The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 13 October 1910, Page 1647

The Storyteller

THE DIVIDING UOAt) Was willst du mehr? What indeed wilt thou more? Gerard Staunton murmured to himself the old line 3 of the poet Heine as the chauffeur smoothly, steadily drove the car through the luxuriant beauty of the early autumn landscape. Absolutely satisfying to the eye were the rich color and foliage and the soft rise and fall of valleys and low lulls. And in his heart was the almost absolute gratification a strong man knows when, speeding through such country, there sits beside him the woman he loves", or thinks he loves—which for the time being practically amounts to the same thing. Obviously the type to inspire such devotion was Evelyn Craig as she sat back in the motor car, that splendid ease and grace of hers scarcely jolted by the few « hog-backs ' in the fane road; her rich, unruffled beauty of hair 'and complexion so artfully and prettily safeguarded by half-conceal-ing, halt-re vealing veils. There were people who thought of her in the lines of a certain English poet young men and older ones used to quote in an earlier day when poetry was more frequently a conversational staple than it is in a prosaic age. Owen Meredith s ' regal, indolent air of hers, so confident of her charm, some of these had ascribed to Evelyn Craig. But the ' indolent ' would have been a misnomer. .On the contrary, vitality was one of her characteristics. It was the one which had helped to accomplish the captivation of Gerard Staunton at this stage of his career, after the tragedy of his young married life. That life had consisted or a lew years with a young, spoiled wife, whose caprices had developed into the more ominous condition of an unstrung mind. Then, finally, had come her death, leaving him shocked by the whole experience, the father of the little girl now sitting at his other side in the car, the child so beautiful, so pathetic; so exquisite in every way, save for the blank expression in her beautiful eyes. Since her mother s death, Gerard Staunton had forsworn almost all society save the child's. His evenings had been spent with her. The endeavor to wake some intelligence in those eyes of hers had been his supreme thought and interest. His former associates could not believe that Gerard Old Gerry,' as they dubbed —could have persisted in such devotion longer than the first several -months succeeding his wife's death. Decency, of course, demanded some respect to her unworthy memory. But surely, his friends said, after he had fulfilled the demands of such respect he would begin going about with them again. They pined to have him, for before his marriage and in the first year of it, he had been one of the best of fellows in the whole merry-hearted set. Meantime not only months, but a few years, had transpired, and he had not returned to them and to their pleasures. That was all a closed book. Nor was it the only volume of his former life that had been shut and clasped. Not only old joys, old loyalties, but also old faiths that should have been called to his service to comfort and energise him had been laid away. Life had been a joy to him, a place wherein to take what he wanted. In the first moment of rude awakening to what possibilities of disappointment, grief, and affliction it held, Gerard turned, as the dreadful phrase goes, from man and from God. Joy was dust and ashes in his mouth. Stunned by his disappointment in his wife, and by hi 3 novel situation as the father of a motherless, imbecile child, he, Gerard Staunton, who had always been so brilliant and so happy, let himself down, down, down in trust and faith in this world and the next, till this world and the next appealed to him only through his child, so exquisite, so helpless! All the love, all the interest other things and people once drew from him, he now gave to her. He seemed to have put his arm about her and challenged the things of life or death to touch her. There was a kind of grim defiance in his sacrifice of everything and everybody to his duty. In the dull, grey routine of such duty, life seemed to have settled for him when Evelyn Craig crossed his path. Suddenly that path, long unillumined by any charm or color, was lightened. He felt himself roused to new energies, new inspirations, new interest. The holiday voice once more called to him. Though he had doubted any such possibility, life again seemed a place wherein to take one's pleasure. These last few weeks Evelyn had wrought the change. Hers was the bright, beguiling figure that swiftly led him back, beckoning him to the old world of his heart's desire. Meantime, everyone wondered. His friends had not surmised that when Gerard decided to return to their world he would be led thither by Evelyn Craig's fair hand, a comely member many of them knew only too. well. However, now that he had returned, so led, they wondered how long it would take him to discover Evelyn as she was, as many of them had known her at the expense !of much disillusion, heartbreak, and some of the other ills that strew the path of a beautiful, selfish, thoroughly mundane woman!

