Owing to the horse’s nap by the roadside, it was quite late in the evening
when they reached the town and David saw the lights of his own
neighborhood gleaming in the distance. He was glad it was late, for now
there would be no one to meet them that night. His friends would think,
perhaps, that they had changed their plans and stopped over night on the
way, or met with some detention.
Marcia still slept.
David as he drew near the house began to feel that perhaps he had made a
mistake in carrying out his marriage just as if nothing had happened and
everything was all right. It would be too great a strain upon him to live
there in that house without Kate, and come home every night just as he had
planned it, and not to find her there to greet him as he had hoped. Oh, if
he might turn even now and flee from it, out into the wilderness somewhere
and hide himself from human kind, where no one would know, and no one ever
ask him about his wife!
He groaned in spirit as the horse drew up to the door, and the heavy head
of the sweet girl who was his wife reminded him that he could not go away,
but must stay and face the responsibilities of life which he had taken
upon himself, and bear the pain that was his. It was not the fault of the
girl he had married. She sorrowed for him truly, and he felt deeply
grateful for the great thing she had done to save his pride.
He leaned over and touched her shoulder gently to rouse her, but her sleep
was deep and healthy, the sleep of exhausted youth. She did not rouse nor
even open her eyes, but murmured half audibly; “David has come, Kate,
hurry!”
Half guessing what had passed the night he arrived, David stooped and
tenderly gathered her up in his arms. He felt a bond of kindliness far
deeper than brotherly love. It was a bond of common suffering, and by her
own choice she had made herself his comrade in his trouble. He would at
least save her what suffering he could.
She did not waken as he carried her into the house, nor when he took her
upstairs and laid her gently upon the white bed that had been prepared for
the bridal chamber.
The moonlight stole in at the small-paned windows and fell across the
floor, showing every object in the room plainly. David lighted a candle
and set it upon the high mahogany chest of drawers. The light flickered
and played over the sweet face and Marcia slept on.
David went downstairs and put up the horse, and then returned, but Marcia
had not stirred. He stood a moment looking at her helplessly. It did not
seem right to leave her this way, and yet it was a pity to disturb her
sleep, she seemed so weary. It had been a long ride and the day had been
filled with unwonted excitement. He felt it himself, and what must it be
for her? She was a woman.
David had the old-fashioned gallant idea of woman.
Clumsily he untied the gay blue ribbons and pulled the jaunty poke bonnet
out of her way. The luxuriant hair, unused to the confinement of combs,
fell rich about her sleep-flushed face. Contentedly she nestled down, the
bonnet out of her way, her red lips parted the least bit with a half
smile, the black lashes lying long upon her rosy cheek, one childish hand
upon which gleamed the new wedding ring—that was not hers,—lying relaxed
and appealing upon her breast, rising and falling with her breath. A
lovely bride!
David, stern, true, pained and appreciative, suddenly awakened to what a
dreadful thing he had done.
Here was this lovely woman, her womanhood not yet unfolded from the bud,
but lovely in promise even as her sister had been in truth, her charms,
her dreams, her woman’s ways, her love, her very life, taken by him as
ruthlessly and as thoughtlessly as though she had been but a wax doll, and
put into a home where she could not possibly be what she ought to be,
because the place belonged to another. Thrown away upon a man without a
heart! That was what she was! A sacrifice to his pride! There was no other
way to put it.
It fairly frightened him to think of the promises he had made. “Love,
honor, cherish,” yes, all those he had promised, and in a way he could
perform, but not in the sense that the wedding ceremony had meant, not in
the way in which he would have performed them had the bride been Kate, the
choice of his love. Oh, why, why had this awful thing come upon him!
And now his conscience told him he had done wrong to take this girl away
from the possibilities of joy in the life that might have been hers, and
sacrifice her for the sake of saving his own sufferings, and to keep his
friends from knowing that the girl he was to marry had jilted him.
As he stood before the lovely, defenceless girl her very beauty and
innocence arraigned him. He felt that God would hold him accountable for
the act he had so thoughtlessly committed that day, and a burden of
responsibility settled upon his weight of sorrow that made him groan
aloud. For a moment his soul cried out against it in rebellion. Why could
he not have loved this sweet self-sacrificing girl instead of her fickle
sister? Why? Why? She might perhaps have loved him in return, but now
nothing could ever be! Earth was filled with a black sorrow, and life
henceforth meant renunciation and one long struggle to hide his trouble
from the world.
But the girl whom he had selfishly drawn into the darkness of his sorrow
with him, she must not be made to suffer more than he could help. He must
try to make her happy, and keep her as much as possible from knowing what
she had missed by coming with him! His lips set in stern resolve, and a
purpose, half prayer, went up on record before God, that he would save her
as much as he knew how.
Lying helpless so, she appealed to him. Asking nothing she yet demanded
all from him in the name of true chivalry. How readily had she given up
all for him! How sweetly she had said she would fill the place left vacant
by her sister, just to save him pain and humiliation!
A desire to stoop and kiss the fair face came to him, not for affection’s
sake, but reverently, as if to render to her before God some fitting sign
that he knew and understood her act of self sacrifice, and would not
presume upon it.
Slowly, as though he were performing a religious ceremony, a sacred duty
laid upon him on high, David stooped over her, bringing his face to the
gentle sleeping one. Her sweet breath fanned his cheek like the almost
imperceptible fragrance of a bud not fully opened yet to give forth its
sweetness to the world. His soul, awake and keen through the thoughts that
had just come to him, gave homage to her sweetness, sadly, wistfully, half
wishing his spirit free to gather this sweetness for his own.
