Ouida_Strathmore.txt topic ['13', '324', '378', '393']
we tread out an insect's ; and longed for it,
hungered for it, pined for it. yet is there a
'? he keep even us from the last depths
320 .
of hell? crouched in the darkness,
heard her pray, pray for all things that suffered,
for all that were in sin and woe ; in her joy, in
her youth, she prayed for us the guilty and the
cursed ! light was on her and saw in hers
her father's eyes, her father's smile; remembered
how had murdered him ! could not slay her then
not then even though you loved her. could not
touch her ^look on her breathe near her.
prayer stood between us, her father's memory held
her from me, the dead himself smote my vengeance
from my hands. spared her ! / the world must
end to-night!"
laugh rang on the air in mockery of herself
then into her burning, weary eyes tears rushed for
the first time since years of shame ; she quivered from
head to foot, and stood there, in the starlight trembling
and afraid. fear of him ? ; in fear of that
long and shameless evil which was called her .
heard her; and on his face there shone a
sudden light, pure, cloudless, glorified, like that of
the planets above. torture she had not abased
him, in agony she had not humbled him, in ven-
geance she had not laid him suppliant ; but noAv in
that hour of release, when into the darkness of his
life the ransom of an unhoped mercy came she had
her victory. saw him bow down before her,
broken, blinded, voiceless, senseless, his haughty
power smitten as a granite shaft is smitten by the
"in the silence of the night." 321
lightning, his proud life pierced and shaken to the
core, his soul laid bare and without shield, in the mo-
ment of his deliverance.
her had come his guilt ; by her also came his
retribution and his redemption.
skies reeled round him in whirling circles of
starry light; the silence of the night seemed filled
with murmuring hosts of angel voices ; the dead past
seemed to fall from him for ever, and be swept away
into those still and lustrous seas that echoed at his
feet ; and on the air, borne up on the winds and on
the waves, he heard the dying words of the man whom
he had loved and slain : " forgive ! ! /
forgive ! " as though by that forgiveness pleading
there for the pardon of the guilty, for the safety
of the sinless.
had forgiven : who should avenge ?
the silence where they stood together, -
more lifted his head and looked on her, the vulture
that had spared, the panther that had known some
pang of pity at the last ; and in her he saw, incar-
nated, his own merciless and brutal sin saw it,
loathsome as it was, denying the pardon which it lived
to need, usurping the power and the judgment of
deity to sate through them the vilest passions of
mortality.
limbs shook, his lips quivered, ins forehead was
wet with the dews of a great suffering, but on his face
shone that liglit which once before had come there
. .
322 .
when he had stood on the wreck of the sinking ship
with death upon him, and the mad waves leaping
round ; and in his ejes as they dwelt on her there
was a profound anguish, gentle, fathomless, merciful,
in the consciousness of his own weakness, giving
forgiveness to her at the last, by whom his sin had
come, by whom his years had been accursed.
was the supreme expiation of his life.
stretched his hands towards her where she
stood, and his voice vibrated with an infinite pardon
through the night :
" mercy you remembered to her, be remem-
bered to you at the last, by her ! both
murdered him with brutal guilt ; we have both
striven to atone to him through the innocent.
us part in peace to-night ; let sin be dead in both our
lives for ever."
looked at him one moment, in one long, last,
mute farewell ; then she bowed her head in silent
acceptation of his words of peace, of his renunciation
of the power of evil ; and like a shadow on the air,
a spirit on the wind, swept from
him through the autumn night and through the white
and wreathing mists that floated from the sea, and
faded from his life for evermore.
once again, like a man bruised and stunned
by mortal blow, he sank down among the coiling ivy
and the sea-splashed stones, his arms outstretched.
" ." 323
his limbs shaken by a voiceless agony, alone in the
silence of the night. he had loved her ; he had
sinned for her, and all the irrevocable crime of those
dead years was but the darker and more deeply damned
in his own sight, because the pity of had touched
his life with an exhaustless and unutterable mercy,
and had spared him the just harvest of his work when
his guilt arose to destroy the innocent, and the strength
of his own hand was stricken powerless.
324
.
