“As a guide my umpire conscience.”
Morning accompanied as far as Chicago the special trains containing
those of the European guests whose official duties required their
immediate departure, but very many, including the Baron Von Eulaw and
his party, remained at Coronado.
With a good deal of effort, the episode of the baron’s conduct, and the
circumstances of the rescue of his wife and himself, were kept out of
the press reports, yet the affair was, nevertheless, one of those open
secrets with which many people enliven conversation.
Mrs. Thornton was, for once, disinclined to suffer her admiration for a
title to induce her to overlook the homicidal freak of her son-in-law,
and she urged Ellen in vain to formally separate her life from that of
her husband. Possibly her appreciation of the fact that Morning was now
more renowed than any European potentate, and outranked any king on
earth, and her comprehension of the further fact that he was still
deeply in love with her daughter, may have influenced her counsel.
Moved by some impulse, which perhaps she could not have explained to
herself, she took occasion when thanking Morning for saving her
daughter’s life, to confide to him the history of how Ellen’s marriage
had been brought about, to which she added the story of her married
life, and concluded by pressing upon him for perusal, a package of her
daughter’s letters. These Morning carried with him to Chicago, and their
reading induced him, after parting with his distinguished guests, to
hasten his return to Coronado, where he was advised that the Von Eulaw
party would remain for some weeks.
On a delicious afternoon the baroness, with Mrs. Thornton and Miss
Winters, sat in the gallery overhanging the old music hall on the sea.
Although a new and costlier edifice had been built, with improved
acoustics and elaborate design, the little gem at the corner of the
hotel, long washed by the waves and threatened by the breakers, seemed
still a favorite resort for concert and afternoon recitals, and thither
came many who sought for a restful hour under the eloquent discourse of
the old white-haired professor’s violin.
“It is a pity for the world,” said Miss Winters, during a pause in the
performance, “that so few are able to look into the soul of Tolstoi’s
labors. In one of his chapters he expresses the epitome of all musical
sensations in half a dozen lines.”
“I hope you are not referring to the ‘Kreutzer Sonata,’ Miss Winters,”
broke in Mrs. Thornton.
Miss Winters smiled rather than spoke reply. But the baroness took
greater liberty and rejoined rather saucily, “The regular thing, dear
mother, is to ask for some palliative to remove the taste from your
mouth after the mention of the much-abused ‘Kreutzer Sonata.’”
Mrs. Thornton replied with a look of high disdain and much fluttering of
ribbons.
“I am not punctilious, but I could not sit and listen to a defense of
that man.”
“I am not defending him, though I might, especially if he were my
client,” laughed Miss Winters. “I am only deploring that the world will
not forgive his truths nor forget his faults in the universal power of
his genius.”
It was well that the next on the programme was Beethoven’s seventh
symphony, and that the men strolled in soon afterwards, for nothing is
so prolific of enmities as the subject of Tolstoi, unless it be that of
tariff.
The enchanting numbers were ended, and the ladies left the hall, the men
taking another direction. At the foot of the stairway they were accosted
by David Morning, who, after a greeting, turned and joined the baroness.
“When did you return?” said she, looking full into his bronzed face, and
again at his traveling clothes.
“Only this moment. And how are you? and has the baron entirely
recovered?”
“Completely, I believe, and for me, one could not be so ungrateful as to
be ill in this place.”
“I trust not,” replied Morning absently.
There was silence for a moment, then, turning shortly, and looking into
the handsome face of the baroness, he said, without calling her by name,
but earnestly, and it may be added a little peremptorily, “I wish to
have a few moments’ conversation with you after dinner, if you will be
good enough to consent.”
“For what purpose? When? Alone?”
“Your first question let me answer later. Here, under the palms, on the
beach, anywhere, but alone, certainly.”
Each question was superfluous, of course, but she was gaining time. At
length she answered slowly, “I could wish you had not asked me for this
meeting, Mr. Morning.”
“But I am going away. Will you, knowing this, still refuse?”
“I will come,” she said after a pause. “We will sit here upon the
veranda, after eight. The others are going, I believe, to look at the
dancers.”
And, thanking her, he lifted his hat and withdrew.
The halls were not ablaze on this night, for there is not light enough
in the world to coax the sullen shadows from their lurking-places in a
modern interior. But the arches of heaven, albeit moonless, were more
obedient, and the electric scintillations searched and filled every rood
of ground with their unwarm but willing light, or chased with exact
pencil the willful outlines of orange and oleander, or the more tender
ways of acanthus, pepper, and palm.
