dawn of red in her cheeks,--not a colour, but a coloured light like the
light that hangs round a rose-tree's boughs in the early spring! And
what a magnificent movement, what a stately grace! The girl must have
been a goddess!"
_Bartlett._--"And now she's a saint--for sweetness and patience! You
think she's had nothing to suffer before from me? You know me better!
Well, I am going away."
_Cummings._--"Perhaps it will be the best. You can go back with me
to-morrow."
_Bartlett._--"To-morrow? Go back with you to-morrow? What are you
talking about, man?" Cummings smiles. "I can't go to-morrow. I can't
leave her hating me."
_Cummings._--"I knew you never meant to go. Well, what will you do?"
_Bartlett._--"Don't be so cold-blooded! What would _you_ do?"
_Cummings._--"I would have it out somehow."
_Bartlett._--"Oh, you talk! How?"
_Cummings._--"I am not in love with Miss Wyatt."
_Bartlett._--"Oh, don't try to play the cynic with me! It doesn't become
you. I know I've used you badly at times, Cummings. I behaved abominably
in leaving you to take the brunt of meeting General Wyatt that first
day; I said so then, and I shall always say it. But I thought you had
forgiven that."
_Cummings_, with a laugh.--"You make it hard to treat you seriously,
Bartlett. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to go to Miss Wyatt
and explain your case to her?"
_Bartlett_, angrily.--"No!"
_Cummings._--"Perhaps to Mrs. Wyatt?"
_Bartlett_, infuriate.--"No!"
_Cummings._--"To the General?"
_Bartlett_, with sudden quiet.--"You had better go away from here,
Cummings--while you can."
_Cummings._--"I see you don't wish me to do anything, and you're quite
right. Nobody _can_ do anything but yourself."
_Bartlett._--"And what would you advise me to do?"
_Cummings._--"I've told you that I would have it out. You can't make
matters worse. You can't go on in this way indefinitely. It's just
possible that you might find yourself mistaken,--that Miss Wyatt cares
for you in your own proper identity."
_Bartlett._--"For shame!"
_Cummings._--"Oh, if you like!"
_Bartlett_, after a pause.--"Would you--would you see the General?"
_Cummings._--"If I wanted to marry the General. Come, Bartlett; don't be
ridiculous. You know you don't want my advice, and I haven't any to
give. I must go to my room a moment."
_Bartlett._--"Well, go! You're of no advantage here. You'd have it
out, would you? Well, then, I wouldn't. I'm a brute, I know, and a fool,
but I'm not such a brute and fool as that!" Cummings listens with
smiling patience, and then goes without reply, while Bartlett drops into
the chair near the easel, and sulkily glares at the picture. Through the
window at his back shows the mellow Indian summer landscape. The trees
have all dropped their leaves, save the oaks which show their dark
crimson banners among the deep green of the pines and hemlocks on the
hills; the meadows, verdant as in June, slope away toward the fringe of
birches and young maples along the borders of the pond; the
low-blackberry trails like a running fire over the long grass limp from
the first frosts, which have silenced all the insect voices. No sound of
sylvan life is heard but the harsh challenge of a jay, answered from
many trees of the nearest wood-lot. The far-off hill-tops are molten in
the soft azure haze of the season; the nearer slopes and crests sleep
under a greyer and thinner veil. It is to this scene that the painter
turns from the easel, with the sullen unconsciousness in which he has
dwelt upon the picture. Its beauty seems at last to penetrate his mood;
he rises and looks upon it; then he goes out on the gallery, and, hidden
by the fall of one of the curtains, stands leaning upon the rail and
rapt in the common reverie of the dreaming world. While he lingers
there, Cummings appears at the door, and looks in; then with an air of
some surprise, as if wondering not to see Bartlett, vanishes again, to
give place to General Wyatt, who after a like research retires silently
and apparently disconcerted. A few moments later Mrs. Wyatt comes to the
threshold, and calling gently into the room, "Constance!" waits briefly
and goes away. At last, the young girl herself appears, and falters in
the doorway an instant, but finally comes forward and drifts softly and
indirectly up to the picture, at which she glances with a little sigh.
At the same moment Bartlett's voice, trolling a snatch of song, comes
from the gallery without:--
ROMANCE.
I.
Here apart our paths, then, lie:
This way you wend, that way I;
Speak one word before you go:
Do not, do not leave me so!
II.
What is it that I should say?
Tell me quick; I cannot stay;
Quick! I am not good at guessing:
Night is near, and time is pressing.
III.
Nay, then, go! But were I you,
I will tell you what I'd do:
Rather than be baffled so,
I would never, never go!
