University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.

THE profound stillness that pervades a room where life
and death grapple for mastery, invites and aids that
calm, inexorable introspection, which Gotama Buddha
prescribes as an almost unerring path to the attainment of peace;
and, in the solemn silence of his last and memorable vigil, Dr.
Grey brought his heart into complete unmurmuring subjection
to the Divine will. A soi-disant “resignation” that draws
honied lips to the throne of grace, leaving a heart of gall in the
camp of sedition, could find no harbor in his uncompromisingly
honest nature; and though the struggle was severe, he felt
that faith in Eternal wisdom and mercy had triumphed over
merely human affection and earthly hopes, and his strong soul

chanted to itself the comforting strains of Lampert's “Trust
Song.”

No mere gala barge, gay with paint and gaudy with pennons,
was his religion; no fair summer-day toy bearing him lightly
across the sun-kissed, breeze-dimpled sea of prosperity and happiness,
and frail as the foam that draped its prow with lace;
but a staunch, trim, steady, unpretending bark, that with
unfaltering faith at the helm, rode firmly all the billows of
adversity, and steered unerringly harborward, through howling
tempests and impenetrable gloom. Human friendships and
sympathy he considered unstable and treacherous as Peter,
when he shrank from his Lord; but Christian trust was one
of the silver-tongued angels of God, ringing chimes of patience
and peace, far above the din of wailing, bleeding hearts, and the
fierce flames of flesh martyrdom.

One o'clock found Dr. Grey sitting near the pillow, where for
five hours Mrs. Gerome had slept as quietly as a tired child.
The fever-glow had burned itself out, and left an ashen hue on
the lips and cheeks.

Wishing to arouse her, he spoke to her several times and
raised her head, but though she drank the powerful stimulant
he held to her mouth, her heavy eyelids were not lifted, and
when he smoothed the pillow and laid her comfortably upon it,
she slumbered once more.

At the foot of the bed, with his keen yellow eyes fastened
on his mistress, crouched the greyhound, his silky head on his
paws; and on a pallet in one corner of the room slept Katie,
ready to render any assistance that might be required.

The apartment was elegantly furnished, and green and gold
tinted all its appointments. On an Egyptian marble table
stood a work-box curiously inlaid with malachite and richly
gilded, and there lay some withered flowers, a small thimble,
and a pair of scissors with mother-of-pearl handles. Around
the walls hung a number of paintings, which, with one exception,
were landscapes or ocean-views; and as Dr. Grey sat
watching the shimmer of lamp-light on their carved frames and
varnished surfaces, they seemed to furnish images of

No sweet-lipped, low-browed Madonnas, no rapt Cecilias, no
holy Johns nor meek Stephens, no reeling Satyrs nor vineclad
Bacchantés relieved the eye, weary of mountain ghylls,
red-ribbed deserts, and stormy surfage.

One long narrow picture baffled interpretation, and excited
speculations that served in some degree to divert the sad current
of the physician's thoughts.

It was a dreary plain, dotted with the “fallen cromlechs of
Stonehenge,” and in front of the desecrated stone altars stood a
veiled woman, with her hands clasped over a silver crescent-curved
knife, and her bare feet resting on oaken chaplets and
mistletoe boughs, starred and fringed with snowy flowers.
Under the dexterously painted gauze that shrouded the face,
the outline of the features was distinctly traceable, and behind
the film, — large, oracular, yet mournful eyes, burned like
setting stars, seen through magnifying vapors that wreathe the
horizon.

It was a solemn, desolate, melancholy picture, relieved by no
flush of color, — gray plain, gray distance, gray sky, gray temple
tumuli, and that ghostly white woman, gazing grimly down at
the gray-haired sufferer on the low bed beneath her.

Under some circumstances, certain pictures seem basilisk-eyed,
riveting a gaze that would gladly seek more agreeable
subjects, and it chanced that Dr. Grey found a painful fascination
in this piece of canvas that hung immediately in front of
him. Wherein consisted the magnetism that so powerfully
attracted him, he could not decide, but several times when the

wind blew the scalloped edge of the lace curtain between the
lamp and the picture, and threw a dim wavering shadow over
the figure on the wall, he almost expected to see the veil float
away from the stony face, and reveal what the artist had
adroitly shrouded. Now it looked a doomed “Norma,” and
anon the Nemesis of a dishonored faneless faith, that was born
among Magi, and had tutored Pythagoras; and finally Dr. Grey
rose and turned away to escape its spectral spell.

Waking Katie, he charged her to call him if any change
occurred in his patient, and went to the front of the house for
a breath of fresh air.

