According to the Pattern (21 page)

And after? Yes, there might be more to life than what
appeared, but it could scarcely be worse than was his
here. He did not think of it. It seemed to him that in
ending his life he was at least showing his own remorse
for the folly that had made of their happy home a place
of misery.

Slowly, deliberately, he opened the box containing
the tiny things that would bring swift healing to his sick
soul and wipe out all this horror. He was as calm about loading that revolver as if he intended to kill a squirrel
instead of himself. And when his work was complete he
carefully closed the drawer and locked it again and put
all the little articles on his desk straight. Then he placed
the cold steel to his temple, moving it carefully to the
vital spot, and raised his trembling finger to the trigger.

His senses were on the alert. He knew perfectly what
he was about to do. There was in his face a light of
triumph. He saw the end in view and blessed relief from
the terrible self-condemnation.

The house had been still for a long time. He realized
it too, with all the rest that came before him now in this
one clear moment of vision. He felt the silence of the
street and all the neighborhood, in the anticipation of the
loud report that would presently ring out. He was glad
the library was so far from Miriam’s room. She would
not be disturbed by the sound. They would keep all
quiet for her sake, and he would be gone!

His finger was touching the trigger now. In an instant
more all would be over.

Suddenly in the stillness of the room there came a
sound and the revolver dropped from the nerveless
fingers of the man standing upon the threshold of an
other world.

Behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

—
James Russell Lowell

STRANGE what creatures of habit and memory we are!
An odor will carry us back over scores of years into
scenes we have not thought of for many a long day. A
touch will set vibrating in us chords that we thought
dead. The sight of the curve of a check, like that of a lost
loved one, will bring back to us old impulses and change
our plans in a moment, while a sound will call us into
sudden action and set every nerve a-throbbing.

The sound which broke the stillness of that room of
agony and brought Claude Winthrop from a suicide’s act
to one of frightened ministration was commonplace
enough to have passed with other sounds of the night,
and yet one that had never lost its power of striking fear
to his heart.

It was a hoarse, shrill bark of croup, and the sound
came from the room overhead, where his baby, Celia,
slept in her little white crib, close by the register, whose flue was also connected with the library register.

The cough was hoarse enough to have alarmed one
less preoccupied than Claude, but it came to him with
the sharp arrow of memory. He saw himself as he was those few short years gone by, when that sound had first
broken upon his terrified ear and their first child strug
gled for breath. He could feel
again, as he felt then, the
impossibility of fastening the buttons of his clothes with
his trembling fingers and the frightful sense of the agony
of time that would have to pass before he could get the doctor there. He could see Miriam white and frightened,
with the tears streaming unheeded down her cheeks and
her long hair falling about her white gown, as she
frantically searched the index of an old medical book her
mother had given her, along with a recipe book and the
Bible for their first setting-up of housekeeping. They
had recognized croup at once as the much-talked-of
terror, which, like death, one hears of and dreads but yet never really expects to come his way.

Claude’s first realization when he heard that sound was
that the last time he had heard it was the night he arrived
home from Europe. Then the mother had been there and
the cough had not been severe. Now the mother was lying
asleep, weak and frail, unable to go to the little one, just
having crept back from the dark valley of the shadow. And
the father, the other one upon whom the little one
depended, had been hovering in that valley too, but by his own wish and cowardly purpose.

It was almost strange that the weary brain, which
during the day and evening had been subjected to so
many varying sensations, and the eyes that had looked so clearly into his past life and his present, had yet strength
left to look in the face the cowardly portrait of himself
as it appeared after the last two hours in his library.

This all went through his mind like a flash while he
locked the revolver away from sight, and then bounded away up the stairs to the nursery.

The nurse had already been roused and was on her
way to the bath room for hot water. The little one sat up
in her crib crying and coughing frightfully. She held out her hands piteously to her father and he gathered her up, all swathed in her blankets, and held her in his arms, the
wildness melting out of his eyes and a tender light
growing there instead.

The nurse was sleepy and did not like being roused
from her slumber. Moreover, she knew in her heart that
the cause of this attack was her own carelessness for
having allowed Celia to stand in the keen draught of an open door while she flirted with the grocer’s boy the day
before. She worked only half-heartedly, and the father
finally sent her to telephone for the doctor and himself arranged the cold compress on the struggling little throat and covered it carefully with many folds of flannel. With
one free hand he lighted the alcohol lamp under the
kettle of water that was always kept in the nursery for
such a time of need, and soon the steam in the air and
the frequent applications of the cloth wrung from cold water relieved the little girl so that she was able to speak.

She slipped a hot hand from the folds of blanket and
patted his cheek feebly.

“Good, good poppie, take care Celie,” came the
hoarse whisper. “Dear, good poppie won’t leave Celie ‘
lone anymore?”

He assured her he would stay with her and snuggled
her close to his breast, and in this safe shelter behind his
little one, with the everyday domestic atmosphere about
him, a great peace came into his heart. The other life,
that life which he had been about to take, seemed so far
away, so impossible. How could he ever have sinned
with the sweetness, the purity of his little ones in his
keeping?

The thoughts of the world, the-struggles he had passed
through during the afternoon and evening, the tortures
that had been his, were all outside this little room. He
could even put them from his mind. They did not
belong here, where love reigned supreme.

