There was one person, at least, in the village who had viewed the success
of the new drug-clerk in carrying off the belle of Newville with entire
complacency, and that was Ida Lewis, the girl with a poor complexion and
beautiful brown eyes, who had cherished a rather hopeless inclination for
Henry; now that he had lost that bold girl, she tremulously assured
herself, perhaps it was not quite so hopeless. Laura, too, had an idea
that such might possibly be the case, and hoping at least to distract her
brother, about whom she was becoming quite anxious, she had Ida over to
tea once or twice, and, by various other devices which with a clever
woman are matters of course, managed to throw her in his way.
He was too much absorbed to take any notice of this at first, but, one
evening when Ida was at tea with them, it suddenly flashed upon him, and
his face reddened with annoyed embarrassment. He had never felt such a
cold anger at Laura as at that moment. He had it in his heart to say
something very bitter to her. Would she not at least respect his grief?
He had ado to control the impulse that prompted him to rise and leave the
table. And then, with that suddenness characteristic of highly wrought
moods, his feelings changed, and he discovered how soft-hearted his own
sorrow had made him toward all who suffered in the same way. His eyes
smarted with pitifulness as he noted the pains with which the little girl
opposite him had tried to make the most of her humble charms in the hope
of catching his eye. And the very poverty of those charms made her
efforts the more pathetic. He blamed his eyes for the hard clearness with
which they noted the shortcomings of the small, unformed features, the
freckled skin, the insignificant and niggardly contour, and for the
cruelty of the comparison they suggested between all this and Madeline's
rich beauty. A boundless pity poured out of his heart to cover and
transfigure these defects, and he had an impulse to make up to her for
them, if he could, by sacrificing himself to her, if she desired. If she
felt toward him as he toward Madeline, it were worth his life to save the
pity of another such heart-breaking. So should he atone, perhaps, for the
suffering Madeline had given him.
After tea he went by himself to nurse these wretched thoughts, and
although the sight of Ida had suggested them, he went on to think of
himself, and soon became so absorbed in his own misery that he quite
forgot about her, and, failing to rejoin the girls that evening, Ida had
to go home alone, which was a great disappointment to her. But it was,
perhaps, quite as well, on the whole, for both of them that he was not
thrown with her again that evening.
It is never fair to take for granted that the greatness of a sorrow or a
loss is a just measure of the fault of the one who causes it. Madeline
was not willingly cruel. She felt sorry in a way for Henry whenever his
set lips and haggard face came under her view, but sorry in a dim and
distant way, as one going on a far and joyous journey is sorry for the
former associates he leaves behind, associates whose faces already, ere
he goes, begin to grow faded and indistinct. At the wooing of Cordis her
heart had awaked, and in the high, new joy of loving, she scorned the
tame delight of being loved, which, until then, had been her only idea of
the passion.
Henry presently discovered that, to stay in the village a looker-on while
the love affair of Madeline and Cordis progressed to its consummation,
was going to be too much for him. Instead of his getting used to the
situation, it seemed to grow daily more insufferable. Every evening the
thought that they were together made him feverish and restless till
toward midnight, when, with the reflection that Cordis had surely by that
time left her, came a possibility of sleep.
And yet, all this time he was not conscious of any special hate toward
that young man.. If he had been in his power he would probably have left
him unharmed. He could not, indeed, have raised his hand against anything
which Madeline cared for. However great his animosity had been, that fact
would have made his rival taboo to him. That Madeline had turned away
from him was the great matter. Whither she was turned was of subordinate
importance. His trouble was that she loved Cordis, not that Cordis loved
her. It is only low and narrow natures which can find vent for their love
disappointments in rage against their successors. In the strictest,
truest sense, indeed, although it is certainly a hard saying, there is no
room in a clear mind for such a feeling of jealousy. For the way in which
every two hearts approach each other is necessarily a peculiar
combination of individualities, never before and never after exactly
duplicated in human experience. So that, if we can conceive of a woman
truly loving several lovers, whether successively or simultaneously, they
would not be rivals, for the manner of her love for each, and the manner
of each one's love for her, is peculiar and single, even as if they two
were alone in the world. The higher the mental grade of the persons
concerned, the wider their sympathies, and the more delicate their
perceptions, the more true is this.
