Bride of the Mistletoe

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He advanced a step toward her, disengaging himself from the evergreen.

"I will answer them," he said. "If they can be answered."

And thus she sat and thus he stood as the questions and answers passed
to and fro. They were solemn questions and solemn replies, drawn out
of the deeps of life and sinking back into them.

"Frederick," she said, "for many years we have been happy together, so
happy! Every tragedy of nature has stood at a distance from us except
the loss of our children. We have lived on a sunny pinnacle of our
years, lifted above life's storms. But of course I have realized that
sooner or later our lot must become the common one: if we did not go
down to Sorrow, Sorrow would climb to us; and I knew that on the
heights it dwells best. That is why I wish to say to you to-night what
I shall: I think fate's hour has struck for me; I am ready to hear
it. Its arrow has already left the bow and is on its way; I open my
heart to receive it. This is as I have always wished; I have said that
if life had any greatest tragedy, for me, I hoped it would come when I
was happiest; thus I should confront it all. I have never drunk half
of my cup of happiness, as you know, and let the other half waste; I
must go equally to the depth of any suffering. Worse than the
suffering, I think, would be the feeling that I had shirked some of
it, had stepped aside, or shut my eyes, or in any manner shown myself
a cowardly soul."

After a pause she went over this subject as though she were not
satisfied that she had made it clear.

"I have always said that the real pathos of things is the grief that
comes to us in life when life is at its best--when no one is to
blame--when no one has committed a fault--when suffering is meted out
to us as the reward of our perfect obedience to the laws of nature. In
earlier years when we used to read Keats together, who most of all of
the world's poets felt the things that pass, even then I was wondering
at the way in which he brings this out: that to understand Sorrow it
must be separated from sorrows: they would be like shadows darkening
the bright disk of life's clear tragedy, thus rendering it less
bravely seen.

"And so he is always telling us not to summon sad pictures nor play
with mournful emblems; not to feign ourselves as standing on the banks
of Lethe, gloomiest of rivers; nor to gather wolf's bane and twist the
poison out of its tight roots; nor set before us the cup of hemlock;
nor bind about our temples the ruby grape of nightshade; nor count
over the berries of the yew tree which guards sad places; nor think of
the beetle ticking in the bed post, nor watch the wings of the death
moth, nor listen to the elegy of the owl--the voice of ruins. Not
these! they are the emblems of our sorrows. But the emblems of Sorrow
are beautiful things at their perfect moment; a red peony just
opening, a rainbow seen for an instant on the white foam, youth not
yet faded but already fading, joy with its finger on his lips, bidding
adieu.

"And so with all my happiness about me, I wish to know life's
tragedy. And to know it, Frederick, not to infer it: _I want to be
told_."

"If you can be told, you shall be told," he said.

She changed her position as though seeking physical relief and
composure. Then she began:

"Years ago when you were a student in Germany, you had a college
friend. You went home with him two or three years at Christmas and
celebrated the German Christmas. It was in this way that we came to
have the Christmas Tree in our house--through memory of him and of
those years. You have often described to me how you and he in summer
went Alpine climbing, and far up in some green valley girdled with
glaciers lay of afternoons under some fir tree, reading and drowsing
in the crystalline air. You told me of your nights of wandering down
the Rhine together when the heart turns so intimately to the heart
beside it. He was German youth and song and dream and happiness to
you. Tell me this: before you lost him that last summer over the
crevasse, had you begun to tire of him? Was there anything in you that
began to draw back from anything in him? As you now look back at the
friendship of your youth, have the years lessened your regret for
him?"

He answered out of the ideals of his youth:

"The longer I knew him, the more I loved him. I never tired of being
with him. Nothing in me ever drew back from anything in him. When he
was lost, the whole world lost some of its strength and
nobility. After all the years, if he could come back, he would find me
unchanged--that friend of my youth!"

With a peculiar change of voice she asked next:

"The doctor, Herbert and Elsie's father, our nearest neighbor, your
closest friend now in middle life. You see a great deal of the doctor;
he is often here, and you and he often sit up late at night, talking
with one another about many things: do you ever tire of the doctor and
wish him away? Have you any feeling toward him that you try to keep
secret from me? Can you be a perfectly frank man with this friend of
your middle life?"

