FOUND WANTING
"How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds
done!"--King John.
The spring and summer had passed, autumn had attained the fullness of
its golden beauty, and the inevitable had happened. David and Pepeeta
had passed swiftly though not unresistingly through all the intervening
stages between a chance acquaintance and an impassioned love.
Any other husband than the quack would have foreseen this catastrophe;
but there is one thing blinder than love, and that is egotism such as
his. His colossal vanity had not even suspected that a woman who
possessed him for her husband could for a single instant bestow a
thought of interest on any other man.
Astute student of men, penetrating judge of motive and conduct that he
was, he daily beheld the evolution of a tragedy in which he was the
victim, with all the indifference of a lamb observing the preparations
for its slaughter. Because of this ignorance and indifference, the
fellowship of these two young people had been as intimate as that of
brother and sister in a home, and this new life had wrought an
extraordinary transformation in the habits and character of both.
David had abandoned the Quaker idiom for the speech of ordinary men,
and discarded his former habiliments for the most conventional and
stylish clothes. Contact with the world had sharpened his native wit,
and given him a freedom among men and women, that was fast descending
into abandon. Success had stimulated his self-confidence and made him
prize those gifts by which he had once aroused the devotion of adoring
worshipers in the Quaker meeting house; he soon found that they could be
used to victimize the crowds which gathered around the flare of the
torch in the public square.
That which his friends had once dignified by the name of spiritual power
had deteriorated into something but little above animal magnetism. He
had learned to cherish a profound contempt for men and morals, and the
shrewd maxims which the quack had instilled into his mind became the
governing principles of his conduct. Those qualities which he had
inherited from his dissolute father, and which had been so long
submerged, were upheaved, while all that he had received from his mother
by birth and education sank out of sight and memory. Three elemental
passions assumed complete possession of his soul--the love of
admiration, of gambling and of the gypsy.
A transformation of an exactly opposite character had been taking place
in Pepeeta. Under the sunshine of David's love, and the dew of those
spiritual conceptions which had fallen upon her thirsty spirit, the
seeds of a beautiful nature, implanted at her birth, germinated and
developed with astonishing rapidity. Walking steadily in such light as
fell upon her pathway and ever looking for more, her spiritual vision
became clearer and clearer every day; and while this affection for God
purified her soul, her love for David expanded and transformed her
heart. Her unbounded admiration for him blinded her to that process of
deterioration in his character which even the quack perceived. To her
partial eye a halo still surrounded the head of the young apostate. But
while these two new affections wrought this sudden transformation in the
gypsy and filled her with a new and exquisite happiness, the
circumstances of her life were such that this illumination could not but
be attended with pain, for it brought ever new revelations of those
ethical inconsistencies in which she discovered herself to be deeply if
not hopelessly involved.
There was, in the first place, the inevitable conflict between her new
sense of duty, and the life of deception which she was leading. The
practice of her art of fortune-telling was daily becoming a source of
unendurable pain as she saw more and more clearly the duty of leaving
the future to God and living her daily life in humble, child-like faith.
And in the second place, she was slowly awaking to the terrifying
consciousness that her affection for David was producing a violent and
ungovernable disgust for her husband.
By the flood of sorrows which poured from these two discoveries, she
seemed to be completely overwhelmed and if, like a diver, she rose to
the sunlight now and then, it was only to seize a few breaths of air by
which she might be able to endure her existence in the depths to which
she was compelled to return.
No wonder that life became a mystery to this poor child. It seemed as if
its difficulties increased in a direct ratio with her wish to discharge
its duties; as if the darkness gained upon the light, and the burden
grew heavy, faster than her shoulders grew strong.
The discovery of the nature of that affection which she felt for David
had been slow and unwelcome, coming to her even before David's
protestations of his love; yet one day the passionate feelings of their
hearts found expression in wild and startling confessions. They were
terrified at what they told each other; but it became necessary
therefore to seek the comfort of still other confessions and
confidences.
Their interviews had steadily become more ardent and more dangerous; and
the doctor's negligence giving them the utmost freedom, they often spent
hours together in wandering about the cities they visited, or the fields
and woods lying near.
