The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Part 181

"Oh," she said, with surprise at seeing him, and at his appearance, "I didn't expect to see you here. I thought everybody had gone from the city. Perhaps you are going to the Neighborhood Guild?"

"No," and Jack forced a little laugh, "I'm not so good as that. I'm kept in town on business. I strolled over here to see how the other side of life looks."

"It doesn't improve. It is one of the worst summers I ever saw. Since Mr. Henderson's death--"

"What difference did Henderson's death make over here?"

"Why, he had deposited a little fund for Father Damon to draw on, and the day after his death the bank returned a small check with the notice that there was no deposit to draw on. It had been such a help in extraordinary cases. Perhaps you saw some allusion to it in the newspapers?"

"Wasn't it the Margaret Fund?"

"Yes. Father Damon dropped a note to Mrs. Henderson explaining about it.

No reply came."

"As he might have expected." Dr. Leigh looked up quickly as if for an explanation, but Jack ignored the query, and went on. "And Father Damon, is he as active as ever?"

"He has gone."

"What, left the city, quit his work? And the mission?"

"I don't suppose he will ever quit his work while he lives, but he is much broken down. The mission chapel is not closed, but a poor woman told me that it seemed so."

"And he will not return? Mrs. Delancy will be so sorry."

"I think not. He is in retreat now, and I heard that he might go to Baltimore. I thought of your wife. She was so interested in his work.

Is she well this summer?"

"Yes, thank you," said Jack, and they parted. But as she went on her way his altered appearance struck her anew, and she wondered what had happened.

This meeting with Mr. Delancy recalled most forcibly Edith, her interest in the East Side work, her sympathy with Father Damon and the mission, the first flush of those days of enthusiasm. When Father Damon began his work the ladies used to come in their carriages to the little chapel with flowers and money and hearts full of sympathy with the devoted priest.

Alone of all these Edith had been faithful in her visits, always, when she was in town. And now the whole glittering show of charity had vanished for the time, and Father Damon--The little doctor stopped, consulted a memorandum in her hand-bag, looked up at the tenement-house she was pa.s.sing, and then began to climb its rickety stairway.

Yes, Father Damon had gone, and Ruth Leigh simply went on with her work as before. Perhaps in all the city that summer there was no other person whose daily life was so little changed as hers. Others were driven away by the heat, by temporary weariness, by the need of a vacation and change of scene. Some charities and some clubs and schools were temporarily suspended; other charities, befitting the name, were more active, the very young children were most looked after, and the Good Samaritans of the Fresh-Air Funds went about everywhere full of this new enthusiasm of humanity. But the occupation of Ruth Leigh remained always the same, in a faithful pertinacity that nothing could wholly discourage, in a routine that no projects could kindle into much enthusiasm. Day after day she went about among the sick and the poor, relieving and counseling individuals, and tiring herself out in that personal service, and more and more conscious, when she had time, at night, for instance, to think, of the monstrous injustice somewhere, and at times in a mood of fierce revolt against the social order that made all this misery possible and hopeless.

Yet a great change had come into her life--the greatest that can come to any man or woman in the natural order. She loved and she was loved.

An ideal light had been cast upon her commonplace existence, the depths of her own nature had been revealed to herself. In this illuminating light she walked about in the misery of this world. This love must be denied, this longing of the heart for companions.h.i.+p could never be gratified, yet after all it was a sweet self-sacrifice, and the love itself brought its own consolation. She had not to think of herself as weak, and neither was her lover's image dimmed to her by any surrender of his own principle or his own ideal. She saw him, as she had first seen him, a person consecrated and set apart, however much she might disagree with his supernatural vagaries--set apart to the service of humanity.

She had bitter thoughts sometimes of the world, and bitter thoughts of the false system that controlled his conduct, but never of him.

It was unavoidable that she should recall her last interview with him, and that the image of his n.o.ble, spiritual face should be ever distinct in her mind. And there was even a certain comfort in this recollection.

Father Damon had indeed striven, under the counsel of his own courage and of Brother Monies, to conquer himself on the field of his temptation.

But with his frail physique it was asking too much. This at last was so evident that the good brother advised him, and the advice was in the nature of a command in his order, to retire for a while, and then take up his work in a fresh field.

When this was determined on, his desire was nearly irresistible to see Ruth Leigh; he thought it would be cowardly to disappear and not say good-by. Indeed, it was necessary to see her and explain the stoppage of help from the Margaret Fund. The check that he had drawn, which was returned, had been for one of Dr. Leigh's cases. With his failure to elicit any response from Mrs. Henderson, the hope, raised by the newspaper comments on the unexecuted will, that the fund would be renewed was dissipated.

In the interview which Father Damon sought with Dr. Leigh at the Women's Hospital all this was explained, and ways and means were discussed for help elsewhere.

"I wanted to talk this over with you," said Father Damon, "because I am going away to take a rest."

"You need it, Father Damon," was Ruth's answer, in a professional manner.

"And--and," he continued, with some hesitation, "probably I shall not return to this mission."

