The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
I had no leisure to think how he was, or whether he could hear what I
said. I had my message to deliver. "Father," I said, laboring with my
panting breath, "it is for this that heaven has opened, and one whom I
never saw, one whom I know not, has taken possession of me. Had we been
less earthly, we should have seen her--herself, and not merely her image.
I have not even known what she meant. I have been as a fool without
understanding. This is the third time I have come to you with her
message, without knowing what to say. But now I have found it out. This
is her message. I have found it out at last." There was an awful
pause,--a pause in which no one moved or breathed. Then there came a
broken voice out of my father's chair. He had not understood, though I
think he heard what I said. He put out two feeble hands. "Phil--I think I
am dying--has she--has she come for me?" he said.
We had to carry him to his bed. What struggles he had gone through before
I cannot tell. He had stood fast, and had refused to be moved, and now he
fell,--like an old tower, like an old tree. The necessity there was for
thinking of him saved me from the physical consequences which had
prostrated me on a former occasion. I had no leisure now for any
consciousness of how matters went with myself.
His delusion was not wonderful, but most natural. She was clothed in
black from head to foot, instead of the white dress of the portrait. She
had no knowledge of the conflict, of nothing but that she was called for,
that her fate might depend on the next few minutes. In her eyes there was
a pathetic question, a line of anxiety in the lids, an innocent appeal in
the looks. And the face the same: the same lips, sensitive, ready to
quiver; the same innocent, candid brow; the look of a common race, which
is more subtle than mere resemblance. How I knew that it was so I cannot
tell, nor any man. It was the other, the elder,--ah, no! not elder; the
ever young, the Agnes to whom age can never come, she who they say was
the mother of a man who never saw her,--it was she who led her kinswoman,
her representative, into our hearts.
* * * * *
My father recovered after a few days: he had taken cold, it was said, the
day before; and naturally, at seventy, a small matter is enough to upset
the balance even of a strong man. He got quite well; but he was willing
enough afterwards to leave the management of that ticklish kind of
property which involves human well-being in my hands, who could move
about more freely, and see with my own eyes how things were going on. He
liked home better, and had more pleasure in his personal existence in the
end of his life. Agnes is now my wife, as he had, of course, foreseen. It
was not merely the disinclination to receive her father's daughter, or to
take upon him a new responsibility, that had moved him, to do him
justice; but both these motives had told strongly. I have never been
told, and now will never be told, what his griefs against my mother's
family, and specially against that cousin, had been; but that he had been
very determined, deeply prejudiced, there can be no doubt. It turned out
after, that the first occasion on which I had been mysteriously
commissioned to him with a message which I did not understand, and which
for that time he did not understand, was the evening of the day on which
he had received the dead man's letter, appealing to him--to him, a man
whom he had wronged--on behalf of the child who was about to be left
friendless in the world. The second time, further letters--from the nurse
who was the only guardian of the orphan, and the chaplain of the place
where her father had died, taking it for granted that my father's house
was her natural refuge--had been received. The third I have already
described, and its results.
For a long time after, my mind was never without a lurking fear that the
influence which had once taken possession of me might return again. Why
should I have feared to be influenced, to be the messenger of a blessed
creature, whose wishes could be nothing but heavenly? Who can say? Flesh
and blood is not made for such encounters: they were more than I could
bear. But nothing of the kind has ever occurred again.
Agnes had her peaceful domestic throne established under the picture.
My father wished it to be so, and spent his evenings there in the
warmth and light, instead of in the old library,--in the narrow circle
cleared by our lamp out of the darkness, as long as he lived. It is
supposed by strangers that the picture on the wall is that of my wife;
and I have always been glad that it should be so supposed. She who was
my mother, who came back to me and became as my soul for three strange
moments and no more, but with whom I can feel no credible relationship
as she stands there, has retired for me into the tender regions of the
unseen. She has passed once more into the secret company of those
shadows, who can only become real in an atmosphere fitted to modify and
harmonize all differences, and make all wonders possible,--the light of
the perfect day.