Decidedly he was still oblivious of this phase of the one whose beauty and fascination held him in content as they speeded through the lovely countryshe, all life and strength and self-satisfaction at his right side, while at his left sat the child, now half-dozing, whom he had brought upon the trip without consulting Evelyn's pleasure. , As the three rode thus, Gerard gave orders to the chauffeur to slow down a little as they arrived at a certain point in the road whence the view was particularly attractive. Wide fields swept to far blue hills hung with the first hazes of the ' season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Peace and abundance brooded everywhere, that hush of remoteness from the tangled affairs of men. Never had such affairs wandered here, thought Gerard. Yet just as he reflected, in the distance at the turn of the road, among the green trees, "stood out the white walls and low towers of some human habitation. 'What do you suppose that is?' he asked. ' It's the Immaculate Convent,' answered Evelyn. ' And by the way, I have been wondering if it wouldn't be just as well for you to put Lily there in September.' Gerard Staunton sat up with a suddenness that roused the sleeping child. ' I could not think of it!' he exclaimed. ' It would be a good place,' continued Evelyn, in tonea whose musical qualities, disguised their inflexibility only to those who did not know her well. ' I thought I had told you I would never part with her,' demurred Gerard. ' I think the arrangement we made the night of our engagement will be perfectly satisfactory. She is so little trouble, and her old nurse, Madge, is so capable and so devoted to her!' Evelyn Craig bit her full red lips, and kept silence a moment, finally saying: ' My dear, I don't think it would be practicable. We shall be going out a great deal, you know. You will not have much time for herand I know nothing of taking care of children ' ' I must arrange time for her, whatever else we plan,' answered Gerard. ' I can't see how my duty to her can conflict with my duty to you.' 'Oh, if it's a case of duty!' objected Evelyn, with a note of childish petulance Gerard had not hitherto heard from her. He reached for her hand, saying ' You know I love you past words.' ' I don't believe you really love anything but Lily,' she protested. And subtly, then, but surely, Evelyn's voice ran up the gamut of jealousy and selfish affection that are at once a flattery and an appeal to a man's fondness, to which other men strong as Gerard Staunton have succumbed. By the time they had driven a few miles further and had turned back, Evelyn had practically 'convinced Gerard that Lily would be better cared for in the convent, that the country air would do her good. This last stroke told on the man, who began to suspect he had been unreasonable in expecting a live-loving woman to mother his little child till she had learned how appealing and lovable the little one really was. By the time they arrived at the turn of the road leading- to the convent he was ready to say yes when Evelyn insisted: ' You might try it for the next four months, anyhowtill after we return from our wedding tour.' When Gerard presented himself and Lily at the convent the grave-eyed Superior was apparently none too anxious at first to take the little one. Exquisite and helpless, the child went to her straightway, and nestled against her knee. Mother Catherine was won over. Then in Gerard's own appeal there had been a kind of desperation, which she could not waive aside. She had asked if his wife were living, and as he answered negatively the expression on his face told her more than he expressed. Besides, as the automobile had approached she had had a glimpse of the handsome, veiled figure in the car, and now she divined its significance in Gerard's life. With that sixth sense of highly spiritualised natures she divined, too, that the luxurious-looking wom,an down there at the gate would not be so benign an influence in the child's life as the pure, sweet nuns; so all the motherhood of her true woman's nature asserted itself. The tenderness, the spiritual note of her presence lingered with Staunton as he walked down to the car. Under its spell and the gratitude he felt, knowing that his little one was to be cherished, he paused halfway down the path, and looked about the beautiful grounds— peace of the place with its smooth lawns, its old trees, its little vine-clad church, all taking his spirit so captive that he stepped in silence to his seat beside Evelyn. * • • ' • « If the few weeks previous to this day had been a change from Gerard's immediately preceding existence, the months that followed were to him a still further alteration from the mood and mode of living into which he had settled before Evelyn came into his life. With Lily at the convent, Evelyn now practically possessed him. He was at her constant beck and call, and that beck and call led him nightly and much in the afternoons through that mad pursuit for which a large city offers such opportunity—unmitigated quest of pleasure. They sought it now, these two, along all its golden ways, till often Staunton went home jaded with" the ceaseless pursuit of laughter, conviviality, and all the glittering superficiality of the career whither Evelyn had lured him, Recently on some such

