The conclusion to which the Rev. Mr. West came was that, if his
love for Amy was deep enough and unselfish enough, he would hold
his tongue. He believed that confession, apart from reparation, was
the refuge of the weak mind.
Having thus decided to bear alone the burden of his secret, he
went, early in the morning, and told the woman he loved.
Of course, there is no explanation of this vacillation and
indifference to his own judgment, except the mere statement that he
was in love.
“Amy is trying on her dress,” Mrs. Paul said, when he was ushered
into the library, “so, if you want to see her, you can go home at
once. But perhaps you may condescend to talk to me a little while?”
“I must see Amy, please,” he said. He had a way of putting people
aside so gently and peremptorily that Mrs. Paul, who was not a
yielding person, never dreamed of protesting.
“I’ll tell her. But she really can’t come down for ten minutes. Do
you mind waiting?”
“Very much,” he said smiling. “Tell her to come down just as she
is, and let me see her frock.”
“Indeed, she shan’t do anything of the sort,” said Mrs. Paul, with
indignation; but relented to the extent of letting him have the
library to himself, and going upstairs to send the girl to him.
Amy came floating in with a snowy gleam and rustle, and stood
before him, bidding him not to dare to touch her; though, indeed,
being a mere man, he was far too uncomfortably awed to think of
taking this glorious white creature into his poor human arms.
“You are magnificent, but you are not Amy,” he said; “do get on
some common clothes. I’m afraid of you.”
“That is as it should be, sir!” she told him. “I shall dress
like this every day if it keeps you obedient. If I had had on my
wedding-dress last night, you would not have dared not to stay to
dinner when I--wanted you.”
Her look, through the mist of tulle, of soft reproach and
challenge, was too much for fear, and he boldly kissed her; which
made her protest, and fly from further risk of crushing the bravery
of her wedding-day. When she came back again, in a blue cotton
gown, trig and pretty, with a bunch of pansies in her belt, there
was, fortunately, nothing to be hurt by being crushed.
There was a moment of tender and passionate silence. His errand
faded from William West’s mind; the reality of life was here! his
past was no more to him than the eggshell is to the eagle. So
when, later, leaning forward in his chair, holding her hand in
his, looking into her pure eyes, he began to speak, it was almost
casually. Before the great fact of human love, the question of
telling her or not telling her of that old dead and buried sin was
suddenly unimportant,--they loved each other!
“Dear,” he said, “I’ve come to tell you something. What you said
last night about having no reserves put it into my head. I had
forgotten it.”
It was characteristic of the man that there was no preamble;
his words were simple, and he was perfectly matter-of-fact and
unanxious; so much so that Amy laughed.
“Were you a year-old criminal? Well, tell me at once! I may
reconsider, you know.”
There was something in the assurance of her gayety that jarred a
little, and he said seriously:--
“It is a wrongdoing of my youth, Amy. I’m not sure that it is not
selfish to tell you about it; but I can’t bear the feeling of
holding anything back from you.”
An answering gravity came into the girl’s face, but she smiled.
“Tell me anything; I am not afraid to hear!”
Her innocent pride gave him a moment of sharp discomfort. Curiously
enough, what he had to tell her had not connected itself, in his
mind, with personal embarrassment; it had been too remote from
himself. He found himself hesitating for a word, and grasping
after that indifference to all but Love which he had felt but a
moment before.
“Perhaps I am a fool to tell you,” he began; “it may make you
unhappy, and”--
A startled look came into Amy’s eyes; then the color flooded up
into her face. She lifted her head with a beautiful, imperious
gesture, and stopped him with a word.
“I--understand. Don’t tell me. I--understand.” She bit her lip as
she spoke, and her eyelids quivered as though the tears had risen
suddenly.
“You understand?” he repeated, in a puzzled voice; “do you mean you
don’t want me to tell you?”
“William,” she said, in a low voice, “I do not think a woman has
any business with a good man’s life in the past; if--he was not
good. I am not a young girl. I am old enough to know that a man’s
life and a girl’s life are--different; but don’t tell me. I--love
you. Don’t tell me.” She trembled as she spoke, and then her eyes
sought his, filled with love and grief.
A wave of tenderness made his whole face melt and quiver. He
murmured something of his undesert of such love as this:--
“You are not like other women,” he told her, as every lover has
told his mistress since the sun first shone on lovers. “That
sin, the mean woman does not forgive. And yet it is so much more
pardonable than some other sins! More pardonable, dear, than what I
want to tell you.”
