_ARTHUR AT WORK._
Wait, and Love himself will bring
The drooping flower of knowledge, changed to fruit
Of wisdom.
And so Arthur Forrest's little love-dream was dispelled. In Margaret's
presence, with her calm, saddened beauty before him, her gentle
words in his ears, he had not seemed to feel it; for as at the first
her beauty had come upon him like a heaven-sent message, arousing
dormant emotion, awaking his spirit from youth's self-worship, so now
it continued its work by slaying absolutely the still dominant self
within him. He had thought and hoped and longed and chafed through
the weeks of London life, haunted by her presence and by the dream
of gaining her. He saw her again, he recognized that she was not for
him, and he submitted, without a single wish to drag down the goddess
of his idolatry from her seat in the clouds to a lower seat by his
side. Arthur was young. Had the dream come later he might have acted
differently, but as yet he was tolerably free from the world-wisdom
which so many able teachers were ready to impart; besides, there was
that in her quiet dignity, in her ready confidence, in her natural way
of accepting his knight-errantry, that would have effectually checked
any presumption. She did not even seem to imagine that the passion she
had inspired in the breast of this man, so much her junior, could be
anything but transitory, and in her presence he acquiesced calmly.
The reaction came when he was alone in the hotel that night. To lose no
time he had started for York in the evening, and the officious waiter,
his friend of the day before, had procured for him the same rooms which
he had occupied then. Peopled they had been with the creations of his
fancy evoked by her, and the prospect of seeing her again; he returned
to them disappointed, denuded of hope, and there was a rue look in his
young face as once more he inflicted the echo of his restlessness on
the innocent occupant of the room below. For when all had been said and
done--when he should have compassed heaven and earth to restore her to
happiness and peace--when (for Arthur never dreamt of failure) through
his efforts, and his alone, she should be enjoying once more the
position from which by no fault of her own she had been torn--when her
husband should return to his faith and devotion, and her child be given
back to her arms,--then for himself, what? A grateful remembrance at
most. Their lives would drift apart, ever more widely: he who believed
he should be able to make her joy would yet form no part of it. His
very love would have to be smothered--to be as if it had not been. With
all the grand sentiments in the world to set against it, this is not an
easy thing to bear.
The greatest hero, the most self-abnegating being that ever lived,
must, I think, have had these moments of reaction--moments when the
heart, looking inward, aches a little for the poor trembling self which
must be buried, hidden away out of sight, if the life would be whole
and consistent.
And Arthur Forrest was no hero; only a young gentleman trained in the
school of luxury and self-pleasing, and for the first time brought
face to face with necessity. One thing in his favor was that it was
necessity--that there could be no beating about the bush, no half
measures. As a gentleman and a man of honor he was bound to serve the
lady of his choice, and to serve without hope of recompense--such
recompense, at least, as he had pictured to himself only twenty-four
hours before.
Perhaps nothing better could have happened to the young man than this
early enforced lesson of submission to the law of necessity. Young men
start off on life's race like well-fed stallions, scenting the goal
afar off, and if the world be moderately submissive they ride over her
rough-shod till her weeds and nettles sting them and they fall back
panting from the course. But if the yoke be borne early, submission
becomes a habit and its difficulty is infinitely less. Arthur, however,
could not be expected to be thankful for the salutary lesson, and
what wonder that when the first excitement of planning and scheming,
of playing the grand _rôle_ of disinterested benefactor was over, he
looked a trifle blue and crestfallen, called himself hard names, and
quarrelled with what he was for the moment pleased to look upon as his
"ridiculous age!"
There is something in the forced inaction of night, when it is not
occupied entirely with its legitimate tenant, Sleep, to nurture morbid
thoughts and gloomy ideas. Like misshapen ghosts they flee with the
daylight--when, that is to say, their sources are not very deep in the
spirit, imbedded there by cruel, unbending circumstance, for then night
is the relief-bringer, morning has the pale terrors of reality in its
train. Arthur's woes were rather of the imagination than the heart.
Morning and action dissipated them.
He was up early, and before midday had satisfied the proprietor of
the hotel about the ownership of the Indian scarf, had gathered fresh
particulars from the waiter, had cross-examined Jane, the soft-hearted
chambermaid, with all the acumen of a barrister, had caught the morning
mail, and was far on his way to London.
The fruit of his first day's exertions--for he could not rest until
something had been done--was that he had obtained the permission of his
guardians (merely nominal, for he was within three weeks of attaining
his majority) for a lengthened absence from England, and that by the
next morning's mail a messenger was ready to start for Middlethorpe,
with a hopeful missive from himself and a little casket containing
the jewelry which had been left to the grasping hands and predatory
instincts of Mr. Robinson.
The messenger was an elderly woman, with gray hair and a pleasant,
homely face. She had been Arthur Forrest's nurse, and his mother had
left her a pension amply sufficient to keep her in comfort and supply
her few wants. The old woman's affection for her nursling was so great
that she had never lost sight of him, and the young man, who knew how
much he owed to her tender care, had gratified her in his youth and
manhood by visiting her from time to time.
Old Mrs. Foster had been the recipient of Arthur's confidence more
than once, and she had helped him out of many a boyish scrape. In this
dilemma he thought of her. The kind old woman took an interest in his
tale, especially because there seemed to be no scheme attached to it
for the entrapping of her darling. That he should be led away by the
snares of womankind was a subject of constant terror to Mrs. Foster.
"Tak' tent of the lassies, my bairn," she would say to him at times;
"they're an awfu' sight tae deep for the lads."
But on this occasion there seemed to be no lassie in the question; only
a suffering lady, who, in the very teeth of her bairn's most dangerous
admissions (over these the old woman shook her head solemnly), had
confessed to a husband still, as it seemed, in the land of the living.
She consented readily--all the more so, perhaps, because of the power
it would give her of watching the matter--to what Arthur had been
almost afraid to mention, that she herself should become for the time
being a kind of confidential servant to the lady, supposing Margaret
herself would permit it. In any case she would not shrink from the
office of messenger and from the task of observation, for with her
young master she was of opinion that the landlady was a dangerous
person.
It was a tolerable amount of work for one day, and Arthur was
satisfied. He felt that the stone was set rolling at all points, and
that it would reach its destination in time if human skill and human
energy could accomplish anything.