Joe was frightened; she stood and looked into Harrington's eyes, doubting
what she should do, not understanding what was occurring. He looked so
pale and strange as he sat there, that she was terrified. She came a step
nearer to him, and tried to speak.
"What is the matter, Mr. Harrington?" she stammered. "Speak--you frighten
me!"
Harrington looked at her for one moment more, and then, without speaking,
buried his face in his hands. Joe clasped her hands to her side in a
sudden pain; her heart beat as though it would break, and the scene swam
round before her in the hot air. She tried to move another step towards
the bench, and her strength almost failed her; she caught at the lattice
of the old summer-house, still pressing one hand to her breast. The rotten
slabs of the wood-work cracked under her light weight. She breathed hard,
and her face was as pale as the shadows on driven snow; in another moment
she sank down upon the bench beside John, and sat there, staring vacantly
out at the sunlight. Harrington felt her gentle presence close to him and
at last looked up; every feature of his strong face seemed changed in the
convulsive fight that rent his heart and soul to their very depths; the
enormous strength of his cold and dominant nature rose with tremendous
force to meet and quell the tempest of his passion, and could not; dark
circles made heavy shadows under his deep-set eyes, and his even lips,
left colorless and white, were strained upon his clenched teeth.
"God help me--I love you."
That was all he said, but in his words the deep agony of a mortal struggle
rang strangely--the knell of the old life and the birth-chime of the new.
One by one, the words he had never thought to speak fell from his lips,
distinctly; the oracle of the heart answered the great question of fate in
its own way.
Josephine Thorn sat by his side, her hands lying idly in her lap, her thin
white face pressing against the old brown lattice, while a spray of the
sweet honeysuckle that climbed over the wood-work just touched her bright
brown hair. As John spoke she tried to lift her head and struggled to put
out her hand, but could not.
As the shadows steal at evening over the earth, softly closing the flowers
and touching them to sleep, silently and lovingly, in the promise of a
bright waking--so, as she sat there, her eyelids drooped and the light
faded gently from her face, her lips parted a very little, and with a
soft-breathed sigh she sank into unconsciousness.
John Harrington was in no state to be surprised or startled by anything
that happened. He saw, indeed, that she had fainted, but with the unerring
instinct of a great love he understood. With the tenderness of his
strength he put one arm about her, and drew her to him till her fair head
rested upon his shoulder, and he looked into her face.
In a few moments he had passed completely from the old life to a life
which he had never believed possible, but which had nevertheless been long
present with him. He knew it and felt it, quickly realizing that for the
first time since he could remember he was wholly and perfectly happy. He
was a man who had dreamed of all that is noble and great for man to do,
who had consecrated his every hour and minute to the attainment of his
end; and though his aim was in itself a good one, the undivided
concentration which the pursuit of it required had driven him into a state
outwardly resembling extreme egotism. He had loved his own purposes as he
had loved nothing else, and as he had been persuaded that he could love
nothing else, in the whole world. Now, suddenly, he knew his own heart.
There is something beyond mere greatness, beyond the pursuit of even the
highest worldly aims; there is something which is not a means to the
attainment of happiness, which is happiness itself. It is an inner
sympathy of hearts and souls and minds, a perfect union of all that is
most worthy in the natures of man and woman; it is a plant so sensitive
that a breath of unkindness will hurt it and blight its beauty, and yet it
is a tree so strong that neither time nor tempest can overthrow it when it
has taken root; and if you would tear it out and destroy it, the place
where it grew is as deep and as wide as a grave. It is a bond that is as
soft as silk and as strong as death, binding hearts, not hands; so long as
it is not strained a man will hardly know that he is bound, but if he
would break it he will spend his strength in vain and suffer the pains of
hell, for it is the very essence and nature of a true love that it cannot
be broken.
With such men as John Harrington love at first sight is an utter
impossibility. The strong dominant aspirations that lead them are a light
too brilliant to be outshone by any sudden flash of hot passion. Love,
when it comes to them, is of slow growth, but enduring in the same
proportion as it is slow; identifying itself, by degrees so small that a
man himself is unconscious of it, with the deepest feelings of the heart
and the highest workings of the intellect. It steals silently into the
soul in the guise of friendship, asking nothing but loyal friendship in
return; in the appearance of kindness which asks but a little gratitude;
in the semblance of a calm and passionless trustfulness, demanding only a
like trust as its equivalent pledge, a like faith as a gauge for its own,
an equal measure of charity for an equal; and so love builds himself a
temple of faith and charity, and trust and kindness, and honest
friendship, and rejoices exceedingly in the whole goodness and strength
and beauty of the place where he will presently worship. When that day
comes he stands in the midst and kindles a strong clear flame upon the
altar, and the fire burns and leaps and illuminates the whole temple of
love, which is indeed the holy of holies of the temple of life.
