The summer was past, but the pageant of autumn was yet undimmed. In the
wet meadows of the lowlands, even in the last days of August, before the
goldenrod was in its glory, the young maples lit their torches; and what
might have seemed their dropping fires crept from sumac to sumac, by the
vines in the grass and over the walls, till all the trees, kindling day
by day, stood at last a flame of red and gold against the sky. The jay
scolded among the luminous boughs; across the pale heaven the far-voiced
crows swam in the mellow sunshine. The pastures took on again the green
of May; the patches of corn near the farmhouses rustled dry in the soft
wind; between the ranks of the stalks lolled the rounded pumpkins.
Many of the summer boarders at Woodward farm had already gone home. The
two young girls had gone with each a box full of fern roots and an
inordinate pasteboard case full of pressed ferns. Mrs. Stevenson had
stayed later than she had meant, in order to complete a study of
cat-tails with autumn foliage. It was the best thing that she had done,
and really better than anybody had ever expected her to do. It sold
afterward for enough money to confirm her in her belief that wifehood
was no more the whole of womanhood than husbandhood was of manhood, and
that to expect her to keep house would be the same as asking every man,
no matter what his business might be, to make his own clothes and mend
his own shoes.
The husbands of three of the married ladies came one final Saturday
night, and departed with them by a much later train than they had ever
taken before, on the Monday morning following. These ladies were going
home to take up their domestic burdens again for the sake of the men who
had toiled all summer long in the city for them. It was a sacrifice,
but, thanks to the wonderful air of West Pekin, and to Mrs. Woodward’s
excellent country fare, they were equal to it; at least they did not
complain, or said they did not, which is the same thing. The driver from
the station came to fetch them away with his yellow Concord stage, and
the ladies got upon the outside seats with him, and waved their
handkerchiefs to those left behind. The husbands tried to shout back
something epigrammatic as they drove off, but these things are usually
lost in the rattle of the wheels, and, even when heard, often prove
merely an earnest of good will in the humorous direction, and are apt to
fall flat upon the kindliest ear.
Mrs. Gilbert was among the latest who remained. Under the circumstances
she might not have chosen to remain, and perhaps her prolonged stay was
an offering to appearances, the fetish before which women will put
themselves to any torment. Her husband was not coming for her, and she
sat alone amid her preparations for departure when Mrs. Farrell, in
passing her open door, lingered half wistfully and looked in upon her.
Since that day which was doubtless always in both their minds whenever
they met, they had neither shunned nor sought each other, but there had
been no intimacy between them.
“Won’t you come in, Mrs. Farrell?” asked the elder lady, with a glance
at the jaded beauty of the other.
“You are really on the wing at last,” said Mrs. Farrell, evasively
accepting the invitation. She came in, looking sad and distraught, and
sat down with an impermanent air.
“Yes, I suppose one may call it _wing_, for want of a better word,” said
Mrs. Gilbert, who indeed did not look much like flying. Presently she
added, in the silence that ensued, “You are not looking very well, Mrs.
Farrell.”
“No?” said Mrs. Farrell. “Why should I look well? But I don’t know that
I don’t feel as well as usual in the way I suppose you mean.”
“I’m sorry you don’t feel well in every way,” said Mrs. Gilbert,
responding to so much of an advance as might be made to her in Mrs.
Farrell’s dispirited words; and after another little silence, she said,
“Mr. Easton seems to have gained a great deal in the last week.”
“Yes, he is very much better; he is going away soon; he will not be here
many days longer.”
“Mrs. Farrell,” said Mrs. Gilbert, “I wish you would let me say
something to you.”
“Oh, say anything you like. Why shouldn’t you?” returned Mrs. Farrell,
not resentfully, but in the same dispirited tone.
“I know you don’t trust me,” began Mrs. Gilbert.
“There isn’t much trust lost between us, is there?” asked Mrs. Farrell
as before.
“But I hope you will believe,” continued Mrs. Gilbert, “that when we
last spoke here together I wasn’t trying to interfere with what you
might consider entirely your own affair from any mean or idle motive. If
I was trying to pry into your heart, as you said then, it was because it
seemed to me that it was partly my affair, too.”
“I didn’t mean to resent anything you did or said,” answered Mrs.
