THE LAST STRUGGLE.
And the quiet days pass one by one--each one very like the other--until
the last sun has set, and the evening lights gleam in the old
farm-house on the last night before the wedding-day--that wedding-day
which she had, to the very last, put off to the latest possible time.
Under the hush of evening skies, in the flower-decked garden, in the
dreamy grey air, in the sight of fallow fields glistening in the
moonlight, Rube is saying good-night.
"To bed early," was the parting injunction of Mell's future lord; "we
have a long journey before us."
"Yes," answered Mell, solemnly, "a very long journey. The journey of
life."
"However long, all too short," was Rube's fond reply. He stroked her
lovely hair. "Mell!
'May never night 'twixt me and you
With thoughts less fond arise!'"
After he was gone Mell repeated those words, "a very long journey."
Then she sighed.
It would have to be a very long journey, indeed, to correspond with
this sigh of Mell's--a very long sigh.
Well, there is no better time for a woman to sigh than the night
before she is married. Nor are tears amiss. Not one in ten knows what
she's about; for, if she did, she would not--
On the brink of the Untried there is room enough to stop and look
about one, to think better of it, to turn around and go back; only no
man or woman was ever yet gifted with brains enough to do it. The
things unknown, which loom up so temptingly into sight upon the brink
of the Untried, look far more desirable, infinitely more tempting,
than all the known blessings of the past. And so Mell sighed--but
lifted not a finger to save herself.
She went back into the little parlor to finish packing some
favorite trifles in a box to be sent to the Bigge House ere she
returned--school friend's mementoes and some of Rube's presents.
Thus engaged, outside was heard the noise of stamping hoofs and the
rumbling of wheels--some vehicle stopped at the gate--somebody came up
the sanded garden path, ascended the steps, crossed the little porch
and gave a hasty rap upon the front door.
Mell sprang to her feet. It thrilled her strangely, that footstep on
the porch, that knock upon the door.
Who could be coming there at such an hour--and the night before her
wedding?
Rube, perhaps; something he had forgotten to do or say. She would go
to the door; she started, and came back. She listened again.
It was not Rube's step--it was not Rube's knock.
Her senses were ever alert; she always noticed such things.
But the man outside had no time to lose, and did not propose to wait
there all night. He cleared his throat impatiently and knocked again.
This knock was louder than the first and more peremptory. It had a
remarkable effect upon Mell--a startling effect.
She sank upon the nearest chair, she trembled from head to foot; wild
thoughts whirled through her anarchical brain with the swiftness of a
whirlwind, and it was not until the persistent intruder knocked the
third time that she succeeded, through breath coming thick and fast,
and half-palsied lips, faintly to call out, "Come in!"
And the man came in, and the girl, crouching upon the chair, as if she
would fain hide herself down in depths of concealment where he would
never find her, felt no surprise, knowing already the late comer was
Jerome.
Jerome--but not at his best. He had been sick--or, so she thought, her
affrighted eyes sweeping over him in one swift glance. Pale was his
face, and careworn; physically, Jerome had never appeared so ill;
spiritually, he had never appeared to better advantage.
There are perplexed and ethereal truths in the heart of human things
which no bloom of health ever yet expressed. The sweetness pressed out
of suffering by the operations of its own nature, clothes itself in a
subtler and more irresistible charm than was ever yet discovered in
the hues of a pearly complexion, or the rays of a brilliant eye. From
under the potent spell of its attraction, we soon forget a countenance
merely beautiful; we never forget the one made beautiful through
suffering.
Our sainted mother, who went through rivers of fire and a thousand
death agonies ere death itself came; who died, at last, with a joyful
smile on her face, bidding us meet her on the other shore--we do not
forget how _she_ looked!
Our heroic father, borne home from the battle-field, with his death
wound; who bade us with his last breath to serve God and our
country--we do not forget how _he_ looked! These are the images
indelibly fixed in the sensitized slide of memory, while the
peach-bloom face upon the boulevard, the merry face in the dance, fade
as fades the glory of a flower.