"The longer I know him the more I like him, honor him, trust him. I
never tire of his companionship or his conversation; I have no
disguises with him and need none."

"The children! As the children grow older do you care less for them?
Do they begin to wear on you? Are they a clog, an interference? Have
Harold and Elizabeth ceased forming new growths of affection in you?
Do you ever unconsciously seek pretexts for avoiding them?"

"The older they grow, the more I love them. The more they interest me
and tempt away from work and duties. I am more drawn to be with them
and I live more and more in the thought of what they are becoming."

"Your work! Does your work attract you less than formerly? Does it
develop in you the purpose to be something more or stifle in you the
regret to be something less? Is it a snare to idleness or a goad to
toil?"

"As the mariner steers for the lighthouse, as the hound runs down the
stag, as the soldier wakes to the bugle, as the miner digs for
fortune, as the drunkard drains the cup, as the saint watches the
cross, I follow my work, I follow my work."

"Life, life itself, does it increase in value or lessen? Is the world
still morning to you with your work ahead or afternoon when you begin
to tire and to think of rest?"

"The world to me is as early morning to a man going forth to his
work. Where the human race is from and whither it is hurrying and why
it exists at all; why a human being loves what it loves and hates what
it hates; why it is faithful when it could be unfaithful and faithless
when it should be true; how civilized man can fight single handed
against the ages that were his lower past--how he can develop
self-renunciation out of selfishness and his own wisdom out of
surrounding folly,--all these are questions that mean more and
more. My work is but beginning and the world is morning."

"This house! Are you tired of it now that it is older? Would you
rather move into a new one?"

"I love this house more and more. No other dwelling could take its
place. Any other could be but a shelter; this is home. And I care more
for it now that the signs of age begin to settle on it. If it were a
ruin, I should love it best!"

She leaned over and looked down at the two setters lying at her feet.

"Do you care less for the dogs of the house as they grow older?"

"I think more of them and take better care of them now that their
hunting days are over."

"The friend of your youth--the friend of your middle age--the
children--your profession--the world of human life--this house--the
dogs of the house--you care more for them all as time passes?"

"I care more for them all as time passes."

Then there came a great stillness in the room--the stillness of all
listening years.

"Am I the only thing that you care less for as time passes?"

There was no reply.

"Am I in the way?"

There was no reply.

"Would you like to go over it all again with another?"

There was no reply.

She had hidden her face in her hands and pressed her head against the
end of the sofa. Her whole figure shrank lower, as though to escape
being touched by him--to escape the blow of his words. No words
came. There was no touch.

A moment later she felt that he must be standing over her, looking
down at her. She would respond to his hand on the back of her neck.
He must be kneeling beside her; his arms would infold her. Then with a
kind of incredible terror she realized that he was not there. At first
she could so little believe it, that with her face still buried in one
hand she searched the air for him with the other, expecting to touch
him.

Then she cried out to him:

"Isn't there anything you can say to me?"

Silence lasted.

"_Oh, Fred! Fred! Fred! Fred_!"

In the stillness she began to hear something--the sound of his
footsteps moving on the carpet. She sat up.

The room was getting darker; he was putting out the candles. It was
too dark already to see his face. With fascination she began to watch
his hand. How steady it was as it moved among the boughs,
extinguishing the lights. Out they went one by one and back into their
darkness returned the emblems of darker ages--the Forest Memories.

A solitary taper was left burning at the pinnacle of the Tree under
the cross: that highest torch of love shining on everything that had
disappeared.

He quietly put it out.

Yet the light seemed not put out, but instantly to have travelled
through the open parlor door into the adjoining room, her bedroom; for
out of that there now streamed a suffused red light; it came from the
lamp near the great bed in the shadowy corner.

This lamp poured its light through a lampshade having the semblance of
a bursting crimson peony as some morning in June the flower with the
weight of its own splendor falls face downward on the grass. And in
that room this soft lamp-light fell here and there on crimson winter
draperies. He had been living alone as a bachelor before he married
her. After they became engaged he, having watched for some favorite
color of hers, had had this room redecorated in that shade. Every
winter since she had renewed in this way or that way these hangings,
and now the bridal draperies remained unchanged--after the changing
years.