Farrell. “It wasn’t my own affair altogether. Nothing that’s wrong can
be one’s own affair, I suppose; it belongs to the whole world.” Mrs.
Gilbert looked a little surprised at the wisdom of this, which had its
own curious pathos, coming from whom it did, and Mrs. Farrell spoke
again with sudden impetuosity, “Oh, Mrs. Gilbert, I hope you are not
judging me harshly!”
“No, I am trying not to judge you at all.”
“Because,” continued Mrs. Farrell, “whatever I have done, I am not doing
my own pleasure now, and my part isn’t an easy one to play.”
“I’m sorry you must play a part at all--my dear,” said Mrs. Gilbert,
with impulsive kindness. “Why must you? Or, no, now it _is_ all your
affair, and I have no right to ask you anything. Don’t tell me--don’t
speak to me about it!”
“But if I don’t speak to you, whom shall I speak to? And I shall go wild
if I don’t speak to some one! Oh, what shall I do?”
“Do?”
“Yes, yes; it drives me to despair! Ought I to break with him now, at
once, or wait and wait? Or shall I go on and marry him? I respect and
honor him with my whole heart, indeed I do; and if he took me away with
him--away to Europe, somewhere--for years and years, I know I should be
good, and I should try hard to make him happy, and never, never let him
know that I didn’t care for him as he did for me. Women often marry for
money, for ambition, for mere board and lodging; you know they do; and
why shouldn’t I marry him because I can’t bear to tell him I’m afraid I
don’t love him?”
“That’s a question that nobody can answer for you,” said Mrs. Gilbert.
“But all those marriages are abominable; and even to marry from respect
seems wrong--hideous.”
“Yes, oh yes, it _is_ hideous; it would be making this wearisome deceit
a lifelong burden. I know what it would be better than anyone could tell
me. I feel the horror of it every minute, and it isn’t for myself that I
care now; it’s the shame to him; it seems to ridicule and degrade him;
it’s ghastly! And he so generous and high-minded, he never could think
that I wasn’t always just as good and constant as he was. No, I’m not
fit for him, and I never was. He’s whole worlds above me, and it would
wear my life out trying to be what he thinks me, and even then I
couldn’t be it. Oh, why did he fall in love with _me_, when there are so
many women in the world who would have been so happy in the love of such
a man? Why did he ever see me? Why did he come here? Good-by, Mrs.
Gilbert, good-by! I wish I were dead!”
Mrs. Gilbert caught her in an impetuous embrace of pity and atonement.
Yet, an hour after, when she finally parted from her, it was by no means
with equal tenderness; it was guardedly, almost coldly.
A week later, Ben Woodward asked his mother’s leave to go visit his
married sister, who lived at Rock Island, Illinois. He urged that, now
her boarders were mostly gone, she did not need him so much about the
house; he hung his head and kicked the chips of the woodpile by which
they stood. She looked at him a moment, and, fetching a long breath,
said he was a good son and she wished he should please himself.
The next morning he kissed her and Rachel, shook hands with his father,
nodded to his brothers, and started off toward the village, carrying his
bag. At the foot of the hill on which the village stood he met Mrs.
Farrell, who was coming from the post-office with letters in one hand.
With the other she held by their stems some bright autumn leaves, and
she stooped from time to time and added to them from the fallen
splendors about her feet. It ought to have been a poet or a painter who
met Mrs. Farrell in the country road, under the tinted maples, that
morning, but it was only a simple farm boy whose soul was inarticulate
in its tender pain. When she saw him she put the leaves and letters
together in one hand, and began to feel in her pocket with the other.
His face flushed as he came up to her, where she stood waiting for him,
and blanched with a foolish, hopeless pleasure in the sight of her.
“Why, Ben!” she said, sadly, yet with an eye that would gleam a little
as she let it stray over the poor fellow’s uncouth best clothes, “are
you going away?” She must have known that he was.
“Yes,” said Ben, uneasily.
“And did you mean to go without saying good-by to me?” she asked, with
soft reproach.
“Well, I didn’t see what good it was going to do.”
“Why, we might never meet again, Ben,” she said, solemnly. And as Ben
shifted his bag from his one hand to the other, she took the hand left
free and tried to make its great red fingers close over something she
pressed into the palm. “I want you to take this to remember me by, Ben,”
she said; but the young fellow, glancing at the gold pencil she had left
in his grasp, shook his head and put the gift back in her hand.
