Richard got through the following week he hardly knew how. He found
occupation, to a much greater extent than he was actually aware of, in a
sordid and yet heroic struggle with himself. For several months now, he
had been leading, under Gertrude's inspiration, a strictly decent and
sober life. So long as he was at comparative peace with Gertrude and
with himself, such a life was more than easy; it was delightful. It
produced a moral buoyancy infinitely more delicate and more constant
than the gross exhilaration of his old habits. There was a kind of
fascination in adding hour to hour, and day to day, in this record of
his new-born austerity. Having abjured excesses, he practised temperance
after the fashion of a novice: he raised it (or reduced it) to
abstinence. He was like an unclean man who, having washed himself clean,
remains in the water for the love of it. He wished to be religiously,
superstitiously pure. This was easy, as we have said, so long as his
goddess smiled, even though it were as a goddess indeed,--as a creature
unattainable. But when she frowned, and the heavens grew dark, Richard's
sole dependence was in his own will,--as flimsy a trust for an upward
scramble, one would have premised, as a tuft of grass on the face of a
perpendicular cliff. Flimsy as it looked, however, it served him. It
started and crumbled, but it held, if only by a single fibre. When
Richard had cantered fifty yards away from Gertrude's gate in a fit of
stupid rage, he suddenly pulled up his horse and gulped down his
passion, and swore an oath, that, suffer what torments of feeling he
might, he would not at least break the continuity of his gross physical
soberness. It was enough to be drunk in mind; he would not be drunk in
body. A singular, almost ridiculous feeling of antagonism to Gertrude
lent force to this resolution. "No, madam," he cried within himself, "I
shall _not_ fall back. Do your best! I shall keep straight." We often
outweather great offences and afflictions through a certain healthy
instinct of egotism. Richard went to bed that night as grim and sober as
a Trappist monk; and his foremost impulse the next day was to plunge
headlong into some physical labor which should not allow him a moment's
interval of idleness. He found no labor to his taste; but he spent the
day so actively, in the mechanical annihilation of the successive hours,
that Gertrude's image found no chance squarely to face him. He was
engaged in the work of self-preservation,--the most serious and
absorbing work possible to man. Compared to the results here at stake,
his passion for Gertrude seemed but a fiction. It is perhaps difficult
to give a more lively impression of the vigor of this passion, of its
maturity and its strength, than by simply stating that it discreetly
held itself in abeyance until Richard had set at rest his doubts of that
which lies nearer than all else to the heart of man,--his doubts of the
strength of his will. He answered these doubts by subjecting his
resolution to a course of such cruel temptations as were likely either
to shiver it to a myriad of pieces, or to season it perfectly to all the
possible requirements of life. He took long rides over the country,
passing within a stone's throw of as many of the scattered wayside
taverns as could be combined in a single circuit. As he drew near them
he sometimes slackened his pace, as if he were about to dismount, pulled
up his horse, gazed a moment, then, thrusting in his spurs, galloped
away again like one pursued. At other times, in the late evening, when
the window-panes were aglow with the ruddy light within, he would walk
slowly by, looking at the stars, and, after maintaining this stoical
pace for a couple of miles, would hurry home to his own lonely and
black-windowed dwelling. Having successfully performed this feat a
certain number of times, he found his love coming back to him, bereft in
the interval of its attendant jealousy. In obedience to it, he one
morning leaped upon his horse and repaired to Gertrude's abode, with no
definite notion of the terms in which he should introduce himself.
He had made himself comparatively sure of his will; but he was yet to
acquire the mastery of his impulses. As he gave up his horse, according
to his wont, to one of the men at the stable, he saw another steed
stalled there which he recognized as Captain Severn's. "Steady, my boy,"
he murmured to himself, as he would have done to a frightened horse. On
his way across the broad court-yard toward the house, he encountered the
Captain, who had just taken his leave. Richard gave him a generous
salute (he could not trust himself to more), and Severn answered with
what was at least a strictly just one. Richard observed, however, that
he was very pale, and that he was pulling a rosebud to pieces as he
walked; whereupon our young man quickened his step. Finding the parlor
empty, he instinctively crossed over to a small room adjoining it, which
Gertrude had converted into a modest conservatory; and as he did so,
hardly knowing it, he lightened his heavy-shod tread. The glass door was
open and Richard looked in. There stood Gertrude with her back to him,
bending apart with her hands a couple of tall flowering plants, and
looking through the glazed partition behind them. Advancing a step, and
glancing over the young girl's shoulder, Richard had just time to see
Severn mounting his horse at the stable door, before Gertrude, startled
by his approach, turned hastily round. Her face was flushed hot, and her
eyes brimming with tears.
