A storm raged all that night; but dawn came up so dewy and serene, that
the world looked like a child waking after anger, with happy smiles upon
its lips, penitential tears in its blue eyes.
Canaris was early astir, after a night as stormy within as without,
during which he had gone through so many alternations of feeling, that,
weary and still undecided, he was now in the mood to drift whithersoever
the first eddy impelled him. Straight to Gladys, it seemed; and, being
superstitious, he accepted the accident as a good omen, following his
own desire, and calling it fate.
Wandering in the loneliest, wildest spot of all the domain, he came upon
her as suddenly as if a wish had brought her to the nook haunted for
both by pleasant memories. Dew-drenched her feet, hatless her head; but
the feet stood firmly on the cliff which shelved down to the shore
below, and the upturned head shone bright against the deep blue of the
sky. Morning peace dwelt in her eyes, morning freshness glowed on her
cheek, and her whole attitude was one of unconscious aspiration, as she
stood there with folded hands and parted lips, drinking in the
storm-cooled breeze that blew vigorous and sweet across the lake.
“What are you doing here so early, little dryad?” and Canaris paused,
with an almost irresistible desire to put out his arms and hold her,
lest she fly away, so airy was her perch, so eager her look into the
boundless distance before her.
“Only being happy!” and she looked down into his face with such tender
and timid joy in her own, he hardly had need to ask,—
“Why, Gladys?”
“Because of this,” showing a string of pearls that hung from her hand,
half-hidden among the trailing bits of greenery gathered in her walk.
“Who gave you that?” demanded Canaris, eying it with undisguised
surprise; for the pearls were great, globy things, milk-white, and so
perfect that any one but Gladys would have seen how costly was the gift.
“Need you ask?” she said, blushing brightly.
“Why not? Do you suspect me?”
“You cannot deceive me by speaking roughly and looking stern. Who but
you would put these in my basket without a word, and let me find them
there when I laid my work away last night? I was so pleased, so proud, I
could not help keeping them, though far too beautiful for me.”
Then Canaris knew who had done it; and his hand tightened over the
necklace, while his eye went towards the lake, as if he longed to throw
it far into the water. He checked himself, and, turning it about with a
disdainful air, said, coldly,—
“If _I_ had given you this, it should have been quite perfect. The cross
is not large nor fine enough to match the chain. Do you see?”
“Ah, but the little cross is more precious than all the rest! That is
the one jewel my mother left me, and I put it there to make my rosary
complete;” and Gladys surveyed it with a pretty mixture of devout
affection and girlish pleasure.
“I’ll give you a better one than this,—a string of tiny carved saints in
scented wood, blessed by holy hands, and fit to say prayers like yours
upon. You will take it, though my gift is not half so costly as his?” he
said, eagerly.
“Whose?”
“Helwyze gave you that.”
“But why?” and Gladys opened wide her clear, large eyes in genuine
astonishment.
“He is a generous master; your singing pleases him, and he pays you so,”
replied Canaris, bitterly.
“He is not my master!”
“He will be.”
“Never! I shall not go, if I am to be burdened with benefits. I will
earn my just due, but not be overpaid. Tell him so.”
Gladys caught back the chain, unclasped the cross, and threw the pearls
upon the grass, where they lay, gleaming, like great drops of frozen
dew, among the green. Canaris liked that; thought proudly, “_I_ have no
need to bribe;” and hastened to make his own the thing another seemed to
covet. Drawing nearer, he looked up, asking, in a tone that gave the
question its true meaning,—
“May _I_ be your master, Gladys?”
“Not even you.”
“Your slave, then?”
“Never that.”
“Your lover?”
“Yes.”
“But I can give you nothing except myself.”
“Love is enough;” and finding his arms about her, his face, warm and
wistful, close to hers, Gladys bent to give and take the first kiss,
which was all they had to bestow upon each other.
Singularly unimpassioned was the embrace in which they stood for a brief
instant. Canaris held her with a clasp more jealous than fond; Gladys
clung to him, yet trembled, as if some fear subdued her joy; and both
vaguely felt the incompleteness of a moment which should be perfect.
