Part 70 (1/2)
”Give me a few minutes to think,” she pleaded, and he saw, from the quick rise and fall of her bosom and the nervous clasp of her hands, that she was deeply agitated. She turned from him and looked wistfully at the young tree on which she had inscribed her name the day she had promised Mr. Eltinge to receive all heavenly influences and guidance. She soon lifted her eyes above the tree and her lips moved in earnest prayer as ever came from a human heart. She was facing the sorest temptation of her life, for she had only to be silent now, she believed, and the success of her efforts to win him from Jennie Burton would be complete. If left to himself in this wild, distracted mood he would indeed break every tie that bound him to her rival; but after time had blunted his poignant self-condemnation he would inevitably come back to her. The conscience whispered: ”Who forgave you here? What did you promise here? What does that tree mean with its branches reaching out towards heaven? What would you think of Jennie Burton were she trying to win him from you?”
”O Friend of the weak! be though my strength in this moment of desperate need,” she sighed.
Van Berg watched her with increasing wonder, and his heart beat thick and fast as she at last turned to him with an expression such as he never had seen before on a human face. Was it the autumn sunlight that illumined her features? He learned eventually that it was the spiritual radiance of the n.o.blest self-sacrifice of which a woman is capable.
”Mr. Van Berg,” she said, in tones that were quiet and firm, ”please take Mr. Eltinge's seat, for I wish to speak to you as a friend.”
He obeyed mechanically, without removing his eyes from her face.
”I once took counsel of pa.s.sion and despair,” she resumed, ”and you know what might have resulted, but on this spot G.o.d forgave me and I promised to try to do right. With shame I confess I have not fully kept that promise, but I shall try to do so hereafter, be the consequences what they may. Pardon me for speaking so plainly, but you are now taking counsel of pa.s.sion and turning your back on duty. While almost insane from self-reproach and wounded pride you are taking steps that may blast your own life and the lives of others. To my mind there is an infinite distance between the error you naturally fell into in view of Miss Burton's loveliness of character and any base intent, but even if I should share in your harsh judgement--which I never can--I would still say that you cannot help the past, and you are now bound by all that's sacred to ask only what is right, and to do that at every cost to yourself.
You are pledged to Miss Burton, and you must make good your pledge.”
”What! I go to that snow-white maiden with a lie on my lips!” he exclaimed indignantly.
”No! go to her with truth on your lips and in your heart, except as in unselfish loyalty to her and to your word you may hide some truth that would give her pain. Mr. Van Berg, you word is pledged.
You have won her love and this is your only honorable course. Thus far you have not done her intentional wrong, but if you rush away from duty now in cowardly flight you will do her a bitter and fatal wrong, for she loves you as only few women can love. She has grown wan and pale in your absence, and it touched me to the heart to see her yesterday, though she made such brave efforts to be cheerful and to encourage father. O G.o.d, forgive me that I--Go to her when you have become calm--your true self. Love like hers will take what you can give till you can give more, and surely one so lovely will soon win all. If ever I have seen human idolatry in any face it has been in hers, and she will soon banish all this wild pa.s.sion from your mind. But be that as it may you must keep your word if you would keep my respect, and I would not lose my respect for you for the world. I know you too well to doubt but that you will take up this sacred duty and seek to perform it with the whole strength of your manhood.”
Never for a moment had Van Berg removed his eyes from Ida's face, and her words and manner seemed both to awe and control him. As she spoke, his expression became quiet and strong, and when she concluded he came to her side and said earnestly:
”Miss Mayhew, since it is still possible, I will keep your respect, for it is absolutely essential to me. G.o.d has indeed given you a woman's soul, and he NEVER MADE A n.o.bLER WOMAN. You are a friend in truth and not in name, and you have saved me from madly destroying my own future, and perhaps the future of others, which is of far more consequence. If I fail in obeying both the letter and spirit of your words it will be because I cannot help myself.”
Her face, which had been so sweet and luminous with her generous impulse and n.o.ble thoughts, was growing very pale now, but she rose and gave him her hand, saying with a faint smile that was like the fading light of evening, ”I knew you would not disappoint me; I was sure you were worthy of my trust. Let the honest right be our motto henceforth, and all will be well some day. Good-by.”
He pressed her hand in both of his as he said fervently, ”G.o.d bless you, Ida Mayhew!” Then he turned and hastened away, flying from his own weakness and a womanly loveliness which at the moment far excelled any ideal he had ever formed.
He had scarcely reached the road before he remembered that he had left his sketch-book, and he went back for it, but as he turned the corner of the shady path he stopped instantly. The strong, clear-eyed maiden who had rallied the forces of his shattered manhood, and given him the vantage-ground again in life's battle, had bowed her head on the arm of the rustic seat and was sobbing convulsively. Indeed, her grief was so uncontrollable and pa.s.sionate that in his very soul he trembled before it.
”Oh, Jennie Burton,” she moaned, ”it would have been easier for me to die for you than to give him up. G.o.d help him--G.o.d help me through the dreadful years to come!”
