 | IV. Azarian |  |
4. IV.
But as soon as she had fairly caught her
fancies, Ruth became absorbed in them so
earnestly as half to dwarf both consciousness
and reflection; she expended herself in lettering
the text, with twisting vines, wings,
petals, and floral charactery of form and hue
exquisite as the work of some old monk in his
cell, in pages full of all the rich confusion of
fragrance and bloom sealed in the verse, —
one leaf a single listening lily, — another, the
little foot-print that the March wind had set
in tufts of bluest violets, — a third, a mass and
strew and tangle of flowers, as if thrown down
from a tired hand with the dew yet trembling
on their sprays, — here and there dainty vignettes,
— just a bough with its waking bird
and signed at foot with graceful intermixture
of the curves of violin and bassoon, —
the simple gateway wound in woodbine, and
far off, a mere outline among the curling
clouds, the black bat hastening away, — the
planet fainting on its daffodil sky, — the old
grave thrilled and blossoming out in purple
and red, — the two lovers met at last in each
other's arms. When it was over, and the fever
of design had faded, “Ah, well,” sighed
Ruth to herself, “what have artists to do with
love? I was happy while I did that.” But
happy or not, its fire had burned out her
strength; she could do no more. “I wish,
I wish,” said little Ruth, “that I had somebody
to take care of me!”
Azarian had dropped in once or twice since
she began the opuscule; no doubt he had
intended to come oftener, had not some new
thing interfered, — it took only trifles to detach
Ruth, having put other things out of mind
with all her might, had nothing but her work
to talk about, and with that she had wished
to surprise him, and therefore afforded small
entertainment. Still, what lover needs that
his mistress should speak in order to please?
Ruth, through her work, had been innocently
dallying with fate; she had given herself
brief reprieve, in vague hope of full remission.
“In this fortnight,” she had thought,
“he may find that he needs me.”
But it was not in that fortnight that Azarian
found it.
The lonely child waited a day or two in
order to please this lover with her book; but
he did not come; and knowing that it would
please him equally well at Madame Saratov's,
and probably much sooner, she sallied forth
with it, — first looking in at the print-shop to
find her things undisturbed in their portfolio,
assured her they would disappear in time; but
time meant existence itself to Ruth, who had
not breakfasted that morning.
It was by some oversight that Isa suffered
Ruth to enter without announcing her.
Madame Saratov, clad in her gown of green
Genoa velvet, and the golden coil of her hair
behind wreathed round with slender peacock
feathers of gorgeous green and gold, stood and
held aloft in her hand a vase, the white Witch
vase. “It should have a jewelled tripod!”
she was exclaiming.
“It has it now,” said Azarian, who had been
sitting on a cushion near her feet, and still
retained his position. “Always hold it, Bacchante!
it is for you!” fascinated in her
not at all just then as a woman, but suddenly
seized with the sense of her artistic faultlessness.
“As near Heaven as I shall ever reach,
on the whole.”
“You make me of compliments all the
days! For me?” And Madame Saratov
slowly turned and laid her eyes upon him.
“This one ouvrage, this finiment of your life?
Is it that a lover does not lay such result at his
lady's feet? For me? Pourquoi pas pour
elle? — No, no,” she added, instantly and deprecatingly,
with a wave of the other hand.
“It is as if a moonbeam had carved it on
snow. I shall keep it forever as the treasure
of my house. C'est divin, mais” —
“Was Madame exiled,” said Azarian, coolly,
“for an insane interest in other people's
affairs?”
Madame Saratov laughed, and took a step
towards him. “Bien!” said she. “I confess
the impeachment. It affords me opportunity,
de plus. Do you know that somebody's
body is wearing so thin that the soul arrives
to look through? I spoke with her not long
ago, I, your poor slave, sir!” beating her foot
little gem. Monsieur, my good friend Azarian,
if you love the child, why do you neglect
her so? If you have need of her, why do you
break her heart?”
If Madame Saratov had looked in Azarian's
face as he lifted his length, she might not have
dared to continue. It was quite as well,
though, for the anger passed like all his other
flashes; and when she raised her glance, he
wore the old mocking smile and witty bravado.
“I don't know that I do need her!” said
he.
Just then a hand was laid upon his arm.
The vase dropped from Madame Saratov's
grasp, and fell in twenty pieces on the floor.
