"When you love, you love," runs a gypsy proverb.
Bessie wore the despairing look of one who clings to a last vain hope.
How had it happened? Why had everything gone contrary to her
expectations? Why was Mr. Yankton dragging her at the wheels of his
chariot instead of she him? According to her social standards he had
seen but little, and yet he had the _savoir faire_ of a man of the
world. Her preconceived ideas on certain subjects were so upset that she
no longer appeared to have a hold on anything; the very ground seemed to
be slipping away beneath her.
Strange that one could care for the person whom one least expected to,
that the most humiliating moment in one's life might be the happiest as
well. If any one had suggested such a possibility to her six months
previously, she would have laughed at the mere thought. How could she
relinquish the life she knew for his? She fought against his influence
with all her powers of resistance. And yet, what woman in her right mind
would hesitate to follow the man of her choice to the sunlit valleys of
our dreams? Weaker women than she had done so and been happy, while
stronger ones had hesitated, as was the case with Blanch, and lived to
regret it. She secretly prayed that she might be spared the torture
which Blanch was suffering and the despair which must inevitably
overtake her should she fail to win back the man she had let slip from
her; for what, after all, could life be to one without the true
comradeship of love? She began to feel and realize the ineffable
sweetness of life's fullness as the days of her awakening continued,
while the ache at her heart told her plainly enough that the decisive
moment of her life had arrived--that she must choose between happiness
and ambition. The one, rich and full though accompanied perhaps by pain
and even denial at times; the other fraught with uncertainty.
She understood now the meaning of Chiquita's passionate longing for the
man she loved; a thing which the worldliness of the life she had lived
hitherto had taught her to be too extravagant to exist anywhere outside
of books, but which was true nevertheless. Her intuition told her this
in the face of all the world might say to the contrary. As she looked
back over the years and thought of her friends, she realized that she
like them had submerged her life in the superficial pleasures of the
world; but had they filled her cup of happiness? Until now she had not
felt the lack of life's crowning joy, for the reason that youth is
buoyant and full of hope, and the grand passion had not yet entered into
her life. These and a thousand other thoughts ran through her mind that
night as she recalled Dick's words.
She could not sleep. From where she lay she could see the moonlight in
the _patio_ and hear the murmur of the fountain in its center. The night
seemed to beckon and whisper to her to come outside. So she arose and
silently dressed herself in the dimly moonlit room without disturbing
Blanch, who murmured incoherently in her sleep of the things she was
thinking of. She slipped noiselessly through the low window to the
_patio_ without and stealthily made her way in the shadow of the
overhanging arcades to the garden beyond.
The hour was late--close on to dawn. The silvery half-moon hung low in
the west accompanied by great cohorts of stars that shone with a
brilliancy she had never before seen, and which seemed to be waiting
with the moon to usher in the new dawn. All was silence and mystery--all
earthly ties seemed severed. Under the cover of the night all things
seemed equal. There were no high, no low, no eyes to see, no ears to
hear, no towns, no cities, no conventions. All things that hold and bind
us had slipped away into the shadows and she seemed to breathe again the
primeval freshness of life.
She knew that she must decide between Dick and her family. Her father
had given her plainly to understand as much, and this she knew meant the
loss of her fortune--the giving up of all for him. Her father
threatened, raged and fumed with the petulance of a spoiled child, his
paternal displeasure taking that uncompromising form of obstinacy with
which the world has long been familiar. She was amazed at herself for
being able to take his displeasure with so little concern; a thing
which, had it occurred at home, would have caused her to pause and
reflect and probably would have been the deciding factor in her life.
Her removal from the old life and the glimpses of the new had
unconsciously wrought a change within her. She began to see things as
they really are when shorn of their glamour. The life she hitherto had
known, she realized, was purely a superficial condition, not only
foreign to the realities of things, but superfluous to man himself.
Never had Captain Forest appeared so sane and her father so superficial
as the hour in which she grasped that truth. It is not what the world
makes of you, but what you make of yourself that counts, the beauteous,
seductive night kept whispering to her. Why, then, if this be true,
should the world about her appear so remote? It was not the actual
world--the world as it really is that she would be called upon to give
up, but merely the world of that particular set of men and women in
which she hitherto had moved.
The same earth rolled beneath her feet--the same stars that looked down
upon her in the past still glittered in the heavens overhead--the same
winds that crept through the garden and sighed among the trees, wafting
the spicy, fragrant odors of the flowers into her face, were the same
that had fanned her cheek in the past. All things remained practically
the same, only the people were different. But could the old interests
and friendships and associations compensate her for the loss of the man
that had come into her life to remain for the rest of her days whether
she chose to keep him or not? These new and perplexing questions she was
forced to ask herself for the first time, and she knew that there could
be but one answer forthcoming.
Love was knocking at the portals of her heart as it had never knocked
before. It had come to her warm and living, deep and subtle and
indefinable, leaving nothing to be said or desired. She saw clearly
that principle, as the world conceives it, was not involved. Affection
recognizes no such principle--only virtuous longing and desire which is
a principle in itself--the fulfillment of creation's grandest purpose;
and it rested with her to accept this truth or pass it by.
The chill of the early morning caused her to draw her wrap more closely
about her shoulders. A deep sigh of relief escaped her as she glanced
upwards once more for a last look at the paling stars. How satisfactory
it was to know even though the knowledge pained her!
She had entered the garden a girl, she returned to the house a woman,
hugging her secret close to her heart.