_ CHAPTER XXV. BECAUSE SHE WAS A WOMAN
The blessed change in the weather came on apace. The sultry air softened and became more life-giving. Folk moved into the open, sat out upon the steps of the front galleries, rich and poor alike, willing to take the air. There was an unusual silence, an unwonted scarcity of callings back and forth across the fences. The people of the town did not care to revive the memories of the last two days.
But the narrow little porch in front of the millinery shop on Mulberry Street held no occupant. There was a light within, but the blinds were close drawn. None who passed could hear any sound.
Aurora Lane had sat for hours, almost motionless, at the side of the table where customarily she worked. She made no pretense to read in her Bible now. Her little white bed was unrumpled by any pressure of her body bowed at its side in prayer, although it was her hour now for these things.
She was trying to think. Her mind had been crushed. She sat dazed. It seemed to her an age since these women--these strangely kind-hearted, newly charitable women--had been here. Or, had she only dreamed that they were here? Had it been a passage of angels she herself had witnessed here?
She had told Miss Julia not to let Don come to see her just yet. So, though she had heard the great news of his release, she had not met him. "I'll have to think, Julia," she said. "I don't know what I'll do. I must be alone."
The window of her shop was still unmended. The red hat which had been so long, in one redressing or another, the sign of her wares, now was bent and broken beyond all possibility of restoration. The walls were bare, the furniture was broken. It was wreck and ruin that lay about her, as dully she still was conscious.
Twenty years of it--and this was the climax! What place was there left for her in all the world? As she sat, hour after hour, alone, Aurora Lane was thinking of the dark pool under the bridge, of how cool and comforting it might be. Her bosom rose, torn now and then with deep, slow sobs, like the ground swell of a sea moved by some vast, remote, invisible cause. She had been sobbing thus for some twenty-four hours.
She had not moved about very much today in her household, had not often left her chair here at the table. The mob had destroyed most of her pitiful store of gear, so there was small choice left her.
Somewhere she had found, deep down in a trunk tray, an old and faded garment, its silken sleeves so worn that the creases were now open--a blouse which she had put away long, long ago--twenty years and more ago. She wore it as best she might; and over the neck where the silk was gone she had cast a white shawl, also of silk, a thing likewise come down, treasured, from her meager girlhood days. This would serve her, so she thought, until she could find heart to go to bed and endeavor to find sleep.... Yes. They may have been of her own mother's wedding finery. Yes. Perhaps she one day had planned they might be parts of her own wedding gear.... But she had had no wedding.
She had done her hair, with Miss Julia's weeping aid, as simply as might be--as she had when she was younger. It lay now in long, heavy, deep rolls, down the nape of her white neck, along the sides of her head, covering her little ears, still shapely. Her face was white as death, but still it held traces in its features, sharpened and refined, of what once was a tender and joyous beauty of its own--a beauty now high and spiritual. In her time Aurora Lane had been known far and wide as a very beautiful girl; self-willed, yes; wild--but beautiful. She did not remember these things now, not in the least; and there was no mirror left unbroken in the place.
The evening waxed on, approaching nine of the clock, at which time good folk began to turn up the porch chairs against the wall so that the rain might not hurt them if it came, and to draw back into the stuffy rooms and to prepare for the use of the stuffy beds. Fathers of families now drank deeply at the pitcher of ice water left on the center table. One little group after another, visible here and there on the porches or the stairs along the little street, lessened and gradually disappeared. One by one the lights went out all over the town. By ten o'clock the town would have settled down to slumber. It was Monday, and on Monday night not even the most ardent swains frequent hammocks or front parlors at an hour so late as ten o'clock in our town, Saturday night and the Lord's day being more especially set apart for these usages.
But the light in Aurora Lane's house still burned. She did not know how late it was. The clock on the mantel was silent, for it had been broken by the men who had been there the night before. She sat motionless as a woman of stone. Not even her boy was there--not even Miss Julia was there. She was alone--with her future, and with her past.
It must have been toward midnight when at length Aurora Lane raised her head, turned a little. She had heard a sound! A sharp pang of terror caught at her--sheer, unreasoning terror. Were they coming again? But no, it was not the sound of many footfalls, not the sound of many voices.
What came to her now was a single sound, not made up of others--a low, definite sound. And it was not at her door in front--it was at the side of the house--it was at her window!
It was a slight sound--a sort of tapping rhythmically repeated--a signal!