Jerome has suffered. Some of his youth he has left behind him. But
with that youth he has left, too, much of his suffering. At this
moment every feature in his facial federation of harmonious elements
was lighted up with a kindling spirit of its own. Whatever the
inspiration, whether intrinsically noble, or ignoble, it is to its
possessor a glorious inspiration. We say noble, or ignoble; for, one
man's glory may be another man's shame, and both true men. So,
perhaps, no cause is great in itself, but only great in the conception
of the soul who conceives it and who fights for it.
Out of Jerome's presence, Mell had branded him as a being selfish,
tyrannical, and incapable of long retaining a woman's love; in his
presence she only knew he was the embodiment of life's supreme good.
But worse than a flaming sword was now the sight of the man she loved.
She dreaded the sound of his coming voice as she dreaded the trump of
Doom. What would he say--he who handled words as a skilful surgeon
manipulates cutting-instruments, to kill or cure--what would he say to
the woman who had been untrue to her word?
He said absolutely nothing.
No formal salutation passed between the two. Drawing a chair directly
in front of the hostess, by whom his coming was so little expected,
Jerome sat down upon it and regarded the agitated face and the almost
cowering form of the woman before him, in profound silence.
She had dreaded his words, had she? Heavens! This wordless arraignment
of her guilty self at the bar of her own conscience, her silent
accuser both judge and jury, and only two wretched hearts, which ached
as one, for witness, was worse than a true bill found in a crowded
court of justice. A storm of angry words, a typhoon, a sorocco, a
veritable Dakota blizzard of sweeping invective, would have been easy
lines compared to this.
She would die--Mell knew she would--of sheer shame and self-reproach,
before this awful silence, which threatened to continue to the end of
time, was ever broken.
Would he never open his mouth and say something, no matter how
dreadful?
He did, at last.
"Mellville," said Jerome, gently, "are you glad to see me?"
"No!" passionately.
"Not glad? Then you are the most ungrateful, as well as the most
faithless, of mortal beings. I have travelled long to get here. My
reaching here in time was uncertain, well nigh a hopeless matter; but
nothing is hopeless to the man who dares. What did I come for? Do you
know?"
"To load me with reproaches. Do it and begone!"
"No, Mell; I have not come for that! There's no salvation in abuse,
and I have come to save. Perhaps, Mell, there is no one in the whole
world who understands you--your nature, in its strength and in its
weakness--as well as I. You are not a perfect woman, Mell; you have
one fault, but even that fault I love because I so love you! And I see
so plainly just how and why your love has failed me in my utmost need,
and I know so well just how and why the conditions of existence, amid
such surroundings as this, must be utterly unendurable to a girl of
your temperament and aims. And so, through all my anger and all my
sorrow and all my wounded affection, I have made excuses in my heart
for my pretty Mell, my faithless Mell, whom I still love in spite of
all her weakness; who in that weakness could find no other way of
escape from a poor, bald, common-place, distasteful life, except
through the crucifixion of her own heart, the ruin of her own
happiness. Weak, you are nevertheless far dearer to me than the
strongest-minded of your sex; false in act but not at heart, you are
still the sweetest to me of all sweet womanhood; and I have come to
save, not to reproach you! Here is what I bring. It goes fittingly
with the heart long in your possession."
He reached forth his hand to her. Mell inspected it with those dark
and regretful looks we bestow on the blessings which are for others,
but not for us.
This was the hand whose touch conferred happiness; a hand so strong,
so firm, so steady, perfect in every joint and finger-tip, endowed
with all the intellectual subtlety and effective mechanism of which
the hand of man is capable--the only hand, among thousands and
ten-thousands of human hands, she had ever wanted for her own--and now
here it was, so near, and, alas! farther than ever before! She
clenched her own hands convulsively together, and closed her eyes to
shut out the sight of it and the entreating tenderness of its appeal.
"Take it," said Jerome, seductively; "it is now mine to give, and
yours to accept."
"Too late," returned Mell, in sadness; "to-morrow I wed with Rube."
"_To-morrow?_ Yes, I know. But have you ever reflected what a long way
off to-morrow is? and how little we need to dread the coming of
to-morrow, if we look well after to-day? And, my dear Mell, how many
things occur to-night ere to-morrow ever comes! That's another thing
you have not thought about. In your plans for marrying Rube to-morrow,
you have neglected to take into consideration"--the rest he whispered
into her ear, so low, so low she could scarcely catch it, but the
sudden crash of brazen instruments, the sharp clash of steel, a
thunderbolt at her very feet could not have made her start so
violently or convulsed her with such terror--"_the fact that you are
going to marry me to-night!_" With a gesture of instinctive
repugnance, with a look of supplicating horror, she pushed him away.
