It was already dark when Gilbert knocked at his sister-in-law’s door.
She was sitting in the chair from which she had risen at parting with
Mrs. Farrell, and into which she sank again at her going. Gilbert sat
down before her, but did not speak.
“Have you made up your mind when you shall go, William?” she asked,
gently.
“I haven’t made up my mind that I shall go at all,” he answered, in a
sullen tone.
“But I think you had better,” she said as before.
“I am always glad, Susan, of advice that costs me nothing,” he returned,
with an affectation of his habitual lightness.
“I have been thinking about you, William, and I want you to go to New
York at once. Your friend is out of all danger, now, and it’s you who
are in danger.”
“You know I never was good at conundrums, Mrs. Gilbert. May I ask what
particular peril is threatening me at present?”
“A peril that an honest man runs from--the danger of doing a great
wrong, of committing a cowardly breach of faith.”
“Upon my word, Susan, you are using words--”
“Oh, don’t catch at my words, my poor boy. Have you nothing to reproach
yourself with? If you haven’t, I beg your pardon with all my heart, and
I will be glad to take back my words, yes, take them back upon my
knees!”
“What is all this coil about? What are you worrying me with these
emotional mysteries for?” demanded Gilbert, angrily, yet with a note of
ungenuine bluster in his voice. “What are you trying to get at?”
“Your heart, William; your conscience, your honor, your self-respect. Do
you think I am blind? Do you think I have not seen it all? If you will
tell me you don’t know what I mean, and make me believe it, I will never
call myself unhappy again.”
“If you have suffered yourself to be made uncomfortable by any affair or
condition of mine,” said Gilbert, “I advise you to console yourself by
reflecting that it doesn’t really concern you. How long is it,” he
demanded, savagely, “since you have felt authorized to interfere in my
questions of honor and conscience?”
“Ever since a motherless boy let a childless woman love him. Oh, think
that I do love you, my dear, and speak to you out of my jealousy for
your stainless good faith, your sacred friendship, your unsullied life!
You know what I mean. Think that she is pledged by everything that is
good in her to your friend. If you believe she does not love him, let
her break with him how and when she will. But don’t you be her wicked
hope--wickeder a thousand times than she!--don’t be the temptation, the
refuge of her falseness. Leave her to herself! You could only add your
treason to hers by staying!”
“Wicked hope, temptation, treason--this is all rather theatrical for
you, Susan,” said Gilbert, with an attempt to smile. He frowned instead.
“And what do I owe to Easton in the way of loyalty? Do you know how
little care he has had for me? Do you know--”
“No, no, no! I don’t know, I _won’t_ know! If he has wronged you in any
way, you are only the more bound to be faithful to him in such a case as
this. But I will never believe that Easton has wronged you willingly,
and you don’t believe it, either, whatever the trouble is that she made
between you--you know you don’t. You are talking away your own sense of
guilt, or trying to. Well, I can’t blame you for that; but keep these
things to silence your conscience with when you are alone; you will need
them all. How long have you watched by your friend’s pillow with the
hope of revenge in your heart?”
Mrs. Gilbert rose from her chair and walked to one of the windows, and
then came and paused in front of Gilbert, where he now stood leaning
against the mantelpiece. “Come,” she entreated, “you _will_ go away,
won’t you, William? I know you never meant him wrong. It has all been
something that has stolen upon you, but you will go now, won’t you?”
“No, I will not go!”
“You will remain?”
“Till such time as I see fit. I am not a boy, to be sent hither and
thither.”
“What good will you remain for?” demanded the woman, sternly. “Or do you
choose to remain for evil? Every hour that you remain deepens your
responsibility. Some things have been talked of already. How long will
it be before the whole house sees that you are in love with the woman
promised to your friend?”
“Do you suppose I care what this houseful of spying, tattling women see
or say?”
“There are no spies and no tattlers; but if they were, a man who hadn’t
shut his senses against his own conscience _would_ care. No one blames
you as yet, but the time will soon be when you will make the blame all
your own.”