"You!" she exclaimed, sharply.
Richard's head swam. That single word was so charged with cordial
impatience that it seemed the death-knell of his hope. He stepped inside
the room and closed the door, keeping his hand on the knob.
"Gertrude," he said, "you love that man!"
"Well, sir?"
"Do you confess it?" cried Richard.
"Confess it? Richard Clare, how dare you use such language? I'm in no
humor for a scene. Let me pass."
Gertrude was angry; but as for Richard, it may almost be said that he
was mad. "One scene a day is enough, I suppose," he cried. "What are
these tears about? Wouldn't he have you? Did he refuse you, as you
refused me? Poor Gertrude!"
Gertrude looked at him a moment with concentrated scorn. "You fool!" she
said, for all answer. She pushed his hand from the latch, flung open the
door, and moved rapidly away.
Left alone, Richard sank down on a sofa and covered his face with his
hands. It burned them, but he sat motionless, repeating to himself,
mechanically, as if to avert thought, "You fool! you fool!" At last he
got up and made his way out.
It seemed to Gertrude, for several hours after this scene, that she had
at this juncture a strong case against Fortune. It is not our purpose to
repeat the words which she had exchanged with Captain Severn. They had
come within a single step of an _éclaircissement_, and when but another
movement would have flooded their souls with light, some malignant
influence had seized them by the throats. Had they too much pride?--too
little imagination? We must content ourselves with this hypothesis.
Severn, then, had walked mechanically across the yard, saying to
himself, "She belongs to another"; and adding, as he saw Richard, "and
such another." Gertrude had stood at her window, repeating, under her
breath, "He belongs to himself, himself alone." And as if this was not
enough, when misconceived, slighted, wounded, she had faced about to her
old, passionless, dutiful past, there on the path of retreat to this
asylum Richard Clare had arisen to forewarn her that she should find no
peace even at home. There was something in the violent impertinence of
his appearance at this moment which gave her a dreadful feeling that
fate was against her. More than this. There entered into her emotions a
certain minute particle of awe of the man whose passion was so
uncompromising. She felt that it was out of place any longer to pity
him. He was the slave of his passion; but his passion was strong. In her
reaction against the splendid civility of Severn's silence, (the real
antithesis of which would have been simply the perfect courtesy of
explicit devotion,) she found herself touching with pleasure on the fact
of Richard's brutality. He at least had ventured to insult her. He had
loved her enough to forget himself. He had dared to make himself odious
in her eyes, because he had cast away his sanity. What cared he for the
impression he made? He cared only for the impression he received. The
violence of this reaction, however, was the measure of its duration. It
was impossible that she should walk backward so fast without stumbling.
Brought to her senses by this accident, she became aware that her
judgment was missing. She smiled to herself as she reflected that it had
been taking holiday for a whole afternoon. "Richard was right," she said
to herself. "I am no fool. I can't be a fool if I try. I'm too
thoroughly my father's daughter for that. I love that man, but I love
myself better. Of course, then, I don't deserve to have him. If I loved
him in a way to merit his love, I would sit down this moment and write
him a note telling him that if he does not come back to me, I shall die.
But I shall neither write the note nor die. I shall live and grow stout,
and look after my chickens and my flowers and my colts, and thank the
Lord in my old age that I have never done anything unwomanly. Well! I'm
as He made me. Whether I can deceive others, I know not; but I certainly
can't deceive myself. I'm quite as sharp as Gertrude Whittaker; and this
it is that has kept me from making a fool of myself and writing to poor
Richard the note that I wouldn't write to Captain Severn. I needed to
fancy myself wronged. I suffer so little! I needed a sensation! So,
shrewd Yankee that I am, I thought I would get one cheaply by taking up
that unhappy boy! Heaven preserve me from the heroics, especially the
economical heroics! The one heroic course possible, I decline. What,
then, have I to complain of? Must I tear my hair because a man of taste
has resisted my unspeakable charms? To be charming, you must be charmed
yourself, or at least you must be able to be charmed; and that
apparently I'm not. I didn't love him, or he would have known it. Love
gets love, and no-love gets none."
