According to the Pattern (16 page)

The senator was searching vainly in his fertile brain for
an explanation that should allow him to assume his usual
careless ease. It is safe to say he had not been many times
slapped in the face for a kiss. He would have given much
to know how long these spectators had been present.

But Miriam, flying down between the palms, all white—white face, white arms, white gown, the light of holy anger springing from her sorrowful eyes, like some desecrated angel, tearing, as she flew, the hateful blos
soms from her breast and stamping on them, looked up and saw her husband standing before her, and beside him
saw her enemy and knew her hour had come and her
defeat complete, with all the witnesses present. As
though she had been struck to the heart, she dropped
silently at his feet, striking her head heavily on the marble floor.

Darting one awful look of imprecation and revenge, Claude stooped and gathered her in his arms and felt the unresponsive heart.

And behind him stood that silent figure in black
velvet, with the same scornful smile upon her lips, the
only witness of the first flush of humiliation on the face of the usually complaisant senator, and the first white agony of the terrified husband.

This was her work, and she viewed it with the cruel scorn of a heartless woman.

The small neglect that may have pained,

A giant structure will have gained

When it can never be explained.

—
A. D. F. Randolph

THEY were all sympathy in a moment, the crowd
outside that surged about to help, but some glanced
curiously at Mrs. Sylvester and then at Claude, and
others looked beyond to where the senator searched for
the frame of his eye-glasses, the while he concocted a
fine talc of how they were broken as he tried to save Mrs.
Winthrop from falling, and told it too, to those who
came to help him look. For he was shut in from escape at present unless he crawled behind the palms, which he would have been glad to do.

A doctor was found somewhere in the hushed throng, who cleared a space for air and gave opportunity for the abashed old scoundrel to slip away.

But Mrs. Sylvester did not move. Claude once, on looking up, while the doctor was listening to the heart
to see if there was any movement at all, saw her standing
there and hated her. He wished she would go and leave
him alone with his misery and his dead life, she who had
brought him here to meet his just punishment and who
had stayed to see it meted out to him stroke by stroke.

Some one gave an order for a carriage and Celia
Lyman brought the soft white cloak that Miriam had
ingeniously made to imitate a much costlier one, and
Mrs. Sylvester still stood and watched, not offering to be of any assistance, only smiling that perpetual amusement which almost seemed as if her eyes were glad of all this mischief.

They carried Miriam to the carriage by a side entrance
and the doctor went with them to take her home.

And as long as she could see them down the long palm
arch of the conservatory, Mrs. Sylvester watched them.
Then she turned and went back to the ballroom, but her hands were empty. She had lost somewhere her lilies of
the valley.

Back through the darkness of the streets rode Miriam, resting at last from all the weary way and in her husband’s
arms; back from her glorious defeat, where she had come
out from the world’s smirching as white in soul as were her garments.

The doctor kept his practiced finger upon the place
where the pulse should have been, but only a feeble,
occasional flutter gave any hope that there was life. The
long day’s strain, with the tremendous happenings,
added to the months of agony, had secured the inevitable
result. The poor weak body and tortured soul had given way and were almost at the parting place.

They carried her in and up the staircase down which
she had come so beautiful and so sorrowful but a few
short hours before, and the household was awakened to
that hushed excitement that pervades the home where
death is lingering on the threshold.

The frightened servants obeyed orders, went on er
rands, brought stimulants and blankets and hot water.

All night they worked, the doctor and a nurse and
another doctor, who had been summoned to their aid.
The husband stood helpless at the foot of the bed and watched his wife’s white face that seemed to be modeled in marble, so still it was and unearthly in its spotless
-reproach. And was this the end then? Was he no more
to see her on earth? Never to have a chance to explain—
no, there was no explanation—but to tell her that he
loved her? Was not this punishment too great for all he
had done, for his weakness, his cowardice? Nay, but
what had he made her suffer! spoke the white face on
the pillow to his shrinking heart.

And little
Pearl stole from her bed in her long night
dress and crept her soft little hand in his and whispered:

“Is our mamma dead, father? Why doesn’t she wake
up?”

And even the sorrowing, gentle little voice seemed to
accuse him of the deed.

The long hours dragged away and still there was no
sign from her that she lived save an occasional flutter of the heart, and once a gasping sigh. But as last, just as the morning broke, the large eyes opened upon them unknowingly, as though they had been looking on great
mysteries, and then dropped shut again as she moaned
softly, “Oh, I am so tired!”

They said she slept, but it seemed more like death than sleep.

And suddenly, in the midst of it all, the face on the
pillow seemed to fade out of Claude’s vision and he
found himself clinging to the foot of the bed and the
doctor trying to persuade him to lie down. And some
one discovered that he needed attention too. But he
came to himself again soon with sharp reality that conies
always in sorrow after a moment’s unconsciousness,
which robs it of its pain, and insisted on coming back
where he could see his wife. And the morning wore
away.

Then silently there entered one of the death angel’s
sentinels that he posts where he may have occasion to
return. Fever took up his stand beside that bed, all
fire-clothed and mocking. The patient began to moan
and toss and mutter of things all troublous, and out of the chaos of heart-rending sentences, that showed her
husband much that otherwise he never would have
known, there came one sentence again and again until it
became the one sentence that the poor troubled brain
could communicate:

“The pattern, the pattern, the pattern on the mount.
Oh, get me the pattern on the mount!”

