_ BOOK I CHAPTER XV. MY FATE
Having lighted the lamp in my room, I looked around it with a delicious sense of proprietorship. Its quaint, homely comfort was just to my taste, and now appeared doubly attractive. Chief of all, it was a portion of the home I had had some part in saving, and we instinctively love that which ministers to our self-complacency. An old house seems to gain a life and being of its own, and I almost imagined it conscious of gratitude that its existence had not been blotted out. Mrs. Yocomb's cordial invitation to come and stay when I could gave me at the time a glad sense that I had found a country refuge to which I could occasionally escape when in need of rest. I felt now, however, as if the old walls themselves would welcome me. As to the inmates of the home, I feared that their grateful sense of the services I was so fortunate as to render might make their boundless sense of obligation embarrassing to me. It would be their disposition to repay an ordinary favor tenfold, and they would always believe that Reuben and I had saved their lives, and the old home which no doubt had long been in their family.
"Well, I'll never complain of fortune again," I thought, "since I've been permitted to do for these people what I have;" and I threw myself down on the lounge, conscious of the warm, comfortable glow imparted by dry clothes and the strong coffee, still more conscious of an inner satisfaction that the threatening events of the night had ended just as I could have wished.
"Since it was to be, thank God I was here and was able to act for the best," I murmured. "The June sunshine and the lightning have thrown considerable light on my future. I said to Emily Warren, 'What could I have done without you in this emergency?' With still greater emphasis I feel like asking, What would life be without you? It seems absurd that one person should become essential to the life of another in a few brief hours. And yet, why absurd? Is it not rather in accord with the deepest and truest philosophy of life? Is the indissoluble union of two lives to result from long and careful calculations of the pros and cons? In true marriage it seems to me the soul should recognize its mate when meeting it."
It thus may be seen that I was no exception to that large class who accept or create a philosophy pleasing to it, and there is usually enough truth in any system to prevent its being wholly unreasonable.
I heard a step in the hall, and as I had left my door open so that at any sound I could spring up, I was so fortunate as to intercept the object of my thoughts. Her face was full of deep content, but very pale. To the eager questioning of my manner, she replied:
"The doctor says Zillah is doing as well as we could expect. Oh, I'm so glad!" "Miss Warren, you don't know how pale you are. When are _you_ going to rest? I've been lying down, and my conscience troubled me as I thought of you still working."
"I never imagined that editors had such tender consciences," she said, with a low laugh, and she vanished into Adah's room.
I knew she wouldn't stay long, and remained at the end of the hall, looking out of the window. The lightning flashes had grown faint and distant, but they were almost incessant, and they revealed that the clouds were growing thin toward the west, while near the horizon a star glimmered distinctly.
"Miss Warren," I called, as she came out of Adah's room, "I've a good omen to show you. Do you see that star in the west? I think the morning will be cloudless?"
"But those flashes prove that the storm is causing fear and loss to other and distant homes."
"Not at all. It is, no doubt, causing 'better grain and clearer skies,' as Mr. Yocomb said. Such an experience as we have had to- night, while having its counterparts not infrequently, take the world over, is by no means common."
"Oh, I hope we may have no more heavy thunderstorms this summer. They are about the only drawback to this lovely season."
"You are perfectly safe so long as you remain here," I laughed; "you know the lightning never strikes twice in the same place."
"I hope to stay here, but for better reasons than that."
"So do I."
"I should think you would. You, certainly, are no longer homeless. Mr. and Mrs. Yocomb will adopt you in spite of yourself as soon as they realize it all. The string of the latch will always hang outside of the door for you, I can tell you; and a nice place it will be for a city man to come."
"And for a city woman, too. Mrs. Yocomb had adopted you before all this happened, and I don't believe she'll forget that you really saved little Zillah's life."
"The dear little thing!" she exclaimed, tears starting to her eyes. "How pathetic her little unconscious form was!"
"To me," I replied earnestly, "it was the most exquisite and sacred thing I ever saw. I don't wonder you felt as you did when you said, 'I can't--I won't give her up,' for it seemed at the moment almost as if my life depended on her life, so powerful was her hold on my sympathy. The doctor spoke truer than he thought, for it seems as if the lightning had fused me into this family, and my grief would have been almost as great as Reuben's had little Zillah not revived."
"I feel as if it would have broken my heart," and her tears fell fast. Dashing them away she said, "I cry as well as laugh too easily, and I'm often so provoked that I could shake myself. I must say that I think we're all becoming well acquainted for people who have met so recently."
"Oh, as for you," I replied, "I knew you well in some previous state of existence, and have just met you again."
"Mr. Morton," she said, turning on me brusquely, "I shall not be quite sure as to your entire sanity till you have had a long sleep. You have seemed a little out of your head on some points ever since our extended acquaintance began. You have appeared impressed or oppressed with the hallucination that this day--is it to-day or to-morrow?"
"It's to-day for a little while longer," I replied, looking at my watch.
"Well, then, that to-day was 'a day of fate,' and you made me nervous on the subject--"
"Then I'm as sane as you are."
"No, I hadn't any such nonsense in my mind till you suggested it, but having once entertained the idea it haunted me."
"Yes, and it haunts you still," I said, eagerly.
"What time is it, Mr. Morton?"
"It lacks but a few moments of midnight."
"No," she said, laughingly, "I don't believe anything more will happen to-day, and as soon as the old clock downstairs strikes twelve I think the light of reason will burn again in your disordered mind. Good- night."
Instead of going, however, she hesitated, looked at me earnestly a moment, then asked:
"You said you found me unconscious?"
"Yes."
"How did you revive me?"
