The Best Short Stories of 1915 Part 37

It has come, the news has come; the war is over. A few days, weeks, and I shall be with you. I have been wounded. They have told you that, have they not? But it is nothing, a scratch. It troubles me now, but it will soon be over. Last night I sat in the hot Southern twilight that smelled of jessamine and dreamed myself back with you in New England, where the spring nights are cold. But I did not dream any more the meetings of fantasy. My mind leaped forward, and dreamed of my real home-coming. I had greeted them all, my dear mother, the girls, Alice, and Lucretia. Then they left us alone in the little circle about the sun-dial, only it was summer, and the bees were heavy with the flower dust, the air was fragrant. And then at last I saw the consciousness of womanhood in your eyes--those clear eyes that have always looked so straight at mine, straight into my heart, it seemed, although I knew they were too young to see. Not once except for that first moment when you said, with lowered lids, "Welcome home, William," did you look at me. And as we sat on the garden seat, I could see your color rise, the lace scarf tremble with your quickened breath. And then I took your hand. "I have come home to you, Allison," I said. "What have you to say to me?" But you would not raise your eyes. I took both of your hands then. "Look at me, Allison," I said, and something ran through you like the wind through a rose shaking out its perfume, and I seemed to draw into my very soul the fragrance of your young emotion; and I said again, "Look at me, Allison." And then, half like a child commanded, you raised your eyes.... There is a majestic purity about you, Allison! Even in the young confusion of that moment it pierced me, humbled me in adoring love before you. "Allison, speak," I said, and I could scarcely get out the words. "Do you love me?" and you, stammering like a child, said, "I don't know, William. I don't know." "Then at least you do not love any other man?" I asked you, and you shook your head.

Oh, Allison, if I come home to find that some other man has taught you love, how shall I live through the burden of my days!

WILLIAM.

July, '65.

My Allison:

Here I sit in verity at my window and write. I shall never speak, after all; for now I know that I haven't the right. The wound was fatal, it seems, and I have only a short time to live, so I dare not tell you until after I am gone. It would hurt you too much. Even now I can scarcely bear to see your pity in your eyes. Suppose that pity were to imagine itself love! When I am myself, my whole being rejects that thought. It is not such love I dreamed to win from you, my Allison.

Then again there are moments, weak moments, when I would have anything, take you at any price, only to have you nearer, only to wring those brief hours of warmth and suns.h.i.+ne from the cold outstretched hand of death. But that is only weakness. Such sad companions.h.i.+p with oncoming death shall not be for you, my beloved. You shall see me till the last as Lucretia's brother, not your lover. I cannot trust myself to think of that other man who will live my dreams. Yet for myself I ask only to live till the end with my eyes filled with the sight of you; to live in fact and memory over each tone of your voice, each light and shade on that dear face. You are not a child now. With your dark braids about your star-like face, you are a woman, ready to waken to the knowledge of love; but, thank G.o.d! not yet awakened. So I may know still the cool, unconscious touch of your hand, your dear daily gift of flowers, watch your sweet down-bent head as you come to read to me here in our garden, and not heed the words for the dearness of dreaming over your face, living so intensely each moment of you. Oh, my sweet, why did you go so soon to-day? I know it was to buy ribbons for a new muslin for Molly Dearborn's party. You must go to your parties, be happy. That is all I wish. Yet you would so gladly have given me that hour if you had known.

Some one could have matched the ribbon for you. "Allison does not know,"

I heard Lucretia say the other day. "We do not want her to know. It would distress her too much." I shall not let you know, my darling.

I write it now, but I shall blot it out lest it hurt you too much to know afterward how precious each moment you gave me was, lest it grieve your tender heart to know there was something more you might have given had you known.

WILLIAM.

Like one coming out of a dream, Mark glanced about the room, noted the hands of the clock marking the half hour past midnight, then picked up the picture of the girl who was young more than forty years ago.

With a little sense of shock it came to him that she existed no more. He wondered whether she also had died in her sweet youth or lived still, an old woman.

