Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
Ever made by the Hand above?
A woman's heart and a woman's life,
And a woman's wonderful love?
You have written my lesson of duty out;
Manlike have you questioned me:
Now stand at the bar of my woman's soul,
While I shall question thee.
--MRS. BROWNING.
But with that point settled, and a stand taken which Magnus knew
would now, by the grace of God, be held till death; there came also a
restless impatience to see Cherry again and know the worst--if worst
it was to be. And so, when Mrs. Kindred bade him go up the hill after
breakfast and see how Mr. Erskine fared after his walk, Magnus went off
with the most eager alacrity.
He found the two over their reading, as on that first day. Mr. Erskine
greeted him very warmly, Cherry gave a little cold, trembling hand, and
no look at all.
"We were almost through our passage," Mr. Erskine said. "Will you sit
down, my boy, and wait five minutes before we begin to talk?"
Magnus said truly that he should like very much to listen, and if
Cherry opened her lips to say no, she thought better of it, and went
straight on with her reading.
But it was with extreme difficulty; the voice shook and fell; more
than once she stopped short for breath to go on, and at last, midway
in a verse, the words faltered, broke, and after a moment's brave
struggle, Cherry hid her face on her father's breast.
"My poor little girl!" he said soothingly, kissing the bowed head. "She
is not herself, Magnus, this morning. Got up with a headache and a
white face. I was quite troubled about her. And in some moods the words
and imagery of the Bible search out all one's weak spots."
"I do not understand Greek, sir," said Magnus briefly.
"Oh, you do not? Then I should not have made you listen. I beg pardon.
This was it,--a grand passage:
"'And there shall be no more curse; but the throne of God and of the
Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him; and they shall
see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.'"
"But you should not break down there, love. _That_ is all victory."
"She was thinking of those who have not won it, sir," said Magnus.
"Perhaps--dear heart!" said her father. "Well, my boy, never do you be
one of those. Fight the good fight, even on the smallest field. 'As a
good soldier of Jesus Christ.'"
"I mean it, sir," Magnus answered gravely. "Mr. Erskine, what that girl
needs is fresh air. If you will send her off for a good walk with me,
I'll find a place in the woods where she can leave her headache. Do you
want her to sputter Greek to you any longer?"
"'Sputter Greek!'" Mr. Erskine repeated. "Well, that certainly displays
your knowledge of the language. Yes, go, love. I think Magnus is right."
"I know he is, this time," said that young man confidently. "I wish I
could stay with you, Mr. Erskine, while she is gone, but then you see
she wouldn't go. I'll stay as long as you like when we come back."
"I don't doubt it," said his friend, smiling. "I know you of old.
'Sputter Greek,' indeed! My Cherry, who has such a specially fine
accent. I think she is very good to go with you at all."
"Cherry never thinks of herself, sir," said Magnus. "If you ask her
this minute, she will tell you she has thought only of me, ever since I
came in."
A quick, assenting colour leaped into the pale cheeks for a moment, as
Cherry tied on her hat, but she said nothing; and Mr. Erskine was too
well used to the chaffing between the two to do more than laugh at it.
So they went out into the perfect June day, slowly along amid
hedgerows and flowers, bees, butterflies, and birds, to the edge of
the shadowy woodland. For some reason of his own, Magnus had put on
the grey that morning, and now as they went on, Cherry could not but
notice and admire the free, regular step, and the easy exactness of
the tall shadow that kept pace with her own. But he said nothing, nor
did she, and once, glancing up at him from under her hat, she noted
the deep quiet of his face--very, very grave, yet with a fine, clear
steadfastness that seemed to herald victory from henceforth. A man's
face now, a boy's no longer.
Absorbed as he appeared to be, Magnus must have been also watching her,
for he caught the look.
"Yes?" he said. "What were you going to ask? Sit down, Cerise; here is
a good place for you."
But he did not put himself at her feet, as yesterday, nor even close at
her side, but on a grey rock a little way off; then threw his cap down
on the grass, and sat watching her anxiously.
