TEMPTATION.
The Relief Committee was organizing in Park Street Vestry.
Women with help in their hands and sympathy in their hearts, came
there to meet women who wanted both; came, many of them, straight
from the first knowledge of the loss of almost all their own money,
with word and act of fellowship ready for those upon whose very life
the blow fell yet closer and harder. Over the separating lines of
class and occupation a divine impulse reached, at least for the
moment, both ways.
"Boffin's Bower" was all alert with aggressive, independent
movement. Here, they did not believe in the divine impulse of the
hour. They would stay on their own side of the line. They would help
themselves and each other. They would stand by their own class, and
cry "hands off!" to the rich women.
What was to be done, for lasting understanding and true relation,
between these conflicting, yet mutually dependent elements?
In their own separate places sat solitary girls and women who sought
neither yet.
Bel Bree was one.
The little room which had been home while Aunt Blin lived there with
her, was suddenly become only a dreary, lonely lodging-room. Cheeps
and Bartholomew were there, chirping and purring, the sun was
shining in; the things were all hers, for Aunt Blin had written one
broad, straggling, unsteady line upon a sheet of paper the last day
she lived, when the fever and confusion had ebbed away out of her
brain as life ebbed slowly back, beaten from its outworks by
disease, toward her heart, and she lay feebly, but clearly,
conscious.
"I give all I leave in the world to my niece Belinda Bree."
"Kellup" came down and buried his sister, and "looked into things;"
concluded that "Bel was pretty comfortable, and with good
folks,--Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley; 'sposed she calc'lated to
keep on, now; she could come back if she wanted to, though."
Bel did not want to. She would stay here a little while, at any
rate, and think. So Kellup went back into New Hampshire.
There was a little money laid up since Miss Bree and Bel had been
together; Bel could get along, she thought, till work began again.
But it was no longer living; it would not be living then; it would
be only work and solitude. She was like a great many others of them
now; girls without tie or belonging,--holding on where they could.
Elise Mokey had said to her,--"See if you could help yourself if you
hadn't Aunt Blin!" and now she began to look forward against that
great, dark "If."
Everything had come together. If work had kept on, there would have
been these little savings to fall back upon when earnings did not
quite meet outlay. But now she should use them up before work came.
And what did it signify, anyhow? All the comfort--all the meaning of
it--was gone.
They were all kind to her; Miss Smalley sat with her evenings, till
Bel wished she would have the wiser kindness to go away and let her
be miserable, just a little while.
Morris Hewland knocked at the door one afternoon when the
music-mistress was out, giving her lessons.
Bel did not ask him in to sit down; she stood just within the
doorway, and talked with him.
He made some friendly inquiries that led to conversation; he drew
her to say something of her plans. He had not come on purpose; he
hardly knew what he had come for. He had only knocked to say a word
of kindness; to look in the poor, pretty little face that he felt
such a tenderness for.
"I can't bear to give things up,--because they _were_ pleasant," Bel
said. "But I suppose I shall have to go away. It isn't home; there
isn't anybody to make home _with_ any more. I know what I _had_
thought of, a while ago; I believe I know what there is that I might
do; I am just waiting until the thoughts come back, and begin to
look as they did. Nothing looks as it did yet."
"Nothing?" asked Morris Hewland, his eyes questioning of hers.
"Yes,--friends. But the friends are all outside, after all."
Hewland stood silent.
How beautiful it might be to make home for such a little heart as
this! To surround her with comfort and prettiness, such as she loved
and knew how to contrive out of so little! To say,--"Let us belong
together. Make home with _me_!"
Satan, as an angel of light, entered into him. He knew he could not
say this to her as he ought to say it; as he would say it to a girl
of his own class whom father and mother would welcome. There was no
girl of his own class he had ever cared to say it to. This was the
first woman he had found, with whom the home thought joined itself.
And this could not rightly be. If he took her, he would no longer
have the things to give her. They would be cast out together. And
all he could do was to make pictures, of which he had never sold
one, or thought to sell one, in all his life. He would be just as
poor as she was; and he felt that he did not know how to be poor.
Besides, he wanted to be rich for her. He wanted to give her,--now,
right off,--everything.
