The Desert and The Sown

M >> Mary Hallock Foote >> The Desert and The Sown

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On his way down the river the doctor continued to muse upon the dignity,
the amazingly beautiful behavior of this rising family in whose somewhat
commonplace city fortunes he had taken a friendly interest for years. He
owned that he had sounded them with too short a line.

* * * * *

Watching with the dying man hours when she was with him alone, Emily
Bogardus continued to test his resolution. He never retracted by a
look--faithful to the word she had spoken which made them strangers.

It was the slightest shell of mortality that ever detained a soul on
earth. The face, small like the face of an old, old child, waxed finer and
more spiritual, yet ever more startlingly did it bear the stamp of that
individuality which the spirit had held so cheap--the earthly so
impenetrated with the spiritual part that the face had become a
sublimation. As one sees a sheet of paper covered with writing wither in
flame and become a quivering ash, yet to the last attenuation of its fibre
the human characters will stand forth, till all is blown up chimney to the
stars.

Still, peaceful, implacable in its peace, settling down for the silence of
eternity. Still no sign.

The younger ones came and went. The little boy stole in alone and pushed
against his grandmother's knee,--she seated always by the bed,--gazed,
puzzled, at the strange, still face, and whispered obediently,
"Gran'faver." There was no response. Once she took the boy and drew him
close and placed his little tender hand within the dry, crumpled husk
extended on the bedclothes. The eyes unclosed and rested long and
earnestly on the face of the child, who yawned as if hypnotized and flung
his head back on the grandmother's breast. She bent suddenly and laid her
own hand where the child's had been. The eyes turned inward and shut
again, but a sigh, so deep it seemed that another breath might never come,
was all her answer.

Past midnight of the fourth night's watch Paul was awakened by a light in
his room. His mother stood beside him, white and worn. "He is going," she
said. It was the final rally of the body's resistance. A few moments'
expenditure, and that stubborn vitality would loose its hold.--The
strength of the soil!

The wife stood aside and gave up her place to the children. Her expression
was noble, like a queen rebuked before her people. There was comfort in
that, too. A great, solemn, mutual understanding drew this death-bed group
together. Within the sickle's compass so they stood: the woman God gave
this man to found a home; the son who inherited his father's gentleness
and purity of purpose; the fair flower of the generations that father's
sacrifice had helped him win; the bud of promise on the topmost bough.
Those astonished eyes shed their last earthly light on this human group,
turned and rested in the eyes of the woman, faded, and the light went out.
He died, blessing her in one whispered word. Her name.

Before daybreak on the morning of the funeral, Paul awoke under pressure
of disturbing dreams. There were sounds of hushed movements in the house.
He traced them to the door of the room below stairs where his father lay.
Some one had softly unlocked that door, and entered. He knew who that one
must be. His place was there alone with his mother, before they were
called together as a family, and the mask of decency resumed for those
ironic rites in the presence of the unaccusing dead.

The windows had been lowered behind closed curtains, and the air of the
death chamber, as he entered, was like the touch of chilled iron to the
warm pulse of sleep. Without, a still dark night of November had frosted
the dead grass.

The unappeasable curiosity of the living concerning the Great Transition,
for the moment appeared to have swept all that was personal out of the
watcher's gaze, as she bent above the straightened body. And something of
the peace there dawning on the cold, still face was reflected in her own.

"You have never seen your father before. There he is." She drew a deep
sigh, as if she had been too intent to breathe naturally. All her
self-consciousness suddenly was gone. And Paul remembered his dream, that
had goaded him out of sleep, and vanished with the shock of waking. It
gave him the key to this long-expected moment of confidence.

"The old likeness has come back," his mother repeated, with that new
quietness which restored her to herself.

"I dreamed of that likeness," said Paul, "only it was much
stronger--startling--so that the room was full of whispers and
exclamations as the neighbors--there were hundreds of them--filed past.
And you stood there, mother, flushed, and talking to each person who
passed and looked at him and then at you; you said--you"--

Mrs. Bogardus raised her head. "I know! I have been thinking all night. Am
I to do that? Is that what you wish me to do? Don't hesitate--to spare
me."

"Mother! I could not imagine you doing such a thing. It was like insanity.
I wanted to tell you how horrible, how unseemly it was, because I was sure
you had been dwelling on some form--some outward"--

"No," she said. "I know how I should face this if it were left to me. But
you are my only earthly judge, my son. Judge now between us two. Ask of me
anything you think is due to him. As to outsiders, what do they matter! I
will do anything you say."

"_I_ say! Oh, mother! Every hand he loved was against him--bruising his
gentle will. Each one of us has cast a stone upon his grave. But you took
the brunt of it. You spoke out plain the denial that was in my coward's
heart from the first. And I judged you! I--who uncovered my father's soul
to ease my own conscience, and put him to shame and torture, and you to a
trial worse than death. Now let us think of the whole of his life. I have
much to tell you. You could not listen before; but now he is listening. I
speak for him. This is how he loved us!"

In hard, brief words Paul told the story of his father's sin and
self-judgment; his abdication in the flesh; what he esteemed the rights to
be of a woman placed as he had placed his wife; how carefully he had
guarded her in those rights, and perjured himself at the last to leave her
free in peace and honor with her children. She listened, not weeping, but
with her great eyes shining in her pallid face.

"All that came after," said Paul, taking her cold hands in his--"after his
last solemn recantation does not touch the true spirit of his sacrifice.
It was finished. My father died to us then as he meant to die. The body
remained--to serve out its time, as he said. But his brain was tired. I do
not think he connected the past very clearly with the present. I think you
should forget what has happened here. It was a hideous net of circumstance
that did it."

"There is no such thing as circumstance," said Mrs. Bogardus with
loftiness. Her face was calm and sweet in its exaltation. "I cannot say
things as you can, but this is what I mean. I was the wife of his
body--sworn flesh of his flesh. In the flesh that made us one I denied
him, and caused his death. And if I could believe as I used to about
punishment, I would lock myself in that room, and for every hour he
suffered there, I would suffer two. And no one should prevent me, or
hasten the end. And the feet of the young men that carried out my husband
who lied to save me, should wait there for me who lied to save myself. All
lies are death. But what is a made-up punishment to me! I shall take it as
it comes--drop by drop--slowly."

"Mother--my mother! The fashion of this world does not last; but one thing
does. Is it nothing to you, mother?"

"Have I my son--after all?" she said as one dreaming.

The night lamp expired in smoke that tainted the cold air. Paul drew back
the curtains one by one, and let in the new-born day.

"'Peace to this house,'" he said; "'not as the world giveth,'" his thought
concluded.

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