As Van Berg left Mr. Eltinge's grounds he had the aspect of a man
who had seen a vision. He had seen more, for the human face expressive
of absolute, even though brief, mastery over evil is a nobler object
than can be the serene visage of a sinless and untempted angel.
At last he understood Ida Mayhew. If he had deeply honored her when
he supposed that as a sincere, honest friend only she had spoken
her strong, true words, which might save him from wrecking his life
from impulses of shame and wounded pride, how instantaneously was
this honor changed into reverence and wonder as he recognized her
self-sacrifice at the dictates of conscience. All was now perfectly
clear. The truth of her love had flashed out from the dark cloud
of her passionate grief, and in its white radiance all the baffling
mystery of her past action was dissipated instantly. Now he knew
why the brilliant music at the concert garden could not brighten
her face, and the end of the symphony saw her in tears. Now he
understood why she could not be Jennie Burton's friend, even though
capable of becoming a martyr for her sake from a sense of duty. The
despairing farewell letter she had once written to him now became
fraught with a deeper meaning, and he saw that in throwing away
the imperfect rose-bud, and in looking at her as a creature akin
to Sibley, he had inflicted mortal wounds on a heart that gave him
only love in return. In her desperate effort to conceal an unsought
love she had sought the nearest covert, and the stains Sibley had
left upon her were no more hers than if he had been a blackened
wall. After all her woman's soul had come to her as in the old
and simple times when even water nymphs had hearts, and love was
still the mightiest force in the universe.
His feeling now was far too deep for his former half-frenzied
excitement. There was not a trace of exultation in his manner,
and there was indeed no ground for rapture. Only the knowledge
that he carried away her respect, and that he was going to the
performance of what he believed a sacred duty, kept him from despair.
He did not blame himself as bitterly as might have been supposed
that he had not discovered her secret earlier, and it increased
his admiration for her, if that were possible, that she had so
carefully maintained her maidenly reserve. A conceited man, or
at least a man whose soul was infested with the meanest kind of
conceit--that of imagining that the woman who gives him a friendly
word or smile is disposed to throw herself into his arms--would no
doubt have surmised her secret before; but although Van Berg was
intensely proud, as we have seen, and had been rendered self-complacent
and self-confident by the circumstances of his lot, he had none of
this contemptible vanity. The discovery of Ida's love caused him
far greater surprise than when he recognized his own, and it was a
source of deep satisfaction to him that this modern and conventional
Undine had received a nature of such true and womanly delicacy that
it had led her to conceal her love like the trailing-arbutus that
hides its fragrant blossoms under fallen leaves.
The light had been so clear that he even saw the temptation which
he unconsciously had suggested to her while in the city. Unlike
the little violet that weakly bowed its head and died because the
brook would not stop, she had resolutely set about the task of
making him stop, and yet never let him suspect that she was even
looking at him. Hence her attempt to penetrate the wilderness of
knowledge which was at once so pathetic and comical; hence also
her wish to learn the authors and subjects which interested him.
"And she had every reason to believe that she might have won me
from the one honorable allegiance I can give," he exclaimed, in
deep humiliation, "and probably she would have done so eventually
had she not acted liek a saint rather than a woman. I've lost
faith utterly in Harold Van Berg, and it will require a great many
years to regain it."
When he reached a dense tract of woodland through which the road
ran, he concealed himself and waited till she should pass. Two
hours elapsed before she did so. The passionate grief that had
overwhelmed her was no slight and passing gust. He saw that she
leaned back weakly and languidly in the phaeton, and had hidden her
face by a vail of double thickness. He followed her at a distance
far too great for recognition until she entered the hotel, and
then sought to obtain a little rest and food at the nearest village
inn; for he found now that his fierce paroxysm of rage and mental
torment was over, he had become very faint and exhausted. After
he had regained somewhat the power to think and act, he turned his
steps towards a narrow, secluded ravine, about a mile from the hotel,
knowing that here he would find the deepest solitude in which to
grow calm and prepare himself for the quiet self-sacrifice of which
Ida had given the example, and which no eye must be able to detect
save his to whom the secrets of all hearts are open.
He made no effort to follow any path, but sprang carelessly and
rapidly down the steep hillside. When he had almost reached the
bottom of the ravine, his foot slipped on a rock half hidden by
leaves, and he fell and rolled helplessly down. Before he could
recover himself, the rock, which had been loosely imbedded in the
soil and which his foot had struck so heavily, rolled after him
and on his leg and foot. In sudden and increasing dismay, he found
that he could not extricate himself. The stone would have been
beyond his ability to lift even if he had the full use of all his
powers; but he was held in a position that gave him very little
chance to exert his strength.
When he found that it was utterly impossible to push the stone
away, he tried to excavate the earth, by means of sticks and his
small pocket-knife, from under his leg, but soon found, with a sense
of mortal fear, that his limb was resting in a little depression
between two other large rocks deeply imbedded in the bottom of
the ravine. This depression, and the soft, dry leaves which had
covered it like a cushion, prevented the stone from crushing his
limb and foot, but also held him in a sort of natural sock.
As these appalling facts became clear, he saw that he was in imminent
danger of death by starvation. Then a worse fear than that chilled
his very soul. He might die in that lonely spot and never be
discovered. The prowling vermin of the night might tear away his
flesh, and drag his bones hither and thither, till the leaves that
now would soon fall covered them forever from sight and knowledge;
but Ida Mayhew, and the orphan girl to whom his honor bound him, would
think that he had broken his pledges, and was in truth a vagabond
on the earth--eating and drinking, rioting, perhaps in ignoble
obscurity. The prospect made him sick and faint for a time, for
that which in his first blind sense of shame he had proposed to
do, now that he had heard Ida's heaven-inspired words, seemed base
and cowardly to the last degree. If she had not brought to him
sane and quiet thought, he would have grimly said to himself that
fate had taken him out of his dilemma in a fitting way, punishing
and destroying him at one and the same time; but now to die and
forever seem unworthy of the trust of the woman he so loved and
revered was a kind of eternal punishment in itself. He called and
shouted with desperate energy for aid but the freshening wind of
early September rustled millions of leaves in the forest around
him and drowned his voice. He soon realized that one standing on
the bank just above him would scarcely be able to hear, even though
listening. Oh, why would that remorseless wind blow so steadily!
Was there no pity in nature?
Then in a frenzy he struggled and wrenched his leg till it was
bruised and bleeding, but the rocky grip would not yield. He soon
began to consider that he was exhausting himself and thus lessening
his chances of escape, and he lay quietly on his side and tried
to think how long he could survive, and now deeply regretted that
his wild passion for the past two days had drawn so largely on his
vital powers. Already, after but an hour's durance, he was weak
and faint.
Then various expedients to attract attention began to present
themselves. By means of a stick he drew down the overhanging
branch of a tree and tied to it his handkerchief. He also managed
to insert a stick in the ground near him, and on its top placed
his hat, but he saw that they could not be seen through the thick
undergrowth at any great distance. Then more deliberately, and
with an effort to economize his strength, he again attempted to
undermine the rocks on which his leg rested, but found that they
ran under him and hopelessly deep. At intervals he would shout
for help, but his cries grew fainter as he became weak and discouraged.
"O God," he said, "there is just the bare chance that some one may
stumble upon me, and that is all;" and as the glen fell into deeper
and deeper shadow in the declining day, even more swiftly it seemed
to him that the shadow of death was darkening about him.
At last the bark of squirrels and the chirp and twitter of birds
that haunted the lonely place ceased and it was night. Only the
notes of fall insects in their monotonous and ceaseless iteration
were heard above the sighing wind, which now sounded like a requiem
to the disheartened man. Suddenly a great owl flapped heavily over
him, and lighting in a tree near by, began its discordant hootings.
"That's an omen of death," he muttered, grimly. Then at last, in
uncontrollable irritation, he shouted, "Curse you, begone!" and
the ill-boding bird flapped away with a startled screech, that to
Van Berg's morbid fancy was like a demon's laugh. But it alighted
again a little further off and drove him half wild with its dismal
cries. At last there was a radiance among the trees on the eastern
side of the ravine, and soon the moon rose clear and bright; the
wind went down, and except the "audible silence" of insect sounds
all was still. Nature seemed to him holding her breath in suspense,
waiting for the end. He called out from time to time till, from
the lateness of the hour, he knew that it was utterly useless.
He began in a dreamy way, to wonder if Ida had missed him yet and
was surprised that he had not returned. He thought how strange,
how unaccountable even, his conduct must appear to Miss Burton,
and how very difficult it would have been to explain it at best.
"Ida was wrong, however, in thinking that it is for me that she
is grieving so deeply," he murmured, "although she may be right in
believing that I have raised hopes in Jennie's mind of a happier
future, when time had healed the wounds made in the past. If I
had lived, if by any happy chance I DO live, my only course will be
to maintain the character of a friend until she gives up the past
for the sake of what I can offer. In a certain sense we will be
on equal footing, for her lover is dead and my love is the same as
dead to me. But what is the use of such thoughts! I shall be dead
to them both in a few hours more, and what is far worse, despised
by them both," and for the first time in all that awful vigil bitter
tears rolled down his cheeks.
Then, slowly and minutely, he went over all that had occurred during
that eventful summer. He found a melancholy pleasure which served
to beguile the interminable hours of pain--for now his leg and
unnatural position began to cause very severe suffering--in portraying
to himself the changes in Ida's mind and character from the hour
of their first meeting, and it seemed to him very mysterious indeed
that the thread of his life should have been caught in hers by that
mere casual glance at the concert garden, and then that it should
have been so strangely and intimately woven with hers only to
be snapped at last in this untimely and meaningless fashion. He
groaned, "its all more like the malicious ingenuity of a fiend
seeking to cause the weak human puppets that it misleads the greatest
amount of suffering, than like the hap-hazard of a blind fate, or
the work of a kind and good God. Oh, if I had only waited till my
Undine received her woman's soul, what a heaven I might have had
on earth! She would have filled my studio with light and beauty,
and my life with honor and happiness. Never, never was there a
more cruel fate than mine! I shall die, and my only burial will
be the infamy which will cover my memory forever."
Then, with a dreary sinking of heart, his mind reverted to the
long future before him that was now so terribly vague and dark. In
the consciousness of solitude and in order to break the oppressive
stillness, he spoke aloud at intervals between his paroxysms of
pain. "After all, what is dying? I know how deeply rooted in the
human mind is the belief that it is only a departure to another
place and a different condition of life. Can a conviction that
has been universal in all ages and among all peoples be a delusion?
Then whoever or whatever created human nature built it on a lie.
This accursed rock has fallen on my body, and holds it as if it
were a mere clod of earth, as it soon may be; but it does not hold
my mind. My thoughts have followed father and dear, dear mother,
and sister Laura across the sea a hundred times to-night. But oh,
how strangely my thoughts come back from every one--everything to
that dear saint who sacrificed herself for me to-day.--And yet I'm
leaving her, I'm leaving all. Whither am I going? It's all dark,
DARK; vague and dreary. Oh, that I had her simple faith! Whether
true or no it would be an infinite comfort now. What did she
say?--'I've found a Friend pledged to take care of me.' That is
all I would ask. I would not be afraid to go out into this great
universe if I only had such a Friend as she believes in, waiting
to receive me. Who cares how strange a place may be if a loved
friend meets and greets us. But to go alone, and away from so much
to which my heart clings--oh, it is awful! awful!---
"A man can't die, ought not to die, like a stupid beast unless he
is a beast only; nor should death drag us like trembling captives
from the shores of time. And yet I must do one of three things:
either wait helplessly and in trembling expectancy, or take cousel
of pride, and stubbornly and sullenly meet the future, or else
appeal to Ida's Friend. It seems mean business to do the last now
in my extremity, but I well know that Ida would counsel it, and
by reaching her Friend I may at some time in the future reach her
again. I know well how my mother--were I dying--would urge me to
look to him, whom she in loyal faith worships daily, and thus I may
see her once more. The Bible teaches how many in their extremity
looked to Christ and he helped them. But then they had not known
about him, and coldly and almost contemptuously neglected him for
years as I have. Oh, what has my reason, of which I have been
so proud, done for me, save blast my earthly life with folly, and
permitted the neglect of all preparation for an eternal life. If
ever a self-confident man was taught how utterly incapable he was
of meeting events and questions that might occur within a few brief
days, I am he, and yet, vain fool that I was! I was practically
acting as if I could meet all that would happen to all eternity
in a cool, well-bred, masterful way. Poor untrained, untaught Ida
Mayhew said she had 'found a Friend pledged to take care of her,'
and he has taken care of her. He has made her life true, noble,
heroic, beneficent. I was content to take care of myself, and
this is the result. God might well turn away in disgust from any
prayer of mine now, but may I be accursed if I do not become a
Christian man, if by any means I now escape death!"
But in his intense longing to see again those he loved so well, and
tell them that he had not basely broken his pledges and fled like
a coward from duty, he did pray with all the agonized earnestness
of a soul clinging to the one hope that intervened between itself
and utter despair, but the moon moved on serenely and sank among
the trees on the western bank of the ravine. The night darkened
again and the stars came out more clearly with their cold distant
glitter. Nature's breathless hush and expectancy continued, and
there was no sound without and no answer within the heart of the
despairing man. At last, in weakness and discouragement, he moaned:
"Well, thank God, brave Ida Mayhew put an honorable purpose in my
heart before I died, and I meant to have carried it out. There's
no use of praying, for it seems as if I were no more than one of
these millions of leaves over my head when it falls from its place.
Nature is pitiless and God is as cold towards me as I was once to
one who turned her appealing eyes to me for a little kindness and
sympathy. O God! if I must die, let it be soon, for my pain and
thirst are becoming intolerable."
The dawn was now brightening the east. Nature as if tired of
waiting--like some professed friends--for one who was long in dying,
ceased its breathless hush. A fresh breeze rustled the motionless
leaves, birds withdrew their heads from under their wings, and
began the twittering preliminary to their morning songs; and two
squirrels, springing from their nest in a hollow tree, like children
from a cottage door, scrambled down and over Van Berg's prostrate
form in their wild sport, but he was too weak, too far gone in
dull, heavy apathy to heed them.
At last he thought he was dying, and he became unconscious.
He learned that it was only a swoon from the fact that he revived
again, and was dimly conscious of sounds near him. It seemed to him
that he was half asleep, and that he could not wake up sufficiently
to distinguish whether the sounds were heard in a dream or in reality.
But he soon became sure that some one was crying and moaning not
far away, and he naturally associated such evidences of distress
with what he had seen last in Mr. Eltinge's garden. He therefore
called feebly:
"Ida--Ida Mayhew."
"Merciful God!" exclaimed a voice, "who is that?"
His heart beat so fast he could not answer at once, but he heard
a light, swift step; the shrubbery and low branches of the trees
were swept aside, and Jennie Burton's blue eyes, full of tears but
dilated with wonder and fear, looked upon him.
"O, Jennie Burton, good angel of God! he has sent you to me," cried
the rescued man, who with a glad thrill of joy felt that life was
coming back in the line of honor and duty.
"Harold Van Berg! what are you doing here?" she asked in wild
amazement.
"I was dying till you came and brought me hope and life, as you
have to so many others."
"Thank God, thank God," she panted, and she rushed at the rock that
had held him in such terrible durance.
He struggled up and tried to pull her hands away.
"Don't do that, Jennie," he said, "you are not quite an angel yet,
and cannot 'roll the stone away.'"
"O God!" she exclaimed, with a sharp cry of agony, "in some such
way and place HE may have died," and she sank to the ground, moaning
and wringing her hands as if overwhelmed with agony at the thought.
Van Berg reached out and took her hand, forgetting for a moment
his own desperate need, as he said: "Dear Jennie, don't grieve so
terribly."
"God forgive me, that I could forget you!" she said, starting up.
"I must not lose a second in bringing you help."
But he clung feebly to her hand. "Wait, Jennie, till you are more
calm. My life depends on you now. The hotel is a long way off,
and if you start in your present mood you will never reach it
yourself, and I had better die a thousand times than cause harm to
you."
She put her hand on her side and her convulsive sobbing soon ceased.
After a moment or two she said quietly: "You can trust me now,
Mr. Van Berg; I won't fail you."
"Do you think you could bring me a little water before you go?" he
asked.
"Yes, there's a spring near; I know this place well," and it seemed
to him that she flitted back and forth like a ray of light, bringing
all the water she could carry in a large leaf.
"Oh," he said, with a long deep breath, "did ever a sweeter draught
pass mortal lips, and from your hands, too, Jennie Burton. May I
die as I would have died here if I do not devote my life to making
you happy!"
"I accept that pledge," she said, with a wan smile that on her
pale, tear-stained face was inexpressibly touching. "It makes me
bold enough to ask one more promise."
"It's made already, so help me God!" he replied fervently.
A faint, far-away gleam of something like mirth came into her deep
blue eyes as she said, "I've bound you now, and you can have no
choice. Your pledge is this--that you will make me happy in my
own way. Now, not another word, not another motion; keep every
particle of life and strength till I come again with assistance,"
and she brought him water twice again, silencing him by an imperious
gesture when he attempted to speak, and then she disappeared.
"That was an odd pledge that she beguiled me into," he murmured.
"I fear that in the wiles of her unselfish heart she has caught
me in some kind of a trap." But after a little time he relapsed
again into a condition of partial unconsciousness.