Ruth, in hesitation, had come gliding across
the room, and round the open screen of rosy
damask, in time to hear this last. With a
little cry, she stooped to gather the fragments.
charged with lightning swept across
Azarian's brow and was gone; he dropped the
black fringes over his luminous eyes, and then
laughed. “So much for lying. Ci-gît,” said
he. “Isa, here are some crumbs of the bread
of life for you to sweep up. — How is my little
maid this morning?”
“I am so sorry, Azarian. It was quite my
fault. I could n't find my voice” —
“Not at all. She was getting up a scene,”
he said, in a stage-whisper, indicating the
other lady.
“How can he forgive me!” exclaimed Madame
Saratov, in her guilt, her hands upon her
face.
“By commencing another straightway. We
won't make it wearisome. Ruth, what affair
is that?”
Ruth laid her gift upon a table, — it was
too insignificant to repair such disaster, — then
to see you, if you please, this evening.”
He looked down on her white face, her dark
beseeching eyes, he did not wish to be reproached,
they steeled him. Moreover, had
not the accident come through her means?
“Very well, perhaps so,” said he.
“No, but certainly, dear. It is as much as
life or death,” she urged, almost inaudibly.
“Send for the doctor, quick, — a pill, —
we 'll have a dose of calomel?”
“Azarian” —
“Well, I 'll see. Perhaps so,” possessing
himself of the little book. “Ah! what have
we here? `Apples of Syria and Turkish
quinces, and mountain peaches, and jasmine,
and Syrian lotus-roots; and myrobalans of
Uklamon, and hill citrons, and Sooltan oranges,
and sweet-scented myrtle, and camomile,
and anemonies, and violets, and pomegranate-flowers,
and narcissus-blossoms, and put the
the Panjandrum. “By Jove, that is delicious!
Wipe your weeping eyes, my friend, and be
charmed.”
“There are three minutes that I have destroyed
the most perfect, the most priceless —
and he asks me to amuse myself!” cried
Madame Saratov.
“Madame must not concern herself,” exclaimed
Azarian. “She ought to know me
well enough by this time never to afford credence
to a word I say. I have at home, believe
me, at least a dozen, equally priceless, more
perfect.”
“Ah, yes, I believe you, — in splinters!”
“Come. I fancy you have done me immense
service. I gloated over the thing.
Now, if the fates conspire, I may produce indeed.
You establish an era.”
“You are very philosophic. But all calm
as you are” —
“It seems to me, if I had received such
illustrations to the Garden-Song as these, I
should not sit with my face in my hands.”
“Azarian, dear!”
“My little Ruth, ma douce consolatrice!”
“There 's jasmine for you! Ah! that acacia
stifles one, it is so sweet. What a passionflower!
it is full of torrid life, with its spikes
and anthers; it is the soul of the glowing East;
I seem to see it sprawling over the swart
sands! When the new earth is made, Ruth,
you will have to be taken into the councils.
But that is a pretty notion, — the light falling
from above on the little head with its gloss
of curls, and just the outline of the brow begun.
You are a genius, Ruth! — The power 's
not all lost, is it? I have n't absorbed it all,
eh, Ruth?” and he looked down askance
where she sat behind him on the hassock, the
sudden pleased red on her forgetful cheek,
her eyes and her instant smile full of the sunlight
a parting curtain, gilded the stray locks about
her face, heightened her color, and overlaid
her. He reached back his hand and placed
it on her hair a moment, then returned to the
pictures. The sunbeam went, the smile went
too. Ruth rose, saying drearily to herself that
it was going to rain, as outward things affect
one mechanically after any blow. She hung
a second on Azarian's arm. The pretty work,
the pretty smile, had melted his rigor. “You
are going?” said he. “Well, then, expect
me for sentence this evening.”
“Surely, Azarian?”
“So sure as twilight. Nay, shall I swear
it, doubter? The angel records an oath in
Heaven's chancery, — and blots it out with
his tears, very like,” he added, lightly, in undertone.
“Till then!”
“Ah, mignonne, must you go? Do not
bring such mischief when you come again. I
to-day!”
“Yes, you will,” said Azarian. “For here
is the carriage at the door, and you may drop
my little Ruth at hers.” So he closed the
panel upon them, and was away to his patients,
of whom, on his rounds that day, he
had made Madame Saratov one.
