door. "It is you who do not understand. There certainly is nothing that
any one else can possibly have misunderstood. I have been scrupulously
careful all along that there should not be. I have guarded every act,
every word, every look--"
Old lady Gordon burst out laughing like a coarse old man deep in his
cups.
"Oh ho!" she scoffed. "So that's how the matter stands, is it? How
high-minded! How prudently virtuous! How perfectly Sidney's daughter
must understand. How highly the girl must appreciate it. Of course she
does understand and appreciate your prudence, your thought--of yourself.
What woman wouldn't? Even a simpleton of a country girl must have been
overcome by it. She can't help forgiving you for trying your best to
make her fall in love with you, if you have been as steadfast--as you
say you have--in warning her that you didn't mean to fall in love with
her. How she must honor and admire you!" she taunted, with something
masculine in her voice, and laughing again like a coarse old man.
The shafts of her merciless scorn pierced the armor of the young man's
cool calmness like arrows barbed with fire. It seemed to him for an
instant as though flame suddenly wrapped him from head to foot. He felt
literally scorched by a burning sense of shame, although, dazed and
bewildered, he could not yet see whence it came. The blood rushed into
his face, into his head; his eyes fell; he could not keep them on his
grandmother's mocking, scornful face.
Old lady Gordon's fiery gaze did not fall, but it softened. A strange
look, one which was hard to read, came to replace the expression of
contemptuous anger. There was still some scorn in it, yet the scorn was
curiously mingled with vanity.
"Well, after all, you are more like me than you're like the men of the
family," she said abruptly, with a sudden return to her usual manner.
Lynn could not speak; he could not look at her. He silently bent down
and took up his hat, which had dropped from his nerveless grasp, and
with bowed head he went silently out into the shielding dusk.
XXV
THE REVELATION OF THE TRUTH
The first wound received by true self-respect is always a terrible
thing. And the truer the self-esteem and the better founded, the more
the slightest blow must bruise it. The deepest stabbing of the derelict
can never hurt so much or be so hard to heal. It may indeed be doubted
whether a touch on the real quick of a fine sense of honor ever entirely
heals.
A man coarser and duller than Lynn Gordon was, less high-minded, less
essentially honorable, could not have suffered as he was suffering when
he went out that night into the dusky peace of the drowsing village. Yet
he could hardly tell at first whence came the blow which had wounded him
so deeply. The suddenness of the arraignment had dazed him; the violence
of the attack had stunned him; so that he was conscious mainly of a
strange bewilderment of pain and humiliation, as though he had been
struck down in the dark.
He went through the gate as if walking in a distressful dream, and
turned toward the silver poplars, as he had turned at that time of the
evening for many weeks, but turning through sheer force of habit,
scarcely knowing whither he went. It was not yet quite nightfall; the
starlight was just beginning to meet the twilight, only commencing to
arch vast violet spaces high above the dim trees on the far-folded
hills. The silvery mists, ever lurking among the fringing willows of the
stream murmuring through the meadows, were already rising to cloud the
lowlands with fleecy whiteness, radiantly starred with fireflies. The
few languid sounds of living heard in the day, now had all passed away
before the coming of night. Only the plaintive song of the white cricket
came from the misty distance; only the lonely chime of the brown cricket
rang from the near-by grass; only the chilling prophecy of the katydid's
cry shrilled through the peaceful silence of the warm, fragrant
gloaming.
But the softest dusk of heaven, the completest peace of earth, is
powerless to calm the storm which beats upon the spirit. Lynn Gordon
strode on as though to confront the full glare of life's fiercest
turmoil. He was driven by such stinging humiliation as he had never
expected to know; he was goaded by such pain of mind as made his very
body ache. So that he thus went forward, swiftly, fiercely, for a score
of paces, and then he stopped and stood still, arrested by a sudden
thought which was as blasting as a flash of lightning. For an instant
his hot and heavy-beating heart seemed to cease its rapid throbbing and
to grow suddenly cold with sickening fear. Another moment and he felt as
if a living flame wrapped him again from head to foot, so intolerable
was the burning shame that flashed over him. Had Doris seen him--as his
grandmother had seen him? Had Doris recognized in his guarded attitude
toward her an intended warning to guard her own heart--as his
grandmother had said? Had Doris felt--as his grandmother had
charged--that he had thus offered her the most unpardonable indignity
that an honorable man can offer a modest woman?