Why shouldn't he give? Why shouldn't she take? He had plenty of
money; he was his father's only son. He meant right; so he said to
himself; and what had the world to do with it?
"I wish I could take care of you, Bel! Would you let me? Would you
go with me?"
The words seemed to have said themselves. The devil, whom he had let
have his heart for a minute, had got his lips and spoken through
them before he knew.
"Where?" asked Bel. "Home?"
"Yes,--home," said the young man, hesitating.
"Where your mother lives?"
Bel Bree's simplicity went nigh to being a stronger battery of
defense than any bristling of alarmed knowledge.
"No," said Morris Hewland. "Not there. It would not do for you, or
her either. But I could give you a little home. I could take care of
you all your life; all _my_ life. And I would. I will never make a
home for anybody else. I will be true to you, if you will trust
me,--always. So help me God!"
He meant it; there was no dark, deliberate sin in his heart, any
more than in hers; he was tempted on the tenderest, truest side of
his nature, as he was tempting her. He did not see why he should
not choose the woman he would live with all his life, though he knew
he could not choose her in the face of all the world, though he
could not be married to her in the Church of the Holy Commandments,
with bridesmaids and ushers, and music and flowers, and point lace
and white satin, and fifty private carriages waiting at the door,
and half a ton of gold and silver plate and verd antique piled up
for them in his father's house.
His father was a hard, proud, unflinching man, who loved and
indulged his son, after his fashion and possibility; but who would
never love or indulge him again if he offended in such a thing as
this. His mother was a woman who simply could not understand that a
girl like Bel Bree was a creature made by God at all, as her
daughters were, and her son's wife should be.
"Do you care enough for me?"
Bel stood utterly still. She had never been asked any such questions
before, but she felt in some way, that this was not all; ought not
to be all; that there was more he was to say, before she could
answer him.
He came toward her. He put his hands on hers. He looked eagerly in
her eyes. He did not hesitate now; the man's nature was roused in
him. He must make her speak,--say that she cared.
"_Don't_ you care? Bel--you do! You are my little wife; and the
world has not anything to do with it!"
She broke away from him; she shrunk back.
"Don't do that," he said, imploringly. "I'm not bad, Bel. The world
is bad. Let us be as good and loving as we can be in it. Don't think
me bad."
There was not anything bad in his eyes; in his young, loving,
handsome face. Bel was not sure enough,--strong enough,--to
denounce the evil that was using the love; to say to that which was
tempting him, and her by him, as Peter's passionate remonstrance
tempted the Christ,--"Thou art Satan. Get thee behind me."
Yet she shrunk, bewildered.
"I don't know; I can't understand. Let me go now Mr. Hewland."
She turned away from him, into the chamber, and reached her hand to
the door as she turned, putting her fingers on its edge to close it
after him. She stood with her back to him; listening, not looking,
for him to go.
He retreated, then, lingeringly, across the threshold, his eyes upon
her still. She shut the door slowly, walking backward as she pushed
it to. She had _left_, if not driven the devil behind her. Yet she
did not know what she had done. She was still bewildered. I believe
the worst she thought of what had happened was that he wanted to
marry her secretly, and hide her away.
"Aunt Blin!" she cried, when she felt herself all alone. "Aunt
Blin!--She _can't_ have gone so very far away, quite yet!"
She went over to the closet, with her arms stretched out.
She went in, where Aunt Blin's clothes were hanging. She grasped the
old, worn dress, that was almost warm with the wearing. She hid her
face against the sleeve, curved with the shape of the arm that had
bent to its tasks in it.
"Tell me, Aunt Blin! You can see clear, where you are. Is there any
good--any right in it? Ought I to tell him that I care?"
She cried, and she waited; but she got no answer there. She came
away, and sat down.
She was left all to herself in the hard, dreary world, with this
doubt, this temptation to deal with. It was her wilderness; and she
did not remember, yet, the Son of God who had been there before her.
"Why do they go off so far away in that new life, out of which they
might help us?"
She did not know how close the angels were. She listened outside for
them, when they were whispering already at her heart. We need to go
_in_; not to reach painfully up, and away,--after that world in
which we also, though blindly, dwell.