"Perhaps that will be best," she said, simply, but looking up at him now, with a face full of tender sympathy.

"I am sure of it," he replied, turning away from her gaze. "The fact is, doctor, I am a little hipped--overworked, and all that. I shall pull myself together with a little rest. But I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your work, and--and what a comfort you have been to me in my poor labors. I used to hope that some time you would see this world in relation to the other, and--"

"Yes, I know," she interrupted, hastily, "I cannot think as you do, but--" And she could not go on for a great lump in her throat.

Involuntarily she rose from her seat. The interview was too trying.

Father Damon rose also. There was a moment's painful silence as they looked in each other's faces. Neither could trust the voice for speech.

He took her hand and pressed it, and said "G.o.d bless you!" and went out, closing the door softly.

A moment after he opened it again and stood on the threshold. She was in her chair, her head bowed upon her arms on the table. As he spoke she looked up, and she never forgot the expression of his face.

"I want to say, Ruth"--he had never before called her by her first name, and his accent thrilled her--"that I shall pray for you as I pray for myself, and though I may never see you again in this world, the greatest happiness that can come to me in this life will be to hear that you have learned to say Our Father which art in heaven."

As she looked he was gone, and his last words remained a refrain in her mind that evening and afterwards--"Our Father which art in heaven"

--a refrain recurring again and again in all her life, inseparable from the memory of the man she loved.

XXII

Along the Long Island coast lay the haze of early autumn. It was the time of la.s.situde. In the season of ripening and decay Nature seemed to have lost her spring, and lay in a sort of delicious languor. Sea and sh.o.r.e were in a kind of truce, and the ocean south wind brought cool refreshment but no incentive.

From the sea the old brown farmhouse seemed a snug haven of refuge; from the inland road it appeared, with its spreading, sloping roofs, like an ancient sea-craft come ash.o.r.e, which had been covered in and then embowered by kindly Nature with foliage. In those days its golden-brown color was in harmony with the ripening orchards and gardens.

Surely, if anywhere in the world, peace was here. But to its owner this very peace and quietness was becoming intolerable. The waiting days were so long, the sleepless nights of uncertainty were so weary. When her work was done, and Edith sat with a book or some sewing under the arbor where the grape cl.u.s.ters hung, growing dark and transparent, and the boy played about near her, she had a view of the blue sea, and about her were the twitter of birds and the hum of the cicada. The very beauty made her heart ache. Seaward there was nothing--nothing but the leaping little waves and the sky. From the land side help might come at any hour, and at every roll of wheels along the road her heart beat faster and hope sprang up anew. But day after day nothing came.

Perhaps there is no greater bravery than this sort of waiting, doing the daily duty and waiting. Endurance is woman's bravery, and Edith was enduring, with an almost broken but still with a courageous heart. It was all so strange. Was it simply shame that kept him away, or had he ceased to love her? If the latter, there was no help for her. She had begged him to come, she had offered to leave the boy with her cousin companion and go to him. Perhaps it was pride only. In one of his short letters he had said, "Thank G.o.d, your little fortune is untouched."

If it were pride only, how could she overcome it? Of this she thought night and day. She thought, and she was restless, feverish, and growing thin in her abiding anxiety.

It was true that her own fortune was safe and in her control. But with the usual instinct of women who know they have an income not likely to be ever increased, she began to be economical. She thought not of herself; but of the boy. It was the boy's fortune now. She began to look sharply after expenses; she reduced her household; she took upon herself the care of the boy, and other household duties. This was all well for her, for it occupied her time, and to some extent diverted her thoughts.

So the summer pa.s.sed--a summer of anxiety, longing, and dull pain for Edith. The time came when the uncertainty of it could no longer be endured. If Jack had deserted her, even if he should die, she could order her life and try to adjust her heavy burden. But this uncertainty was quite beyond her power to sustain.

She made up her mind that she would go to the city and seek him. It was what he had written that she must not on any account do, but nothing that could happen to her there could be so bad as this suspense. Perhaps she could bring him back. If he refused, and was angry at her interference, that even would be something definite. And then she had carefully thought out another plan. It might fail, but some action had now become for her a necessity.

Early one morning--it was in September-she prepared for a journey to the city. This little trip, which thousands of people made daily, took on for her the air of an adventure. She had been immured so long that it seemed a great undertaking. And when she bade good-by to the boy for the day she hugged him and kissed him again and again, as if it were to be an eternal farewell. To her cousin were given the most explicit directions for his care, and after she had started for the train she returned to give further injunctions. So she told herself, but it was really for one more look at the boy.

But on the whole there was a certain exhilaration in the preparation and the going, and her spirits rose as they had not done in months before.

Arrived in the city, she drove at once to the club Jack most frequented.

"He is not in," the porter said; "indeed, Mr. Delancy has not been here lately."

"Is Major Fairfax in?" Edith asked.

Major Fairfax was in, and he came out immediately to her carriage.

From him she learned Jack's address, and drove to his lodging-house.