"LOVE, THE MESSENGER OF DEATH."
Victor Heron seemed to Minola about this time in a fair way to let his
great grievance go by altogether. He was filled with it personally when
he had time to think about it, but the grievances of somebody else were
always coming across his path, and drawing away his attention from his
own affairs. Minola very soon noticed this peculiarity in him, and at
first could hardly believe in its genuineness; it so conflicted with all
her accepted theories about the ingrained selfishness of man. But by
watching and studying his ways, which she did with some interest, she
found that he really had that unusual weakness; and she was partly
amused and partly annoyed by it. She felt angry with him now and then
for neglecting his own task, like another Hylas, to pick up every little
blossom of alien grievance flung in his way. She pressed on him with an
earnestness which their growing friendship seemed to warrant the
necessity of his doing something to set his cause right, or ceasing to
tell himself that he had a cause which called for justice.
It would not be easy to find a more singular friendship than that which
was growing up between Miss Grey and Victor. She received him whenever
he chose to come and see her. Many a night, when Mary Blanchet and she
sat together, he would look in upon them as he went to some
dinner-party, or even as he came home from one, if he had got away
early, and have a few minutes' talk with them. He came often in the
afternoon, and if Minola did not happen to be at home, he would
nevertheless remain and have a long chat with Mary Blanchet. He seemed
always in good humor with himself and everybody else, except in so far
as his grievance was concerned, and always perfectly happy. It has been
already shown that although quite a young man, he considered himself, by
virtue of his experience and his public career, ever so much older than
Minola. Once or twice he sent a throb of keen delight through Mary
Blanchet's heart by speaking of something that "I can remember, Miss
Blanchet, and perhaps you may remember it--but Miss Grey couldn't of
course." To be put on anything like equal ground with him as to years
was a delightful experience to the poetess. It was all the more
delicious because there was such an evident genuineness in his
suggestion. Of course, if he had meant to pay her a compliment--such as
a foolish person might be pleased with, but not she, thank goodness--he
would have pretended to think her as young as Minola. But he had done
nothing of the kind; and he evidently thought that she was about the
same age as himself.
At all events, and it was more to the purpose, he set down Miss Grey as
belonging to quite a different stage of growth from that to which he had
attained. He thought her a handsome and very clever girl, who had the
additional advantage over most other girls that she was rather tall, and
that he therefore was not compelled to stoop much when speaking to her.
He liked women and girls generally. He hardly ever saw the woman or girl
he did not like. If he knew that a woman was insincere or affected, he
would not have liked her; but then he never knew it; he never saw it; it
never occurred to him. Anybody could have seen that he was a man who had
no sisters or girl-cousins. The most innocent and natural affectations
of womanhood were too deep for him to see. There really was a great deal
of truth in what he had said to Minola about his goddess theory as
regarded women. He made no secret about his greatly admiring
her--thinking her very clever and fresh and handsome. He would without
any hesitation have told her that he liked her best of all the women he
knew, but then he had often told her that he liked other women very
much. He seemed, therefore, the man whom a pure and fearless woman, even
though living in Minola's odd condition of semi-isolation, might frankly
accept as a friend without the slightest fear for the tranquillity of
his heart or of hers. Minola, too, had always in her own breast resented
with anger and contempt the idea that a man and woman can never be
brought together and allowed to walk in the beaten way of friendship
without their forthwith wandering off into the thickets and thorny
places of love. All such ideas she looked upon as imbecility, and
scorned. "I don't like men," she used to say to herself and even to
others pretty freely. "I never saw a man fit to hold a candle to my
Alceste. I never saw the man who seemed to me worth a woman's troubling
her heart about." She began to say this of late more than ever--and to
say it to herself, especially when the day and the evening had closed
and she was alone in her own room. She said it over almost as if it were
a sort of charm.
The business of the poems now gave him many occasions to call, and one
particular afternoon Victor called when, by a rare chance, Mary Blanchet
happened to be out of doors. Minola had had it on her mind that he was
not pushing his cause very earnestly, and was glad of the opportunity of
telling him so. He listened with great good humor. It is nearly as
agreeable to be lectured as to be praised by a handsome young woman who
is unaffectedly interested in one's welfare.