As the song ends, Bartlett reappears at the gallery door giving into
the parlour, and encounters Constance turning at his tread from the
picture on which she has been pensively gazing while he sang. He puts up
a hand on either side of the door.
IV.
BARTLETT _and_ CONSTANCE.
_Bartlett._--"I didn't know you were here."
_Constance._--"Neither did I--know you were, till I heard you singing."
_Bartlett_, smiling ironically.--"Oh, you didn't suppose I sang!"
_Constance_, confusedly.--"I--I don't know"--
_Bartlett._--"Ah, you thought I did! I don't. I was indulging in a sort
of modulated howling which I flatter myself is at least one peculiarity
that's entirely my own. I was baying the landscape merely for my private
amusement, and I'd not have done it, if I'd known you were in hearing.
However, if it's helped to settle the fact one way or other, concerning
any little idiosyncrasy of mine, I shan't regret it. I hope not to
disappoint you in anything, by-and-by." He drops his hands from the
door-posts and steps into the room, while Constance, in shrinking
abeyance, stands trembling at his harshness.
_Constance_, in faltering reproach.--"Mr. Bartlett!"
_Bartlett._--"Constance!"
_Constance_, struggling to assert herself, but breaking feebly in her
attempt at hauteur.--"Constance? What does this mean, Mr. Bartlett?"
_Bartlett_, with a sudden burst.--"What does it mean? It means that I'm
sick of this nightmare masquerade. It means that I want to be something
to you--all the world to you--in and for myself. It means that I can't
play another man's part any longer and live. It means that I love you,
love you, love you, Constance!" He starts involuntarily toward her with
outstretched arms, from which she recoils with a convulsive cry.
_Constance._--"You love me? _Me?_ Oh, no, no! How can you be so
merciless as to talk to me of love?" She drops her glowing face into her
hands.
_Bartlett._--"Because I'm a man. Because love is more than
mercy--better, higher, wiser. Listen to me, Constance!--yes, I will call
you so now if never again: you are so dear to me that I must say it at
last if it killed you. If loving you is cruel, I'm pitiless! Give me
some hope, tell me to breathe, my girl!"
_Constance._--"Oh go, while I can still forgive you."
_Bartlett._--"I won't go; I won't have your forgiveness; I will have all
or nothing; I want your love!"
_Constance_, uncovering her face and turning its desolation upon him:
"My love? I have no love to give. My heart is dead."
_Bartlett._--"No, no! That's part of the ugly trance that we've both
been living in so long. Look! You're better now than when you came here;
you're stronger, braver, more beautiful. My angel, you're turned a woman
again! Oh, you can love me if you will; and you will! Look at me,
darling!" He takes her listless right hand in his left, and gently draws
her toward him.
_Constance_, starting away.--"You're wrong; you're all wrong! You don't
understand; you don't know-- Oh, listen to me!"
_Bartlett_, still holding her cold hand fast.--"Yes, a thousand years.
But you must tell me first that I may love you. That first!"
_Constance._--"No! That never! And since you speak to me of love, listen
to what it's my right you should hear."
_Bartlett_, releasing her.--"I don't care to hear. Nothing can ever
change me. But if you bid me, I will go!"
_Constance._--"You shall not go now till you know what despised and
hated and forsaken thing you've offered your love to."
_Bartlett_, beseechingly.--"Constance, let me go while I can forgive
myself. Nothing you can say will make me love you less; remember that;
but I implore you to spare yourself. Don't speak, my love."
_Constance._--"Spare myself? Not speak? Not speak what has been on my
tongue and heart and brain, a burning fire, so long?-- Oh, I was a happy
girl once! The days were not long enough for my happiness; I woke at
night to think of it. I was proud in my happiness and believed myself,
poor fool, one to favour those I smiled on; and I had my vain and crazy
dreams of being the happiness of some one who should come to ask
for--what you ask now. Some one came. At first I didn't care for him,
but he knew how to make me. He knew how to make my thoughts of him part
of my happiness and pride and vanity till he was all in all, and I had
no wish, no hope, no life but him; and then he--left me!" She buries her
face in her hands again, and breaks into a low, piteous sobbing.
_Bartlett_, with a groan of helpless fury and compassion.--"The fool,
the sot, the slave! Constance, I knew all this,--I knew it from the
first."
_Constance_, recoiling in wild reproach.--"You _knew_ it?"