He replaced the taper against the wall and came over and stood before
her, holding out his hands to help her rise.

She arose without his aid and passed around him, moving toward her
bedroom. With arms outstretched guarding her but not touching her, he
followed close, for she was unsteady. She entered her bedroom and
crossed to the door of his bedroom; she pushed this open, and keeping
her face bent aside waited for him to go in. He went in and she closed
the door on him and turned the key. Then with a low note, with which
the soul tears out of itself something that has been its life, she
made a circlet of her white arms against the door and laid her profile
within this circlet and stood--the figure of Memory.

Thus sometimes a stranger sees a marble figure standing outside a tomb
where some story of love and youth ended: some stranger in a far
land,--walking some afternoon in those quieter grounds where all human
stories end; an autumn bird in the bare branches fluting of its
mortality and his heart singing with the bird of one lost to him--lost
to him in his own country.

On the other side of the door the silence was that of a tomb. She had
felt confident--so far as she had expected anything--that he would
speak to her through the door, try to open it, plead with her to open
it. Nothing of the kind occurred.

Why did he not come back? What bolt could have separated her from him?

The silence began to weigh upon her.

Then in the tense stillness she heard him moving quietly about,
getting ready for bed. There were the same movements, familiar to her
for years. She would not open the door, she could not leave it, she
could not stand, no support was near, and she sank to the floor and
sat there, leaning her brow against the lintel.

On the other side the quiet preparations went on.

She heard him take off his coat and vest and hang them on the back of
a chair. The buttons made a little scraping sound against the wood.
Then he went to his dresser and took off his collar and tie, and he
opened a drawer and laid out a night-shirt. She heard the creaking of
a chair under him as he threw one foot and then the other up across
his knee and took off his shoes and socks. Then there reached her the
soft movements of his bare feet on the carpet (despite her agony the
old impulse started in her to caution him about his slippers). Then
followed the brushing of his teeth and the deliberate bathing of his
hands. Then was audible the puff of breath with which he blew out his
lamp after he had turned it low; and then,--on the other side of the
door,--just above her ear his knock sounded.

The same knock waited for and responded to throughout the years; so
often with his little variations of playfulness. Many a time in early
summer when out-of-doors she would be reminded of it by hearing some
bird sounding its love signal on a piece of dry wood--that tap of
heart-beat. Now it crashed close to her ear.

Such strength came back to her that she rose as lightly as though her
flesh were but will and spirit. When he knocked again, she was across
the room, sitting on the edge of her bed with her palms pressed
together and thrust between her knees: the instinctive act of a human
animal suddenly chilled to the bone.

The knocking sounded again.

"Was there anything you needed?" she asked fearfully.

There was no response but another knock.

She hurriedly raised her voice to make sure that it would reach him.

"Was there anything you wanted?"

As no response came, the protective maternal instinct took greater
alarm, and she crossed to the door of his room and she repeated her
one question:

"Did you forget anything?"

Her mind refused to release itself from the iteration of that idea: it
was some _thing_--not herself--that he wanted.

He knocked.

Her imagination, long oppressed by his silence, now made of his knock
some signal of distress. It took on the authority of an appeal not to
be denied. She unlocked the door and opened it a little way, and once
more she asked her one poor question.

His answer to it came in the form of a gentle pressure against the
door, breaking down her resistance. As she applied more strength, this
was as gently overcome; and when the opening was sufficient, he walked
past her into the room.

How hushed the house! How still the world outside as the cloud wove in
darkness its mantle of light!

VI. THE WHITE DAWN

Day was breaking.

The crimson curtains of the bedroom were drawn close, but from behind
their outer edges faint flanges of light began to advance along the
wall. It was a clear light reflected from snow which had sifted in
against the window-panes, was banked on the sills outside, ridged the
yard fence, peaked the little gate-posts, and buried the shrubbery.
There was no need to look out in order to know that it had stopped
snowing, that the air was windless, and that the stars were flashing
silver-pale except one--great golden-croziered shepherd of the thick,
soft-footed, moving host.