“I don’t need anything to remember you by, Mrs. Farrell,” he said,
huskily, looking at her half-amused, half-daunted face. “If you can give
me anything to forget you by, I’ll take it,” and Ben, as if he had made
a point which he might not hope to surpass, was going to press by her,
when she placed herself full in front of him and would not let him.
“Oh, Ben,” she said, “how can you talk so to me? You know I have always
thought you such a friend of mine, and you know I like you and think
ever so much of your good opinion. I shall never let you pass till you
take back those cruel words. Will you take them back?”
“Yes,” said Ben, helpless before those still, dark eyes, “I will if you
want I should.”
“And will you try to remember me--remember me kindly, and not think
hardly of anything I’ve done?”
“You know well enough, Mrs. Farrell,” said the boy, with a sort of
ireful pathos, “that I would do anything you asked me to, and always
would. Don’t, don’t mind what I said. You know how I like you, and
wouldn’t forget you if I could.”
“Oh, Ben, Ben, I’m very unhappy,” she broke out.
“Don’t mind it,” said Ben, with the egotism of love, but touchingly
unselfish even in this egotism. “You needn’t be troubled about me. I
always knew just as well as you that it was all foolishness, and I
didn’t ever mean to let it vex you. Don’t mind it; I shall get over it,
I suppose, and if I never do, I hope even when you’re a married woman it
won’t be any harm for me to think you cared enough for me to be sorry
that--that I was such a fool.”
She looked at him, puzzled by his misconception, but, divining it, she
said instantly, “No indeed, Ben; whatever becomes of me, I shall be only
too proud to think of you as my dear, dear friend. I haven’t had so many
that I could spare you. I only wish I half deserved you. Ben!” cried
Mrs. Farrell, abruptly, “do you know what I wish I was? I wish I was
five or six years younger, so as to be a little younger than you; and I
wish I was a good, simple girl, like some of these about here, and you
had bought a farm out in Iowa, and you were taking me out there with you
this peaceful, lovely morning.”
“Don’t, Mrs. Farrell!” implored Ben.
“I do, Ben, I do! And if I were such a girl as that, I would work for
you like a slave from morning till night; and I would obey you in
everything; and all that I should ask would be that you should keep me
there out of sight of everybody, and never let me go anywhere, or speak
to a living soul but you. And, oh, Ben, you would be very kind and
patient with me, wouldn’t you? But it can’t be, it can’t be.”
She stooped down and gathered up some letters which had slipped from her
hand; Ben let her; he had his bag to hold, and he was not used to
offering little services to ladies. When she lifted her face again and
confronted him, “_He_ is a good man, too; don’t you think he is, Ben?”
she asked, brushing her hand across her eyes.
“Yes; there a’n’t many like him,” answered Ben, soberly.
“Do you think he’s too good for me?”
“I don’t think anybody could be that, you know well enough, Mrs.
Farrell,” said Ben, with a note of indignation, as if he suspected a
latent mockery in this appeal to his judgment.
“Yes, yes, that’s true, I know that,” said Mrs. Farrell, hastily. “I
meant, don’t you think he’s better than--than Mr. Gilbert?”
“I never had anything against Mr. Gilbert,” answered Ben, loyally. “He
took good care of his friend.”
“Oh yes! But--but--Ben,” she faltered, “there is something--something I
would like to ask you. It’s a very strange thing to ask you; but there
is no one else. Did you ever think--sometimes I was afraid, you know,
that Mr. Gilbert--it makes me very, very unhappy--was getting to--to
care for me--”
“No, I never thought so,” answered Ben.
“Oh, I’m _so_ glad. But if he had?”
“I should say such a man ought to be shot.”
“Yes, oh yes--he ought to be shot,” she assented, hysterically. “But,
Ben--but _you_ cared for me, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But that was a very different thing. Mr. Easton wasn’t my friend,
as he was Mr. Gilbert’s, and I commenced caring for you long before he
was laid there sick and helpless. He would be just as much to blame as
if you was married to Mr. Easton already. I don’t see any difference.
But I don’t think he could. You must have been mistaken.”
“Perhaps I was. Yes, I must have been mistaken. I’m glad to have you
speak so frankly, Ben. It _is_ too horrible to believe. For if he had
been so, of course it could only be because he saw, or thought he saw,
something in me that would let him. And you never could think anything
so bad, so heartless, of me, could you, Ben?”