Ruth sat quietly opposite Madame Saratov,
— who had partially forgotten her recent paroxysms,
and made only comical little allusions
to them, — smiled at her gay words, which
seemed to strike somewhere a great way outside
of her, kept herself down as if compressed
by iron bonds till the carriage stopped. Then
she ran breathlessly up-stairs, shut her door
swiftly, and locked it, and, bursting through
all her bonds, cried out in a loud voice, “I
don't know that I do need her!” She fell
upon the floor, hiding her face, the blank side
of the universe turned upon her, utter negation,
length, for her memory only repeated the
words and drew no meaning from them.
Gradually she began to feel there was something
wrong; she strove to gather calm, to
obtain the upper hand of herself once more,
and, when that was done, she crowded all her
thoughts down, till the evening should let
them rise and shake their dismal vans before
Azarian's eyes.
Meanwhile Ruth turned to the wants of the
day. She was faint, and needed strength.
There was little left in her rooms for the
pawnbroker; she hated to denude this one
further till Azarian should have come and
gone; she took some trifle, and, going out in
the soft showers, disposed of it for a wherewithal
to dine upon, forcing herself to eat;
but she had no longer the spur that once she
had in the first blast of poverty; each time
the process grew more insupportable; and,
upright, she must needs be proud to all the
world beside, she thought she would sooner
starve than resort to such method again.
Later in the day, she busied herself putting
the place into the most exquisite order; — a
little basket of grapes that some unknown one
had sent her she would not touch, — grapes
will not keep one alive, — saving them for the
evening; but, directly, she saw in that very
act a hope, and impetuously dashed them out
of the window, where a parcel of young ragamuffins
seized upon them as the generous
bounty of the skies.
Ever since that night with Madame Saratov,
ever since that noon with Azarian, Ruth had
indistinctly meant to assert herself, — yet had
postponed the evil day. She had scarcely
dared to do more than dream of parting, —
that so sucks the strength out of the future,
and suffocates the soul beneath the accumulation
pictures of the long life with him, even if it
were sacrificed to him; she had thought of a
hearth almost happy; she had suffered somewhere
in the inmost recesses a thrilling hope,
unwhispered, unheard, of the ruddy firelight
playing on little heads, each one of which
should wear his brow, his eyes, should make
her dearer, should win him nearer; she had
an insight of that advancing hour that none
but she could soothe; she sought with all the
wild rushing of her love to be the one to lead
him upward, to do him loyal service; she
abased herself in her thought and put her
heart beneath his feet, — her whole nature suddenly
went out to him in clamorous longing.
And then again those words of the morning
fell on her like ice-drops; she bent her head
in a storm of tears, and when they cleared,
though she had never written him word or
message before, she found herself pencilling
Azarian, — till you need me.” She wanted
to be the whole world to him. She found
herself almost nothing. Something must be
done that evening; it was right for no love
to continue on such ignoble terms!
Poor little Ruth thought then all had
reached an end. She did not know how
deeply she was cherishing yet one last hope,
until the twilight passed and he had not come.
She sat at the window after the dark had
fallen, straining her gaze as she searched the
long, wide, lonely square, where the gas-light
flickered in the wind and laid its fickle lustre
in the black and shallow pools. The rain
lashed along the pane, the gale sighed and
sobbed about the house or mounted and shook
the casement and lulled away again, the
great shadow stretched along the earth and
grew deeper and immense, — no one came.
A wild wet night, — few braved it, few traversed
homes, their friends, their fires. — A stir without
in the solitary space. Was it a football?
the spark of a cigar? the long lessening
shadow, — that was he! She ran to light her
candle, to compose her dress; she waited with
her breath between her teeth for the hall-door
to slam. All was silent; there came no sound,
no turning lock, no step on the stair, no shaking
off of the rain, — her heart sank down a
sickening gulf; she blew out the light again.
A long hour full of keen quick pangs, —
ah! who has not known them, the heat tearing
up and down the veins, the quenching
hopes, the wild despair? — The clock struck,
tolled out remorselessly its nine iron strokes;
it would soon be too late to expect him;
eagerness, impatience, fear, all fevered her,
her pulses began to throb with liquid fire.