But at this point of her meditations Gertrude almost broke down. She
felt that she was assigning herself but a dreary future. Never to be
loved but by such a one as Richard Clare was a cheerless prospect; for
it was identical with an eternal spinsterhood. "Am I, then," she
exclaimed, quite as passionately as a woman need do,--"am I, then, cut
off from a woman's dearest joys? What blasphemous nonsense! One thing is
plain: I am made to be a mother; the wife may take care of herself. I am
made to be a wife; the mistress may take care of _herself_. I am in the
Lord's hands," added the poor girl, who, whether or no she could forget
herself in an earthly love, had at all events this mark of a spontaneous
nature, that she could forget herself in a heavenly one. But in the
midst of her pious emotion, she was unable to subdue her conscience. It
smote her heavily for her meditated falsity to Richard, for her
miserable readiness to succumb to the strong temptation to seek a
momentary resting-place in his gaping heart. She recoiled from this
thought as from an act cruel and immoral. Was Richard's heart the place
for her now, any more than it had been a month before? Was she to apply
for comfort where she would not apply for counsel? Was she to drown her
decent sorrows and regrets in a base, a dishonest, an extemporized
passion? Having done the young man so bitter a wrong in intention,
nothing would appease her magnanimous remorse (as time went on) but to
repair it in fact. She went so far as keenly to regret the harsh words
she had cast upon him in the conservatory. He had been insolent and
unmannerly; but he had an excuse. Much should be forgiven him, for he
loved much. Even now that Gertrude had imposed upon her feelings a
sterner regimen than ever, she could not defend herself from a sweet and
sentimental thrill--a thrill in which, as we have intimated, there was
something of a tremor--at the recollection of his strident accents and
his angry eyes. It was yet far from her heart to desire a renewal,
however brief, of this exhibition. She wished simply to efface from the
young man's morbid soul the impression of a real contempt; for she
knew--or she thought that she knew--that against such an impression he
was capable of taking the most fatal and inconsiderate comfort.
Before many mornings had passed, accordingly, she had a horse saddled,
and, dispensing with attendance, she rode rapidly over to his farm. The
house door and half the windows stood open; but no answer came to her
repeated summons. She made her way to the rear of the house, to the
barn-yard, thinly tenanted by a few common fowl, and across the yard to
a road which skirted its lower extremity and was accessible by an open
gate. No human figure was in sight; nothing was visible in the hot
stillness but the scattered and ripening crops, over which, in spite of
her nervous solicitude, Miss Whittaker cast the glance of a connoisseur.
A great uneasiness filled her mind as she measured the rich domain
apparently deserted of its young master, and reflected that she perhaps
was the cause of its abandonment. Ah, where was Richard? As she looked
and listened in vain, her heart rose to her throat, and she felt herself
on the point of calling all too wistfully upon his name. But her voice
was stayed by the sound of a heavy rumble, as of cart-wheels, beyond a
turn in the road. She touched up her horse and cantered along until she
reached the turn. A great four-wheeled cart, laden with masses of newly
broken stone, and drawn by four oxen, was slowly advancing towards her.
Beside it, patiently cracking his whip and shouting monotonously, walked
a young man in a slouched hat and a red shirt, with his trousers thrust
into his dusty boots. It was Richard. As he saw Gertrude, he halted a
moment, amazed, and then advanced, flicking the air with his whip.
Gertrude's heart went out towards him in a silent Thank God! Her next
reflection was that he had never looked so well. The truth is, that, in
this rough adjustment, the native barbarian was duly represented. His
face and neck were browned by a week in the fields, his eye was clear,
his step seemed to have learned a certain manly dignity from its
attendance on the heavy bestial tramp. Gertrude, as he reached her side,
pulled up her horse and held out her gloved fingers to his brown dusty
hand. He took them, looked for a moment into her face, and for the
second time raised them to his lips.
