Read Ebook: Beyond the Gates by Phelps Elizabeth Stuart

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Ebook has 672 lines and 42386 words, and 14 pages

As if I had been a baby, I obeyed. I put my feet to the floor, and found that I stood strongly. I experienced a slight giddiness for a moment, but when this passed, my head felt clearer than before. I walked steadily out into the middle of the room. Each step was firmer than the other. As I advanced, he came to meet me. My heart throbbed. I thought I should have fallen, not from weakness, but from joy.

"Don't be afraid," he said encouragingly; "that is right. You are doing finely. Only a few steps more. There!"

It was done. I had crossed the distance which separated us, and my dear Father, after all those years, took me, as he used to do, into his arms....

He was the first to speak, and he said:--

"You poor little girl!--But it is over now."

"Yes, it is over now," I answered. I thought he referred to the difficult walk across the room, and to my long illness, now so happily at an end. He smiled and patted me on the cheek, but made no other answer.

"I must tell Mother that you are here," I said presently. I had not looked behind me or about me. Since the first sight of my father sitting in the window, I had not observed any other person, and could not have told who was in the room.

"Not yet," my father said. "We may not speak to her at present. I think we had better go."

I lifted my face to say, "Go where?" but my lips did not form the question. It was just as it used to be when he came from the study and held out his hand, and said "Come," and I went anywhere with him, neither asking, nor caring, so long as it was with him; and then he used to play or walk with me, and I forgot the whole world besides. I put my hand in his without a question, and we moved towards the door.

"Any way you like best," I said joyfully. He smiled, and still keeping my hand, led me down the stairs. As we went down, I heard the little Swiss clock, above in my room, strike the half hour after two.

I noticed everything in the hall as we descended; it was as if my vision, as well as the muscles of motion, grew stronger with each moment. I saw the stair-carpeting with its faded Brussels pattern, once rich, and remembered counting the red roses on it the night I went up with the fever on me; reeling and half delirious, wondering how I could possibly afford to be sick. I saw the hat-tree with Tom's coat, and Alice's blue Shetland shawl across the old hair-cloth sofa. As we opened the door, I saw the muffled bell. I stood for a moment upon the threshold of my old home, not afraid but perplexed.

My father seemed to understand my thoughts perfectly, though I had not spoken, and he paused for my reluctant mood. I thought of all the years I had spent there. I thought of my childhood and girlhood; of the tempestuous periods of life which that quiet roof had hidden; of the calms upon which it had brooded. I thought of sorrows that I had forgotten, and those which I had prayed in vain to forget. I thought of temptations and of mistakes and of sins, from which I had fled back asking these four walls to shelter me. I thought of the comfort and blessedness that I had never failed to find in the old house. I shrank from leaving it. It seemed like leaving my body.

When the door had been opened, the night air rushed in. I could see the stars, and knew, rather than felt, that it was cold. As we stood waiting, an icicle dropped from the eaves, and fell, breaking into a dozen diamond flashes at our feet. Beyond, it was dark.

"It seems to me a great exposure," I said reluctantly, "to be taken out into a winter night,--at such an hour, too! I have been so very sick."

"Are you cold?" asked my father gently. After some thought I said:--

"No, sir."

For I was not cold. For the first time I wondered why.

"Are you tired?"

No, I was not tired.

"Are you afraid?"

"A little, I think, sir."

"Would you like to go back, Molly, and rest awhile?"

"If you please, Papa."

The old baby-word came instinctively in answer to the baby-name. He led me like a child, and like a child I submitted. It was like him to be so thoughtful of my weakness. My dear father was always one of those rare men who think of little things largely, and so bring, especially into the lives of women, the daily comfort which makes the infinite preciousness of life.

We went into the parlor and sat down. It was warm there and pleasant. The furnace was well on, and embers still in the grate. The lamps were not lighted, yet the room was not dark. I enjoyed being down there again after all those weeks up-stairs, and was happy in looking at the familiar things, the afghan on the sofa, and the magazines on the table, uncut because of my illness; Mother's work-basket, and Alice's music folded away.

"It was always a dear old room," said Father, seating himself in his own chair, which we had kept for twenty years in its old place. He put his head back, and gazed peacefully about.

When I felt rested, and better, I asked him if we should start now.

"Just as you please," he said quietly. "There is no hurry. We are never hurried."

"If we have anything to do," I said, "I had rather do it now I think."

