AN EVENING CALL.
When Leigh entered the drawing-room he found Miss Barhyte already
there. “It is good of you to come,” she said, by way of greeting.
The young man advanced to where she stood, and in a tender, proprietary
manner, took her hand in his; he would have kissed her, but she turned
her face aside.
“What is it?” he asked; “you are pale as Ophelia.”
“And you, my prince, as inquisitive as Hamlet.”
She led him to a seat and found one for herself. Her eyes rested in his
own, and for a moment both were silent.
“Lenox,” she asked at last, “do you know Mr. Incoul?”
“Yes, of course; every one does.”
“I mean do you know him well?”
“I never said ten words to him, nor he to me.”
“So much the better. What do you suppose he did the other evening after
you went away?”
“Really, I have no idea, but if you wish me to draw on my imagination,
I suppose he went away too.”
“He offered himself.”
“For what?”
“To me.”
“Maida, that mummy! You are joking.”
“No, I am not joking, nor was he.”
“Well, what then?”
“Then, as you say, he went away.”
“And what did you do?”
“I went away too.”
“Be serious; tell me about it.”
“He came here this afternoon, and I--well--I am to be Mrs. Incoul.”
Lenox bit his lip. Into his face there came an expression of angered
resentment. He stood up from his seat; the girl put out her hand as
though to stay him: “Lenox, I had to,” she cried. But he paid no
attention to her words and crossed the room.
On the mantel before him was a clock that ticked with a low, dolent
moan, and for some time he stood looking at it as were it an object
of peculiar interest which he had never before enjoyed the leisure
to examine. But the clock might have swooned from internal pain, he
neither saw nor heard it; his thoughts circled through episodes of the
winter back to the forest and the fringes of the summer sea. And slowly
the anger gave way to wonder, and presently the wonder faded and in its
place there came a sentiment like that of sorrow, a doubled sorrow in
whose component parts there was both pity and distress.
It is said that the rich are without appreciation of their wealth until
it is lost or endangered, and it was not until that evening that Lenox
Leigh appreciated at its worth the loveliness that was slipping from
him. He knew then that he might tread the highroads and faubourgs of
two worlds with the insistence of the Wandering Jew, and yet find no
one so delicious as she. And in the first flood of his anger he felt
as were he being robbed, as though the one thing that had lifted him
out of the brutal commonplaces of the every day was being caught up and
carried beyond the limits of vision. And into this resentment there
came the suspicion that he was not alone being robbed, that he was
being cheated to boot, that the love which he had thought to receive as
he had seemed to give love before, was an illusory representation, a
phantom constructed of phrases.
But this suspicion faded; he knew untold that the girl’s whole heart
was his, had been his, was yet his and probably would be his for all
of time, till the grave opened and closed again. And then the wonder
came. He knew, none better, the purity of her heart, and knowing,
too, her gentleness, the sweetness of her nature, her abnegation of
self, he began to understand that some tragedy had been enacted which
he had not been called upon to witness. Of her circumstances he had
been necessarily informed. But in the sensitiveness of her refinement
the girl had shrunk from unveiling to a lover’s eyes the increasing
miseries of her position, and of the poignancy of those miseries he had
now, uninformed, an inkling. If she sold herself, surely it was because
the sale was imperative. The white impassible face of the girl’s mother
rose before him and then, at once, he understood her cry, “Lenox, I had
to.”
As he moved from her, Maida had seen the anger, and knowing the anger
to be as just as justice ever is, she shook her head in helpless grief,
yet her eyes were tearless as had she no tears left to shed. She had
seen the anger, but ignorant of the phases of thought by which it had
been transfigured she stole up to where he stood and touched his arm
with a shrinking caress.
He turned and would have caught her to him, but she drew back,
elusively, as might a swan. “No, not that, Lenox. Only say that you do
not hate me. Lenox, if you only knew. To me it is bitterer than death.
You are the whole world to me, yet never must I see you again. If I
could but tell you all. If I could but tell him all, if there were
anything that I could do or say, but there is nothing, nothing,” she
added pensively, “except submission.”