She drew a quick breath and smiled. “Ah,” she said, “I’m glad it
is not that!” Her relief was so apparent that he realized how
austerely sweet her face had been as she forgave him.
“Go on and tell me,” she said; “I am not afraid to hear anything
now.”
“That would have been the hardest thing to forgive?” he asked her.
She flashed a look of pride at him.
“The things I could not forgive, you could not do!”
This made him glow. After all, who would not confess anything, to
be met by such confident love as this?
“This happened long ago, Amy; when I was nineteen. I forged a check
for five hundred dollars.”
“Forged!” Her lips fell apart; she sat staring at him.
He was holding her hand, lifting it to his lips sometimes, and
looking at it as it lay in his. He went on, quietly:--
“It was when I was at college; I needed money; and--poor,
desperate, wicked, silly young man--I forged Professor Wilson’s
name. I don’t know what I supposed would become of me when it
was found out. And I don’t know what would have become of me,
but Henry Wilson died before the month was out, and so, by some
strange chance, it never was discovered. If it had been--well,
you and I would not have been here to-day. Human justice would
have interposed before Divine mercy”--He looked up with a solemn
elation which seemed to put self out of his mind. “I might have
gone lower and lower! Who can say? It was an easy thing to do,
for I was his secretary, and he trusted me. That, of course, was
the most horrible part of what I did, the part that now seems to
me incomprehensible--the broken trust! Well, of course, I made
reparation, as I called it, out of the money he left me. I gave
away many times the amount I stole; but it was only because I was
scared at the risk I had run, and the thought of it harassed me. It
was a sort of expedient morality, you know; a sort of bargain with
my conscience for peace of mind. Then, about a year afterwards, I
met X----. I heard him preach, and life changed. How extraordinary
it seems to look back upon it now! Then I repented. Before, I had
only reformed. That was when I entered the divinity school. But
just think, Amy, just think of the difference! How life might have
gone--yet here I am to-day, your lover, your husband. Oh, the mercy
of God!”
He was deeply moved. He got up and walked the length of the room.
Amy sat silently looking down at her hands in her lap. When he
came back, his eyes were full of peace.
“That is all, dearest; now we will forget it. You know my life as
you do your own.”
“Forget it?” she repeated, with a sudden, sobbing laugh, that tore
at the man’s heart.
“Amy! dearest! have I shocked you so? Remember, it was twenty-three
years ago; I was only a boy. Let me tell you how it was: I was
madly in love with a woman; at least, it was not love, but I
thought it was; she fascinated me, and”--
“Oh, go on--go on!” she interrupted, hoarsely; “as if I cared about
that!”
He tried to take her hand, but she made a pretense of arranging
the flowers in her belt; her head was turned a little from him. He
leaned forward, with a grave authority to command her attention,
took the pansies from her, and held them in his hand.
“I was possessed to marry her. Of course, she would not look at
me--a penniless, charity student. But I strained every nerve to
win her. It was the old story. She took my flowers, or theatre
tickets, or anything I could give her. Curious, the mercenariness
of the woman did not revolt me! But I was mad about her. I thought,
at last, that if I had money I could give her some jewels she
wanted, and perhaps she would accept me. That was how it came
about. She took the diamonds, and eloped with a married man two
days afterwards.”
As he told the story, the grossness of it all came over him,--the
offense to the exquisite delicacy of the girl beside him.
“But I ought not to have told you this,” he stammered.
“What?” she said dully. “About the woman? Oh, as if that mattered!”
She turned from him sharply, putting the back of her hand against
her lips as though to hide their quiver.
Then she burst out: “Oh, why did you tell me? Why? why? Oh, I wish
you had not told me!” She shook from head to foot. “But it will
make no difference! I will not let it make any difference. I am
going to marry you. Only--_I never knew you_!”
Those most terrible words, those words with which Love destroys
itself, came like a blow between the eyes. He grew very pale. “‘Not
make any difference’?” he repeated, blankly, “why, what difference
could it make?”
She stopped crying, suddenly, and stood, panting, steadying herself
by her hands upon his breast, and staring at him. There was
something almost terrifying in this sudden pause and in her burning
look.
“It’s the one thing,” she said, “don’t you see? that lasts. It
isn’t like--other things.”
“But it was not I,” he said, mechanically. “Not I, the man you--you
thought you knew. It was a boy, twenty-three years ago. Amy, Amy!
Twenty-three years ago!”