On one of these tramps, their relationship reached a critical stage. It
was the early morning of a beautiful autumn day that they strolled up
Broadway in the city of Cincinnati, turned into the Reading road, and
sauntered slowly out into the country.
"In which direction shall we go?" asked David.
"Let us wander without thought or purpose, like those beautiful clouds,"
Pepeeta answered, pointing upward.
David watched them silently for a moment and then said, "Pepeeta, men
and women are like those clouds. They either drift apart forever, or
meet and mingle into one. It must be so with us."
She walked silently by his side, sobered by the seriousness of his voice
and words.
"Perhaps," he continued, "it makes but little difference what becomes of
us, for our lives are like the clouds, a morning mist, a momentary
exhalation. And yet, how filled with joy or woe is this moment of
parting or commingling! Pepeeta, I have decided that this day must
terminate my suspense. I cannot endure it any longer. I must know before
night whether our lives are to be united or divided. You have told me
that you love me, and yet you will not give yourself to me. What am I to
think of this?"
"My friend," she cried with an infinite pain in her voice, "how can you
force me to such a decision when you know all the difficulties of my
life? How can you thus forget that I have a husband?"
"I do not forget it," he answered bitterly, "I cannot forget it. It is
an eternal demonstration of the madness of faith in any kind of
Providence. It makes me hate an order which unites a lion to a lamb, and
marries a dove to a hawk! You say that you loathe this man! Then leave
him and come with me! The world lies before us. We are as free as those
clouds!"
"We are not free, and neither are they," she answered. "Something binds
them to their pathway, as it binds me to mine. I cannot leave it. I must
tread it even though I have to tread it alone."
"You can leave it if you will; but if you will not, I must know the
reason why."
"Oh! why will you not see? I have tried so hard to show you! I have told
you that there is a voice which speaks within my soul, that to it I must
listen and that the inward light of which you told me shines upon the
path and I must follow it."
"I could curse that inward light! Must I be always confronted by the
ravings of my youth? All my life long must the words of my credulous
childhood hang about my neck like a millstone? There is no inward light.
You are living a delusion. You are restrained by the conventionalities
of life and are the slave of the customs of society. Because the
miserable herd of mankind is willing to submit to that galling yoke of
marriage, does it follow that you must? By what right can society demand
that men and women who abhor each other should be doomed to pass their
lives in hopeless agony? Against such laws I protest! I defy those
customs. The path of life is short. We go this way but once! Who is to
refuse us all the joy that we can find? There will be sorrow enough, any
way!"
"Oh! my friend, do not talk so! Do not break my heart! Have pity on me.
I know that it is hard for you; but it is I who have to suffer most. It
is I who must continually exert this terrible resistance which alone
keeps us from being swept away. Have mercy, David! Spare me a little
longer. Spare me this one day at least. If any troubled heart had ever
need of the rest and peace of such a day as this, it is mine! Let us
give ourselves up to these soothing influences. Let us wander. Let us
dream and let us love."
"Love! This accursed Platonic affection is not love," he answered
savagely.
"David," she said with an enforced calmness, "you must not speak so. It
will do no good. There is something in me stronger than this passion.
From the bottom of my soul there has come a sense of duty to a power
higher than myself and I will be true to it. I believe that it is God
who speaks. You may appeal to my mind, and I cannot answer you, but my
heart has reasons of its own higher than the reason itself. It was you
who told me this! You told me when you were so beautiful, so good, so
true that I know you were right, and I shall never doubt it. I am not
what I was. I am, oh! so different. I cannot understand; but I am
different."
There was in this delicate and ethereal girl who spoke so fearlessly
something which held the man, strong in his physical might, in an
inexplicable and irresistible awe. Before a mountain, beside the sea,
beneath the stars and in the presence of a virtuous woman, emotions of
wonder and reverence possess the souls of men.
Subdued by this influence, David said, with more gentleness: "But what
are we to do? We cannot live in this way. We have been forced into a
situation from which we must escape, even if we have to act against our
consciences."
"I do not think that this is so! I do not believe that any one can be
placed against his will in a situation that is opposed to his
conscience! There must be some other way to do. A door will open. Let us
wait and hope a little longer. Let us have another happy day at least,"
Pepeeta said.