_Bartlett_, desperately.--"Yes, I knew it--in spite of myself,
through my own stubborn fury I knew it, that first day, when I had
obliged my friend to tell me what your father had told him, before I
would hear reason. I would have given anything not to have known it
then, when it was too late, for I had at least the grace to feel the
wrong, the outrage of my knowing it. You can never pardon it, I see; but
you must feel what a hateful burden I had to bear, when I found that I
had somehow purloined the presence, the looks, the voice of another
man--a man whom I would have joyfully changed myself to any monstrous
shape _not_ to resemble, though I knew that my likeness to him,
bewildering you in a continual dream of him, was all that ever made you
look at me or think of me. I lived in the hope--Heaven only knows why I
should have had the hope!--that I might yet be myself to you; that you
might wake from your dream of him and look on me in the daylight, and
see that I was at least an honest man, and pity me and may be love me at
last, as I loved you at first, from the moment I saw your dear pale
face, and heard your dear, sad voice." He follows up her slow retreat
and again possesses himself of her hand: "Don't cast me off! It was
monstrous, out of all decency, to know your sorrow; but I never tried to
know it; I tried _not_ to know it." He keeps fast hold of her hand,
while she remains with averted head. "I love you, Constance; I loved
you; and when once you had bidden me stay, I was helpless to go away, or
I would never be here now to offend you with the confession of that
shameful knowledge. Do you think it was no trial to me? It gave me the
conscience of an eavesdropper and a spy; yet all I knew was sacred to
me."
_Constance_, turning and looking steadfastly into his face.--"And you
could care for so poor a creature as I--so abject, so obtuse as never to
know what had made her intolerable to the man that cast her off?"
_Bartlett._--"Man? He was _no_ man! He"--
_Constance_, suddenly.--"Oh, wait! I--I love him yet."
_Bartlett_, dropping her hand.--"You"--
_Constance._--"Yes, yes! As much as I live, I love him! But when he left
me, I seemed to die; and now it's as if I were some wretched ghost
clinging for all existence to the thought of my lost happiness. If that
slips from me, then I cease to be."
_Bartlett._--"Why, this is still your dream. But I won't despair. You'll
wake yet, and care for me: I know you will."
_Constance_, tenderly.--"Oh, I'm not dreaming now. I know that you are
not he. You are everything that is kind and good; and some day you will
be very happy."
_Bartlett_, desolately.--"I shall never be happy without your love."
After a pause: "It will be a barren, bitter comfort, but let me have it
if you can: if _I_ had met you first, could you have loved _me_?"
_Constance._--"I might have loved you if--I had--lived." She turns from
him again, and moves softly toward the door; his hollow voice arrests
her.
_Bartlett._--"If you are dead, then I have lived too long. Your loss
takes the smile out of life for me." A moment later: "You are cruel,
Constance."
_Constance_, abruptly facing him.--"I cruel? To _you_?"
_Bartlett._--"Yes, you have put me to shame before myself. You might
have spared me! A treacherous villain is false in time to save you from
a life of betrayal, and you say your heart is dead. But that isn't
enough. You tell me that you cannot care for me because you love that
treacherous villain still. That's my disgrace, that's my humiliation,
that's my killing shame. I could have borne all else. You might have
cast me off however you would, driven me away with any scorn, whipped me
from you with the sharpest rebuke that such presumption as mine could
merit; but to drag a decent man's self-respect through such mire as that
poor rascal's memory for six long weeks, and then tell him that you
prefer the mire"--
_Constance._--"Oh, hush! I can't let you reproach him! He was pitilessly
false to me, but I will be true to him for ever. How do I know--I _must_
find some reason for that, or there is no reason in anything!--how do I
know that he did not break his word to me at my father's bidding? My
father never liked him."
_Bartlett_, shaking his head with a melancholy smile.--"Ah, Constance,
do you think _I_ would break my word to you at your father's bidding?"
_Constance_, in abject despair.--"Well, then I go back to what I always
knew; I was too slight, too foolish, too tiresome for his life-long
love. He saw it in time, I don't blame him. You would see it, too."
_Bartlett._--"What devil's vantage enabled that infernal scoundrel to
blight your spirit with his treason? Constance, is this my last answer?"
_Constance._--"Yes, go! I am so sorry for you,--sorrier than I ever
thought I could be for anything again."
_Bartlett._--"Then if you pity me, give me a little hope that sometime,
somehow"--
_Constance._--"Oh, I have no hope, for you, for me, for any one.
Good-bye, good, kind friend! Try,--you won't have to try hard--to forget
me. Unless some miracle should happen to show me that it was all his
fault and none of mine, we are parting now for ever. It has been a
strange dream, and nothing is so strange as that it should be ending so.