"I shall lose my good opinion of you if you don't keep more steadily to
your purpose."
"But I do keep steadily to it. I am always thinking of it."
"No; you allow anything and everything to interfere with you. Anybody's
affairs seem more to you than your own."
Victor shook his head.
"That isn't the reason," he said. "I wish it were, or anything half so
good. No; the truth is that I get ashamed of the cursed work of trying
to interest people in my affairs who don't want to take any interest in
them. I am a restless sort of person and must be doing something, and my
own business is now in that awful stage when there is nothing practical
or active to be done with it. I find it easier to get up an appearance
of prodigious activity about some other person's affairs. And then, Miss
Grey, I don't mind confessing that I am rather sensitive and
morbid--egotistic, I suppose--and if any one looks coldly on me when I
endeavor to interest him in my own affairs, I take it to heart more than
if it were the business of somebody else I had in hand."
"But you talked at one time of appealing to the public. Why don't you do
that?"
"Get people to bring my case on in the House of Commons?"
"Yes; why not?"
"It looks like being patronized and protected and made a client of."
"Well, why don't you try and get the chance of doing it yourself?"
He smiled.
"I still do hold to that idea--or that dream. I should like it very much
if one only had a chance. But no chance seems to turn up; and one loses
heart sometimes."
"Oh, no," Minola said earnestly, "don't do that."
"Don't do what?"
He had hardly been thinking of his own words, and he seemed a little
surprised at the earnestness of her tone.
"Don't lose heart. Don't give way. Don't fall into the track of the
commonplace, and become like every one else. Keep to your purpose, Mr.
Heron, and don't be beaten out of it."
"No; I haven't the least idea of that, I can assure you. Quite the
contrary. But it is so hard to get a chance, or to do anything all at
once. Everything moves so slowly in England. But I have a plan--we are
doing something."
"I am very glad. You seem to me to be doing nothing for yourself."
"Do I? I can assure you I am much less Quixotic than you imagine. Now, I
am so glad to hear that you still like the Parliamentary scheme, because
that is the idea that I have particularly at heart; and if the idea
comes to anything, there are some reasons why you should take a special
interest in it."
"Are there really? May I be told what they are?"
"Well, the whole thing is only in prospect and uncertainty just yet. The
idea is Money's, not mine; he has found out that there is going to be a
vacancy in a certain borough," and Victor smiled and looked at her,
"before long; and his idea is that I should become a candidate, and tell
the people my whole story right out, and ask them to give me a chance of
defending myself in the House. But the thing is not yet in shape enough
to talk much about it. Only I thought you would be glad to know that I
haven't thrown up the sponge all at once."
Minola did not very clearly follow all that he had been saying; partly
because she was beginning to be afraid that to put herself into the
position of adviser and confidante to this young man was a scarcely
becoming performance on her part. Her mind was a little perturbed, and
she was not a very good listener then. Some people say that women seldom
are good listeners; that while they are playing the part of audience
they are still thinking how they look as performers. Anyhow, Minola was
now growing anxious to escape from her position.
"I am so glad," she said vaguely, "that you are doing something, and
that you don't mean to allow yourself to be beaten."
"I don't mean to be, I assure you," he said, a little surprised at her
sudden coolness. "I shouldn't like to be. That isn't my way, I hope."
"I hope not too, and I think not; I wish I had such a purpose. Life
seems to me such a pitiful thing--and in a man especially--when there is
no great clear purpose in it."
"But is a man's trying to get himself a new appointment a great clear
purpose?" he asked with a smile. He was now trying to draw her out again
on the subject, having been much pleased with the interest she seemed to
take in him, and a little amused by the gravity with which she tendered
her advice.