“You do love me, then?” she whispered, wondering at his silence.
“Should I ask you to be my wife if I did not?” and the stern look melted
into an expression of what seemed, to her, reproach.
“No; ah, no! I fancied that I might have deceived myself. I am so young,
you are so kind. I never had a—friend before;” and Gladys smiled shyly,
as the word which meant “lover” dropped from her lips.
“I am not kind: I am selfish, cruel, perhaps, to let you love me so. You
will never reproach me for it, Gladys? I mean to save you from ills you
know nothing of; to cherish and protect you—if I can.”
Verily in earnest now; for the touch of those innocent lips reminded him
of all his promise meant, recalled his own unfitness to guide or guard
another, when so wayward and unwise himself. Gladys could not understand
the true cause of his beseeching look, his urgency of tone; but saw in
them only the generous desire to keep safe the creature dearest to him,
and loved him the more for it.
“I never can think you selfish, never will reproach you but will love
and trust and honor you all my life,” she answered, with a simplicity as
solemn as sincere; and, holding out the hand that held her dead mother’s
cross, Canaris pledged his troth upon it with the mistaken chivalry
which makes many a man promise to defend a woman against all men but
himself.
“Now you can be happy again,” he said, feeling that he had done his best
to keep her so.
She thought he meant look out upon the lake, dreaming of him as when he
found her; and, turning, stretched forth her arms as if to embrace the
whole world, and tell the smiling heaven her glad secret.
“Doubly happy; then I only hoped, now I _know_!”
Something in the exultant gesture, the fervent tone, the radiant face,
thrilled Canaris with a sudden admiration; a feeling of proud
possession; a conviction that he had gained, not lost; and he said
within himself,—
“I am glad I did it. I will cherish her; she will inspire me; and good
_shall_ come out of seeming evil.”
His spirits rose with a new sense of well-being and well-doing. He
gathered up the rejected treasure, and gave it back to Gladys, saying
lightly,—
“You may keep it as a wedding-gift; then he need give no other. He meant
it so, perhaps, and it will please him. Will you, love?”
“If you ask it. But why must brides wear pearls? They mean tears,” she
added, thoughtfully, as she received them back.
“Perhaps because then the sorrows of their lives begin. Yours shall not:
I will see to that,” he promised, with the blind confidence of the
self-sacrificing mood he was in.
Gladys sat down upon the rock to explore a pocket, so small and empty
that Canaris could not help smiling, as he, too, leaned and looked with
a lover’s freedom.
“Only my old chain. I must put back the cross, else I shall lose it,”
laughed Gladys, as she brought out a little cord of what seemed woven
yellow silk.
“Is it your hair?” he asked, his eye caught by its peculiar sunshiny
hue.
“Yes; I could not buy a better one, so I made this. My hair is all the
gold I have.”
“Give it to me, and you wear mine. See, I have an amulet as well as
you.”
Fumbling in his breast, Canaris undid a slender chain, whence hung a
locket, curiously chased, and tarnished with long wear. This he unslung,
and, opening, showed Gladys the faded picture of a beautiful, sad woman.
“That is my Madonna.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Mine now.” The girl touched it with her lips, then softly closed and
laid it on her lap.
Silently Canaris stood watching her, as she re-slung both poor but
precious relics, while the costlier one slipped down, as if ashamed to
lie beside them. He caught and swung it on his finger, thinking of
something he had lately read to Helwyze.
“Kharsu, the Persian, sent a necklace to Schirin, the princess, whom he
loved. She was a Christian, and hung a cross upon his string of pearls,
as you did,” he said aloud.
“But I am not a princess, and Mr. Helwyze does not love me; so the
pretty story is all spoiled.”
“This thing recalled it. _I_ have given you a necklace, and you are
hanging a cross upon it. Wear the one, and use the other, for my sake.
Will you, Gladys?”
“Did Schirin convert Kharsu?” asked the girl, catching his thought more
from his face than his words; for it wore a look of mingled longing and
regret, which she had never seen before.