"Excuse my glove," she said, with a little smile.
"Excuse mine," he answered, exhibiting his sun-burnt, work-stained hand.
"Richard," said Gertrude, "you never had less need of excuse in your
life. You never looked half so well."
He fixed his eyes upon her a moment. "Why, you have forgiven me!" he
exclaimed.
"Yes," said Gertrude, "I have forgiven you,--both you and myself. We
both of us behaved very absurdly, but we both of us had reason. I wish
you had come back."
Richard looked about him, apparently at loss for a rejoinder. "I have
been very busy," he said, at last, with a simplicity of tone slightly
studied. An odd sense of dramatic effect prompted him to say neither
more nor less.
An equally delicate instinct forbade Gertrude to express all the joy
which this assurance gave her. Excessive joy would have implied undue
surprise; and it was a part of her plan frankly to expect the best
things of her companion. "If you have been busy," she said, "I
congratulate you. What have you been doing?"
"O, a hundred things. I have been quarrying, and draining, and clearing,
and I don't know what all. I thought the best thing was just to put my
own hands to it. I am going to make a stone fence along the great lot on
the hill there. Wallace is forever grumbling about his boundaries. I'll
fix them once for all. What are you laughing at?"
"I am laughing at certain foolish apprehensions that I have been
indulging in for a week past. You are wiser than I, Richard. I have no
imagination."
"Do you mean that _I_ have? I haven't enough to guess what you _do_
mean."
"Why, do you suppose, have I come over this morning?"
"Because you thought I was sulking on account of your having called me a
fool."
"Sulking, or worse. What do I deserve for the wrong I have done you?"
"You have done me no wrong. You reasoned fairly enough. You are not
obliged to know me better than I know myself. It's just like you to be
ready to take back that bad word, and try to make yourself believe that
it was unjust. But it was perfectly just, and therefore I have managed
to bear it. I was a fool at that moment,--a stupid, impudent fool. I
don't know whether that man had been making to love to you or not. But
you had, I think, been feeling love for him,--you looked it; I should
have been less than a man, I should be unworthy of your--your affection,
if I had failed to see it. I did see it,--I saw it as clearly as I see
those oxen now; and yet I bounced in with my own ill-timed claims. To do
so was to be a fool. To have been other than a fool would have been to
have waited, to have backed out, to have bitten my tongue off before I
spoke, to have done anything but what I did. I have no right to claim
you, Gertrude, until I can woo you better than that. It was the most
fortunate thing in the world that you spoke as you did; it was even
kind. It saved me all the misery of groping about for a starting-point.
Not to have spoken as you did would have been to fail of justice; and
then, probably, I should have sulked, or, as you very considerately say,
done worse. I had made a false move in the game, and the only thing to
do was to repair it. But you were not obliged to know that I would so
readily admit my move to have been false. Whenever I have made a fool of
myself before, I have been for sticking it out, and trying to turn all
mankind--that is, _you_--into a fool too, so that I shouldn't be an
exception. But this time, I think, I had a kind of inspiration. I felt
that my case was desperate. I felt that if I adopted my folly now I
adopted it forever. The other day I met a man who had just come home
from Europe, and who spent last summer in Switzerland. He was telling me
about the mountain-climbing over there,--how they get over the glaciers,
and all that. He said that you sometimes came upon great slippery,
steep, snow-covered slopes that end short off in a precipice, and that
if you stumble or lose your footing as you cross them horizontally, why
you go shooting down, and you're gone; that is, but for one little
dodge. You have a long walking-pole with a sharp end, you know, and as
you feel yourself sliding,--it's as likely as not to be in a sitting
posture,--you just take this and ram it into the snow before you, and
there you are, stopped. The thing is, of course, to drive it in far
enough, so that it won't yield or break; and in any case it hurts
infernally to come whizzing down upon this upright pole. But the
interruption gives you time to pick yourself up. Well, so it was with me
the other day. I stumbled and fell; I slipped, and was whizzing
downward; but I just drove in my pole and pulled up short. It nearly
tore me in two; but it saved my life." Richard made this speech with one
hand leaning on the neck of Gertrude's horse, and the other on his own
side, and with his head slightly thrown back and his eyes on hers. She
had sat quietly in her saddle, returning his gaze. He had spoken slowly
and deliberately; but without hesitation and without heat. "This is not
romance," thought Gertrude, "it's reality." And this feeling it was that
dictated her reply, divesting it of romance so effectually as almost to
make it sound trivial.
