What the Piper had said to Evelina came back to her now, eloquent with appeal;

_The word is not made right. I'm thinking 't is wrong end to, as many things in this world are until we move and look at them from another way. It's giving for, that's all. When you have put self so wholly aside that you can he sorry for him because he has wronged you, why, then you have forgiven_.

She moved about restlessly. It seemed to her that she could never be sorry for Anthony Dexter because he had wronged her; that she could never grow out of the hurt of her own wrong.

"Come with me," said Ralph, choking. "I know it's a hard thing I ask of you. G.o.d knows I haven't forgiven him myself, but I know I've got to, and you'll have to, too. Miss Evelina, you've got to forgive him, or I never can bear my disgrace."

She let him lead her out of the house. On the long way to Anthony Dexter's, no word pa.s.sed between them. Only the sound of their footfalls, and Ralph's long, choking breaths, half sobs, broke the silence.

At the gate, the usual knot of curious people had gathered. They were wondering, in undertones, how one so skilful as Doctor Dexter had happened to take an overdose of laudanum, but they stood by, respectfully, to make way for Ralph and the mysterious, veiled woman in black. The audible whispers followed them up to the very door: "Who is she? What had she to do with him?"

As yet, Anthony Dexter's body lay in his own room. Ralph led Miss Evelina in, and closed the door. "Here he is," sobbed the boy. "He has gone and left the shame for me. Forgive him, Miss Evelina! For the love of G.o.d, forgive him!"

Evelina sighed. She was standing close to Anthony Dexter now without fear. She had no wish to torture him, as she once had, with the sight of her unveiled face. It was the man she had loved, now--the emotion which had made him hideous to her was past and gone. To her, as to him the night before, death seemed the solution of all problems, the supreme answer to all perplexing questions.

Ralph crept out of the room and closed the door so softly that she did not hear. She was alone, as every woman some day is; alone with her dead.

She threw back her veil. The morning sun lay strong upon Anthony Dexter's face, revealing every line. Death had been kind to him at last, had closed the tortured eyes, blotted out the lines of cruelty around his mouth, and changed the mask-like expression to a tender calm.

A hint of the old, loving smile was there; once again he was the man she had loved, but the love itself had burned out of her heart long ago. He was naught to her, nor she to him.

The door k.n.o.b turned, and, quickly, she lowered her veil. Piper Tom came in, with a soft, slow step. He did not seem to see Miss Evelina; one would have said he did not know she was in the room. He went straight to Anthony Dexter, and laid his warm hand upon the cold one.

"Man," he said, "I've come to say I forgive you for hurting Laddie.

I'm not thinking, now, that you would have done it if you had known.

I'm sorry for you because you could do it. I've forgiven you as I hope G.o.d will forgive you for that and for everything else."

Then he turned to Evelina, and whispered, as though to keep the dead from hearing: "'T was hard, but I've done it. 'T is easier, I'm thinking, to forgive the dead than the living." He went out again, as silently as he had come, and closed the door.

Was it, in truth, easier to forgive the dead? In her inmost soul, Evelina knew that she could not have cherished lifelong resentment against any other person in the world. To those we love most, we are invariably most cruel, but she did not love him now. The man she had loved was no more than a stranger--and from a stranger can come no intentional wrong.

"O G.o.d," prayed Evelina, for the first time, "help me to forgive!"

She threw back her veil once more. They were face to face at last, with only a prayer between. His mute helplessness pleaded with her and Ralph's despairing cry rang in her ears. The estranging mists cleared, and, in truth, she put self aside.

Intuitively, she saw how he had suffered since the night he came to her to make it right, if he could. He must have suffered, unless he were more than human. "Dear G.o.d," she prayed, again, "oh, help me forgive!"

All at once there was a change. The light seemed thrown into the uttermost places of her darkened soul. She illumined, and a wave of infinite pity swept her from head to foot. She leaned forward, her hands seeking his, and upon Anthony Dexter's dead face there fell the forgiving baptism of her tears.

In the hall, as she went out, she encountered Miss Mehitable. That face, too, was changed. She had not come, as comes that ghoulish procession of merest acquaintances, to gloat, living, over the helpless dead.

At the sight of Evelina, she retreated. "I'll go back," murmured Miss Mehitable, enigmatically. "You had the best right."

Evelina went down-stairs and home again, but Miss Mehitable did not enter that silent room.

The third day came, and there was no resurrection. Since the miracle of Easter, the world has waited its three days for the dead to rise again. Ralph sat in the upper hall, just beyond the turn of the stair, and beside him, unveiled, was Miss Evelina.

"It's you and I," he had pleaded, "don't you see that? Have you never thought that you should have been my mother?"

From below, in Thorpe's deep voice, came the words of the burial service: "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."

