C. S. C. - "Verses and Translations"

From Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 - "Se quo yah"

Andrew Lang - "Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose"

Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): Deuteronomy"

Together

R >> Robert Herrick (1868 1938) >> Together




As Isabelle closed the old-fashioned shutters before dressing for dinner,
she saw her husband coming up the steps, walking with his slow, powerful
stride, his head erect,--the competent, high-minded, generous man, a rock
of stable strength, as she had always believed him, even when she loved him
least! There must be something wrong with the universe when this man, the
best type of hard, intelligent labor, should have become a public robber!
... Renault's solemn words repeated themselves, "The curse of our age, of
our country, is its frantic egotism." The predatory instinct, so highly
valued in the Anglo-Saxon male, had thriven mightily in a country of people
"born free and equal," when such a man as John Lane "grafted" and believed
himself justified.

* * * * *

Lane stood behind her chair waiting for her in the dining room. As she
entered the room he glanced at her questioningly. He had noticed that the
evening paper was not in its usual place in the hall. But after that glance
he settled himself composedly for the meal, and while the servants were in
the room husband and wife talked of immediate plans. He said he should have
to go to New York the next day, and asked what she wished to do. Would she
wait here in St. Louis for her mother? Or join her at the Springs? Or open
the Farm? He should have to be back and forth between New York and St.
Louis all the spring, probably.

Isabelle could answer only in monosyllables. All these details of where she
should be seemed irrelevant to the one burning point,--what will you do
now, in the face of this verdict of guilt? At last the meal was over, and
they were alone. Isabelle, without looking up, said:--

"I saw the verdict in the papers, John."

He made no reply, and she cried:--

"Tell me what you are going to do! We must talk about it."

"The case will be appealed, as I told you before."

"Yes! ... but the fine, the--"

She stopped for lack of the right word. He made a gesture of indifference
at the word "fine," but still waited.

"John, is it true what the judge said, what the district attorney said,
about--the officials getting money from those coal companies?"

She colored, while Lane eyed her and at last replied irritably:--

"The officers of the road invested their money, like most men, where they
saw fit, I suppose."

"But does that mean they take advantage of their position with the road to
make money--improperly?"

"That depends on what you call 'improperly.'"

Her mind leaped clear of this evasion; she cried out:--

"But why did you want to make money--so much money? You had a large salary,
and I could have had all the money we wanted from my father!"

Her husband looked at her almost contemptuously, as if her remark was too
childish for serious consideration. It was axiomatic that all men who had
the power desired to make what money they could.

"I certainly never cared to live on your father's money," he retorted.

"But we didn't need so much--"

"I wonder if you realize just how much we have seemed to need in one way or
another since we moved East?"

There it was staring her in the face, her share in the responsibility for
this situation! She had known only vaguely what they were spending, and
always considered that compared with women of her class she was not
extravagant, in fact economical.

"But, John, if I had only known--"

"Known what?" he demanded harshly. "Known that I was making money in stocks
and bonds, like other men, like your father's friend, Senator Thomas, like
Morton, and Beals himself? Isabelle, you seem to have the comprehension of
a child! ... Do you think that such men live on salaries?"

"But why weren't the others indicted and tried?"

He hesitated a moment, his face flushing, and then there burst out the
truth. She had unwittingly touched the sore spot in his mind.

"Because there had to be some sort of scapegoat to satisfy public clamor!
The deals went through my office mostly; but the road is behind me, of
course.... They all shared, from Beals down."

At last they were at the heart of the matter, he challenging her criticism,
she frightened at the cloudy places in her husband's soul that she had
penetrated, when a servant interrupted them, saying that Lane was wanted at
the telephone. While he was out of the room, Isabelle thought swiftly. What
would be the next word? Was it not better to accept his excuse? "They have
all done as I have done, men who are honored and respected. It is
universal, what we do, and it is only an accident that I am put up as a
target for public abuse!" If she persisted in knowing all, she would merely
divide herself farther from her husband, who would resent her attitude. And
what right had she to examine and judge, when for all these years she had
gone her way and let him go his?

The blood beat in her ears, and she was still uncertain when Lane returned.
His face had lost its color of passion, and his voice was subdued as he
said:--

"Steve has met with an accident,--a serious one."