"Only devils tempt like that!"
"No devil ever yet tempted a woman to right-doing."
"It could not be right to treat Rube so."
"It is the only way to right a wrong already done him."
"No. I am going to make that wrong up to Rube. I have sworn to do it!
I am going to stick by Rube through thick and thin. You go away! What
did you come here for? Dark is the fate of the woman who breaks her
plighted vows."
"Darker still the fate of the woman who seals false vows. Such are
untrue to the high instincts of the immortal within them."
"But think how infamous! how base such an act! how scandalous! I
cannot do it!"
"Yet, you will do worse--far worse. A loveless marriage is worse than
a broken vow. Such a marriage may pass current for legal tender in the
courts of the world, but when some day, you come to square up
accounts, you will find fraudulent bonds and unholy speculation in
married estate the worst investment a foolish woman ever made.
Dishonesty never pays, but it pays less in a marriage without love
than anywhere else. And where's the use of trying to deceive Rube and
the rest of the world, when God knows? You can't very well hoodwink
_Him_, Mell. And how will you be able to endure it; to be clothed in
marvellously fine garments and ride in a chariot, and envy the beggars
as you pass them in their honest rags; to be a Jonas in every kiss, a
Machiavelli in every word, a crocodile in every tear; Janus-faced on
one side, and mealy-mouthed on the other; to be a fraud, a sham, a
make-believe, an organized humbug, and a painted sepulchre? That's the
picture of the woman who marries one man and loves another. Is it a
pleasant picture, Mell? You will chafe behind the gilded bars, and
champ the jewelled bit. You will feel the sickening thraldom of a
cankering memory, a rankling regret, a sullen remorse, a longing after
your true self, with every breath a lie, every act a counterfeit,
every word a mincing of the truth. God only knows how you will bear
it!"
God only--she did not. Her head drooped lower in unspeakable
bitterness and humiliation. Amid all the darkness she could see but
one ray of light.
"But if I do my duty--" began Mell.
"A woman's first duty to her husband is to love him," said Jerome,
gravely; "failing in that, she fails in all else."
"But love comes with the doing of duty, everybody says. I must do my
duty by Rube."
"Very well. Do your duty, Mell, but do it now. That is all I ask.
Manifestly it is not your duty to marry him. With every throb of your
heart pulsating for me, you will not be worth one dollar to Rube in
the capacity of a wife. He would tell you so, if he knew. Can't you
see that, Mell?"
She could see it distinctly. Jerome's words burned with the brilliancy
of magnesium, throwing out this aspect of the subject in glaring
light. Rube stood again before her, as he had stood on the morning of
that day upon which she had undertaken to fulfil her promise to Jerome
and failed so ignominiously--stood, and was saying: "_I_ would be the
most defrauded man of the two," and "where would be the sanctity of
such a marriage?"
Not one dollar would she be worth to him--_if he knew!_ He would know
some time; everything under the sun gets known somehow, the only
question is--when?
Seeing the impression made, Jerome spoke again, in words low,
impassioned:
"Save yourself, for the love of God! Save yourself and Rube from such
a fate!"
Mell glanced about her in terror and confusion, turning red and pale.
Gladly would she save herself; but how can a respectable member of
good society accept salvation at such a price--the price of being
talked about?
"It is too late," she told her companion, in tones as sorrowful as the
wail of a wandering bard in a strange land; "too late! Why, man, the
bridal robes are ready, the bridal cake is baked, the bridal guests
are bidden; and would you have me, at this last minute, turn Rube
into a laughing-stock, a by-word on every idle lip, a man to be
pointed out upon the streets, a man to be jeered at in the crowd?
Would you have me do that?"
"Yes. That is not a happy lot, but it soon passes, and is better than
being duped for life and wretched for life."
Mell averted her face. She seemed striving for words:
"I don't see why Rube should be so unhappy as you seem determined to
make him. Even granting that he knew that I do not feel romantically
towards him, as I have felt towards you--"
"Have felt?" interposed her listener.