"It was fortunate you had a walking-pole," she said.
"I shall never travel without one again."
"Never, at least," smiled Gertrude, "with a companion who has the bad
habit of pushing you off the path."
"Oh, you may push all you like," said Richard. "I give you leave. But
isn't this enough about myself?"
"That's as you think."
"Well, it's all I have to say for the present, except that I am
prodigiously glad to see you, and that of course you will stay awhile."
"But you have your work to do."
"Dear me, never you mind my work. I've earned my dinner this morning, if
you have no objection: and I propose to share it with you. So we will go
back to the house." He turned her horse's head about, started up his
oxen with his voice, and walked along beside her on the grassy roadside,
with one hand in the horse's mane, and the other swinging his whip.
Before they reached the yard-gate, Gertrude had revolved his speech.
"Enough about himself," she said, silently echoing his words. "Yes,
Heaven be praised, it is about himself. I am but a means in this
matter,--he himself, his own character, his own happiness, is the end."
Under this conviction it seemed to her that her part was appreciably
simplified. Richard was learning wisdom and self-control, and to
exercise his reason. Such was the suit that he was destined to gain. Her
duty was as far as possible to remain passive, and not to interfere with
the working of the gods who had selected her as the instrument of their
prodigy. As they reached the gate, Richard made a trumpet of his hands,
and sent a ringing summons into the fields; whereupon a farm-boy
approached, and, with an undisguised stare of amazement at Gertrude,
took charge of his master's team. Gertrude rode up to the door-step,
where her host assisted her to dismount, and bade her go in and make
herself at home, while he busied himself with the bestowal of her horse.
She found that, in her absence, the old woman who administered her
friend's household had reappeared, and had laid out the preparations for
his mid-day meal. By the time he returned, with his face and head
shining from a fresh ablution, and his shirt-sleeves decently concealed
by a coat, Gertrude had apparently won the complete confidence of the
good wife.
Gertrude doffed her hat, and tucked up her riding-skirt, and sat down to
a _tête-à-tête_ over Richard's crumpled table-cloth. The young man
played the host very soberly and naturally; and Gertrude hardly knew
whether to augur from his perfect self-possession that her star was
already on the wane, or that it had waxed into a steadfast and eternal
sun. The solution of her doubts was not far to seek; Richard was
absolutely at his ease in her presence. He had told her, indeed, that
she intoxicated him; and truly, in those moments when she was compelled
to oppose her dewy eloquence to his fervid importunities, her whole
presence seemed to him to exhale a singularly potent sweetness. He had
told her that she was an enchantress, and this assertion, too, had its
measure of truth. But her spell was a steady one; it sprang not from her
beauty, her wit, her figure,--it sprang from her character. When she
found herself aroused to appeal or to resistance, Richard's pulses were
quickened to what he had called intoxication, not by her smiles, her
gestures, her glances, or any accession of that material beauty which
she did not possess, but by a generous sense of her virtues in action.
In other words, Gertrude exercised the magnificent power of making her
lover forget her face. Agreeably to this fact, his habitual feeling in
her presence was one of deep repose,--a sensation not unlike that which
in the early afternoon, as he lounged in his orchard with a pipe, he
derived from the sight of the hot and vaporous hills. He was innocent,
then, of that delicious trouble which Gertrude's thoughts had touched
upon as a not unnatural result of her visit, and which another woman's
fancy would perhaps have dwelt upon as an indispensable proof of its
success. "Porphyro grew faint," the poet assures us, as he stood in
Madeline's chamber on Saint Agnes' eve. But Richard did not in the least
grow faint now that his mistress was actually filling his musty old room
with her voice, her touch, her looks; that she was sitting in his
unfrequented chairs, trailing her skirt over his faded carpet, casting
her perverted image upon his mirror, and breaking his daily bread. He
was not fluttered when he sat at her well-served table, and trod her
muffled floors. Why, then, should he be fluttered now? Gertrude was
herself in all places, and (once granted that she was at peace) to be at
her side was to drink peace as fully in one place as in another.