“What does she mean?” asked the doctor, puzzled
after the hundredth attempt to quiet the restless one with
answers that would set her at peace. “Had she been
sewing much before she was taken ill? There is usually
some little occurrence, or some big one, back of the
trouble of a delirious mind, I believe,” he said, “and if one is only bright enough to find out what it is, it can
sometimes be removed.” He looked at Claude with the
light of enthusiasm for his profession in his eyes, but the husband’s haggard face responded only with a hopeless compliance. He was taking his punishment bitterly.

Then Claude went out to the maid to get, if possible,
some solution to the question that was troubling the
patient, for the doctor felt much would be gained if her
mind could be set at rest on this point and she be induced
to sleep again.

Careful questioning brought out the facts from the
demure maid. Yes, Mrs. Winthrop had done a great deal
of sewing since when Mr. Winthrop went to Europe.
She had finished all the children’s clothes herself without
the usual help from a seamstress, and she had made many
of her beautiful gowns with her own hands. The tears
flowed freely as the maid went into details. She brought
different dresses from the wardrobe and showed Mr.
Winthrop the exquisite needlework, the rare lace and
appliqué, and dainty outlining of pattern in curious rib
bon-work and embroidery.

Claude listened to it all helplessly, with agonized
expression. He fingered the beautiful handiwork clum
sily. It seemed something sacred to him. This, then,
explained why no bills had come to him for all the rare
garments she had worn. Then he remembered his mis
sion.

“Did she have any patterns?” he asked awkwardly
enough.

“Oh, yes, sir, a whole box full, besides those in the
fashion book. I have them put by carefully,” and she
brought forth a large pasteboard box containing patterns
of every imaginable garment a woman could put on. Her
husband turned the leaves of the pile of fashion maga
zines without purpose. Just to touch these things that had
been a part of his wife’s precious life while he in his blindness had been separated from her, seemed good.
(Perchance the book he held was the very one contain
ing the letter that gave Miriam inspiration for her gigan
tic undertaking.) But finally he brought the box of
patterns to the doctor and tried to tell him all.

They carried them to the bed and laid them out one by one and let the sick one touch them. She looked at
them without interest and the paper crackled gratingly
between her fevered fingers. They were the things of a
life with which she seemed almost to be done. And still
her lips repeated: “I want the pattern in the mount. Can
no one show me where to get the pattern in the mount?”

“Is there anything in the house that she calls a
‘mount’?” asked the doctor, but they shook their heads.

“It’s my opinion it’s a minister she needs,” said the
silent nurse at last. “There’s something like what she’s
saying in the Bible, if I ain’t mistaken.”

The doctor’s face brightened. “Surely,” he said, “it
must be that. Have you a minister whom she knows
well?”

But Claude shook his head sadly. They had not been
frequent attendants at church of late. He was unac
quainted with his wife’s recent attempts at identification
with the church. He shrank from the strange minister
who had preached the last time he was there.

“Then may I bring my brother?” said the doctor. “He
is studying for the ministry and he is here on a visit. He
has a lot of sense, if he is my brother, and I’d like to put
him in the next room and see what he makes of all this.”

Claude’s heart was too heavy to care what was done.
He was wrestling with the conviction that Miriam was
going to die. It was traditional that dying people talked
of religious things. That was what this talk of the pattern
in the mount meant, of course. Strange that it had been only the uneducated nurse who had been able to think
of it! And he sat at the foot of the bed, his haggard face
almost the counterpart of his wife’s, so unceasingly did
he watch her.

They had sent for her mother to come, Claude’s
mother-in-law, with her decided ways and her dainty
cameo face that Claude used to like to think Miriam’s
would be like when he and she grew old together. And
she would come, and perhaps read the awful tale of his
shame and her daughter’s sorrow from his eyes. He felt
that it was written there.

His mother-in-law had always liked him, and he had returned the affection, but now she would despise him.
He shrank from that like a blow.

Then trooped back one by one the years which he and
Miriam had spent together. The little house where they first began housekeeping—how foolish and how happy they were there! The tiny parlor that they furnished bit
by bit as they could spare the money and how they
would go hand in hand to look at each new purchase and
he would tell her she had a new idol now to worship, and she would blush and tell him, No, she never wor
shiped things that had no life.

The days when she did the work and they ate breakfast on the kitchen table to save trouble and also to save coal!
The very taste of the buckwheat cakes and syrup that she piled upon his plate hot from the smoking griddle was in his mouth. So keenly can the suffering nerves smite back
the aching heart by a sight, an odor, or a taste.

Then there was the day when her aunt sent the lovely
little crib and its fixings, all dainty with broad blue satin ribbons, for the expected little one that was coming to
gladden their hearts. How they had hovered over that
little nest, smoothed down the fine white coverlet,
patted the little ruffled pillow and admired the softness
of the pretty blankets. And he could remember now
with what curious blending of emotions he had bent
again over that crib, alone, a few days later, and turned down the wriggling blanket to look upon his first-born,
his little Pearl, all pink and sweet and sleeping with her
rose-leaf hands tight curled and her tiny mouth set firmly
as if she meant to face and conquer this world into which
she had come!

That look of a madonna Miriam had given him! How
it was burned into his soul now beside that changed face
on the pillow, and beside it came the wraith of her as she
had been that night, the last he had seen her conscious
and well, her beautiful, sad face, and her reproachful
eyes. Oh, horror of horrors! Oh, pity of pities! that any
life could bear such punishment as his! God had no need
to make a hell hereafter for such as he if this could be for
all who sinned that way.