She waived his question aside and proceeded:
"Still there is a love born of habit and propinquity, and that will
come to my rescue. Rube is a splendid fellow! I respect him. I honor
his character, and I could be happy with him if--"
"Well," said Jerome, huskily, "go on."
"_If it were not for you._"
"Ha!" exclaimed he, "has it come to that? That alters the case
completely. I will take myself off, then! I will get out of your way!
Had I suspected the existence of one drop of real affection in your
heart towards the man you are about to marry, I would have cut off
this right hand of mine rather than come here to-night. In coming I
was sustained by the belief that I would not defraud my friend--not in
reality--not of any thing he could value; not of a wife, but of an
empty casket. This belief, on my part, is all that redeems my coming
from being an act of diabolism. And now it turns out that there is a
very good reason why the bridal cake cannot be thrown to the dogs, and
the bridal robes cannot be committed to the flames, and the bridal
guests cannot upon any account be robbed of their bride upon the
morrow--_you could be happy with him if it were not for me!_"
Bitter in tone was this repetition of her words--words which wounded
him so keenly. They were calculated to wound the tender sensibilities
of any lover, most of all a lover of Jerome Devonhough's stamp. He
could condone any weakness on her part, except that which touched his
own dominion over her--the sceptre of his love, the yoke of his power.
Under a pacific exterior, there seethed in Jerome, volcanic masses of
self-will and unchangeable purpose; hemmed in, held in bounds, seldom
breaking forth in violent eruption, but always there. He was totally
unprepared for any change in the feelings of the woman upon whom he
had lavished the arbitrary tenderness of his own strong nature.
Jerome, you perceive, is no more of a hero than Mell is a heroine. He
is the counterpart of the man who lives round the corner, who sits
next you in church, whom you meet not unfrequently at your friend's
house at dinner. This man loves his wife, not because she is an
artistic production, elaborately wrought out in broad, mellow,
triumphant lines, grand in character, but rather because he recognizes
good material in her for his own moulding. We must never approach the
contemplation of any man's requirements in a wife with our minds full
of loose generalities. There is so much of the fool in every man, the
wisest man, who falls in love. He falls in love, not so much with what
is ideally lovable in a woman, but what is practically complemental to
his own nature. Jerome, being strong, loved Mell, who was weak, and
weak in those very places where Jerome was strong. She needed him. He
felt that he was a necessary adjunct to her perfect development in the
sphere of womanhood; he felt that she was necessary to him in the
enlargement of his manhood. For, does not a man of his type need some
one to guide, to govern, to lord it over, and to get all the nonsense
out of? But he would love her, too, notwithstanding all this, with
that sheltering devotion which a woman needs--all women, with one
exception. A strong woman in her strength is not dependent upon any
man's love.
"So it has come to this," pursued Jerome, brooding in low tones over
the matter, "there is but one impediment to your happiness--the man
whom you have professed to love, whom you have so basely resigned.
With me safely out of the way, you and Rube are all right. You do, it
seems, know your own mind at last. And Clara Rutland knows hers at
last, and everybody is about to be made incontinently happy--everybody
but me! I am left out in the cold! I am left, between you all,
stranded on the lonely rock of unbelief, either in a woman's word or a
woman's love; and must eat alone, and digest as best I may, all the
sour grapes left over from two marriage-feasts. A pleasant prospect,
truly! Would to God I had never seen either one of you!"
Mell was dumb. She was dumb from conviction. Clara Rutland _had_
treated him badly, and so had she; and she could think of nothing to
say which would put in any fairer light that ugly treatment. She
marvelled at his patience through it all; she was bewildered that he
had thus far, during this trying interview, remained
"In high emotions self-controlled."
She knew a change must come. She saw through furtive eyes and without
raising her head, that a change had already come. Not even a strong
will can regulate a heart's pulsations--a heart which has been sinned
against in its most sacred feelings. As the storm-clouds sweep up from
the west and mass themselves with awful grandeur in battle array, so
lowered dark and tempestuous thoughts, pregnant with danger, on the
young man's brow. Across his frame there swept a convulsive quiver of
emotion; his features took on that hard, stern look of repressed
indignation and passion which Mell so well knew and so much feared.
