Part 42 (1/2)
”I don't want it,” cried Mildred indignantly.
”Oh yes, you do; besides it's only spoiling the Philistines. They had already discharged that scoundrel Bissel, and they intend prosecuting the girl. They apologize to you, and promise to raise your wages, but I think I can obtain enough sewing and fancy work to render it unnecessary for you to go back unless you prefer it.
I don't want to think of your being subjected to that barbarous rule of standing any longer. I know of a lady on Fifth Avenue who is a host if she once becomes interested in any one, and through her I think I can enlist enough people to keep you busy. I feel sure she will be our ally when she knows all.”
”Oh, if I could only stay with mamma and work at home, I should be so glad,” was the young girl's response.
”Well, I must have one promise first, and your conscience should lead you to make it honestly. You must give me your word that you will not shut yourself up from light, air, and recreation. You must take a walk every day; you must go out with your sister and Roger, and have a good time as often as possible. If I find you sewing and moping here all the time, I shall feel hurt and despondent. Miss Millie, the laws of health are just as much G.o.d's laws as the Ten Commandments.”
”I feel you are right,” she faltered. Then she covered her face with her hands and sobbed, ”But papa, papa. Mr. Wentworth, since all know it now, you must know the truth that is worse than death to us. I feel as if I wanted to hide where no one could ever see me again; I fear we do Mr. Atwood a wrong in permitting him to be so friendly.”
Roger towered up until he ”looked six feet six,” as Belle remarked afterward, and, coming straight to the speaker, he took her hand and said, ”Miss Jocelyn, when I'm ashamed to be seen with you and Belle, I'll strike hands with Bissel in the sneak-thieving line. I ask for no prouder distinction, than to be trusted by your mother and by you.”
”Roger has settled that question, and shown himself a sensible fellow,” resumed Mr. Wentworth, with an emphatic and approving nod. ”Since you have spoken of a subject so deeply painful, I will speak plainly too. There are plenty of people, I admit, who treat the family of wrong-doers as if their unspeakable misfortune were their fault; and in a certain sense this tendency is wholesome, for it has a great restraining influence on those tempted to give way to evil. But this tendency should not be carried to cruel lengths by any one, and there are those who are sufficiently just to discriminate and feel the deepest sympathy--as I do. While it would be in bad taste for you and Miss Belle to ignore this trouble, and flaunt gayly in public places, it would be positively wicked to let your trouble crush out health, life, and hope. You are both young, and you are sacredly bound to make the best and the most of the existence that G.o.d has bestowed upon you. You have as good a right to pure air and suns.h.i.+ne as I have, and as good a right to respect while you maintain your present character. It would do your father no good, it would break your mother's heart, if you followed your morbid impulses. It would only add to your father's remorse. I fear his craving for the poisons that are destroying him has become a disease, and that it is morally impossible for him to refrain.”
”Do you think--would it be possible to put him into an inst.i.tution,”
Mildred faltered.
”Well, it would be expensive, and yet if he will go to one and make an honest effort to be cured, perhaps the money might be raised.”
”Oh,” cried Mildred, ”we'd starve almost, we'd work night and day to give him a chance.”
”The money shall be raised,” said Roger quietly. ”I've saved nearly all my wages, and--”
”Oh, Mr. Atwood,” burst out Mildred impetuously, ”this would be far better than saving me from prison. I would pay you back every penny if I toiled all my life, and if papa could be his old self once more we would soon regain all that we have lost.” Then a sudden pa.s.sion of sobs shook her slight form. ”Oh,” she gasped brokenly, ”I could die--I could suffer anything to save papa.”
”Mr. Wentworth,” said the wife, with a look in her large tearless blue eyes which they never forgot, ”we will live in one room, we'll spend only enough for bare existence, if you'll help us in this matter.” Then putting her arms around Roger's neck she buried her face on his breast and murmured, ”You are like a son to me, and all there is left of my poor crushed heart clings to you. If I could see Martin the man he was, I could die in peace.”
”He shall have the chance of the best and richest,” said Roger brokenly. ”I ask nothing better than to have a hand in saving such a man as Mr. Jocelyn must have been.”
Then was Roger's hour and opportunity, and he might at that time have bound Mildred to him by vows that the girl would sooner perish than break. Indeed in her abounding grat.i.tude, and with every generous, unselfish chord in her soul vibrating, even his eyes could have been deceived, and he might easily have believed that he had won her heart. But there was neither policy nor calculation in his young enthusiasm. His love truly prompted his heart, but it was a heart abounding in good, unselfish impulses, if sufficient occasion called them forth. He loved Mrs. Jocelyn and Belle scarcely less than his own mother and sister, and yet with a different affection, a more ideal regard. They appealed to his imagination; their misfortunes made them sacred in his eyes, and aroused all the knightly instincts which slumber in every young, unperverted man.
