THE MEETING
A hundred thousand welcomes! I could weep
And I could laugh—I’m light and heavy! Welcome!
A blight begin at the very root of his heart
Who is not glad to see thee! Welcome!
SHAKESPEARE.
“Emolyn Wyndeworth! Emolyn, my child, can it be possible that I find you
again after all these years?” exclaimed Commodore Bruce, seizing the
hands of the lady as she arose and offered them on his entrance into the
little study.
“You _are_ glad to see me, then?” she murmured in low and tremulous
tones.
“‘Glad?’ Oh, my Lord!” aspirated the old man with all his soul.
“Let me sit down,” she breathed in almost inaudible tones, as she sank
back trembling into her seat.
“You are not much changed; not so much as might have been expected. No,
indeed, you are not,” he resumed, as he stood before her, holding her
hands and gazing wistfully, tenderly into her face.
“Years of life without smiles, or tears, or frowns, or any emotion that
could trace a line on cheek or brow, a life in marble, a life in death,
leaves no vestige of its passage on the face or form,” mournfully
replied Emolyn.
“But, my child, why have you led this life? Why have you expatriated and
hidden yourself from your friends all these years?”
“You ask me why? Oh, Commodore Bruce!”
“Well, I suppose I know or can surmise your motive for doing so; but,
Emolyn, that motive arose from a very morbid mind. Oh, child, if you
knew how I have ‘sought you, sorrowing,’ all these years!”
“Ah, why should you have taken any interest in one so lost?” she sighed,
covering her eyes with one hand.
“Why? You ask me why?” he inquired, unconsciously repeating her own
words. “I will tell you, Emolyn. My poor boy, my poor Lonny, with his
last words, before sailing on that fatal voyage—committed you to my
charge—telling me that when he should return from his voyage he meant to
claim you for his wife.”
A low moan of pain escaped the lips of the lady, but she made no
comment.
“Ah, Emolyn, would to Heaven I had paid that heed to his words which I
afterward, but too late, found they deserved! But how could I have
known?”
“How, indeed? You knew nothing. Do not reproach yourself,” breathed the
lady in low, almost inaudible tones.
“But I ought to have known, or inquired, or discovered! Emolyn, child!
what was the meaning of the pleading eyes you used to raise to mine when
I would pass you in leaving Green Point, after a visit to your
bed-ridden uncle? Tell me, dear! Tell me!”
“It were bootless to tell you now what I had not the courage to tell
then,” she replied.
“And I—hard, cold and blind that I was, I never encouraged you to open
your heart to me, although I had promised my poor boy to watch over
you,” groaned the commodore.
“Do not reproach yourself,” she repeated. “I might never have been able
to confide in any man.”
“Yet I should have drawn your secret from you, Emolyn! Tell me now, I
conjure! In the name of the dead, I conjure you, tell me, were you the
wife of my son?” solemnly demanded the veteran.
She paused a moment and then answered in a low, distinct voice:
“I was.”
The commodore dropped his gray head upon his open hands and groaned
aloud.
“I thought so! I thought so! But not until it was too late! Not until
you had passed out of my reach and knowledge entirely. Oh, child! If
only you had confided in me, what sorrow would have been saved!”
“He wished to do so as soon as we were married, for boy as he was, he
had a man’s intelligent and delicate sense of honor. He wished to do so,
but I was afraid to consent. We were married nearly a month before he
sailed; and every day he pleaded with me to let him confess his
marriage; but the very idea of doing so frightened and distressed me so
much that he would yield the point.”
“Fatal timidity on your side—fatal compliance on his!” sighed the
commodore.
“I told you just now not to reproach yourself. I beg you now not to
reproach me, for I have already suffered the bitter fruits of my
cowardice, nor _him_, for he has passed beyond our judgment,” solemnly
replied Emolyn.
“My child, I am not reproaching—I am only lamenting!”
“That, too, is vain.”
“I know it; yet, oh, how differently all this might have ended had he
but confessed your marriage even at the last moment!”
“He was in honor bound to me _not_ to do so. At the very last moment he
implored me to release him from his promise and allow him to tell you
and his mother and leave me under your protection. But I was afraid to
consent and sent him away sorrowing.”
“Poor boy! Poor boy! Yet he did what he could. He _did_ invoke my
protection for you, Emolyn, although he was not permitted to use the
argument that would have bound you to us by owning you as his wife. Ah,
what a misfortune!”
“But I must tell you what more he did, that you may know how thoughtful,
how loving, how earnest he was. On the last night he stayed in his own
home he spent the hours which should have been given to sleep in writing
a long letter of confession to you, telling you all the circumstances
attending our marriage, and invoking your pardon of him and protection
of me. This letter he inclosed in one to me, in which he besought me to
seek your presence at once; or, if I could not summon courage to do so,
at least to keep the inclosed letter carefully, so that I might be able
to present it to you in case I should ever stand in need of your
friendship——”
“Where is that letter? Where? Why, oh, why, my child, did you never
deliver it to me?” impetuously demanded the commodore.