"What is it?" he said again. "Speak out all that is in your dear
heart. You could not offend me, and hurts from you will only do me
good."
Probably the "all" in Cherry's heart was a good deal, just then; for at
first she could bring nothing out.
"I am not sure that I was going to say anything," she answered with
effort.
"Well, you looked at me," said Magnus. "What was that for? To see what
sort of a wild animal I had turned into since last night?"
"No, no! Oh, Magnus don't talk so. People may look at each other, I
suppose."
"I suppose they may--and I have been looking at you. Cherry, have you
been crying over me all night? Because, if you have, I might as well go
and drown myself at once."
Cherry remarked logically that she did not see how that would help
matters.
"They used to say you never cried," Magnus said reproachfully.
"Most women keep a few tears for special occasions," said Cherry,
trying to speak lightly.
"Well, you have squandered your whole stock on me," said Magnus; "you
don't look as if there could be one tear left. I'm not worth it,
Cherry. Such a coward, such a careless fellow; yielding to temptation,
and with only bravery enough left to own it. I wonder you should cry
over _him_."
Plainly, the fountain had not yet run dry, for the girl looked at him
with her eyes full.
"Oh, Magnus!" she cried, "why do you talk so? You break my heart."
"Well, you are breaking mine," said Magnus; "so we're quits."
"What have I done?" Cherry faltered.
"Thrown me off like a bad package. You didn't look at me when I came
in, you hardly spoke to me. I suppose I deserve it, but that does not
generally make things much easier."
"Just now you found fault with me for looking at you."
"Found fault, did I?" said Magnus. "I wonder you dare say such a thing
to me."
"Well, remarked upon it, then," Cherry corrected herself.
"A man is pretty apt to remark upon the first gleam of anything like
sunlight he has seen for twelve hours."
"Those twelve hours having come off chiefly in the night."
"Stop chopping logic with me! If I get cross there is no telling what I
may do. Cherry, why don't you say out all the dreadful things at once,
and have them off your mind?"
"But, I thought it was to cure my _head_ you brought me here?"
"You did not think any such thing. You knew I had to have it out with
you, some time, and now you will not let me do it. Never even gave me
your hand when I came in, but just a little piece of ice."
"You are quite wild this morning," Cherry said, with the feeling that
detachments were coming up faster than she could manage them.
"Men are apt to be, when they are waiting to be shot and the guns don't
go off."
"But how do I hinder your having a talk?"
"It takes two to make a bargain, doesn't it? Oh, yes, I can talk on by
myself, Saturdays and Sundays, and all the week, and tell the truth
straight through. How lovely Cherry looks this morning! The first night
I came back I found she had grown handsomer than I ever thought any
woman could be, and I think so still. And there's not a girl in all the
world that is half so good. And I never cared two straws for anybody
else--and never shall. Never could, for that matter. And I've been
a fool, and a poltroon, and anything else you like; and so she has
thrown me off, and has no use for me any more. And it makes me just mad
to sit here and think that I have lost her. And some day I shall get
her wedding cards, with the name of some nice man who never tied his
shoestrings in a hurry."
"Magnus, why, Magnus!" Cherry said, astonishment sending every other
feeling to the rear. "What is the matter with you?"
"That."
"What has come over you?"
"This."
"But we cannot have our talk on such terms," said Cherry, catching her
breath a little.
"They're the only terms we shall ever talk on again," said Magnus. "We
always chose each other out, from the time we could walk; and I knew I
loved you with all my heart when I went away. But the minute I saw you
again, that first night, I knew that I never should--never could--love
anybody else. Not if I lived to be nine hundred and ninety-nine, and
you got in love with forty other men."
Cherry could not help laughing, in spite of herself, for sheer
nervousness.
"I think that would cure you," she said.
"No, it wouldn't. I ought to know, after fighting the thing through all
night."
"But, Magnus, we used to be just brother and sister," Cherry said very
low.
"No, we didn't. Maybe you think so. We're not that now, anyway, and
never shall be again. That was why I poured out the whole thing to you
last night, and made you sick. I wanted you to know everything there
was to tell. Just how weak and wicked and mean I could be. I knew I
didn't deserve to hold your hand this morning, and that was the very
reason I wanted it so much."