Heaving a sigh and shrugging his shoulders as if to throw off a burden,
David answered, "Well, let it be as you wish. I have had to suffer so
much that perhaps I can endure it a little longer. I do not want to make
you unhappy. I will try."
"Oh! thank you, thank you a thousand times; that is like yourself!"
Pepeeta said, her face aglow with gratitude.
It was a light from the soul itself that shone through the thin
transparency of that face, pale with thought and suffering, and gave it
its new radiance.
The world around them was steeped in autumn beauty. A gigantic smile was
on the face of Nature. Fleecy, fleeting clouds were chasing each other
across the blue dome of the heavens. The hazy atmosphere of the Indian
summer softened the landscape and lent it a mystical and unearthly
charm. The forests were resplendent with those brilliant colors which
appear like a last flush of life upon the dying face of summer, as she
sinks into her wintry grave. The autumn birds were singing; the autumn
flowers were blooming; yellow golden rod and scarlet sumach glowed in
the corners of the fences; locusts chirped in treetops; grasshoppers
stridulated in the meadows, one or two of them making more noise than a
whole drove of cattle lying peacefully chewing their cud beneath an
umbrageous elm and lifting up their great, tranquil, blinking eyes to
the morning sun. Here and there boys and girls could be seen in the
vineyards and orchards gathering grapes and apples. Farmers were cutting
their grain and stacking it in great brown shocks, digging potatoes, or
plowing the fertile soil. Now and then a traveler met or passed them,
clucking to his horses and hurrying to the city with his produce. Amid
these gracious influences, life gradually lost its stern reality and
took on the characteristics of a pleasant dream. The fever and unrest
abated, burdens weighed less heavily, sorrow became less poignant; the
finer joys of both the waking and sleeping hours of existence were
mysteriously blended.
Sharp and irritating as the encounter had been between the two lovers,
the momentary antipathy passed away as they moved along. They drew
nearer together; they lifted their eyes furtively; their glances met;
they smiled; they spoke; their sympathies flowed back into the old
channel; their hopes and affections mingled. They gave themselves up to
joy with the abandon of youth, falling into that mood in which
everything pleases and delights. Nature did not need to tell them her
secrets aloud, for they comprehended her whispers and grasped her
meaning from sly hints. They melted into her moods.
What joys were theirs! To be young; to be drawn together by an affinity
which produced a mysterious and ineffable happiness; to wander aimlessly
over the earth; to yield to every passing fancy; to dream; to hope; to
love. It was the culminating hour of their lives.
Passing through the little village since called Avondale, they turned
down what is now the Clinton Springs road, climbed a hill, descended its
other slope, and came upon an old spring house where, as they paused to
drink, David scratched their names with his penknife on one of the
stones of the walls, where they may be read to-day.
Leaving the turnpike, they entered a grove through which flowed a noisy
stream; cast themselves upon a bank, bathed their faces, ate their lunch
and rested. There for a few moments, in the tranquil and uplifting
influence of the silence and the solitude, all that was best in their
natures came to the surface. Pepeeta nestled down among the roots of a
great beech tree, her hat flung upon the ground by her side, her arms
folded across her bosom, her face upturned like a flower drinking in the
sunshine or the rain. At her feet her lover reclined, his head upon his
arms and his gaze fixed upon the canopy of leaves which spread above
them and through which as the branches swayed in the breeze he caught
glimpses of the sky.
Pepeeta broke the silence. "I could stay here forever," she said. "I
nestle here in the roots of this great tree like a little child in the
arms of its mother. I feel that everything around me is my friend. I
feel, not as if I were different from other things, but as if I were a
part of them. Do you comprehend? Do you feel that way?"
"More than at any time since leaving home," he said. "That was the way I
always felt in the old days--how far away they seem! I could then sit
for hours beside a brook like this, and thoughts of God would flow over
my soul like water over the stones; and now I do not think of Him at
all! It was by a brook like this that we first met. Do you remember,
Pepeeta?"
"I shall never forget."
"Are you sure?"
"As certain as that I live."
"Sure--certain! Of what are we sure but the present moment? Into it we
ought to crowd all the joys of existence."