“That I do not know; but you must convert me: I am a sad heathen,
Helwyze says.”
“Has _he_ tried?”
“No.”
“Then I will!”
“You see I’ve had no one to teach me any thing but worldly wisdom, and I
sometimes feel as I should be better for a little of the heavenly sort.
So when you wear the rosary I shall give you—‘Fair saint, in your
orisons be all my sins remembered;’” and Canaris put his hand upon her
head, smiling, as if half-ashamed of his request.
“I am no Catholic, but I _will_ pray for you, and you shall not be lost.
The mother in heaven and the wife on earth will keep you safe,”
whispered Gladys, in her fervent voice, feeling and answering with a
woman’s quickness the half-expressed desire of a nature conscious of its
weakness, yet unskilled in asking help for its greatest need.
Silently the two young lovers put on their amulets, and, hand in hand,
went back along the winding path, till they reached the great eglantine
that threw its green arches across the outlet from the wood. All beyond
was radiantly bright and blooming; and as Canaris, passing first to hold
back the thorny boughs, stood an instant, bathed in the splendor of the
early sunshine, Gladys exclaimed, her face full of the tender idolatry
of a loving woman,—
“O Felix, you are so good, so great, so beautiful, if it were not
wicked, I should worship you!”
“God forbid! Do not love me too much, Gladys: I do not deserve it.”
“How can I help it, when I feel very like the girl who lost her heart to
the Apollo?” she answered, feeling that she never could love _too much_.
“And broke her heart, you remember, because her god was only a stone.”
“Mine is not, and he will answer when I call.”
“If he does not, he will be harder and colder than the marble!”
When Canaris, some hours later, told Helwyze, he looked well pleased,
thinking, “Jealousy is a helpful ally. I do not regret calling in its
aid, though it has cost Olivia her pearls.” Aloud he said, with a
gracious air, which did not entirely conceal some secret anxiety,—
“Then you have made a clean breast of it, and she forgives all
peccadilloes?”
“I have not told her; and I will not, till I have atoned for the meanest
of them. May I ask you to be silent also for her sake?”
“You are wise.” Then, as if glad to throw off all doubt and care, he
asked, in a pleasantly suggestive tone,—
“The wedding will soon follow the wooing, I imagine, for you make short
work of matters, when you do begin?”
“You told me to execute your wish in my own way. I will do so, without
troubling Mrs. Surry, or asking you to give us your blessing, since
playing the father to orphans is distasteful to you.”
Very calm and cool was Canaris now; but a sense of wrong burned at his
heart, marring the satisfaction he felt in having done what he believed
to be a just and generous act.
“It is; but I will assume the character long enough to suggest, nay,
_insist_, that however hasty and informal this marriage may be, you will
take care that it _is_ one.”
“Do you mean that for a hint or a warning, sir? I have lied and stolen
by your advice; shall I also betray?” asked Canaris, white with
indignation, and something like fear; for he began to feel that whatever
this man commanded he must do, spite of himself.
“Strong language, Felix. But I forgive it, since I am sincere in wishing
well to Gladys. Marry when and how you please, only do not annoy me with
another spasm of virtue. It is a waste of time, you see, for the thing
is done.”
“Not yet; but soon will be, for you are fast curing me of a too tender
conscience.”
“Faster than you think, my Faust; since to marry without love betrays as
surely as to love without marriage,” said Helwyze to himself, expressing
in words the thought that had restrained the younger, better man.
A week later, Canaris came in with Gladys on his arm, looking very like
a bride in a little bonnet tied with white, and a great nosegay of all
the sweet, pale flowers blooming in the garden that first Sunday of
September.
“Good-bye, sir; we are going.”
“Where, may I ask? To church?”
“We have been;” and Canaris touched the ungloved hand that lay upon his
arm, showing the first ring it had ever worn.
“Ah! then I can only say, Heaven bless you, Gladys; a happy honeymoon,
Felix, and welcome home when—you are tired of each other.”
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