THE BREAKING OF ANOTHER DAY AND WAY

Alva slipped into her cape, and drawing some fur up round her throat, set swiftly forth upon the Long Bridge—for the last time, she told herself.

The snow was falling fast, but not thickly as yet, and she had it in her heart to steal under cover of the fast-approaching twilight to her house, and look upon that also for the last time. Her sorrow was too deep to leave any room to mourn the background of her dream, but the background was consecrated by the dream and she longed to stand once more close to those walls, even if only to sob her heart out alone under the rustle of dead leaves, amidst the fast deepening snow.

There was in her that awful strength that saves one's reason in the first shock of the otherwise unbearable. Years were ahead and yet her heart did not shrink; endless gray duties stretched between their mile-stones, but to her it mattered not. Nothing mattered, she told herself over and over. Life would go on, other lives in especial would go on; their demands would be hers to meet, their cares and troubles, their joys and sorrows would be hers to reflect, but to her personally nothing would—nothing could—matter more. Her unseeing eyes looked out over the gorge; the matchless beauty, for the preservation of which her dead love had fought so hard, came to a blind market now; she could not see, she could not feel, for her life and all that makes life worth living was over.

So she swept on, her dark cape fluttering wide like wings on either side of her steady swiftness. The snow crystals clung to the wool and quickly starred its night with stars, but she saw no night except her own, and noted no stars. "And yet I must not give way too much," she thought suddenly, with a quick stabbing sense of proving unworthy; "if I am what I have told Lassie that one should be—if I am what one who has truly loved should surely be—I shall be strong and live resolutely as he lived, even though I have been so crushed. Pain could not crush his spirit; shall sorrow crush mine? I will be strong."

The letter which she had brought out with her came to her mind then, and she paused and read it. It was from the surgeon and told her what she had lately mistrusted,—that there had never been the slightest chance of moving him, that she had been sent away as a child is banished from a painful scene, and that she had been beguiled as a child is beguiled. She did not resent the truth, she was too big to resent such a truth; but she felt freshly mournful, and the home that was to have been seemed to fade utterly out of her consciousness, leaving her with no desire to ever see it again.

But there was another sheet within the envelope. She took that out, too. It was printed—in a hand that trembled. Her heart contracted as she saw the crooked lines,—so much ran deep between them.

Alva:—I have struggled. I shall not give up. I believe sometimes God has given a new body to serve a needed end. I cannot go. I must come back. Not for your sake. But for theirs—for the sake of those who will never know. If I come, help me again. For you and for me help is the only bond. I am not sure that there is any other that endures. Not in this present world of ours.

She shook a little. Something especially cold and piercing struck to her heart. She raised her eyes quickly, and there, close beside her on the bridge, the dead man stood.

His bright dark eyes looked straight into hers.

"Don't you know who I am?" he said.

She would have fallen but for his quick grasp, and the grasp choked the cry that was rising, for it was the grasp of flesh and of strength.

"Don't you know who I am?" he asked again. "I thought that I saw in your eyes that you knew. I thought that she had described me to you. I'm Lisle Bayard. You wrote to me, you know."

She drew away from him, and leaned heavily against the bridge-rail. If it were true that this were he! A new body to serve a great purpose. If that Mystery that is the rooting of all that is or is to be had been building this man and this hour, and weaving and twisting and shaping both to its ends! She seemed to stand motionless, but within herself she was dizzy and reeling. "He moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform."

"You have freed them?" she said, divining truth with a prescience that startled herself.

"Oh, yes," he said, "I have been to Geneseo. They are free. But you never really believed that I had any interest in them, did you?"

His voice was no strange voice in her ears, nor was his manner that of a stranger. She had to press her temples hard with her two hands. "You are like the man whom I loved," she said; "he—he died yesterday. That was what drew me to her; she described you and said that you loved her."

"Poor thing," he said, simply.

"And that you pursued her," Alva went on; "you can think that I befriended her then. I tried to help her. Because I, too, loved—and hoped."

"It was good of you," he said; "but they are mere adventuresses—not worth your troubling."

"But you have helped them?"

"I? Oh, yes. But," he hesitated; "I am tired of my life," he added suddenly. "I've turned over a new leaf—I've reformed."

"Since when?"

"Since yesterday."

She held hard to the bridge-rail. "Since yesterday," she repeated; "since yesterday?"

"Yes, since yesterday."

Her eyes were staring into his now. "Tell me about it?" she cried, as the starving cry out for food—"at once."

"I don't know about it. I just turned in disgust from myself. It was all in a minute. I wandered about all day and all last night. I tried to drink—you know I drink?—and then all of a sudden I realized what a beast I'd been, and I turned from it all. Something stronger than myself drew me to Geneseo this morning; something stronger yet drew me here; what led me out upon the bridge was strongest of all. I don't know what it all means, but perhaps you do."

For a long minute she looked at him, and then she spoke. "The man who died is guiding you," she said; "I know it is that."

He smiled a little. "Can I trust him?" he asked.

"I think so," she answered; "because his appeal is to your better self. You will learn."

"And you will teach me?" he said, quickly.

She was silent.

"You will teach me?" he repeated.

"I am going home," she said. "I live far from here. I have duties which will chain me there for life. You will learn of him alone. You will be guided; do not fear."

He looked at her, and his eyes blazed suddenly. She shrank back with a cry. "Oh, no—not that—not that!" she exclaimed; "I loved him and he is dead. His work descends on us to do, that is all. All!"

The man, looking down at her with the dead man's eyes, was silent.

"I am not able to talk to you," she said, "I can hardly control my voice. He died yesterday, and to-day you speak to me with his voice. And it is so strange,—your coming. It is all so strange."

"Yes, it is all strange," he said; "but it cannot stop here, you know. The Purpose that has brought this about will not cease to exist now."

She felt herself agitated, unnerved, trembling. She took hold of the bridge-rail again. "The Purpose works for great ends," she said; "we must learn that. I have learned it. Even a little respite from daily life is not allowed, when one has once crossed the border and left self behind. I have had to learn that in a bitter school. For God's sake, lift burdens; do not add to them. And do not make my lot harder than it is to be. You are not him, and I know it. Do not seek friendship with me; it is torture."

"But if I were he," he said, "if I do his work, live towards his goal, accomplish his purposes. Who shall say what soul I bear? I never had a soul till yesterday. I have one now. Where did it come from, this new soul of mine. Perhaps from him. I've read stories like that."

"I cannot bear it," she said, suddenly; "my head refuses to understand. All that I have believed is rolling and crashing around me. Let us say good-by. In a few hours I shall be far away. Oh, I shall be glad—so glad—to go."

"But I shall remain," he declared. "I shall take up the battle, and I shall win his unfinished fight. Let us leave the future wrapped in its mystery. I have been impatient all my life, but now I can wait."

She walked away through the snow.

And then suddenly, as she moved, she felt her steps stayed—she stopped. It was not the man who had stayed her; he was standing where she had left him, behind her—there on the bridge. But she was stopped by a thought; at that thought she turned.

"If you are to live here," she said faltering, her voice quite unlike its usual firm, low purpose,—"if you are to live here, you will want a home. There is a house—"

She paused. Her hand had drawn a key from her pocket, and without further explanation she held it out to him.

He approached and took the key. He asked no question. He spoke no word. They did not even exchange a glance.

Five minutes later a veil of snowflakes divided them, and the gorge lay black between.

What is there to be said further? Nothing unless perhaps the single line that can so fitly begin and end all:

"He moves in a mysterious way."