Morning had wheeled a luxurious easy-chair alongside of his veranda
“shaker,” and sat with his hands upon the upholstered back, waiting for
the one woman in the world to him, while the promenaders, in full
evening toilet, filed in pairs along the thronged corridors, and the
soft strains of “La Paloma” floated down from the balcony and mingled
with the plash of the sea.
“Engaged,” spoke Morning curtly, as a youthful lord, accompanying the
British delegation, attempted to move the fanteuil aside.
“Beg pardon, I wish I were,” retorted the scion of a noble house,
striding away with the fair one upon his arm.
“There is hope for that fellow,” Morning muttered.
“I left the baron to be taken to his room by his valet,” explained the
baroness approaching. “He is a little tired and nervous,” and she
loosened the lace about her throat impatiently.
“Yes,” dryly, was the only comment.
“He said he might get around here before he retired. I hope you would
not mind, he is so very capricious, you don’t know.”
“Oh, no, I don’t mind, but if he comes I am going, for I ‘don’t mind’
saying also I’ve had enough of that fellow!”
The baroness looked up with surprise, but Morning went on excitedly:—
“Oh, I know I ought not to say this to you, but I must say it, and a
great deal more, unless you stop me! I say you are in deadly terror of
that man, and you hate him beside, as you ought.”
“How can you—who told you this? Surely you are assuming—”
“No, pardon me, I am assuming nothing. I read your letters.”
“Who gave you my letters?” asked the baroness in amazement.
“Your mother urged them upon me, and I was disloyal enough to read them,
every line,” a little triumphantly. He arose hastily and walked away for
a few paces, drying and fanning his face with his handkerchief, then,
returning, he leaned upon the back of her chair, and, dropping his
voice, said huskily, and with quite uncontrollable emotion:—
“Ellen—let me call you so this once, it remains with you whether I ever
utter the name again—dear Ellen, answer this from your own sweet lips,
have you a spark of love for that beas—man?” correcting himself too
late. “I know how capricious the heart of a woman is, and perhaps—but
no! take your time to answer, only give me your word,” and he walked
swiftly away, and looked out on the sea, and saw the waves beat their
soft white arms upon the sands, then returned.
The woman had turned to ashen paleness. The ever-repeating and
distributing electric light had forgotten the delicate tints of her
dainty gown, and the color of her hair and brows, with the roses upon
her bosom, and only the waxen face, with its dark eyes filled with
glistening tears, uprose whiter than the beams.
“Poor heart!” said he, noting the quiver of the sensitive mouth. “It
ought not to be so difficult to speak the truth.”
At length the tortured woman found voice:—
“David Morning,” she said, in tremulous tones, “I am not meaning to
question your right to give challenge to my despair, though, for reasons
you can understand, it is from you, more than from all the world, I
would have disguised it. You ask me if I love that man? I answer, No,
no, a thousand times no! But my sense of obligation as his wife is as
much stronger than my hate as misery is stronger than the social bars
which contain it, and I deem it neither noble nor just to utter
complaints against one who is, whatever may be said, my legal protector
before the world. I do not deny that I have suffered untold agonies, but
I may as well bear them in one cause as another.”
“I confess,” said Morning, with a manner suddenly grown cold, “I do not
fully understand you. You speak of ‘obligations,’ and ‘social bars;’ you
cannot mean that you would deliberately sacrifice your woman’s soul,
with all its honor and its aims, to a life of dishonor and deceit—for so
I dare to name it—for dread of the idle dictum of a malicious social
scarecrow?”
The baroness winced, but quickly rallied, and, leaning forward in her
chair, so near that he caught the perfume of the roses on her corsage,
she replied:—
“No! though I will say in passing that, whatever I might do, no woman,
be she termagant or angel, has ever lived long enough to escape the
opprobrium arising from the poisonous effluvia of the divorce courts!
However, that is not the subject under discussion, and my unhappy feet
are placed upon more tenable ground. I confess myself, then, not strong
enough to defy the convictions of a life given much—the maturer portion,
at least—to an examination of the ethics of the question. And I
resolutely affirm that, in my own mind, I am convinced that to seek to
evade the results of my own deliberate action, would be sinful, and in
violation of my own conscientious perceptions—‘a grieving of the
Spirit,’ in the language of a very old author, and, therefore, a sin
against the Holy Ghost.”