If she was alive, had she married some one not Uncle William? Or had she never married? Had she loved him? Had she known that he loved her? He picked up the picture again. The face seemed vaguely familiar. It seemed to speak to him. He lost himself in dreams and roused himself with a laugh.

"I believe I am half in love with you myself, little Allison, in love with your lost youth, in love with the shadow of a shadow. And _that_ is a subject for a song--"

Allison, a quaint little name it was. Allison what? Who was she? It struck him suddenly,--he wondered that he had not thought of it before,--it must be, it surely was, Miss Allison Clyde. He studied the young pictured face more closely, and felt sure he traced a resemblance in it to the old. To-morrow he would find out.

The pathos of it--too old for love, the theme of his song. Reverently he gathered up the letters, replaced them in their envelope, and put them away. Suddenly, sharply the consciousness smote him: the woman to whom those letters were written had never read them.

III

The next afternoon at tea-time he took the daguerreotype to his Aunt Lucretia. She received it with her slow, uncertain, frail old hands, lifting it to the light.

"Why, that little old picture of Allison!" she said. "I had forgotten we had it. Where did you find it? It was William's." She stared at it with the pitiful look the eyes of the old show at reawakening memories. "I always thought your Uncle William was in love with her," she confided, "although he never told us so."

"Miss Allison Clyde?" Mark questioned, and Miss Lucretia nodded faintly, marveling:

"Why, didn't you know!"

"And was Miss Allison in love with Uncle William?"

Miss Lucretia answered doubtfully:

"I don't know. She was a child. She never said so."

"Did she ever, later on, have a love-affair?"

His aunt shook her head.

"Not that I know of. She was always so taken up with her own household.

They were very close to each other, a very united family."

"It is a wonderful little face," Mark said, looking down at the daguerreotype.

"She was only a child then," Lucretia repeated, "not more than fifteen."

Her eyes became reminiscent. "She was still so young, only seventeen, when he died. When he came home, he knew he had not long to live. He used to sit out here and watch her as she moved about. He never talked much, but the look in his eyes was," Aunt Lucretia stated in her quiet way, "very moving."

Mark heard a step, and glanced up to see Miss Allison Clyde herself standing beside them, looking down at them with a smile.

"To whom am I indebted for this honor? That funny little old ambrotype!

Where did you unearth it, Lucretia?"

"It was Brother William's," Lucretia explained, with her gentle melancholy. "Mark found it in his room and asked me about it."

Mark looked to see some revelation in Miss Allison Clyde's face, but found none. Her kindly smile had not faded or changed except to take on a shade of amus.e.m.e.nt as she picked up the ambrotype.

"How proud I was of that mantilla!" she said. "I remember it so well.

It was green. Do you recall it, Lucretia?"

Miss Lucretia nodded, her frail hands busy with the tea-cups.

"I do. And the turban with the green plume you wore with it."

Mark glanced from the picture of the child to the face of the woman whose youth was past. Was it tragedy for her, he wondered, that she had never known in its fullness the meaning of love and home? Or was she happy burning with her own diffusing light full of the warmth of humanity, loving, and giving to all the world instead of one lover?

Miss Lucretia interrupted his reverie.

"I suppose you are going over to see Stella this evening, and we old people shall have to amuse ourselves without you as best we can."

Mark lifted his Lowestoft tea-cup and set it down again before he answered slowly:

"No, I think not. I am going to stay and have some music with Miss Allison."

He wondered why Miss Allison had made Stella seem suddenly hard, new, almost crude, like the modern furniture in the drawing-room beside the fine old mahogany, with its simple decoration and tone of time.

It was that evening, which he had decided should be his last, that, when their music was over, he handed Miss Allison Clyde a sheet of ma.n.u.script music.

"Since you liked it," he said.

She took it, a faint color coming in her cheek. It was the ma.n.u.script of the fifth song of his cycle, "Evening," and he had dedicated it to her. Involuntarily she moved to give it back to him.

"No, not to me. You are too kind. But you must dedicate it to youth."

He nodded, with his smile.

"So I have: to the woman who has youth in her heart." Then he drew out the package of letters. "And these," he said in a lower voice, "are yours also." He handed them to her silently.