Part 38 (1/2)
”You have a great many friends, have you not?” she said.
”Yes, very many. A man cannot have too many of the right sort.”
”I do not think you and I mean the same thing by friends.h.i.+p,” said Joe. ”I should say one cannot have too few.”
”I mean friends who will help you at the right moment, that is, when you ask help. Surely it must be good to have many.”
”Everything that you do and say always turns to one and the same end,”
said Joe, a little impatiently. ”The one thing you live for is power and the hope of power. Is there nothing in the world worth while save that?”
”Power itself is worth nothing. It is the thing one means to get with it that is the real test.”
”Of course. But tell me, is anything you can obtain by all the power the world holds better than the simple happiness of natural people, who are born and live good lives, and--fall in love, and marry, and that sort of thing, and are happy, and die?” Joe looked down and turned the leaf she held in her fingers, as she stated her proposition.
John Harrington paused before he answered. A moment earlier he had been as calm and cold as he was wont to be; now, he suddenly hesitated. The strong blood rushed to his brain and beat furiously in his temples, and then sank heavily back to his heart, leaving his face very pale. His fingers wrung each other fiercely for a moment. He looked away at the trees; he turned to Josephine Thorn; and then once more he gazed at the dark foliage, motionless in the hot air of the summer's afternoon.
”Yes,” he said, ”I think there are things much better than those in the world.” But his voice shook strangely, and there was no true ring in it.
Joe sighed again.
In the distance she could see Ronald and Sybil, as they stood under the porch shaking hands with the departing guests. She looked at them, so radiant and beautiful with the fulfilled joy of a perfect love, and she looked at the stern, strong man by her side, whose commanding face bore already the lines of care and trouble, and who, he said, had found something better than the happiness of yonder bride and bridegroom.
She sighed, and she said in her woman's heart that they were right, and that John Harrington was wrong.
”Come,” she said, rising, and her words had a bitter tone, ”let us go in; it is late.” John did not move. He sat like a stone, paler than death, and said no word in answer. Joe turned and looked at him, as though wondering why he did not follow her. She was terrified at the expression in his face.
”Are you not coming?” she asked, suddenly going close to him and looking into his eyes.
CHAPTER XXII.
Joe was frightened; she stood and looked into Harrington's eyes, doubting what she should do, not understanding what was occurring. He looked so pale and strange as he sat there, that she was terrified. She came a step nearer to him, and tried to speak.
”What is the matter, Mr. Harrington?” she stammered. ”Speak--you frighten me!”
Harrington looked at her for one moment more, and then, without speaking, buried his face in his hands. Joe clasped her hands to her side in a sudden pain; her heart beat as though it would break, and the scene swam round before her in the hot air. She tried to move another step towards the bench, and her strength almost failed her; she caught at the lattice of the old summer-house, still pressing one hand to her breast. The rotten slabs of the wood-work cracked under her light weight. She breathed hard, and her face was as pale as the shadows on driven snow; in another moment she sank down upon the bench beside John, and sat there, staring vacantly out at the sunlight. Harrington felt her gentle presence close to him and at last looked up; every feature of his strong face seemed changed in the convulsive fight that rent his heart and soul to their very depths; the enormous strength of his cold and dominant nature rose with tremendous force to meet and quell the tempest of his pa.s.sion, and could not; dark circles made heavy shadows under his deep-set eyes, and his even lips, left colorless and white, were strained upon his clenched teeth.
”G.o.d help me--I love you.”
That was all he said, but in his words the deep agony of a mortal struggle rang strangely--the knell of the old life and the birth-chime of the new.
One by one, the words he had never thought to speak fell from his lips, distinctly; the oracle of the heart answered the great question of fate in its own way.
Josephine Thorn sat by his side, her hands lying idly in her lap, her thin white face pressing against the old brown lattice, while a spray of the sweet honeysuckle that climbed over the wood-work just touched her bright brown hair. As John spoke she tried to lift her head and struggled to put out her hand, but could not.
As the shadows steal at evening over the earth, softly closing the flowers and touching them to sleep, silently and lovingly, in the promise of a bright waking--so, as she sat there, her eyelids drooped and the light faded gently from her face, her lips parted a very little, and with a soft-breathed sigh she sank into unconsciousness.