And so he brought his lips to hers, and kissed her, his bride, yet not his
bride. Kissed her for the second time. That thought came to him with the
touch of the warm lips and startled him. Had there been something
significant in the fact that he had met Marcia first and kissed her
instead of Kate by mistake?
It seemed as though the sleeping lips clung to his lingeringly, and half
responded to the kiss, as Marcia in her dreams lived over again the kiss
she had received by her father’s gate in the moonlight. Only the dream
lover was her own and not another’s. David, as he lifted up his head and
looked at her gravely, saw a half smile illuminating her lips as if the
sleeping soul within had felt the touch and answered to the call.
With a deep sigh he turned away, blew out the candle, and left her with
the moonbeams in her chamber. He walked sadly to a rear room of the house
and lay down upon the bed, his whole soul crying out in agony at his
miserable state.
Kate, the careless one, who had made all this heart-break and misery, had
quarreled with her husband already because he did not further some
expensive whim of hers. She had told him she was sorry she had not stayed
where she was and carried on her marriage with David as she had planned to
do. Now she sat sulkily in her room alone, too angry to sleep; while her
husband smoked sullenly in the barroom below, and drank frequent glasses
of brandy to fortify himself against Kate’s moods.
Kate was considering whether or not she had been a fool in marrying the
captain instead of David, though she called herself by a much milder word
than that. The romance was already worn away. She wished for her trunk and
her pretty furbelows. Her father’s word of reconciliation would doubtless
come in a few days, also the trunks.
After all there was intense satisfaction to Kate in having broken all
bounds and done as she pleased. Of course it would have been a bit more
comfortable if David had not been so absurdly in earnest, and believed in
her so thoroughly. But it was nice to have some one believe in you no
matter what you did, and David would always do that. It began to look
doubtful if the captain would. But David would never marry, she was sure,
and perhaps, by and by, when everything had been forgotten and forgiven,
she might establish a pleasant relationship with him again. It would be
charming to coquet with him. He made love so earnestly, and his great eyes
were so handsome when he looked at one with his whole soul in them. Yes,
she certainly must keep in with him, for it would be good to have a friend
like that when her husband was off at sea with his ship. Now that she was
a married woman she would be free from all such childish trammels as being
guarded at home and never going anywhere alone. She could go to New York,
and she would let David know where she was and he would come up on
business and perhaps take her to the theatre. To be sure, she had heard
David express views against theatre-going, and she knew he was as much of
a church man, almost, as her father, but she was sure she could coax him
to do anything for her, and she had always wanted to go to the theatre.
His scruples might be strong, but she knew his love for her, and thought
it was stronger. She had read in his eyes that it would never fail her.
Yes, she thought, she would begin at once to make a friend of David. She
would write him a letter asking forgiveness, and then she would keep him
under her influence. There was no telling what might happen with her
husband off at sea so much. It was well to be foresighted, besides, it
would be wholesome for the captain to know she had another friend. He
might be less stubborn. What a nuisance that the marriage vows had to be
taken for life! It would be much nicer if they could be put off as easily
as they were put on. Rather hard on some women perhaps, but she could keep
any man as long as she chose, and then—she snapped her pretty thumb and
finger in the air to express her utter disdain for the man whom she chose
to cast off.
It seemed that Kate, in running away from her father’s house and her
betrothed bridegroom, and breaking the laws of respectable society, had
with that act given over all attempt at any principle.
So she set herself down to write her letter, with a pout here and a dimple
there, and as much pretty gentleness as if she had been talking with her
own bewitching face and eyes quite near to his. She knew she could bewitch
him if she chose, and she was in the mood just now to choose very much,
for she was deeply angry with her husband.
She had ever been utterly heartless when she pleased, knowing that it
needed but her returning smile, sweet as a May morning, to bring her much
abused subjects fondly to her feet once more. It did not strike her that
this time she had sinned not only against her friends, but against heaven,
and God-given love, and that a time of reckoning must come to her,—had
come, indeed.
She had never believed they would be angry with her, her father least of
all. She had no thought they would do anything desperate. She had expected
the wedding would be put off indefinitely, that the servants would be sent
out hither and yon in hot haste to unbid the guests, upon some pretext of
accident or illness, and that it would be left to rest until the village
had ceased to wonder and her real marriage with Captain Leavenworth could
be announced.
She had counted upon David to stand up for her. She had not understood how
her father’s righteous soul would be stirred to the depths of shame and
utter disgrace over her wanton action. Not that she would have been in the
least deterred from doing as she pleased had she understood, only that she
counted upon too great power with all of them.
When the letter was written it sounded quite pathetic and penitent,
putting all the blame of her action upon her husband, and making herself
out a poor, helpless, sweet thing, bewildered by so much love put upon
her, and suggesting, just in a hint, that perhaps after all she had made a
mistake not to have kept David’s love instead of the wilder, fiercer one.
She ended by begging David to be her friend forever, and leaving an
impression with him, though it was but slight, that already shadows had
crossed her path that made her feel his friendship might be needed some
day.
It was a letter calculated to drive such a lover as David had been, half
mad with anguish, even without the fact of his hasty marriage added to the
situation.
And in due time, by coach, the letter came to David.