“I wouldn’t ask her to share it.”
“Oh, very fine! you think your brave words will make a brave affair of a
cowardly, sneaking treason!”
“Susan!”
“William! These people who are beginning to talk you over do not know
what I know. They see that you are beginning to be fascinated with her,
as _he_ was. They don’t know that you have believed her false and
shallow from the first, and that if you have any hopes of her love now,
they are in your belief that after all that has happened she is still
too false and shallow to be true to him. _He_ was taken with what was
best in her, with all that he believed was good. But you have dared to
love her in the hope that she had no principles and no heart. You are
ready to lay your honor at her feet, to give all that makes life worth
having for what would make your whole life a sorrow and a shame. If you
could commit this crime against Easton and yourself and her, if you
could win the heart you think so empty and so fickle, what would you do
with it? If you could make her false enough to love you, how could you
ever have peace again? How could you ever meet each other’s eyes without
seeing the memory of your common falsehood in them? Think-- Oh, my dear,
dear boy, forgive me! I know that it isn’t your _fault_; I take it all
back, all that I have said against you; I don’t blame you for loving
her--how could you help it? She is charming--yes, she charms me, too;
and to a man she must make all other women seem so blank and poor and
plain! But now you mustn’t love her: she cannot be yours without a wrong
that when you’re away from her you must shudder at. And--and--you will
go, won’t you, William?”
Gilbert’s arm dropped from the mantel where it lay, to his side. “I will
go,” he said, sullenly. “But I acknowledge nothing of all that you have
chosen to attribute to me, motive or fact. And you must be aware that
you have said things to me that are not to be forgiven.”
He turned to go out of the room, without looking at her, but she cried
after him: “Never mind forgiving me, my dear. Only go now, in time to
forgive yourself, and I will gladly let you hate me all your life.
Good-by, good-by; God bless you and keep you!”
He did not answer, nor turn about, but closed the door behind him and
left her standing with her hands clenched, in the gesture of her final
appeal. She sank into her chair, spent by the victory she had won.
Gilbert went to the room which he had been occupying since his constant
attendance upon Easton had ceased to be necessary, and began to gather
together the things scattered about the room. It was a great and
bewildering labor, but he had succeeded in heaping many of them into his
valise when Rachel Woodward appeared with his lighted lamp. Then he knew
that he had been working in the dark. “Oh, thank you, thank you,” he
said, in a strange voice of unconscious, formal politeness. “I--I was
just going away, and it’s rather difficult getting these things together
without a light.”
“You are going away?” she asked.
“Yes; I had a letter this morning recalling me to New York, but I hadn’t
made up my mind to go until just now. I’m going to try to catch the
express; I’ll get a man to drive me over from the hotel, and I’ll send
him back from there for this bag.”
“And you are going at once?” she said, almost gladly.
“Yes,” he said; and he gave her an address, to which he asked her to
have her mother send the account of her charges against him. With a
little hesitation he offered her his hand, and she took it with
something like a show of penitence. “Good-by,” said he, “I hope if you
ever have occasion to think of me, you’ll be lenient to my memory; and
if it isn’t the thing for me to say that I feel as if I somehow owed you
a debt of gratitude for being what you are, why, I hope you’ll excuse it
to the confusion of the parting moment.”
Rachel’s face flushed a little, but she did not try to respond to the
odd compliment, and Gilbert said he must go and take leave of Easton. He
went abruptly to his friend’s room, but faltered a moment before he
softly turned the door-knob. It was dark within, and the long and even
breathing from the bed where Easton lay revealed that he was asleep.
Gilbert stood a moment beside him, and then leaned over and peered
through the darkness with his face close to the sleeper’s. Neither
stirred. Gilbert waited another moment, and with a heavy sigh crept from
the room. He went to his sister’s door, at which he knocked, but
impatiently opened it without waiting to be bidden enter. Mrs. Gilbert
looked at him without surprise.
“I came back on a small matter of business, Susan. I neglected to say, a
moment ago, that I think myself an infamous wretch, totally unworthy of
your pains and affection. You are right in everything. I thought I’d
mention it in justice to you; we all like to have our little impressions
confirmed. Good-by.”