“No, I couldn’t, Mrs. Farrell,” answered Ben, decidedly. “What’s the
use--”
“Thank you, Ben--thank you. I knew you couldn’t; it would be too
monstrous. Oh yes, it’s just like some horrid dream. Such a woman as
that wouldn’t deserve any mercy--not if she had allowed him to think so
for one single instant. Would she?”
“Why, we can all find mercy, I suppose, if we go the right way to the
right place for it,” answered Ben, seriously.
“Yes--but I don’t mean that kind. I mean, she wouldn’t deserve--Ben, if
you were in Mr. Easton’s place, and the girl you were engaged to had
allowed some one else--just for the excitement, you know; not because
she wanted him to, or was so wicked and heartless, but just foolish--to
think she might let him like her, you never would speak to her again,
would you, Ben? You never would forgive her?”
“No, I don’t know as I could overlook a thing like that.”
“Of course you couldn’t! You always see things in the right light, Ben;
you are so good--oh! how cruel, how perfectly unrelenting you are! That
is--I don’t mean that--I mean-- Oh, Ben, if you felt toward her--I
oughtn’t to say it, I know; but just for instance--as you feel, as you
used to feel, toward _me_, Ben”--she implored, while her tearful eyes
dwelt on his--“could you forgive me--_her_, I mean?”
“I--I don’t know,” faltered Ben.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Ben! But you oughtn’t, you oughtn’t!” she
cried. “I mustn’t keep you, Ben. Good-by. And now you’ll let me give you
the pencil, won’t you? It isn’t for you. It’s for some nice girl you’ll
be sure to find, out there. Tell her I sent it to her; and, oh, tell her
the best thing she can do is to be good! I hope you’ll have a pleasant
time and get back safely; I sha’n’t be here when you come home.”
She did not shake hands with him at parting, and they went their several
ways. At the turn of the road she looked back and saw him watching her.
She took out her handkerchief and waved it to him; then, rounding the
corner, she pressed it to her eyes, and stooped and made a little hasty
toilet at the brook that ran along the roadside. When she rose she saw
Easton at the head of the avenue, coming slowly down toward her. She
went courageously to meet him. “Are my eyes red?” she asked. “I have
just been shedding the parting tear over poor Ben. He’s a good boy, and
I felt sorry for him. I’ve been his first love for several years, you
know.”
“Yes,” said Easton, with the superiority that men feel toward much
younger men’s passions. “That was plain enough from the beginning.”
Mrs. Farrell looked at him. He was pale and thin from his long lying in
bed, but his old tone and manner were coming back, and he was growing
better, though he was still far from strong. They were lingering at the
farm while the fair weather lasted, that he might profit by the air as
long as it could do him good, though he had meant to go before this
time.
“I’ve brought you about all the letters there were in the office, this
morning,” she said. “Do you want them now?”
“I suppose they must be read. Yes; let us go back to the piazza and open
them there. You’ll be glad to rest after your walk to the village.”
“Is that why you want to get at your letters? I’m not tired at all, and
I’d rather walk on.”
“Well, whatever you like. You’ve unmasked my deceit about the letters. I
certainly don’t care to read them. I see that I had better never try to
keep anything from you.”
“Should you like me to tell you everything about myself?”
“Why, you did that once, didn’t you?”
“Oh, that was nothing. I mean everything I think and feel and do.”
“If you wished to tell me. I can’t know too much about you.”
“Don’t be so sure of that. Suppose I had something that lay very heavy
on my conscience, and that I didn’t like to tell you. I ought to,
oughtn’t I?”
“Why, if it didn’t concern me--”
“But if it did concern you?”
“Well, still, I’m not so sure about your obligation to tell it. If you
could endure to keep it, you might have a greater right to keep it than
I should have to know it. The only comfort of confession is that it
seems to disown our wrong and make it a sort of public property, a part
of evil in general, and lets us begin new, like people who have taken
the benefit of the bankrupt law.” He spoke these truisms in a jesting
tone. “I shall always be willing to adopt half of your sins. How have
you been injuring me, Rosabel?” he asked, with the smile which Mrs.
