Sons and Fathers Read online

  CHAPTER IX.

  THE TRAGEDY IN THE STORM.

  Edward returned to Ilexhurst that evening conscious of a mentaluneasiness. He could not account for it except upon the hypothesis ofunusual excitement. His mind had simply failed to react. And yet to hissensitive nature there was something more. Was it the conversation withEldridge and the sudden dissipation of his error concerning Gerald, ordid it date to the meeting in the club? There was a discord somewhere.He became conscious after awhile that he had failed to harmonize withhis new acquaintances and that among these was Col. Montjoy. He seemedto feel an ache as though a cold wind blew upon his heart. If he had notmade that unfortunate remark about the negro! He acquitted himself veryreadily, but he could not forget that terrible silence. "I have greatsympathy for the negro," he had said. What he meant was that, secure inher power and intelligence, her courage and advancement, the south couldsafely concede much to the lower class. That is what he felt andbelieved, but he had not said it that way. He would say it to-morrow toCol. Montjoy and explain. Relief followed the resolution.

  And then, sitting in the little room, which began to exert a strangepower over him, he reviewed in mind the strange history of the peoplewhose lives had begun to touch his. The man downstairs, sleeping off theeffects of the drug, taken to dull a feverish brain that had all daystruggled with new problems; what a life his was! Educated beyond thescope of any single university, Eldridge had said, and yet a child, lessthan a child! What romance, what tragedies behind those restless eyes!And sleeping down yonder by the river in that eternal silence of thecity of the dead, the old lawyer, a mystery living, a mystery dead! Whata depth of love must have stirred the bosom of the man to endure insilence for so many years for the sake of a fickle girl! Whatforgiveness! Or was it revenge? This idea flashed upon Edward with thesuddenness of an inspiration. Revenge! What a revenge! And the woman,was she living or dead? And if living, were her eyes to watch him,Edward Morgan, and his conduct? Where was the father and why was thegrandfather ignorant or silent? Then he turned to his own problem. Thatwas an old story. As he sat dreaming over these things his eyes fellupon the fragmentary manuscripts, and almost idly he began to read thebriefs upon them.

  One was inscribed, "The Storm," and it seemed to be the bulkiest.Opening it he began to read; before he knew it he was interested. Thechapter read:

  "Not a zephyr stirred the expectant elms. They lifted their arms againstthe starlit sky in shadowy tracery, and motionless as a forest of coralin the tideless depths of a southern sea.

  "The cloud still rose.

  "It was a cloud indeed. It stretched across the west, far into north andsouth, its base lost in the shadow, its upper line defined and advancingswiftly, surely, flanking the city and shutting out the stars with itsmighty wings. Far down the west the lightning began to tear the mass,but still the spell of silence remained. When this strange hush iscombined with terrific action, when the vast forces are so swift as tooutrun sound, then, indeed, does the chill of fear leap forth.

  "So came on the cloud. Now the city was half surrounded, its wallsscaled. Half the stars were gone. Some of the flying battalions had evenrushed past!

  "But the elms stood changeless, immovable, asleep!

  "Suddenly one vivid, crackling, tearing, defending flash of intensestlight split the gloom and the thunder leaped into the city! It awokethen! Every foundation trembled! Every tree dipped furiously. The windsburst in. What a tumult! They rushed down the parallel streets andalleys, these barbarians; they came by the intersecting ways! Theyfought each other frantically for the spoils of the city, strugglingupward in equal conflict, carrying dust and leaves and debris. They weresucked down by the hollow squares, they wept and mourned, they sobbedabout doorways, they sung and cheered among the chimneys and thetrembling vanes. They twisted away great tree limbs and hurled them farout into the spaces which the lightning hollowed in the night! Theydrove every inhabitant indoors and tugged frantically at the city'sdefenses! They tore off shutters and lashed the housetops with the poortrees!

  "The focus of the battle was the cathedral! It was the citadel! Here waswrath and frenzy and despair! The winds swept around and upward, withmeasureless force, and at times seemed to lift the great pile from itsfoundations. But it was the lashing trees that deceived the eye; itstood immovable, proud, strong, while the evil ones hurled theirmaledictions and screamed defiance at the very door of God's own heart.