It was Christmas morning on the effulgent Shield.

Already there was sufficient light in the room to reveal--less as
actual things than as brown shadows of the memory--a gay company of
socks and stockings hanging from the mantelpiece; sufficient to give
outline to the bulk of a man asleep on the edge of the bed; and it
exposed to view in a corner of the room farthest from the rays a woman
sitting in a straight-backed chair, a shawl thrown about her shoulders
over her night-dress.

He always slept till he was awakened; the children, having stayed up
past their usual bedtime, would sleep late also; she had the white
dawn to herself in quietness.

She needed it.

Sleep could not have come to her had she wished. She had not slept and
she had not lain down, and the sole endeavor during those shattered
hours had been to prepare herself for his awakening. She was not yet
ready--she felt that during the rest of her life she should never be
quite ready to meet him again. Scant time remained now.

Soon all over the Shield indoor merriment and outdoor noises would
begin. Wherever in the lowlands any many-chimneyed city, proud of its
size, rose by the sweep of watercourses, or any little inland town was
proud of its smallness and of streets that terminated in the fields;
whereever any hamlet marked the point at which two country roads this
morning made the sign of the white cross, or homesteads stood proudly
castled on woody hilltops, or warmed the heart of the beholder from
amid their olive-dark winter pastures; or far away on the shaggy
uplift of the Shield wherever any cabin clung like a swallow's nest
against the gray Appalachian wall--everywhere soon would begin the
healthy outbreak of joy among men and women and children--glad about
themselves, glad in one another, glad of human life in a happy
world. The many-voiced roar and din of this warm carnival lay not far
away from her across the cold bar of silence.

Soon within the house likewise the rush of the children's feet would
startle her ear; they would be tugging at the door, tugging at her
heart. And as she thought of this, the recollection of old simple
things came pealing back to her from behind life's hills. The years
parted like naked frozen reeds, and she, sorely stricken in her
womanhood, fled backward till she herself was a child again--safe in
her father's and mother's protection. It was Christmas morning, and
she in bare feet was tipping over the cold floors toward their
bedroom--toward her stockings.

Her father and mother! How she needed them at this moment: they had
been sweethearts all their lives. One picture of them rose with
distinctness before her--for the wounding picture always comes to the
wounded moment. She saw them sitting in their pew far down toward the
chancel. Through a stained glass window (where there was a ladder of
angels) the light fell softly on them--both silver-haired; and as with
the voices of children they were singing out of one book. She
remembered how as she sat between them she had observed her father
slip his hand into her mother's lap and clasp hers with a
steadfastness that wedded her for eternity; and thus over their linked
hands, with the love of their youth within them and the snows of the
years upon them, they sang together:

"Gently, Lord, O gently lead us
* * * * * *
"Through the changes Thou'st decreed us."

Her father and mother had not been led gently. They had known more
than common share of life's shocks and violence, its wrongs and
meannesses and ills and griefs. But their faith had never wavered that
they were being led gently; so long as they were led together, to them
it was gentle leading: the richer each in each for aught whereby
nature or man could leave them poorer; the calmer for the shocks; the
sweeter for the sour; the finer with one another because of life's
rudenesses. In after years she often thought of them as faithful in
their dust; and the flowers she planted over them and watered many a
bright day with happy tears brought up to her in another form the
freshness of their unwearied union.

That was what she had not doubted her own life would be--with
him--when she had married him.

From the moment of the night before when he had forced the door open
and entered her room, they had not exchanged any words nor a glance.
He had lain down and soon fallen asleep; apparently he had offered
that to her as for the moment at least his solution of the
matter--that he should leave her to herself and absent himself in
slumber.

The instant she knew him to be asleep she set about her preparations.

Before he awoke she must be gone--out of the house--anywhere--to save
herself from living any longer with him. His indifference in the
presence of her suffering; his pitiless withdrawal from her of touch
and glance and speech as she had gone down into that darkest of life's
valleys; his will of iron that since she had insisted upon knowing the
whole truth, know it she should: all this left her wounded and stunned
as by an incredible blow, and she was acting first from the instinct
of removing herself beyond the reach of further humiliation and
brutality.

