Chapter X: “ye Shall Not Understand.”

Whatever happens to anybody it will be turned to beautiful results,
And nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

--_Walt Whitman._

Two years had passed since Colonel Layton died. Renewed health and beauty had come to the Butterfly, who still contentedly earned and ate her own bread. Self-dependence has many rewards for its faithful disciples, not least among them being the conscious dignity that belongs to usefulness, and expresses itself in the greater ease and calmer assurance of bearing. Being a factor instead of a cipher gives a woman new value in her own eyes, as well as in the eyes of others.

If Chrissalyn could see into the world to follow this, Cartice wondered why she had had no glimpse of her husband. She had not, she said, and didn’t want to. She hoped she never would see any one who had been near to her--it would be too terrible. She insisted on keeping all knowledge of her queer experiences from Prescott. His sniffs and sneers of ridicule would be too much for her, nor did Cartice feel equal to them either. According to Phillips Brooks there are two kinds of cowardice, that of the conservative, and that of the radical, both of them fatal to freedom of thought. The former is afraid of being called an innovator, the latter fears to be thought conservative. One pliantly conforms to established methods; the other strikes defiance of them. Neither of them are free.

Perhaps Prescott was of the second. Perhaps he fought what he called superstition lest he be forced to believe in spite of himself. At any rate his two friends, perhaps the loyalest he had, were not bold enough to take him into their confidence. The intolerant always pay this penalty. They shut out confidence; they make people afraid of them; they keep light and good away from them, and drive angels themselves from their gates.

Cartice had a notion that the Butterfly and Prescott loved each other. Being something of which the gods themselves must approve, she could not understand the Butterfly’s reticence on the subject, for the winged creature said not a word in regard to it. In spite of his aggressive character and some other deplorable defects, Prescott was a man to be proud of.

The three were much together. Prescott was the Butterfly’s tireless escort everywhere, and they were usually anxious to have Cartice with them, and often they came together to pass a few hours with her in the evening, as she was invariably alone, Doring finding places more to his taste than the one he called home. Some of Prescott’s friends said more than once that he was growing gentler and kinder, both on paper and off.

One evening the three friends were together in Cartice’s apartment. Prescott’s face was radiant, with a light never seen there before. It refined and softened his rugged features, making his countenance sweet and sunny.

“He has spoken,” thought Cartice, “and this is the light of love that has naught to fear.”

“Children,” he said, after a time, with an unusual sweetness and confidence that became him well, “dear children, I am going to have happiness.”

Both looked at him in affectionate inquiry.

“What kind of happiness?” asked the Butterfly, in a low voice, for there was that in his face which made them feel they were upon holy ground.

“I don’t know! I don’t know! That’s the inexplicable part of it. Yet it seems so near I can almost reach out my hands and grasp it. This feeling has been upon me all day, and grows stronger every moment. I never experienced anything like it before. I don’t know why or whence it comes, nor can I explain it well; but I feel it. Yes, I am very near to something good--near to happiness at last.”

His voice sank low, and its tones had a thrilling sweetness, a holy joy. His companions listened in silence, under a spell, their astonishment too vast for words. This was strange talk to come from him.

As in reverie he went on, after a pause, “All my life I have wondered how it would seem to be happy--really happy--if only for one hour. Misery I know well; but happiness and I have never met. Now, it is so near that I am already in its sunshine.” And he smiled, with the wonderful light on his face, and the smile was strangely sweet and beautiful.

The Butterfly shook herself out of the seriousness that was upon her, and said:

“You are going to have money--plenty of money--all unexpected as it comes in stories, and then--then you must give a big supper and Cartice and I will wear our prettiest gowns and be queens of the feast.”

He looked at her and smiled again, but did not even hear her chatter, for his soul was revelling in soundless melody. The exaltation was still on his face when he and Chriss bade Cartice good-night.

It was ten o’clock next day when Mrs. Doring reached the _Register_ office. The entrance was full of men, with frightened faces, one of whom motioned to her to stop. Obeying, she stood in her tracks, chilled with a sense of disaster, until he reached her.

“You must not come in,” he said. “There has been an accident at the elevator, and--Prescott is dead.”

In silence she turned away. “And this was the happiness he felt so near to him--this?” she gasped. “Yes; it was so near, yet he did not understand, and we did not understand. And it was this! It was this!”

Prescott and death were irreconcilable. He was typical of life, force and action. Who could think of him as out of the conflict, as voiceless and silent? How could they ever learn to speak of him as one who was but is not?

“Saw you nothing, Chrissalyn--nothing that portended this?” Cartice asked.

“Nothing.”

“Yet we had a sign, and were too blind to see it. His glorified face last night, and his strange feeling that happiness was near to him--these were signs, though we understood them not.”

From the first a sense of the unreality of what had occurred came to Mrs. Doring and never left her. She followed the sable carriage of the dead to the cemetery, and returned to find his chair vacant, his pen idle, his presence gone forever, yet it was not like reality,--none of it. She shed no tears, nor was she sad. After the first startled moment she was at peace, though she knew not why.

Later she understood, as will all of us after a little time. Now we weep and moan over sorrow, questioning it all, resenting it all; but a day is coming when we shall see and know and understand, and in that day we shall re-name many things, having until then miscalled them.

