A DIRECTOR OF DESTINIES
When Mary Elton was able to be out and about once more, she seemed to
have undergone what she herself termed “a change of heart, from bad to
worse.”
“A peep inside Death’s door would soften and chasten most people,” she
told her bewildered uncle, “but on me it has had just the opposite
effect. I suppose it’s because I made all my plans for a death-bed
repentance, and now that the Devil is well, the devil a nun is she. I
always did hate to have my calculations upset, and this recovery is
too much of a surprise for an old maid to adjust herself to all of a
sudden.”
But if the physical shock of a serious operation was hard to recover
from, the mental torment caused by the recollection of her confession
to Philip Morley was a thousand times more difficult to endure. She
knew that the thought of it would poison her whole life. It had been
hard enough before to bear the anguish of a kind of love known only to
deep and undemonstrative natures, a love doomed to remain unrequited,
but now added to biting sorrow was the sting of shame and humiliation
that Philip should have heard from her own lips of her love for him.
“I might have known I shouldn’t die,” Mary berated herself fiercely.
“The Fates have too much sense of humor to lose the joke of my
recovery. Well, Destiny has beaten me again; but my will is not
defeated, and though I can’t die, I shall at least go abroad. When bad
Americans can’t die, they go to Paris. Uncle Charles shall take me if
the eloquence of one risen from the bed can move him to action.”
On Edith Dudley’s return from the mountains she had gone directly to
Mrs. Warner’s, feeling that her visit to the Eltons had better be
shortened, in view of Mary’s unexpected illness. She came to see Mary
every few days, and their friendship continued the same, although
Mary detected a subtle change in Edith, the clue to which lay in the
circumstance that Philip’s name had not once been mentioned between
them.
Mary’s clear vision and quick mind had jumped to a conclusion which
made even the most tactful interference seem an impertinence, and
yet she felt that she held, in a way, the reins of her two friends’
destinies. She herself had seen Philip only in the most casual way, but
she was not so utterly self-absorbed as to be blind to the difficulties
and painfulness of his situation, which she interpreted thus: knowing,
as he did, that she (Mary) was in love with him, he had determined not
to persist in his courtship of her friend, who had already refused him.
He was not so stupid as to greet Mary’s recovery with a proposal of
marriage, but she knew him well enough to suspect the line of conduct
he meant to pursue. Having accepted Edith’s refusal as final, he would,
after she had left the house, resume his friendly visits to Mary, then
slowly,--very slowly,--he would show her that not her declaration of
love, but her own fine qualities, had magically touched his heart,
transforming friendship into a more vital emotion.
And, after all, Mary asked herself, might not the result bring
happiness to both? Once married to him, Mary would _make_ him love
her, for he would know by the revelations of daily life the depth and
strength of her affection. She knew that no one else could make the
man of him that she would make. All the latent sweetness of her nature,
all the buried wealths of tenderness and unselfishness would blossom
under his hand. Each would be the best for each, and yet--he did not
love her.
Mary’s qualities, good and bad, were vigorous. Capable of two extremes
of conduct, she recognized the situation as demanding a great act of
heroism, or an equally large act of selfishness. In the wakeful hours
of many nights, her conflicting emotions met and fought bloody battles,
till the final victory was won. Her irrevocable decision was made. She
dispatched two notes, one to Edith Dudley, asking her to come and see
her at four o’clock the next afternoon, the other to Philip Morley,
summoning him half an hour later.
Mary never indulged in the tentative tactics known as beating about the
bush. Edith and she had hardly exchanged greetings when Mary made a
bold attack. “Edith Dudley, now that your old Dr. Fell is out of the
way, should you accept Philip Morley, if he proposed again?”
Poor Edith looked vainly about for escape from the revolver of truth
with which her friend was holding her up. The sight of her gave Mary a
curiously complex emotion, in which scorn, admiration, pity, and wonder
were blended. How was it possible that this beautiful, clever creature,
who was neither good nor bad, and who was to all outside influences
as the weathercock to the breeze, could yet subdue criticism to a
blind acceptance of her with all her weakness and weaknesses, and her
irresistible charm?
“If Philip Morley should ask me now, I should accept him,” she said,
her luminous eyes shining like mirrors of truth. “But it will be
better for him if he does not ask me again.” Then, with a passionate
gesture unusual to her, “Mary, Mary, don’t desert me! Don’t go back on
me ever,--whatever happens!” she cried earnestly. “Let me feel that
you are always here, firm and sure, a rock for me to cling to,--poor
helpless seaweed that I am,--when the waves get too strong for me. No
one else has ever made me feel as you do--that perhaps I have a soul
and a will somewhere. I am generally conscious only of being _nothing_;
a Laodicean, from whom the power to feel hot and cold and love and hate
have been squeezed out by early training. I should like to be the wife
for Philip. Perhaps, if he is strong enough, he can make something out
of me; or if he is weak enough, he may never find me out. But I think
he is neither. He is simply human. He loves me a great deal. I feel it
even when I am away from him, and I don’t with every one,” she naïvely
added.
