“Father,” called out the son. The father rose to his feet and calmly said: “My boy, pity me. I’m weak. But oh, you never knew what it is to have your life sawn in twain and be compelled then to drag your half and lacerated being along the over-clouded vales of an undesired existence!”
“My mother’s tomb?”
“Yes. I promised, as my last service to you, to bring you to it. Its study shall be the finish of your schooling.”
Just then the clouds broke away and the moonlight fell full upon the monument. It was a shaft, terminating in a crucifix; by its side were two forms, one that of St. John, with face turned toward the figure of the dying Savior; the other that of a woman kneeling, her face buried in her hands. On the base of the cross was the brief sentence: “Behold thy mother.” As the youth gazed on the farewell charge of Jesus to John, when He commended to the care of that beloved disciple His sorrowing mother, he started. It seemed as if the words had grown out of the marble suddenly while he was gazing, and for himself only. He felt as if he could almost embrace the stone.
The two men were silent and heart full. After a long time, they simultaneously turned away toward Bethany. They came to a turn in the road that would shut out all view of the garden of sorrow, and the elder paused, loath to leave the place where his heart was buried.
Presently he spoke again, as if unconscious of any other being with him: “Oh, Miriamne, I failed to carry out the work thou left’st me! How could I, alone? I was but half a man without thee, my other self! Miriamne, Miriamne, I can be only nothing when I can not be with thee.” Then the old man lifted his hands as in benediction or embrace, and continued: “Farewell, a last farewell, sweet, white soul, until upon the tearless, healing shores of light I say good morning!”
There was a mighty pathos in the display of this old, ripe, strong grief, which lived on a love that could not die. The man was a study. He was of fine fibre, almost effeminate, never firm, except in his affection for that one woman. That was the one strong trend, the one anchorage of his life. He need not study the man far, who strove to know him, to discover that this tenacity was not natural to him always. It had been a growth under the influence of the peerless wife.
“Shall we go on?” after a little asked the son. With a shudder and a suppressed sob the elder moved on, but with laggard step, which soon paused. Just now, the moon being beclouded, it was very dark about them, and the father reached out his hand and drew the youth to his embrace. He whispered: “Winfred, son of Miriamne, you bear her image in your face, bear it ever in heart, as well. I’m glad you’re not so like me.” The son tried to speak, but the elder interrupted:
“You’ll ere long be fatherless as well as motherless, but take your mother for your guiding-star. You know what your birth cost her. By her death you obtained life, as by the Christ’s, immortality. She saved others, she could not save herself; but if you’re true to her memory she’ll have a mother’s immortality, that life that lives in the life of her child.”