She had so determined that he would come,
so set her heart upon it, if he loved her in the
Ah! how dismal it looks! she thought, — coming
from delightsome places, no wonder he
will not want to stay. There was yet some
coal in her grate, laid in the spring and unkindled
during all the summer; she touched
a match to the wisp of paper beneath, and
sent its crackle and sparkle up the chimney
till they fell to a soft deep blaze, where the
colored exhalations of liquescent jewels seemed
to stir and hover. How warm the room was
then! She threw up the window, and leaned
out into the southerly gale; the rain beat upon
her temples and cooled them; she seemed to
see forms flitting far down the distance; could
that be — was — ah, no! only the gas-light
flaring in the wind and tossing its shadows
about the long, wide, lonely square. “O
Azarian, how can you treat me so!” she cried
aloud.
One, — two, — three, — the clock was pealing
let down her hair warm and loose in the back
of her neck; she brushed it till it tingled all
through its length with fires and darks, till
her head burned and her brain grew clear.
He would come yet, she insisted, she was positive
of it.
There rose the noise of wheels, — ah! to be
sure, — he had been detained, and would not
walk in all the storm. She twisted the tresses
into a knot, her heart shook the chair that
held her; she forgot reproach, separation; she
sprang to meet him with passionate welcome,
— swiftly and indifferently the coach rolled by.
Others followed; they returned from the theatres;
none of them knew of the tragedy in the
life of the little girl up there in the blazing
window. She had been so confident, that the
reverse shocked her stiff; she leaned there,
and in the last fierce shower of the breaking
tempest let the rain-torrents dash about her.
was so like certainty that it swallowed breath
and palpitation.
There he was at last! Why had she lost
the step? Life and strength and joy surged
up again at the sound. The key rattled in
the door. He would be here after an instant.
How he would come in, in his gay way, saying
not a word, cheeks flushed with the weather,
eyes shining beneath the brim slouched like
a brigand's, open his arms, his great shaggy
coat, shut her in under all the rain-drops, feel
her heart beating, kiss her first on the forehead,
— her face was aglow with smiles, —
and all the night's tumult for nothing —.
And then the heavy step of a lodger passed
her door and went higher.
She flashed the window down, she walked
the room like one caged, she held her hands
tightly griped that she might not wring them.
How the minutes dragged and dragged and
look for him again; it would be of no use
if he did come; it would be only to say good
night; but oh what cheer in the sound of that
single word! She would go to bed, but she
could not sleep. The next step found her at
the window, peering through the pane, out
where the desolate lamp flung about its wild
shadows on the glowering darkness, where the
drops yet pattered from the boughs, dripped
from the eaves, and the tossing flashes lit up
the emptiness of the great lonely square.
There was no more rain; the warm wind
had risen and sent the scudding clouds to sea
in tattered shreds; here and there a star appeared,
mild and hazy, like soft summer stars;
it was the dawn of the Indian summer of the
year. But Ruth felt as though never again
for her would there be any summer in the
soul. All the sudden swift anticipations that
had met her with shining faces, like glorious
flying, — black disappointments. They were
but trifles, — yet what sorrow they drew in
their train, what mood of anguish they super-induced!
Hot, parched, weary work, over at
length; the eyes ached, the cheeks had left
burning, the hands were cold and wet, the
nerves were all aslack. Her heart felt too
heavy to flutter any more.
Twelve o'clock of a starlight night. She
had ceased to expect him now; but it had all
passed beyond her control, and still she sat
there. They that have looked for one who
came not, and on whom their very life hung,
know what a vigil was that.
Ruth may have slept in her chair at last,
for when she looked up again, the day was
breaking, breaking over the house-tops in its
deep tender prime. Whoever has known that
perfect hour in the country can still feel its
firmament broods over its soft dream of
light. But Ruth felt nothing, remembered
nothing, just now; she only saw down the
gap of a street the morning star sinking
back like a great watery chrysolite and melting
in depths of golden vapor; she had a vague
feeling that it was her own being dissolving
there in the red fumes of the sun, till suddenly
she recalled the chrysolite upon her
finger, and all the turmoil and passion of
the night rose with it. But she was too weary
for any thought; things passed before her
eyes, and made their own impression; she had
not even the volition to receive them. She
saw all the roofs lie dark and glittering in
the gray with their wet slopes, then steam in
censers of curling filmy threads; one spire
studded its base with rubies, just above great
pearly clouds flocked and floated on, then
high and clear bloomed out the faint fresh
of rosy mist soared up and sailed away, and
slantwise round the corner of the eaves a sunbeam
touched her face. Slowly the city began
to plume itself in smoke; Ruth watched
the slender stream that left one chimney, and
dissipated itself up high in the airy sparkling
heaven, idly fancied the hearth far below from
which it rose, the bright breakfast-table, with
its cheery faces, saw by and by the children
trooping forth to school, then turned her eyes
inward. It was noon before she moved. She
was unconscious of time, felt no hunger, forgot
her toilet. All her sensations clustered
at one point, — she was waiting for Azarian.