“I am quite aware of his affection,” Mary acquiesced grimly. “Let’s
talk of something else,--me, for instance. One reason why I wanted you
to come and see me this afternoon, is to tell you that I have at last
succeeded in persuading Uncle Charles to take a holiday. He and I are
going abroad next month, to be gone a year. Isn’t that splendid? You
know how I’ve always wanted to see Paris and London, and this means
Italy and Egypt added. Don’t you congratulate me?”
“Oh, Mary, I do, I do!” cried Edith, instantly radiant with sympathy.
“And I congratulate Europe! Won’t you say nice, funny, original things
about everything, and make the antiquities feel that they’ve never
been appreciated before? And, oh Mary, how you’ll _hate_ the traveling
Americans,--and the traveling English, and worst of all the traveling
Germans!”
Her voice rose in a crescendo of amused horror. Philip was forgotten,
she herself was forgotten,--she was living only in Mary’s prospective
travels.
They talked for some time, till presently the door-bell rang, and Mary
jumped up saying, “I don’t want to see any one,--I’ll just tell the
maid,” and with that she slipped out of the room.
At the head of the stairs she met Philip Morley. He had not been in the
house since the night before she went to the hospital, and for a moment
the recollection of their talk that evening gripped them both by the
throat. Then the girl recovered herself, and she smiled courageously.
“Go in there. Tell her she’s _got_ to marry you,--don’t ask her whether
she will or not,” she said rather incoherently, then turned and dashed
upstairs, and Philip heard her chamber door slam after her.
Feeling as if he were a puppet to which Mary held the string, he
obediently went into the room she had just quitted. Edith Dudley stood
by the mantelpiece, lightly touching a bunch of pink and white roses in
an iridescent vase--suggestive of herself as was everything delicately
lovely and changing. To Philip her beauty was so overwhelming that
even his love seemed a sacrilege, yet the rush of warm emotion which
filled him at the sight of her--even if unreciprocated--was something
for which a man would give all other bliss. She was dressed in gray,
except for a touch of blended colors in her hat and at her throat,--her
“trade-mark,” she called this opal touch in which her nature seemed
to express itself. She was waiting for the intruder to be dismissed,
and for Mary’s return, and a sunny smile warmed her face as the door
opened and Philip entered. She was not disconcerted, but she instantly
realized that she was the victim of a plot. “How do you do, Mr. Morley!
This is just where we first met, isn’t it? Did Mary send for you, too,
to tell you her great news? Where is she?”
“She went upstairs,” Philip said stupidly, still dazed by the part he
was expected by Mary to play in the scene she had arranged.
Miss Dudley sat down and motioned to a sofa with her muff. “We are
evidently expected to entertain each other,” she went on lightly, “and
I’m going to punish Mary for her rudeness in deserting us, by telling
you her secret. She’s going abroad with her uncle for a year.”
Philip’s handsome face was working with emotion like that of a
girl. “It’s no use,” he burst out, hypnotized by her mere presence,
and paying no attention to her words, “I didn’t mean to ask you
again; I know it’s useless, you wonderful, beautiful creature,--you
could marry any one in the whole world; but I’ve got to go away
somewhere--anywhere--unless you can care a little for me. I’m too
unspeakably wretched! You don’t know what it is,--this feeling I
have about you. I didn’t know there were such feelings in the world,
myself.” He saw her eyes looking towards him, softened with affection,
and he jumped to his feet. He rushed to her, and grasped her hand.
“Edith, you’ve _got_ to marry me!” he cried, the gentleman for once
lost in the man. “You’ve _got_ to. I shan’t take no, again. I am mad
with love for you, or I shouldn’t ask you this, here in this house. You
don’t know what I’ve been through. I didn’t mean to do this again. I
tried not to. It’s Mary’s fault. Edith, I love you with all there is in
me of good or bad, and my love demands a return!” His gaze pierced her.
Her face cleared into an expression of exquisite happiness. Oh, the
peace of being told to do something so easy! She showed no instinct of
the flirt, who likes to torture her prey. With childlike confidence she
gave him both her hands, and her eyes spoke as eloquently as her lips.
“Philip, I will love you. I will be to you as good a wife as I can be,
if you are _sure, sure_ you want me. There were reasons why I could
not say yes, the last time you asked me. Now I _can_ say it, indeed I
_must_ say it.”
