A STORY AND A REVELATION.
Percy found himself so ill the next morning, that he was obliged to send
for his physician, Dr. Sydney.
Ever since his return from South America, he had been losing strength
and flesh, and a dull ache in his side, and darting pains throughout his
entire body had rendered his nights restless, and his days full of
lassitude. His physician had answered him that it was a "touch of
malaria, contracted in the beastly climate of South America," and Percy
had relied on quinine and time to effect a cure.
(We all know how customary it is in these days for physicians to
designate any puzzling ailment by the convenient and indefinable term of
malaria.)
But this morning, when Dr. Sydney was called to his patient, he decided
that something more serious, and tangible than a touch of malaria was
imminent.
Percy had been suffering from a hard chill during the night, which was
now succeeded by a high fever, and acute pain in his side. He was
sitting in his chair by the window--dressed as if to go out.
"My dear fellow, this will never do!" Dr. Sydney cried. "You are on the
eve of a serious sickness, I fear, and you must be put to bed, and place
yourself under treatment."
"Pshaw--nothing of the kind!" Percy answered. "I have taken cold, and
beside, I am worn out with worry over some matters. That is all."
"H'm! then why did you send for me, if you know so much better about it
than I do!" growled the old physician.
"Simply, because I want you to brace me up, and get me in condition to
take a short trip on business this afternoon."
"A trip, business!" echoed Dr. Sydney, gazing at Percy over his
spectacles. "Why, if you are not _insane_ you will at once give up that
idea. You will not be fit to leave your room under a week, if you do in
that time: and you must have a good nurse, and keep perfectly quiet
until you are out of this."
"But I tell you, I _must_ attend to some important business out of town
to-day!" Percy answered, stubbornly. "It is the worry and anxiety over
the matter which has caused my illness, mainly. And I want you to give
me a tonic, or a stimulant, or something that will carry me through the
day. Then, if to-morrow I find myself no better, I will promise to go to
bed and follow your advice. For I want to get in condition to go abroad
very soon."
Finding his patient incorrigible, Dr. Sydney grimly prepared some
medicine for him to take during the forenoon, and left him with a last
injunction to be very careful of himself if he desired to escape a long
siege of illness.
"But he can't escape it. It is coming, unless I greatly mistake
symptoms!" he muttered, as he went out.
Percy remained in his room until the afternoon, then he set forth upon a
visit to Centerville; and in the excitement of the hour, and under the
stimulating effect of Dr. Sydney's tonic, he felt himself wonderfully
improved as he walked up the village street.
He went directly to Helena. He had resolved to tell her the whole story,
and abide by her decision of what was right for him to do.
"She has no actual knowledge of the world," he said to himself; "but she
is endowed with divine wisdom, broad sympathies, and a natural
understanding of the human heart. She is my best adviser."
She held out her hand to him, when she came into the room, saying: "This
is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Durand."
But he did not take the proffered hand. He only answered: "Wait. I came
here to make a confession to you, and to ask your advice. Perhaps, after
you have heard my story, you will not want to clasp my hand."
She looked up at him, startled, wondering.
"Surely you have not committed murder!" she said. "You do not resemble
an assassin, Mr. Durand."
"There are different degrees of murder," he replied, "and I think to
murder a human heart is the cruelest of all."
"Have you done that willfully?" she asked, lifting her sombre eyes to
his face. "Then, indeed, I will not offer you my hand in greeting."
"No, no!" he added hastily, "not willfully, but thoughtlessly! and
thoughtlessness is the consort of selfishness, and the two are parents
of crime. But now listen to my story, Miss Maxon. I will be brief."
"My father died when I was but a child, and left me the only heir to an
independent fortune. I grew into early manhood with this knowledge--a
sad knowledge for any youth, because it leaves him with the
consciousness that he need not exert his own powers of brain or muscle
to make a name and place in Society. My mother died when I was
fifteen--just at the time I most needed her gentle counsels, and
refining influence. I was selfish, proud, passionate, strong-willed. But
I tried to make a man of myself for the sake of my mother's memory. I
believed all women were saints, because she was one. At twenty I met a
beautiful woman, two or three years my senior. She possessed a
magnificent form, and a face of wonderful brunette beauty. Every man in
my circle was raving over her, and I became madly infatuated. I asked
her to be my wife and she consented. I reveled in dreams of a
home--something I had not known since my mother died. A few days before
the time set for our wedding, I discovered that the woman I worshiped
was making sport of me, and that she had promised to be my wife only to
secure my fortune. More shocking still, she was carrying on the most
flagrant infidelities, which were the talk of the club-rooms, while I,
poor dupe, only discovered the horrible truth at the last hour. I was
but a youth, and this experience nearly wrecked my life.
"I lost faith in every thing, human and divine, for a time. As years
passed my wound healed, but all my views of life were changed. I looked
upon women as vain, frivolous and deceitful, and whatever amusement they
could afford me, I considered myself justified in taking. Marriage
seemed to me a bondage, and love a dream sure to end in misery: a dream
which could never disturb my heart again.
"After years of travel, adventure and folly, when a wearisome ennui
toward the whole world had taken possession of me, I met a lovely woman.
"She also abhorred marriage, and had sworn eternal warfare against it.
She was more pronounced and bitter in her denunciations of the social
system than I. She was a charming companion; but I felt that the
association was dangerous, and tried to fly from it. A perverse fate,
however, constantly threw us together. Finally, she was left entirely
alone in the world. In an evil hour, when she was weeping because her
life was so desolate, I asked her to decide between the society she
despised, and my companionship and protection."
He paused. It was hard to go on with those truthful, earnest, pure eyes
gazing at him. How could he make her understand?
"Well--and what was her answer?" Helena asked, almost in a whisper.