Her feminine instinct discovered the return of his thoughts into the old
dangerous channel, and her quick wit diverted them.
"Tell me more about your home, and how you felt when you used to sit
like this and think."
He determined to yield himself for a little while longer to her will,
and said: "In those days Nature possessed for me an irresistible
fascination; but the spell is broken now. I then thought that I was face
to face with the eternal spirit of the universe. How far I have drifted
away from the world in which I then existed! I could never return to it.
I am like a bird which has broken its shell and which can never be put
back again. I have found another face into which I now look with still
deeper wonder than into that of Nature, and which exerts a still deeper
fascination. It is the face of a woman, in whom all the beauties of
nature seem to be mirrored. She is everything to me; she is the entire
universe embodied in a gentle heart."
He gazed at her with a look that made her pulses beat; but she was
determined not to permit him to drift back into that dangerous mood from
which she had drawn him with such difficulty.
"One time you told me," she said, "that the birds and squirrels were
such good friends to you, that if you called them they would come to you
like your dog. I should love to see that. Look! There is a squirrel
sitting on the limb of this very tree! How saucy he looks! How shy!
Bring him to me! I command you! You have said that I am your mistress;
go, slave!"
Rising to her feet she pointed to the squirrel. Her lithe form was
outlined against the green background of the forest in a pose of
exquisite grace and beauty, her eyes glowed with animation, and her lips
smiled with the consciousness of power. It was impossible to resist her.
He rose, looked in the direction toward which she pointed, and saw the
squirrel cheeping among the branches. Imitating its cries, he began to
move slowly toward it. The little creature pricked up its ears, cocked
its head on one side, flirted its bushy tail and watched the approaching
figure suspiciously. As it drew nearer and nearer, he began to creep
down the branches. Stopping now and then to reconnoiter, he started
forward again; paused; retreated; returned, and still continued to
advance, until he was within a foot or two of David's hand, which he
examined first with one eye and then the other and made a motion as if
to spring upon it. Suddenly the spell was broken. With a wild flirt of
his tail and a loud outcry, he sprang up the tree and disappeared in the
foliage.
David watched him until he had vanished, and then turned toward Pepeeta
with a look of disappointment and chagrin.
"It is too bad," she cried, hastening toward him sympathetically, "but
see, there is a redbird on the top of that old birch tree. Try again!
You will have better success this time, I am sure you will."
He determined to make another experiment. The brilliant songster was
pouring out his heart in that fine cry of strength and hope which he
sends resounding over hill and vale. Suddenly hearing his own voice
repeated to him in an echo sweet and pure as his own song, he fluttered
his wings, peered this way and that, and sang again. Once more the
answering call resounded, true as an image in a mirror.
David now began to move with greater caution than before toward the
little creature, who looked at him with curious glances. Back and forth
resounded the sweet antiphonal, and the bird hopped down a branch or
two. Neither of the actors in this woodland drama removed his eyes from
the other, and the spectator watched them both with breathless interest.
Presently David lifted his hands--the palms closed together in the form
of a cup or nest. The songster bent farther forward on the twig, and
suddenly with a downward plunge shot straight toward them; but just as
his tiny feet touched the fingers, turned as the squirrel had done, and
uttering a loud cry of terror flew away. David dropped his hands and his
eyes.
"I have lost my power," he said sadly.
"You are out of practice, you must exercise it oftener. It will all come
back," Pepeeta responded cheerfully.
They walked slowly and silently back to the place where they had been
sitting, and David began tossing pebbles into the brook.
"Three times to-day," he said, pausing and turning toward Pepeeta, "I
have opened my hands and my heart, and each time the object whose love I
sought has fluttered away from me in terror or repugnance."
"Oh! no, not in terror and repugnance," she said eagerly.
"Am I then incapable of exciting love?" he asked.
"You will break my heart if you speak so. I love you more than I love my
own life."
"I do not believe it. Can I believe that the squirrel and the redbird
love me, when they flee from me? If they had loved me, they would have
come to me and nestled to my heart. And so would you. I have come back
to the old subject. I cannot refrain any longer. Will you go with me, or
will you not?"