With that look upon his face, Jerome was not a man to be trifled
with.
But what was he going to do? Shake her again?
She said nothing when he took hold of her two hands with a grasp of
iron. Silently she awaited her fate; tremblingly she wondered what
that fate would be.
He was only telling her good-by. He knew not how hard he pressed upon
those tender hands; he only knew he might never clasp them in his own
again. It was a terrible moment--terrible not alone for Mell.
One would have thought, seeing how he suffered in giving her up, that
she was the last woman in the world; whereas, we know there are
multitudes of them, many more estimable in character, some equally
desirable in person, with just such wondrous hair, just such
enchanting eyes, just such shapeliness of construction, enough in
itself to inspire mankind with the most passionate love--plenty of her
kind, but none exactly Mell!
Sensible of that detaining clasp; knowing his keen eyes scanned darkly
and hungrily every quivering feature in her unquiet face; hearing his
labored breath and the low sobs wrung from a strong man's agony, Mell
felt first as a guilty culprit.
If only he would stab her to the heart, and then himself.
We little thought, any of us, when we saw him lying in the meadow on
the grass at her feet, that out of the joyous inspiration of that
glorious summer weather, out of two young lives so beautiful, out of
young love, a thing so full of poetry and romance, would come such
wretchedness as this.
After a little while, the touch of those rose-leaf palms, the
whiteness of her face, the appeal for mercy in those eyes seeking his
own, had a soothing effect upon Jerome. He would now put forth all his
strength and quietly say good-by.
Softly he pressed to his lips one of those imprisoned hands; softly,
in a heart-sick rapture of despairing renunciation, he was about to do
the same with the other, when the glint of Rube's solitaire, the
pledge of her hated bondage to another, the glaring witness of her
treachery towards himself, flashed into his eyes and overcame all his
good resolutions. With a look of unutterable reproach, with a gesture
of undying contempt, he tossed the offending hand back upon her lap.
"Think not," he broke forth, in vehement utterance, "that no thought
of me will embitter your bridal joys! I leave you to your fate! I go
to my own! Dark it may be, but not darker than yours!"
And this was the quiet way in which he bade her good-by.
The words pierced Mell to the very soul, and, combined with the
blackness of his countenance, filled her with indefinable, but very
horrible imaginings. He had almost reached the door, when with a
smothered cry of pain, she followed him.
As irresistibly as ever he drew her.
"Jerome! Jerome! Where are you going?"
"To ruin!" exclaimed he, turning upon her with that barbaric
fierceness which seems to underlie everything strong in nature--"to
ruin, where you women without principle, have sent many a better man!
To ruin, and to hell, if I choose," he added, with fearful emphasis.
"My going and my coming are no longer any concern of yours!"
"Yes, they are, Jerome," she assured him, deprecatingly. "Don't leave
me in anger, Jerome!"
"Not in anger? Then, how--in delight?" There was now a menacing gleam
in his eye which more than ever alarmed her. "My cause is lost. You
have done me all the wrong you could, and now that I am dismissed, set
aside, told to begone, debased, and dethroned, you expect me to be
delighted over it, do you?"
"No, Jerome; but do not leave me feeling so. Promise me to do nothing
rash."
"I will not promise you anything! You have not spared my feelings, why
should _I_ spare yours? Since your affection for me has moderated into
that platonic kind, which admits of your happiness in union with
another, I will do whatever I please to do, knowing no act of mine,
however dreadful, will affect you."
"Oh, Jerome, do not say that! You must see, you must know in your
heart, that I do still care for you--Oh, God! more than I ought."
"And yet not enough to make you do what is right!"
"But to right you, will wrong Rube," she answered in confusion.
"Enough, then; you know your own feelings, or ought to. Since Rube is
the one dearest to you, marry him!"
He turned again upon his heel. Obeying an impulse she could not
resist, Mell once more detained him. It is hard to die, everybody
says; but to die yourself must be easier than to give up the one you
love.
"Jerome, wait a moment! Come back! Jerome, you do not realize what a
dishonorable thing this is you are persuading me to do?"
