LANCE AND ADELA.
Sylv was on the point of beginning his journey, when Lance walked into
his boarding-place with a hearty salutation.
"Isn't this very sudden?" he asked, with pronounced astonishment at
Sylv's new move.
"It looks so to you," said the young man. "But I've been thinking it
over a long time. It isn't best for me to stay here."
Lance saw that something was held in reserve, but could not conjecture
what. "Suit yourself, Sylv," he returned. "If you're satisfied, I ought
to be."
"Besides," said Sylv, with the air of having already given one reason,
"I ought to do some of that work I promised for you."
"It _would_ be an advantage to begin exploring the swamp before warm
weather comes on," Lance agreed.
"Well, sir, I'm ready to go at it right straight off," said the other.
There was a disproportionate grimness in his tone and manner, Lance
imagined. The declaration had apparently cost him an effort.
"Lord bless me, Sylv," he exclaimed, abruptly, "how thin and pale you've
grown! I didn't fairly notice it until this moment. It evidently won't
do you any harm to have a change."
"No, sir. I have not been feeling well."
"All right. Wait till the afternoon train, and I'll go back to Beaufort
with you. I only want to see Adela for a while. Will you come along?"
He did not really want Sylv to accompany him; and perhaps this was
manifest in his way of speaking. Yet he was somewhat surprised when the
young man, turning aside and pretending to adjust some of the articles
in the forlorn miniature trunk he had been packing, said: "No, thank
you, Mr. Lance. I said good-by to her last night."
"It's just as well, that way," said Lance, nervously. "I have something
important to tell her, and it will be better to see her alone."
Sylv straightened up, and glanced at him almost fiercely. A suspicion
occurred to him. "Something important?" he asked. But he did not dare to
demand particulars.
Nor did it reassure him much, either, to have Lance answer, "Yes; I'll
tell you about it afterward."
For his part, Lance, in noticing Sylv's abstracted behavior, recalled
what Jessie had said as to throwing the young fellow so much with Adela,
and wondered whether there was any confirmation of her fear in the
constraint which had overtaken his _protege_. But he was so anxious to
see Adela, that he did not stop to reflect on that point more than a
moment.
Ushered by the matronly principal of the academy into its scrupulously
dusted but threadbare parlor, he awaited the girl's advent with a good
deal of trepidation. The window-blinds were closed, and the interior was
pervaded by a mock twilight. When Adela at last made her appearance, her
figure, from the opposite side of the room, looked so dim and uncertain
that Lance was strongly reminded of the first time he ever saw her--the
time that she rose out of the earth, as it were, and again crumbled back
into it.
"Miss Reefe!" he said, scarcely above a murmur.
"Oh, Mr. Lance! Sylv told me you were coming." And she approached him
through the dimness of the room, groping, one might say.
They shook hands formally, and to Lance's distraught fancy it seemed as
if her fingers withdrew themselves with the recoil of absolute dislike
from the touch of his own.
"You're not glad to see me, I'm afraid," he began, boldly.
"Oh yes--yes I am. What makes you think so?"
"I can hardly tell, but I think I should know if you were. It is so dark
here I can barely see you. Shall I open a shutter?" He made a movement
to do so.
"It is light enough for me," Adela answered; and he at once desisted
from his purpose. "Won't you sit down?" she asked.
He accepted the invitation.
They conversed for a few moments about her studies and about what he
himself had been doing since they last met. But at length he said: "You
never would be able to guess, Adela, why I have come to see you to-day.
You told me a very interesting story once--do you remember?--about your
people. That was a legend; but now I have a true story to tell _you_,
which is connected with yours. Would you like to hear it?"
"I always like stories better than anything," said the girl. "Do tell it
to me."
Thereupon Lance narrated the tale with which we are familiar, adding the
details of the picture, the first clew which he had caught in her
resemblance to Jessie, and the extraordinary coincidence of the old
rhyme from Wharton Hall. Adela listed intently, without interposing a
syllable; but he could hear her breath coming and going, and
occasionally she sighed. She was seated in a chair near his own; but,
though his eyes were growing used to the gloom of the apartment, he felt
her presence more by the warm irradiation of her vitality through the
air than by actual vision. From time to time there was an audible flurry
of light feet and flitting skirts in the passageway without, or in the
rooms above, indicating the movement of young women from one point to
another of the scanty scholastic edifice; and once a desk-bell rang
punctiliously from a distance. But otherwise they were uninterrupted. As
Lance proceeded with his story, the dimness of the light and the random
brushing of the breeze against the shutters aided a species of
hallucination that laid hold of him. While he retraced the mazes and the
by-paths of the tradition that led back so far into the forests and the
obscurity of an earlier epoch, the gloom of the wilderness itself seemed
to surround him; the leaves of an unknown forest-land muttered and
rustled in his ears; he felt like an explorer; he was making his way, he
could fancy, toward the goal of his long striving and his harassed
desire. Should he not meet, at the end of his wanderings, the object of
his search?
When he had finished the story he said: "_You_ have Indian blood in your
veins, Adela."
Her voice permeated the dusk slowly and hesitatingly: "Yes. But how do
you know?"
"I have seen your father, and he has told me." Lance rose and stepped
toward the window. "Gertrude Wylde was your ancestress," he declared,
"and she was the same woman as Ewayea in your legend. It is I who have
discovered this, and I have brought you, at last, out of all that
mystery!"
Flinging the shutters open he stood there, looking toward her. Adela at
the same instant left her seat and placed herself before him. Then, for
the first time, he could see the change that had crept over her
features.
