Part 23 (1/2)
”I have not heard for some time. She was in Venice again, very ill from the long journey, when she last wrote.”
”You have not heard since?”
”No.”
”Do you think she is well now, and--and at peace?”
”No.”
”What reason have you to doubt her well-being?”
”I cannot tell you.”
The man looked at her searchingly, as if he would read her very soul, and then turned away with a word of leave-taking,--”Good-night.”
”Stay a moment. I have something to tell you. I do not know why I am forced to speak to you of the last interview she had in this room, but I must do so. Before she left,--on the night when she cried out in the court-room,--you remember?”
Did he remember? Ah, Heaven! only too well he remembered the last words she had ever spoken to him,--valiant words, full of love and protection.
”That night Mr. Galbraith came to see her. It was very late, and they had a long conversation. I could only hear their voices from the next room; and then she called me to her, and told us both all her sad story,--all that had pa.s.sed between you and her. She took all blame upon herself, and would have made us both acknowledge that you had been right and just in acting as you did.”
”And was I not just?”
”Just, perhaps; but how ungenerous! What have you to do with justice?
You, who never painted till you painted her; you, who were so cold and unfeeling till her smile made you human for a little time. Then your own selfish egotism froze you again.”
”Thank you for what you have told me, and good-by. I shall not see you soon again. You were very good to her; bless you for it! Every one was good to her,--every one but me, it seems.”
”You speak as if she were dead.”
He did not hear her last words. He was already out of earshot, taking leave of his hostess.
When he was alone with the stars he could think better than in that heated room, with that dear vine-crowned face before his eyes, with Barbara's voice in his ears. He saw how Barbara misjudged him. He knew that most men and women would have held him as she did; and yet he had thought that he was right. He had fought the good fight, and he had conquered. What mattered it if all the world saw in him a monster of selfishness? He had chosen poverty, hard work, and loneliness, when wealth, worldly success, and a painless love might have been his.
Sybaris had been open to him; and he had turned his back upon the perfumed island for an attic, a crust, and a mistress who demanded all, and had yielded nothing but hope.
But now things were altered. He felt angry and outraged at the thought that others knew her story, that she was pitied by them because of her great love for him. He longed to protect her, to suffer for her, to make her forget in his love and care the cruel lot which had been hers.
He yearned for her sympathy, for her love, for that sense of peace which had come upon him as he sat by her side. The tide of love, which not once in a million years is at the full in two human hearts at once, rushed over him, sweeping away pride, reason, selfishness, ambition,--all, all routed and o'erset by that warm, delicious flood of emotion. He had fought against love so long, that at last the overthrow of will brought him an ecstasy of delight. He ran like one crazed through the cool, starry night, singing a love-song strange and tender, a song of submission, of hope and pa.s.sionate love. Through the orchard he pa.s.sed, startling the birds with his wonderful song. The prisoned love-mates heard it in their little nest, and folded their snowy wings closer together; the white roses heard it, and trembled at the sound; the six tall redwoods listened and whispered gravely together as he came among them and sank upon his knees at their feet, on the very spot where she had sat that day. That day! How could he have forgotten it, and all that it had meant to them both? What mist had risen again between them and hidden its memory from his sight? Before, it had been her want of faith in him, her fault, her only fault. Her atonement for that sin against her own soul, against him, had been bitter indeed. And afterwards what veil had blinded him to the great truth that they loved each other absolutely, that their two beings were each incomplete without the other? His pride! It had been his pride which had kept them so long apart! But now it was over. He would go to her, and tell her all.
”Millicent, Millicent, I love you!” he cried aloud, his eager voice surging from his breast as if to relieve its weight of love. His cry was joyous, bounding, full of life and love and hope. The night wind bore back to his ears a tender, mournful cadence,--”love you.”
”Millicent, my love, I am coming; wait for me!”
”Wait for me!” sighed the echo.
And the young moon, pale and shrinking, dropped behind the high tree-tops from his sight; while the redwoods swayed tremulously, shaken by a sudden blast, and the echo again sighed its faint response,--
”Wait for me!”
And the tide on the Pacific was at the flood.