On the table lay Aunt Blin's great Bible; beside it her glasses.
Something that Miss Euphrasia had told them one day at the chapel,
came suddenly into her mind.
"The angels are always near us when we are reading the Word, because
they read, always, the living Word in heaven."
Was that the way? Might she enter so, and find them?
She moved slowly to the table.
It was growing dark. She struck a match and lit the gas, turning it
low. She laid back the leaves of the large volume, to the latter
portion. She opened it in Matthew,--to the nineteenth chapter.
When she had read that, she knew what she was to do.
She heard nothing more from Morris Hewland that night.
In the morning, early, she had her room bright and ready for the
day. The light was calm and clear about her. The shadows were all
gone.
She opened her door, and sat down, waiting, before the fire. Did
she think of that night when she had had on the rose-colored silk,
and had set the door ajar? Something in her had made her ashamed of
that. She was not ashamed--she had no misgiving--of this that she
was going to do now.
She was all alone; she had no other place to wait in she had no one
to tell her anything. She was going to do a plain, right thing,
whether it was just what anybody else would do, or not. She never
even asked herself that question.
She heard Mr. Sparrow, with his hop and step, come down over the
stairs. He always came down first of all. Then for another half
hour, she sat still. At the end of that time, Morris Hewland's door
unlatched and closed again.
Her heart beat quick. She stood up, with her face toward the open
door. At the foot of that upper flight, she heard him pause. She
could not see him till he passed; and he might pass without turning.
Unless he turned, she would be out of his sight; for the door swung
inward from the far corner. No matter.
He went by with a slow step. He could not help seeing the open door.
But he did not stop or turn, until he reached the stairhead of the
second flight; then he had to face this way again. And as he passed
around the railing, he looked up; for Bel was standing where she had
stood last night.
She had put herself in his way; but she had not done it lightly,
with any half intent, to give _him_ new opportunity for words. There
was a pure, gentle quiet in her face; she had something herself to
say. He saw it, and went back.
He colored, as he gave her his hand. Her face was pale.
"Come in a moment, Mr. Hewland," said the simple, girlish, voice.
He followed her in.
"You asked me questions last night, and I did not know how to answer
them. I want to ask you one question, now."
She had brought him to the side of the round table, upon whose red
cloth the large Bible lay. It was open at the place where she had
read it.
She put her finger on the page, and made him look. She drew the
finger slowly down from line to line, as if she were pointing for a
little child to read; and his eye followed it.
"For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh.
"Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore
God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."
"Is that the way you will make a home and give it to me,--before
them all?" she said.
He forgot the sophistries he might have used; he forgot to say that
it _was_ to leave father and mother and join himself to her, that he
had purposed; he forgot to tell her again that he would be true to
her all his life, and that nothing should put them asunder. He did
not take up those words, as men have done, and say that God had
joined their hearts together and made them in his sight one. The
angels were beside him, in his turn, as he read. Those sentences of
the Christ, shining up at him from the page, were like the look
turned back upon Peter, showing him his sin.
"One flesh:" to be seen and known as one. To have one body of
living; to be outwardly joined before the face of men. None to set
them asunder, or hold them separate by thought, or accident, or
misunderstanding. This was the sacred acknowledgment of man and
wife, and he knew that he had not meant to make it.
As he stood there, silent, she knew it too. She knew that she should
not have been his wife before anybody.
Her young face grew paler, and turned stern.
His flushed: a slow, burning, relentless flush, that betrayed him,
marking him like Cain. He lowered his eyes in the heat of it, and
stood so before the child.
She looked steadfastly at him for one instant; then she shut the
book, and turned away, delivering him from the condemning light of
her presence.
"No: I will not go to that little home with you," she said with a
grief and scorn mingled in her voice, as they might have been in the
voice of an angel.
When she looked round again, he was gone. Their ways had parted.
An hour later, Bel Bree turned the key outside her door, and with a
little leather bag in her hand, saying not a word to any one, went
down into the street.
Across the Common, and over the great hill, she walked straight to
Greenley Street, and to Miss Desire.