Richard accordingly ate a great working-day dinner in Gertrude's
despite, and she ate a small one for his sake. She asked questions
moreover, and offered counsel with most sisterly freedom. She deplored
the rents in his table-cloth, and the dismemberments of his furniture;
and, although by no means absurdly fastidious in the matter of household
elegance, she could not but think that Richard would be a happier and a
better man if he were a little more comfortable. She forbore, however,
to criticise the poverty of his _entourage_, for she felt that the
obvious answer was, that such a state of things was the penalty of his
living alone; and it was desirable, under the circumstances, that this
idea should remain implied.
When at last Gertrude began to bethink herself of going, Richard broke a
long silence by the following question: "Gertrude, _do_ you love that
man?"
"Richard," she answered, "I refused to tell you before, because you
asked the question as a right. Of course you do so no longer. No. I do
not love him. I have been near it,--but I have missed it. And now
good-by."
For a week after her visit, Richard worked as bravely and steadily as he
had done before it. But one morning he woke up lifeless, morally
speaking. His strength had suddenly left him. He had been straining his
faith in himself to a prodigious tension, and the chord had suddenly
snapped. In the hope that Gertrude's tender fingers might repair it, he
rode over to her towards evening. On his way through the village, he
found people gathered in knots, reading fresh copies of the Boston
newspapers over each other's shoulders, and learned that tidings had
just come of a great battle in Virginia, which was also a great defeat.
He procured a copy of the paper from a man who had read it out, and made
haste to Gertrude's dwelling.
Gertrude received his story with those passionate imprecations and
regrets which were then in fashion. Before long, Major Luttrel presented
himself, and for half an hour there was no talk but about the battle.
The talk, however, was chiefly between Gertrude and the Major, who found
considerable ground for difference, she being a great radical and he a
decided conservative. Richard sat by, listening apparently, but with the
appearance of one to whom the matter of the discourse was of much less
interest than the manner of those engaged in it. At last, when tea was
announced, Gertrude told her friends, very frankly, that she would not
invite them to remain,--that her heart was too heavy with her country's
woes, and with the thought of so great a butchery, to allow her to play
the hostess,--and that, in short, she was in the humor to be alone. Of
course there was nothing for the gentlemen but to obey; but Richard went
out cursing the law, under which, in the hour of his mistress' sorrow,
his company was a burden and not a relief. He watched in vain, as he
bade her farewell, for some little sign that she would fain have him
stay, but that as she wished to get rid of his companion civility
demanded that she should dismiss them both. No such sign was
forthcoming, for the simple reason that Gertrude was sensible of no
conflict between her desires. The men mounted their horses in silence,
and rode slowly along the lane which led from Miss Whittaker's stables
to the high-road. As they approached the top of the lane, they perceived
in the twilight a mounted figure coming towards them. Richard's heart
began to beat with an angry foreboding, which was confirmed as the rider
drew near and disclosed Captain Severn's features. Major Luttrel and he,
being bound in courtesy to a brief greeting, pulled up their horses; and
as an attempt to pass them in narrow quarters would have been a greater
incivility than even Richard was prepared to commit, he likewise halted.
"This is ugly news, isn't it?" said Severn. "It has determined me to go
back to-morrow."
"Go back where?" asked Richard.
"To my regiment."
"Are you well enough?" asked Major Luttrel. "How is that wound?"
"It's so much better that I believe it can finish getting well down
there as easily as here. Good-by, Major. I hope we shall meet again."
And he shook hands with Major Luttrel. "Good by, Mr. Clare." And,
somewhat to Richard's surprise, he stretched over and held out his hand
to him.
Richard felt that it was tremulous, and, looking hard into his face, he
thought it wore a certain unwonted look of excitement. And then his
fancy coursed back to Gertrude, sitting where he had left her, in the
sentimental twilight, alone with her heavy heart. With a word, he
reflected, a single little word, a look, a motion, this happy man whose
hand I hold can heal her sorrows. "Oh!" cried Richard, "that by this
hand I might hold him fast forever!"