  "In vain. In a far up niche stood a weather-beaten saint--the warden.The hand of God upheld him and kept the citadel while unseen forcesswung the great bell to voice his faith and trust amid the gloom!

  "Then came the deluge, huge drops, bullets almost, in fierceness,shivering each other until the street-lamps seemed set in driving fogthrough which the silvered missiles flashed horizontally--a stormtraveling within a storm.

  "But when the tempest weeps, its heart is gone. Hark! 'Tis the voice ofthe great organ; how grand, how noble, how triumphant! One burst ofmelody louder than the rest breaks through the storm and mingles withthe thunder's roar.

  "Look! A woman! She has come, whence God alone may know! She totterstoward the cathedral; a step more and she is safe, but it is nevertaken! One other frightened life has sought the sanctuary. In the graspof the tempest it has traveled with wide-spread wings; a great white seabird, like a soul astray in the depths of passion. It falls into theeddy, struggles wearily toward the lights, whirls about the woman's headand sinks, gasping, dying at her feet. The God-pity rises within her,triumphing over fear and mortal anguish. She stands motionless a moment;she does not take the wanderer to her bosom, she cannot! The winds havestripped the cover from the burden in her arms! It is a child's coffin,pressed against her bosom. The moment of safety is gone! In the next aman, the seeming incarnation of the storm itself, springs upon her,tears the burden from her and disappears like a shadow within a shadow!

  "Within the cathedral they are celebrating the birth of Christ, without,the elements repeat the scene when the veil of the temple was rended.

  * * * * *

  "The storm had passed. The lightning still blazed vividly, but silentlynow, and at each flash the scene stood forth an instant as though somemighty artist was making pictures with magnesium. A tall woman, who hadcrouched, as one under the influence of an overpowering terror near theinner door, now crept to the outer, beneath the arch, and lookedfearfully about. She went down the few steps to the pavement. Suddenlyin the transient light a face looked up into hers, from her feet; a facethat seemed not human. The features were convulsed, the eyes set. With alow cry the woman slipped her arms under the figure on the pavement,lifted it as though it were that of a child and disappeared in thenight. The face that had looked up was as white as the lily at noon; theface bent in pity above it was dark as the leaves of that lily scatteredupon the sod."

  Edward read this and smiled, as he laid it aside, and continued with theother papers. They were brief sketches and memoranda of chapters;sometimes a single sentence upon a page, just as his friend DeMaupassant used to jot them down one memorable summer when they hadlingered together along the Riviera, but they had no connection with"The Storm" and the characters therein suggested. If they belonged tothe same narrative the connections were gone.

  Wearied at last he took up his violin and began to play. It is said thatimprovisers cannot but run back to the music they have written."Calvary" was his masterpiece and soon he found himself lost in itsharmonies. Then by easy steps there rose in memory, as he played, thestorm and Gerald's sketch. He paused abruptly and sat with his bow idleupon the strings, for in his mind a link had formed between that sketchand the chapter he had just read. He had felt the story was true when heread it. The lawyer had said John Morgan wrote from life. Here was thefirst act of a drama in the life of a child, and the last, perhaps, inthe life of a woman.

  And that child under the influence of music had felt the storm sceneflash upon his memory and had drawn it. The child was Gerald Morgan.
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  Edward laid aside the violin for a moment, went into the front room,threw open the shutters and loosened his cravat. Something seemed tosuffocate him, as he struggled against the admission of thisirresistible conclusion. Overwhelmed with the significance of thediscovery, he exclaimed aloud: "It was an inherited memory."

  But if the boy had been born under the circumstances set forth in thesketch, who was the man, and why should he have assaulted the woman whobore the child's coffin? And what was she doing abroad under suchcircumstances? The man and the woman's object was hidden perhapsforever. But not so the woman; the artist had given her features, and asfor the other woman, the author had said she was dark. There was inGerald's mind picture no dark woman; only the girl with the coffin, thearch above and the faint outlines of bending trees!