Henry had been recently offered a very good position in an arms
manufactory in Boston, and, having made up his mind to leave the village,
he wrote to accept it, and promptly followed his letter, having first
pledged his sole Newville correspondent, Laura, to make no references to
Madeline in her letters.
"If they should be married," he was particular to say, "don't tell me
about it till some time afterward."
Perhaps he worked the better in his new place because he was unhappy.
The foe of good work is too easy self-complacency, too ready
self-satisfaction, and the tendency to a pleased and relaxed
contemplation of life and one's surroundings, growing out of a
well-to-do state. Such a smarting sense of defeat, of endless aching
loss as filled his mind at this time, was a most exacting background for
his daily achievements in business and money-making to show up against.
He had lost that power of enjoying rest which is at once the reward and
limitation of human endeavour. Work was his nepenthe, and the difference
between poor, superficial work and the best, most absorbing, was simply
that between a weaker and a stronger opiate. He prospered in his affairs,
was promoted to a position of responsibility with a good salary, and,
moreover, was able to dispose of a patent in gun-barrels at a handsome
price.
With the hope of distracting his mind from morbid brooding over what was
past helping, he went into society, and endeavoured to interest himself
in young ladies. But in these efforts his success was indifferent.
Whenever he began to flatter himself that he was gaining a philosophical
calm, the glimpse of some face on the street that reminded him of
Madeline's, an accent of a voice that recalled hers, the sight of her in
a dream, brought back in a moment the old thrall and the old bitterness
with undiminished strength.
Eight or nine months after he had left home the longing to return and see
what had happened became irresistible. Perhaps, after all--
Although this faint glimmer of a doubt was of his own making, and existed
only because he had forbidden Laura to tell him to the contrary, he
actually took some comfort in it. While he did not dare to put the
question to Laura, yet he allowed himself to dream that something might
possibly have happened to break off the match. He was far, indeed, from
formally consenting to entertain such a hope. He professed to himself
that he had no doubt that she was married and lost to him for ever. Had
anything happened to break off the match, Laura would certainly have lost
no time in telling him such good news. It was childishness to fancy aught
else. But no effort of the reason can quite close the windows of the
heart against hope, and, like a furtive ray of sunshine finding its way
through a closed shutter, the thought that, after all, she might be free
surreptitiously illumined the dark place in which he sat.
When the train stopped at Newville he slipped through the crowd at the
station with the briefest possible greetings to the acquaintances he saw,
and set out to gain his father's house by a back street.
On the way he met Harry Tuttle, and could not avoid stopping to exchange
a few words with him.. As they talked, he was in a miserable panic of
apprehension lest Harry should blurt out something about Madeline's being
married. He felt that he could only bear to hear it from Laura's lips.
Whenever the other opened his mouth to speak, a cold dew started out on
Henry's forehead for fear he was going to make some allusion to Madeline;
and when at last they separated without his having done so, there was
such weakness in his limbs as one feels who first walks after a sickness.
He saw his folly now, his madness, in allowing himself to dally with a
baseless hope, which, while never daring to own its own existence, had
yet so mingled its enervating poison with every vein that he had now no
strength left to endure the disappointment so certain and so near. At the
very gate of his father's house he paused. A powerful impulse seized him
to fly. It was not yet too late. Why had he come? He would go back to
Boston, and write Laura by the next mail, and adjure her to tell him
nothing. Some time he might bear to hear the truth, but not to-day, not
now; no, not now. What had he been thinking of to risk it? He would get
away where nobody could reach him to slay with a word this shadow of a
hope which had become such a necessity of life to him, as is opium to the
victim whose strength it has sapped and alone replaces. It was too late!