It seemed to the Captain that Richard's grasp was needlessly protracted
and severe. "What a grip the poor fellow has!" he thought. "Good-by," he
repeated aloud, disengaging himself.
"Good-by," said Richard. And then he added, he hardly knew why, "Are you
going to bid good-by to Miss Whittaker?"
"Yes. Isn't she at home?"
Whether Richard really paused or not before he answered, he never knew.
There suddenly arose such a tumult in his bosom that it seemed to him
several moments before he became conscious of his reply. But it is
probable that to Severn it came only too soon.
"No," said Richard; "she's not at home. We have just been calling." As
he spoke, he shot a glance at his companion, armed with defiance of his
impending denial. But the Major just met his glance and then dropped his
eyes. This slight motion was a horrible revelation. He had served the
Major, too.
"Ah? I'm sorry," said Severn, slacking his rein,--"I'm sorry." And from
his saddle he looked down toward the house more longingly and
regretfully than he knew.
Richard felt himself turning from pale to consuming crimson. There was a
simple sincerity in Severn's words which was almost irresistible. For a
moment he felt like shouting out a loud denial of his falsehood: "She is
there! she's alone and in tears, awaiting you. Go to her--and be
damned!" But before he could gather his words into his throat, they were
arrested by Major Luttrel's cool, clear voice, which, in its calmness,
seemed to cast scorn upon his weakness.
"Captain," said the Major, "I shall be very happy to take charge of your
farewell."
"Thank you, Major. Pray do. Say how extremely sorry I was. Good by
again." And Captain Severn hastily turned his horse about, gave him his
spurs, and galloped away, leaving his friends standing alone in the
middle of the road. As the sound of his retreat expired, Richard, in
spite of himself, drew a long breath. He sat motionless in the saddle,
hanging his head.
"Mr. Clare," said the Major, at last, "that was very cleverly done."
Richard looked up. "I never told a lie before," said he.
"Upon my soul, then, you did it uncommonly well. You did it so well I
almost believed you. No wonder that Severn did."
Richard was silent. Then suddenly he broke out, "In God's name, sir, why
don't you call me a blackguard? I've done a beastly act!"
"O, come," said the Major, "you needn't mind that, with me. We'll
consider that said. I feel bound to let you know that I'm very, very
much obliged to you. If you hadn't spoken, how do you know but that I
might?"
"If you had, I would have given you the lie, square in your teeth."
"Would you, indeed? It's very fortunate, then, I held my tongue. If you
will have it so, I won't deny that your little improvisation sounded
very ugly. I'm devilish glad I didn't make it."
Richard felt his wit sharpened by a most unholy scorn,--a scorn far
greater for his companion than for himself. "I am glad to hear that it
did sound ugly," he said. "To me, it seemed beautiful, holy, and just.
For the space of a moment, it seemed absolutely right that I should say
what I did. But you saw the lie in its horrid nakedness, and yet you let
it pass. You have no excuse."
"I beg your pardon. You are immensely ingenious, but you are immensely
wrong. Are you going to make out that I am the guilty party? Upon my
word, you're a cool hand. I _have_ an excuse. I have the excuse of being
interested in Miss Whittaker's remaining unengaged."
"So I suppose. But you don't love her. Otherwise----"
Major Luttrel laid his hand on Richard's bridle. "Mr. Clare," said he,
"I have no wish to talk metaphysics over this matter. You had better say
no more. I know that your feelings are not of an enviable kind, and I am
therefore prepared to be good-natured with you. But you must be civil
yourself. You have done a shabby deed; you are ashamed of it, and you
wish to shift the responsibility upon me, which is more shabby still. My
advice is, that you behave like a man of spirit, and swallow your
apprehensions. I trust that you are not going to make a fool of yourself
by any apology or retraction in any quarter. As for its having seemed
holy and just to do what you did, that is mere bosh. A lie is a lie, and
as such is often excusable. As anything else,--as a thing beautiful,
holy, or just,--it's quite inexcusable. Yours was a lie to you, and a
lie to me. It serves me, and I accept it. I suppose you understand me. I
adopt it. You don't suppose it was because I was frightened by those big
black eyes of yours that I held my tongue. As for my loving or not
loving Miss Whittaker, I have no report to make to you about it. I will
simply say that I intend, if possible to marry her."