"No, but yours is not merely trying to get an appointment. You are
trying to have justice done to your past career and to get an
opportunity of being useful again in the same sort of way. You don't
want to lead an idle life lounging about London. Mr. Blanchet has his
poems; Mr. Money has--well, he has his business, whatever it is, and he
is in Parliament."
At this moment the servant entered and handed a card to Minola. A
gentleman, she said, particularly wished to see Miss Grey, but he would
call any time she pleased to name if she could not see him at present.
Minola's cheek grew red as she glanced at the card, for it bore the name
of Mr. Augustus Sheppard, and it had the words pencilled on it, "Wishes
particularly to see you--has important business." Her lips trembled.
Nothing could be more embarrassing and painful than such a visitation.
The disagreeable memory of Mr. Sheppard and of the part of her life to
which he belonged had been banished from her thoughts, at least except
for occasional returning glimpses, and now here was Mr. Sheppard himself
in London and asserting a right to see her. She could not refuse him,
for he did, perhaps, come to her with some message from those in Keeton
who still would have called themselves her family. Mary Blanchet had
only just gone out, and Minola was left to talk with Mr. Sheppard alone.
For a moment she had a wild idea of begging Victor Heron to stay and
bear her company during the interview. But she put this thought away
instantly, and made up her mind that she had better hear what Mr.
Sheppard had to say alone.
"Show the gentleman in, Jane," she said, as composedly as she could. "A
friend--at least a friend of my people, from my old place, Mr. Heron."
Heron was looking at her, she thought, in a manner that showed he had
noticed her embarrassment.
"Well, I must wish you a good morning," Mr. Heron said. "Be sure I
shan't forget what you were saying."
"Thank you--yes; what was I saying?"
"Oh, the very good advice you were giving me; and I propose to hear it
all out another time. Good morning."
"Don't go for a moment--pray don't?" she asked, with an earnestness
which surprised Victor. "Only a moment--I would rather you didn't go
just yet."
The thought suddenly went through her that Mr. Sheppard was the very man
to put an exaggerated meaning on the slightest thing that seemed to hint
at secrecy of any kind, and that she had better take care to let him
see, face to face, what sort of visitor was with her when he came.
Victor was glad in any case of the chance of remaining a few moments
longer, and was in no particular hurry to go so long as he could think
he was not in anybody's way.
Victor Heron stood, hat in hand, on the hearth-rug near the
chimney-piece. As Mr. Sheppard entered, Heron was the first person he
happened to see, and the entirely unexpected sight surprised him. He
glanced confusedly from Heron to Minola before he spoke a word, and his
manner, always stiff and formal, seemed to acquire in a moment an
additional incubus of constraint. Victor Heron had something about him
which did not seem exactly English, and which, to a provincial mind,
might well suggest the appearance of a foreigner--a Frenchman. Mr.
Sheppard had never felt quite satisfied in his own mind about that
mysterious rival of whom Minola spoke to him on the memorable day when
he saw her last. She had told him that her Alceste was only "a man who
lived in a book, Mr. Sheppard--in what you would call a play." How well
he remembered the very words she used, and the expression of contempt on
her lips as she used them. And he had got the book--the play--and read
it--toiled through it--and found that there was an Alceste in it. So far
she had told the truth, no doubt; but might not the Alceste have a
living embodiment, or might she not have found since that time a
supposed realization of her Alceste, and might not this be he--this
handsome, foreign-looking young man, who was lounging there as coolly
and easily as if the place belonged to him? For a moment an awful doubt
filled his mind. Could she be married? Was that her husband?
"Miss Grey?" he said in hesitating and questioning tone, as that of one
who is not quite clear about the identity of the person he is
addressing; but Mr. Sheppard was only giving form unconsciously to the
doubt in his own mind, Are you still Miss Grey?
The words and their tone were rather fortunate for Minola. They amused
her and seemed ridiculous, although she did not guess at Mr. Sheppard's
real meaning, and they enabled her to get back at once to her easy
contempt for him.
"You must have forgotten my appearance very soon, Mr. Sheppard," she
said in a tone which carried the contempt so lightly and easily that he
probably did not perceive it, "or I must have changed very much, if you
are not quite certain whether I am Miss Grey. You have not changed at
all. I should have known you anywhere."