"Don't I?" he laughed wildly. "God Almighty! Mellville, what do you
take me for? Wouldn't I have been here a week ago, two weeks ago, but
for the battle I have had to fight with my own scruples--but for the
war I have had to wage with my own soul? I have said to myself, again
and again, 'I will not do this thing though I die!' But when I started
out upon this journey, it had come to this: 'I must do this thing or
else--die!'"
Shaken as a storm-rifted tree bending in the blast, she was not yet
uprooted.
"It is hard, hard," she murmured, wringing her hands in nervous
constraint; "but time, you know, Jerome, time softens everything."
"It does!" he said, harshly--"even the memory of a crime!"
"What do you mean by that?" exclaimed Mell, every word of his filling
her with indefinable fears.
"I mean what I say. Once out of the way, you and Rube, the two beings
most dear to me on earth, could be happy together; you have told me
so. Then, how selfish in me--"
"Oh, Jerome, you would not! Surely you would not do such a thing!"
"I do not say that I would, nor that I would not. A desperate man is
not to be depended on either by himself or others. I only know that in
this fearful upheaval of all my life's aims and ends, any fate seems
easier than living. But Mellville--" his tones were now quiet, but
they were firm; his lips were set in angles of immovable resolve; his
brow bent and dark with the shadows of unlifting determination. It
would be difficult to imagine a more striking figure than Jerome in
the role of a man who had made up his mind--
"But Mellville, this struggle must end. It must end _now_, or it will
put an end to us. I did not come here to-night to submit to the
humiliation of begging a woman to marry me against her will. I came to
rescue a being in distress from the painful consequences of her own
rash act. Now, then, you love me, or you do not? You will marry me, or
you will not? Which is it? Answer! In five minutes I leave this house,
with or without you!"
He dropped upon his knees at her feet; he snatched her to his breast.
Reason was gone, his soul all aflame:
"Mell, listen: Love is more than raiment, more than food, more than
the world's censure or the world's praise. It is sweeter in life than
life itself! But time presses; the other wedding comes on apace; we
have no time to spare. An hour's hard driving will bring us to Parson
Fordham's, well known to me. There we will be married at once, and
catch the early train at Pudney. Our names will be an execration and a
by-word for a little time, but what of that? What though all friends
turn their backs upon us! Together we will enter hopefully upon a new
life, loving God and each other--a life of truer things, Mell; a life
consecrated to each other and glorified by perfect love and perfect
trust. Will you lead that life with me?"
"No, I will not!"
"What, Mellville!" he cried. "You will not! I thought you loved me,
loved me as I loved you?"
"Once I loved you," she said. She spoke now as much to her own soul as
to his perceptions. "Once--or was it only that I thought I did? For
long weeks I struggled against deceiving Rube, and out of that I must
have drifted by slow degrees into deceiving myself. For, to-night,
even to-night, when I parted from Rube I thought it was you I loved,
not he! But the mists have lifted from my vision, and now, at this
moment--never fully until this moment--I see you both in your true
light; I weigh you understandingly, one against the other; I set your
self-seeking against his unselfishness, your improbity against his
high sense of honor. And how plainly I see it all! Just as if a moral
kaleidoscope were exhibiting by spiritual reflections, to the eyes of
my mind, the difference between one man and another, at an angle of
virtue which is the aliquot part of three hundred and sixty degrees of
real merit! Upon this disk of the imagination appears your own image;
and what are you doing? Passing me by as an unknown thing, a thing too
small to know in the presence of mighty magnates at a county picnic!
There is another manly form; what is he doing? Lifting me up from the
bare earth where the other's cruel slights have crushed me; feeding me
with his own hands; even then loving me. How different the pictures!
