The Romance of Zion Chapel Part 18

For answer he looked at her with awed and suddenly enlightened eyes.

"Do you mean that?" he asked. "You mustn't mean that."

"Do you think I could care any more for life?" she asked. "Would you?"

"No," he answered simply.

"May I, then?"

His eyes could alone answer. He knew her love too well to affect that there would be any loss to her in the life she would thus be leaving.

"But Jenny?"

"If Jenny is there, she will understand now."

I can conceive no happier, completer moment than that which followed for these two, no more una.s.sailable peace. If their lives were to be quite put out, they would be extinguished together; if they were to begin anew elsewhere, they would begin anew together; and meanwhile nothing that could happen could harm them, could rob them of the desire of their hearts. At the worst, they would attain their best; at the very least, they would win their most: they would die together.

To end together. It matters not how few or many years love and the beloved live their days side by side, even though their love be but the morning and the evening of one divine day, so that there be no bereaved and lonely to-morrow. The hour that takes one and not the other takes with it too all the acc.u.mulated happiness of all the years. That hour these two were to escape. Yet was there no need of haste. So long as they might, they would sit together in the sun of life. For a little longer they would say, "How wonderful life is!"--for a little longer make sure of each other.

Your eyes, Isabel! Your hair, Isabel! Your dear mouth, Isabel!

A little longer.

"Shall we go to-night?"

"Not yet...perhaps to-morrow, Isabel."

But Theophil was now very near death, and he might forget if he lingered on much more. Not wearily, but with music and singing must they pa.s.s through the strange gate of Death.

So at length, one June evening, Isabel made for them one last little feast,--once more wine and great grapes set out upon a little table at Theophil's bedside; and on the table, too, was the little sealed packet Isabel had taken from the cupboard in her desk.

Drawing her chair close up to his pillow, she poured out their wine, and they drank it and ate the grapes together,--no happier people in G.o.d's strange world.

As the feast neared its end, Isabel rose, and stirring the little fire into a blaze, turned out the lamps, so that the room was lit only with the light from the fire. Then she refilled their gla.s.ses with wine, and breaking the seal of the little white packet, took from it a small bottle of green crystal, the contents of which she mingled with the wine.

Then she and Theophil held up their gla.s.ses to each other.

"Let us go deeper into the wood," she said softly.

"How wonderful life has been!" said Theophil; and the two drank, with their eyes firm and sweet upon each other.

Then Isabel sat down again by Theophil's side, and leaning her head against his on the pillow, she took his hand. And the room became a heaven of silence.

Whoso would say of these two lives, "How sad!" let him consider the quality of his own happiness; and whoso would regard the life of Theophilus Londonderry as a failure, let him, too, consider the value of his own success.