THE PASSING OF WANDA.
After night comes morning in the material world, but in that inner
sphere of thought and feeling, which is the only reality, it
frequently happens that after night comes a greater depth of darkness.
The early light of successive summer mornings falling into the
sleeping-room of Edward Macleod seemed to mock the heavy gloom which
perpetually enshrouded his heart. He was back in his old home, for the
pleasant circle at Stamford Cottage had broken up shortly after the
unexpected advent of Wanda. A few days of enforced civilization had
affected her more severely than the hard journey preceding it, and she
had returned to her native wilds with the feeling of a bird regaining
its freedom. Where in all the limitless forest she could be found at
any particular time her lover could not tell. He was her lover
still--he must always remain her lover. He had attempted to limit and
define the strange irresistible attraction she exerted over him, he
had voluntarily resolved upon life-long celibacy rather than subject
her to the bitterness of seeing him belong to another; and if in
thought he ever yielded to this great, untamed unrepressed love of
hers, it was with something of the exaltation and ardour of one who
makes a supreme sacrifice.
Edward Macleod was no sentimentalist, and yet he was conscious of a
very delicate, infinitely sad satisfaction in the belief that he would
expiate with his life the folly he had committed in permitting her to
love him. In the loftiest sense he would be true to her. He could not
be selfish and shameless enough to set forever aside the desolation
that his hands had callously wrought. As her sorrow could never be
mitigated it should always be shared. He would do everything for her.
She should be educated, and inducted by gentle degrees into the
refinement of civilization--he fervently hoped that it might not prove
the refinement of cruelty. She should not be left desolate, forsaken,
uncared-for; she should share everything he had except his heart. That
was to be kept empty for her sake--for the sake of the sweet dusky
maiden who had once possessed it.
Who had _once_ possessed it! Ah, was it true then that she no longer
held a claim? He had closed the door hesitatingly and with sharp pain
in her face, but now the bare recollection of the little brown hands
fumbling upon it thrilled him with a blissful sense that perhaps,
after all, his life was not to be the utter sacrifice that he had
supposed. Perhaps this peerless creature by some magical process of
development might yet meet and satisfy his intellectual demands. She
had already the soul of an angel--yes, and the beauty of an angel. And
yet he was not satisfied.
It was this haunting dissatisfaction that kept him a prisoner in his
room, one brilliant afternoon, when the fresh world without seemed too
insupportable a mockery of his jaded and cynical state of mind. He
stepped out upon the little balcony that ran under the windows of his
own and his sister's apartments, and looked with a sore heart upon the
eternal miracle of earth and sky. He sank heavily down upon a low
seat, feeling very old and worn. If the back is fitted to the burden,
it occurred to him that the painful process of adjustment would have
to be continued through an interminable period of years. Perhaps it is
only the stiff, bent shoulders of age that are really fitted to bear
the burdens that impetuous youth find unendurably irksome.
While he sat in utter silence, thrilled occasionally with shrill sweet
bursts of irrepressible bird song, and inwardly tortured by the
hateful whisperings of doubt, remorse and despair, the door of his
sister's apartment was opened, and a murmur of voices told him that
Rose and Helene had returned together from an afternoon drive. Through
the lightly draped open window their conversation, distinctly heard,
forced him into the position of an unintentional eaves-dropper. There
seemed at first no reason why he should withdraw, and when the reason
became apparent he found it impossible to make his presence known.
"Is your brother in the house?" asked Helene, waiting for the answer
before laying aside hat and gloves, and dropping languidly into an
easy chair.
"Oh, no," returned Rose, "he is never at home at this hour of the day.
Why? Did you wish to see him?"
"I? No! I wish never to see him!" The words were uttered in a
passionate undertone.
Rose came directly and beseechingly over to her friend. "Dear Helene,"
she said, "what is this terrible trouble that is preying upon your
life? Every day you grow thinner and whiter and colder--more like a
moonbeam than a mortal woman. Soon I fear you will fade from my grasp
altogether, and I shall have nothing left but the recollection that
you did not care enough for me to confide in me. I am sure there is
something dreadful between you and Edward."
"Something, yes, but not enough; there should be an ocean--a whole
world between us."
"I wish I could help you a little."
