Restless Earth/Chapter 25

The afternoon sun shone into the room where Grace Harley lay. The window curtains waved lazily, and in the room there brooded a peace which had long been absent from it.

James Harley, clothed and in his right mind, sat at the bedside of his wife looking thoughtfully at her hands. Gentle hands they were; hands which traced endlessly the embroidered pattern of the counterpane; soft hands, doomed to grope in eternal darkness.

In his own wasted hands, hanging between his knees, he held a single sheet of notepaper. He had read the words upon it many times, aloud and silently. He knew them by heart.

James Harley was puzzled. He thought he had not slept. Yet he must have done so, for he had not heard Patricia depart.

​He had assisted her to her bed, and had left her to fling himself upon his knees at the bedside of his wife. He had been crushed with unutterable shame and remorse, and the dark hours had been hours of intense suffering.

Yet he must have slept; and Patricia had gone before he could beg her forgiveness and utter his heart-felt thanks for her care of Grace.

He sat with the sunlight upon his greying hair, his shoulders drooping pathetically—the pitiful shadow of the man he had been. In his heart was a curious emptiness, a sense of dull finality. He felt old and tired.

A gentle hand touched his arm, settling upon it as lightly as a bird. He turned to smile upon the bandaged face of his wife, and his own hand covered hers.

“Jimmy, we haven’t quite arrived at the happy ending, have we?”

He shook his head slowly.

“This is a happier ending than I could have dreamed during these last weeks, Grace,” he answered softly.

“But it isn’t complete, Jimmy, is it?”

“There is never completeness in happy endings, my dear. It is not in the nature of things.”

“You evade the point, Jimmy. Our happiness—yours and mine—is clouded by the thought of—Pat.”

“Grace!”

“Oh, I do not mean that we fear she will come between us again. I mean that we are, and always will be, conscious that she is unhappy.”

James Harley was silent.

“Pat deserves happiness, Jlmmy And I stand in her way—and in your way———”

“Oh, my dear! You must not say such things.”

“You’re a dear old Jimmy to speak like that. It is the way you will always speak to me. But, in this darkness, Jimmy, I can read your heart. I see some things much more clearly now that I am blind.”

​“Please, Grace———”

Harley lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them gently, as he had done in the days of their courtship. She did not attempt to stay him; but she shook her head and smiled pityingly with her lips.

“I love you to do that, Jimmy,” she said softly.

They were silent for a long time, Harley holding her hands tenderly.

“Perhaps the happy ending is not very far away for all of us,” she said at last, turning her face to the sun.

“What do you mean?” he asked, looking at her sharply, his heart seeming to contract.

“The darkness will grow deeper and eternal for me—soon, Jimmy,” she answered gently; “and I shall go to find Joan.”

He caressed her hands, kissing them again. His eyes suffused and his throat filled.

“Grace, you must not say these things,” he said unsteadily. “The sun will shine upon us both for many years, and our happiness will be fuller because we have suffered. I will never leave you———”

“I know you won’t, Jimmy; and I will not ask you to—although I am blind and the little beauty I had is utterly destroyed. I know you will be true and kind to me, fighting down the thoughts of Pat which will come to you, and—I will be grateful, very grateful. But I shall keep my thoughts upon the happy ending, Jimmy. It may not come to-day, or to-morrow, or for years; but it will come, Jimmy. And I want you to promise me that, when it does come, neither you nor Pat will shun the place where I—where I sleep. For I love you both, dear, as you love both of us.”

Harley could not speak. Emotion choked him.

“Read something to me, Jimmy,” begged Grace lightly, after a long silence.