She did not listen; she kept repeating to herself: “It shall make
no difference. I will not let it make any difference.” Alas, it was
not for her to say! The difference was made; the jewel crushed
under foot is no more a jewel; the rose thrown into the fire is no
more a rose. The stained human soul is no more the innocent human
soul.
“But you must listen to me, Amy,” he said. “No, I will not speak
until you are calm. Sit down. Look at me. Now, listen to what
I have to say.” He spoke slowly and gently, as one does to a
terrified, unreasonable child.
“Dear, I had forgotten it. So little is it a part of my life that
I had forgotten it. When I remembered it last night, it was with a
sense of astonishment, a sense of pity for the mad boy who did it.
I had no personal shame,--it seemed to belong to some one else,
whom I watched with sorrow and indignation. I do not believe that
to-day, more than twenty years afterwards, I have any business to
think of it.”
“Then why did you tell me?” she said wearily. “Oh, don’t talk about
it any more. I am going to forget it. Good-by. I am going upstairs.
I have a headache. Good-by.”
She let her hand slip listlessly out of his, and left him standing,
blankly, his lips parted for another protest, and the flowers from
her belt between his fingers.
V
As he went out past the drawing-room door, Mrs. Paul called to
him:--
“Do come here a moment, Mr. West. Isn’t Amy pretty in her
wedding-dress? You really must tell me what to do about something.
There is a family”--and she entered upon a puzzling question of
relief work, her forehead gathering into a frown, yet with her kind
eyes denying the severe common-sense of her statement, that if a
man will not work neither shall he eat.
“But you see we can’t let the children go hungry,” she ended.
The consideration of other people’s weaknesses and wickedness gave
William West time to get his breath; he threw himself into the
question with keen and intelligent sympathy. He pointed out this;
he suggested that; he cleared the puzzle out of Mrs. Paul’s face,
and all the time he was half deafened by a clamoring suspicion:
“Have I been a fool? She will never forget it! It will always be
between us. I’ve been a cowardly fool.”
“Well, that’s all settled,” said Mrs. Paul, with an air of relief;
“now tell me, what day shall I have Amy’s things sent to the
rectory? And shall I take the silver from the bank the day before
you arrive? Is it safe to leave it at your house? I hate the
responsibility of other people’s silver!”
“Oh, certainly, yes,” he answered, suddenly absent; and, with a
curt good-by, left her.
Somehow or other, he hardly knew how, he got through the day. There
was a service in the afternoon, and there were other people’s
affairs and sorrows to remember; fortunately, there always is duty
for us poor human creatures as a refuge from our thoughts! Duties
to be done saved William West from desperately going back to Amy to
explain. For he was guilty of the impulse of “explanation,” the
babble with which the weak mind is forever annotating its remarks
or its opinions.
Well, the day passed. In spite of a craving to see Amy that was
almost agonizing, he held on to his common-sense, and left her to
herself. In the evening, his lawyer came in, bringing some papers
in regard to certain property which it was the minister’s intention
to make over to his wife, and the looking these over, and the
business talk, was a relief to him. He began to feel that he had
taken Amy’s perturbation much too seriously; it would be all right;
she would see things clearly when the first dismay had passed. He
thought, tenderly, that he must not let her feel any regret for
having for a moment shown him her pain at what he had told her. Her
pain was only part of her exquisite goodness, that goodness which
held her, remote and lovely, like some pure and luminous star, so
far above the sordid meannesses and wickednesses of common life
that she could not understand them; perhaps even she could not pity
them. Only the sinlessness which was in all points tempted like as
we are can at once understand and pity; his thought, chastened and
passionate, fled back to his Master for comfort,--yet there was no
reproach of Amy in his mind.
It must have been after ten, as he and Mr. Woodhouse sat before the
broad writing-table, with the litter of papers and memoranda before
them, that John Paul suddenly burst into the room.
The senior warden’s strong, kind face was flushed; he was plainly
profoundly disturbed and upset.
“West”--he said explosively, and stopped, seeing that they were not
alone. “My dear fellow,” he began again, stammering with agitation,
“can I see you a moment? A matter of business, Woodhouse, if you
don’t mind. Can we go into another room, West?”
But the lawyer protested that he was just about to go home. “I have
married a wife; you’ll see how it is yourself, Billy, pretty soon!
Lois allows me twenty minutes leeway of the hour I name to get
home, and if I’m not back then, she threatens to send a policeman
after me. Good-night. Good-night, John.” And he went whistling off
into the night.