* * * * *

Now another serious event confronted Mrs. Doring. She had done her best to save her husband from himself but could not. Now she saw clearly at last, after much striving to bring compatibility out of incompatibility, that their union was a sham, a pretence, a lie, which if persisted in could only bring destruction to both of them. The conviction came to her that it must end.

Few experiences are bitterer or sadder for a sensitive, proud, high-spirited woman, than to face a domestic calamity like this. To see the love upon which she had founded her dearest hopes turn to ashes; to have what she once thought happiness become a burden so intolerable that it must be cast down, acknowledging disappointment, defeat and humiliation before the world, is, indeed, a bitter cup.

The coarse, the malicious, the undeveloped have sneers, jeers and taunts for this order of sufferer; but the enlightened, the truly moral bow before her reverently, not only because she has suffered, but because she stands for a great principle.

That the separation must be legal as well as actual, she saw would be best for both. Though the laws of their state were as humane as most others, still they had not evolved beyond the point, where in order to secure freedom from irksome marital bonds one of the parties must make a damaging charge against the other.

In talking it over with her husband she said, “We can arrange that as decently as the law will permit. If I make the application, I shall put it on the most inoffensive ground possible. If that is not agreeable to you, I will leave you and you can charge me with desertion.”

Doring determined to do at once what he had long been arranging to do slyly, which was to go away himself, and as a Parthian arrow announced that he had intended to do so for sometime, but not alone.

It was a curious ending of the most delicate and important relation in life. Cartice gathered his effects together, packing everything with careful hands. When he went she watched him out of sight, and out of her life. Late into the night she still sat at the window, with a white face and eyes that stared into the darkness yet saw only the scenes of the past.

When Louis Doring boarded the train that evening he knew that within awaited him the sharer of his future fortunes.

His story can soon be told. It was the natural outcome of his weak, selfish, stubborn and vain character. A few months later, deserted by the companion he had taken with him, penniless and alone in a southern city, he fell a victim to a malignant fever and passed out of life.

Cartice saw a brief mention of his death in a daily newspaper of the city in which it occurred. Accompanied by the faithful Butterfly she went at once, arriving there in time to put his mortal part out of sight with the decency custom requires.

These two loving hearts, both bruised from sad experiences, sat together late that night, talking of the curious events we call life and death. What they knew of one made it almost as terrible as the other.

“Ah, Butterfly, dear,” said Cartice, “I envy the women who have lost husbands worth lamenting. Such tears would be sweet, not bitter.”

“You call me a seeress, sometimes,” said Chrissalyn, “and perhaps I am, for I have been looking off into the future--a future that is very far away, indeed--and I see you, and you are happy. At least I read it so, for there is light all about you, and your face is like a picture of joy, it is so bright. And you are more beautiful than the sun, of whose radiance your clothes are made. But I am not with you, and it is, oh! so far away--so far that it looks to be even on the other side of death though that is a queer way to put it. Yes, you will be great and renowned some day as well as happy; but the road there is so long--I don’t understand it--as long as several lives put together, I should say.”

“And you, child of the far-away eyes, see you naught for yourself?”

“No; I never do; but I have a firm belief that I am yet to have satin couches and plenty of time to rest on them.”

Splendor be it observed, was her deal of bliss, which was natural, she being a butterfly.

That night while her friend slept, Mrs. Doring sat by the open window thinking of the cold, still form she had seen put out of sight that day, and wondering with a chill sense of awe where now was the soul that had been represented by it. The moonlight whitened everything, and added its electric beauty and pale sadness to the loneliness of the night. She recalled other nights when that form had pulsated near her, and yet her spirit had been as lonely as now.

What did it all mean, the loving and the suffering, the dreaming and the awakening, the meeting and the parting? The road together had been long and hard, yet here was the end--the same end to which all roads lead--but what was the purpose of it all?

The problem of life; what can it be but the development of the individual, the unfolding of the soul, that marvelous, persistent, god-like thing of whose unlimited possibilities we are but beginning to dream? And all that we do and have done to us, enjoy and suffer, think and dream, hope and aspire, make to that end, and are necessary and therefore good.

Memories came to her from a remote past, that antedated her birth--or so it seemed, for their origin was not within her earthly experiences. Yet surely they were memories, for one and all met with recognition. Faces she had loved came and smiled their sympathy and fondness. Familiar voices spoke to her--voices whose heavenly sweetness mortal ear hath not heard. Snatches of songs, celestial in their thrilling melody, floated by. Scenes restful and beautiful unrolled themselves for a moment and were gone. But it was the inner eyes which saw and the inner ears that heard.

Yes, she knew them all, for they were her people, her very own people, of whom she was always dreaming, and for whom she was always searching. They had come to comfort her. See, all smiled, not one wept, and their words and songs were joyous.

“My own people! My dear people, I shall yet find you,--I am finding you,” she said, glancing at the Butterfly’s pretty face, with its crown of sunshiny hair on the pillow, and thinking of Prescott, with his head like carven granite and eyes of fire; and others, with some of whom she had clasped hands but once, yet knew them as her own.

But what of the new-made narrow mound in the cemetery? It presented itself at the end of every life, mutely asking an explanation of its existence. This was the wall against which the race of man has ever beaten the wings of inquiry. There it always stands, unresponsive and forbidding, the grim silence, like the shores that shut in the sea, saying, “Thus far shalt thou come and no farther.”

Yet above and beyond the awe and wonder that filled her soul, was that curious sense of the unreality of death which had come when Prescott went away and still remained.