The Lifting of a Finger/Chapter 20

WEARIED physically and not refreshed in mind, Francis returned from his walk as the sunshine fell aslant the grass. On all sides were signs of nature's resurrection. In the distant fields that checkered the hills farmers ploughed and planted, and in the trees the birds sang a jubilant chorus.

Everything—the trees, the moist brown earth, the very air—seemed brimming with fresh, warm life. But to Francis these influences brought no comfort. He was conscious of them all,—the warmth, the beauty, the sweetness of the springtime,—and he felt himself in contrast to be a thing dead, decayed, corrupt.

​All was quiet about the house as he approached, and the neatness of the place seemed a rebuke. Lawns and driveways were well kept, and everything about house and grounds showed signs of thrift and care.

On the broad piazza Francis paused and turned to look about him. The county contained no place that was so well cared for as his, and he had his wife to thank for it. She had taken upon herself the duties of master as well as mistress; he had done naught but despoil what her efforts had made beautiful.

He remembered with a horrible disgust of himself one of the nights when he had been drinking too much and had driven across the lawn, soaked and soft from a recent rain; and another time ​when his ruthless carriage-wheels had ruined a flower-bed.

Francis dropped listlessly to a seat on the railing of the piazza. He was tired—tired of battling with his love for a woman as far above him as the stars are above the earth they shine upon.

To love a woman and yet not try to win her love! 'Tis not an easy task for a man to set himself. Could he, by trying, make her love him? "When you choose to charm, you have a way about you that must win any woman," someone had said to him. The words came back to him now, but there came to his mind also other words, Margaret's when she had said, "The saddest fate that can befall a woman is to love a man she cannot look up to nor respect." ​Of course, she had been thinking of Somers.

Francis had heard the words with pity for her; now the remembrance of them stung his very soul. Should he not, even because he loved her, refrain from all attempts to win her heart? She had suffered much because of one unworthy man; all others, if they valued her peace of mind, surely ought to keep themselves out of her path.

Did she love Somers yet? Francis wondered. Ah, what a fool the man had been to throw away the heart of such a woman. If she loved him, if such a miracle could come to pass, what wondrous changes could she not work in him? But even then there would be always between them the past, the irrevocable past.

​Francis pulled himself together, sharply impatient at his futile daydreams, and passed into the hall. There the windows had been thrown open to let in the warm spring air, and through one of them Francis caught glimpses, between the curtains, of the purples and yellows of the pansies in Margaret's window-box and, just beyond, a cherrytree white with bloom.

The recess inside the window was Margaret's favorite reading-place. A book with a handkerchief between its pages lay there now, on a table beside a bowl of early wild-flowers, and the place seemed redolent of her presence, as though she had just left it.

The library was untenanted, but through the curtained door-way leading to a smaller room Francis heard the ​sound of voices. He softly pushed aside one of the portières and looked into the room. Margaret was sitting with her back towards him in a low chair by the window, and clinging to her knee was little Robert Grant, a child of one of the neighbors whom Margaret often invited to spend the day with her.

"And did the Princess May love the good Prince?" the boy was saying.

"No, dear," Margaret's voice replied; "the Princess could not love the good Prince Florizel; she had given her heart to Prince Charming, who was a very handsome Prince, but who lived a very wicked life. He took no pride in his houses or lands or even in his people, but trampled down the rights of others until there was no one left to love him but the Princess May."

​"Prince Charming must have been the baddest man that ever lived," murmured Robert, his big blue eyes fixed thoughtfully upon the distant hills.

"No, dear," said Margaret quickly; "there was just one good thing about him—not such a little thing either; he was not a hypocrite. He never tried to make anyone think him better than he was. And he was truthful, Bobby; he would not tell a lie."

Francis moved back a step and took a long breath, then leaned forward to hear more, scarcely daring to breathe again for fear of betraying his presence.

"Why did the Princess love Prince Charming if he was so bad?" questioned the child in his pretty treble. "Why did she not love the good Prince?"

​"I don't know, dear," Margaret answered. There was a note of weariness in her voice, and Francis fancied he heard her sigh. "The Princess did not want to love Prince Charming; she knew he was not worthy of any woman's love, and she despised him for his wickedness. And yet she loved him, she loved him; she could not help it."

Margaret stopped suddenly and went on in another tone. "I am tired, Bobby, so will you run and play now? and I will finish the story for you another day. Only remember, dear," Margaret concluded, softly stroking the boy's hair,—"remember you must try to grow up good as well as strong, and true as well as brave, and that when you find your Princess she will not have to cry because she loves you."

​Francis dropped the curtain and hurried into the hall as swiftly as he dared. He felt choked and stifled, and his heart seemed bursting in his bosom. He longed to get out-of-doors, where there was room to breathe, space to exult in.

As he left the library he found himself staggering, and leaned against the wall to steady himself, burying his face in his arms. "She loves me! she loves me!" he said softly again and again, and when he raised his head there were tears upon his cheeks.

At the hat-rack he caught up her cape and kissed its folds, and when he came to the table with her book upon it he purloined the handkerchief that lay there. He felt that he must have something belonging to her to crush against his heart.

​Outside the house the stir of the day's close blended with the hush of evening. Down to the farthest corner of the lawn Francis hurried and fell upon a rustic seat.

His wife loved him. There was nothing in heaven or earth that could give him greater joy. For the time even his regrets faded before his overwhelming exultation; he was spellbound and breathless with the wonder of it all.

All his senses were awake and quickened, and he was newly conscious of the sights and sounds of spring. The air he breathed was fragrant with newly turned earth and the smell of foliage; the songs of birds and the distant lowing of cattle sounded sweetly in his ears. He felt the spring because there was sunshine in his heart.