"It is not that," Mr. Sheppard said with a little renewal of
cheerfulness. "I should have known you anywhere, Miss Grey. You have not
changed, except indeed that you have, if that were possible, improved.
Indeed, I would venture to say that you have decidedly improved."
"Thank you: you are very kind."
"It would be less surprising, if you, Miss Grey, had had some difficulty
in recognizing me. Fortune, perhaps, has withdrawn some of her blessings
from others only to pour them more lavishly on you."
"I feel very well, thank you; but I hope fortune has not been robbing
any Peter to pay Paul in my case. You, at least, don't seem to have been
cheated out of any of your good health, Mr. Sheppard."
While he made his little formal speeches Mr. Sheppard continued to
glance sidelong at Victor Heron. Mr. Heron now left his place at the
chimney-piece and came forward to take his leave.
"Must you go?" Minola asked, with as easy a manner as she could assume.
She dreaded a _téte-à-téte_ with Sheppard, and she also dreaded to let
it be seen that she dreaded it. If Mary Blanchet would only come!
An expedient occurred to her for putting off the dreaded conversation
yet a moment, and giving Mary Blanchet another chance.
"I should like my friends to know each other," Minola said, with a
gayety of manner which was hardly in keeping with her natural ways.
"People are not introduced to each other now, I believe, when they meet
by chance in London, but we are none of us Londoners. Mr. Sheppard comes
from Keeton, Mr. Heron, and is one of the oldest friends of my family."
Mr. Heron held out his hand with eyes of beaming friendliness.
"Mr. Heron?" Sheppard asked slowly. "Mr. Victor Heron?"
"Victor Heron, indeed!"
"Mr. Victor Heron, formerly of the St. Xavier's Settlements?"
Heron only nodded this time, finding Mr. Sheppard's manner not
agreeable. Minola wondered what her townsman was thinking of, and how he
came to know Heron's name and history.
"Then my name must surely be known to you, Mr. Heron. The name of
Augustus Sheppard, of Duke's-Keeton?"
"No, sir," Heron replied. "I am sorry to say that I don't remember to
have heard the name before."
"Indeed," Mr. Sheppard said with a formal smile, intended to be
incredulous and yet not to seem too plainly so. "Yet we are rivals, Mr.
Heron."
Minola started and colored.
"At least we are to be," Mr. Sheppard went on--"if rumor in
Duke's-Keeton speaks the truth. I am not wrong in assuming that I have
the honor of addressing the future Radical--I mean Liberal--candidate
for that borough?"
"Oh, that's it," Heron said carelessly. "Yes, yes: I didn't know that
rumor had yet troubled herself about the matter so much as to speak of
it truly or falsely. But of course, since you have heard it, Mr.
Sheppard, it's no secret. I have some ideas that way, Miss Grey. I
intend to try whether I can impress your townspeople. This gentleman, I
suppose, is on the other side."
"I am the other side," Mr. Sheppard said gravely. "I am to be the
Conservative candidate--I was accepted by the party as the Conservative
candidate, no matter who the Radical may be."
"Well, Mr. Sheppard, we shall not be the less good friends I hope,"
Heron said cheerily. "I can't be expected to wish that the best man may
win, for that would be to wish failure for myself; but I wish the better
cause may win, and in that you will join me. Good morning, Miss Grey!"
The room seemed to grow very chilly to Minola when his bright smile and
sweet courteous tones were withdrawn and she was left with her old
lover.
There was not much in Sheppard's appearance to win her back to any
interest in him. He did not compare advantageously with Victor Heron.
