Her beauty had never failed.Nature had fought hard in her for all things;and to the last youth of her womanhood it burned like an autumn rose which some morning we may have found on the lawn under a dew that is turning to ice.But when youth was gone, in the following years her face began to reflect the freshness of Easter lilies.For prayer will in time make the human countenance its own divinest alter; years upon years of true thoughts, like ceaseless music shut up within, will vibrate along the nerves of expression until the lines of the living instrument are drawn into correspondence, and the harmony of visible form matches the unheard harmonies of the mind.It was about this time also that there fell upon her hair the earliest rays of the light which is the dawn of Eternal Morning.
She had never ceased to watch his career as part of her very life.Time was powerless to remove him farther from her than destiny had removed him long before: it was always yesterday; the whole past with him seemed caught upon the clearest mirror just at her back.Once or twice a year she received a letter, books, papers, something; she had been kept informed of the birth of his children.From other sources--his letters to the parson, traders between Philadelphia and the West--she knew other things: he had risen in the world, was a judge, often leading counsel in great cases, was almost a great man.
She planted her pride, her gratitude, her happiness, on this new soil: they were the few seed that a woman in the final years will sow in a window-box and cover the window-pane and watch and water and wake and think of in the night--she who was used once to range the fields.
But never from the first to last had she received a letter from him that was transparent; the mystery stayed unlifted; she had to accept the constancy of his friendship without its confidence.Question or chiding of course there never was from her; inborn refinement alone would have kept her from curiosity or prying; but she could not put away the conviction that the concealment which he steadily adhered to was either delicately connected with his marriage or registered but too plainly some downward change in himself.Which was it, or was it both? Had he too missed happiness? Missed it as she had--by a union with a perfectly commonplace, plodding, unimaginative, unsympathetic, unrefined nature? And was it a mercy to be able to remember him, not to know him?
These thoughts filled her so often, so often! For into the busiest life--the life that toils to shut out thought--the inevitable leisure will come; and with the leisure will return the dreaded emptiness, the loneliness, the never stifled need of sympathy, affection, companionship--for that world of two outside of which every other human being is a stranger.And it was he who entered into all these hours of hers as by a right that she had neither the heart nor the strength to question.
For behind everything else there was one thing more--deeper than anything else, dearer, more sacred; the feeling she would never surrender that for a while at least he had cared more for her than he had ever realized.
One mild afternoon of autumn she was walking with quiet dignity around her garden.She had just come from town where she had given to Jouett the last sitting of her portrait, and she was richly dressed in the satin gown and cap of lace which those who see the picture nowadays will remember.The finishing of it had saddened her a little; she meant to leave it to him; and she wondered whether, when he looked into the eyes of this portrait, he would at last understand": she had tried to tell him the truth; it was the truth that Jouett painted.
Thus she was thinking of the past as usual; and once she paused in the very spot where one sweet afternoon of May long ago he had leaned over the fence, holding in his hand his big black had decorated with a Jacobin cockade, and had asked her consent to marry Amy.Was not yonder the very maple, in the shade of which he and she sat some weeks later while she had talked with him about the ideals of life? She laughed, but she touched her handkerchief to her eyes as she turned to pass on.Then she stopped abruptly.
Coming down the garden walk toward her with a light rapid step, his head in the air, a smile on his fresh noble face, an earnest look in his gray eyes, was a tall young fellow of some eighteen years.A few feet off he lifted his hat with a free, gallant air, uncovering a head of dark-red hair, closely curling.
"I beg your pardon, madam," he said, in a voice that fell on her ears like music long remembered."Is this Mrs.Falconer?""Yes," she replied, beginning to tremble, "I am Mrs.Falconer.""Then I should like to introduce myself to you, dearest madam.I am John Gray, the son of your old friend, and my father sends me to you to stay with you if you will let me.And he desires me to deliver this letter.""John Gray!" she cried, running forward and searching his face."You John Gray! You! Take off your hat!" For a moment she looked at his forehead and his hair; her eyes became blinded with tears.She threw her arms around his neck with a sob and covered his face with kisses.
"Madam," said the young fellow, stooping to pick up his hat, and laughing outright at his own blushes and confusion, "I don't wonder that my father thinks so much of you!""I never did that to your father!" she retorted.Beneath the wrinkled ivory of her skin a tinge of faintest pink appeared and disappeared.