"She has been living in pleasant apartments in New York, as my friend
and comrade, for almost two years. Do you understand?"
"I understand," she answered, and a sudden chill shook her from head to
foot.
"We were very happy for a year--for longer," he went on, hurriedly. "She
was perfectly happy, because she believed she was doing right. I was not
as happy as I had expected to be. My conscience seemed often to cry out,
after years of silence; but I would not listen to it. We passed many
delightful hours together, and I was always proud to think my friend was
a beautiful, refined and true woman. I congratulated myself, that at
least, I had shown better taste in the selection of my companion, than
many of my friends who were similarly situated. The lady was
independently wealthy, and our association was prompted by congenial
tastes and affection.
"Then I met you. Your voice woke all the higher impulses of my nature:
your conversation lifted me into a strangely rarified atmosphere; I
abhorred my old life from the hour I met you. I have tried to break
away from it, but I cannot without crushing a human heart.
Unfortunately, my friend has passed through no such change of feeling.
She is happy, and she loves me. To leave her alone, to desert her, seems
heartless and cruel. The way of escape is hedged about with unforeseen
difficulties. I am tortured from within and without. Surely the way of
the transgressor _is_ hard. I would reform my life, if I knew how. Can
you tell me what is right to do under the circumstances?"
She was very pale. Her hands were clasped tightly before her. Her breath
came hard. "There is one way--only one," she said. "I wonder it has not
suggested itself to you. Make the tie that binds you to your friend a
legal one. Make her your wife, and let the future atone for the past."
He started to his feet as if she had struck him.
"It is impossible!" he said. "She would never consent. It is opposed to
all her theories."
Helena looked at him coldly, a dumb pain in her face.
"I fear you can not understand our very peculiar situation," he went on.
"But you _must_ believe I am telling you the whole truth. I am not
misstating one thing. There has been no effort at misleading this
woman--this friend of mine. There never was any talk of marriage between
us, save to condemn it. She often said she liked me first, because I did
not endeavor to convert her from her pet theories, as many men had done.
She is very beautiful, and has been annoyed by many suitors. But she is
almost a monomaniac upon the subject. You would find less to condemn in
my course, if you could understand how peculiar and deep-rooted were her
prejudices."
"I _do_ understand," Helena answered. "I once knew just such a person as
you describe. We were school-mates, and she shocked us all on graduating
day, by an anti-marriage address. So I can understand the type of woman
you describe. Yet these views of hers did not necessitate the grave
course of action you suggested to her later on, surely."
Percy flushed. "No," he said, "that was the result of our dangerous
companionship, and my selfishness. I could not continue in the platonic
association so satisfactory to her, and I could not give her up easily,
and so the great mistake was made. The error of a lifetime is often
committed in a moment, you know. And now--"
"And now," Helena continued, calmly, with white lips as he paused, "now
the right course of action for you seems very clearly defined. You can
at least tell her of your changed ideas, and offer her marriage. If she
declines, you are justified in leaving her. She has no right to compel
you to live an unprincipled life. But she will not decline your offer.
Even Heloise yielded her opinions and liberal theories to the request of
Abelard, and became his wife, you know."
Percy had been walking the room excitedly while she spoke. As she
ceased, he turned, and stood facing her with his arms folded.
"There is one more thing to tell you," he said. "Something which renders
the advice you give impossible for me to follow. I love another woman
with all the fervor of my soul, with all the strength of my heart. Love
her with a love that lifts me up to the very gates of heaven, and
purifies my whole nature like a refining fire. I see her face, waking or
sleeping. I hear her voice in the silence of the night, and above the
roar of the street, by day. It is a love which only comes to one man in
a thousand, because only one woman in a million can inspire it. This
love is at once an agony and a rapture. It asks, it expects no return.
It fills my life full here, and it will pervade eternity for me when I
die. But, loving like this, even though hopelessly, it would be
sacrilege to ask any other woman to be my wife. Even to right a wrong,
one should not commit a greater wrong--that of sinning against the
holiest and most sacred emotion which ever entered a human heart."
While he spoke, Helena had grown crimson from brow to chin. Then she
turned deathly pale, and, burying her face in her hands, she sank into
a chair, sobbing wildly.
When he had told her the story of his life, she had wondered at the
terrible pain it gave her to listen. But she had believed it was the
disappointment she felt in finding her ideal friend so earthly. This
together with her sympathy for the unknown woman.
Now, as she listened to his strangely impassioned words, there came to
her a revelation that she had given him all the pent-up passion of her
soul, all the pure love of her woman's heart. And to what end? The
knowledge startled, shocked and terrified her, and she sobbed like a
frightened child.
Percy was unmanned at the sight of her tears, yet this unexpected
outburst filled him with sudden hope. After all, this divine being, this
goddess _did_ love him. He forgot everything, save that one fact.
"Helena!" he cried, kneeling before her, and striving to uncover her
face--"my darling, my queen--look at me--speak to me."
She pushed him from her, and rose hurriedly.
"Oh!" she sobbed, "you are cruel. Do you want to break _two_ hearts!"
Then, as if alarmed at her own words, she added quickly, "You must go
away now and leave me. I am all unnerved--I can not give you any more
advice to-day. Please go." But as he turned to obey her, she called him
back.
"One word only I would say to you now. Do not tell--your friend, what
you have told me. Do not tell her that you love another woman. It will
be hard enough for her to know that you are to go out of her life,
without having that bitter knowledge added."
"God bless you!" he cried, his eyes full of tears. "You are the most
generous woman I ever dreamed of in my wildest visions of what was
noble."
Even in the supreme hour of her own new found misery--a misery so vast
it seemed to fill the whole earth--Helena thought of her rival and tried
to save her pain. Truly had Percy said she was one woman in a million.