ON TIPTOE FOR A FLIGHT.
"If it be a sin to love thee,
Then my soul is deeply dyed
With a stain more dark than crimson,
That hath all the world defied;
For it holds thine image nearer
Than all else this earth hath given,
And regarded thee as dearer
Almost than its hopes of heaven!"
A period of three months goes by after Lulu's marriage, swiftly to
those who are gone, slowly to those who remain. Mrs. Clendenon, in
quiet household employments, in prayerful study of her Bible, fills up
the aching void of her daughter's absence. Grace, in pursuance of the
charge Lulu has left her, finds much of her leisure employed in scenes
and undertakings that gently divert her mind from her own troubles to
those of others. Under it all, the wound that time has only seared
lies hidden, as near as she can hide it, from the probing of careless
fingers.
Captain Clendenon shuts himself up in his dusty law office with his
red-tape documents and law books. Of late he has covered himself with
glory in the winning of a difficult suit at law, and Norfolk is loud
in praise of the one-armed soldier, the maimed hero who has grown into
such an erudite lawyer. He takes the adulation very quietly. "The
time has passed when he sighed for praise." A shadow lies darkly on
his life--the shadow of Grace Winans' unhappiness. In that strong,
pure heart of his, no thought of himself, no selfish wish for his own
happiness ever intrudes. Had peace folded his white wings over her fair
head she would long ago have become to his high, honorable heart, a
thing apart from his life, as something fair and lovely that was dead;
and with her safe in the shelter of another man's love he would have
tutored his heart to forget her. As it was, when he looked on the fair
face that was to him but a reflex of the saintly soul within, his whole
soul yearned over her; his love, which had in it more of heaven than
earth, infolded her within the sphere of its own idolizing influence.
She became to him, not the fair, fascinating, but sometimes faulty
mortal woman the world saw in her, but rather a goddess, a creature
most like
"That ethereal flower--
No more a fabled wonder--
That builds in air its azure bower,
And floats the starlight under.
Too pure to touch our sinful earth,
Too human yet for heaven,
Half-way it has its glorious birth,
With no root to be riven."
Such worship as this has always been the attribute of the purest, most
unselfish love.
He sat alone in his office one day, his head bowed idly over
Blackstone, his thoughts far away, when the sharp grating of wheels
on the street outside startled him into rising and glancing out of
the window. _She_ was springing from her little pony-phaeton, and in
another moment came flitting down the steps and into the room like a
ray of sunshine.
"Moping, are you?" she asked with her head on one side, and a glimmer
of her old-time jaunty grace.
"Not exactly," he answered, cheerfully bowing over the gloved hand she
extended with frank sweetness--"only thinking; our life is too short
for moping."
She might have added:
"I myself must mix with action
Lest I wither by despair."
"Are you busy?" glancing, as he offered her a seat, at the table
littered with books and papers.
"Not at all; I am at your service," he replied.
"I want to talk to you; but--excuse me--your office looks so
gloomy--makes me _blue_," she shivered a little. "Is your mother quite
well?"
"Quite well--thanks. Will you not go up and see her?--or shall I bring
her down?"
"Thanks--neither, I believe. I saw her a day or two since, and I am
come on business now. Captain Clendenon, is it quite _comme il faut_
for a lady to ask you to take a drive? If so, my phaeton is at your
service. I want to ask you something; I cannot here. Some of your
tiresome clients may disturb me."
The soft appealing eyes and voice work their will with this
infatuated man. If she had asked him to lie down under the hoofs
of her cream-white ponies and be trampled on, I fear he would have
done it. A man's love for a woman sometimes rises above its ordinary
ridiculousness into the sublimity of pathos, and how little it is for
him to consent to sit by her side and hear those magical tones, perhaps
give some advice to that ever restless young spirit. He calls his
office boy, takes his hat, and goes. Presently they are rolling over
one of Norfolk's handsome drives, and censorious people, looking from
their windows, exchange opinions that Mrs. Winans is "rather fast."
"Alas! for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun."
"I have been over to Portsmouth this morning," she says, in the midst
of their small talk. "It is rather a nice little jaunt over there on
the ferry-boat over the Elizabeth River--don't you think so?"
"Yes, I do think so; had you a nice time?"
"I don't know--yes, I suppose so. I visited some friends, and we went
down and saw the beautiful grounds of the Naval Hospital--what a
handsome building it is! The pride of Portsmouth. And what romantic
grounds! I sat there a long time and looked at the sea."
To what is all this idle chatter leading, he wonders, seeing perfectly
well with what consummate art she is leading the subject whither she
wants it to go.
"We were all talking of that dreadful fever at Memphis," she resumes,
constrainedly. "What swift progress it is making! The newspaper
accounts of it are just terrible--heart-rending, indeed; and they are
so fearfully in need of nurses and money. I have sent them a small
sum--a mere 'drop in the ocean.'"
"So have I," he answers, white to the lips. He knows what is coming.
She gives him a flitting glance, fanning herself energetically the
while. A useless proceeding, for the sea-breeze, that flutters her fair
curls like golden banners, is simply delicious.