The minister had not spoken.
“Look here,” John Paul said, as the front door banged, “what
under the sun is this business? Good Lord, West, Amy’s sent you
a letter--Kate told me to break it to you, but I--confound it,
man--go and read it. The girl’s crazy. Go and read it. What are we
going to do?”
Without a word William West took the letter and read it, standing
facing Mr. Paul. (“It looked,” John Paul told his wife afterwards,
“as though he died, then and there.”)
“_You were right to tell me--only please--please don’t make me
marry you. I cannot. I could never forget. If it were anything
else--anything else--it would be different; but theft--oh, how
cruel I am to say that! but I cannot marry you. There’s no use
talking about forgiveness. I don’t want you to forgive me. I
want you to hate me; then you will suffer less. Hate me. I’m
not worth anything else. I’m going home to-morrow. It can be
said I am ill, and the wedding is put off. I am ill, it won’t
be a lie. Please don’t ask to see me. I cannot see you. Forgive
me._
_A._”
William West sat down, folding the letter between his fingers.
“There’s nothing to be said.” He spoke very quietly. Then he opened
the letter again, and looked down at it.
“West, for God’s sake,” John Paul entreated him; “listen, man!
don’t take it like that. The girl is out of her mind. Here, pull
yourself together! It’s a passing whim; you will bring her to her
senses as soon as you see her.”
“She will not see me,” he said. As he spoke his eye caught the
headlines of the deed of gift, and he read them absently:--
“=This Indenture= _made this ---- day of ----, Anno Domini
18--, Witnesseth: that William West, the grantor, for divers
good and valuable considerations to him moving, has, and by
these presents does give, grant, and convey_”--
The fold in the deed hid the rest.
“She’s got to see you!” John Paul said angrily. “What’s the matter
with her? Is she out of her senses? All I know is what Kate told
me. She asked me to bring you the letter. She said Amy had broken
her engagement. You could have knocked me over with a straw. She
wouldn’t give any reasons. But I’m touched by this business. If a
woman in my household suddenly forgets honor and common decency,
I’m touched by it! Unless you’ve given her cause?”
He walked up and down, breathing hard, his hands thrust into his
pockets, jingling his latchkeys for the mere relief of doing
something. William West put the little note into his pocket.
“I’ve given her cause,” he said.
His senior warden stopped in front of him, and looked at him
critically. “You’re lying to me. I know you! It’s a girl’s whim,
and I’m touched by it, I tell you. She’s a member of my family.
I shall see her (she wouldn’t see me before I started here), and
straighten this business out. Kate is nearly dead with it. My wife
looked like a ghost when she came and told me--and the wedding day
after to-morrow! No; I’m going to straighten this thing out. What I
want you to do is to tell me, man to man, what started it?”
“Amy is perfectly justified,” William West said dully. “I told her
this morning that I had committed a forgery.”
“A--?” John Paul sat down, his mouth open, his plump hands on his
knees, his eyes starting from his head.
“You are out of your mind!”
William West laughed shortly.
“I think, perhaps, I was when I told her. Yes; I was a fool. It
was twenty-three years ago; I had just about forgotten it. When I
remembered, I told her. It was too much for her. She is right to
stop now. If she can throw me over, thank Heaven she has done so!”
The bitterness of it burst out in that last sentence. Then,
quietly, he told Amy’s cousin the story of that long-buried youth.
When it was done, John Paul said huskily:--
“West, I don’t know what to think of your telling her; but I know
what to think of you. And I know what to think of Amy.”
William West said nothing; he took the little note out of his
pocket and turned it over and over.
(“He seemed to go to pieces before my eyes,” John Paul told his
wife. “I tell you, Kate, I saw him lose his moral grip! Poor
West--poor fellow!”)
Mr. Paul sat helplessly looking at his clergyman, until he had a
sense of indecency in watching the suffering of this silent human
creature. Then he said vaguely:--
“I suppose you want me to clear out? But just tell me; what do you
want me to do?”
“Nothing.”
“But don’t you mean to make any effort to bring her to her senses?”
burst out the other.
“There’s nothing to be done,” the lover said. “It’s over--don’t
you see?”
“It’s not over,” insisted Amy’s cousin; “I shall see her; this
thing can’t go on. I’ll send for you; you are well rid of her; it
will be all right, I”--Storming and protesting and contradicting
himself, he went out of the rectory, scarcely noticing that his
host saw him to the door, and let him out, in absolute silence.
Then William West went back and locked himself into his library.