 | XXIV. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
24. XXIV.
Would that marred and ruined being, once the
beautiful Mrs. Brothertoft, ever revive enough
to ask and receive forgiveness from her husband?
Lucy did not dare to hope it. She watched the
breathing corpse, and looked to see it any moment
escape from its bodily torture into death.
Edwin Brothertoft was but little harmed by
the flames. A single leap had carried him
through the fiery circle which was devouring his
wife, as she sat bound. In an instant he had
dragged her away over the falling floor, cut her
free, and was at the window struggling through.
He had been almost stifled by the smoke, but his
hurts were slight. In a few days he was at his
wife's bedside.
He alone could interpret the sad, sad language
of her suffering moans. Her soul, half dormant,
in a body robbed of all its senses, seemed to perceive
his presence and his absence by some spiritual
touch. Would she ever hear his words of
peace?
The red, ripe leaves grew over-ripe, and fell,
and buried October. Then came the first days
of November, with their clear, sharp sunshine,
and bold, blue sky, and massive white clouds,
sailing with the northwest wind a month before
the snow-drifts. Sweet Indian summer followed.
Its low southern breezes whispered the
dying refrain of the times of roses and passionate
sunshine.
Edwin Brothertoft sat by his wife's window
one twilight of that pensive season.
A new phase in his life had begun from the
night of the rescue. By that one bold act of
heroism he had leaped out of the old feebleness.
He felt forgotten forces stir in him. His long
sorrow became to him as a sickness from which a
man rises fresh and purified.
In this mood, with the dim landscape before
him, a symbol of his own sombre history, and
the glowing sky of evening beyond, symbolizing
the clear and open regions of his mind's career
henceforth, — in this mood he grew tenderer for
his wife than ever before.
It was no earthly love he felt for her. That
had perished long ago. Deceit on her side
wounded it. Disloyalty killed it. The element
of passion was gone. There would have been a
deep sense of shame in recalling his lover fondness
once for a woman since unfaithful. But
errors as irremediable facts, and he could pity
both alike. The tendency of such a character as
hers, so trained as hers, to some great rebellion
against the eternal laws, some great trial of its
strength with God, and to some great and final
lesson of defeat, became plain to him. The law
of truth in love and faith in marriage is the
law a woman is likely to break if she is a law-breaker.
She had broken it, and he divined the spiritual
warfare and the knowledge of defeat and degradation
which had been her spiritual punishment,
bitterer to bear than this final corporeal vengeance.
Entering into her heart and reading the
thoughts there, he utterly forgave and pitied
her.
And for himself, — what harm had she done
him? None, — so he plainly saw. Except for
the disenchanting office of this great sorrow,
he would have lived and died a worldly man.
When his poetic ardors passed with youth, he
would have dwindled away a prosperous gentleman,
lost his heroic and martyr spirit, and
smiled or sneered or trembled at the shout for
freedom through the land. Except for this great
sorrow, his graceful gifts would have made him a
courtier, his refinement would have become fastidiousness,
status quo, and then, when the moment came for
self-sacrifice, he would have been false to his
nobler self. That meanness and misery he had
escaped. That he had escaped it, and knew
himself to be a man wholly true, was victory.
The world might repeat its old refrain of disappointment
in his career; it might say, “He
promised to be our brilliant leader, — he is nobody.”
But it could never say, “See, there is
Brothertoft! He was an ardent patriot; but
wealth spoiled him, the Court bought him, and
he left us meanly.”
“My life,” he thought, “has been somewhat a
negative. I have missed success. I have missed
the joy of household peace. And yet I bear no
grudge against my destiny. I have never for
one moment been false to the highest truth, and
that is a victory greater than success.”
These last words he had spoken aloud.
In reply, he heard a stir and a murmur from
his wife.
He turned to her, and in the dusk he could
see that her life was recoiling from death to gain
strength to die. Voice and expression returned
to her.
“Edwin!” she called to him, feebly.
“Jane?” he answered.
In the pleading tone of her cry, in the sweet
the other's heart. There was no need of long
interpretation. To her yearning for pardon and
love, her name upon his lips gave full assurance
that both were granted.
She reached blindly for his hand. He took
hers tenderly. And there by the solemn twilight
they parted for a time. Death parted them.
She awoke in eternity. He stayed, to share a
little longer in the dreamy work of life.
| XXIV. Edwin Brothertoft | |