A STAR FALLS.
Percy found letters in London, which gave him the opportunity of
remaining in Europe permanently, if he chose to accept it. The business
outlook was fine, and the position most desirable for him. Yet he
decided to refuse it; to return to America at once, and send some one
else to fill the vacancy. A farewell letter he wrote to Dolores will
explain his reasons. It read as follows:
"MY DEAR MISS KING:--
"I have decided, somewhat suddenly, to return to America, despite
the fact that my senior partners desire me to accept a permanent
position abroad.
"I shall sail next week and without seeing you again. I hope you
will not think me discourteous.
"But to be frank, Miss Dolores, I find our intimate acquaintance
growing constantly more dangerous. I am not a marrying man, as you
know; and I respect your views on the same subject. Even if I wished
I could not change those views; and no greater mistake could be made
by two people who entertained our ideas, than to permit any
combination of circumstances to bind them together for life. Yet, at
the same time, it is impossible for two young unmarried persons like
ourselves, neither of us owing allegiance to any third party, to
continue long in this fraternal sort of comradeship, which now
exists, between us. You are a beautiful and fascinating woman. I am
by no means a second Plato. In spite of my wish to please you, and
to be the perfect friend you are so kind as to call me, I find
myself constantly irritated with your calm, emotionless demeanor
toward me. I would not offend you by any word of love; yet I am
obliged to be always on my guard when in your presence, and when I
am absent from you, I feel a feverish desire to be near you. Your
beauty and your brightness and your many agreeable qualities are an
aggravation to me. I am aware that it is something more (or less)
than a feeling of friendship which has taken possession of me, and,
since it is so, the only wise course lies in flight. For,
He who loves and runs away
May live to love another day.
I shall always be your friend, and I hope you will continue to
answer my letters. You have been a revelation to me in many ways,
and my experience in your society can never be forgotten. I am sure
I am better for it. Yet I am only mortal, and I can but be rendered
unhappy by a continuation of what has been so pleasant. La Bruyéré
was right when he said, that friendship was impossible between the
sexes. I beg you to forgive the extreme frankness of this letter,
and to think of me as your weak, selfish, yet
"Admiring friend,
"PERCY DURAND."
He sealed and addressed the letter, and rang for a boy to post it. But
at that moment a rap sounded at his door, and a telegram was placed in
his hands. He tore it open and read:
PARIS, FRANCE.
"Mrs. Butler is dying; will you come to me?
"DOLORES."
Aside from the sorrow he felt at the news of Mrs. Butler's illness,
Percy read the telegram with an actual sense of relief. We all remember
to have experienced the feeling at some time in our lives, when
inclination warred with conscience, and Fate, constituting herself
umpire, decided in favor of inclination.
"There is no escaping Destiny. After all, whatever the Power that rules
this world, we are
"Impotent pieces of the game he plays,
Upon the checker-board of nights and days,"
he said, as he placed the letter he had written in his pocket, and
scribbled a hasty reply to Dolores' telegram.
Arriving at Paris, he found Mrs. Butler in an extremely critical
condition. She had been ill since the day following her arrival, and
Dolores had scarcely slept or tasted food in her care and anxiety.
"Never since my uncle died," she said to Percy, "have I known such
loneliness and dependence as I feel now. It seemed to me I must have
some one near me, who would share my anxiety and personal interest in
the patient. I hope you will forgive me for sending for you: but when I
realized that she might die, I could not bear the suspense any longer
alone."
Percy proved himself a hero in the emergency: he was brother, father,
friend and messenger, all in one.
He performed all those innumerable outside duties necessitated by
illness, and helped sustain Dolores' courage and strength, until at
length the patient was pronounced on the highway to recovery.
Then there were long health-restoring drives, and pleasant afternoons
when Percy read to the convalescent, while Dolores sat near with her
sewing or drawing. But by and by there came a day when Percy realized
that he must tear himself away, at once.
He had been reading aloud, and, among other things, he read a little
poem entitled "The Farewell." It seemed particularly suited to his case.
'Tis not the untried soldier new to danger
Who fears to enter into active strife.
Amidst the roll of drums, the cannons' rattle,
He craves adventure, and thinks not of life.
But the scarred veteran knows the price of glory,
He does not court the conflict or the fray.
He has no longing to rehearse that gory
And most dramatic act, of war's dark play.
He who to love, has always been a stranger,
All unafraid may linger in your spell.
My heart has known the warfare, and its danger.
It craves no repetition--so farewell.
He laid down the book. Mrs. Butler was asleep, lulled by his soothing
voice. As he sat looking at Dolores, her beauty, her grace, her
intellect, and all her countless charms awoke an irritated sense of
injury in his heart.
What right had she to keep her attractions constantly before him, and
yet deny him the right of possession? It was the cup of Tantalus. He
rose suddenly.
"Dolores," he said, drawing a letter from his pocket, "I wrote this to
you before I received your telegram calling me to you. I am going back
to London day after to-morrow. I shall call to-morrow to say farewell.
But I want you to read this letter, as it will explain to you my abrupt
leave-taking better than I can explain it." And then he left her.
Dolores broke the seal, and began to read the letter, first with
wondering curiosity, then with anger. Her eye flashed, her cheek
flushed, her lip quivered.