Philip was too dazed with surprise and joy to do anything but foolishly
kiss her hands. In a moment he burst out, “It’s no use. I can’t believe
it. Tell me again. Are we really to be always together, you and I,
after a little while?”
“Oh, I hope not always,” the girl expostulated. “Married people who
never get away from each other grow frightfully uninteresting. Listen,
Philip,” and she laid a shy finger against his mouth. “This is all
Mary’s doing. If we are unhappy it will be her fault. If we are happy
it is her we must thank. She made this match.”
“God bless her!” cried Philip fervently, but with a spasm of pain
crossing his bliss.
Then a sudden seriousness clouded Edith’s sunshine also. “Philip, I
want to tell you something. You won’t believe me, but I shall tell you
just the same. _I am nothing_, do you understand? The reason people
like me--when they do--is because most people like themselves, and I am
rather a flattering mirror, that is all.”
“Then I must be an arch-egotist,” Philip interrupted her.
“You are. Your affection for me proves the extent of your self-love.”
She spoke with surprising gravity. “You see, Philip, I was brought up
to seem, not to be, and my education was extraordinarily successful. I
lost my life in childhood.”
The young man threw back his boyish head and laughed. “Yes, you look as
if you were not alive!” he cried. “You, whose every nerve and fibre
are instinct with life. You are the epitome of sensation. You respond
to every slightest emotion, to every touch of feeling. I would believe
anything else you tell me, but not that you are unfeeling and dull of
sensation. You are anything but a Belle Dame Sans Merci.”
“Not sans merci alone,” she said sadly, “but sans _every_thing, like
Shakespeare’s old man. I have warned you, you see. I have strength
enough for that, because I know in my heart that it will make no
difference to you, as you won’t believe me; but I haven’t the strength
to refuse you, Philip. I will marry you as soon as you want.”
Her personal charm surrounded him like a vapor, and obscured all else.
Like two happy children they sat side by side, making plans for the
future. All that she stipulated was, that she should be married from
her stepmother’s house in Kentucky, and that she should have time to
get a few clothes.
“Please always have the rainbow motif in all your dresses,” Philip
said, pointing to the opal hues at her neck. “It matches your
temperament. I remember when I first saw you here in that wonderful,
changing, pinky-grayish-heliotrope, crapy thing. You seemed to me like
a woman that Hawthorne would have rejoiced in describing, with your
dress the symbol of your nature. Then there is one more thing, dear, I
want to ask. Will you let me give you an opal for an engagement ring?
It is what I should like best, if you are not superstitious. It is my
favorite stone, and I think you said it was yours. You are _my_ opal,
you know, and I should like you to have one, beautiful as yourself,
with a heart of fire.”
She laughed gayly. “Philip, you are waxing poetic! Of course I’m not
superstitious. We defy augury. I will have nothing but an opal. It is
alive, though it is not as permanent as I should like the symbol of our
love to be. Philip,” she said, a trembling wistfulness in her voice,
“you know opals crumble and fall to pieces, and there is no mending
them,--they just disappear, and their beauty is gone. Are you sure you
want _your_ opal for better or worse?”
“I am quite sure,” he said decisively. “And your opal shall be set in
diamonds, to keep it from crumbling and guard its beauty.”
“And so shall yours, Philip, for when I am married to you your opal
will be truly set in strong and precious stones, to defend it from its
own weakness.” Her little Frenchily sentimental speech did not sound
artificial, as with the naturalness of a trustful child she lifted her
face to his.
Upstairs a very different drama was in progress. Mary Elton was
pacing her room, with hands clenched and brows knit. Now that her
self-appointed rôle of fairy godmother was played, she not only
wondered how she had found strength to go through with it, but scolded
herself for having been sensational. “After all, it was none of my
business,” she told herself. “I wish I hadn’t interfered. If I had let
things alone, Philip might have come back to me of his own free will,
and Edith would have married some one else who would have made her just
as happy.”
At the end of half an hour she opened her door and listened. She heard
the murmur of low voices, and once Philip’s laugh rang out,--confident,
happy, proud.
With a sob between clenched teeth, Mary closed her door again, and
seated herself in front of her mirror. She watched the cynical,
scornful face before her contort itself into lines of bitterness and
grief. Relentlessly she stared at the slowly puffing eyelids, the
quavering mouth. Never had she looked less attractive, less romantic.
“A picture of unrequited love,--realistic school,” she announced
mockingly, for her own amusement. And as a watery smile intruded upon
the grimness of the tragic mask at which she gazed, Mary found herself
wondering, irrelevantly, whether Edith Dudley looked pretty when she
cried.