The shriek of the trains swooping down upon
the city had not roused her; but here the fulgurant
clangor of the great steel bells startled
the air, and their reverberation seemed to shatter
itself in her frame. Ruth always loved
bells, — used to shiver with their slow toll,
with their showering peals, felt always all attuned
to the great tone that pulsed from particle
to particle throughout their sonorous expanses,
— so musical, so ravishing, she had
wondered they should have to do with hands,
— would have had them swinging, ringing, in
the blue dome by unseen agencies. Now she
rose, caught sight of her face in the glass,
went and bathed and indued fresh raiment,
lay down on her lounge and tried to sleep.
Vain effort: all her love for Azarian was beating
its life out wildly in her bounding heart;
all her wrongs from him rushed up in wave
on wave to drown the struggling passion. The
greatest wrong of all made the very heart
stand still; but for him she could have prayed.
In this her need she could have found help.
When she came to him with all her nascent
faith, her holy hopes, he had laughed at them,
silenced her words, stifled her thoughts. For,
had to-day no religious element in his
nature; his cold intellect might stand bareheaded
without, and watch the sun strike up
the painted windows, — he had never entered
and become transmuted in the rosy warmth
and amethystine glow of prayer. He had made
himself the absorbent of all Ruth's power and
aspiration, and in his exhausting atmosphere,
if her devotion were not dead, it was at least
in syncope. She could not pray; she had
lost the language; she had made herself so
remote; she felt that there was nothing to
hear her should she call. Yet had he been
but constant! Her friend, her religion, her
love, — he had taken them all, prevented her
power, drained her strength, and in return he
had given her nothing, nothing; he did not
care for her, he had no need of her, — so little
would have contented her, — such a breath
of tenderness would have kept her warm, —
that she was forsaken, that she was alone, that
she was all alone in the world. Why did not
Azarian come? There were double reasons
that he should, — and those words to explain!
Was it possible, was it possible that he never
meant to come again? She tried to say that
she wanted no return for all she gave. She
tried to persuade herself that she was wrong,
that he had delayed a hundred times before, —
why should this once be life or death? Oh,
she had made it so! It is from the spark
that the forest flames. She had wrought herself
to that frantic pitch that listens to nothing,
to that intense state wherein one perhaps
sees the truer relations of magnitudes, where
nothing is small, all great. She was prostrate,
and the chances swept on above, as remote
from her reach as any mighty wind that roars
through a black and hollow sky. All creation
hung on the yea or nay of his coming.
as the hours wore on, flushing and paling,
shaking with such great tremors, her breath
like little gusts of flame, half beside herself
through suffering, excitement, inanition, exhaustion,
that life seemed of no worth but to
keep her keenly attempered to pain. And of
what worth was it? Who valued it? Nobody.
Nobody in the wide world. Why should
she keep it? And she turned her face to the
wall. — Gently the day withdrew, strained all
the golden light from its rich lees in sunset,
and soft purple glooms wrapped the earth and
brought the stars down nearer as one by one
they trembled into life. Ruth sat up and
pushed back her hair, went to the window and
looked out. The perfumes of all her untended
flowers floated themselves across to soothe her,
but she did not regard them. A little fitful
breeze tapped the bare vine-stem against the
pane, but she did not let it in. Some prayer-meeting
her ears with her hands. It was utterly impossible
that she should re-enact last night;
she had neither the vigor nor the spirit for it;
she shuddered at the thought, the fear, — all
her nerves were torn to pieces. What should
she do? Go out? And perhaps miss seeing
him! Remain? And endure the torture.