Under the shock of the thought he recoiled from it as too monstrous to
be true. That exquisite, spotless child! That sacred embodiment of
peerless beauty! He could have groaned aloud as the unbearable thought
clung like a flaming garment. Yet he could not cast it from him; and out
of the smoke of memory there now came swirling many little
half-forgotten incidents. Small things, which had then seemed at the
time to be trifles light as air, now came back, seeming confirmations
strong as proof of holy writ. Under the light of this fiery revelation
one recollection stood out more distinctly than any other. He remembered
giving Doris some simple little gift. He saw again in this dim,
unpeopled dusk, even more clearly than he had seen it then, the
bewitching brightness of her beautiful face, the soft radiance of her
lovely, uplifted eyes, as he had put the bauble in her eager little
hands. And now, while he still saw her thus, he heard his own voice
saying an incredible thing. He now heard himself--not some dull,
blundering, brutal dolt--saying something vague about its being strictly
an "impersonal" sort of present.
Ay, he heard again the very tone in which his own voice uttered these
inconceivable words. And then he saw again the dawning bewilderment
which crept over the sunny transparency of the exquisite face; the slow
shadowing of the soft dark eyes, raised so frankly, so confidingly to
his; the quick-coming, quicker-going, quiver of the sweet rose-red lips.
At last, as though the glass through which he had seen darkly were
miraculously become as clear as crystal, he saw again the quivering fall
of the long, curling lashes over the lily cheeks, which reddened
suddenly, as they rarely did, before growing swiftly whiter than ever;
the sudden proud lifting of the golden head, which naturally drooped
like some rare orchid too heavy for its delicate waxen stem: the brave,
steady, upward look from the soft eyes, now suddenly grown very bright:
the abrupt laying down of the simple gift by the little hand, which was
always so gently deliberate in all that it did: the hasty moving away of
the slender form, which had, up to that time, rested at his side in the
perfect trust which only the timid ever give.
All this rushed back, bringing an unendurable self-revelation. The
firmest, deepest foundations of his character were shaken in his own
estimation. His pride of uprightness, his pride of intelligence, his
pride of good breeding, his belief in his own right feeling, his
reliance upon his own quickness of perception, his faith in his fineness
of sensibility,--all these now stood convicted of weakness and falsity.
Faster and more confusedly many self-delusions flew through the stress
of his mind, as burning brands are borne by violent gusts of wind. Thus
was hurled the recollection of that day in the graveyard, the day from
which had dated this growing aloofness of Doris, an aloofness so gentle
that he had mistaken it for timidity; the day from which had dated her
increasing unwillingness to continue these daily strolls--an
unwillingness so subtle that he had taken it for nothing more than
natural anxiety about Miss Judy. Not until this moment had he had the
remotest suspicion of the truth, even though it had gradually frozen the
sweet freedom of her innocent talk into the silence of cold constraint.
He had been standing still, bowed under this intolerable weight of
humiliation, crushed beneath this overwhelming burden of self-reproach.
Now he went slowly onward, unseen and unheard, through the gathering
darkness and the deep dust. When he came within sight of the light
shining behind the white curtain over the one window of Doris's humble
home, he paused again and leaned on the fence and looked at the window
for a long time. He felt that he could not go nearer it that night, that
he could not face Doris until he had more fully faced his own soul. As
he gazed at the white light, he thought how like it was to the girl
herself, so simple, so clear, so steady, so open, shielded only by the
single whiteness of purity. A soft breeze coming over the hills rippled
the silver leaves,--grown as dark now as the sombre plumes of the
cypress tree,--and stirred the white curtain as if with spirit hands.
And then as he lingered there came to him a wonderful change of feeling.