Aurora Lane stopped breathing--her heart stopped in her bosom. The face was icy white which she turned toward the window back of which she heard this sound, this signal. She thought she had gone mad. She believed that at last her mind had broken under all the trials that had been heaped upon it. Then her eyes began to move about, startled, like those of a wild deer, seeking which way to leap.
It seemed to her she heard now another sound in addition, a sort of low call, a word.... Yes, it was her name:
"Aurora! Aurora!"
What could it mean? It was some visitor come there in insult--it could be no more than that. And yet what impiousness, what mockery! Because, what she heard, she had heard before! It had been twenty years since, and more--but she had heard it then.
Resolved suddenly to brave the worst, whatever it might be, she rose and swiftly stepped to the side door which made out upon the narrow yard.
A man was standing near the door, now turning away from the window--a tall man, slouching down like an old man.
"Who's there?" she cried, intending to call out aloud to give the alarm, but failing to raise her voice above a whisper, such was her fear. Yes, it was someone come here to offer yet another insult.
But the man came into the field of light which shone around her through the door--came closer, reaching out his hands to her. She heard him struggling with his own voice, trying to speak. At last: "Aurora! Aurora! Let me in! Will you let me in?"
She threw open the door so that the light might come. But it was late. The town slept. No one saw the light. No one saw the man who entered her door.
He came on slowly, bending down, groaning, almost sobbing, it seemed to her. He entered the room, sank down into a chair. He was that pitiable thing, a man with his nerves set loose by cataclysm of the emotions.
Not less than this had William Henderson met this day. It had shortened actually his physical stature, had altered every line in his face. He was twenty years and more older now than when she had seen him last. In one short day William Henderson had burned down to a speck in the cosmic plan. He had learned for himself how little is any man. And vanity torn out by the roots--a megalomaniac egotism done away by a capital operation--a life-long self-content, an ingrown selfishness, all wrenched out at once--that sort of thing takes its toll in the doing.
William Henderson was paying his debts all at once--with interest accrued, as Hod Brooks had said to him. It was an old, old, ashen-faced man who turned to her at last, as he came into the little lighted room.
Neither had spoken since he came within. The door now was closed back of him. No one without could have any inkling of what went on within this little room.... The drawn curtains ... the low light ... the man ... the woman ... midnight! All which had been here twenty years before for setting, that same now was here! And if there was ruin now of what here once was fresh and fair, if ruin lay about them now, who had wrought that ruin?
... Yes, it had been here. It was at this very place--when she was just starting, struggling, young--all the vague, soft, mysterious, compelling impulses of youth and life just now hers--so strange, so strong, so sweet, so ineffable, so indispensable, so little understood....
That had been his signal! And when he had rapped before--when he was young and comely, not old and ashen--she could no more have helped opening the door than the white wisps from the cottonwoods could cease to pass upon the air in their ancient seeking, blown by the spirit of life, coming from thither, passing thence, under an impulse soft, sweet, gentle, unsought but irresistible.
"Will!" she said at length. "Will, what's wrong? What have you done? What does this mean?" In some sense, swiftly, the past seemed back again, its twenty years effaced, so that she thought in terms of other days.
He raised his head. "What, you speak to me? You said 'Will'? Oh, Aurie, Aurie, don't!--I can't stand it. I'm not good enough for this."
"What's happened?" she insisted. "Why are you here?"
He sat, his lips loosely working now, his eyes red, his face flabby, his gray hair tumbled on his temples. It was as though all life's excesses and indulgences had culminated and taken full revenge on him in this one day.
"And you can say that to me?" he murmured. It was very difficult for him to talk. He was broken--he was gone--he was just an old man--a shell, a rim, a ruin of a man, now seeing himself as he actually had been all these years--God knows, a pitiable sight, that, for many and many a man of us all.
"I'm--I'm afraid, Will! Last night--it broke me, someway--I don't think much more can happen.... I can't think--I can't pull together, someway.... I was going down to the bridge tonight.... But I thought of Don."
"But you couldn't think of
me, Aurora?--Have you ever, in all these years?"
She made him no answer at all.
"No. You could only hate the thought of me," he said. "What a coward I've been, what a cur! Ah, what a coward I've been all these years!"
"I wish you wouldn't, Will," she said. Dazed, troubled, she was trying to think in terms of the present; trying, as she had said, to pull together. "You are Don's father.... Well, you were a man, Will," she added, sighing. "I was only a woman."
She had neither sarcasm nor resentfulness in her words. It was simply what she had learned by herself, in her own life, without any great horizon in the world.
