The Path of a Star

by Sara Jeannette Duncan

“But the Mother Superior—you know how particular about the rules—”

“Say nothing about it. Go to bed. I am not coming.”

“Then, Miss Howe, I shall be obliged to report it.”

“Report and be—report if you like. There is nothing for you to do here to-night,” and Hilda softly closed the door. There was a whispered expostulation when Sister Margaret came back, but Miss Howe said, “It is arranged,” and with a little silent nod of appreciation the Sister settled into her chair, her finger marking a place in the Church Service. Hilda sat nearer to the bed, her elbow on the table, shading her eyes from the lamp, and watched.

“Is it not odd,” whispered Sister Margaret, as the night wore on, “he has refused to be confessed before he goes? He will not see the Brother Superior—or any of them. Strange, is it not?”

Together they watched the quick short breathing. It seemed strangely impossible to sleep against such odds. They saw the lines of the face grow sharper and whiter, the dark eye-sockets sink to a curious roundness, a greyness gather about the mouth. There were times when they looked at each other in the last surmise. Yet the feeble pulse persisted—persisted.

“I believe now,” said Sister Margaret, “that he may go on like this until the morning. I am going to take half an hour's nap. Rouse me at once if he wakes,” and she took an attitude of casual repose, turning the Prayer-book open on her knee for readier use, open at “Prayers for the Dying.”

The jackals had wailed themselves out, and there was a long, dark period when nothing but the sudden cry of a night bird in the hospital garden came between Hilda and the very vivid perception she had at that hour of the value and significance of the earthly lot. She lifted her head and listened to that, it seemed a comment. Suddenly, then, a harsh quarrelling of dogs—Christian dogs—arose in the distance and died away, and again there was night and silence. Night for hours. Time for reflection, alone with death and the lamp, upon the year that had been very valuable. “I would have married you,” she whispered. “Yes, I would.” Later her lips moved again. “I would have taken the consequence;” and again, “I would have paid any penalty.” There he lay, a burden that she would never bear, a burden that would be gone in the morning. There were moments when she cried out on Fate for doing her this kindness.

The long singing drone of a steamer's signal came across the city from the river, once, twice, thrice; and presently the sparrows began their twittering in the bushes near the verandah, an unexpected unanimous bird talk that died as suddenly and as irrelevantly away. A conservancy cart lumbered past creaking; the far shrill whistle of an awakening factory cut the air from Howrah; the first solitary foot smote through the dawn upon the pavement. The light showed grey beyond the scanty curtains. A noise of something being moved reverberated in the hospital below, and Arnold opened his eyes. They made him in a manner himself again, and he fixed them upon Hilda as if they could never alter. She leaned nearer him and made a sign of inquiry toward the sleeping Sister, with the farewells, the commendations of poor mortality speeding itself forth, lying upon her lap. Arnold comprehended, and she was amazed to see the mask of his face charge itself with a faint smile as he shook his head. He made a little movement; she saw what he wanted and took his hand in hers. The smile was still in his eyes as he looked at her, and then at the cheated Sister. “I would have married you,” she whispered passionately as if that could stay him. “Yes, I would.”

So in the end he trusted the new wings of his mortal love to bear his soul to its immortality. They carried their burden buoyantly, it was such a little way. The lamp was still holding its own against the paleness from the windows when the meaning finally went out of his clasp of Hilda's hand, without a struggle to stay, and she saw that in an instant when she was not looking, he had closed his eyes upon the world. She sat on beside him for a long time after that, watching tenderly, and would not withdraw her hand—it seemed an abandonment.