Laura, as she sat sewing by the window, had looked up and seen him, and
now as he came slowly up the walk she appeared at the door, full of
exclamations of surprise and pleasure. He went in, and they sat down.
"I thought I'd run out and see how you all were," he said, with a ghastly
smile.
"I'm so glad you did! Father was wondering only this morning if you were
never coming to see us again."
He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
"I thought I'd just run out and see you."
"Yes, I'm so glad you did!"
She did not show that she noticed his merely having said the same thing
over.
"Are you pretty well this spring?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm pretty well."
"Father was so much pleased about your patent. He's ever so proud of
you."
After a pause, during which Henry looked nervously from point to point
about the room, he said--
"Is he?"
"Yes, very, and so am I."
There was a long silence, and Laura took up her work-basket, and bent her
face over it, and seemed to have a good deal of trouble in finding some
article in it.
Suddenly he said, in a quick, spasmodic way--
"Is Madeline married?"
Good God! Would she never speak!
"No," she answered, with a falling inflection.
His heart, which had stopped beating, sent a flood of blood through every
artery. But she had spoken as if it were the worst of news, instead of
good. Ah! could it be? In all his thoughts, in all his dreams by night or
day, he had never thought, he had never dreamed of that.
"Is she dead?" he asked, slowly, with difficulty, his will stamping the
shuddering thought into words, as the steel die stamps coins from strips
of metal.
"No," she replied again, with the same ill-boding tone.
"In God's name, what is it?" he cried, springing to his feet. Laura
looked out at the window so that she might not meet his eye as she
answered, in a barely audible voice--
"There was a scandal, and he deserted her; and afterward--only last
week--she ran away, nobody knows where, but they think to Boston."
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon when Henry heard the fate of
Madeline. By four o'clock he was on his way back to Boston. The
expression of his face as he sits in the car is not that which might be
expected under the circumstances. It is not that of a man crushed by a
hopeless calamity, but rather of one sorely stricken indeed, but still
resolute, supported by some strong determination which is not without
hope.
Before leaving Newville he called on Mrs. Brand, who still lived in the
same house. His interview with her was very painful. The sight of him set
her into vehement weeping, and it was long before he could get her to
talk. In the injustice of her sorrow, she reproached him almost bitterly
for not marrying Madeline, instead of going off and leaving her a victim
to Cordis. It was rather hard for him to be reproached in this way, but
he did not think of saying anything in self-justification. He was ready
to take blame upon himself. He remembered no more now how she had
rejected, rebuffed, and dismissed him. He told himself that he had
cruelly deserted her, and hung his head before the mother's reproaches.
The room in which they sat was the same in which he had waited that
morning of the picnic, while in his presence she had put the finishing
touches to her toilet. There, above the table, hung against the wall the
selfsame mirror that on that morning had given back the picture of a girl
in white, with crimson braid about her neck and wrists, and a red feather
in the hat so jauntily perched above the low forehead--altogether a
maiden exceedingly to be desired. Perhaps, somewhere, she was standing
before a mirror at that moment. But what sort of a flush is it upon her
cheeks? What sort of a look is it in her eyes? What is this fell shadow
that has passed upon her face?
By the time Henry was ready to leave the poor mother had ceased her
upbraidings, and had yielded quite to the sense of a sympathy, founded in
a loss as great as her own, which his presence gave her. He was the only
one in all the world from whom she could have accepted sympathy, and in
her lonely desolation it was very sweet. And at the last, when, as he was
about to go, her grief burst forth afresh, he put his arm around her and
drew her head to his shoulder, and tenderly soothed her, and stroked the
thin grey hair, till at last the long, shuddering sobs grew a little
calmer. It was natural that he should be the one to comfort her. It was
his privilege. In the adoption of sorrow, and not of joy, he had taken
this mother of his love to be his mother.
"Don't give her up," he said. "I will find her if she is alive."