"It was pretty hard sometimes," said she, after a time, slowly. "I had to contrive so much. Putting the boy through college--it began to cost more the last four years--so much more than we had supposed it would. You know, sometimes I was almost----" She flushed and paused.
"What was it, Aurie?"
"At one time not long ago, the bills were so large that we had to pay--it was so hard to get the money, I was almost on the point of going to you--for him, you know--and to ask you for a little help. But that's all over now."
"Oh, I ought to have come through--I ought to have owned it all up!"
"Yes, Will, you ought."
"Why did you keep it--why didn't you name me? I always thought, for a long time, that you would, that you must."
"I don't know. Don't ask me anything. But at least, Don's out now. Thank God! he's clear--he's innocent, and they all know it now. They can't keep him down, can they? He won't have as hard a time as I've had? He'll succeed, won't he? He must, after it all!"
"Yes," said the man, shaking as in a palsy, "after it all, he ought to, and I pray he may." But he could talk no more.
"And he's such a fine boy! I don't see how you could----"
"How I could disown him? Yesterday?"
She nodded. "I can't understand that. I never could. I can't see how you could hesitate. I--I wish you hadn't. I--I can't forgive that." Her voice rose slightly at last, a spot of color came into her pallid cheek.
"I didn't have the courage to come through square, and that's the truth about it. I've never had, all along. Maybe a man doesn't have the same feeling that a woman does about a child--I don't know. But I was worse than the average man--more selfish. I got caught up in politics, in business. Success?--well, I saw how hard it is. I thought I had to keep down the past. Well, it's over now. But as for you----"
"I lived it down for a good many years. Don's twenty-two now."
"But how could you keep that secret--what made you? Why didn't you go into court and force me to do my duty to my own flesh and blood--and to you?"
"I don't know," she answered. "I told you, I don't know. Maybe I was proud. Maybe I thought I'd wait till you shamed your own self into coming. I'm glad you've come now, at last. I don't know--maybe I thought some day you would."
"I'm not Judge Henderson!" he broke out bitterly. "I'm Arthur Dimmesdale! I ought to be in the pillory, on the gallows, before this town. I'm a thief and a coward, and I deserve no pity, neither of man nor of God himself. You've carried all the blame, when I was the one to blame. And I can't see why you didn't tell, Aurie--what made you keep it all a secret?"
"I don't know," said she simply again. "I don't know. It seemed--it seemed somehow to me--
sacred--what was between us! It was--Don! I have never told anyone. I was waiting, hoping you'd come--for your own sake. Why should I rob you of your chance?"
"Thank God that you did keep the secret!" he broke out at length. "It's all the chance I have left to be a man. At least I'll confess the truth."
"Why, Will, what do you mean? I'll never tell. I told you I wouldn't--I swore I wouldn't.
"I'll be going away before long, Will," she added. "I can't stay here now. I suppose Don and I will go away somewhere. I'm glad he's found a good girl. Ah!--Anne, she's splendid.... I'm not going to make any objections to his marrying
her. And, you see, I'll know that you came here. And some time he will know--who was his father. He doesn't, yet. In justice, some time he will. God will attend to that, not any of us."
"All the world shall know it, Aurora!" said the man at her side. "I saw them a little while ago, walking together. He was listening to the drums. He was looking at the Flag--and so was she. They are up at my house now. They're happy. God bless them."
"But they don't know--you've not told?"
"No, I've been walking out in the country--all evening. I was up there--on the road to the Calvary Cemetery. I'm going to tell Don the truth tomorrow.
"But look at your house--your poor little home." He cast about him a gaze which took in the ruin that had been made of all her belongings. "Oh, my God, Aurora! It was my own fault. It was
I who made that mob a possible thing. And you were a good woman. You've been a good woman all the time. I never knew before what a splendid thing a woman can be. Why--strong!... And you called me 'Will' just now. What made you do that?"
"I don't know," said Aurora Lane. "I suppose a woman never does quite forget the--the first man of--of her life."
"But how sweet it all was," he broke out, "in spite of it all, in spite of everything! Oh, Aurie, don't you remember when I'd come and tap there on the window--and you'd come and let me in? I don't deserve even that memory ... a woman like you--and a man like me. But I can't forget it. And you let me come in now--that's my one last joy left for all my life. Why, it's the one thing I can never think of again without a shudder. Yes, I've come without your asking--and you--you've let me in.