"Help me, dearest? It is like your goodness to think of such a thing;
but it is impossible. No, there is nothing tragic, or terrible, or awe
compelling, in my fate. It is nothing, I suppose, beyond the common
lot of a great portion of humanity. It is simply--" she hesitated a
moment, while a choking sob rose in her throat; she clasped her white
hands above her head in a stern effort at self control, and then flung
them down with an irrepressible moan--"it is simply that I am hungry,
and thirsty, and cold, and tired and I want to go back to my old home,
to my only home in the heart of the man I love. My poor child, do I
startle you by talking in this passionate lawless, way? You invited my
confidence, and it is such a relief to give it to you. To every one
else in the world I must keep up the desolate show of appearing
heartless and lifeless, incapable of compassion, of suffering and
yearning. But with you, for a little while, I want to be myself. I am
not a mere drawing-room ornament, prized by its owner, and gazed at by
curious beholders. I am a wretched woman. Oh, Rose, Rose, I am an
inexpressibly wretched woman!"
She caught the little warm hands, sympathizingly outstretched towards
her, and pressed them to her neck, where the veins throbbed fast.
"No, don't pity me yet--only listen to me. I am so tired of living on
husks, I seem to be nothing but a husk myself, brainless, soulless,
and empty. I am so tired of sham and pretence, of keeping up
appearances. I hate appearances. They are all false, unreal, loathsome.
Yes, I am a well-trained puppet; I smile and chatter, dance and sing,
am haughtily self-satisfied; but at night--at night my sick heart
cries like a starving child, and I pace the floor with it until I fear
that its wailings will drive me mad. I heap insults on my darling, and
profess to scorn his tenderness, and all the time I could fly to him,
and rain caresses upon him, and hold him closely folded in the arms of
my love perpetually. No, he is not to blame, and Wanda is not to
blame, for all this wretchedness. I don't understand how a woman can
hate her rival. The fact of their loving the same object gives them a
closer kinship than that between twin sisters. Wanda's sufferings are
too much like my own to permit me even to dislike her. She has rich
beauty, a rarely luxuriant vitality, and the immense advantage of
being free to show her love in a natural way. I have nothing but my
love for her lover! If I could only trample on it, despise it, spurn
it, but I can't, I can't! My love is stronger than my pride, stronger
than my life. It is not a mere fancy of yesterday, it has grown and
strengthened with my years."
"I remember one evening in York, last spring," Helene continued, "when
it was warm enough to leave doors and windows open to admit the free
breeze from the lake; I happened to pass a wretched little shanty in
the lower part of the town. A commonplace woman within was cooking
supper in plain sight of the street, and I thought what a miserable
lot must be hers. Then her husband, a grimy-looking workman came home,
and she put her toil-worn hands about his neck, and gave him a welcome
that left me dazed and desolate, filled with unbearable pain and envy,
because I knew then, as I know now, that for my darling and me there
can be no sweet home-coming, no interposition of my love between him
and the sordid cares of the day. The measure of my need will never be
filled. Ah, _mon Dieu_, it is very hard--it is bitterly hard!"
The low passionate tones died away into absolute silence. Rose's
tender arms were closely clasped about her friend, and her wet cheek
was pressed against the pale face on her shoulder; but she could find
no words to match the heart-sickness that had at last found free vent
in speech. Perhaps the deepest sympathy can be expressed only by
silence. In a few moments Helene looked up gratefully and with a
quivering smile. "Dear little, pet," she said, "it is a sin for me to
burden you with the shameless story of my griefs. I hardly know what I
have been saying, so you must not attach too much importance to it.
After all, it is only a mood." The inevitable reaction after deep
feeling had come.
"I wish with all my heart that I could help you," said Rose,
soothingly but despairingly.
"So you can. Give me those two blue eyes of yours to kiss. They are
blue as wood-violets, and look grieved and sad--so exactly like
Edward's." She leaned over and kissed them fervently. "Oh, I must not
yield to such thoughts. I must control myself. I must be strong. I
must conquer everything. Heaven help me!" The last words sounded like
a piteous prayer, as indeed they were. "Come and sing to me, Rose.
Sing my soul out of this perdition if you can."
The two girls departed to the music-room, and, shortly after, Edward,
with the soundless step of a murderer, crept down stairs and far out
into the forest. Like one driven by an indwelling demon into the
wilderness he walked swiftly with great strides away from his trouble.
No, not away from it, for it surrounded him like the atmosphere.
Sometimes he stopped from sheer exhaustion, and leaned heavily against
a tree, while the perspiration stood on his brow in large drops. At
one of these times there was a rustling among the thick leaves behind
him, and Wanda stole timidly, yet with the fearless innocence of a
child, to his side. He groaned aloud as she hid her face upon his
breast. "Ah, you are sad as a night in the moon of dying leaves," she
said, pulling his arms about her.