"Oh! David," she cried, wringing her hands, "why, why will you break my
heart? Why can you not permit me to finish this day in peace? Wait until
some other time. Why can you not enjoy this present moment? I could wish
it to last forever, if you were only kind. If the flight of time could
be stopped, if we could be forever what we are just now, I could not ask
for any other thing. See how beautiful the world is. See how happy we
are. See how everything hangs just like a balance! Do not speak, do not
move; one unkind word would jar and spoil it all."
"It is impossible," he cried roughly, "you must leave your husband and
come with me. You cannot put me off any longer. I am desperate."
He was looking at her with eyes no longer full of pleading, but of
determination and command.
"What will you do?" he asked.
"Oh!" she answered, trembling, "why will you compel me to act? Let
something happen! Wait! It is not necessary always to act! Sometimes it
is better to sit still! We are in God's hands. Let us trust Him. Has He
not awakened this love in our hearts? He has not made us love and long
for each other only to thwart us!"
"Thwart us! Who coaxes the flowers from the ground, only that the frost
may nip them? Who opens the bud only to permit it to be devoured by the
worm? Who places the babe in its mother's arms only to let it be
snatched away by the hand of death? You cannot appeal to me in that
way," he retorted, bitterly.
"Do not speak so," she exclaimed with genuine terror. "It is wicked to
say such things in this quiet and holy place. Oh! why have you lost that
faith you once possessed? What has blinded your eyes to the light that
you taught me to see? I see it now! All will be well! Something says to
me in my heart, 'All will be well,' if we only follow the light!"
Nothing could have given stronger proof that inspiration and intuition
are as natural and legitimate functions of the spiritual nature as
sensation and sense perception are of the physical, than her words and
looks. They would have convinced and mastered him, except for the
self-denial which they demanded of his love! But he was now far past all
reason.
"Pepeeta," he cried, approaching her, "you must be mine and mine alone!
I can no longer endure the thought of your being the wife of another
man. You must come with me. I will not take 'no' for an answer. I
command you to leave this man and go with me. It is a worse crime for
you to live with him when you hate him than to leave him! Come, let us
go! I have money! There are horses to be had. He does not know where we
are. Let us fly!"
It was evident that he had brooked her refusal as long as he could. The
man was mad. He seized her by the arm.
In a single instant this gentle creature passed through an incredible
transformation. She wrenched her arm from his hand and stood before him
fearless, resolute, magnificent! Her gypsy training stood her in good
stead now. Young as she was when a pupil in that hard school, she had
learned from her wild teachers the cardinal principle of their
code--_loyalty to her marriage vows_. They had taught her to believe
that this breach was the one unpardonable sin.
She drew a little stiletto from the folds of her dress, placed its point
upon her heart and said: "It is not necessary that a gypsy should live;
but it is necessary that she should be virtuous!"
Her resplendent beauty, her fearless courage, her invincible
determination quenched the wild impulses of the reckless youth in a
single instant. All the manhood, all the chivalry of his better nature
rose within him and did homage. He threw himself on his knees and
frantically besought her pardon.
In an instant the fierce light died from her eyes. She stooped down,
laid her hand on his arm, and with an all-forgiving charity lifted him
to his feet. They stood regarding each other in silence. All that their
souls could reveal had been manifested in actions. The brief scene was
terminated by a common impulse. They turned their faces toward the city
and walked quietly, each reflecting silently upon the struggle that had
been enacted and the denouement which was yet to come.
In her ignorance and inexperience, Pepeeta hoped that a scene so
dreadful would quench the madness in her lover's soul; but this
revelation of the grandeur of her nature only inflamed his desires the
more. The momentary feeling of shame and penitence passed away. His
determination to possess her became more fixed than ever and during the
homeward walk assumed a definite form.
For a long time a sinister purpose had been rolling about in his soul.
That purpose now crystallized into resolution. He determined to commit a
crime if need be in order to gain his end.
Nothing can be more astonishing than the rapidity and ease with which
the mind becomes habituated to the presence of a criminal intention.
The higher faculties are at first disturbed, but they soon become
accustomed to the danger, and permit themselves to be destroyed one
after another, with only feeble protestations.