"She'll not have you. She'll never marry a cold-blooded rascal."
"I think she'll prefer him to a hot-blooded one. Do you want to pick a
quarrel with me? Do you want to make me lose my temper? I shall refuse
you that satisfaction. You have been a coward, and you want to frighten
some one before you go to bed to make up for it. Strike me, and I'll
strike you in self-defence, but I'm not going to mind your talk. Have
you anything to say? No? Well, then, good evening." And Major Luttrel
started away.
It was with rage that Richard was dumb. Had he been but a cat's-paw
after all? Heaven forbid! He sat irresolute for an instant, and then
turned suddenly and cantered back to Gertrude's gate. Here he stopped
again; but after a short pause he went in over the gravel with a
fast-beating heart. O, if Luttrel were but there to see him! For a
moment he fancied he heard the sound of the Major's returning steps. If
he would only come and find him at confession! It would be so easy to
confess before him! He went along beside the house to the front, and
stopped beneath the open drawing-room window.
"Gertrude!" he cried softly, from his saddle.
Gertrude immediately appeared. "You, Richard!" she exclaimed.
Her voice was neither harsh nor sweet; but her words and her intonation
recalled vividly to Richard's mind the scene in the conservatory. He
fancied them keenly expressive of disappointment. He was invaded by a
mischievous conviction that she had been expecting Captain Severn, or
that at the least she had mistaken his voice for the Captain's. The
truth is that she had half fancied it might be,--Richard's call having
been little more than a loud whisper. The young man sat looking up at
her, silent.
"What do you want?" she asked. "Can I do anything for you?"
Richard was not destined to do his duty that evening. A certain
infinitesimal dryness of tone on Gertrude's part was the inevitable
result of her finding that that whispered summons came only from
Richard. She was preoccupied. Captain Severn had told her a fortnight
before, that, in case of news of a defeat, he should not await the
expiration of his leave of absence to return. Such news had now come,
and her inference was that her friend would immediately take his
departure. She could not but suppose that he would come and bid her
farewell, and what might not be the incidents, the results, of such a
visit? To tell the whole truth, it was under the pressure of these
reflections that, twenty minutes before, Gertrude had dismissed our two
gentlemen. That this long story should be told in the dozen words with
which she greeted Richard, will seem unnatural to the disinterested
reader. But in those words, poor Richard, with a lover's clairvoyance,
read it at a single glance. The same resentful impulse, the same
sickening of the heart, that he had felt in the conservatory, took
possession of him once more. To be witness of Severn's passion for
Gertrude,--that he could endure. To be witness of Gertrude's passion for
Severn,--against that obligation his reason rebelled.
"What is it you wish, Richard?" Gertrude repeated. "Have you forgotten
anything?"
"Nothing! nothing!" cried the young man. "It's no matter!"
He gave a great pull at his bridle, and almost brought his horse back on
his haunches, and then, wheeling him about on himself, he thrust in his
spurs and galloped out of the gate.
On the highway he came upon Major Luttrel, who stood looking down the
lane.
"I'm going to the Devil, sir!" cried Richard. "Give me your hand on it."
Luttrel held out his hand. "My poor young man," said he, "you're out of
your head. I'm sorry for you. You haven't been making a fool of
yourself?"
"Yes, a damnable fool of myself!"
Luttrel breathed freely. "You'd better go home and go to bed," he said.
"You'll make yourself ill by going on at this rate."
"I--I'm afraid to go home," said Richard, in a broken voice. "For God's
sake, come with me!"--and the wretched fellow burst into tears. "I'm too
bad for any company but yours," he cried, in his sobs.
The Major winced, but he took pity. "Come, come," said he, "we'll pull
through. I'll go home with you."
They rode off together. That night Richard went to bed miserably drunk;
although Major Luttrel had left him at ten o'clock, adjuring him to
drink no more. He awoke the next morning in a violent fever; and before
evening the doctor, whom one of his hired men had brought to his
bedside, had come and looked grave and pronounced him very ill.