Chief of all, they belonged to Mildred, the girl who had awakened his manhood, and to whom he had felt, even when she was so cold and prejudiced, that he owed his larger life and his power to win a place among men. Now that she was so kind, now that she was willing to be aided by him in her dearest hopes, he exulted, and life grew rich in tasks for which the reward seemed boundless. The hope would come to him, as Mildred rose to say good-by with a look that he had never seen on any human face before, that she might soon give him something warmer and better than grat.i.tude; but if she could not soon, he would wait, and if she never could return his love, he proposed to be none the less loyal as a friend.
Indeed the young girl's expression puzzled him. The old pride was all gone, and she gave him the impression of one who is conquered and defenceless, and who is ready to yield anything, everything to the victor. And this ill-defined impression was singularly true, for she was in a pa.s.sion of self-sacrifice. She felt that one who had been so generous and self-forgetful had a right to all that a true man could ask, and that it would be base in her to refuse.
The greater the sacrifice the more gladly she would make it, in order that she too might prove that a Southern girl could not be surpa.s.sed in n.o.blesse oblige by a Northern man. She was in one of those supreme moods in which men and women are swayed by one dominant impulse, and all other considerations become insignificant. The fact that those she loved were looking on was no restraint upon her feeling, and the sympathizing presence of the clergyman added to it. Indeed her emotion was almost religious. The man who had saved her from prison and from shame--far more: the man who was ready to give all he had to rescue her fallen father--was before her, and without a second's hesitation she would have gone into a torture-chamber for the sake of this generous friend. She wanted him to see his absolute power. She wanted him to know that he had carried her prejudice, her dislike by storm, and had won the right to dictate his terms. Because she did not love him she was so frank in her abandon. If he had held her heart's love she would have been shy, were she under tenfold greater obligations. She did not mean to be unmaidenly--she was not so, for her unconscious delicacy saved her--but she was at his feet as truly as the ”devotee” is prostrate and helpless before the car of Juggernaut. But Roger was no grim idol, and he was too inexperienced, too modest to understand her. As he held her throbbing palm he looked a little wonderingly into her flushed face and tear-gemmed eyes that acknowledged him lord and master without reserve; then he smiled and said in a low, half-humorous tone, ”I shan't be an ogre to you--you won't be afraid of me any longer, Miss Mildred?”
”No,” she replied impetuously; ”you are the truest and best friend a woman ever had. Oh, I know it--I know it now. After what you said about papa, I should despise myself if I did not know it.”
She saw all his deep, long-repressed pa.s.sion leap into his face and eyes, and in spite of herself she recoiled from it as from a blow. Ah, Mildred, your will is strong, your grat.i.tude is boundless, your generous enthusiasm had swept you away like a tide, but your woman's heart is stronger and greater than all, and he has seen this truth unmistakably. The pa.s.sion died out of his face like a flame that sinks down to the hidden, smouldering fire that produced it. He gave her hand a strong pressure as he said quietly, ”I am indeed your friend--never doubt it;” then he turned away decidedly, and although his leave-taking from Mrs. Jocelyn and Belle was affectionate, they felt rather than saw there was an inward struggle for self-mastery, which made him, while quiet in manner, anxious to get away.
Mr. Wentworth, who had been talking with Mrs. Jocelyn, observed nothing of all this, and took his leave with a.s.surances that they would see him soon again.
Mildred stood irresolute, full of bitter self-reproach. She took an impulsive step toward the door to call Roger back, but, checking herself, said despairingly, ”I can deceive neither him nor myself.
Oh, mamma, it is of no use.” And indeed she felt that it would be impossible to carry out the scheme that promised so much for those she loved. As the lightning flash eclipses the sun at noonday, so all of her grat.i.tude and self-sacrificial enthusiasm now seemed but pale sickly sentiment before that vivid flame of honest love--that divine fire which consumes at touch every motive save the one for the sacred union of two lives.
”I wish I could see such a man as Roger Atwood look at me as he looked at you,” said Belle indignantly. ”I would not send him away with a heartache.”
”Would to Heaven it had been you, Belle!” replied Mildred dejectedly.
”I can't help it--I'm made so, and none will know it better than he.”
”Don't feel that way,” remonstrated Mrs. Jocelyn; ”time and the thought of what Roger can do for us will work great changes. You have years before you. If he will help us save your father--”