Farrell’s speculative seriousness was apt to call forth; the best men
find it so hard to believe that a charming woman can be in earnest about
anything but her good looks.
“Oh, I was supposing a case,” she answered, with a sigh. “You do think I
have some faults, then?”
“Yes, I think you have; but that doesn’t make any difference.”
“But you can’t pretend you like them?”
“Let me think! Do I like your faults?”
“Don’t joke. Which do you think is the worst?” she demanded, stopping
and confronting him with a look of solemnity which he found amusing.
“Upon my word,” he answered, with a laugh, “I don’t believe I could
say.”
“What are any of my faults?”
“How can I tell?”
“Am I willful? Am I proud? Am I bad-tempered? What’s the thing you would
find it hardest to forgive me?”
“You must give me time to think. And when I’ve forgiven you a great many
times for a great variety of offenses I will tell you which I found the
hardest. You must remember that I’ve had no sort of experience yet.”
“That’s because you don’t know at all how badly I’ve treated you. What
do you think of my laughing at you that day when I went off to the
schoolhouse with Rachel Woodward? Don’t you consider it heartless? If I
hadn’t been the worst person in the world, could I have done it?”
Easton smiled at the zeal of her self-condemnation. “I dare say there
had been something very ridiculous in my behavior. If you can remember
any particular points that amused you, I shouldn’t mind laughing them
over with you, now.”
“How good you are!” she murmured, regarding him absently. “I should be
the worst woman in the world, shouldn’t I, if I deceived you in the
least thing? But I never will; no, no, I couldn’t! Your not thinking it
anything would only make it the harder to bear. Don’t you know how
killing it is to have people suppose you’re too good to do things when
you’ve done them? It’s awful. That’s one good thing about Rachel
Woodward. She thinks I’m a miserable sinner, but she likes me; and you
mustn’t like me unless you think I’m a miserable sinner. Oh no, I
couldn’t let you. I’ll tell you: I want you to think me perfectly
reckless and fickle; I want you to believe that I’m so foolish, don’t
you know, that even while you were lying sick there, if he’d let me, I
should have been quite capable of flirting with--with Ben Woodward.”
Easton burst into a laugh: “That’s altogether too abominable for anybody
to believe, Rosabel. Can’t you try me with something a shade less
atrocious? Come, I’m willing to think ill of you, since you wish it; but
do be reasonable! Won’t you?” he asked, looking round into her face, as
they walked along. “Well, then, try to help me in another way. What
shall I do about Rachel Woodward? I don’t know how I’m to express my
gratitude fitly or acceptably for all the trouble she’s had with me in
this most humiliating sickness of mine. Do you suppose she could be
persuaded into accepting any sort of help? Do you think she would care
to become a painter, if she had the facilities quite to her mind?”
“She would,” replied Mrs. Farrell, “if she didn’t expect sometime to get
married, like other people; there’s always that _if_ in a woman’s
aspirations. But that’s neither here nor there. If you think you can
ever contrive to reward Rachel Woodward for doing what she thinks her
duty, you’re very much mistaken.”
“It’s rather hard to be left so much in her debt.”
“Yes; but she doesn’t consider you indebted; that’s one comfort.”
Easton mused awhile. “Do you know,” he said, presently, “I sometimes
wonder Gilbert didn’t take a fancy to our difficult little friend.
They’re sufficiently unlike, and he would be just the man to feel the
pale charm of her character.”
“Do you think so?” asked Mrs. Farrell, with cold evasion. “I supposed
Mr. Gilbert was too worldly a man to care for a simple country girl like
Rachel Woodward.”
“Oh, you’re very much mistaken. He’d be altogether unworldly in a matter
of that kind. He would be true to himself at any cost. That was what
always charmed me so in Gilbert. He had the air and talk of a light man,
but he was as true as steel under it all. Every day a man has a hundred
occasions to prove himself mean or great, and Gilbert, without any show
of being principled this way or that, always did the manly and generous
and loyal thing.”
“Shall we go back, now?” asked Mrs. Farrell. “I _am_ rather tired, after
all.”
“Will you take my arm?” asked Easton. “It isn’t of much use yet, I’m
ashamed to think, but it will be. Did you despise me when I was lying
there sick?”
“Despise you?”