When Heron left the room, the light seemed to have gone out; Heron was
so fresh, so free, so sweet, and yet so strong, full of youth, and
spirit, and manhood--a natural gentleman without the insipidity of the
manners of society. Poor Augustus Sheppard was formal, constrained, and
prosaic; he had not even the dignity of austerity. He was not
self-sufficing: he was only self-sufficient. As he stood there he was
awkward, and almost cowed. He seemed as if he were afraid of the girl,
and Minola was woman enough to be angry with him because he seemed
afraid of her. He was handsome, but in that commonplace sort of way
which in a woman's eye is often worse than being ugly. Minola felt
almost pitiless toward him, although the girl's whole nature was usually
full of pity, for, as has already been said, she did not believe in his
affection, and thought him a thorough sham. He stood awkwardly there,
and she would not relieve him from his embarrassment by saying a word.
"Well, Miss Grey," he began at last, "I suppose you hardly expected to
see me."
"I did not know you were in town, Mr. Sheppard."
"I fear I am not very welcome," he said, with an uncomfortable smile;
"but your mother particularly wished me to see you."
"My mother, Mr. Sheppard?" Minola grew red with pain and anger.
"I mean your stepmother, of course--the wife of your father."
"Once the wife of my father; now the wife of somebody else."
"Well, well, at all events the person who might be naturally supposed to
have the best claim to some authority--or influence--influence let us
say--over you."
"Has Mrs. Saulsbury sent you to say that she thinks she ought to have
some influence over me?"
"Oh, no," he answered with that gentle deprecation of anger which is
usually such fuel to anger's fire. "Mrs. Saulsbury has given up any idea
of the kind long since--quite long since, I assure you. I think, if you
will permit me to say it, that you were always a little unjust in your
judgment of Mrs. Saulsbury. She is a true-hearted and excellent woman."
Minola said nothing. Perhaps she felt that she never had been quite in a
position to do impartial justice to the excellence and the
true-heartedness of Mrs. Saulsbury.
"But," Mr. Sheppard resumed, with a gentle motion of his hands, as if he
would wave away now all superfluous and hopeless controversy, "that was
not what I came to say."
Minola bowed slightly to signify that she was glad to know he was coming
to the point at last.
"Mrs. Saulsbury is in very weak health, Miss Grey; something wrong with
the lungs, I fear."
Minola was not much impressed at first. It was one of Mrs. Saulsbury's
ways to cry "wolf" very often, as regarded the condition of her lungs,
and up to the time of Minola's leaving, people had not been in serious
expectation of the wolf's really putting his head in at the door.
Mr. Sheppard saw in Minola's face what she did not say.
"It is something really serious," he said. "Mr. Saulsbury knows it and
every one. You have not been in correspondence with them for some time,
Miss Grey."
"No," said Miss Grey. "I wrote, and nobody answered my letter."
"I am afraid it was regarded as--as----"
"Undutiful perhaps?"
"Well--unfriendly. But Mrs. Saulsbury now fears--or rather knows, for
she is too good a woman to fear--that the end is nigh, and she wishes to
be in fullest reconciliation with every one."
"Oh, has she sent for me?" Minola said, with something like a cry, all
her coldness and formality vanishing with her contempt. "I'll go, Mr.
Sheppard--oh, yes, at once! I did not know--I never thought that she was
really in any danger."
Poor Minola! With all her wild-bird freedom and her pride in her lonely
independence and her love of London, there yet remained in her that
instinct of home, that devotion to the principle of family and
authority, that she would have done homage at such a moment, and with
something like enthusiasm, to even such a simulacrum of the genius of
home as she had lately known. Something had passed through her mind that
very day as she talked with Heron, and feared she had talked too freely:
something that had made her think with vague pain of yearning on the
sweetness of a sheltered home. Her heart beat as she thought, "I will go
to her--I will go home; I will try to love her."
Mr. Sheppard dispelled her enthusiasm. "Mrs. Saulsbury did not exactly
express a wish to see you."
"Oh!"
"In fact, when that was suggested to her--I am sure I need hardly say
that I at once suggested it--she thought, and perhaps wisely, that it
would be better you should not meet."
Minola drew back, and stood as Mr. Heron had been standing near the
chimney-piece. She did not speak.
"But Mrs. Saulsbury begged me to convey to you the assurance of her
entire and cordial forgiveness."
