Flower of the Dusk | Page 4

sight but within hearing. Having observed that in her presence they laughed less, she spent her evenings alone unless they urged her to join them. She had a newspaper more than a week old, but, as yet, she had not read it. She sat staring into the shadows, with the light of her one candle flickering upon her face, nervously moving her work-worn hands.
"The other song," reminded Barbara, gently.
[Sidenote: Song of the Sunset]
"This one was about a sunset," he sighed. "It was such a sunset as was never on sea or land, because two who loved each other saw it together. God and all His angels had hung a marvellous tapestry from the high walls of Heaven, and it reached almost to the mountain-tops, where some of the little clouds sleep.
"The man said, 'Shall we always look for the sunsets together?'
"The woman smiled and answered, 'Yes, always.'
"'And,' the man continued, 'when one of us goes on the last long journey?'
"'Then,' answered the woman, 'the other will not be watching alone. For, I think, there in the West is the Golden City with the jasper walls and the jewelled foundations, where the twelve gates are twelve pearls.'"
There was a long silence. "And so--" said Barbara, softly.
Ambrose North lifted his grey head from his hands and rose to his feet unsteadily. "And so," he said, with difficulty, "she leans from the sunset toward him, but he can never see her, because he is blind. Oh, Barbara," he cried, passionately, "last night I dreamed that you could walk and I could see!"
"So we can, Daddy," said Barbara, very gently. "Our souls are neither blind nor lame. Here, I am eyes for you and you are feet for me, so we belong together. And--past the sunset----"
"Past the sunset," repeated the old man, dreamily, "soul and body shall be as one. We must wait--for life is made up of waiting--and make what songs we can."
"I think, Father, that a song should be in poetry, shouldn't it?"
[Sidenote: The Real Song]
"Some of them are, but more are not. Some are music and some are words, and some, like prayers, are feeling. The real song is in the thrush's heart, not in the silvery rain of sound that comes from the green boughs in Spring. When you open the door of your heart and let all the joy rush out, laughing--then you are making a song."
"But--is there always joy?"
"Yes, though sometimes it is sadly covered up with other things. We must find it and divide it, for only in that way it grows. Good-night, my dear."
He bent to kiss her, while Miriam, with her heart full of nameless yearning, watched them from the far shadows. The sound of his footsteps died away and a distant door closed. Soon afterward Miriam took her candle and went noiselessly upstairs, but she did not say good-night to Barbara.
[Sidenote: Midnight]
Until midnight, the girl sat at her sewing, taking the finest of stitches in tuck and hem. The lamp burning low made her needle fly swiftly. In her own room was an old chest nearly full of dainty garments which she was never to wear. She had wrought miracles of embroidery upon some of them, and others were unadorned save by tucks and lace.
When the work was finished, she folded it and laid it aside, then put away her thimble and thread. "When the guests come to the hotel," she thought--"ah, when they come, and buy all the things I've made the past year, and the preserves and the candied orange peel, the rag rugs and the quilts, then----"
[Sidenote: Dying Embers]
So Barbara fell a-dreaming, and the light of the dying embers lay lovingly upon her face, already transfigured by tenderness into beauty beyond words. The lamp went out and little by little the room faded into twilight, then into night. It was quite dark when she leaned over and picked up her crutches.
"Dear, dear father," she breathed. "He must never know!"

II
Miss Mattie
Miss Mattie was getting supper, sustained by the comforting thought that her task was utterly beneath her and had been forced upon her by the mysterious workings of an untoward Fate. She was not really "Miss," since she had been married and widowed, and a grown son was waiting impatiently in the sitting-room for his evening meal, but her neighbours, nearly all of whom had known her before her marriage, still called her "Miss Mattie."
[Sidenote: "Old Maids"]
The arbitrary social distinctions, made regardless of personality, are often cruelly ironical. Many a man, incapable by nature of life-long devotion to one woman, becomes a husband in half an hour, duly sanctioned by Church and State. A woman who remains unmarried, because, with fine courage, she will have her true mate or none, is called "an old maid." She may have the heart of a