"Good God!" he cried. "What has happened?"
Adela spread her hands out in timid deprecation. "I don't know," she
said. "What do you mean?"
"You are so much more--you have grown so like Jessie since I saw you,"
Lance returned, well-nigh gasping. "If it were not for that darker
tint--"
"Mr. Lance," she interrupted, "what can you be thinking of? Why do you
talk so excitedly, and why did you come here to tell me this?"
"Because," he said, "I have been intensely interested in the problem. I
believe you belong to the line of Gertrude Wylde. If you do, you
represent the woman whom my ancestor loved, and you are closely related
to Jessie Floyd. Do you suppose it makes any difference to me that
Indians came into that line? No; I see in you the lineal descendant of
Gertrude, and a kinswoman of the Floyds. I wish to have it clearly
understood that you and they are of one family. You must take the place
that belongs to you."
"What place?" Adela sighed. "Can you tell what place mine is?"
"Of course I can. Haven't I said what I thought?" But while Lance
uttered these words, he noticed how sad and wan she looked, and he also
felt the difficulty of bringing her within the circle of life to which
he belonged.
"You have made a great mistake," she replied. "I am only Adela Reefe,
and I cannot be anything else. Did Sylv tell you? I am going away from
here. I shall not stay any longer, for I promised to be Dennie's wife,
and I am going to marry him as soon as he comes for me."
"To be Dennie's wife!" exclaimed Lance, instinctively treating the idea
as though he had not heard of it before. "Yes; yes; I suppose you are to
be. But why should that prevent your being one of us? You will be a
kinswoman, a cousin, just the same."
Adela gathered herself up, and spoke with resolution. "I don't know if
you are right," she said, "but any way, Mr. Lance, if I _am_ a kinswoman
and a cousin, do you think Miss Jessie will want to have me for one?"
The best that Lance could do was to parry this direct thrust. "If you
are so," he answered, "what difference can her wish make?"
"I will tell you, easy enough," Adela retorted, proudly. "It is just
that I won't have anything to do with people who don't want me for one
of them. If I had ever supposed that coming up here to school would make
it seem as if I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have come. Oh, I didn't
know all this when I came! No, no! And I'm sorry I did it. I tried to be
grateful to you, Mr. Lance, and I do thank you for your good meaning;
but I'm sorry I came."
"Adela," he said, rather coldly, "I can't let you talk in this way. You
are proud and angry, and don't know what you're saying. Remember that,
whatever happens, I stand by you."
"I don't want any one to stand by me," she returned. "I am all alone,
and I will stay so. Suppose you had never come here, Mr. Lance; who
would have guessed that I had anything to do with that old English
family? I could not have guessed it myself, even. I know you've tried to
help me, and now you want to make something different of me from what I
always was before. But I'm going back to marry Dennie, and the best
thing you can do is to leave me where you found me, and forget all about
me. I shall just be Dennie's wife; that's all. I don't ask to be
anything else."
It may seem to you unreal that Lance should have been so much exercised
regarding Adela's happiness and her future, especially since he was
bound to Jessie Floyd by the most sacred promises. Unreal it is, I
grant, to people who live by the tinkle of the horse-car, the tick of
the clock, and the reading of the newspaper. But this individual,
impracticable man--so like many other men who, in dissimilar
circumstances, conceive themselves to be prodigiously practical--was
bent upon an idea. And he was determined to carry out his idea. He cared
more for his theory than he did for himself or for any one besides. It
was his ambition to be impartial--to secure the recognition of all
rights which he thought were in need of vindication. And so far did he
carry that desire, that he was really somewhat bewildered by it; in
consequence whereof he held himself ready, at this especial moment, to
sacrifice one great obligation to a lesser obligation.
"I'm not going to be satisfied with this result," he said. "I am
determined that it shall not be in vain that I have sought you out and
found you. Listen to me, Adela! It is a question of justice--in fact, of
simple humanity--and I'm bound to have justice done. You may go back to
Hunting Quarters, if you like, any day, and marry Dennie; but you ought
not to ask to be dropped out of our lives. I wish to see you put where
you belong. If you have changed your mind, and do not want to marry
Dennie, only tell me so. Your happiness is at stake, and it shall be
preserved at all hazards."
"How can you preserve it better than I can?" Adela demanded.
Lance delayed his answer, inwardly trembling. It may be that we ought
not to inquire into the wild and erratic impulses that assailed him at
that instant; but, amid their dizzying influence, he held fast to the
ideal of honesty on all sides.
"Very likely I can't," he replied, calmly. "But I wish to say that, if
anything should go wrong, if any trouble should come to you, I may be
counted on as your friend--no matter who opposes."
Adela melted at once into frank dependence. "Oh, Mr. Lance," she said,
"I have sorrows, like other people, and I don't know what they will
bring at last; so if you _will_ help me when I need help, I shall be
glad! But please don't think about me now; only let me go--let me go!"
And with this sorry climax the interview ended, Lance retiring with an
inexplicable sense of defeated endeavor. In some way, which he was not
able to analyze as yet, his dream had been exploded. The unravelling of
the mystery of Gertrude Wylde had been to him a romance of the most
fascinating kind; but now that the romance had culminated, no one seemed
to know what to do with it. Apparently he had followed a
will-o'-the-wisp, when he expected any good to attend his success in
ferreting out Adela's identity; for it had put him at odds with Jessie,
and it brought no pleasure to Adela herself.