John Harrington, through five and thirty years of his life, had believed
that the patient labor of a powerful intellect could suffice to a man, in
its results, for the attainment of all that humanity most honors, even for
the wise and unerring government of humanity itself. To that end and in
that belief he had honestly given every energy he possessed, and had
sternly choked down every tendency he felt in his inner nature toward a
life less intellectual and more full of sympathy for the affairs of
individual mankind. With him to be strong was to be cold--to be warm was
to be weak and subject to error; a supreme devotion to his career and a
supreme disdain of all personal affections were the conditions of success
which he deemed foremostly necessary, and he had come to an almost
superstitious belief in the idea that the love of woman is the destruction
of the intellectual man. Himself ready to sacrifice all he possessed, and
to spend his last strength in the struggle for an ideal, he had
nevertheless so identified his own person with the object he strove to
attain that he regarded all the means he could possibly control with as
much jealousy as though he had been the most selfish of men. Friends he
looked upon as tools for his trade, and he valued them not only in
proportion to their honesty and loyalty of heart, but also in the degree
of their power and intelligence. He sought no friendships which could not
help him, and relinquished none that could be of service in the future.
But the world is not ruled by intellect, though it is sometimes governed
by brute force and yet more brutal passions. The dominant power in the
affairs of men is the heart. Humanity is moved far more by what it feels
than by what it knows, and those who would be rulers of men must before
all things be men themselves, and not merely highly finished intellectual
machines.
The guests were gone, no one had missed Harrington and Joe, and Ronald and
Sybil had gone into the house. They sat side by side in the little bower
at the end of the long walk--Joe's fair head resting in her
unconsciousness upon John's shoulder. Presently she stirred, and opening
her eyes, looked up into his face. She drew gently away from him, and a
warm blush spread quickly over her pale cheek; she glanced down at her
small white hands and they clasped each other convulsively.
John looked at her; suddenly his gray eyes grew dark and deep, and the
mighty passion took all his strength into its own, so that he trembled and
turned pale again. But the words failed him no longer now. He knew in a
moment all that he had to say, and he said it.
"You must not be angry with me, Miss Thorn," he began, "you must not think
I am losing my head. Let me tell you now--perhaps you will listen to me.
God knows, I am not worthy to say such things to you, but I will try to
be. It is soon said. I love you; I can no more help loving you than I can
help breathing. You have utterly changed me, and saved me, and made a life
for me out of what was not life at all. Do not think it is sudden--what is
really to last forever must take some time in growing. I never knew till
to-day-I honored you and would have done everything in the world for you,
and I was more grateful to you than I ever was to any human being. But I
thought when we met we should be friends just as we always were, and
instead of that I know that this is the great day of my life, and that my
life with all that it holds is yours now, for always, to do with as you
will. Pray hear me out, do not be afraid; no man ever honored you as I
honor you."
Joe glanced quickly at him and then again looked down; but the surging
blood came and went in her face, coursing madly in her pulses, every beat
of her heart crying gladness.
"It is little enough I have to offer you," said John, his voice growing
unsteady in the great effort to speak calmly. There was something almost
terrible in the strength of his rising passion. "It is little enough--my
poor life, with its wretched struggles after what is perhaps far too great
for me. But such as it is I offer it to you. Take it if you will. Be my
wife, and give me the right to do all I do for your sake, and for your
sake only." He stretched out his hand and took hers, very gently, but the
strained sinews of his wrist trembled violently. Josephine made no
resistance, but she still looked down and said nothing.
"Use me as you will," he continued almost in a whisper. "I will be all to
you that man ever was to a living woman. Do not say I have no right to ask
you for as much. I have this right, that I love you beyond the love of
other men, so truly and wholly I love you; I will serve you so faithfully,
I will honor you so loyally that you will love me too. Say the word, my
beloved, say that it is not impossible! I will wait--I will work--I will
strive to be worthy of you." He pressed his white lips to her white hand,
and tried to look into her eyes, but she turned away from him. "Will you
not speak to me? Will you not give to me some word--some hope? I can never
love you less, whatever you may answer me--yes or no--but oh, if you knew
the difference to me!"
Pale as death, John looked at Joe. She turned to him, very white, and
gazed into the dark gray depths of his eyes, where the raging force of a
transcendent passion played so wildly; but she felt no fear, only a mad
longing to speak.
"Tell me--for God's sake tell me," John said in low, trembling tones,
"have I hurt you? Is it too much that I ask?"
For one moment there was silence as they gazed at each other. Then with a
passionate impulse Josephine buried her face in her hands upon John's
shoulder.
"No, it is not that!" she sobbed. "I love you so much--I have loved you so
long!"