“At first I was afraid. Afterward, when the greater terror overcame the
less, I looked for my precious parcel and could not find it. My cabinet
had been rifled of that and of all my correspondence—of everything,
indeed, that could have afforded the slightest circumstantial evidence
to the truth of my marriage.”
“Who was the thief? Who?” indignantly demanded the veteran.
“I have no positive knowledge, and I have no right to speak of my
suspicions,” replied Emolyn.
“Oh, my child! If, even without those proofs, you could have summoned
resolution to have come to me and told the whole story!” sighed
Commodore Bruce.
“Are you sure that you would have believed me? Yet at one time I had
resolved to make a full disclosure of my relations to you.”
“I wish to Heaven you had; but when was that? Was it when you used to
watch for me in the hall and look at me with large, wistful eyes as I
passed out?”
“Oh, no; it was after you had gone away. I had been plunged in despair
by the news of my husband’s sudden death; but it was not until I
knew—what, in my ignorance, I was long in knowing—that I should become a
mother, and the fate of an innocent being would depend upon mine, I was
inspired with the courage to desperation and resolved to go away with my
faithful nurse to her relatives and stay with them until my child’s
arrival and your return, and then, if the babe lived, to take it to you
and tell it was your son’s child, and that I, its mother, was your son’s
widow.”
“I wish to Heaven you had done so.”
“I should have carried out my resolution if the fatal catastrophe had
not fallen so suddenly upon me. Then after the death of my child and the
shameful accusation——Oh, I cannot speak of this!” exclaimed Emolyn,
breaking off and dropping her head upon her hands.
“I know—I know,” murmured the commodore in deep emotion—“you acted with
the heroism and self-devotion of your race and nature. You refused, even
for your own preservation and vindication, to tell your real story and
bring our name into the trial.”
“Yet without it I was acquitted and vindicated by all but by myself.”
“How, Emolyn, how? What do you mean, my child?” inquired the old man in
distress.
“I know not—oh, I know not what happened that horrible night!” she
gasped with a shudder.
“You were irresponsible. You are free from reproach.”
“Oh, let us not talk of it! The thought—the doubt—has made me a vagabond
and wanderer on the face of the earth, trying to hide from the world, to
fly from myself. Oh, let us not talk of it! Let us talk of something
else!” She shivered and buried her face in her hands.
They were both painfully silent for a few moments.
At length Emolyn raised her head and spoke:
“Commodore Bruce——”
“My dear,” said the old man.
“I did not come here with any intention of telling you my secret, nor
should I ever have told you if you had not asked me the direct
question.”
“I only asked you, Emolyn, that I might receive confirmation of my own
convictions. I am glad and grateful that you came to see me and gave me
the opportunity of making inquiries that have brought out the truth.”
“Yet I should never have had the hardihood to leave my seclusion after
all these years if it had not been for one in whom I take a deep
interest. I mean my little namesake, Emolyn Palmer, whose acquaintance I
have recently made.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the commodore.
“I am aware that you know her quite well.”
“Oh, yes; she passed a week here—a very interesting young person. She
might have had a permanent home with us if it hadn’t been for the folly
of my nephew Ronald in fancying he had fallen in love with her.”
“It is of that ‘folly’ I have come to speak to you. It does not seem to
me to be folly, but an honest, manly, faithful love, likely to last his
lifetime,” said Emolyn earnestly.
“I am very sorry to hear you say that. I trust in Heaven, for his sake,
that it is not true,” gravely replied the old man.
“What is your objection to Emolyn Palmer as the wife of your nephew?”
“Objection? My dear lady, how can you ask? My objection is not a
particular but a general one.”
“She is beautiful.”
“Yes.”
“She is graceful.”
“Certainly.”
“Amiable and irreproachable in character.”
“Quite so.”
“Intelligent and fairly educated.”
“She is all that.”
“And is she not sincerely attached to your nephew and yourself, and
beloved by both?”
“Yes, it is true.”
“And are not all these qualities that you would desire to find in the
chosen bride of Ronald Bruce?”
“Yes, my dear lady—all these qualities are to be desired, but they are
not all that are to be expected in my nephew’s wife.”
“What else would you have, you exacting man?”
“Wealth and a good social position,” curtly replied the commodore.
“Emolyn Palmer shall have both,” said the lady quietly.
“Eh! Emolyn Palmer have wealth and social position? How is that
possible? You dream, my child!”