The grandmother came frightened from her room,
with a gray look about her face. She had forgotten the
days when her own children were ill, and croup had
taken on a new terror for her. She offered to hold Celia,
but the father shook his head and held her close, and was
comforted by the little hand that clung to his neck and
the hoarse voice that fretted, “No, poppie keep Celie.”

He held her all night long, even after the doctor had
come and the disease had been controlled and the house
hold settled to quiet.

And then was fulfilled anew that prophecy which said,
“And a little child shall lead them.”

Through that little sleeping girl the heavenly Father
spoke to the weary, sin-sick soul of the earthly father. All
the long night did he feel the love and tenderness of the
infinite Fatherhood that bears with the sins and follies of
his earthly children. And as a penitent child did he judge
himself And now it was not so much horror for what he
had done as sorrow that filled his heart.

When morning came the little one smiled and patted
his face again, and cooed gently: “Oo did stay, poppie,
oo stayed wiv Celie.”

They had their breakfast together on the little round
white table which he had fashioned in his evening hours
about Christmas time during the days of Pearl’s baby
hood, when money with which to buy toys was not so
plentiful as of late years. He ate bites of her poached egg
and toast, that she fed him, and took sips of her milk
obediently, and each ate more than they would have
done alone.

The other children gathered about their father with
surprise and delight. The tired grandmother saw that she
was not needed and retired to rest.

He let himself be taken by storm and be soothed by
their fluttering hands. He reveled in their clear eyes and
direct speech. He told stories of adventure and fun. He
read the Mother Goose books through as many times as
the young tyrants demanded, and he built houses of
blocks for them to overthrow. There was nothing, even
to dressing Celia’s doll, that he stopped at, though the
costume when finished presented a most remarkable
combination.

But when at a call from the nurse he was forced to go downstairs to see about having a prescription filled for the
doctor he shivered visibly. Here in the light, cheery nursery, which everywhere spoke of Miriam’s presence, he
had been able to forget the nightmare of the days that were passed, ending in the almost tragedy of the night before.

Cold chills crept down his back as he passed the library
door, and he was glad to find it closed. It seemed as if all
the evil thoughts that had visited him the previous night
must be shut within the walls of that room.

And it was necessary after all for him to enter the
library to get the prescription the doctor had written the
clay before, which must be renewed. He knew it was
lying on his desk next to the letter of dismissal that had
come to him. The doctor had hurried away to his lecture
at the medical college to which he was already late,
leaving his brother, who had kindly offered to save Claude the trouble of going out, and he stood there
waiting now.

As he watched the haggard look creep into Claude
Winthrop’s face he prayed in his heart for some oppor
tunity to help him and followed to the library door.

Claude was glad of his companionship. He dreaded to
look about him. He breathed a sigh of relief as he
remembered that he had locked the revolver out of sight
the evening before. It seemed as if it could but tell the
tale of his cowardice and sin if it lay there in sight.

As they entered, to Claude’s fevered imagination, the
shadows seemed to shrink into the corners and take the
forms of all the fiendish tortures that had been here dealt
out to him a few hours ago. The little gold cup on the
mantel, innocent in itself, had somehow reminded him
last night of the first tiny cup of tea Mrs. Sylvester had
handed him when she began to weave her spell about his
unsuspecting heart! There were the ashes in the grate
that spoke of the partly read letter he had burned! There
was the whole dreadful mistake of his life again all
standing about in the pictures, the chairs, the drapery,
everything that he had looked at in his march about the
room. So memory uses commonplace hooks to hang our
deeds upon, and we may not take them down and put
them out of sight however much we try.

“I wish that I might do something more for you.”

It was George Carter who spoke, wistfully, as he
lingered by the door with the prescription in his hand.

Claude looked up surprised out of his absorption. It
did him good to see the other man still standing there. It dispelled some of the shadows from his mind. It was like
medicine to hear the sympathetic tones. His heart went
out in longing for that sympathy. He liked this whole
some man whose coming seemed like some strong,
life-giving breeze from the mountain-tops. It brought
relief from the stagnant, humid depths of what his own nature had come to be.
The look on his face drew the younger man back to
the desk again, and the two pairs of eyes met in a
recognition of their brotherhood as it is given for spirit
to speak to spirit without the use of words.

“I wish you could give me a prescription that would
cure mistakes,” said Claude earnestly, thinking of the
days when he was this young man’s age, and wishing he
could go back to that time and begin over his life. He
felt sure he could live it better in the light of all he now
knew.

The light of longing came into the eyes of the young
minister. “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath
He
removed our transgressions from us!” repeated the
young man reverently. “Won’t that apply to mistakes
too, don’t you think, if we ask him?”

A hopeless sorrow settled into the face of Claude.

“It wouldn’t apply to the inevitable results,” said
Claude hopelessly.

“God controls all results,” said George Carter. “He is
able to make even the result of terrible mistakes work
together for good to them that love him.”

“But I am not one of those,” said Claude sadly.

“It is your privilege to be.”

There was a great silence in the room. And all those
shadows in the corners gathered about and drew to
gether, and hovered over and behind Claude Winthrop contending for his soul. Almost they had succeeded last
night. Now another Power, greater than themselves, was
here. A light of hope was shining into that room.