frivolous nights, when he returned home, he sat long in the lonely, quiet house, asking himself what, after all, was the use of it. He had, of late, formed a habit of sitting in little Lily's room. The ; first month or so of the child's absence he had not missed her so keenly as he fancied he would. Evelyn absorbed his time. He was infatuated with her, and as a matter of fact was at home so little, that the absence of the vacant-minded child was not sharply felt. But these last two weeks, when a sudden business call had taken him from the city, and so allowed him to recover his balance, he had begun to be somewhat disillusioned with the pace he had been keeping up; he began to cravo his child's almost dumb companionship. His heart went out to her with all the tenderness with which he had brooded over her in the early years after her mother's death. With regret sharp as remorse he now remembered that of late he had been negligent. Writing to her signified practically nothing. He had promised himself to take frequent flying trips to see her, but the autumn had gone without his doing so. A few times he had suggested motoring Evelyn to the conventbut she had promptly turned him from the idea. With the blindness of one more faithful than farseeing, it was only lately that Gerard Staunton had become at all aware of the selfishness, the utter superficiality of the nature that informed Evelyn Craig's beautiful face and figure. Only lately had he begun to escape from the toils of abject infatuation in which these had snared him. Only lately had be begun to see her nature in clear perspective. And now that he had begun thus to see it, he began also to feel a loathing, not only for her, but for himself— he had lent himself to the reckless, silly life of gratification he had shared with this woman for several months. How could he have done it, he asked himself! And now he was engaged to be married to her! What would be the life stretching out before them both? What but a continuation of this mad whirl, ending perhaps, a few years later, in a jaded, bored existence? And where in that existence would there be place for the tenderness to his little child he had hoped to waken in Evelyn? In Evelyn Craig who, he now remembered with bitterness, had lured him away from his own duty? Having paid her bill at the convent he had practically turned her over to the nuns. That reminded himthere were probably letters from them now awaiting him in his room. Letting himself into the quiet house, he made his way to his apartments. On his table there were two or three letters, and among the letters a telegram. It was, of course, opened first. It ran: 'Do come immediately. The child cannot get well.' A chill shook his strong frame as he re-read the words, looking at the date of two days before. He gathered up*the letters, and went alone to the garage, took out the roadster, and started at 2 o'clock in the morning for the convent, which he could easily reach by 6 o'clock. Once it was light enough to permit of doing so, he took the letters from his pocket, and read them. Among them was a small, pale-grey envelope, one of many embossed ' E.G.' that had often come to him. He put it and all others into his pocket save those bearing the postmark of the little convent station. _ There were three of these in Mother Catherine's handwriting. The first stated that Lily seemed getting frailer, that he had better come to see her. The second one was in the same strain, saying that Mother. Catherine and the other Sisters did not wish to have the entire responsibility for the sick child, that the convent was primarily a school, not an infirmary. The third letter most positively. insisted on his immediate appearance. Then finally this telegram The four hours Gerard Staunton travelled alone through the night to his dying child were hours of deep feeling and spiritual illumination. Remorse for his neglect overwhelmed him. The whole life of the last few months of her absence weighed upon him now, sordidly, repulsively. In contrast to all its glamor en passant, it now became in retrospect a period of wretched, vain indulgence. The old gray days when, every evening, he returned fondly from his office to his child, seemed the best of his life. And of his own accord he had forfeited them; he had waived the opportunity he had once so loved, to waken intelligence in that sweet face! He could scarcely wait to clasp her in his arms again, to carry her back, to foster the frail strength, to begin once more the old life of devotion. For in those hours of coming to his senses, he knew that' such was to be his service hereafter, that everything which could not fit in with such devotion must be sacrificed. He had ridden far and thought and resolved much before he recalled the small gray envelope in his pocket which several months ago would have given him such a thrill. Carelessly now he opened it and impatiently tore it to bits as he finished reading, the contents ringing as insincere and disagreeable to him as was the faint scent of the familiar sachet that clung to envelope and note. The pearl-gray mists held the white walls of the convent the towers and facade of the little church, as Gerard approached them. The Angelus was ringing and a file of nuns was filing to Mass as he mounted the convent steps with quickly beating heart. He could • scarcely wait for the Mother to be summoned. He was pacing the floor as. she came in.