"It is because I do not love you," he returned, and the cruel sentence
was softened by the measureless sadness of his tone.
"Oh, but you shall love me!" Each passionate word seemed a link in a
strong chain that bound him inexorably to her. "What does it matter,"
she pleaded, "that you care little for me now? My love is great enough
for both. I can give my life up, but I can never give you up. You are
dearer to me than life!"
She leaned over him, and he felt as in a dream the old potential charm
of her flower-sweet breath and glowing beauty. Still, though he
submitted to her caresses, he did not return them. Within his ears the
impassioned words of Helene were sounding perpetually, deafening him
to every other appeal. His visible presence was with Wanda, his breast
was deeply stirred with pity and affection and remorse for her, but
his soul was left behind with that stricken girl, to whose
broken-hearted confessions he had been a forced listener.
The day had lost its brightness, as though twilight had suddenly laid
her dusky hand across the burning gaze of noon; the shadows deepened
perceptibly about them; the sky threatened, the darkened trees seemed
full of dread, the last gleam of light faded swiftly into the black
approaching clouds, and they were speedily engulfed in one of those
impatient summer showers, whose sharp fury quickly spends itself.
Edward was reminded of that time a year ago when they were alone in
the storm. Again the Indian girl bent reverently to the ground,
exclaiming in awed accents, "The Great Spirit is angry." "He has need
to be angry," muttered the young man, hurrying his companion to a
denser part of the forest, where the thickly intermingled boughs might
form a roof above them. But before they reached it a terrific burst of
thunder broke upon their ears, and a tree beside them was suddenly
snapped by the wind, and flung to the ground. The girl, with the quick
instinct of a savage, stepped aside, pulling hard as she did so upon
the arm of Edward. But he, walking as one in a dream, was scarcely
less unconscious of what was going on around him than when, a moment
later, he lay, felled to the earth by the fallen tree.
Wanda uttered an ejaculation of horror and alarm, and exerting all her
strength she dragged the inanimate figure away from its enshrouding
coverlet of leaves. The rain beat heavily upon the bloodless, upturned
face. "What can I do for you?" she cried in despair, taking his
handkerchief and binding tightly the deep wound on his head. He opened
his eyes languidly, and murmured scarcely above his breath, "Bring
Helene!" She did not pause even to kiss the pale lips, but flew swift
as Love itself upon Love's errand. And yet, in her consuming desire to
obey the least wish of her idol, it seemed to her that every fibre of
her eager frame was clogged and weighted with lead. The rain blinded
her eyes, the tangled underbrush tripped her feet, and more than once
she fell panting and trembling on the dead leaves. Only for a moment;
then she sprang up again, leaping, running, pushing away the branches
that stretched across her path, spurning at every step the solid earth
that interposed so much of its dull bulk between her and her heart's
desire. Reaching the lake she jumped quickly into a boat Edward had
given her, which lay near, and she made haste for Kempenfeldt Bay.
The rain ceased before she reached Pine Towers, and with the first
radiant glance of the sun Helene had come to the wood's edge for the
sake of the forest odours, which are never so pungent and delicious as
immediately after a thunder-storm. In the thinnest, most transparent
of summer white gowns, with her lily-pale face and drooping figure,
she looked like some rare flower which the storm in pity had spared.
So thought Wanda, who, now that the object of her search was in sight,
approached very slowly and wearily, her breast rent by fierce pangs of
jealousy. Why had Edward wished at such a critical time for this
useless weakling? What possible good could she be to him in what might
be his dying moments? And all the time, Helene, fixing her sad eyes
upon this wild girl of the woods, noting her drenched, ragged and
earth-stained raiment, and the dark sullen expression that jealousy
had painted upon her face, saw more than all and above all the
overwhelming beauty, which belittled all externals, and made them
scarcely worth notice. "What wonder," thought Helene, "that Edward is
given up heart and soul to this peerless creature, when the mere sight
of her quickens my slow pulses?"
The two loves of Edward Macleod stood face to face. Wanda explained
her presence in a few cold words. "Some of the family can take a
carriage and everything necessary and go to him by the road," she
said. "You will reach him much sooner by letting me row you across the
bay in my boat."
Helene trembled visibly, and a great longing possessed her to go
instantly to Edward. Then a strong fear seized her. She felt a
profound distrust of this beautiful savage with the coarse garments,
rough speech, and strangely marred visage. Perhaps to revenge herself
for Edward's suspected unfaithfulness she had killed him in the
forest, and wished now to satiate her appetite for vengeance by taking
the woman who loved him to view her ghastly work. Perhaps the whole
story was a fabrication to lure her to some lonely spot in the
boundless woods, where she would be horribly murdered. Perhaps--
"Come!" urged Wanda, with passionate entreaty. "He is dying."