The thought of her stole softly to him through the warm starlight, sweet
as the breath of the white jessamine. A great, deep tenderness welled up
in his heart and went out to her, sweeping all before it--all untrue
dreams of ambition, all false thinking, all self-delusion. Then he knew
that he loved her; then he knew that he had loved her from the instant
that his eyes had fallen upon her, a vision of beauty framed in roses;
then he knew that he would love her with the highest and finest love
that was his to bestow--so long as he should live.
When this bitter-sweet truth came home to his troubled heart, it brought
with it a calm, tender sadness. Even as he recognized it he felt that
his own blind folly, his foolish conceit of wisdom, had robbed him of
whatever chance, whatever hope he might have had, of winning her love in
return. The fatal, unforgivable blunders into which he had fallen so
blindly must forever stand in the way. And he hardly dared think there
ever could have been any hope, even had he not so hopelessly offended.
For humility is always the hall-mark of true love. To be loved by the
one beloved is always true love's most wondrous miracle.
With a last lingering look at the light shining through the white
curtain, Lynn turned slowly and went down the big road toward his
grandmother's house, now lying dark and silent beneath the tall trees
which stood over it and amid the thick shrubbery which crowded around
it. The passionate emotion with which he had left it had passed wholly
away. The love filling his mind and heart, as with the sudden unfurling
of soft wings, left no room for anything hard or unkind or bitter. He
had almost forgotten the hard words with which his grandmother had so
cruelly stoned him; he had wholly forgiven them. For newly awakened love
can forgive almost any harshness in the awakening. He was not, in fact,
thinking of his grandmother at all; he was thinking solely of Doris, and
was planning to see her at the earliest possible moment on the morrow.
It was not easy of late to see her alone; he realized this now with a
guilty pang which touched his new peace with the old pain. Only on the
previous evening he had found her gone from her home, without leaving a
message for him, as she always used to leave one. Only by the merest
accident had he met her coming out of Miss Judy's gate; only by the most
urgent persuasion had he been able to induce her to take the accustomed
walk to the graveyard, which she used always to be so ready and even
eager to take. Ah, that walk up the hillside, which had been as a torch
to the tinder of his grandmother's anger! For that, also, as for
everything else, he alone was to blame. It was too late to undo what had
been done; but never again through any fault of his should evil speaking
or evil thinking approach her spotless innocence. It was not for his
strong arms to protect her; his own folly had forfeited all hope of that
sweetest and most sacred privilege. Nevertheless, he might still beg her
to forgive him, even though he knew that forgiveness was impossible for
an offence such as his. And he might still tell her that he loved her
and ask her to be his wife, although he knew only too well that she
would refuse. And then, having done what he could, he would go on with
his work. He had not forgotten his ambition, nor had he thought of
giving it up; but his old foolish belief that the happiest marriage must
hamper a man's life plans had gone with the rest of his blinding
delusions. He no longer thought of needing both hands free for the
climbing of ambition's unsteady, long ladder. It now seemed to him that
he never could win anything worth the winning without Doris to hold up
his hands; that nothing either great or small was worth the winning
unless shared by her. And his self-delusion had forever lost him all
hope of this. Yet he might still beg her to forgive him, he might still
tell her that he loved her and ask her to be his wife. Nothing should
deny him that honor and happiness--if he were but spared to see another
morning's light.
It came with all the misty glory of the late southern summer. There was
something melancholy, something foretelling the saddest days of the
year, in the sighing wind which drifted the browning leaves of the old
locust trees, wafting them down to the thinning grass. The dim woods
belting the purpled horizon already lifted banners of scarlet and gold,
waving them here and there on the hillsides, among the fast-fading
verdure. The sumac bushes were already binding the foot of the far green
hills with brilliant bands of crimson. The near-by blackberry briers
were already richly spotted with red. The trumpet-vine, with the
dazzling cardinal of its splendid flowers and the rich, dark green of
its luxuriant foliage, already made all the crumbling tree-trunks and
all the falling rail fences gorgeous mysteries of beauty. The
golden-rods were already full-flowering, already gilding the meadows
where the black-eyed Susans, too, were aglow, and where the grass was
still vividly green beneath the purple shadows cast by the distant
hills--the sad, beautiful, dark shadows which slant before the coming of
fall. Beyond the shadows and beyond the hills, the summer sun still
flooded the warm fields, turning the vast billowing seas of tobacco from
blue-green into golden green. And the wide, deep corn-fields, now
flowing in silver-crested waves, were already melting into molten gold.