Shift the scene. Some one is crowning me: I am a queen before the
world. Whose hand has held a crown for me? Not yours--Rube's! You had
not the courage. He had. I love courage in a man. I love it better
than a handsome face or an oily tongue. A man without courage--what is
he? He isn't a man at all--not really. Jerome Devonhough," here she
turned her lovely face, grown so cold, and her exquisite eyes, grown
so scornful, full upon him, "were you the right sort of a man, would
you be here to-night? Will a man, false to his friend, be true to his
wife? I can trust Rube Rutland; can I trust you? No! For, even while
loving, I could not keep down a feeling of contempt. Beginning with
respect for Rube, that sentiment of respect has ripened into
love--real love--not the wild, senseless, mad, unreasoning passion of
an untutored girl, which eats into its own vitals, and drains its own
lees,--as mine for you,--but that deeper, better, higher, more
enduring, and well-nigh perfect affection of the full-lived woman, who
out of deep suffering has emerged into an enlightened conception of
her own nature's needs, her own heart's craving for what is best,
truest, most God-like in a man! That love, which will wear well, nor
grow threadbare through time, which will take on a more wondrous glow
in the realms of eternity, is the love I feel for Rube!"
"Bah!" he exclaimed, not yet quenched, not yet hopeless. "Eternity is
a long word, and all your fine talking cannot deceive _me!_ Oh, woman,
woman, what a face you have, and what brains! I do not know which
holds me tighter. That face so fair, that mind so subtle--together
they might well turn the head of the devil himself, but they cannot
deceive _me!_ The string which draws you is golden. It is not Rube you
love so much, so purely, so perfectly; oh, no, not Rube! Not Rube, but
his possessions. Not the man--the man's house! Its beautiful turrets
and gables, its gardens and lawns, its lovely views, and spacious
luxury, and abounding wealth. For that you give me up. Still loving
me, Rube's pelf is dearer still!"
"Not now--not now! Now I love _him_--the man! Not for what he has, but
for what he is. For his truth, his nobility, his honor; and, as that
honor is in my keeping, I bid you go and return no more. Your power to
tempt me from my duty _and my love_ is over! My faith is grounded, my
purpose unalterable. Go!"
"This is folly. Come with me!" he cried, striving to draw her towards
the door.
She resisted.
"Come!" he urged.
She broke from him, crying:
"No, by heaven! Were it the only chance to save my own life, I would
not go! I have done with you now, forever!"
"Good-night, then," he told her, with a bitter sneer and a low,
mocking bow. "Good-night; but you will be sorry for this! You will
regret this night's work all the days of your life. Its memory will
darken the brightest day of your life!"
She did not speak, or move, as he turned upon his heel and left her.
There sounds his foot upon the stair, and next upon the gravelled
walk! And now the garden-gate swings open, and the carriage-door bangs
shut, after which the wheels grate upon the pebbles, and the clatter
of horses' hoofs rings out upon the midnight air. Gone! Gone!
Her head reels; all her senses seem benumbed. Not even a heavy tread
through the dark entry did she hear. It was the clasp of strong arms
around her which woke her from her trance.
She turned, exclaiming in alarm: "Rube! You here! You--you have
heard?"
"Every word. I was up; I could not sleep. Does any man sleep the night
before he is married? _I_ could not. I lighted a cigar and went out
upon the lawn. At the gate I stood, puffing away and looking up in
this direction, wondering if my sweet wife that is to be had obeyed my
parting injunctions and gone to sleep, when presently a carriage came
tearing along, going in the very direction of my own thoughts. A man
sat within; I cannot say that I exactly recognized that man in the
moonlight, but I saw him move quickly back when he saw me, and that
aroused my suspicions. I followed; I could not help following.
Something told me my happiness was menaced, my love in danger. I was
determined to know the truth, Mell. I listened."
"And you do not hate me?"
"Hate you, Mell? Dearer to me than ever you are at this moment! I
know how you have been tempted; I realize all you have overcome. Never
could I doubt such love! Comforted by it, I can bear up even under
so heavy a misfortune as the treachery of a friend. But the hour is
late; we must not talk longer; you must snatch a little rest.
Good-night once more, dear love. To-morrow, Mellville, you will be
mine--to-morrow!"
"Aye, Rube! To-morrow, yours! Upon every day and every morrow of my
life, always yours!"
THE END.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note:
Authors' archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation is mostly
preserved.
Authors' punctuation styles are preserved.
Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.
Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=.
Typographical problems have been changed and are listed below, as
are changes made to standardise some hyphenation.
Transcriber's Changes:
Page 169: Was 'territores' (nullify the results of the war by
converting the Southern States into conquered =territories=,
in order that party supremacy)
Page 169: Was 'acquiesence' (The hint was taken, the contest of 1868
was fought under a seeming =acquiescence= in the views of
Stevens and Morton;)
Page 194: Was 'imperturable' ("No, indeed! I have pledged my word to
_her_ never to touch a drop!" protested Andy, with
=imperturbable= good nature.)