Narcissus-like, a three-quarter moon was staring down at her
own image, rocked on the bosom of the sea, while dim stars
printed silver photographs on the deep blue beneath them, —

The wind that had blown steadily for two days past from the
south-east, had gone down into some ocean lair; but the sullen
element refused to forget its late scourging, and occasionally a
long swelling billow dashed itself into froth against the stone
piers of the boat-house, and the cliffs which stood like a phantom
fleet along the southern bend of the beach, were fringed
with a white girdle of incessant breakers.

Far out from shore the rolling mass of water was darkly blue,
but now and then a wave broke over its neighbor, and in the
distance the foam flashed under moonshine like some reconnoitring
Siren-face, peeping landward for fresh victims; or as
the samite-clad arm that Arthur and Sir Bedivere saw rise
above the meer to receive Excalibar.

Following the beckoning of those snowy hands, and listening
to the low musical monologue that sea uttered to shore, Dr.
Grey started in the direction of the terrace, whence he could
see the whole trend of the beetling coast, but some unaccountable
impulse induced him to pause and look back.

The dense shadow of the trees shut out from the spot where
he stood the golden radiance of the moon, but over the lawn it

streamed in almost unearthly splendor, — and there he saw
some white object glide swiftly towards the group of deodars.
The first solution that occurred to his mind was that Katie had
fallen asleep, and Mrs. Gerome in her delirium making her
way out of the house, was seeking her favorite walk; but a
moment's reflection convinced him that she was too utterly
prostrated to cross the room, still less the grounds, and, resolved
to satisfy himself, he followed the moving object that retreated
before him.

Walking rapidly but stealthily in the shadow of the trees
and shrubbery, he soon ascertained that it was a woman's
figure, and saw that it stopped at Elsie's grave, and bent down
to touch the head-board. Creeping forward, he had approached
within ten yards of her, when his hat struck the lower limbs of
a large acacia, and startled a bird that uttered a cry of terror
and darted out. The sound caused the figure to turn her head,
and catching a glimpse of Dr. Grey, she ran under the dense
boughs of the deodars, and disappeared.

He followed, and groped through the gloom, but when he
emerged, no living thing was visible; and, perplexed and curious,
he stood still.

After some moments he heard a faint sound, as of some one
smothering a cough, and pursuing it, found himself at the
boundary of the grounds. Here a thick hedge of osage orange
barred egress, and he saw the woman disentangling her drapery
from the thorns that had seized it.

Springing forward, he exclaimed, —

“Stand still! You can not escape me. Who are you?”

A feigned and lugubrious voice answered, —

“I am the restless spirit of Elsie Maclean, come back to
guard her grave.”

In another instant he was at her side, and laying his hand on
the white netted shawl with which she was veiling her features,
he tore it away, and Salome's fair face looked defiantly at him.

“If I had known that my pursuer was Dr. Grey, I would
not have troubled myself to play the ghost farce, for of course
I could not expect to frighten you off; but I hoped you were

one of the servants, who would not very diligently chase a
spectre. I did not suppose that you could be coaxed or driven
thus far from your arm-chair beside the bed where Mrs.
Gerome is asleep.”

Astonishment kept him silent for some seconds, and, in the
awkward pause, the girl laughed constrainedly — nervously.

“After all your show of bravery in pursuing a woman, I
verily believe you are too much frightened to arrest me if
I chose to escape.”

“Salome, has something terrible happened at home, that
you have come here at midnight to break to me?”

“Nothing has happened at home.”

“Then why are you here? Are you, too, delirious?”

Her scornful laugh rang startlingly on the still night air.

“Oh, Salome! You grieve, you shock me!”

“Yes, Dr. Grey, you have assured me of that fact too frequently
— too feelingly — to permit me to doubt your sincerity.
You need not repeat it; I accept the assertion that you are
shocked at my indiscretions.”

Compassion predominated over displeasure, as he observed
the utter recklessness that pervaded her tone and manner.

“I am unwilling to believe that you would, without some
very cogent reason, violate all decorum by coming alone at
dead of night two miles through a dreary stretch of hills and
woods. Necessity sometimes sanctions an infraction of the
rules of rigid propriety, and I am impatient to hear your
defence of this most extraordinary caprice.”

She was endeavoring to disengage the fringe of her shawl
from the hedge, but finding it a tedious operation, she caught
her drapery in both hands and tore it away from the thorns,
leaving several shreds hanging on the prickly boughs.

“Dr. Grey, I have no defence to offer.”

“Tell me what induced you to come here.”

“An eminently charitable and commendable interest in your
fair patient. I came here simply and solely to ascertain whether
Mrs. Gerome would die, or whether she could possibly recover.”

Unflinchingly she looked up into his eyes, and he thought he
had never seen a fairer, prouder, or lovelier face.

“How did you expect to accomplish your errand by wandering
about these grounds, exposing yourself to insult and to
injury?”