Is it possible, thought Morning, forgetful for the moment of the purpose
that had brought him there, that in this evening of the nineteenth
century a cultivated woman, herself the victim of a system fiendish in
its power to forge public opinion, and cruel as the Inquisition, should
have the courage thus to look her awful destiny in the face tranquilly,
and smilingly set upon it the cold white seal of conscience? And for a
brief moment he wondered if she were a saint or a lunatic.
Then he thought of the many shafts of argument that might be let loose
to pierce the diseased cuticle of her morbid philosophy, but he had not
the heart, or, rather, he lacked entire faith in their efficacy, so he
sat silently counting his heart beats. Finally, taking alarm at his
protracted silence, she resumed:—
“Do not misunderstand me; I am not narrow enough to convict, or egotist
enough to try to convert, others to my way of thinking; I only speak for
myself.”
“Your missionary seed would fall upon stony ground if you were so
disposed,” he answered quickly, almost rudely. “Ellen Thornton,” he
continued, ignoring the hateful title that seemed to have engulfed her
body and soul for all of him, “for thirteen years fate has been
circumventing our lives. I have heard your name over seas as you have
heard mine, familiar to all but each other. I have loved you with hope
and without it. Great wealth has been my portion, yet I would be a
beggar to-night if you would but share my crust with me, with love like
mine.”
Into the eyes of the woman, fierce with resolution and despair, there
came tears, half of pity, half of joy—pity for his fate and hers, joy
for that the love she had deemed lost and gone from their lives was
here, tireless and strong as the sea, immortal and sweet as the morning,
and the voice of the man whose head was bent near her own thrilled her
with its music.
“During all the years of parting,” continued Morning, “I have been
neither despairing nor misanthropic, but I knew that the passion of my
life had glowed and burned, and—as I thought—died to ashes upon the
altar whose goddess was the dark-eyed maiden whom my young manhood
adored. When, less than a fortnight ago, I was able to deliver you from
the awful death that madman would have inflicted upon you, my exultation
had but one sting, that I had saved you for another, and for such a
fate; and then, in my insane rage, I cursed myself that I had not let
you die under my dizzy eyes, and so have rounded my despair.
“But I have come near to you now, our paths have crossed. O God, how I
have waited for the hour! and how can I let you go? If I do, our ways
will again diverge, and every remove will bring us farther apart. Do you
know what this means to me? It is the dividing of my soul from my body,
of my heart from my brain; it means a galvanized life, a career of
eviscerated motives, a gibbering, masquerading existence, emasculate of
manly and fruitful purpose, a hopeless love”—and his voice trembled and
sank—“ashes and dust and nothing more.”
The baroness listened with passion tearing at her heart, while her white
lips were fashioning word of wise restraint. Could she trust herself to
speak? She envied in her soul the women she had known abroad, women of
convictions, with uncoddled consciences, charming, virtuous women too,
but without the monitor to guide the wayward thought, a sky without a
polar star, a ship without a rudder, and then she recalled the burning
words of the man beside her.
“I know,” said she at length, “that I owe you my life, and, in the logic
of natural sequence, I should give back that which you won. But it is
love’s sophistry, and, in truth, perhaps for no better reason than
because I so much desire it, I dare not. One phase of your argument
pricks my conscience in turn. You tell me that your usefulness must pay
the penalty of my decision. Unsay those words, I entreat you”—and she
leaned far toward him. “God has singled you out for a great destiny.
Fulfill it. You have the world at your feet; let that suffice you for
the present. I do not ask you to forget me!”—and her lips grew
tremulous. “I should die if I thought you could. But work on, as you
have been doing, for the sake of humanity, and wait heroically, as you
have done.”
“Wait for what? for somebody to die?” broke in Morning hotly. “For
somebody to die, that is the English of it. Most lives are made what
they are by some woman. She may be a mother, a sister not likely. Since
I received that long-lost letter—anathemas upon that circular desk,” and
he pounded the “shaker” arm with his fist—“I have had but one
inspiration in my projects, one question always ringing in my
ears,—‘What will she think of it?’ Now I have found you only to hear
from your own lips that my life is a failure, and yours a moral suicide,
which I seem as helpless to prevent as I am to put a stay upon yonder
waves that lash themselves to spray upon the rocks.”