"Steve!" Isabelle cried.

"Yes; I think we had better go out there at once. Alice got some one to
telephone for her."

The account of the accident had been in that late edition of the penny
paper which Isabelle had seen, but it had been crowded into the second page
by the magnitude of the Atlantic and Pacific sensation. Lane bought the
papers, and they read them on their way to Bryn Mawr. Johnston had been run
down as he was going to the station early that Saturday afternoon. It was a
heavy motor, running at reduced yet lively speed through the crowded city
street. A woman with a child by the hand had stepped from the sidewalk to
hail an approaching street-car, without noticing the automobile that was
bearing down behind her. Steve had seen their danger, rushed for the woman
and pulled her and the child out of the way,--got them clear of the motor.
But he was struck, a glancing blow in the back, as the motor sheered off.
He had been taken to a drug-store, and reviving quickly had insisted on
going home. The driver of the car, apparently a humane person, had waited
with a notable display of decency and taken the injured man with the doctor
who had attended him at the drug-store to Bryn Mawr.... The reporter for
the penny paper had done his best by the accident, describing the thrilling
rescue of the woman and child, the unavoidable blow to the rescuer, with
all the vividness of his art.

"It was a brave act," Lane remarked, folding up the sheet and putting it in
his pocket....

As soon as they entered, Alice came down to them from the sick room. She
was pale, but she seemed to Isabelle wonderfully composed and calm,--the
steady balance-wheel of the situation. When Steve had first reached home,
he had apparently not been badly off, she told them. He had insisted on
walking upstairs and said that he would be quite right after he had laid
down a little while. So the doctor went back to the city in the motor. But
at dinner time, Alice, going into his room, found him breathing heavily,
almost unconscious, and his voice had become so thick that she could
scarcely make out what he was saying. She had summoned their own doctor,
and he had called another from the city. They feared cerebral trouble, due
to a lesion of the spinal chord; but nothing could be certainly determined
yet.

"Something seems to be on his mind," Alice said in conclusion. "I thought I
made out your name, John; so I had you telephoned for. I don't know that it
will do any good, but it may quiet him to see you."

While Lane was upstairs, Alice talked on in the composed, capable,
self-contained manner that she usually had,--merely speaking a trifle
faster, with occasional pauses, as if she were listening for a sound from
Steve's room. But the house was painfully still.

... "You see," she explained, "Steve doesn't move quickly,--is too heavy
and slow. I suppose that was why he didn't succeed in getting out of the
way himself. The car wasn't really going fast, not over eight miles an
hour, the chauffeur said.... But Steve saved the woman and child,--they
would have been killed."

He had saved the woman and child,--chance strangers in the
street,--possibly at the cost of his life or the use of his limbs. There
was an ironical note in the tragedy. This stout man with the character in
his slow organism that could accomplish great things--this hero of
Alice's--had stepped off the sidewalk to save the life of a careless
passer-by, and risked his own life, the happiness of his wife and children,
in just that little way.

"It was so like Steve,--to realize but one point, _their_ danger," Alice
continued with a proud smile. And Isabelle could see the dull, large-framed
man, his head slightly bent, plodding forward in the stream of home-goers
on the pavement, suddenly lift his head, and without a moment's hesitation
step out into the path of danger....

When Isabelle and John left the house late in the evening, he said gravely,
"The doctors don't think there is much chance for him."

"He will die!" Isabelle gasped, thinking of Alice, who had smiled at them
cheerily when they went out of the door.

"Perhaps worse than that,--complete paralysis,--the lower limbs are
paralyzed now."

"How perfectly awful!"

"I think he knew me. He grasped my hand so hard it hurt, and I could make
out my name. But I couldn't understand what he was trying to say."

"Do you suppose it could be the mortgage?"

"Very likely. I must attend to that matter at once."

They were silent on the way back to the city, each buried in thought. The
verdict, which had stirred them so deeply a few hours before, had already
sunk into the background of life, overshadowed by this nearer, more human
catastrophe.

"I shall have to go on to New York to-morrow, for a few days at least,"
Lane said as they entered the house.

