III
THERE was, then, you will remember, but an interval of minutes betweenthe accident and the temporary recovery of consciousness, betweenthat recovery again and the moment when the head fell forward on myknee and she was gone. That "recovery" of consciousness I feel boundto question, as you shall shortly hear. Among such curious things Iam at sea admittedly, yet I must doubt for ever that the eyes whichpeered so strangely into mine were those of Marion herself--as I hadalways known her. You will, at any rate, allow the confession, andbelieve it true, that I--did not recognize her quite. Consciousnessthere was, indubitably, but whether it was "recovery" ofconsciousness is another matter, and a problem that I must for everquestion though I cannot ever set it confidently at rest. It almostseemed as though a larger, grander, yet somehow a less personal, soullooked forth through the fading eyes and used the troubled breath.
In those brief minutes, at any rate, the mind was clear as day, thefaculties not only unobscured, but marvellously enhanced. In the eyesat first shone unveiled fire; she smiled, gazing into my own withlove and eager yearning too. There was a radiance in her face I mustcall glory. Her head was in my lap upon the bed of rugs we hadimprovised inside the field: the broken motor posed in a monstrousheap ten yards away; and the doctor, summoned by a passing stranger,was in the act of administrating the anaesthetic, so that we mightbear her without pain to the nearest hospital--when, suddenly, sheheld up a warning finger, beckoning to me that I should listenclosely.
I bent my head to catch the words. There was such authority in thegesture, and in the eyes an expression so extraordinarily appealing,and yet so touched with the awe of a final privacy beyond language,that the doctor stepped backwards on the instant, the needle shakingin his hand--while I bent down to catch the whispered words that atonce began to pass her lips.
The wind in the poplar overhead mingled with the little sentences, asthough the breath of the clear blue sky, calmly shining, was mingledwith her own.
But the words I heard both troubled and amazed me:
"Help me! For I am in the dark still!" went through me like a sword."And I do not know how long."
I took her face in both my hands; I kissed her. "You are withfriends," I said. "You are safe with us, with me--Marion!" And Iapparently tried to put into my smile the tenderness that clumsywords forswore. Her next words shocked me inexpressibly: "Youlaugh," she said, "but I----" she sighed--"I weep."
I stroked her face and hair. No words came to me.
"You call me Marion," she went on in an eager tone that surely beliedher pain and weakness, "but I do not remember that. I have forgottennames." Then, as I kissed her, I heard her add in the clearestwhisper possible, as though no cloud lay upon her mind: "Yet Marionwill do--if by that you know me now."
There came a pause then, but after it such singular words that I couldhardly believe I heard aright, although each syllable sank into mybrain as with pointed steel:
"You come to me again when I lie dying. Even in the dark I hear--howlong I do not know--I hear your words."
She gave me suddenly then a most piercing look, raising her face alittle towards my own. I saw earnest entreaty in them. "Tell me," Imurmured; "you are nearer, closer to me than ever before. Tell mewhat it is?"
"Music," she whispered, "I want music----"
I knew not what to answer, what to say. Can you blame me that, in mytroubled, aching heart, I found but commonplaces? For I thought ofthe harp, or of some stringed instrument that seemed part of her.
"You shall have it," I said gently, "and very soon. We shall carry younow into comfort, safety. You shall have no pain. Another momentand----"
"Music," she repeated, interrupting, "music as of long ago."
It was terrible. I said such stupid things. My mind seemed frozen.
"I would hear music," she whispered, "before I go again."
"Marion, you shall," I stammered. "Beethoven, Schumann,--what wouldplease you most? You shall have all."
"Yes, play to me. But those names"--she shook her head--"I do notknow."
I remember that my face was streaming, my hands so hot that her headseemed more than I could hold. I shifted my knees so that she mightlie more easily a little.
"God's music!" she cried aloud with startling abruptness; then,lowering her voice again and smiling sadly as though something cameback to her that she would fain forget, she added slowly, withsomething of mournful emphasis:
"I was a singer ..."