Her voice had sunk into a whisper: she was pleading as much with
herself as with him. Her arms were pendant and her eyes downcast. On
the mantel the clock kept up its low, dolorous moan, as though in
sympathy with her woe. “Nothing,” she repeated.
“But surely it need not be. Things cannot be so bad as that--Maida, I
cannot lose you. If nothing else can be done, let us go away; at its
best New York is tiresome; we could both leave it without a regret or a
wish to return. And then, there is Italy; we have but to choose. Why, I
could take a palace on the Grand Canal for less than I pay for my rooms
at the Cumberland. And you would love Venice; and in winter there is
Capri and Sorrento and Palermo. I have known days in Palermo when I
seemed to be living in a haze of turquoise and gold. And the nights!
You should see the nights! The stars are large as lilies! See, it would
be so easy; in a fortnight we could be in Genoa, and before we got
there we would have been forgotten.”
He was bending forward speaking rapidly, persuasively, half hoping,
half fearing, she would accept. She did not interrupt him, and he
continued impetuously, as though intoxicated on his own words.
“When we are tired of the South, there are the lakes and that lovely
Tyrol; there will be so much to do, so much to see. After New York, we
shall really seem to live; and then, beyond, is Munich--you are sure to
love that city.” He hated Munich; he hated Germany. The entire land,
and everything that was in it, was odious to him; but for the moment
he forgot. He would have said more, even to praises of Berlin, but the
girl raised her ringless hand and shook her head wearily.
“No, Lenox, it may not be. Did I go with you, in a year--six months,
perhaps--we would both regret. It would be not only expatriation; it
would, for me at least, be isolation as well, and, though I would bear
willingly with both, you would not. You think so now, perhaps, I do not
doubt”--and a phantom of a smile crossed her face--“and I thank you for
so thinking, but it may not be.”
Her hand fell to her side, and she turned listlessly away. “You must
forget me, Lenox--but not too soon, will you?”
“Never, sweetheart--never!”
“Ah, but you must. And I must learn to forget you. It will be
difficult. No one can be to me what you have been. You have been my
youth, Lenox; my girlhood has been yours. I have nothing left. Nothing
except regrets--regrets that youth should pass so quickly and that
girlhood comes but once.”
Her lips were tremulous, but she was trying to be brave.
“But surely, Maida, it cannot be that we are to part forever.
Afterwards--” the word was vague, but they both understood--“afterwards
I may see you. Such things often are. Because you feel yourself
compelled to this step, there is no reason why I, of all others, should
be shut out of your life.”
“It is the fact of your being the one of all others that makes the
shutting needful.”
“It shall not be.”
“Lenox,” she pleaded, “it is harder for me than for you.”
“But how can you ask me, how can you think that I will give you up? The
affair is wretched enough as it is, and now, by insisting that I am not
to see you again, you would make it even worse. People think it easy to
love, but it is not; I know nothing more difficult. You are the only
one for whom I have ever cared. It was not difficult to do so, I admit,
but the fact remains. I have loved you, I have loved you more and more
every day, and now, when I love you most, when I love you as I can
never love again, you find it the easiest matter in the world to come
to me and say, ‘It’s ended; _bon jour_.’”
“You are cruel, Lenox, you are cruel.”
“It is you that are cruel, and there the wonder is, for your cruelty is
unconscious, of your own free will you would not know how.”
“It is not that I am cruel, it is that I am trying to do right. And it
is for you to aid me. I have been true to you, do not ask me now to be
false to myself.”
If at that moment Mrs. Bunker Hill could have looked into the girl’s
face, her suspicions would have vanished into air. Maida needed only
a less fashionable gown to look like a mediæval saint; and before the
honesty that was in her eyes Lenox bowed his head.
“Will you help me?”
“I will,” he answered.
“I knew you would; you are too good to try to make me more miserable
than I am. And now, you must go; kiss me, it is the last time.”
He caught her in his arms and kissed her full upon the mouth. He kissed
her wet eyes, her cheeks, the splendor of her hair. And after a moment
of the acutest pain of all her life, the girl freed herself from his
embrace, and let him go without another word.