His first impulse was to spring to her side, but he hesitated, and then with a gesture and look of infinite regret he turned and stole silently away.
Chapter LIII. A Night's Vigil.
As Van Berg left Mr. Eltinge's grounds he had the aspect of a man who had seen a vision. He had seen more, for the human face expressive of absolute, even though brief, mastery over evil is a n.o.bler object than can be the serene visage of a sinless and untempted angel.
At last he understood Ida Mayhew. If he had deeply honored her when he supposed that as a sincere, honest friend only she had spoken her strong, true words, which might save him from wrecking his life from impulses of shame and wounded pride, how instantaneously was this honor changed into reverence and wonder as he recognized her self-sacrifice at the dictates of conscience. All was now perfectly clear. The truth of her love had flashed out from the dark cloud of her pa.s.sionate grief, and in its white radiance all the baffling mystery of her past action was dissipated instantly. Now he knew why the brilliant music at the concert garden could not brighten her face, and the end of the symphony saw her in tears. Now he understood why she could not be Jennie Burton's friend, even though capable of becoming a martyr for her sake from a sense of duty. The despairing farewell letter she had once written to him now became fraught with a deeper meaning, and he saw that in throwing away the imperfect rose-bud, and in looking at her as a creature akin to Sibley, he had inflicted mortal wounds on a heart that gave him only love in return. In her desperate effort to conceal an unsought love she had sought the nearest covert, and the stains Sibley had left upon her were no more hers than if he had been a blackened wall. After all her woman's soul had come to her as in the old and simple times when even water nymphs had hearts, and love was still the mightiest force in the universe.
His feeling now was far too deep for his former half-frenzied excitement. There was not a trace of exultation in his manner, and there was indeed no ground for rapture. Only the knowledge that he carried away her respect, and that he was going to the performance of what he believed a sacred duty, kept him from despair.
He did not blame himself as bitterly as might have been supposed that he had not discovered her secret earlier, and it increased his admiration for her, if that were possible, that she had so carefully maintained her maidenly reserve. A conceited man, or at least a man whose soul was infested with the meanest kind of conceit--that of imagining that the woman who gives him a friendly word or smile is disposed to throw herself into his arms--would no doubt have surmised her secret before; but although Van Berg was intensely proud, as we have seen, and had been rendered self-complacent and self-confident by the circ.u.mstances of his lot, he had none of this contemptible vanity. The discovery of Ida's love caused him far greater surprise than when he recognized his own, and it was a source of deep satisfaction to him that this modern and conventional Undine had received a nature of such true and womanly delicacy that it had led her to conceal her love like the trailing-arbutus that hides its fragrant blossoms under fallen leaves.
The light had been so clear that he even saw the temptation which he unconsciously had suggested to her while in the city. Unlike the little violet that weakly bowed its head and died because the brook would not stop, she had resolutely set about the task of making him stop, and yet never let him suspect that she was even looking at him. Hence her attempt to penetrate the wilderness of knowledge which was at once so pathetic and comical; hence also her wish to learn the authors and subjects which interested him.
”And she had every reason to believe that she might have won me from the one honorable allegiance I can give,” he exclaimed, in deep humiliation, ”and probably she would have done so eventually had she not acted liek a saint rather than a woman. I've lost faith utterly in Harold Van Berg, and it will require a great many years to regain it.”
When he reached a dense tract of woodland through which the road ran, he concealed himself and waited till she should pa.s.s. Two hours elapsed before she did so. The pa.s.sionate grief that had overwhelmed her was no slight and pa.s.sing gust. He saw that she leaned back weakly and languidly in the phaeton, and had hidden her face by a vail of double thickness. He followed her at a distance far too great for recognition until she entered the hotel, and then sought to obtain a little rest and food at the nearest village inn; for he found now that his fierce paroxysm of rage and mental torment was over, he had become very faint and exhausted. After he had regained somewhat the power to think and act, he turned his steps towards a narrow, secluded ravine, about a mile from the hotel, knowing that here he would find the deepest solitude in which to grow calm and prepare himself for the quiet self-sacrifice of which Ida had given the example, and which no eye must be able to detect save his to whom the secrets of all hearts are open.
He made no effort to follow any path, but sprang carelessly and rapidly down the steep hillside. When he had almost reached the bottom of the ravine, his foot slipped on a rock half hidden by leaves, and he fell and rolled helplessly down. Before he could recover himself, the rock, which had been loosely imbedded in the soil and which his foot had struck so heavily, rolled after him and on his leg and foot. In sudden and increasing dismay, he found that he could not extricate himself. The stone would have been beyond his ability to lift even if he had the full use of all his powers; but he was held in a position that gave him very little chance to exert his strength.
When he found that it was utterly impossible to push the stone away, he tried to excavate the earth, by means of sticks and his small pocket-knife, from under his leg, but soon found, with a sense of mortal fear, that his limb was resting in a little depression between two other large rocks deeply imbedded in the bottom of the ravine. This depression, and the soft, dry leaves which had covered it like a cus.h.i.+on, prevented the stone from crus.h.i.+ng his limb and foot, but also held him in a sort of natural sock.