Part 39 (1/2)
”Oh!” she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. ”How you frightened me! I didn't know there was anybody here. Don't you want a light?”
”No.”
”Has--has Mr. Benton gone?”
”Yes.”
”That's good. Supper's ready.”
”I don't want anything.”
”Mercy, Martin! You ain't sick?”
”No.”
”But you must be hungry.”
”No. I'm not.”
Still the woman lingered; then making a heroic plunge, she faltered:
”There--there ain't nothin' the matter, is there?”
So genuine was the sympathy beneath the quavering inquiry that it brought to Martin's troubled heart a gratifying sense of warmth and fellows.h.i.+p.
”No,” he said, his impatience melting to gentleness. ”Don't worry, Jane.
I've just got to do a little thinking by myself, that's all.”
”It ain't money you're fussin' over then,” said his sister, with a sigh of relief.
”No--no, indeed. It's nothin' to do with money.”
”I'm thankful for that.”
Nevertheless as he mounted to his room, Martin reflected that after all it was money which was at the storm center of his difficulties. He had not thought at all of the matter from its financial aspect. Yet even if he had done so in the first place, it would have had no influence upon his decision. He didn't care a curse for the money. To carry his point, he would have tossed aside a fortune twice as large. The issue he confronted, stripped of all its distractions, was simply whether his love were potent enough to overmaster his pride and bring it to its knees.
Even for the sake of Lucy Webster, whom he now realized he loved with a pa.s.sion more deep-rooted than he had dreamed, could he compel himself to do the thing he had staked his oath he would not do?
Until this moment he had never actually examined his affection for the girl. Events had shaped themselves so naturally that in cowardly fas.h.i.+on he had basked in the joy of the present and not troubled his mind to inquire whither the phantasies of this lotus-eater's existence were leading him. When a clamoring conscience had lifted up its voice, he had stilled it with plat.i.tudes. The impact of the crisis he now faced had, however, jarred him out of his tranquillity and brought him to an appreciation of his position.
He loved Lucy Webster with sincere devotion. All he had in the world he would gladly cast at her feet,--his name, his heart, his worldly possessions; only one reservation did he make to the completeness of his surrender. His pride he could not bend. It was not that he did not wish to bend it. The act was impossible. Keenly as he scorned himself, he could not concede a victory to Ellen Webster,--not for any one on earth.
The jests of the townsfolk were nothing. He did not lack courage to laugh back into the faces of the jeering mult.i.tude. But to own himself beaten by a mocking ghost, a specter from another sphere; to relinquish for her gratification the traditions of his race and the trust of his fathers; to leave her triumphant on the field,--this he could not do for any woman living--or dead.
Ah, it was a clever net the old woman had spun to ensnare him, more clever than she knew, unless by some occult power she was cognizant of his affection for Lucy. Could it be? The thought arrested him.
Had Ellen guessed his secret, and, armed with the knowledge, shaped her revenge accordingly? If so, she was a thousand times more cruel than he had imagined her capable of being, and it gave quite a different slant to her perfidy. Suppose she had suspected he loved Lucy and that Lucy loved him. Then her plot was one to separate them, and the very course he was following was the result she had striven to bring about. She had meant to wreck his happiness and that of the woman he loved; she had planned, schemed, worked to do so.
Martin threw back his head and laughed defiantly up at the ceiling. Well, she should not succeed. He would marry Lucy, and he would rebuild the wall: and with every stone he put in place he would shout to the confines of the universe, to the planets where Ellen Webster's spirit lurked, to the grave that harbored her bones: