A DEAL IN FUTURES.
"Why do you fret so much about it?" asked Rube, sitting beside his
promised wife about a week after the old man was laid to rest. "You
loved your father, of course, but--"
"There's the point!" exclaimed Mell. "I did not love him--not as a
child ought to love a parent. What did it matter that his looks
were common and his speech rude? His thoughts were true, his
motives good, his actions honest, and now I mourn the blindness which
made me value him, not for what he was, but what he looked to be. In
self-forgetfulness and sacrificing devotion to me he was sublime. He
went in rags that I might dress above my station; he ate coarse food
that I might be served with dainties; he worked as a slave that I
might hold my hands in idleness; and how did I requite him? I was
ashamed of him; I held him in contempt. Oh, oh! My, my!"
"Come, now," remonstrated Rube, trying to stem the torrent of this
lachrymatory deluge, and wondering what had become of all the
comforting phrases in the English language, that he could not put his
tongue upon one of them. "Do try to calm yourself, dearest. I know you
are exaggerating the true state of the case, as we are all prone to
do in moments of self-upbraiding. I never saw you lacking in respect
to him."
"There's a great many bad things in me you never saw," blubbered Mell,
breaking out afresh.
"Dear, dear!" said Rube, "I never saw such grief as this!"
"You--are--disgusted, I know?"
"Not a bit of it!" declared Rube; "just the contrary! I fairly dote on
the prospect of a wife who is going to cry hard and cut up dreadful
when anything happens to a fellow. It kind of makes dying seem sort of
easy. But, come, now; you've cried enough. Let me comfort you."
"No, no!" cried Mell, shrinking away from him. "If you only knew, you
would not want to comfort me. I do not deserve a single kind word from
you. I am unworthy your regard. I am a weak woman, and a wicked one.
Oh, Rube! I have not treated you right. That day at the picnic I was
angry with some one else; I was piqued; I did not feel as I made you
think I felt. I--that is--"
Here Mell broke down completely in her disjointed arraignment of self,
thoroughly disconcerted by the young man's change of countenance. His
breath came quick, a dark cloud overspread his features, and he lost
somewhat of his ruddy color.
"Do you mean, then, to say I was but a tool, and the whole thing a lie
and a cheat?"
Rube's thoughts sped as directly to their mark, as the well-aimed
arrow from the bent bow.
"Don't be so angry with me," prayed Mell, "please don't! You don't
know how much I have suffered over it. I say, at that time I thought I
cared for some one else, and so I ought not, in all fairness, to have
encouraged you; but, it is only since father died, that I have been
able to see things in their true light. I have had a false standard of
character, a false measure of worth, a false conception of human aims
and human achievement. Out of the wretchedness of sleepless hours I
have heard the under-tones of truth: Knowledge is great, but how much
greater is goodness without knowledge than knowledge without
goodness!"
Rube made no reply. He left her side, and, crossing the room, folded
his arms and looked moodily out of the window. He was very simple in
nature, somewhat slow, sometimes stupid; but loyal and true--true in
great things, and no less true in small ones, and as open as the day.
Mell dried her eyes, and glanced at him anxiously. The worst part of
her duty was now over. She began already to feel relieved; she began
already to know just how she was going to feel in a few minutes more,
the possessor of a conscience, void of offence before God and man.
There's nothing like it--a good conscience.
"This beats all!" soliloquized Rube, at the window; "I'll be hanged if
there's enough solid space in a woman's mind to peg a man's hat on!
Now, just as things have panned out all right for Devonhough, here's a
tombstone in my own graveyard!"
"Ha!" thought Mell, hearing, considering.
"_Just as things have panned out all right for Devonhough._"
What did that mean? Her throbbing, panting, bursting heart knew only
too well. Clara had come to a decision--she would marry Jerome, and
not the Honorable Archibald.
Rube had scarcely ceased to speak when Mell raised her head.
"Rube!"
Very soft that call!
Unheeding, Rube still looked out of the window and into the past. That
day at the picnic--that beautiful day, that day of days; a pure,
white, luminous spot in memory's galaxy of fair and heavenly
things--that day she had not felt as she had made him think she felt;
hence, he had been a cat's-paw, a puppet; and she--oh, it could not be
that Mell was a dissembler, a hypocrite, a serpent!
"Rube!"
A little louder was this call.
He turned, he obeyed--no more able to resist the beckoning hand, the
dulcet voice, the luring glance, than you or I the spells of our own
individual Sirens and Circes.
He came back to her, but stood in gloomy waiting, his brow so dark,
his expression so hard and cold and stern, that the girl on the sofa
felt herself wilting and withering before him, as a frail flower in a
deadly blast.
She did not say a word.
She only used two eyes of blue, and two big tears which rolled out of
them, and down upon her velvet cheek, and splash upon her little white
hand, with crushing effect--not upon the hand, but the beholder.
"Mell," said he, hoarsely, "what is all this? What is the meaning of
it? I do not see your drift, exactly. Do you wish to be free?"
"I thought that would be _your_ wish," floundered Mell, "perhaps, when
you heard of that other--other fancy--you know, Rube; if I had not
told you anything about it, and it had come afterwards to your
knowledge, you would have thought I had not acted squarely towards
you."
"So much, then, I understand; but what are your leanings now? Don't
beat about the bush; speak out your wishes plainly. I am not a brute.
I would release a woman at the very altar, if her inclinations leaned
in another direction. Do you imagine I would care to marry a woman,
however much I might love her, whose heart was occupied by another?
Where would be the sanctity of such a marriage? I would be the worse
defrauded man of the two. So, Melville, if there is any one you like
better than you do me, speak it now. Tell me plainly, do you care for
me--or some one else?"
Now, Mell, here's your chance; hasten to redeem your past. He has put
the whole thing before you in a nutshell. You know just how he thinks
and how he feels. After this, you dare not further betray a heart so
noble, so forbearing, so true! Tell him, Mell; tell him, for your own
sake; tell him, for his sake; tell him, for God's sake! Come, Mell,
speak--speak quick! Don't wait a second, a single second! A second is
a very little bit of time, the sixtieth part of one little minute;
but, short as it is, if you hesitate, it will be long enough for you
to remember that you may live to be a very old woman, and pass all
your life in this old farm-house, utterly monotonous and wearisome;
that you will be very lonely; that you will be very poor; that you
will be very unhappy; that you will miss Rube's jewels and Rube's
sugar plums and Rube's hourly devotions, to which you have now become
so well accustomed;--short, but long enough to remember all this. So
speak, Mell, quick! quick! The second is gone before Mell speaks.
It was a long second for Rube.
"O Mell, Mell! can it be that you care for him and not for me? At
least, let _me_ hear it--let me hear the truth! I can bear anything
better than this uncertainty."
Even this bitter cry brought forth no response. The dumbness of
Dieffenbachia lay upon Mell's tongue.
"I see how it is," said Rube, turning to go.
"No, you don't!" exclaimed Mell, pulling him back. She was now
desperate. Her tear-stained face broke into April sunshine. "I do not
care for that other. How could you think so? Once I thought so myself;
it was a delusion. A woman cannot love a selfish, tyrannical,
overbearing creature like that!--not really, though she may think so
for a time; but you, Rube, you are the quintessence of goodness! you
are worth a dozen such men as he!"
"So it's me!" ejaculated Rube. "I am the lucky dog! I am the
quintessence of goodness!"
He drew a long breath; he sank comfortably back into the old seat and
into the old sense of security, and addressed himself with a joyous
air and renewed enthusiasm to the old role of love-making.
Just like a man--the very man who thinks he has such a deep insight
into dark matters, who thinks he knows so much about everything in the
wide world, especially women!
"You are the most conscientious creature alive!" declared Rube,
happier than ever, over a nearly lost treasure. "The whole amount of
your offence seems to be that you once thought you cared--"
"Yes--that's it! I once thought so."
"But _I_ once thought that I cared for another girl. You would not,
for that reason, wish to send me adrift, would you?"
"No. Only I wish you hadn't!"
"Just the way I feel about it."
He laughed uncontrollably.
"Pretty one! Soul of honor! What other girl would have opened her lips
about such a trifle? And now I will not be put off another moment.
Name the day which is to make me the happiest of men."
The day was named, and Mell really felt more composure of mind and
less disquietude of spirit than she had known for many a day. She had
eased, to some extent, her guilty conscience. She had shed many
bitter, if unavailing, tears over Rube and her dead father; and now,
convinced that she could not help herself, and determined to make the
best of it, her mind drifted complacently over the long stretch of
prosperous years before her, wherein she would be neither lonely, nor
poor, nor unhappy, nor unloved; with sugar plums to her taste and
jewels in quantity--for there are just two things in this world every
young woman is sure to love--tinsel and taffy.
A healing balm now poured itself, so to speak, into her life and
future prospects.
Of Jerome she saw no more. He had gone home before her father's
funeral. He had seemingly passed out of her life forever. She never so
much as mentioned his name, even to Rube, and she even thought of him
less frequently than of yore. How could she be expected to think of
him with the wedding trousseau demanding all her thoughts and time?
But one day Rube came to the farm-house, worried, and told Mell, of
his own accord, that it was about Jerome and Clara. There had been a
row between them.
The Honorable Archibald Pendergast, as she well knew, was no ordinary
man--neither, it seemed, was he an ordinary lover. Notwithstanding his
late rejection, he had been paying Clara such marked attentions in
Washington that a society journal had publicly announced their
engagement; whereupon Jerome had delivered his ultimatum--she would
marry him at once or else they were quits.
"And I don't blame him," declared Rube, "not one bit! He stood as much
at her hands, and stood it as long, as a man _can_ stand. I never
could have taken the same from you."
Ah, Rube, we little know, any of us, just what we are taking at any
hour in the day and at the hands of our own friends!
It is well for us that we do not.
"And now," inquired Mell, scarcely able to articulate, so great was
her agitation, "what is Clara going to do?"
"She is going to marry the Honorable Archibald," replied Rube, adding,
with the breezy disgust of a sunny temper: "It's a confounded shame!
He's old enough for her father, and I don't believe she cares _that_
about him! But he's a great statesman, and there's a good prospect of
his getting into the White House some of these days; and some women
love social eminence better than they do their own souls! I am glad
you are not one of that kind, Mell--you will be content with your
planter husband, won't you, Mell?"
"I have written him to come to our wedding," pursued Rube. "I like him
as well as ever--even more! He's a splendid fellow! I hope he will
come, but I think it hardly probable."
Mell thought, too, it was hardly probable. After this, things went
wrong again with Mell. Her trousseau ceased to occupy her time and
attention; her wayward thoughts waged internecine strife in regions of
turmoil and vain speculation.
Meanwhile, Jerome made no sign.
"Woe is me!" wept Mell. Much had she wept since her father died; but a
dead man is not half so sore a subject of weeping as a living woman's
unworthiness, when it falls under her own judgment.
"To do right is the only thing," moaned the unhappy girl--"to do right
and give no heed to consequences. I have learned the lesson at last.
It has been a hard one. Henceforth I am going to do right though I
slay myself in the doing."
She prayed that night as she had never prayed in all her life before.
She asked for divine help in doing right by Rube. And she arose from
her knees strengthened to do her duty, as she then conceived it.