"What right has he to address me--to think of me like this?" she cried
bitterly. "I have never given him one liberty--" Then she paused, for
over her swept the memory of that single moment on the ice-boat when her
heart had rested against his--her head pillowed upon his shoulder. Even
now, it thrilled her with an emotion as sweet as it was strange. Her
anger gave place to a profound melancholy.
Dimly, and with a sensation approaching terror, she began to understand
Percy's own feelings, and the danger of his position. She could not
blame him--she could only blame herself.
"It is my own fault," she said to her aching heart. "I expected too
much. There is no possibility of an enduring friendship between man and
woman in this world. That, too, is as transient and unreliable as love.
And yet--and yet--how _can_ I give up my friend--how can I?" and,
burying her face in her hands, she sobbed aloud.
When Percy called the following day, Mrs. Butler was informed, for the
first time, of his intended return to America the succeeding week.
"Then we must be ready to accompany you," she said. "I am convinced that
I have only a short time to live. I want to die in my own land. Dolores,
we can be ready--can we not--by the time Percy goes?"
"It is not necessary," Dolores replied, blushing painfully. "We could
go the next week as well. We need not trouble Mr. Durand to act as our
escort on this voyage, Mrs. Butler."
"Why, what in the world has come over you?" cried Mrs. Butler, staring
with wondering eyes at Dolores. "You speak as if Percy were a stranger,
instead of our almost brother and son. I am sure he will wait for us, if
we cannot go next week. I have an unaccountable dread of making the
voyage unattended. I shall feel far safer with our friend by my side;
and, somehow, I am sure we shall need him."
So again Percy's earnest desire to fly from an embarrassing position was
circumvented, and he was once more to be the companion of Dolores.
Mrs. Butler seemed to rally with a feverish excitement as they made
their preparations for departure. Dolores watched her with anxious eyes.
"I fear you are not strong enough to take the sea-voyage at this time of
year," she urged. "Will you not wait until later in the season, dear
Mrs. Butler?"
But Mrs. Butler would not listen. "I can scarcely wait until next week;"
she said, "I could not possibly delay my departure another month. It
would make me ill, I know. Once on the ocean I shall grow stronger."
But instead she drooped, and failed; and on the fifth day of the stormy
voyage, Percy and Dolores stood beside her shrouded form listening to
the solemn service for the dead at sea.
They were standing on the deck, quite alone, the evening before they
reached harbor....
Dolores drew a long shivering sigh. "Oh," she said, "I dread the sight
of land! It seems to me, I am going into some arid desert, where I shall
faint, and die, from very loneliness. I have lost my friend who was
almost like an own mother to me. And now I am to lose you. Life is cruel
to me. I think it is wicked for parents to bring children into this
world of trouble and sorrow. Oh, why was I ever born to swell the tide
of miserable suffering humanity?"
Percy laid his hand gently on her arm.
"You do not lose my friendship," he said. "Remember, I shall always be
your loyal friend, ready to do you any favor. But the close
companionship and intimate association of the last year becomes every
day more impossible. You must realize it yourself."
"I do, I do," she said, and then she put her hands over her face, and
her tears fell through the slender fingers.
"I wish I had been buried in the sea, too;" she sobbed. "I would not
have been so much alone as I am upon this dreary earth, where every
thing dear is taken from me."
He turned and took her hands down from her tear wet face, and drew them
closely in his own.
His face was very pale. His voice trembled with the intensity of his
emotions.
"Listen to me Dolores," he said, in a low, and almost stern tone. "I
think we understand and respect each other's views perfectly. I think,
if in a moment of profound sorrow like this, we disregarded the settled
convictions of a life-time, that we should in calmer and brighter hours
regret it. But I think also, that when two people have become so
necessary to each other's lives as we have become,--when such perfect
sympathy exists, as exists between us,--I think then, Dolores, that it
is wicked to throw aside the happiness which might be theirs. George
Eliot and Mr. Lewes did not throw it away; Shelley and Mary Godwin did
not; Mary Wollstonecraft and Imlay did not. It is simply a question
whether a woman cares more for the forms of Society, and the laws made
by men, than she cares for the love and companionship of one man. I have
found more happiness in this year of association with you, than I
supposed it possible for life to afford me. You are to me an ideal
comrade: I can picture years of such companionship; happy wanderings,
sweet home-comings, quiet evenings, cosy suppers, and all with the
perfect knowledge that it might cease at any time either or both wearied
of it; all with the knowledge that the individual liberty of each was
absolutely untrammeled; and that, when love ceased to exist--there were
no bonds to fetter. It seems to me that happiness, as perfect as it ever
exists in this world, might bless such an union of two lives. Dolores,
will you accept the love and protection I offer you?"
Her hands had rested passive in his, while she listened. Her face was
turned from him, her eyes gazing out over the expanse of sea. Not a sail
was in sight. One solitary gull flapped lonesome wings above the
inhospitable waves. It seemed to her that her life was like that
gull's--the world stretched before her, like a great waste of water,
shoreless and desolate. She thought of the monotonous years awaiting
her, homeless and alone as she was; of the ghastly emptiness of every
pleasure, if she no more saw _his_ face, no more heard his voice. She
shivered slightly, and his hands tightened their clasp upon her own. His
touch thrilled her with a sweet inexplicable joy. She ceased to reason
or think.
Turning her white, beautiful, strangely calm face up to his, she
answered solemnly and distinctly:
"I will."
And just then a star shot down from heaven, and sank into the dark and
troubled waters of the sea below.