"I will stay here, of course," Isabelle replied, "and you can bring Molly
and the governess back with you. I will telegraph them." It was all easily
decided, what had seemed perplexing earlier in the evening, when she had
been occupied merely with herself and John. "I can be of some help to Alice
any way, and if he should die--"

"Yes," Lane agreed. "That is best. I will be back in a week." And he added
casually, announcing a decision arrived at on the way to the city:--

"I'll have my lawyer look up that mortgage. You can tell Alice to-morrow
and try to get Steve to understand, so that he will have it off his mind as
soon as possible."

Her heart responded with a glow. Yes, that was the very thing to do! She
had money enough to help them, but she did not know just what to do. It was
like John, this sure, quick way of seeing the one thing to be done
immediately and doing it. It was like him, too, to do generous things. How
many poor boys and young men he had helped along rough roads in their
struggle up,--given them the coveted chance in one way and another, without
ostentation or theory, simply in the human desire to help another with that
surplus strength which had given him his position of vantage.

"I will write the note to Mather now, telling him what to do about the
mortgage," he continued in his methodical, undemonstrative manner. As he
sat down at the desk and drew pen and paper towards him, he paused a
moment. "You will see to the nurses,--they should have two. The doctors may
decide on an operation. Have the best men, of course."

He struck pen into the paper with his broad, firm stroke. Isabelle stood
watching him, her heart beating strangely, and suddenly leaning over him
she kissed his forehead, then fled swiftly to the door.




CHAPTER LXXV


Isabelle waited in the carriage outside the station for her husband and
Molly. The New York train was late as usual. She had driven in from Bryn
Mawr, where she had spent most of the ten days since Lane's departure. She
was steeped now in the atmosphere of that suburban house covered by the
April mist, with the swelling bushes and trees all about it. There had been
an operation, decided on after consultation with the eminent surgeons that
Isabelle had summoned. After the operation hope had flickered up, as the
sick man breathed more easily, was able to articulate a few intelligible
words, and showed an interest in what was going on about him. But it had
waned again to-day, and when Isabelle left, Alice was holding her husband's
large hand, talking to him cheerfully, but there was no response.... How
wonderful she was,--Alice! That picture of her filled Isabelle's thought as
she waited in the carriage. Never a tear or a whimper all these anxious
days, always the calm, buoyant voice, even a serene smile and little joke
at her husband's bedside, such as she had used to enliven him with,
--anything to relax his set, heavy features. "How she loves him!" thought
Isabelle, almost with pain.

When she left that afternoon, Alice had sent a grateful message to John.
"He will come out to-morrow if he can?" she had asked. She knew now that
the hours were numbered without being told so by the doctors. And never a
tear, a self-pitying cry! Oh, to be like that,--sturdy in heart and
soul,--with that courage before life, that serene confidence in face of the
worst fate can offer! Alice was of the faith of Renault.

Lane came down the platform, followed by Molly and her governess. As he
raised his hat in greeting, Isabelle noticed the deep lines at the corners
of his mouth, and the line above his broad, straight nose. When they were
in the carriage, she realized that her husband had been living these ten
days in another world from the one she had inhabited, and in spite of his
questions about Steve and Alice, he was preoccupied, still held by the
anxieties and perplexities of his business in New York, still in the close
grip of his own affairs, his personal struggle. So she talked with Molly,
who was almost articulately joyful over her escape from the country, at the
sight of streets and motor carriages.

As they were going to dinner a servant brought word that a reporter wished
to speak to John. Usually Lane refused to see reporters outside his office,
and there turned them over to his secretary, who was skilled in the gentle
art of saying inoffensive nothings in many words. But to her surprise John
after slight hesitation went into the library to see the man, and it was a
long half hour before he returned to his dinner. The evening was another
one of those torturing periods when Isabella's heart was full and yet must
be carefully repressed lest she make a false step. After a little talk
about Molly, her mother, the Johnstons, Lane turned to open his mail that
had been sent up for him from the office. Isabelle left him absorbed in
this task, but she could not sleep, and when at last she heard him go to
his room, she followed him. Laying her hands on his arms, she looked at him
pleadingly, longing now not so much to know the facts, to reason and judge,
as to understand, perhaps comfort him,--at least to share the trouble with
him.

"Can't you tell me all about it, John?"

