Part 46 (1/2)
”Certainly; that is exactly what I came here to do,” she answered, as, with a dexterous movement, she tore the gla.s.ses from her eyes, and swept the moles from her face, after which she s.n.a.t.c.hed the cap and wig from her head, and stood before her companion revealed as Isabel Stewart herself.
”Good Heaven!” he gasped, then sank back upon his chair, staring in blank amazement at her.
Mrs. Stewart seized this opportunity to again slip from the room, and when she returned, a few minutes later, her superabundance of cellular tissue (?) had disappeared and she was her own peerless self once more.
She quietly resumed her seat, gravely remarking, as she did so:
”A woman who has been wronged as you have wronged me, Gerald G.o.ddard, will risk a great deal to re-establish her good name. When I first learned of your whereabouts I thought I would go and boldly demand that certificate of you. I tried to meet you in society here, but, strange to say, I failed in this attempt, for, as it happened, neither you nor your--Anna Correlli frequented the places where I was entertained, although I did meet Monsieur Correlli two or three times.
Then I saw that advertis.e.m.e.nt for a housekeeper to go out to Wyoming, to take charge of your house during a mid-winter frolic; and, prompted by a feeling of curiosity to learn something of your private life with the woman who had supplanted me, I conceived the idea of applying for the situation and thus trying to obtain that certificate by strategy.
How did I know that it was you who advertised?” she interposed, as Mr.
G.o.ddard looked up inquiringly. ”Because I chanced to overhear some one say that the G.o.ddards were going out of town for the same purpose as that which your notice mentioned. So I disguised myself, as you have seen, went to your office, found I was right, and secured the position.”
”Now I know why I was so startled that day, when you dropped your gla.s.ses in the dining-room,” groaned the wretched man.
”Yes; I saw that you had never forgotten the eyes which you used to call your 'windows of paradise,'” responded his companion, with quiet irony, and Gerald G.o.ddard shrank under the familiar smile as under a blow.
”Gerald,” she went on, after a moment of painful silence, but with a note of pity pervading her musical tones, ”a man can never escape the galling consciousness of wrong that he has done until he repents of it; even then the consequences of his sin must follow him through life. Yours was a nature of splendid possibilities; there was scarcely any height to which you might not have attained, had you lived up to your opportunities. You had wealth and position, and a physique such as few men possess; you were finely educated, and you were a superior artist. What have you to show for all this? what have you done with your G.o.d-given talents? how will you answer to Him, when He calls you to account for the gifts intrusted to your care? What excuse, also, will you give for the wreck you have made of two women's lives? You began all wrong; in the first place, you weakly yielded to the selfish gratification of your own pleasure; you lived upon the principle that you must have a good time, no matter who suffered in consequence--you must be amused, regardless of who or what was sacrificed to subserve that end--”
”You are very hard upon me, Isabel; I have been no worse than hundreds of other men in those respects,” interposed Gerald G.o.ddard, who smarted under her searching questions and scathing charges as under a lash.
”Granted that you 'are no worse than hundreds of other men,'” she retorted, with scornful emphasis, ”and more's the pity. But how does that lessen the measure of your responsibility, pray tell me? There will come a time when each and every man must answer for himself. I have nothing to do with any one else, but I have the right to call you to account for the selfishness and sins which have had such a baneful influence upon my life; I have the right, by reason of all that I have suffered at your hands--by the broken heart of my youth--the loss of my self-respect--the despair which so nearly drove me to crime--and, more than all else, by that terrible renunciation that deprived me of my child, that innocent baby whom I loved with no ordinary affection--I say I have the right to arraign you in the sight of Heaven and of your own conscience, and to make one last attempt to save you, if you will be saved.”
”What do you care--what does it matter to you now whether I am saved or lost?” the man huskily demanded, and in a tone of intense bitterness, for her solemn words had pierced his heart like a double-edged dagger.
”I care because you are a human being, with a soul that must live eternally--because I am striving to serve One who has commanded us to follow Him in seeking to save that which is lost,” the fair woman gravely replied. ”Look at yourself, Gerald--your inner self, I mean.
Outwardly you are a specimen of G.o.d's n.o.blest handiwork. How does your spiritual self compare with your physical frame?--has it attained the same perfection? No; it has become so dwarfed and misshapen by your indulgence in sin and vice--so hardened by yielding to so-called 'pleasure,' your intellect so warped, your talents so misapplied that even your Maker would scarcely recognize the being that He Himself had brought into existence. You are forty-nine years old, Gerald--you may have ten, twenty, even thirty more to live. How will you spend them?
Will you go on as you have been living for almost half a century, or is there still a germ of good within you that you will have strength and resolution to develop, as far as may be, toward that perfect symmetry which G.o.d desires every human soul to attain? Think!--choose!
Make this hour the turning point in your career; go back to your painting, retrieve your skill, and work to some purpose and for some worthy object. If you do not need the money such work will bring, for your own support, use it for the good of others--of those unfortunate ones, perchance, whose lives have been blighted, as mine was blighted, by those 'hundreds of other men' like you.”
As the beautiful woman concluded her earnest appeal, the conscience-smitten man dropped his head upon the table beside which he sat, and groaned aloud.
For the first time in his life he saw himself as he was, and loathed himself, his past life, and all the alluring influences that had conspired to decoy him into the downward path which he had trodden.
”I will! I will! Oh, Isabel, forgive and help me,” he pleaded, in a voice thrilling with despair.
”I help you?” she repeated, in an inquiring tone, in which there was a note of surprise.
”Yes, with your sweet counsel, your pure example and influence.”
”I do not understand you, quite,” she responded, her lovely color waning as a suspicion of his meaning began to dawn upon her.
He raised his face, which was drawn and haggard from the remorse he was suffering, and looked appealingly into hers. But, as he met the gaze of her pure, grave eyes, a flush of shame mounted to his brow as he realized how despicable he must appear to her in now suing so humbly for what he had once trampled under foot as worthless.
Yet an unspeakable yearning to regain her love had taken possession of him, and every other emotion was, for the moment, surmounted by that.
”I mean, come back to me! try to love me again! and let me, under the influence of your sweet presence, your precepts and n.o.ble example, strive to become the man you have described, and that, at last, my own heart yearns to be.”