"I carried you to the sofa under the window, which I opened. I then chafed your hands, but I think the wind and spray restored you."
"I don't remember fainting before; and--oh, well, this whole experience has been so strange that I can't realize it."
"Don't try to. If I'm a little out of my head, your soul will be out of your body if you don't take better care of yourself. You might as well be killed by lightning as over-fatigue. That doctor seems to think you are made of india-rubber."
"I've laughed to myself more than once at your injunctions to the doctor since Zillah revived. We've had such a narrow escape that I feel as if I ought not to laugh again for a year, but I can't help it. I won't thank you as I meant to--it might make you vain. Good-night," and she gave my hand a quick, strong pressure, and went swiftly back to Mrs. Yocomb's room.
Had my hand clasped only flesh and blood, bone and sinew? No, indeed. I felt that I had had within my grasp a gratitude and friendly regard that was so full and real that the warm-hearted, impulsive girl would not trust herself to express it in words. Her manner, however, was so frank and unconstrained that I knew her feelings to be only those of gratitude and friendly regard, seeing clearly that she entertained no such thoughts as had come unbidden to me.
In spite of my fatigue, the habit of my life and the strong coffee would have banished all thought of sleep for hours to come, if there had been no other cause, but the touch of a little hand had put more glad awakening life within me than all the stimulants of the world.
I went downstairs and looked through the old house to see that all was right, with as much solicitude as if it were indeed my own home. Excepting the disorder I had caused in the kitchen and hall, it had the midnight aspect of quiet and order that might have existed for a century.
"I would not be afraid of the ghosts that came back to this home," I muttered. "Indeed, I would like to see Mr. and Mrs. Yocomb's ancestors; and, now I think of it, some one of them should wear a jaunty, worldly hat to account for Adah. By Jove! but she was beautiful as she lay there, with her perfect physical life suspended instantaneously. If the lightning would only create a woman within the exquisite casket, the result would well repay what we have passed through. Her mother would say, as I suppose, that another and subtler fire from heaven were needed for such a task."
As I came out into the hall the great clock began to strike, in the slow, dignified manner befitting its age--
"One, two, three--twelve."
The day of fate had passed. I knew Emily Warren was laughing at me softly to herself as she and the physician watched with the patients in Mrs. Yocomb's room.
I was in no mood to laugh, for every moment the truth was growing clearer that I had met my fate.
I looked into the parlor, in which a lamp was burning, and conjured up the scene I had witnessed there. I saw a fair young face, with eyes turned heavenward, and heard again the words, "My faith looks up to Thee."
Their faith had been sorely tried. The burning bolt from heaven seemed a strange response to that faith; the crashing thunder a wild, harsh echo to the girl's sweet, reverent tones.
"Is it all chance?" I queried, "or all inexorable law? Who or what is the author of the events of this night?" As if in answer, Mrs. Yocomb's text came into my mind: "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter."
"Well," I muttered, "perhaps there is as much reason in their philosophy as in any other. Somebody ought to be in charge of all this complex life and being."
I went out on the piazza. The rain was still falling, but softly and lightly. A freshening breeze was driving the thin, lingering clouds before it, and star after star looked out, as if lights were being kindled in the western sky. The moon was still hidden, but the vapor was not dense enough to greatly obscure her rays. In the partial light the valley seemed wider, the mountains higher, and everything more beautiful, in contrast with the black tempest that had so recently filled the scene.
I sat down on the piazza to watch with those who were watching with the child. I made up my mind that I certainly should not retire until the physician departed; and in my present mood I felt that my midsummer night's dream would be to me more interesting than that of Will Shakespeare. Hour after hour passed almost unnoted. The night became serene and beautiful. The moon, like a confident beauty, at last threw aside her veil of clouds, and smiled as if assured of welcome. Raindrops gemmed every leaf; and when the breeze increased, myriads of them sparkled momentarily through the silver light. As morning approached the air grew so sweet that I recognized the truth that the new flowers of a new day were opening, and that I was inhaling their virgin perfume.
I rose and went softly to the ivy-covered gateway of the old garden, and the place seemed transfigured in the white moonlight. Even the kitchen vegetables lost their homely, prosaic aspect. I stole to the lilac-bush, and peered at the home that had been roofless through all the wild storm. My approach had been so quiet that the little brown mother sat undisturbed, with her head under her wing; but the paternal robin, from an adjacent spray, regarded me with unfeigned surprise and alarm. He uttered a note of protest, and the mother-bird instantly raised her head and fixed on me her round, startled eyes. I stole away hastily, smiling to myself as I said:
"Both families will survive unharmed, and both nests are safe."
I went to the spot where I had stood with Emily Warren at the time I had half-jestingly, half-earnestly indulged my fancy to reproduce a bit of Eden-like frankness. Under the influence of the hour and my mood I was able to conjure up the maiden's form almost as if she were a real presence. I knew her far better now. With her I had passed through an ordeal that would test severely the best and strongest. She had been singularly strong and very weak; but the weakness had left no stain on her crystal truth, and her strength had been of the best and most womanly kind. As in the twilight, so in the white moonlight, she again made perfect harmony in the transfigured garden.
"There is but one woman in the world for me," I murmured, "as truly as there was only one for the first lonely man. I know not how it is with her, but I hope--oh, what would life now be to me without this hope!-- that she cannot have inspired this absolute conviction that she is essential to my being without some answering sympathy in her own woman's heart. But whether this is true or not, or whether it ever can be true, _I have met my fate_."
As I returned from the garden I saw that the dawn was coming, and I sat down and watched it brighten with the feeling that a new and happy life was also coming. _