The Attic Guest: A Novel

by Robert E. Knowles

His towering figure turned where he stood; and his burning eyes, aglow with the passion that was rending him, leaped to where I still pointed with outstretched hand. Then I straightened myself too, as one might gather his soul for the Judgment Day, and joined my gaze with his. The eyes of all in the house were upon us, I suppose—but I shall never know. We stood together, oblivious to all except the destiny of weal or woe that waited us, looking, both looking, as the eye of the Eternal itself might look. We could not—we dared not—be sure, lest we might court the bitterness of death. The light was not bright enough, or true enough—for us to stake our souls. We feared exceedingly; and for each other; wherefore neither spoke any word.

The scene was the great Broadway scene, where the anguished father finds his son at last. And the tattered youth upon whom that father—that acting father—gazed, on him our eyes were set in dreadful silence, in questioning that involved our souls. We could not—we dared not—know; but suddenly the old man on the stage—oh! the perjured wastery of simulated love like that—broke forth with a wild outcry of love and rapture as he leaped towards the soiled and wasted prodigal before him.

And then—and then—mingling with the father's chant, there came from the bowed and broken wanderer one single note; a little cry, a muffled plaint of penitence and hope. It was such a little sound, subdued and faltering as became a broken heart, and it was almost lost in the father's louder strain—but I heard it, and my soul laid hold of God. Only a stifled cry—but it was the same I had heard when I first came out of the valley and my new-born baby boy lay helpless at my breast; the same I had heard a thousand times when he was hurt or wronged and toddled in to me with the boyish story of his grief; the same I had heard when he came home that night and told me of his sin; the same I had heard when he bent above his sleeping sister and kissed her a long farewell.

"Oh, Gordon," I said, fainting, "it's Harold—it's our Harold!"

He knew it too. And he left me where I was, half conscious in uncle's arms. I see it all again, dismantled though I was, as in a dream. The curtain dropped just as uncle's arm received me, as Gordon glided towards the narrow half-hidden passageway leading to the stage. Slowly it fell, right down close to the floor, shutting out the last fragment of the vision that had flooded our hearts with heaven. Ah, me! no one there—not even uncle—knew that for us life's curtain had really risen, the play, the wonderful play of life, only just begun.

The orchestra had softly started some subdued and sympathetic air; I knew not, nor yet do know, what strain it was—but it fell on my reviving heart with the sweetness of such music as angels make—and my eyes flew after Gordon as he was swallowed up of the shadowy passageway that led back to that mysterious region where actors are men and women, players now no more. I think somebody, some hireling who knew not what he did, tried to turn Gordon from his course—as well have tried to stop Niagara. I fancy I caught a glimpse of him as he swept the intruder by—his eye was flashing, fearful in its purpose of love and power, as though he were asserting his claim to life itself.

He never stopped—this was described to me afterwards—till he stood beside the pair of actors, the old man and the young, already repairing to the dressing-room behind. And the old man's face, so they told me, was a study to behold as he was swiftly brushed aside, dispossessed, the unreality swallowed up of Life as Gordon took the tattered form into the arms that long emptiness had clothed with almost savage strength.

"Oh, my son! Oh, Harold, my son, my son!" was Gordon's low cry that all about could hear; for the stillness of the grave was on every heart. "Come, come, we'll go to mother," came a moment later as he turned and tried to lead Harold gently away.

I do not know all the son said to the father. But Gordon told me after how Harold clung to him as though he were hiding for his life, speaking no word, but burying his face as though none must see the shame—or the holy gladness; and in a minute or two, though I know not how long it was, some one in authority said that the play must go on, that the audience would be impatient and indignant.

"Then come, my son," said Gordon; "get your clothes on, Harold, and we'll go—your mother, your mother knows it's you," his face radiant, I ween, as it turned upon his boy.