"But, Magnus," Cherry said, the bright drops welling up again, "that
'could' is in the past."
"With the Lord's help, yes!" he answered. "I will live a pure life and
a true life, even if I must live it alone. Your arrow did its work."
"Mine?" the girl cried. "Oh, Magnus, was I so unkind?"
"So kind. But I was pierced through, all the same."
"I did not mean it," she said, the tears dropping down. "Oh, Magnus, I
did not mean it!"
"Well, you had better mean it," he said; "good enough for me. If there
were more girls like you in the world there'd be more better men. Why,
half of the women you see almost put the stuff down your throat. Give
it to you so sweetened and spiced and fussed up that you don't know
what you're taking. And when it's once in your mouth, it's pretty hard
not to swallow it."
"Very hard, I should think," said Cherry. "It looks easier to refuse it
altogether."
"For you, I dare say; but things are not always exactly what they look,
for other people. However, I am going to try it. So if you ever happen
to read in the papers of a hopelessly insane cadet, you'll know who it
is."
Again the girl's eyes filled, though a bit of a smile came too.
"Magnus," she said, "I think you are called to be a leader."
"Looks like it."
"But I mean, really. How many other fellows, do you think, may take
heart to follow, if you will but show the way?"
"So you said before. How many? I don't know; perhaps some. Oh, there
are men enough there now who never touch anything stronger than water.
And I never did, till that unlucky night. But I've been in lately,
somehow, with the other crowd."
"Crowds are unsafe places," Cherry said with a sigh.
"Well, don't waste any long breaths on me," Magnus said. "Why do you?"
The girl's lips parted in that same pathetic smile, but then they began
to quiver, trembling so that she could not speak.
"I wonder at you," Magnus repeated. "Why don't you tell me all your
mind, and bid me go? What do _you_ want of such a Derelict?"
"Magnus, you are very hard to me."
"I? Hard to you?" Magnus repeated, at her feet now. "To you? My beauty,
and treasure, and heart's delight? The girl I love best in all the
world, and the only one I ever can love better than everything else. I,
hard to _you_? The girl I left behind me, with my heart in her keeping.
And now she sits there, despising me. Cherry, I never was anything but
true to you; never. I have fooled with other girls, but I did not care
a red cent for the whole lot."
"No--" Cherry said, drawing a long, long sigh. "Oh Magnus! you were not
true to yourself."
"Never mind me," Magnus answered unreasonably. "I don't want you for a
missionary. If I've got to have one, call in some old wrinkled specimen
that will not distract my mind. If you don't care anything about me
except to get me creditably out of the world, why, say so. I have told
you all the worst things about myself. And if you are willing to work
it as we always did; I carrying you over the hard places, and you
brushing the mud off with your own little hands--you can say that, too."
"Oh, Magnus!" she cried, "there must not be any mud."
"There must not be, and there isn't going to be; but what if there
was? We can't have the marriage service made over just for us two,
I suppose. I mean it shall be for better and better, every day I
live--but you've got to _take_ me 'for better, for worse.'"
I fancy few men have any faint notion what it is to a woman to have
her image of perfection marred; perhaps men less often set up ideals,
unless in the line of beauty; and that is altogether a lower erection.
To see "fragile" written on your tower of strength, and the hero marked
"human," in unmistakable letters, is a very, very sharp lesson. A
good one, though; the sooner that form of idolatry ceases the better;
letting the woman down--or up--to her proper station of helpmeet.
Cherry's heart was ringing yet with the ache and the sorrow, her eyes
dazed with this sudden mortal light let in upon the world of dreams and
imaginations.
Her love was not changed, she knew that; as it had gone out to the
hero, so still it went out to the man, and would, while her life
lasted. No question to settle there. But now another was stirring in
the girl's heart, coming on a sudden uncalled for, unwelcome--and the
old words of the apostle confronted her:
"And the wife see that she reverence her husband."