"Very well," said Father, "that is like you." He rose and held out his hand again. I took it once more, and once more we went out to the threshold of our old home. This time I felt more confidence, but when the night air swept in, I could not help shrinking a little in spite of myself, and showing the agitation which overtook me.

My father turned at this, and looked at me solemnly. His face seemed to shine and glow. He looked from what I felt was a great height. He said:--

"No, no!" I protested in a passion of regret and trust, "my dear father! I would go any where in earth or Heaven with you!"

"Then come," he said softly.

I clasped both hands, interlocking them through his arm, and we shut the door and went down the steps together and out into the winter dawn.

It was neither dark nor day; and as we stepped into the village streets the confused light trembled about us delicately. The stars were still shining. Snow was on the ground; and I think it had freshly fallen in the night, for I noticed that the way before us lay quite white and untrodden. I looked back over my shoulders as my father closed the gate, which he did without noise. I meant to take a gaze at the old house, from which, with a thrill at the heart, I began to feel that I was parting under strange and solemn conditions. But when I glanced up the path which we had taken, my attention was directed altogether from the house, and from the slight sadness of the thought I had about it.

The circumstance which arrested me was this. Neither my father's foot nor mine had left any print upon the walk. From the front door to the street, the fine fair snow lay unbroken; it stirred, and rose in restless flakes like winged creatures under the gentle wind, flew a little way, and fell again, covering the surface of the long white path with a foam so light, it seemed as if thought itself could not have passed upon it without impression. I can hardly say why I did not call my father's attention to this fact.

As we walked down the road the dawn began to deepen. The stars paled slowly. The intense blue-black and purple of the night sky gave way to the warm grays that precede sunrise in our climate. I saw that the gold and the rose were coming. It promised to be a mild morning, warmer than for several days. The deadly chill was out of the air. The snow yielded on the outlines of the drifts, and relaxed as one looked at it, as snow does before melting, and the icicles had an air of expectation, as if they hastened to surrender to the annunciation of a warm and impatient winter's day.

"It is going to thaw," I said aloud.

"It seems so to you," replied my father, vaguely.

"But at least it is very pleasant," I insisted.

"I'm glad you find it so," he said; "I should have been disappointed if it had struck you as cold, or--gloomy--in any way."

It was still so early that all the village was asleep. The blinds and curtains of the houses were drawn and the doors yet locked. None of our neighbors were astir, nor were there any signs of traffic yet in the little shops. The great factory-bell, which woke the operatives at half-past four, had rung, but this was the only evidence as yet of human life or motion. It did not occur to me, till afterwards, to wonder at the inconsistency between the hour struck by my own Swiss clock and the factory time.

I was more interested in another matter which just then presented itself to me.

The village, as I say, was still asleep. Once I heard the distant hoofs of a horse sent clattering after the doctor, and ridden by a messenger from a household in mortal need. Up to this time we two had seemed to be the only watchers in all the world.

Now, as I turned to see if I could discover whose horse it was and so who was in emergency, I observed suddenly that the sidewalk was full of people. I say full of people; I mean that there was a group behind us; a few, also, before us; some, too, were crossing the street. They conversed together standing at the corners, or walked in twos, as father and I were doing; or strolled, some of them alone. Some of them seemed to have immediate business and to be in haste; others sauntered as he who has no occupation. Some talked and gesticulated earnestly, or laughed loudly. Others went with a thoughtful manner, speaking not at all.

As I watched them I began to recognize here and there, a man, or a woman;--there were more men than women among them, and there were no children.

A few of these people, I soon saw, were old neighbors of ours; some I had known when I was a child, and had forgotten till this moment. Several of them bowed to us as we passed along. One man stopped and waited for us, and spoke to Father, who shook hands with him; intimating, however, pleasantly enough, that he was in haste, and must be excused for passing on.

"Yes, yes, I see," said the man with a glance at me. I then distinctly saw this person's face, and knew him beyond a doubt, for an old neighbor, a certain Mr. Snarl, a miserly, sanctimonious man--I had never liked him.

"Father!" I stopped short. "Father, that man is dead. He has been dead for twenty years!"

Now, at this, I began to tremble; yet not from fear, I think; from amazement, rather, and the great confusion which I felt.

"And there"--I pointed to a pale young man who had been thrown from his carriage --"there is Bobby Bend. He died last winter."

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