She remained. Still waiting, all alert, there
came across her wildness brief lulls, moments
of reflection. The words of Madame Saratov
rung in her remembrance: she thought if, by
her untiring service, she were only to weaken
and degrade his soul, would it not be best to
let him leave her. “How can I let him leave
me,” she said, “when the very fear of it gives
me this agony? I have not the strength to
let him leave me, — and live. And live?
Where is the need? Well, then, why not
die? Leave? He has already left! I am
so tired, — O God, why don't you take me?”
— why not go?
Yet she trembled. — And if he came —.
She stood waiting, with her hands clasped on
the table before her. When the clock should
strike eight —. What an eternity that was!
Sparkling on the fixed strain of the moment
a thousand happy vanities started up and made
darker the gloom that swallowed them. She
laughed grimly at herself, and asked if every
girl who lost a lover were mad as she. The
question was another goad. Let her hurry
to escape her humiliation! Let her bury her
sorrow and her shame out of the light! Let
her perish with it! And then the awfulness
of death smote her in the face. Here now,
burning, breathing, beating, — and then? O
terrible unknown! and then? Coming with
all her vivid life, what dreadful power was that
which could give it so sudden extinction? The
white cold horror whelmed her; yet better
would be brief, — and then it would be over.
Her forehead was wet, her heart struck her
side with blows that one could hear; still she
was waiting, waiting, and all became lost in
the rigidity of her purpose.
Slowly, sweetly, unconsciously, the peal
parted the air, and fell, fell softly down
through the listening night, lingering and
loitering, and quivered into silence. Its tone
still swam upon the ear when Ruth was on
the pavement, flying with fleet feet to find
her fate. Step after step, in some swift mechanism
of violent will, on, on, rapid and sure.
This was the place.
Ruth leaned a moment over the parapet;
she stood and looked down into the deep dark
water that lapsed along below; she seemed to
see herself lying there forever sheathed in the
crystal flow, looking up at soft starry heavens,
all trouble dead and done with. Not far away
voices, while its helmsman bore a torch. In
travesty of all their mirth, some woman sang;
the song floated over the bay and reached her
ears.
Your bloom was bliss.
The rose fades from the sky,
From you the kiss.
Eyes that were made to weep, —
At length how blest
Soul-satisfying sleep
And dreamless rest!
Heart that was made to break, —
One pang, one breath, —
Your fluttering thrill and ache
Drop into death!
like a strain of the wide world's indifference,
from another skiff that drifted down the obscure
far on the hither side of the bay, another
careless lazy tune, much like the motion
of the current that buoyed the singer so
languidly, so graciously along.
Float, little boat, along the sleepy tide;
Vaguely we note, we hear the distant rote
Where the great waters and the steep shores chide, —
Slowly we slide, it lulls us as we glide,
Float, little boat.
both. There was a subtle mockery in the
contrasting song. She delayed till they should
drop below the piers. And she looked steadily
ahead far away into the low horizon that
drew over the sphere's side all its heaven of
dark transparence, so remote and deep, with
such a lofty lucid dark that it seemed full of
slumbering light. Even then, through all the
madness that whirled about the fixed point of
her purpose, some sense of the hour's beauty
instant her personal misery lifted over a quick
flash of gratitude for the perfect loveliness of
the world. How beautiful must be the hand
that made its work so fair! It was but an
instant, — then the pain shut down again.
Ah, how regardlessly the earth pursued its
way, the river went to meet the sea, the boats
slipped downward, gently drawn and loitering
along the lure! Sweet eyes that through the
western windows see every night over the
broad shadowy stream the lamps build up
their aerial bridge of light, could not detect
this little spirit hovering to be gone, hidden
among all the clustering glooms and summoning
the powers of vasty death to do her will.
She was all alone in the world; God had forgotten
her, — that was what Ruth kept saying
to herself; — a moment, and then sleep. As
she said it, suddenly she seemed to feel a hand
upon her shoulder. She turned hastily and
violet heaven full of scattered starlight, the
great immensity of clear and bending space.
What wrung the scalding drops from her brain
and dashed them impetuously down her cheek,
gazing still with brimmed and blurring eyes?
How beautiful the hand? Tender as beautiful!