For a few moments, Thorpe spoke of death as the inevitable end of life, and our ignorance of what lies beyond. He spoke of that mystic veil which never parts save for a pa.s.sage, and from behind which no word ever comes. He said that life was a rainbow spanning brilliantly the two silences, that man's ceasing was no more strange than his beginning, and that the G.o.d who ordained the beginning had also ordained the end. He said, too, that the love which gave life might safely be trusted with that same life, at its mysterious conclusion.

At length, he struck the personal note.

"It is hard for me," Thorpe went on, "to perform this last service for my friend. All of you are my friends, but the one who lies here was especially dear. He was a man of few friendships, and I was privileged to come close, to know him as he was.

"His life was clean, and upon his record there rests no shadow of disgrace." At this Ralph, in the upper hall, buried his face in his hands. Miss Evelina sat quietly, to all intents and purposes unmoved.

"He was a brave man," Thorpe was saying; "a valiant soldier on the great battlefield of the world. He met his temptations face to face, and conquered them. For him, there was no such thing as cowardice--he never shirked. He met every responsibility like a man, and never swerved aside. He took his share, and more, of the world's work, and did it n.o.bly, as a man should do.

"His brusque manner concealed a great heart. I fear that, at times, some of you may have misunderstood him. There was no man in our community more deeply and lovingly the friend of us all, and there is no man among us more n.o.ble in thought and act than he.

"We who have known him cannot but be the better for the knowing. It would be a beautiful world, indeed, if we were all as good as he. We cannot fail to be inspired by his example. Through knowing him, each of us is better fitted for life. We can conquer cowardice more easily, meet our temptations more valiantly, and more surely keep from the sin of shirking, because Anthony Dexter has lived.

"To me," said Thorpe, his voice breaking, "it is the greatest loss, save one, that I have ever known. But it is only through our own sorrow that we come to understand the sorrow of others, only through our own weaknesses that we learn to pity the weakness of others, and only through our own love and forgiveness that we can ever comprehend the infinite love and forgiveness of G.o.d. If any of you have ever thought he wronged you, in some small, insignificant way, I give you my word that it was entirely unintentional, and I bespeak for him your pardon.

"He goes to his grave to-day, to wait, in the great silence, for the final solution of G.o.d's infinite mysteries, and, as you and I believe, for G.o.d's sure reward. He goes with the love of us all, with the forgiveness of us all, and with the hope of us all that when we come to die, we may be as certain of Heaven as he."

Perceiving that his grief was overmastering him, Thorpe proceeded quickly to the benediction. In the pause that followed, Ralph leaned toward the woman who sat beside him.

"Have you," he breathed, "forgiven him--and me?"

Miss Evelina nodded, her beautiful eyes shining with tears.

"Mother!" said Ralph, thickly. Like a hurt child, he went to her, and sobbed his heart out, in the shelter of her arms.

XXIII

Undine Finds Her Soul

The year was at its noon. Every rose-bush was glorious with bloom, and even the old climbing rose which clung, in its decay, to Miss Mehitable's porch railing had put forth a few fragrant blossoms.

Soon after Araminta had been carried back home, she discovered that she had changed since she went away. Aunt Hitty no longer seemed infallible. Indeed, Araminta had admitted to herself, though with the pangs of a guilty conscience, that it was possible for Aunt Hitty to be mistaken. It was probable that the entire knowledge of the world was not concentrated in Aunt Hitty.

Outwardly, things went on as usual. Miss Mehitable issued orders to Araminta as the commander in chief of an army issues instructions to his subordinates, and Araminta obeyed as faithfully as before, yet with a distinct difference. She did what she was told to do out of grat.i.tude for lifelong care, and not because she felt that she had to.

She went, frequently, to see Miss Evelina, having disposed of objections by the evident fact that she could not neglect any one who had been so kind to her as Miss Evelina had. Usually, however, the faithful guardian went along, and the three sat in the garden, Evelina with her frail hands listlessly folded, and the others st.i.tching away at the endless and monotonous patchwork.

Miss Mehitable had a secret fear that the bloom had been brushed from her rose. Until the accident, Araminta had scarcely been out of her sight since she brought her home, a toddling infant. Miss Mehitable's mind had unerringly controlled two bodies until Araminta fell off the ladder. Now, the other mind began to show distressing signs of activity.

By dint of extra work, Araminta's eighth patchwork quilt was made for quilting, and the Ladies' Aid Society was invited to Miss Mehitable's for the usual Summer revelry of quilting and gossip. Miss Evelina was invited, but refused to go.

After the festivity was over, Miss Mehitable made a fruitful excavation into a huge chest in the attic, and emerged, flushed but happy, with enough sc.r.a.ps for three quilts.

"This here next quilt, Minty," she said, with the air of one announcing a pleasant surprise, "will be the Risin' Sun and Star pattern. It's harder 'n the others, and that's why I've kep' it until now. You've done all them other quilts real good," she added, grudgingly.