“Oh, my dear, good boy! I knew you wouldn’t leave me so; I knew you
would come back.” She took his hand between her own, and he bent over
and kissed the pale fingers that clasped his with their weak, nervous
stress. “You’re so good, my dear, that I’ve half a mind not to let you
go; but I think you had better go. Don’t you?”
“Yes; I don’t wish to stay. Very likely I should be able to behave
myself; but it would be an experiment, and I haven’t time for it. On the
whole,” he said, with a smile, “I’d as lief be innocent as virtuous.”
“Oh, yes indeed,” answered Mrs. Gilbert, “it’s preferable in some cases,
decidedly. You’re not so young as you were when I used to kiss you,
William,” she added, “but neither am I, and I’m really going to give you
a kiss now for your exemplary obedience, and for good-by.”
“You overwhelm me, Susan. _None_ of the women at Woodward farm seem able
to resist my fascinations. I think perhaps I had better go away on
_your_ account.”
He stooped down and took the kiss she had volunteered, and then with
another clasp of the hand he went.
The moon had risen, and was striking keenly through the thin foliage of
the avenue of white birches which the highway became in its approach to
the farmhouse, and in the leaf-broken light he saw drifting before him a
figure which he knew. He stopped, and trembled from head to foot. Then,
whatever may have seemed the better part for him to choose, he plunged
forward again, and overtook her.
“You are going away,” she said, half turning her face upon him. “I came
here so that you could not go without seeing me. I could not bear to
have you go away thinking I was such a heartless woman as you do, with
no care or regret for all the trouble I’ve made you.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that,” said Gilbert; “I wasn’t thinking so much of
you as of a man--excuse the egotism--who has a great deal more to answer
for.”
“Oh no, no!”
“Sometime, when you tell Easton about it all, as you must, I want you to
excuse me to him; no one else can. Tell him--tell him that all I had to
urge in my own behalf was that I loved you.”
“No, no, no! You mustn’t speak to me in that way! It’s too dreadful.”
“Oh yes, it’s dreadful. But you can excuse it if he couldn’t. How could
you excuse me if I didn’t love you? Why else should we be parting? I
must have loved you from the first--before I knew. What else could have
made me so bitter with poor Easton about what he told you? I knew he
never meant me any harm; I knew he couldn’t; he was a man to have died
for me. I was mad with jealousy. Did you mean it? You managed it well!
But I loved you-- What a fool I am! Don’t come any farther; in Heaven’s
name go back! No,” he said, perceiving that she faltered in her steps,
as if she were about to sink, “don’t stop--come on.” He had caught her
hand, and now he drew it through his arm, and hurried forward. “Yes,
come! I have something to ask you. I want you to tell me that since you
have felt yourself bound to him, you have never--I want you to tell me
that I was altogether in a delusion about you, and that you have done
nothing to make me recreant to him.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” she moaned. “How pitiless you are! How hard, how hard you
make it for me!” She released her hand and pressed it against his arm in
the eagerness of her entreaty. “Leave me--do leave me--the poor hope
that I have seemed worse than I was!”
He threw up his arm across his forehead and started a few paces onward.
She hastened after him. “And do believe,” she implored him, “that I only
wanted to meet you to-night to say--to--to--somehow to make it easier
for you to go. Indeed, indeed--Don’t leave me to despair!”
He halted, and confronted her. “Was that what you came for? I thought it
might have been to see if you couldn’t make me say what I have just
said; I fancied you might have wished to send me away beggared in
everything that makes a man able to face the past and the future, and to
meet the eyes of honest men. I deserved it. But I was mistaken, was I?”
he asked, with a bitter derision. “Well, good-by!”
“No, no! You shall never go, believing such a thing as that! If I
_hated_ you--hated you to death--how could I wish to do that to you? Ah,
you _don’t_ believe it. You--”
But he turned from her, and hurried swiftly down the lane without
another look or word.