God had never forgotten her! He remembered
her, he lifted her, he upheld her;
she was his little child, he loved her! He
had set her feet in that path, — let her cling
to the hand and walk therein! This pain
was in the destiny of her nature belike, evaded
here only to endure hereafter, in other worlds,
sadder lives, till accomplished. Evade it,
escape his will, escape fate, — she would not,
if it were possible; the old adoring worship
overflowed her soul; there might come barren
sighs of ineffable human longing, but through
all the years that should engulf those dreary
instants henceforth the wide universe sufficed
all result of his laws, precious because
his choice, welcome since sent by him. Let
her live his life, her face upturned to catch
his light, and dying leave some handful of
his earth transmuted to heoric dust. It was
all she could do for her Lord. And if he did
more for her, if he drew her up higher and
higher and into his heart through soaring
eternities, let her wait, and, doing the Divine
will, become fit for the Divine rest. It was
all in a breath, — one of those swift miracles
that happen every day, that sooner or later
come to us all, and weld our wish with the
Eternal Will. But as Ruth restored her gaze
to the low dark horizon, how all Nature opened
its depths to meet her! what sweetness lurked
in the shadows! what brightness in the rays!
She forgot sorrow, and it seemed as if the very
heart were smiling within her. Her passion,
her selfish ecstasy of pain, had passed; rest
summer night breathed its balm about
her. A little wind blew up and ruffled all the
idle bay as the two boats stole nearer; it refreshed
Ruth with great wafts, and soothed
her brow; it caught the dust of the thoroughfare,
and whirled it in great clouds together.
Suddenly the torch in the gay barge beyond,
peopled with its invisible voices, flared into
being again, and flung its restless light about,
tossed up to the forgetful glance a sidelong
dart from the chrysolite shining on her finger,
lingered a moment on all the cool dew that
lay beaded along the parapet flashing back
innumerable twinkles and shattered sparks of
color, then swept its gleam higher, and trembled
over Ruth herself and on the great cloud
impending there behind her, — and, suddenly,
the slender boat on the hither side, drifting
from its shadow, was caught back on a delaying
oar while its master hung upon the rapt
with the same heart-beat that old
dream of which she had once told him, and
it seemed to his transfixed fancy that the two
upbearing angels stood behind her with their
great arching pointed wings and glorious
faces. To shoot down, secure his boat, climb
and seek the spot, was but brief work, — yet
vain. The place was vacant; he found nothing
but the empty starlight and kind sheltering
clouds of dust that perhaps hid the little
phantom as it flitted on and away.
The day had been one of the fond mistakes
of the year, — those dear surprises when all
June seems filtering through November, when
the landscape lies lapped in blue and mellow
haze, and resin-breaths — sweeter than sighs
from Sorrento's orange-groves — come floating
everywhere tangled in the blissful air.
Azarian had certainly intended to keep his
he bethought himself that no such delicious
day for boating would the fall again afford, —
so he went lightly simmering up the stream
with the tide, found some woods in which to
belate himself, gathered a rare medicinal root,
watched a little sleepy fly, that all the season
had not coaxed from its cell, just break the
chrysalis, fall on his sleeve to spread and dry
its gauzy wings and flutter along upon his
way, pleased to see what kind of time the tiny
prodigal was having on his first launch in life;
and when sunset burned among the tree-boles,
found the dim bank and drifted down again.
Now, as he rapidly left the bridge, and sought
the old region, the solitary square, with its
wildly flickering lamp, I cannot say what
quick spasms of vague apprehension were
these that stung him on. He reached Ruth's
door, — it was open; the place was dark. He
entered, called her, waited, groped round and
very impression of her head upon the cushion,
the spot where her breath had soiled the pane,
the fire's dead remnants in the grate, his little
Angelico hanging before her painting-desk, on
her painting-desk the amaranth half sketched,
and then those idle words. He bent and read
them: “Till you need me, Azarian, — till you
need me.” Azarian gave one long look about
the room, and set down the candle, stood before
it till, burning to the socket, it dipped
and gasped for life and fell and left the place
in blackness. Then he strode out, and locked
the door behind him.
Meanwhile, if any watched the little vagrant
woman wending under the shadow down the
lonely windy way, none molested her. The
slight form slid along the streets like a shadow
itself. Weary, it waited a moment, leaning
upon the stone pillar of a church. Down
from the choir, that terzetto where the first
voice floats forward on the great stream of
the second, and underneath all the third tolls
like a bell across a tranquil water, full of Sabbath
rest, — Lift thine eyes. Then, when the
beautiful silence had closed over it, she went
on. Up and down long windy ways, looking
only at her two clasped hands and on the single
jewel there into which the light of all the
lamps seemed to stoop and sparkle as she
went.