As though a flash of light had passed, some inner darkness was cleftasunder in me. Some heaviness shifted from my brain. It seemed theyears, the centuries, turned over like a wind-blown page. And out ofsome hidden inmost part of me involuntary words rose instantly:
"You sang God's music then ..."
The strange, unbidden sentence stirred her. Her head moved slightly;she smiled. Gazing into my eyes intently, as though to dispel a mistthat shrouded both our minds, she went on in a whisper that yet wasstartlingly distinct, though with little pauses drawn out between thephrases: "I was a singer... in the Temple. I sang--men--into evil.You ... I sang into ... evil."
There was a moment's pause, as a spasm of inexplicable pain passedthrough my heart like fire, and a sense of haunting things whereof noconscious memory remained came over me. The scene about me waveredbefore my eyes as if it would disappear.
"Yet you came to me when I lay dying at the last," I caught her thinclear whisper. "You said, 'Turn to God!'"
The whisper died away. The darkness flowed back upon my mind andthought. A silence followed. I heard the wind in the poplar overhead.The doctor moved impatiently, coming a few steps nearer, then turningaway again. I heard the sounds of tinkering with metal that thedriver made ten yards behind us. I turned angrily to make asign--when Marion's low voice, again more like the murmur of the windthan a living voice, rose into the still evening air:
"I have failed. And I shall try again."
She gazed up at me with that patient, generous love that seemedinexhaustible, and hardly knowing what to answer, nor how to comforther in that afflicting moment, I bent lower--or, rather, she drew myear closer to her lips. I think her great desire just then was toutter her own thought more fully before she passed. Certainly it wasno avowal or consolation from myself she sought.
"Your forgiveness," I heard distinctly, "I need your fullforgiveness."
It was for me a terrible and poignant moment. The emptiness of my pitybetrayed itself too mercilessly for me to bear; yet, before mybewilderment enabled me to frame an answer, she went on hurriedly,though with a faultless certainty: the meaning to her was clear asday:
"Born of love ... the only true forgiveness..."
A film formed slowly. Her eyes began to close, her breath died offinto a sigh; she smiled, but her head sank lower with her fadingstrength. And her final words went by me in that sigh:
"Yet love in you lies unawakened still... and I must try again...."
There was one more effort, painful with unexpressed fulfilment. Aflicker of awful yearning took her paling eyes. Life seemed tostammer, pause, then flush as with this last deep impulse to yield asecret she discerned for the first time fully, in the very act ofpassing out. The face, with its soft loveliness, turned grey in death.Upon the edge of a great disclosure--she was gone.
I remember that for a space of time there was silence all about us.The doctor still kept his back to us, the driver had ceased hiswretched hammering, I heard the wind in the poplar and the hum ofinsects. A bird sang loudly on a branch above; it seemed miles away,across an empty world.... Then, of a sudden, I became aware that theweight of the head and shoulders had dreadfully increased. I dared notturn my face lest I should look upon her whom I had deeplywronged--the forsaken tenement of this woman whose matchless love nowbegged with her dying breath for my forgiveness!
A cowardly desire to lose consciousness ran through me, to forgetmyself, to hide my shame with her in death; yet, even while this wasso, I sought most desperately through the depths of
my anguished pityto find some hint, if only the tiniest seed, of love--and found itnot.... The rest belonged to things unrealized....
I remember a hand being laid upon me. I lifted my head which hadfallen close against her cheek. The doctor stood beside me, his graveand kindly face bent low. He spoke some gentle words. I saw himreplacing the needle in its little leathern case, unused.
Marion was dead, her deep secret undisclosed. That which she yearnedto tell me was something which, in her brief period of devotion, shehad lived, had faithfully acted out, yet herself only dimly aware ofwhy it had to be. The solution of this problem of unrequited love layat last within her grasp; of a love that only asked to give of itsunquenched and unquenchable store, undismayed by the total absence ofresponse.
She passed from the world of speech and action with this intensedesire unsatisfied, and at the very moment--as with a drowning manwho sees his past--when the solution lay ready to her hand. She sawclearly, she understood, she burned to tell me. Upon the edge of fulldisclosure, she was gone, leaving me alone with my aching pity andwith my shame of unawakened love.
"I have failed, but I shall try again...."