t;,^! You ha not ha ? m second telegram she asked, all Kindness and sympathy. 'I have been away. I found only one on my return last night. Ah, Mother, am I too late?' He read the affirmative answer in the kind, tear-filled eyes. c,f i' YeS ~- d , ied ,,^ st ni 8 ht >' said Mother Catherine softly: we tried all day to get you by telephone. Then we telegraphed. I wish you had come sooner. Will you step this way?' J tll Th j ?£ ron e figure trembled and bent like a reed as it followed the nun to the little convent chapel, where among the flowers lay one like them. She had never more closely resembled her pure flower-name than when she lay there as it sleeping, the beautiful, unspeaking eyes now closed tor ever upon a world often baffling to brains wiser than her poor feeble one. Mother Catherine left Staunton with his child for a while. When she returned to him some time later it was to endeavor to give the man the comfort she saw his anguished heart cried out for. If he had seemed to cast the child on their hands so entirely, evidently his present grief testified to regret for any neglect. , 'Oh, if I had only kept her with me!' he murmured, as tie and Mother Catherine sat down in the convent parlor, lou may spare yourself that reproach, sir,' said the venerable Mother. 'Dr. Valentine, our physician, who is, as you know, one of the best authorities on such cases, has told us that she could not have lived. He says he practically knew this when he first saw her— nothing could have been done for her much longer either by your care or ours. t These words came back to Gerard later in the day, bringing some meagre comfort. The old priest, Father Hussell, repeated them to him as he kept saying: 'Why, then, Father, did I not keep her with me, for the short time there was left? Whv did I not have her these last few months of her frail, precious life?' ' We may not question too far the wavs of Providence ' answered Father Russell. ' What has seemed vour affliction may prove your blessing. Many of us in"our youth think our path must go straight and smooth in a certain, well-defined direction. Suddenly we are jolted, or we come to a division in the road; anxiety, disturbance possess our spirits—we must face the question whether we shall go ahead on the old pleasant, smooth path, or take the turn that promises new difficulties to surmount, but perhaps compensations that would be lacking in the-old easy, down-hill way. J ' As the old convent chaplain talked bv the firelight in his simple room the serenity of his brow and eyes and voice, the strong, rugged lines attesting that lie had lived no idyllic nor sluggard life, Gerard could not help contrasting that remarkable face with some that now came into his memory, faces of men, and of some women, of one woman in particular, who, he knew, were living but tor the hour, for the mad moment, snatching, like wildhearted children, at gratification of sense and impulsewhile always before them, as before him, lay the turn of the road that would lead them to the reasonable life, the life of control, the life dominated by spiritual ideals once dear to him, but which were now become almost a forgotten memory. to m He sat in silence gazing into the low embers and reviewing the last few months, since that day when Evelvn Craig s selfish wish to get Lily out of her path of pleasure and his had made him take the turn in the road that led to the convent. He brooded remorsefully over the months since that day, now culminating in the grief that had so sharply brought him to a new vision of things. Finally he spoke : J 'Father, though you have known nothing of my life, you have been unwittingly making some commentaries on it. 1 believe that the convent road winding from the mam road, the convent road I saw for the first time last autumn, was "my dividing road." I have not been to confession for several years. Before I go down to the city to-morrow I should like you to give me Holv Communion. AY ill you hear my confession a little later this evening? I have a letter to get off now ' ' Yes my son,' said Father Russell gently. And Gerard Staunton passed to his room to write the letter to Evelyn Craig that broke with all she stood for and with her for ever, if the Lord would only grant him the strength for which he was fain to believe the spirit of his little child, now at last kindled m the Light eternal, was interceding and would intercede hereafter.— Mcuiazine. J