"Aurie," he went on, "that's what leaves me so helpless. I know what I deserve--but I don't want to be despised.... I want more than I deserve! I've always had more than I deserved. It's about all any man can say. It's life itself, I suppose. I don't know what it is. But, Aurie, Aurie, I do see a thousand things now I never saw before."
She still sat, white, dumb. Only, now, her head began to move, slowly, from side to side. He caught the evidence of negative, and a new resolution came to him at last.
"Let it all go!" he said at length--and now indeed he was on his knees at her side. "What I have lost is nothing. I'll never ask for office until I have lived here twenty years, openly, as you have. I must have loved you! I did--I do! I do! I wish I were fit to love you now. Because, in twenty years more.... The years pass, Aurie. Won't they pass? My sentence----"
His gray head was bent down low in her lap now, as her son's had been at this very place but a day before. Her hands--hands stained with needle work, rough on the finger ends, the taper gone there into a little square--were the same long shapely hands that had touched his hair at another time. The eyes that looked down at him now under long, soft, dark lashes were the same. But they were more brooding--tender, yes, but more sad, more wise. There was no passion in her gaze, in her touch. What was hatred or revenge to her?
His face was hid deep in his hands as he knelt. It lay there in that haven, the lap of woman, the place of forgiveness--and of hope, as some vague memory seemed to say to him. Indeed, all the wisdom and all the mercy and all the hope of a world or of a universe of worlds were in the low voice of Aurora Lane as she stroked back his hair--the gray hair of an old man, who knelt beside her. It was the ancient pitying instinct of woman that was in her touch. Hardly she knew she touched him, so impersonal was it all to her.
"Will, you poor boy, you poor boy! Oh, poor boy!" He heard her voice once more. Suddenly he raised his head, he sprang up, he stood before her.
"You do forgive me!" A sort of triumph was in the eager note of his voice. "You say 'poor boy!' You do forgive me!" He advanced toward her.
But Aurora also had risen quickly. Now, suddenly, some shock came to her, vivifying, clarifying. The needle of her heart swung on the dial of Today.
"Forgive you!" she exclaimed, her color suddenly gone high. "Forgive you--what do you mean?--what do you
mean?"
"You said you pitied me----"
"Pity you, yes, I do. I'm sorry for you from the bottom of my heart. I'd be sorry to see any man go through what you've got to face. Yes,
pity you--but--love you? What do you mean? Is that what you mean?
Respect you--is that what you mean? Oh, no! Oh, no! Use for you, in any way in the world?--Oh, no! Oh, no! Don't mistake.
Pity--that's all! Don't I know what it means to descend into hell? And that's what you must do."
"But, Aurie--Aurie--you just said----"
"I said I was sorry for you, and so I am, in all my heart. But he's our boy. I've paid my share in anguish. So must you."
"Haven't I? Haven't I?"
"Not yet! You're only beginning. It takes twenty years.--Oh, not of hidden and secret repentance--but
open repentance, before all the world! And square living. And your prayer to God each night for twenty years for understanding and forgiveness!
"Go out and earn it," she said, walking to the door and opening it. "Pity?--yes. Love? No--no--
no! I've no use for you. I don't need you now. My boy doesn't need you--we're able to stand alone. We've
succeeded! You? You're a failure--you're a broken-down, used-up, hopeless failure--so much, I'm sorry for you, sorry.
"You didn't really think I'd ever take you back, did you, Will?" she went on, eager to be fair even now. "I was only
sorry for you, that's all. God knows, I'm sorry for any human being, woman or man, that has to go through hell as I have. Twenty years? That'll leave you old, Will. But--go serve it, in this town, as I have! And God have mercy on your soul!"
She flung the door yet wider, and stumbling, he began to grope toward it. The black wall of the night lay beyond.
Slowly the color faded from the cheeks of the woman now left alone yet again. She sank down, crumpling, white, her face marble clear, her eyes staring straight ahead at what picture none may ask. Then, as the white column of her throat fluttered again, she beat one hand slightly against the other, ere she crushed them both together in her lap, ere she flung them wide above her.
"God! God!" cried Aurora Lane. "If it wasn't right, why did He say, 'Suffer little children'? It was in the Book ... little ... little children ... the Kingdom of Heaven!"
It was more than an hour before she, too, rose and, stepping toward the door, looked out again into the night. A red light showed here or there. Homes--the homes of our town.
[THE END]
Emerson Hough's Book: Broken Gate: A Novel
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