"Is it you who have killed him?" demanded Helene, sternly voicing all
her fears in that black suspicion.
The girl turned away with a quick writhing motion. "No," she groaned,
"it is he who has killed me--with two words--_bring Helene_." She
darted to the house with the news of Edward's accident, and then to
the beach, where Helene was already before her. The tiny skiff was
pushed off, and the two girls were alone together.
As long as she lived Helene DeBerczy remembered that swift boat ride
across the bay. Great masses of black clouds still hung heavily in the
western sky, occasionally pierced by a brilliant flash of sunshine,
that emphasized by contrast the dreariness succeeding it. Below, the
waters were dark and troubled, while from the flat shores rose the
majestic monotony of the forest, chill, shadowy, inscrutable. But
these were as the frame of a picture, that printed itself indelibly
upon the heart of this high-born woman of the world--the picture of a
tropically beautiful face, now for the first time deathly pale, and
seamed with lines of unutterable anguish; of bare rounded arms,
showing in their raised muscles, and in the tense grasp of the oars,
a power of self-repression awful in its strength; of deeply-heaving
bosom, beneath which was raging that old, old conflict between true
and false love--the true love that gives everything, the false love
that grasps everything; of the passionate, eloquent, suffering eyes,
full of jealousy and yearning, fierce hate and fiercer desire, and
behind all, yes, dominating all, the struggle for martyr-like
self-effacement whose cry forever is, not for my sake, but for the
sake of one that I love. Great waves of pity overwhelmed every other
emotion in Helene's breast, as she leaned forward. "My poor child,"
she said, "how intensely you love him! Do not let my coming hurt you
so, I have long ago yielded him to you."
"But he has not yielded himself to me," moaned the girl, her ashen
lips framing the cry that came from her soul. The boat grated in the
sand, and she sprang out, and pulled it upon the beach. Then, taking
in a feverish clasp the delicately-draped arm of the other, she
hurried her to the spot where Edward still lay, deadly pale but
conscious. He did not look at Wanda--he had no eyes save for Helene.
With a little cry of passionate love and sorrow she flung herself
beside him, and drew the white wounded face close to her aching heart.
His broken syllables of love were in her ears, his head was nestled,
like that of a weary child, within her arms, his blood was staining
the white laces on her breast. For a moment Wanda paused and looked
upon them; then noiselessly as a dream she vanished away.
But where in the wide, pitiless world is there a place of refuge for a
woman's broken heart? Instinctively Wanda went back to the boat, and
rowed far out upon the troubled waters. The afternoon's storm had been
but the warning of a wilder one yet to come; the heavy skies shut down
on all sides, adamantine and inexorable as the fate enshrouding her;
from the mute mysterious woods came the sighing of the wind, sinking
now into deep moaning, then rising into a shrill anguish, that was
answered by the sobbing of the waves upon the beach. All nature seemed
stirred to the heart at the hopeless misery of this her cherished
child. But Wanda's eyes were blank, and her ears deafened to the
sights and sounds around her. With the desperation of despair she
rowed fast and strenuously out into the heaving lake, while hours
passed, and the black night, like a pall, enveloped all things
earthly. At last, with her strength utterly gone, she dropped the oars
and drifted wherever the wild tide might choose to take her. Low
mutterings of thunder shook the air, and with them she mingled the
notes of an Indian death-chant. Before the weird, heart-breaking tones
had ceased, the black heavens opened, and tears of pity were rained
upon this desolate human soul. She lay outstretched, her glorious face
upturned to the starless skies, her tired hands far apart over the
sides of the boat. Towards them with wolfish haste rushed the
white-capped breakers, rising in fury as they reached the little
craft, and flinging themselves wildly across it. Wanda paid no heed.
Her voice rose once again, thrilling the air with its wild sweet
melody, and then she sank, without even a convulsive clutch at the
frail bark which overturned upon her.
So perished the life that was naught but a mere empty husk, since
love, its strong sweet occupant, had departed. Alas, poor Wanda! alas,
poor little one, whose sore feet and sorer heart could find no
resting-place in all this wide hard world. The anguished winds moaned
on far into the night; the sad waves, now racked and scourged by the
tempest, sobbed ceaselessly upon the beach; the pitiful heavens
outpoured their flood of tears, but the tortured soul that had
committed the god-like sin of loving too much had found rest at last.