“Why, I think a sick man is a contemptible kind of creature. You women
seem to be able to make anything gracious and appropriate, even
suffering; but a sick man can only be an odious burden. We ought to be
allowed to crawl away like hurt animals into holes and clefts of rocks,
and take the chances, unseen, of dying or living. Were you able to pity
me very much?”
“I don’t see why you ask such things,” she faltered. “Don’t you think I
did?”
“Oh yes, too much. Sometimes I’m afraid that, without your knowing it,
it’s been all pity from the beginning. I dare say every decently modest
man wonders what a woman finds to love in him. I wanted you to love me
from the first instant I saw you, but I never concealed from myself that
I wasn’t worth a thought of yours. What a curious thing it is that
makes one willing to receive everything for nothing.” He laid his left
hand upon her fingers where they passively clung to his right arm. “Why,
how cold your hand is!” he said. “It seems incredible that it’s going to
be _my_ hand some day! Everything else under the sun has its price; you
slave for it, you risk your life for it, you buy it somehow. But the
divinest thing in the world is _given_, it has no price, it’s
invaluable; we can’t _merit_ a woman’s love any more than we can merit
God’s mercy. Come, take yourself from me again! I’ve never given you a
fair chance to say me nay. You must acknowledge that you never had time
to answer that question of mine. Before you could decide whether you
could endure me or not you had to pity me so much that you were biased
in my favor. I ought to set you free, and let you judge again whether
you would have me!”
Her breath went and came quickly, as he spoke in this mixed jest and
earnest. He tried to make her meet his eye, peering round into her face,
but she would not look at him. If this was the release, the opportunity,
so long and wildly desired, it found her helpless to seize it. She moved
her head from side to side like one stifling. “Oh, don’t! How can you?”
she gasped. “Don’t talk so any more,” she entreated. “I can’t bear it!”
She turned her face away; he tenderly pressed her arm against his side.
They were near the house again, and she slipped her hand from his arm
and fled indoors. He blushed with joy, and walked on down the birch
avenue, where she saw him sitting, after a while, on a stone by the
wayside. She went to join him, holding forward, as she drew near him, a
handful of letters. “We both forgot these,” she said, with a dim smile.
“Oh yes,” he laughed. She glanced down at the stone where he sat, and up
at that clump of birches through whose thin foliage the sun fell upon
him, and shivered with the recognition of the spot where she had parted
from Gilbert. “Sit down, Rosabel,” he said, making a place for her at
his side. “This stone is large enough for both of us. I want you to help
me read my letters.”
“No, no!” she faintly pleaded; “let me stand awhile. And do you--do you
think it’s well for you to sit--just here?”
“Why, yes,” he returned. “It seems a sufficiently salubrious spot, and
this is a most obliging rock. If you won’t share it with me--here!” he
said, touching another stone in front of his own seat, “sit here! Then I
can see your face whenever I look up, and that will be better even than
having you at my side. Ah! Now for the letters,” he cried, when she had
suffered him to arrange her as he would, and she gave them into his
hand.
He ran them quickly over before opening any, and, “Why!” he exclaimed,
holding up one of them, “did you know whom we have kept waiting?
Gilbert! It’s too bad, poor old fellow! Didn’t you notice his letter,
you incurious Fatima?”
“I never saw his handwriting. How could I know his letter?”
“Of course! That might have occurred to me if I hadn’t known it so well
myself. Never mind! We’ll keep Gilbert a little longer, since we’ve kept
him so long already, and have him last of all, to take away the bad
taste, if these are not pleasant reading.” He laid Gilbert’s letter
aside, and opened the others and commented on them one after another;
but her eyes continually wandered to the unopened letter, do what she
might to keep them on the level of the page he was reading. At last he
took up Gilbert’s letter; a shiver ran through her as he tore open the
envelope, and she drew herself closer together.
“Why, are you cold, my dear?” he asked, glancing at her before he began
to read. “Aren’t you well? Let us go up to the house, and read the
letter there.”
“No, no,” she answered, steadily; “I’m not cold, I’m perfectly well. I
was curious to know what he said; that was all. Do go on.”