"About what?" he demanded dryly, his dislike of effusiveness, emotionalism,
showing in the glitter of his gray eyes.

"Tell me what is troubling you! I want to share it,--all of it. What has
happened?"

He did not answer at once. There was an evident struggle to overcome his
habitual reserve, the masculine sense of independence in the conduct of his
affairs. Also, there was between them her prejudice, the woman's
insufficient knowledge, and the barrier of the long years of aloofness. But
at last, as if he had reflected that she would have to know soon in any
case, he said dryly:--

"The Board has voted to relieve me of my duties as general manager of
traffic. I am assigned to St. Louis for the present, but the duties are not
specified. A polite hint--which I have taken!"

"Did Mr. Beals do that?"

"Beals went to Europe on his vacation when the coal cases first came up....
Besides, it would have made no difference. I think I see in it the fine
hand of our good friend the Senator,--smug-faced old fox!"

Isabelle felt how much this action by the directors had stung him, how
severely he was suffering.

"It was ... because of the verdict?"

"Oh, the general mess, the attacks in the press, complaints from
stockholders! They want to get under cover, show the public they are
cleaning house, I suppose. They thought to shelve me until the row fizzles
out, then drop me. But I am not the sort of man to sit around as a willing
sacrifice, to pose for the papers as a terrible example. They will know,
to-morrow!"

Isabelle understood why he had consented to see the reporter. Hitherto, he
had refused to speak, to make any public defence of himself or comment on
the trial. But after this action on the part of the directors, after the
long smouldering hours on the train, he had decided to speak,--at length.
It would not be pleasant reading in certain quarters near Wall Street, what
he said, but it would make good copy.

Biting fiercely at his cigar, which had gone out, he struck a match sharply
and talked on:--

"I am not a back number yet. There is not another road in the country that
has shown such results, such gain in traffic, as the A. and P. since I was
put in charge of traffic five years ago. There are others who know it, too,
in New York. I shan't have to twiddle my thumbs long when my resignation is
published. The prejudiced trial out here won't stand in the way."

In the storm of his mood, it was useless to ask questions. Isabelle merely
murmured:--

"Too bad, too bad,--I am so sorry, John!"

Instead of that dispassionate groping for the exact truth, justice between
her husband and the public, that she had first desired, she was simply
compassionate for his hurt pride. Innocent or guilty, what right had she to
judge him? Even if the worst of what had been charged was literally true,
had she not abandoned him at the start,--left him to meet the problems of
the modern battle as he could,--to harden his soul against all large and
generous considerations? Now when he was made the scapegoat for the sins of
others, for the sin of his race, too,--how could she sit and censure! The
time would come for calm consideration between them. There was that
something in her heart which buoyed her above the present, above the
distress of public condemnation,--even disgrace and worldly failure. Coming
close to him again, she said with ringing conviction:--

"It can make no difference to you and me, John!"

He failed to see her meaning.

"The money doesn't matter,--it isn't that, of course. We shan't starve!"

"I didn't mean the money!"

"Sensible people know what it amounts to,--only the mob yaps."

"I didn't mean criticism, either," she said softly.

"Well, that New York crowd hasn't heard the last of me yet!"

His lips shut tight together. The spirit of fight, of revenge, was aroused.
It was useless to talk further. She drew his arm about her.

"You will go out to see Steve to-morrow, won't you?"

"Yes, of course,--any time in the afternoon."

She kissed him and went back to her room.

One precept out of Renault's thin book of life was hard to
acquire,--Patience. But it must be acquired,--the power to abide the time
calmly, until the right moment should come. The morrows contain so many
reversals of the to-days!




CHAPTER LXXXVI


It was probable that the dying man did not recognize Lane, though it was
hard to say what dim perception entered through the glazing eyes and
penetrated the clouding brain. The children had been about the room all the
morning, Alice said, and from the way the father clung to Jack's hand she
thought there still was recognition. But the sense of the outer world was
fast fading now. The doctor was there, by way of kindly solicitude,--he
could do nothing; and when the Lanes came he went away, whispering to John
as he left, "Not long now." Alice had sent away the nurse, as she had the
night before, refusing to lose these last minutes of service. She told
Isabelle that in the early morning, while she was watching and had thought
Steve was asleep from his quieter breathing, she had found his eyes resting
on her with a clear look of intelligence, and then kneeling down with her
face close to his lips he had whispered thickly. Her eyes were still
shining from those last lover's words in the night....