" ' ."
the still night lay sleeping, as the
young flower sleeps, unconscious of the ruthless hand
that has been stretched to break and to despoil it, and
that has passed over it without harm because its love-
liness brought back a pang of memory, an echo of
lost youth. the lofty casement left open to
the night there shone the tranquil and star-studded
skies, there came the far melodious murmur of the
seas ; and straying through dark traceries of foliage
and the deep hues of the painted panes, the light fell
on her where she slept, and shed its halo round her.
hair swept backward in its golden masses, a
dreaming smile was on her lips, a soft flush on her
brow, on which the chastened brilliance of the moon-
light fell, and in her sleep she murmured, as though
her dreams were seraphs' whispers,
" is ! "
" * ." 325
were the last words of her evening prayer;
the words that had stricken strengthless the hand
which had been lifted to destroy her.
heard them as, from the lonely shore, he
came into her presence as to some divine and sacred
thing, and stood to look on her in the repose of
innocence and childhood, unconscious of the peril
that had drawn near her in the silence and the
solitude of the defenceless night, to strike her with
his sin, and sacrifice her for his guilt drawn so
near! so near! shuddered and sickened at its
memory, gazing on her with bursting heart and
yearning eyes, listening for every soft pulse of her
young life, watching for every noiseless breath that
passed her lips, for every smile that dreaming lent its
light to sleep, as though she had been given back to
him from the hideousness of death by storm, by flame,
by poisoned steel, or by plague-tainted air. dead
sin had risen, and had crept to her to slay her with
his past. he had thought to bury sin and bid it
keep its peace, and have no resurrection ! , fool !
oh, fool !
" is ! "
! was , since he had saved her.
heard the words murmured in her happy rest, where
she dreamed of angel voices and of lands beyond
the sun ; and the smile upon her lips, where she lay
in the serene and silvered glory of the heavens, lulled
to slumber by the gentle echoes of the distant seas,
smiled on him with pardon from the dead, with mercy
236 .
for the past, with promise for the future, with light
from by whom no prayer remains unheard and
no remorse denied.
tears rose into his aching eyes, deep sobs
shook his frame ^it was the agony of gratitude, the
dehrium of release ; and as he threw himself down
beside her bed, his arms cast over her in her sleep,
his head bowed upon the loose trail of her bright hair,
lay down for ever the sins and the passions
of his past, and gave, as to the hand of , his dedi-
cation to a life that should know no law save of
mercy, no governance save of compassion, no pause
in self-humiliation, no pity in self-sacrifice, no effort
but for redemption, no travail but for expiation a
life that should hold its holiest as nothing worth, its
best as nothing given.
the tender chastened light of the morning
stars, growing clearer and clearer to the dawn in
which the shadows of the night were fading, shone on
him where he knelt beside the deep pure sleep of
innocence.
*****
in the deep heart of the great western
forests, in the silence of the solitary swamps, where
pestilence is abroad in the torrid noons, and miasma
rises with every night that falls, where the dank
leaves drop death, and the graves lie thick under the
cypress-woods, a woman in the of .
" reveeder' le stelle." 327
de lives ever among the poor, the suffering,
the criminal, the shameless, sparing herself no task,
fearing no death dead to the world, as the world is
dead to her. the dying her voice has a strange
rich music, far beyond all other; for the innocent
her look has a nameless terror, it is often very evil
still; for those who are in dishonour, or in danger,
her lips have a wild, sweet eloquence that scares them
back from their abyss, and leaves them saved but
sore afraid ; for none has she a history. , when
in her path some summer roses bloomed, and in the
sunlight threw their soft fragrance on the wind, they
saw tears gather in her eyes, and fall, slowly, as
though each tear were a pang; then alone did they
ever see that she thought of her youth, that she
remembered her past.
the press of the great world, far sundered from
her by whom his guilt came, through whom his guilt
still pursues him, one man lives who joins to the life
that is known of men, a life that is unknown by any.
life, in which those who weary and are heavy laden
are aided by a hand that they never see; in which
every shape of suffering is sought and succoured;
in which all evil memories that tempt, are crushed
out, as in a debt that is due ; in which all deeds of
sacrifice are done with a strength that is merciless
only to itself ; in which a sweet and sinless happiness
sheds its radiance ; yet in which the poignancy of one
remorse, the memory of one crime, are never lulled
to peace or to oblivion, but, following the appointed
328 .
travail of a silent expiation offered only to the dead,
and of a supreme duty rendered for conscience' sake
alone, lay subject the stained greatness of a grand
and guilty nature, and lift it upwards into holier
light.
passion his life fell, lost in darkness of the
night, and sunk in lowest deeps ; yet, tljough once
fallen, who shall dare deny that, in the end, it shall
not reach to that atonement which unceasingly is
besought, obedient to the law which lies on every
human soul, seeking for purification, striving for
immortality, rising nearer and higher towards the
perfect day, onward to
heights, in other lives, willing?