the lounge had been covered (by Penelope) with that most desolate of all draperies, a plain black shawl. Though Margaret had entered so quietly, Garda seemed to know who it was; she was lying with her face turned away, but she spoke instantly – "Margaret?" And Margaret came and took her in her arms.

"Margaret, I cannot bear it," Garda said, calmly; "I have tried, but it is impossible. And if you cannot tell me how to – you the only one I really believe, I shall not try any more. It is decided."

"Time will tell you how, Garda," Margaret answered, putting her hand upon the girl's head as it lay against her breast. "Time, I think, is the only thing that can help us – women, I mean – when we suffer so."

"But it's nineteen months already," Garda went on, in the same desperately calm tone. "And to-day I've suffered just as much as I did in the beginning – exactly as much."

"Yes – the coming home. It will be different now."

"But now's now," said Garda, sitting up, and looking at her friend, her face hardened, her lovely lips set in her pain.

"I mean soon, dear."

"I won't believe it unless you swear it to me," Garda went on. She got up and stood looking at Margaret. "If you will swear it to me I will try to believe it, because you know me, and you speak the truth."

"Very well, then; listen: I am absolutely sure of it," Margaret answered.

"Sure that I shall stop caring so much? stop feeling so dreadfully?"

"Yes, sure."

"But when will it begin?" the girl demanded, shaken with fresh sobs; she leaned down as she spoke, pressing her hands on Margaret's shoulders and looking at her insistently, as if she would draw from her by force a comforting reply.

"To-morrow, perhaps," said Margaret, answering her almost as one answers a suffering child.

"Well – you mustn't leave me."

"I won't leave you to-night at least."

This gave Garda some slight solace, she sat down and rested her head on Margaret's shoulder. "He was buried in Venice – on that island, you know. Margaret, I want to go down to East Angels to-morrow, mamma is there; do you remember dear little mamma?"

But this quiet did not last long. Suddenly she sprang up again, and began walking about the room, clinching her hands.

Margaret went to her.

"I told you I could not bear it," Garda cried, flinging her off. "You said it would stop, and it hasn't stopped at all. It suffocates me, it's a sort of dreadful agony in my throat that you don't know anything about, you —you!" And she faced her friend like a creature at bay. "When shall I begin to forget him? – tell me that. When?"

"But you do not wish to forget him, Garda."

"Yes, I do, I wish I might never think of him on earth again," said Garda, fiercely, giving a stamp with her foot as one does in extremity of physical pain. "Why should I suffer so? it's not right. If you don't help me more than you've done (and I relied upon you so), I shall certainly go to him – go to Lucian. He'll be glad to see me, he thinks more of me than you do – you who haven't helped me at all! But it will be easy to end it, you will see; I've got something I shall take. I relied upon you so – I relied upon you so!"

Margaret took her hands. "Give me another day, Garda," she said.

"Only one," answered Garda.

CHAPTER XXXVII

One afternoon, six months later, Margaret, under her white umbrella, opened the gate of the rose garden at East Angels. She came through the crape-myrtle avenue, at the end of its long vista, on the bench under the great rose-tree, she saw Garda; the crane, outlined in profile against the camellia bushes, kept watch over his mistress stiffly; another companion, in bearing scarcely less rigid, stood beside her – Adolfo Torres.

His Cuban slips had served their destiny after all, Garda's lap was full of roses. Crimson and pink, they lay on her black dress a mass of color, contrasting with the creamy hue of the paler roses above her head.