The great ships of this vast inland ocean of grain--the huge,
heavy-laden wagons, rising high at the ends like the stem and stern of a
vessel, and drawn by doubled and trebled teams--already labored,
swayingly, on their way to the Ohio River to deliver their cargoes of
wheat to the big steamers which were waiting to bear them away to the
whole world. Many of these lurched thunderingly by Lynn Gordon, wholly
unheeded, as he went on that morning to seek Doris Wendall. It was very
early, as early as he could hope to find even Doris awake,
notwithstanding that she awakened with the birds. The wild
morning-glories, clinging, wet, fragrant, and sparkling, on all the
fences along the wayside, were not closed, and still held out their
fragrant blue cups, striped with red like streaks of wine, and brimming
with dew. The evening primroses also had forgotten to close, and were
still blooming bright and sweet, close in the corners of the fences.
Lynn bent down to gather the freshest and sweetest, because it somehow
reminded him of Doris, though he knew not why or how. As he straightened
up he suddenly saw her!--with a great leap of his heart. There she was,
within a stone's throw, just entering Miss Judy's gate. He was not quite
near enough to speak had he found any words; and, although he went
swiftly toward her with the long, firm stride of a strong-willed man
approaching a distinct purpose, she had flitted out of sight before he
reached the gate. He was not sure that she had seen him, but he felt
that she had; and the feeling brought back the new distrust of himself,
the new lack of confidence in his own judgment, the new insecurity in
his own knowledge of what was best to do. All these strange and painful
feelings, which he had never known till the humbling revelation of the
previous night, rushed together now, to hold him dumb and helpless, with
his unsteady hand on the little broken gate.
He turned with a nervous start at a sound by his side. Sidney had drawn
near without his seeing her. She stood within a few paces, looking at
him, and knitting as usual, but with a look of trouble on her honest
face. Silently he bowed and stepped aside, holding the gate open for her
to pass through.
"You've come to ask about Miss Judy," she said, lowering her voice. "I'm
afraid she isn't any better. Doris came on ahead of me, but I haven't
seen her since, so that I have had no news from Miss Judy for nearly an
hour."
"I--I didn't know she was ill," said Lynn, simply.
"Well, your grandmother did. I sent her word last night that we hardly
expected Miss Judy to live till daybreak." Sidney spoke a little
severely, and she looked at him with frank curiosity.
"I am sincerely grieved. What is it?" the young man faltered.
"It seems to be the same old weakness of the heart that she's always
had. Any kind of a shock has always made it worse, and this foolish
lawsuit of that crazy Spaniard's--over an old no-account note of her
father's--gave her the hardest blow she's had this many a year, poor
little soft soul. It didn't make any difference to her that the note
wasn't worth the paper it was written on, and that it had been outlawed
long ago. She has always had her own queer little notions about things,
and you couldn't shake her, either, mild as she has always been. And
she's always worshipped her father, so that she couldn't bear to have
anything against his name. He never worried himself much about his
debts. The major was very slack-twisted in business matters, just
between you and me. But the angel Gabriel, himself, couldn't make Miss
Judy believe that, even if he were mean enough to try. Last night she
came by my house, going on to see Mr. Pettus. She hoped he might buy the
house, and that she could raise the money in that way. But she fainted
before she could tell him what she wanted, and he carried her home in
his arms. Such a poor, light, little mite of a thing! She's been
unconscious most of the time since, but whenever she comes to herself
she tries to say something about selling the house--in a whisper, so
that Miss Sophia won't hear. Then she begins to worry, wondering what
Miss Sophia will do if the house is sold, and honestly believing that
poor Miss Sophia will feel disgraced if it isn't, when Miss Sophia
neither knows nor cares a blessed thing about the whole matter, so that
she's let alone to eat and sleep. I am going into the room now to stay
with Miss Judy while Doris goes home for a little rest. She wouldn't
leave the bedside for an instant last night. Wait for her," Sidney
added, assuming a blank, meaningless expression. "When she comes out she
can tell you how the poor little soul is."