Easton opened the sheet, and began to read to himself, as people often
do with letters when they propose to read them aloud. “Oh!” he said,
presently, “excuse me! I didn’t know what I was doing. Do you think
you’ll be able to stand all this?” He held up the eight pages of
Gilbert’s letter, and then he began faithfully with the date, and read
on to the end. The first part of the letter was given to Gilbert’s
regrets at not having been able to write before. He took it for granted
that his sister-in-law had told Easton of his sudden call to go to South
America on that business of Mitchell & Martineiro, who wished him to
look after some legal complications of their affairs in Brazil, which
needed an American lawyer’s eye; and that she had made all amends she
could for his going so suddenly.
You were asleep [he wrote] when I went to take leave of you, and on
the whole I’m not sorry. A good-by is good at any distance, and I
knew I could send you mine. I didn’t suppose I should be so long
about it; but the truth is that what with putting my own business
in order before going, and instructing myself about Mitchell &
Martineiro’s, in a case where I can represent their interests only
in an exterior sort of way, I have not had a moment that I could
call yours. I might have sent you a line, of course, but I waited
till I could do more than that. I knew you were getting well, and I
need not worry about leaving you before you were quite well. And
now, after all, when I have a few hours before sailing, and I sit
down to write to you, I do not know that I have much to say.
Perhaps if I had had days before this, it would have come to the
same thing. In fact, it could have come only to one thing under any
circumstances. It could have come only to my telling you, with
whatever force I had, that in all our recent unhappiness I felt
myself wholly and solely at fault. I do not merely mean that you
were blameless, but that everyone else but myself was so. I hope
this will not come to your eye like an impertinence; it lies under
mine like a very vital thing. I do not know what your measure of my
blame is, whether it has grown greater or not since we parted; but
in my own sight my treatment of you seems inexpiable. Of course I
feel that in this separation of ours there are many chances that we
may not meet again; but I should like to say this to you if we were
to meet every day all our lives. I will not appeal to the kindness
of your heart; there ought to be none for me in it. But do not
forget me, Easton; and if ever in the future you can think more
leniently of me than I deserve, I shall be glad of your pity.
“Is that all?” asked Mrs. Farrell, hoarsely.
“Yes, that’s all,” returned Easton, turning the pages absently over,
and looking up and down the leaves.
Whatever had been her purposes, or hopes, or dreads, the moment had come
from which she could not recoil, and in which she stood as absolutely
unfriended as in the face of death. Everything had led to this at last;
it might have been said that she was born for this alone, so supreme was
it over all other fates and chances. If she had hoped for help from any
source--from Easton’s possible suspicion, from the light in which she
had tried to see what she had done with others’ eyes, from some
confession of Gilbert’s in this letter of his--it was all in vain.
Everything was remanded to her, and she was to make her choice, with
none to urge or stay her. She sat and stared at the man who, she knew,
would have given his life to defend her from others, but who was so
powerless now to help her against herself. Of all the contending
passions of her soul--shame, fear, resentment, and chiefly a frantic
longing to discredit the reality of what was, and had been--a momentary
scorn came uppermost.
“So!” she cried. “And that’s all he had to say!” She caught the letter
from Easton’s hand, ran her eye swiftly over the closing page, and flung
it back to him. “Yes, he was afraid to write it, two hundred miles away;
he leaves it all to me. Well, then, I will tell you-- Oh,” she broke off,
“do you love me very, very much? Yes, _I_ must tell you, for there is no
one else, and, no matter what happens, you _must_ know it.” She looked
at him in an agony of terror and pity; she could not take her eyes from
him while she spoke the words that now came. “He was in love with me; he
said so the last moment I saw him; he was so from the first. It was that
which made him quarrel with you, and it is that which makes him--he
thinks I’ve told you--ask your pity now.”
In the ghastly silence that ensued, they found that they had both risen,
and he stood with one hand resting against the trunk of the birch
beneath which they had been sitting; Gilbert’s letter had fallen, and
lay on the ground between them.
Easton made no answer, and tried to make none, standing in a hapless
maze. The silence seemed interminable; but it was also intolerable; she
recalled him to himself with a wild “Well!” Then he seemed to find his
voice a great way off, and a husky murmur preceded his articulate
speech.
“Have I kept you apart?” he asked. “Do you love him?”
“_Love_ him? I _loathe_ him!”
She shuddered to see the hope that rushed into his face, when he said,
“Then I pity him with all my heart. How could he help loving you?”
She wrung her hands in despair. “Oh, why don’t you kill me, and spare me
this. How can I tell you and make you understand? He never would have
dared to speak to me if I had not-- He never would have dared to speak if
he had believed I loved you!”
