Chapter XV “Be Pitiful, O God!”
“O God! to clasp those fingers close and yet to feel so lonely,
To see a light within those eyes that is the daylight only—
Be pitiful, O God!”
—E. Barrett Browning.
Amy Waite walked swiftly down the path which led from Hadwell Heights to Pine Avenue. The night was a cold one; the moon hung bright and glittering in the starlit heavens and the white, still earth seemed to her as cruel as Life, as inexorable as Time. She shivered as she walked and drew her shabby fur more closely around her throat. When would this cruel walk end? When would this crueler interview be over?
She reached her destination at length and rang the bell. General Shaftan had no relatives in Montreal, but his fame and character had won him many friends. Yet he lay dying alone in his handsome house; alone, save for the ministrations of a hired nurse. Mrs. Waite’s thin lips curved in a smile more tragic than most tears are as she stood on the doorstep of the silent house while the keen winds blew dismally about her. Alone! What freak had made him send for her at such a time?
A silent man-servant admitted and conducted her upstairs. Amy paused long enough to remove her wraps and, while she waited, the nurse came out from the sickroom and spoke, softly.
“The General is failing fast,” she whispered. “He was determined to see you this evening and so I sent you that urgent message. This afternoon he saw his lawyer on business connected with his will and I wanted him to wait till to-morrow for this, but he would not. He seemed to fear that he might not live to see another day.” Her voice trembled; she was a kind-hearted soul and the General had a way of endearing himself to all with whom he came in contact. Mrs. Waite, however, stood erect and tearless, and the nurse, after a half-wondering, half-resentful glance, directed her to enter.
“He wants to see you, alone,” she said, reluctantly. “But, if any change should take place in him, be sure to let me know at once.”
Mrs. Waite gave the required promise and left her. The General lay, half-propped up with pillows; his bronzed face was pale with the pallor of approaching dissolution, but his eyes were the eyes of twenty. Amy’s dead youth sprang to sudden life beneath them and something akin to the hopeless, useless rapture of thirty years ago awoke and cried in her heart. Her face was set and pallid, and the hands which clasped the dying soldier’s were cold as his own. They looked at one another in silence which the woman could not break. The man spoke at last, a little disappointed at her lack of feeling.
“Well, Amy?” he whispered, half-quizzically.
“You—wanted to see me, Arnold?”
“I did—very much. I’m dying—I suppose you know that, eh?”
“I had heard so. I didn’t know”——
“Oh, it’s true enough. Don’t I show in my looks that I am?”
Amy did not answer immediately nor did her face betray any especial interest in the statement. The General, after scrutinizing her closely, almost anxiously for a moment, relinquished her hand and laughed, half in amusement, half in disappointment.
“You’re a cold-blooded little creature, Amy,” he cried. “You always were. But you’re a faithful little soul—I’d trust you through thick and thin—and I want to do something for you before I go. Also I want you to help me to pay off old scores and spite my lady Julia—you won’t mind lending a hand in that, I’ll wager.” His still brilliant grey eyes twinkled significantly.
Amy watched him passively and smiled a little, wondering why an ugly, faded woman of forty-eight with a sordid past should feel as keenly and cruelly as an untrained girl of eighteen. No answer suggested itself and she sat in silence, watching the dying man and wishing that she, herself, had died long ago.
The General laughed feebly as he looked at her. She was, as he had told her, such a cold-blooded little thing—rather unpleasantly like a fish—but, after all, poor little soul! she had had a beastly hard time of it; why, she looked like an old woman at fifty. He could do one good turn to a friend before he died, at all events.
“Amy,” he said at last, “give me your hand, little woman! I want to know if you will marry me. Don’t look surprised: this is no freak. You see if we are married I can leave you all my money—I am not poor, though I am not rich—and it’s only right that you should have some comfort before you die. Then, too, I want to prevent Mrs. Julia from saying what she will say as soon as I am dead—that I always wanted her and died of grief as well as of my wound, because of her refusal. She shan’t say that, by—— She spoilt my life and I’ll not die till I’ve paid her back a little. It seems queer,” he went on, with the radiant, mischievous smile that had made his listener’s heart ache in the old days, “it seems queer to die a married man, Amy, after living a single one all my life. But it’s never too late to mend. How thin your hand is, you poor little thing! You’ve had hard luck, haven’t you?” He relapsed into silence, staring steadily at the wall at the foot of his bed. His eyes grew glazed and feverish.
“Don’t leave me,” he muttered. “Julia! Julia!”
Amy started and winced.
“You’re a beastly little flirt,” he went on, angrily, gripping her hand till she with difficulty refrained from crying out with pain, “a heartless, despicable little flirt and I despise you from the bottom of my soul—but, O God! I can’t help loving you. No other woman has ever been to me what you were—and you—threw—me—over,” he went on, slowly, with a hard, cruel expression, “for Greene. Greene! the miserable, worthless sot! Well, you made one mistake, my lady, didn’t you?... But don’t turn away, Julia!” he went on, imploringly, “don’t turn away from me! I can’t stand it.... Your hand is cold—you don’t care—O my God! you don’t care!” His voice rose almost to a wail. “Julia!” he cried. “Julia! my darling, my darling!—say it’s a mistake! You’re not what you pretend to be—you can’t be!—Julia!”
He sank back exhausted and his face relaxed. A look of intense relief overspread his features and his lips formed a smile of great beauty and tenderness.
“Julia!” he murmured softly. Then he died.
Amy sat quite unmoved and looked at the rigid figure. She showed no particular emotion; yet the peace which made the dead face so beautiful was lacking in the living. Some minutes elapsed. She rose at last and stood for a moment, looking down. About that lifeless thing on the bed had clustered all her poor, starved life had held of love and romance. She bent slowly toward it; then straightened, a faint red colour in her sallow cheek.
“No!” she said, almost proudly.
She rang the bell.
“The General has just died,” she said in level, unemotional accents. “It was very sudden. It was impossible to call you. I am sorry.”
The big-hearted nurse looked at her with hearty repulsion and dislike and burst into a flood of tears. There seemed no particular reason for waiting further; Amy moved mechanically to the door and down the steps; and so passed quietly into the bitter night.