With a strange tightening of the throat and a tender aching in his
breast, Lynn then stood waiting, with his eyes on Miss Judy's window. It
seemed a long time before Doris came out, and when she finally appeared,
there was something indefinable in her manner which made him feel that
she had not come of her own accord. But she was very calm, very quiet,
very sad, and very pale; and her soft dark eyes were softer and darker
than ever with unshed tears. She merely said that her mother had sent
her to say that there was no change. The doctor had decided that there
could be but one. And when she had said this she quietly turned back
toward Miss Judy's room. No, she answered in reply to his keenly
disappointed inquiry, she was not going home. She could rest and
sleep--after--Miss Judy was gone. There was so little time now that they
could stay together.
XXVI
THE TRAGEDY
The news of Miss Judy's illness reached the judge as he was leaving the
tavern for the opening of court. It was then too late for him to go at
once in person to ask how she was, as he wished to do, and as he
otherwise would have done. But he nevertheless turned back and went to
his own room, long enough to write her a few hurried lines telling of
his deep and tender concern.
And when this was written he was not satisfied. He sat hesitating for a
moment, listening absently to the ringing of the court-house bell. Then,
again taking up his pen, he went on to beg her not to give another
troubled thought to the note or to the suit. He wrote that possibly the
case might come for trial on that very day,--writing this as lovingly,
as tenderly, as he could have written to his mother whom he had never
known,--and going on to tell her that he wished her to know, only for
her own peace of mind, that the payment of the note, both principal and
interest, had already been arranged for, and would be made, if possible,
before the opening of court. This was, so he wrote, to be quite
regardless of the decision in the case, and solely to set her mind
wholly at rest. After writing thus far he still sat thinking, feeling as
if he had not yet said just what he meant to say, as if he had not been
quite tender enough of the little lady's tender sensibilities. With his
pen poised he looked out at the passing wagons and at the crowd
gathering around the court-house, taking no heed of anything save the
anxiety in his mind. At last a sudden, gentle smile illuminated his
grave, pale face, as he added another paragraph:--
"Of course you understand, my dear little friend, that this money is
advanced as a loan which you may repay at your convenience. You will
also understand, I am sure, that I should not have taken the liberty of
thus settling your private business without your consent, had I not
heard of your illness and feared that you were not able to attend to it
yourself. As soon as you are well enough you may scold me as much as you
like for my presumption. It is, however, to be between ourselves; no one
else must know."
He gave the letter to a negro boy and watched him fly like an arrow
through the clouds of dust which were hanging heavy over the big road.
He saw the child's hazardous dash between the great wagons, close to the
high, grating wheels, under the huge, clanking trace-chains, almost
under the beating iron hoofs. For this quiet morning of late summer
chanced to be the one out of the whole year when the grass-grown
solitude of Oldfield's single street became a thronged, clamorous,
confused thoroughfare.
But the judge cared nothing for all this unwonted turmoil, beyond the
safe, swift passage of the messenger bearing his letter. He did not know
that Miss Judy was too ill to read it, and he was longing to have it
reach her before she could hear any troubling news through the possible
coming up of the case. Turning slowly toward the court-house, he was
thinking solely of her, and the thought of her illness deepened the
sorrow for the pain of the world which always lay heavy on his sad
heart. As he thought of this gentle soul, whose whole life had been
loving sacrifice for others, and whose very life might now be demanded
for the wrong-doing of others, the sorrowful mystery of living perplexed
him more sorely than ever. As he thought of this other innocent woman
suffering, it might be even unto death, through a madman's causeless
hatred of himself--even his great faith, measured by his judicial mind,
seemed for the moment to shrink.