“_Do_ you love me?” he asked, as if he regarded nothing else but that,
and he searched with his clear gaze the eyes which she was powerless to
avert. She tried to speak, and could not. The shame, more cruel than
any crime can bring, which a man feels in such a disillusion, crimsoned
his pale visage, and his head fell upon his breast. Again the terrible
silence held them both.
“Oh, don’t, don’t!” she wailed, at last. “What must you think of me? I
_did_ believe that I loved you once--that day when you asked me; and
then when you were taken sick, and I thought you might die, how could I
help caring for you? And afterward, when you were better, and you never
showed any misgiving, I _couldn’t_ undeceive you; it had to go on. I
_always_ respected you more than anyone in the world; you’re the best
man I ever saw; better than I ever dreamed of; it frightened me to think
how far too good for me you were. And why do you blame me so much, now?”
she piteously implored. “You said, once, that you didn’t ask me to love
you; that all you wanted was to love me.”
Easton rubbed his hand wearily over his forehead, and drew a long
breath. “If I blamed you I was wrong,” he answered, gravely. “It was my
fault.”
His hand began to tremble on the birch, and he sank down on the rock
where he had been sitting. She saw his faltering, and dropped on her
knees before him, and instinctively cast one arm about him to support
him. He put it away. “I’m perfectly well,” he said, with his deathly
face. “But I shall sit here awhile before I go back to the house.
Don’t--don’t let me keep you.”
The dismissal seemed to strike her back from him, but she did not rise.
She only dropped her face in the hollow of her rejected arm, and moaned,
“Oh, how you must despise me! But don’t drive me from you!”
“I didn’t mean that,” he said; “I thought of sparing you.”
“But don’t spare me! It’s that that drives me wild. I want you to tell
me what it is I’ve done. I want you to judge me.”
“Judge yourself, Rosabel. I will not.”
“But I can’t have any mercy on myself! Oh, keep me from myself! Don’t
cast me off! I know I’m not worthy of you, but if you love me, _take_
me! I will be a good wife to you, indeed I will.”
“Oh no,” said Easton, in the tone of a man hurt beyond all solace, who
faintly refuses some compassionately proffered, impossible kindness. “I
have loved you, Heaven knows how dearly, and I could have waited
patiently any length of time in the hope of your love; that was what I
meant when I said I didn’t ask you to love me then. But now--”
She must have felt the exquisite manliness of his intention toward her.
Perhaps she contrasted the grandeur which would not reproach her by a
word or look, with the relentless bitterness in which Gilbert had
retaliated all upon her. She had always admired Easton; it may be that
in this moment she felt a thrill of the supreme tenderness. She suddenly
clung to his arm. “But I _want_ you to take me!” she cried. “Don’t you
trust me? Don’t you think I know my own heart, even now? Oh, if you
will only believe in me again, I know I _shall_ love you!”
“No!” said Easton. “I love you too much for that.”
“And it is all over, then? Do you break your engagement?”
“It’s broken. You must go free of me. I know you would try to give me
what you cannot; but only misery could come of trying. It would be worse
than my mistake with Gilbert, when I accepted a sacrifice from him that
no man should accept from another, because I believed that I could have
done as much for him. We thought it our bond of friendship, but it must
always have been a galling chain to him. And you are asking to do a
thousand times more than he did! No, no; you would only be starving
yourself to beggar me. If you loved me, all that’s happened would be
nothing; but if you had married me, without loving me, you would have
done me a wrong that I could never have pardoned. Don’t accuse
yourself,” he said. “If you had loved me, nothing of all this could have
happened. Think of that. It was my mistake more than yours; you were
unfairly bound to me. Come,” he said, rising with a sudden access of
strength that belied his pale looks, “I must go to-day.” And he led the
way back to the house in a silence which neither broke.
She did not answer him by words, then or afterward. But when they
entered the dark of the hall doorway together, she expressed all by an
action which was not the less characteristic for being so humble and
childlike; she caught up his hand, and, holding it a moment with a
clinging stress, carried it to her mouth and reverently kissed it. That
was their farewell, and it was both silent and passive on his part. He
looked at her with eyes that she did not meet, and moved his lips as if
he would say something, but made no sound.