Page 221: Was 'anymore' ("W.," she said, "you don't know =any more=
about it than Horace Greeley did.")
Page 225: Was 'contemptously' (Mrs. W. spoke of them
=contemptuously= as "nasty black worms.")
Page 245: Was 'in' (which is much better, and come to the reader =in
the= shape of love-stories, odd adventures,)
Page 248: Was 'of' (and if she were in the company =of one= whom she
trusted intimately, she would laugh those popular virtues
to scorn with her warm,)
Page 254: Was 'pleasant, sounding' (Mell's rather strained gayety
found an agreeable echo in his =pleasant-sounding=
laughter.)
Page 263: Standardised hyphenation: Was 'pic-nic' (Not on Wednesday,
for there's a confounded =picnic= afoot for that day.)
Page 263: Standardised hyphenation: Was 'pic-nics' (I wish the man
who invented =picnics= had been endowed with immortal life
on earth and made to go to every blessed one)
Page 269: Standardised hyphenation: Was 'pre-occupied' (They were
fine young fellows, and very pleasant, too, but Mell
continued so =preoccupied= in the vain racking of her
brain)
Page 270: Was 'omniverous' (It was altogether as much as she could
do to keep from sobbing aloud in the faces of all these
=omnivorous=, happy people.)
Page 273: Was 'inate' (to a simple country girl, who, destitute of
fortune, had nothing to commend her but =innate= modesty
and God-given beauty.)
Page 276: Was 'It' ("You mean it? =It is= a solemn promise! One of
those promises you always keep!")
Page 278: Was 'repentent' (I don't know who feels most idiotic or
=repentant=, the girl who wears 'em or the fellow who won
'em.)
Page 278: Was 'juvenality' (Jerome, as soon as he could again command
his voice, "unless it be Miss Josey's =juvenility=.")
Page 281: Was 'It' ("But I don't wonder you feel a little frightened
about it. =It is= such a wonderful thing for Rube to do:
but Rube has two eyes in his head,)
Page 282: Was 'How--do' ("=How-do=, old fellow?" said Jerome, by way
of congratulation.)
Page 287: Was 'bran' (She must take an airing with him in his
=brand= new buggy)
Page 289: Standardised hyphenation: Was 'farmhouse' (And so it came
about that on a certain day Rube came as usual to the
=farm-house=, but not as usual, alone.)
Page 291: Was 'it' (The visit was long and pleasant, and at =its=
close Mell accompanied her guests to the very door of
their carriage.)
Page 293: Was 'wont' (Only Clara =won't= announce, because she wants
to keep up to the last minute her good times)
Page 298: Was 'fiercy' ("She can lie, and lie, and still be
honorable," he informed her with =fierce= irony.)
Page 299: Was 'tortment' (you can never know what hours of
=torment=, what days of suffering, this conduct of yours
has cost me.)
Page 301: Was 'exquisively' (but take the woman of emotional nature,
=exquisitely= sensitive in all matters of feeling, and to
such the touch of unloved)
Page 302: Was 'it' (The ball is over, gone, past, never to come back
again, with its waltz melody, =its= ravishing rhyme
without reason)
Page 303: Standardised hyphenation: Was 'gaslight' (It must be the
=gas-light= in the ball-room, it must be the sunlight in
the day-time, which makes all the difference.)
Page 304: Was 'forgotton' (the quiet and shade of the old farm-house
and recalling, as a =forgotten= dream, its honest
industry)
Page 305: Was 'euonyms' (birds chirped softly in the =euonymus=
hedge under the window of her own little room)
Page 305: Was 'ecstacy' (from an =ecstasy= of suffering and an agony
of transport; in short, a hoped-for refuge from herself
and Jerome.)
Page 313: Was 'ignominously' (upon which she had undertaken to fulfil
her promise to Jerome and failed so =ignominiously=--stood,
and was saying)
Page 313: Was 'ques-is' (He would know some time; everything
under the sun gets known somehow, the only =question
is=--when?)
* * * * *