When John went back to the city, Isabelle stayed on, taking luncheon with
the nurses and little Belle. Neighbors came to the door to inquire, to
leave flowers. These neighbors had been very kind, Alice had said often,
taking the boys to their homes and doing the many little errands of the
household. "And I hardly knew them to bow to! It's wonderful how people
spring up around you with kindness when trouble comes!"...

Meanwhile, overhead the life was going out, the strong man yielding slowly
to the inevitable. Twilight came on, the doctor returned and went away
again, and the house became absolutely still. Once Isabelle crept upstairs
to the door of the sick room. Alice was holding Steve's head, with one arm
under his pillow, looking,--looking at him with devouring eyes! ...
Gradually the breathing grew fainter, at longer intervals, the eyelids fell
over the vacant eyes, and after a little while the nurse, passing Isabelle
on the stairs, whispered that it was over,--the ten days' losing fight.
Presently Alice came out of the room, her eyes still shining strangely, and
smiled at Isabelle.

When they went out the next afternoon, there was in the house that dreary
human pause created by the fact of death,--pause without rest. Flowers
scented the air, and people moved about on tiptoe, saying nothings in
hushed voices, and trying to be themselves.

But in the dim room above, where Alice took them, there was peace and
naturalness. The dead man lay very straight beneath the sheet, his fleshy
body shrunken after its struggle to its bony stature. Isabelle had always
thought Steve a homely man,--phlegmatic and ordinary in feature. She had
often said, "How can Alice be so romantic over old Steve!" But as the dead
man lay there, wasted, his face seemed to have taken on a grave and austere
dignity, an expression of resolute will in the heavy jaw, the high brow,
the broad nostril, as though the steadfast soul within, so prosaically
muffled in the flesh, had at the last spoken out to those nearest him the
meaning of his life, graving it on his dead face. Lane, caught by this
high, commanding note of the lifeless features, as of one who, though
removed by infinite space, still spoke to the living, gazed steadily at the
dead man. And Isabelle felt the awe of his presence; here was one who could
speak with authority of elemental truths....

Alice, her arms resting on the foot-rail of the bed, was leaning forward,
looking with eyes still shining at her husband, her lover, her mate. And
her lips parted in a little smile. Large and strong and beautiful, in the
full tide of conscious life, she contemplated her dead comrade.

A feeling that she was in the presence of mystery--the mystery of perfect
human union--stole through Isabelle. The woman standing there at the feet
of her dead man had had it all,--all the experience that woman can have.
Had she not loved this man, received his passion, borne his children,
fought by his side the fight of life,--and above all and beyond all else
cherished in her the soul of the man, the sacred part of him, that beauty
unknown to others hitherto, now written plain for all to see on his face!
And her lighted eyes seemed to say, 'What place is there here for grief?
Even though I am left in mid life, to struggle on alone with my children,
without his help, yet have I not had it all? Enough to warm my heart and
soul through the empty years that must come!'...

Tears dropped from Isabelle's eyes, and convulsively she grasped the hand
that rested beside her, as though she would say, 'To lose all this, what
you two have had, how can you bear it!' Alice bent down over her
tear-stained face and kissed her,--with a little gesture towards Steve,
murmuring "I have had so much!"

* * * * *

They walked slowly back to the city in the warm April night. Neither had
spoken since they left the little house, until Isabelle said with a deep
solemnity:--

"It was perfect--that!"

"Yes! Steve was a good man, and Alice loved him."

Each knew what lay behind these commonplace words in the heart of the
other. These two, Steve and Alice, in spite of hardship, the dull grind of
their restricted existence, the many children, the disappointments, had had
something--a human satisfaction--that _they_ had missed--forever; and as
they walked on through the deserted streets silently, side by side, they
saw that now it could never be for them. It was something that missed once
in its perfection was missed for all time. However near they might come to
be, however close in understanding and effort, they could never know the
mystery of two who had lived together, body and soul, and together had
solved life.

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