“Yes, I do dream, and I mean to realize my dream. The child, Emolyn
Palmer, has interested me more than any person or anything that I have
met with for the last seventeen years. I feel my heart so drawn out
toward her that I begin to believe in the possibility of happiness in
this life even for me, through her! For her sake I have come to see you.
I told you that in addition to all her personal attractions, she should
have the necessary ones of wealth and social position. Wealth I will
give her. I have no children nor near relatives to share my fortune. I
will, therefore, give my little namesake a marriage portion that shall
make her the equal in fortune to any young lady in this State. Her
marriage will give her the social position that is required, for the
wife takes rank from her husband. Thus Emolyn Palmer shall have wealth
and position added to all her personal attractions. Will you now consent
to the engagement of these lovers?” earnestly inquired the lady.
The commodore waved his thin white hand to and fro, as if gently putting
away her arguments, as he replied:
“My dearest young friend, that is all benevolent sophistry. I do not
wish my nephew’s wife to owe her rank to her husband’s family alone. A
beggar girl might do that. No, _good birth_, even before wealth or
personal attractions, is what I desire and insist upon in the wife of
Ronald. And let me tell you, my dear and gentle Emolyn, that this and
all other desirable attributes are to be found in the lady I long ago
selected for him—Hermia, my niece. They are indeed my co-heirs, and they
must marry. There, my dear, there is my decision. And now, my Emolyn,
you have known me of old. You know that when my judgment has decided any
course of action to be the right one no power on earth can move me to
alter.”
“I know! I know! That is the reason why I feared you so, and shrank from
confessing my marriage to you until it was too late. Do not fear. I
shall not continue to importune you, Commodore Bruce,” said the lady in
a tone of pain.
“Do not be vexed with me, Emolyn, my child. It is inexpressibly
distressing to me to be obliged to place myself in opposition to you on
any subject at this our first reunion after so long and hopeless a
separation. Believe me, dear, I appreciate the benevolence of your
actions, which is in perfect keeping with the tenor of your whole life.
I approve your kind intentions toward this young girl with only one
exception——”
“The only vital one,” murmured Emolyn.
“Be as kind to her as your good heart dictates in all things. Give her
the advantages of wealth and a higher culture. She deserves them, and
will put them to good use. Do all you please for her, my dear; but do
not torment yourself or me by trying to bring about a marriage between
Ronald Bruce and the overseer’s daughter.”
“Fear no importunity from me, sir. I shall not recur to the subject
again in your presence,” said the lady in the same tone of pain.
“Now I fear that I have angered you, Emolyn.”
“Oh, no, not angered, only disappointed me,” she replied.
Then rising and gathering her India shawl about her, she held out her
hand and said:
“I wish you good-morning, sir.”
“What? Going? You are not going so early?”
“Thanks; but I must.”
“At least stay to lunch?”
“Much obliged; but it is impossible.”
“Let me then introduce you to the ladies of my family. My niece and her
daughter will be happy to see you.”
“Not for the world. I came not out of my grave to make a fashionable
call. I came to fulfil a mission, which has failed. Let me go in peace.”
“But, my dear, your cousins—Mrs. and Miss Ward—are here, my guests. Let
me send for them and make known your presence,” said the commodore,
reaching his hand for the bell.
But the lady’s hand quickly arrested his.
“No, on your salvation!” she cried in great excitement. “Not for a
thousand worlds! Oh, stop! _Nothing_ should ever induce me to meet
Malvina Warde! _Never_ could I bear to look upon her—her, the cause of
all my sorrows—my enemy—my destroyer!”
“Well, well, my dear, you shall not see her! She is no great favorite of
mine, although she is unhappily my guest. Calm yourself, Emolyn. Sit
down and let me offer you a glass of wine. Do.”
“Thanks, no—nothing. I shall only trouble your boatmen to take me back
to the island.”
“They are at your orders, Emolyn,” said the old man, once more
approaching his hand to the bell.
Again she arrested his motion as she said:
“One moment. I had nearly forgotten an important point. But the mere
mention of that woman so maddens me that I forget everything else for
the time being! Commodore Bruce, what I must say and to impress upon you
is this—that I do not wish my name mentioned, or my existence revealed
to any human being, either in this house or out of it. Like Noah’s weary
dove, I have folded my wings to rest in peace in the ark of my island.
But the same day that reveals my name and identity to this neighborhood
sees me go forth again a homeless wanderer over the face of the earth!”
“I will keep your secret, my poor, morbid Emolyn; but—Ronald and Willet,
who know who you are?”
“I can trust them as I trust myself.”
“Then you are safe.”
“Now please ring the bell and order the boat for me.”
“Certainly. I may come to see you at your ‘Island of Calm Delights?’”
“Yes, I shall always welcome you.”
Again the old man approached his hand to the bell; but he was again
prevented from ringing it.