"I heard something about you over there," she ventures. "One always has
to go abroad to hear news from home, you know."
"Very likely; you can hear anything you want to over there. Little
Portsmouth is the hot bed of gossip," he answers, smiling dryly.
"Well, for that matter, all places are," she returns. "But you do not
ask what it was that I heard?"
"Is it worth the repetition?"
"I think so, but you are not interested, I see;" and she leans back
with some displeasure--a pout on the curve of her crimson lip.
He rouses himself, all penitence and forced gallantry.
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Winans. Any remark from yourself cannot fail
to be interesting."
"I heard--I wonder you did not tell me of it yourself--that you and
your mother are going next week to Memphis to help to nurse the fever
patients."
No answer.
"Is this true?"
Her eyes are seeking his. He looks down on her, answering constrainedly:
"It is perfectly true, Mrs. Winans."
"Why have you kept it from me?" in some wonder this.
"We intended telling you, of course, before we left; but it is
such a harrowing topic--the sufferings of those poor yellow fever
patients--that I have hesitated in mentioning it to you."
"Was that your only reason?"
No answer. He cannot bear to speak.
"I know," she resumes, "why you have not told me. You feared I would
want to go, too, and so kept it from me in your good, true, brotherly
love; but in this case," smiling willfully up into his disturbed face,
"your painstaking has been 'Love's Labor Lost.' I have been making my
mind up to go all along, and now I mean to make the trip there under
the protection of your mother and yourself--if you will permit me."
The murder is out. She looks away from him demurely, waiting his reply.
It comes, full of a shocked horror.
"Mrs. Winans, are you mad?"
"Not at all; are you? I am quite as strong, quite as able to help those
poor sufferers, as your mother is; and yet you do not think she is
mad," she answers, half offended.
"No; for she has had the fever, and so have I. You have heard of the
fever that desolated Norfolk and Portsmouth in 1855? Mother and I
both had the _yellow fever_ in its worst form then, so you see it is
perfectly safe and our bounden duty for us to go to the relief of those
poor sufferers. But you are frail and delicate yourself. You have
never had the fever; you are not acclimated there, and would only fall
a victim. It would be a sort of disguised suicide, for you would be
voluntarily rushing into the jaws of death."
"No, no," she answered, half bitterly. "I bear a charmed life. Nothing
seems to check the current of my doomed existence. And you forget that
Memphis is my native home. I lived there the first sixteen years of
my life, and am quite accustomed to the peculiar climate. And what if
death should come? It would only be to 'leave all disappointment, care,
and sorrow, and be at rest forever,' But no, I shall not die. I have
borne illness, suffering, sorrow--everything that breaks the heart,
and snaps the frail threads of existence--yet here I am still, quite
healthy, passably rosy, and willing to devote my strength to those
who need it. I have been 'through the fire,' Captain Clendenon, and
really," with a subdued smile, "I think I am _fireproof_."
"Some are refined in the furnace of affliction," he repeats, very
gently.
Soothed by the softly spoken words, she asks, timidly:
"Tell me if I may go under your care?"
"If you _will_ go, I shall be most happy to take all the annoyances of
travel off your hands; but, little friend, think better of it, and give
up this mad, quixotic scheme."
"Do you think it such a mad scheme?" she asks, mortified and
humiliated. "Do you think I could do no good to those poor suffering
victims who need gentle womanly tending so badly? Do you think the
sacrifice of my ease, and luxury, and comfort, would count as nothing
with Christ? If you think this, Captain Clendenon, tell me so frankly,
and I will remain in Norfolk--not otherwise."
There is nothing for him to urge against this appeal. She touches up
the ponies with her slim, little whip, lightly and impatiently. They
are off, like the wind, for home again, as he makes the last appeal he
can think of to this indomitable young spirit.
"News may come of your husband at any time, Mrs. Winans. Were you
to go, and he, returning, found you gone, he would be most bitterly
displeased. Remember, it was his express desire that you should remain
in your home here. I beg your pardon, if I seem persistent, but it
is only through friendly interest in you and yours that I take the
liberty."
"Ah! but," a gleam of triumph lightening under her black lashes, "you
forget that I have my husband's consent to visit Memphis? You brought
it to me. I'm returning to the home of my childhood. I am not violating
any command or desire of his."
"Once more," he says, desperately "let me beg you not to think, for
the sake of all those who love you, all you love, of going to that
plague-stricken city."
"It is useless." She set her lips firmly. "I am sorry to refuse
your request, but the call of duty I must obey. My arrangements are
all made. Norah is to stay and to take care of my home. My visit to
Portsmouth this morning was for the purpose of leaving Lulu's precious
charge in the hands of a dear Christian friend; so," trying to win him
to smile by an affected lightness, "you may tell your mother she will
have company she did not anticipate, though you were so ungallant as to
persuade me not to come."
"When a woman will she will."
She carried her point against the entreaties of all her friends,
and in less than two weeks, three dusty travelers--weary in body,
but very strong in prayerful resolves and hopes--were entered as
assistants in nursing in one of the crowded hospitals of the desolated,
plague-stricken city of Memphis.