“I have been on the gallery since twilight, looking through
the lace curtains at Mrs. Gerome lying on her bed, and at
you sitting in the arm-chair. Her eyes are keener than yours,
for she saw me peeping through the window, and told you so.
When you left the room I came out among the trees to escape
observation. I scorn all equivocation, and have no desire to
conceal the truth, for if I am not dowered

at least I hold my pauper soul high above the mire of falsehood;
and

They had walked away from the hedge, and Dr. Grey paused
at the mound, where the Ariadne gleamed cold and white in the
moonbeams that slanted across it like silver lances.

Revolving in his mind the best method of extricating the
orphan from the unfortunate predicament in which her rashness
had plunged her, he did not answer immediately, and
Salome continued, impatiently, —

“If you imagine that I came here to act as spy upon your
actions, you most egregiously mistake me, for I know all that
the most rigid surveillance could possibly teach me. I heard
you say that this night would prove a crisis in Mrs. Gerome's
case, and I was so anxious to learn the result that I could not
wait quietly at home until morning. I begged you to bring me,
and you refused; consequently, I came alone. Deal frankly
with me, — tell me, will that woman die?”

The breathless eagerness with which she bent towards him,
the strained, almost ferocious expression of her keen eyes,

sickened his soul, and he put his hand over his face to shut out
the sight of hers.

“Tell me the truth. I must and will know it.”

Her sweet clear voice had become a low hoarse pant, and the
knotted lines were growing harder and tighter on her beautiful
brow.

“I pray ceaselessly that God will spare her to me, and I hope
all things from His mercy. Another hour will probably end
my suspense, and decide the awful question of life or death.
Salome, if she should die, my future will be very lonely, — and
my heart bereft of the brightest, dearest hopes, that have ever
cheered it.”

A half-smothered cry struggled across the orphan's trembling
lips that had suddenly grown colorless, and he saw her clutch
her fingers.

“And if she lives?”

“If she lives, and will accept the affection I shall offer her,
the remainder of my years will be devoted to the work of
making her forget the sorrows that have darkened the early
portion of her life. I do not wish to conceal the fact that she
is inexpressibly dear to me.”

During the long silence that ensued, a lifetime of agony
seemed compressed into the compass of a few moments, but
Salome stood motionless, with her arms pressed over her aching
heart, and her head thrown haughtily back, while the moonlight
streamed down on her face where pride and pain were struggling
for right to reign.

When all expectation of earthly happiness is smothered in a
proud, passionate soul, and the future robes itself in those dun
hues that only the day-star of eternity can gild, nerves and
muscles shrink and shiver at the massacre of hopes which
despair hews down, in the hour that it “storms the citadel of
the heart, and puts the whole garrison to the sword.”

Dr. Grey could not endure the sight of that fixed, hardened
face, and sorely distressed by the consciousness of the suffering
which he had unintentionally inflicted on one so young,
he moved away, and for some time walked slowly under the

arching laurestines. Although his stern integrity of purpose
acquitted him of all blame, and he could accuse himself of no
word or deed that might be held amenable to conscience for the
mischief and misery that had resulted from his acquaintance
with this unfortunate girl, he regretted that he had remained in
the same house, and, by constant association, fed the flame that
absence might have extinguished.

While he pitied the weakness that had induced her to yield
so entirely to the preference she indulged for him, he felt humiliated
at the thought that he, who had intended to guide and
elevate this wayward child of nature, had been instrumental
in darkening and embittering her young life.

When he came back to the spot, whence she had not moved,
and laid his hand gently on her shoulder, she smiled strangely,
and

“My little sister, you must not stay here any longer. Would
you prefer to go home at once in my buggy, or remain in the
parlor until daylight?”

“Neither. Let me sit down on the stone terrace till the end
comes. I will disturb no one. It will be three hours before
day breaks, and when you know whether your idol will live or
die, come and tell me. Take your hand from my shoulder.”

He had endeavored to detain her, but she shrank away from
his grasp, and glided down the smooth sward to the terrace
which divided it from the ripple-barred and ringed sands of the
shelving beach.

As he returned to the house, the wind sprang up and moaned
through the dense foliage above him, and an owl, perched in
some clustering bough that overhung the portico, screamed and
hooted dismally. The sound was so startling that the greyhound
leaped to his feet and set up an answering howl, which
almost froze Katie with fright, and caused even Mrs. Gerome's
heavy eyelids to unclose.

Salome sat down on the paved terrace, crossed her arms over

the low stone balustrade, and resting her chin upon them,
looked out at the burnished bosom of the ocean. Just beneath
her, and near enough to moisten the granite with the silvery
spray, —

If the old Rabbinical legend of Sandalphon be grounded in
some solemn vision granted to the saints of eld, who walked in
Syria, then peradventure on this night, the angel must have
been puzzled indeed concerning the petitions that floated up,
and demanded admission to the Eternal ear.