Are you the ghost or I, I wonder! It confuses me as it did at first; but
if you are he, or only you-- Ah, don't look at me so, or I must believe
he has never left me, and implore you to stay!"
_Bartlett_, quietly.--"Thanks. I would not stay a moment longer in his
disguise, if you begged me on your knees. I shall always love you,
Constance, but if the world is wide enough, please Heaven, I will never
see you again. There are some things dearer to me than your presence.
No, I won't take your hand; it can't heal the hurt your words have made,
and nothing can help me, now I know from your own lips that but for my
likeness to _him_ I should never have been anything to you. Good-bye!"
_Constance._--"Oh!" She sinks with a long cry into the arm-chair
beside the table, and drops her head into her arms upon it. At the door
toward which he turns Bartlett meets General Wyatt, and a moment later
Mrs. Wyatt enters by the other. Bartlett recoils under the concentrated
reproach and inquiry of their gaze.
V.
GENERAL WYATT, MRS. WYATT, CONSTANCE, _and_ BARTLETT.
_Mrs. Wyatt_, hastening to bow herself over Constance's fallen
head.--"Oh, what is it, Constance?" As Constance makes no reply, she
lifts her eyes again to Bartlett's face.
_General Wyatt_, peremptorily.--"Well, sir!"
_Bartlett_, with bitter desperation.--"Oh, you shall know!"
_Constance_, interposing.--"I will tell! You shall be spared that, at
least." She has risen, and with her face still hidden in her
handkerchief, seeks her father with an outstretched hand. He tenderly
gathers her to his arms, and she droops a moment upon his shoulder;
then, with an electrical revolt against her own weakness, she lifts her
head and dries her tears with a passionate energy. "He--Oh, speak _for_
me!" Her head falls again on her father's shoulder.
_Bartlett_, with grave irony and self-scorn.--"It's a simple matter,
sir; I have been telling Miss Wyatt that I love her, and offering to
share with her my obscurity and poverty. I"--
_General Wyatt_, impatiently.--"Curse your poverty, sir! I'm poor
myself. Well!"
_Bartlett._--"Oh, that's merely the beginning; I have had the indecency
to do this knowing that what alone rendered me sufferable to her it was
a cruel shame for me to know, and an atrocity for me to presume upon.
I"--
_General Wyatt._--"I authorised this knowledge on your part when I spoke
to your friend, and before he went away he told me all he had said to
you."
_Bartlett_, in the first stages of petrifaction.--"Cummings?"
_General Wyatt._--"Yes."
_Bartlett._--"Told you that I knew whom I was like?"
_General Wyatt._--"Yes."
_Bartlett_, very gently.--"Then I think that man will be lost for
keeping his conscience _too_ clean. Cummings has invented a new sin."
_Mrs. Wyatt._--"James, James! You told me that Mr. Bartlett didn't
know."
_General Wyatt_, contritely.--"I let you think so, Margaret; I didn't
know what else to do."
_Mrs. Wyatt._--"Oh, James!"
_Constance._--"Oh, papa!" She turns with bowed head from her father's
arms, and takes refuge in her mother's embrace. General Wyatt, released,
fetches a compass round about the parlour, with a face of intense
dismay. He pauses in front of his wife.
_General Wyatt._--"Margaret, you must know the worst now."
_Mrs. Wyatt_, in gentle reproach, while she softly caresses Constance's
hair.--"Oh, is there anything _worse_, James?"
_General Wyatt_, hopelessly.--"Yes: I'm afraid I have been to blame."
_Bartlett._--"General Wyatt, let me retire. I"--
_General Wyatt._--"No, sir. This concerns you, too, now. Your destiny
has entangled you with our sad fortunes, and now you must know them
all."
_Constance_, from her mother's shoulder.--"Yes, stay,--whatever it is.
If you care for me, nothing can hurt you any more, now."
_General Wyatt._--"Margaret,--Constance! If I have been mistaken in what
I have done, you must try somehow to forgive me; it was my tenderness
for you both misled me, if I erred. Sir, let me address my defence to
you. You can see the whole matter with clearer eyes than we." At an
imploring gesture from Bartlett, he turns again to Mrs. Wyatt. "Perhaps
you are right, sir. Margaret, when I had made up my mind that the wretch
who had stolen our child's heart was utterly unfit and unworthy"--
_Constance_, starting away from her mother with a cry.--"Ah, you _did_
drive him from me then! I knew, I knew it! And after all these days and
weeks and months that seem years and centuries of agony, you tell me
that it was _you_ broke my heart! No, no, I never _will_ forgive you,
father! Where is he? Tell me that! Where is my husband--the husband you
robbed me of? Did you kill him, when you chose to crush my life? Is he
dead? If he's living I will find him wherever he is. No distance and no
danger shall keep me from him. I'll find him and fall down before him,
and implore _him_ to forgive you, for I never can! Was this your
tenderness for me--to drive him away, and leave me to the pitiless
humiliation of believing myself deserted? Oh, great tenderness!"