Instinctively she took off her wedding ring and laid it on his dresser
beside his watch: he would find it there in the morning and he could
dispose of it. Then she changed her dress for the plainest heavy one
and put on heavy walking shoes. She packed into a handbag a few
necessary things with some heirlooms of her own. Among the latter was
a case of family jewels; and as she opened it, her eyes fell upon her
mother's thin wedding ring and with quick reverence she slipped that
on and kissed it bitterly. She lifted out also her mother's locket
containing a miniature daguerreotype of her father and dutifully fed
her eyes on that. Her father was not silver-haired then, but
raven-locked; with eyes that men feared at times but no woman ever.

His eyes were on her now as so often in girlhood when he had curbed
her exuberance and guided her waywardness. He was watching as she,
coarsely wrapped and carrying some bundle of things of her own, opened
her front door, left her footprints in the snow on the porch, and
passed out--wading away. Those eyes of his saw what took place the
next day: the happiness of Christmas morning turned into horror; the
children wild with distress and crying--the servants dumb--the inquiry
at neighbors' houses--the news spreading to the town--the papers--the
black ruin. And from him two restraining words issued for her ear:

"My daughter!"

Passionately she bore the picture to her lips and her pride answered
him. And so answering, it applied a torch to her blood and her blood
took fire and a flame of rage spread through and swept her. She
stopped her preparations: she had begun to think as well as to feel.

She unpacked her travelling bag, putting each article back into its
place with exaggerated pains. Having done this, she stood in the
middle of the floor, looking about her irresolute: then responding to
that power of low suggestion which is one of anger's weapons, she
began to devise malice. She went to a wardrobe and stooping down took
from a bottom drawer--where long ago it had been stored away under
everything else--a shawl that had been her grandmother's; a brindled
crewel shawl,--sometimes worn by superannuated women of a former
generation; a garment of hideousness. Once, when a little girl, she
had loyally jerked it off her grandmother because it added to her
ugliness and decrepitude.

She shook this out with mocking eyes and threw it decoratively around
her shoulders. She strode to the gorgeous peony lampshade and lifting
it off, gibbeted it and scattered the fragments on the floor. She
turned the lamp up as high as it would safely burn so that the huge
lidless eye of it would throw its full glare on him and her. She drew
a rocking chair to the foot of the bed and seating herself put her
forefinger up to each temple and drew out from their hiding places
under the mass of her black hair two long gray locks and let these
hang down haglike across her bosom. She banished the carefully
nourished look of youth from her face--dropped the will to look
young--and allowed the forced-back years to rush into it--into the
wastage, the wreckage, which he and Nature, assisting each other so
ably, had wrought in her.

She sat there half-crazed, rocking noisily; waiting for the glare of
the lamp to cause him to open his eyes; and she smiled upon him in
exultation of vengeance that she was to live on there in his
house--_his_ house.

After a while a darker mood came over her.

With noiseless steps lest she awake him, she began to move about the
room. She put out the lamp and lighted her candle and set it where it
would be screened from his face; and where the shadow of the chamber
was heaviest, into that shadow she retired and in it she sat--with
furtive look to see whether he observed her.

A pall-like stillness deepened about the bed where he lay.

Running in her veins a wellnigh pure stream across the generations was
Anglo-Saxon blood of the world's fiercest; floating in the tide of it
passions of old family life which had dyed history for all time in
tragedies of false friendship, false love, and false battle; but
fiercest ever about the marriage bed and the betrayal of its vow. A
thousand years from this night some wronged mother of hers, sitting
beside some sleeping father of hers in their forest-beleaguered
castle--the moonlight streaming in upon him through the javelined
casement and putting before her the manly beauty of him--the blond
hair matted thick on his forehead as his helmet had left it, his mouth
reddening in his slumber under its curling gold--some mother of hers
whom he had carried off from other men by might of his sword, thus
sitting beside him and knowing him to be colder to her now than the
moon's dead rays, might have watched those rays as they travelled away
from his figure and put a gleam on his sword hanging near: a thousand
years ago: some mother of hers.

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