From the anxious heart of the sincere and humble Christian
who knelt at the bedside of the invalid, rose a fervent prayer
that if consistent with the Father's will, He would lay His
healing hand upon the sufferer, and restore her to health and
strength; while the wretched girl on the terrace prayed
vehemently that God would crush the feeble flicker of life in
Mrs. Gerome's wasted frame, would take from the world a
woman whose existence was a burden to herself and threatened
to prove a curse to others.

The passionate cry of Salome's soul was, —

“Punish me in any way, and all other ways! Send sickness,
destitution, humiliation, — let every other affliction smite
me; but save me from the intolerable anguish of seeing that
woman his wife! O my God! the world is not wide enough
to hold us both. Take her, or else call me speedily hence.
I am not fit to die, but I shall never be better, if I am doomed
to witness this marriage. I would sooner go down to perdition
now, than live to see that thing of horror. Of two hells,
I choose that which takes me farthest from her.”

For the first time in her life she felt that the hours were flying,
that the day of doom was rushing to meet her, and she
shuddered when one after another the constellations slipped
softly and solemnly down the sky, and vanished behind the dim
shadowy outline of the western hills. Gradually the moon sank

so low that the sea could no longer reflect her beams, and as the
mighty waste of waters slowly darkened, and the wind stiffened,
and the song of the surf swelled like a rising requiem, the girl
felt that all nature was preparing to mourn with her over the
burial of her only hope of earthly peace.

If Mrs. Gerome died, a quiet future stretched before the orphan,
and she could bear to live without the love which she had
the grim satisfaction of knowing brightened no other woman's
life.

The happiness of the man for whom she almost impiously
prayed, was a matter of little importance compared with the
ease of her own heart; and she had yet to learn that the welfare
and peace of the object she loved so selfishly would one day become
paramount to all other aims and considerations. That
pure and sublime spirit of self-abnegation which immolates every
hope and wish that is at variance with the happiness of the beloved
had not yet been born in Salome's fiery nature; and she
cared little for the anguish that might be Dr. Grey's portion,
provided her own heart could be spared the pang of witnessing
his wedded bliss.

Through the trees, she could see the steady light of the lamp
that burned in the room where the sick woman lay, and so
she watched and waited, shivering in the shadow that fell
over earth and ocean just before the breaking of the new day.

Along the eastern horizon, the white fires of rising constellations
paled and flickered and seemed to die, as a gray light stole
up behind them; and the gray grew pearly, and the pearly
opaline, and ere long the sky crimsoned, and the sea reddened
until its waves were like ruby wine or human gore.

In the radiant dawn of that day which would decide the
earthly destinies of three beings, Salome saw Dr. Grey coming
across the lawn. His step was quiet, — neither slow nor hasty,
and she could not conjecture the result; but as he approached, she
rose, wrapped her shawl about her, and advanced to meet him.
He paused, took off his hat, and she knew all before a syllable
passed his lips.

“Salome, God has heard my prayers, — has mercifully taken

my darling from the arms of death, and given her to me. I do
not think I am too sanguine in saying that she will ultimately
recover, and my heart can not find language that will interpret
its gratitude and joy.”

Never before had such a light shone in his clear, calm blue
eyes, and illumined his usually grave countenance; and though
continued vigils and keen anxiety had left their signet on his
pale face, his great happiness was printed legibly on every feature,
and found expression even in the deepened and softened tones of
his voice.

The girl did not move or speak, but looked steadily into his
bright eyes, and the calmness with which she listened, comforted
and encouraged him to hope that ere long she would conquer her
preference.

How could he know that at that instant she was impiously
vowing that heaven had heard her last prayer? — that never
again should a petition cross her lips? God had granted one
prayer, — had decided against hers, — had denied her utterly;
and henceforth she would not weary Him, — she would not
mock herself and her misery.

Dr. Grey saw that there was no quiver on the still, pale lips, no
contraction of the polished forehead; but the rigidity of her face
broke up suddenly in a smile of indescribable mournfulness, — a
smile where self-contempt and pity and hopeless bitterness all
lent their saddest phases.

“Dr. Grey, in your present happy mood, you certainly can
not be so ungracious as to deny me a favor?”

“Have I ever refused my little sister anything she asked?”

“The only favor you can ever grant me will be to persuade
Miss Jane to consent to my departure. Look to it, sir, that I
am allowed to go, and that right speedily; for go I certainly
shall, at all hazards. Convince your sister that it is best, and
let me go away forever, without incurring the displeasure of the
only friend I ever had or ever shall have.”

She moved away as if to leave the grounds, but he caught her
arm.

“Wait five minutes, Salome, and I will take you home in my

buggy. It is not right for you to walk alone at this early hour,
and I will not allow it.”

She shook off his hand as if it had been an infant's; and, as she
walked away, he heard her laugh with a degree of savage bitterness
that stabbed his generous heart like a dagger; while behind
her trailed the hissing echo, —