_General Wyatt_, confronting her storm with perfect quiet.--"No, I will
give better proof of my tenderness than that." He takes from his
pocket-book a folded paper which he hands to his wife: "Margaret, do you
know that writing?"
_Mrs. Wyatt_, glancing at the superscription.--"Oh, too well! This is to
you, James."
_General Wyatt._--"It's for you now. Read it."
_Mrs. Wyatt_, wonderingly unfolding the paper and then reading.--"'_I
confess myself guilty of forging Major Cummings's signature, and in
consideration of his and your own forbearance, I promise never to see
Miss Wyatt again. I shall always be grateful for your mercy;
and_'--James, James! It isn't possible!"
_Constance_, who has crept nearer and nearer while her mother has been
reading, as if drawn by a resistless fascination.--"No, it isn't
possible! It's false; it's a fraud! I _will_ see it." She swiftly
possesses herself of the paper and scans the handwriting for a moment
with a fierce intentness. Then she flings it wildly away. "Yes, yes,
it's true! It's his hand. It's true, it's the only true thing in this
world of lies!" She totters away toward the sofa. Bartlett makes a
movement to support her, but she repulses him, and throws herself upon
the cushions.
_General Wyatt._--"Sir, I am sorry to make you the victim of a scene. It
has been your fate, and no part of my intention. Will you look at this
paper? You don't know all that is in it yet." He touches it with his
foot.
_Bartlett_, in dull dejection.--"No, I won't look at it. If it were a
radiant message from heaven, I don't see how it could help me now."
_Mrs. Wyatt._--"I'm afraid you've made a terrible mistake, James."
_General Wyatt._--"Margaret! Don't say that!"
_Mrs. Wyatt._--"Yes, it would have been better to show us this paper at
once,--better than to keep us all these days in this terrible
suffering."
_General Wyatt._--"I was afraid of greater suffering for you both. I
chose sorrow for Constance rather than the ignominy of knowing that she
had set her heart on so base a scoundrel. When he crawled in the dust
there before me, and whined for pity, I revolted from telling you or her
how vile he was; the thought of it seemed to dishonour you; and I had
hoped something, everything, from my girl's self-respect, her obedience,
her faith in me. I never dreamed that it must come to this."
_Mrs. Wyatt_, sadly shaking her head.--"I know how well you meant; but
oh, it was a fatal mistake!"
_Constance_, abandoning her refuge among the cushions, and coming
forward to her father.--"No, mother, it was no mistake! I see now how
wise and kind and merciful you have been, papa. You can never love me
again, I've behaved so badly; but if you'll let me, I will try to live
my gratitude for your mercy at a time when the whole truth would have
killed me. Oh, papa! What shall I say, what shall I do to show how sorry
and ashamed I am? Let me go down on my knees to thank you." Her father
catches her to his heart, and fondly kisses her again and again. "I
don't deserve it, papa! You ought to hate me, and drive me from you, and
never let me see you again." She starts away from him as if to execute
upon herself this terrible doom, when her eye falls upon the letter
where she had thrown it on the floor. "To think how long I have been the
fool, the slave of that--_felon_!" She stoops upon the paper with a
hawk-like fierceness; she tears it into shreds, and strews the fragments
about the room. "Oh, if I could only tear out of my heart all thoughts
of him, all memory, all likeness!" In her wild scorn she has whirled
unheedingly away toward Bartlett, whom, suddenly confronting, she
apparently addresses in this aspiration; he opens wide his folded arms.
_Bartlett._--"And what would you do, then, with this extraordinary
resemblance?" The closing circle of his arms involves her and clasps her
to his heart, from which beneficent shelter she presently exiles herself
a pace or two, and stands with either hand pressed against his breast
while her eyes dwell with rapture on his face.
_Constance._--"Oh, _you're_ not like him, and you _never_ were!"
_Bartlett_, with light irony: "Ah?"
_Constance._--"If I had not been blind, blind, blind, I never could have
seen the slightest similarity. Like _him_? Never!"
_Bartlett._--"Ah! Then perhaps the resemblance, which we have noticed
from time to time, and which has been the cause of some annoyance and
embarrassment all round, was simply a disguise which I had assumed for
the time being to accomplish a purpose of my own?"