Chapter XXXV: Time’s Revenge

“Tears from the depth of some divine despair,
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In thinking of the days that are no more.”
TENNYSON.

A crisp, cold morning in December, brilliant with the gleam of sunlight falling on a thin, soft carpeting of newly fallen snow.

Along the wide, handsome street leading to the Inebriate Asylum, walks a lady, leading by the hand a laughing, bright-eyed little boy. Her slow, languid step scarcely keeps pace with his, and she keeps fast hold of his hand to restrain his impatience.

“And we shall see papa?” he says to her now and then brightly, and with a shudder she answers:

“Yes, Charlie, we shall see papa.”

As she pauses at the gates of the Inebriate Asylum and lifts a shrinking gaze toward the elegant building, a gentleman steps out on the wide porch, and stands idly a moment, gazing out on the sunny street.

He is equipped for a walk, in overcoat and gloves, and holds his hat in his hand, the winter sunlight falling goldenly on his curly, chestnut locks, and the tawny mustache, whose graceful curve does not hide the sweet seriousness of his mobile lips.

Mrs. Essex, coming slowly up the steps, looks at this man carelessly, then starts and looks again, while a nervous thrill shakes her whole frame.

He is springing lightly down the steps, and meets her midway, lifting his hat as to a stranger, and passing on.

But before he reaches the gate he turns back, overtaking her at the top of the steps.

“I beg pardon,” with stately deference. “I did not recognize you in the first moment--time has changed you--but surely this must be Mrs. Essex?”

“Doctor Verne,” she answers tremulously, and half extends her hand. He does not seem to see it, and it drops to her side again.

“You are quite well, I hope,” he says stiffly.

“Quite well, I thank you.”

“And this is your little son? He resembles Charlton, I think,” looking at Charlie with grave interest. “Mrs. Essex, I am sorry you will not find your husband as well as when you visited him yesterday--he told me you came--and I think it best to tell you--forgive my frankness--that he is rapidly sinking. No excitement with him, please.”

“I will remember,” she answers and turns from him, going down the wide hallway, a slender, pathetic figure in trailing black, for her loved and lost ones. He stands still, where she left him, watching her, the bitter waters of memory rising to flood tide in his heart.

And this is their meeting. How different from their parting. He remembers her as she was then--so young, so fair, so happy, in the morning of her life, and now--ah, what a story is written on her blanched cheek, on the hopeless curve of the sweet lips, in the large, dark, melancholy eyes.

Relentless time had avenged his wrongs, had pressed to the lips of her nearest and dearest the soul-destroying glass. She had drained to its very dregs the bitter cup of sorrow. It was time he should forgive her, but he turned and went his way with a chill at his heart that was not born of the winter’s cold.

* * * * *

And Vivian. She has no time to recur to the dead past now. She is in her husband’s room, bending down to listen to the failing voice that welcomes her and the child. He lies still, clinging to her hand, his large, wistful eyes roving from her grave, white face to the little child flitting restlessly about the room--the little one to whom he is leaving the heritage of the drunkard’s child--a dishonored name, and the danger of an inherited appetite for strong drink.

“Viva, dear,” he cries out entreatingly, “I wish you would give the child to Max.”

Starting with surprise, she asks: “Why?”

“Don’t you understand, Viva? Our little boy is so apt to inherit my fatal appetite, and Doctor Verne is so strong and wise, he can help him--save him from himself.”

“Charlton will be my son’s guardian,” she replies. “He will not lack for loving care.”

“I know, dear,” he answers uneasily. “Charlton is a good brother, but--he is very lenient to the habit of drinking. Indeed, I have known him to indulge too much himself sometimes. So he is not quite a safe guardian for the child.”

Viva makes no comment, and he drops the subject with a weary sigh.

“I wish Charlton would come and see me, Viva. Perhaps he can find it in his heart to forgive me some of my sins, now that I am going so fast. Can you forgive me, too, all your wrongs, Viva?”

“Freely,” she answers, with the ineffable goodness of a woman’s heart.

“That is a blind answer, dear. If you knew all----”

He stops, a spasm of pain distorting his ghastly features.

“Do not worry over it, Earle. I forgive, without knowing,” she answers still very gently. “What is past cannot matter now.”

“It always matters, when wrong has been done, that things should be set right again--doesn’t it? I once did not think so, Viva, but things grow clearer to me now, and there is something I must confess to you, dear, before I die. Promise me, Viva, that when you know it you will not hate my memory.”

“I promise, Earle.”

“God bless you, Viva. To-morrow, then, you will--come to me, and--I--I will tell you the dark secret I have kept so long. Madame Orne has not told you?”

“No.”

“To-morrow, then. I am so very tired to-day. Somehow I have been getting tired a long, long time, only I did not understand what it meant, and I kept staving off the weakness with strong drink. Do you know I have been told by Doctor Landelle--Max’s friend, you know--that if I had not happened in here that day as I did, I must soon have died in the street from exhaustion. Think of it.”

She shudders through all her slender frame.

“Do not talk any more,” she remonstrates kindly, “your voice is a mere whisper. I will go now and let you sleep. Charlton shall come to you this evening, without fail.”

“And you--to-morrow?”

“Yes, to-morrow,” she replies, answering his wistful smile.

When Charlie kisses papa farewell there is something in that wistful white face that moves her to stoop and kiss him also. Afterward she is glad that she obeyed that sudden impulse.

Out in the wide hall her spoiled child breaks from her gentle hold, and clambering up the stairs disappears in the upper regions.

Vivian follows in haste, and finds him taking refuge in the little room we knew in earlier days as “the den.” It wears the same familiar look, though all else is changed. But, oh, horror! little Charlie has mounted a chair, and, with fearless baby fingers, extracts from the top of a cabinet the grinning skull that presides over the room in awful majesty. At his mother’s reproachful cry it drops from his grasp and rolls over the floor to her feet, dislodging from its cavity a crumpled, yellowish paper.

Something familiar in the faded handwriting on it attracts her. She picks it up and looks over it with startled eyes.

“Mine!” cries Charlie, trying to secure the treasure.

“No, it is mine, pet,” Vivian answers hoarsely. She thrusts it into her pocket and leads him away, her face as white as death, her eyes wild with misery.

* * * * *

She comes back, as she had promised, on the morrow, but Earle Essex is too tired still to tell her the secret he had promised--too tired even to lift his heavy eyes to her beloved face. For between the midnight and the dawn Max and Charlton had held his hands in theirs, and gone with him down to the shores of the dark river across whose gloom and blackness glimmered the light of that promise to repentant sinners: “Whosoever believeth in me I will in no wise cast out.”