Minola bowed gravely.
"And her hope that you will be happy in life and be guided toward true
ends, and find that peace which it has been her privilege to find."
Minola bore all this without a word.
"What shall I say to her from you?" he asked. "Miss Grey, remember that
she is dying."
The caution was not needed.
"Say that I thank her," said Minola in a low, subdued tone. "Say that,
after what flourish your nature will, Mr. Sheppard. I suppose I was
wrong as much as she. I suppose it was often my fault that we did not
get on better. Say that I am deeply grieved to hear that she is so
dangerously ill, but that I hope--oh, so sincerely!--that she may yet
recover."
Mr. Sheppard looked into her eyes with puzzled wonder. Was she speaking
in affected meekness, or in irony, as was her wont? Was the proud,
rebellious girl really so gentle and subdued? Could it be that she took
thus humbly Mrs. Saulsbury's pardon? Yes, it seemed all genuine. There
was no constraint on the lines of her lips; no scorn in her eyes. In
truth, the sympathetic and generous heart of the girl was touched to the
quick. The prospect of death sanctified the woman who had been so hard
to her, and turned her cold, self-complacent pardon into a blessing. If
the dying are often the most egotistic and self-complacent of all human
creatures, and are apt to make of their very condition a fresh title to
lord it for the moment over the living--as if none had ever died before,
and none would die after them, and therefore the world must pay special
attention and homage to them--if this is so, Minola did not then know it
or think about it.
The one thing on earth which Mr. Sheppard most loved to see was woman
amenable to authority. He longed more passionately than ever to make
Minola his wife.
"There is something else on which I should like to have your permission
to speak," he said; and his thin lips grew a little tremulous. "But I
could come another time, if you preferred."
"I would rather you said now, Mr. Sheppard, whatever you wish to say to
me."
"It is only the old story. Have you reconsidered your determination--you
remember that last day--in Keeton? I am still the same."
"So am I, Mr. Sheppard."
"But things have changed--many things; and you may want a home; and you
may grow tired of this kind of life--and I shan't be a person to be
ashamed of, Minola! I am going to be in Parliament, and you shall hear
me speak--and I know I shall get on. I have great patience. I succeed in
everything--I really do."
She smiled sadly and shook her head.
"In everything else I do assure you, so far--and I may even in that; I
must, for I have set my heart upon it."
She turned to him with a glance of scorn and anger. But his face was so
full of genuine emotion, of anxiety and passion and pain, that its
handsome commonplace character became almost poetic. His lips were
quivering; and she could see drops of moisture on his shining forehead,
and his eyes were positively glittering as if in tears.
"Don't speak harshly to me," he pleaded; "for I don't deserve it. I love
you with all my heart, and today more than ever--a thousand times
more--for you have shown yourself so generous and forgiving--and--and
like a Christian."
Then for the first time the thought came, a conviction, into her
mind--"He really is sincere!" A great wave of new compassion swept away
all other emotions.
"Mr. Sheppard," she said in softened tones, "I do ask of you not to say
any more of this. I couldn't love you even if I tried, and why should
you wish me to try? I am not worth all this--I tell you with all my
heart that I am not worth it, and that you would think so one day if I
were foolish enough to--to listen to you. Oh! indeed you are better
without me! I wish you every success and happiness. I don't want to
marry."
"Once," he said, "you told me there was no one you cared for but a man
in a book. I wonder is that so now?"
In spite of herself the color rushed into Minola's face. It was a lucky
question for her, however unlucky for him, because it recalled her from
her softer mood to natural anger.
"You can believe me in love with any one you please to select in or out
of a book, Mr. Sheppard, so long as it gives you a reason for not
persecuting me with your own attentions. I like a man in a book better
than one out of it; it is so easy to close the book and be free of his
company when he grows disagreeable."
She did not look particularly like a Christian then, probably, in his
eyes. He left her, his heart bursting with love and anger. When Mary
Blanchet returned she found Minola pale and haggard, her eyes wasted
with tears.