At length she paused beside another door
than that through which the radiant crowd
were pouring, and waited till one should issue
alone. The boy came tumbling down with
his basket, — then a different form appeared,
a firm foot stepped out, a white bare hand
wrapped the cloak together and let it fall
again in a moment's pause, — the soft breeze
soothed so after all that reeking air, the stars
after the glaring footlights, the great vault was
so clear, so pure the cool night-fragrance, so
grateful the silence. The lofty glance fell
downward then, — what little beggar was this
slipping a hand in hers? Ruth did not look
up.
“Charmian,” she faltered, “I have come —”
The warm hand closed over the slender
thing within it as if they were cut from one
marble, and, still fast held, without a word,
the two went on together.
Is it, when all is said, the lover or the love
that one requires? Think of Goethe, and say
the love. Think of any woman, and answer
that it is the pulsating personality of the lover.
But falling torn and bleeding, the arms
of a true and strong affection, be it whose it
returns. It is said, — L'amour est à la portée
de tout le monde: la seule épreuve d'un
cœur d'élite est l'amitie.
Perhaps it did not take the whole of those
three foreign years for Charmian's embracing
spirit to give tone and vigor to Ruth once
more, to place her upon a fresh centre whence
she could look with clearer eyes, to let her
find herself full of such purified strength as
that with which, after its igneous struggle, the
diamond drops away from its char. Before
the second year had expired, the sudden death
of Madame Saratov left two orphans upon
the world. Ruth saw a path before her with
tears of thankfulness; she made a swallow's
flight across the Atlantic, and brought them
both back to Charmian's hearth and hers, and
took them into a heart wide enough to be a
mother's. The boys stood a shield between
her and the past; gentle maternal duties absorbed
constant care to overcome the vagrant life
they lived and give it the wholesomeness of
home; they began to interknit with closest
fibres; she poured all the beautiful accumulations
of her being into the young mould
of theirs, and spared them none of the alchemized
treasure of her experience. The
brothers held Charmian in a sacred awe, and
addressed her by the reverential surname;
but the other one they worshipped and caressed,
and called her always Ruth. Then
all returned once more to the shores where
first they had met one another, and, heart free
and hand free in the service of unselfish love,
Ruth soared on her art with wings she had
not found before. She lived the life she coveted,
she had her work, she had her bliss,
these were her children.
Did one who, with a start, paused outside
as he went down the hill in the wintry twilight,
opposite windows of a drawing-room on the
ground-floor, where the lights were lit and
shutters still thoughtlessly unclosed, divine
anything of this? Was that she, sitting in
the ruby glow of the fire, his Ruth, — Ruth,
who three years ago had gone forth into the
night and left him? Ruth with such sunny
light in her brown eyes, such soft rose-bloom
on her cheek, such happy clinging smiles
about the mouth he used to kiss? Ruth!
Was it Paul Saratov too, the youth that stood
with the mien of a young Norse hero, leaning
on the back of her tall chair, and looking
down with her at what the dark-eyed Ivan,
seated at her feet on the other side, held up
for her to see? These boys — had she set
them in his empty shrine? Ah no, that
chamber was sealed, and she was at peace.
Was it Ruth with a mother's joys grafted
upon her life? Well, — grafted? false then.
the fostering of the sunlight deep in its own
heart, rejoiced most in the blossom of its own
veins, but yet with the borrowed bud it bore
good fruit. There was a deep and perfect
serenity of gladness in that meeting of the
three warm trusting glances before him there
in the pleasant room, glances from faces full
of love and peace.
As he gazed his bitter gaze, a stir of
figures disturbed the air; those happy sun-shiny
brown eyes were lifted and looking
quietly at him. The night without, the light
within, the pane between, made him viewless.
She looked at him, and he was of less substance
than any flitting film of the darkness.
Then her fingers were stroking back
Ivan's hair, and she was smiling up at Paul.
Guests took their departure, a queenly woman
with her purples gleaming beneath the golden
drip of the chandeliers swept forward into his
the shade.
“The curtain falls,” said Azarian, striding
gloomily on his way alone, “the play is played
out.”
| IV. Azarian | |