“David Morning,” and her voice was firm now, “I think I owe it to you as
well as myself to tell you, even with the marriage ring upon my finger,
that I wish I were free from the yoke of this fateful marriage; that if
I could be delivered from the body of this death, then could I mount
with glad wings the great height to which your love would raise me. But
I could have no weight of a crying conscience upon my feet, no wail of
wounded justice behind me, and so I will bear it to the end.”
“You say, even with that marriage ring upon your finger. What care I,”
said he, rising and standing before her, “for that circlet of gold upon
your beautiful hand? I know it is a mockery, so do you, and but for it
that hand might have been mine, and all these years have been saved to
love and the heart’s gladness. What signifies the sanction of the law if
you have not the sanction of your own soul? I shall not seek to dissuade
you more, but one question I will ask of you, and if wealth could buy
words eloquent enough to couch it in, I would surrender my possessions
and delve for it again, if need be, in the depths of the earth. But
truth is simple, and so I beg of you to answer from your soul, and
thereafter I will do as you bid me. Do you love me, darling? do you?”
and he bent over her chair.
She lifted a face radiant with beautiful light. “Dearest,” said she
softly, and David Morning thrilled with delight—“dearest, I am glad that
this meeting and this understanding have come to us just here, where
hundreds of eyes are upon us, for, if it were otherwise, I should forget
all else except my desire to comfort you, and should place my arms about
your neck, and ask you to seal upon my lips your forgiveness of me for
all that I have made you suffer. God help me, I do love you, and I never
loved any other. You are my hero, my darling, and my heart’s delight.
All these years I have loved you, until the hour of death I shall love
you, and beyond the gates I shall love you forever, and forever more.”
Only a great sob came from the breast of David Morning.
“Noble man,” she continued, “you have accomplished a great work in the
world. God has selected and armed you for the deliverance of his
nations. You have other and greater work to do. In the doing it the
luster of your shield shall never be tarnished, as it would be were we
to wrong another now. Go forth, my hero, my life, and my darling; go
forth panoplied in your high manhood to your duty. In spirit I shall be
with you ever. I shall rejoice in your mighty deeds. I shall live in
your nobler thoughts. Day and night, my beloved, will my soul dwell with
yours. Only in perfect honor and faith can I join you. If the hour for
such union shall ever be given to us on earth, come to me and you will
find me waiting. If it come only in the other land, I shall still be
waiting. But here, my darling, my own, my heart’s solace, here we must
meet not again.”
And she placed her ungloved fingers in his.
The man and the woman sat silently hand in hand. The music floated out
from the lighted ballroom, where “the dancers were dancing in tune;” the
sea curled its beryl depths to crests of foam, and sounded in musical
monotones upon the beach which lay a white line upon the edge of the
dusk, and the old, old world, the sorrowful, disappointing world, the
weary world, was as sweet and young as when the first dawns were
filtrated from chaotic mists.
She broke the silence and withdrew her hand: “Yonder comes the baron.”
“Good-by,” said he, and he walked away into the night, and as he reached
the edge of the balcony overhanging the beach, and felt the sting of the
salt spray in his eyes, he muttered something. It might have been a
good-night prayer, but it sounded like, “Damn the baron.”
[From the San Diego _Union_, May 15, 1896.]
We regret to announce the death yesterday, at the Coronado Hotel, of
Baron Frederick Augustus Eulaw Von Eulaw, eleventh Count of
Walderberg, eighth Baron of Weinerstrath, and Knight Commander of the
order of the Golden Tulip.
The immediate cause of the baron’s death was hyperemia of the brain,
but he never recovered from the nervous prostration induced by heat
and long exposure to the sun, while in the performance of his duty as
one of the representatives of the German Empire, on the occasion of
the dynamic exposition.
This distinguished nobleman, during his brief sojourn among us, had
endeared himself to all with whom he came in contact, by the
gentleness and grace of his manner, his kindly sympathies, and
unselfish courtesy. The _Wilhelm II._ has been detailed to receive his
remains, which will be embalmed for transportation in state to Berlin,
where they will be interred with fitting pomp.
The baroness, who to the last was devoted in her attentions to the
late baron, will, it is understood, remain in this country in the home
of her parents, Professor and Mrs. John Thornton.