marry him. You will ruin him, and yourself too."
"He has seen how I have struggled," answered Esther with a sort of sob.
"I never knew how gentle and patient a man could be until I saw how he
helped me. He began by taking all the risk. I told him faithfully that I
was not fit for him, and he said that he only asked me to love him. I
did love him. I love him so much that if he were a beggar in the street
here and wanted me, I would get down and pick up rags with him."
She moaned out this last sentence so piteously that Mrs. Murray's heart
bled. "Poor child!" she thought. "It is like crushing a sparrow with a
stone. I must do it quickly."
"Tell him all about it, Esther! It is his affair more than yours. If
his love is great enough to take you as you are, do your best, and never
let him repent it; but you must make him choose between you and his
profession."
"I can't do that!" said Esther quickly. "I would rather go on and leave
it all to chance."
"If you do," replied Mrs. Murray, "You will only put yourself into his
hands. Sooner or later Mr. Hazard must find out that you don't belong to
him. Then it will be his duty to make you choose between your will and
his. You had better not let yourself be put in such a position. A woman
can afford to break an engagement, but she can't afford to be thrown
over by a man, not even if he is a clergyman, and that is what Mr.
Hazard will have to do to you if you let him go on."
"Oh, I know him better!" broke out Esther. She resented bitterly this
cruel charge against her lover, but nevertheless it cut into her
quivering nerves until her love seemed to wither under it. The idea that
he could ever want to get rid of her was the last drop in her cup of
bitterness. Mrs. Murray knew how to crush her sparrow. She needed barely
five minutes to do it. From the moment that Esther's feminine pride was
involved, the sparrow was dead.
Certainly Hazard had as yet no thought of giving up his prize, but he
had reached the first stage of wondering what he should do with it.
Naturally sanguine and perhaps a little spoiled by flattery and success,
he had taken for granted that Esther would at once absorb her existence
in his. He hoped that she would become, like most converts, more zealous
than himself. After a week of trial, finding her not only unaffected by
his influence but actually slipping more and more from his control, he
began to feel an alarm which grew more acute every hour, and brought him
for the first time face to face with the possibility of failure. What
could he do to overcome this fatal coldness.
With very uneasy feelings he admitted that a step backwards must be
taken, and it was for this purpose that he wanted to consult with
Strong. Never was the Church blessed with a stranger ally than this
freest of free thinkers, who looked at churches very much as he would
have looked at a layer of extinct oysters in a buried mud-bank. Strong's
notion was that since the Church continued to exist, it probably served
some necessary purpose in human economy, though he could himself no more
understand the good of it than he could comprehend the use of human
existence in any shape. Since men and women were here, idiotic and
purposeless as they might be, they had what they chose to call a right
to amuse themselves in their own way, and if this way made some happy
without hurting others, Strong was ready enough to help. He was as
willing to help Hazard as to help Esther, provided the happiness of
either seemed to be within reach; and as for forms of faith it seemed to
him as easy to believe one thing as another. If Esther believed any
thing at all, he could see no reason why she might not believe whatever
Hazard wanted.
With all the good-will in the world he came from his club after dinner
to Hazard's house. As the way was short he did not even grumble, knowing
that he could smoke his cigar as well at one place as at the other. He
found Hazard in his library, walking up and down, with more
discouragement on his face than Strong had ever seen there before. The
old confusion of the room had not quite disappeared; the books were not
yet all arranged on their shelves; pictures still leaned against the
wall; dust had accumulated on them, and even on the large working table
where half-written sermons lay scattered among a mass of notes,
circulars, invitations and unanswered letters. It was clear that Mr.
Hazard was not an orderly person and needed nothing so much as a wife.
Esther would have been little flattered at the remark, now rather common
among his older friends, that almost any wife would be better for him
than none.
With an echo of his old boyish cordiality he welcomed Strong, gave him
the best easy-chair by the fire, and told him to smoke as much as he
liked.
"Perhaps a cigar will give you wisdom," he added. "You will need it, for
I want to consult you about Esther."
"Don't!" said Strong laconically.
"Hush!" replied Hazard. "You put me out. I don't consult you because I
like it, but because I must. The matter is becoming serious, and I must
either consult you or Mrs. Murray. I prefer to begin with you. It's a
habit I have."
"At your own risk, then!"
"I suppose I shall have to take whatever risk there is in it," answered
Hazard. "I must do something, for if my amiable parishioner, Mrs. Dyer,
gets at Esther in her present state of mind, the poor child will work
herself into a brain fever. But first tell me one thing! Were you ever
in love with Esther yourself!"
"Never!" replied Strong, peacefully. "Esther always told me that I had
nothing but chalk and plate-glass in my mind, and could never love or be
loved. We have discussed it a good deal. She says I am an old glove that
fits well enough but will not cling. Of course it was her business to
make me cling and I told her so. No! I never was in love with her, but I
have been nearer it these last ten days than ever before. She will come
out of her trouble either made or marred, and a year hence I will tell
you which."
"Take care," said Hazard. "I have learned to conquer all my passions
except jealousy, and that I have never yet tried."
"If she marries you," replied Strong, "that will settle it."
"_If_ she marries me!" broke out Hazard, paying no attention to Strong's
quiet assumption that for Esther to be thus married was to be marred.
"Do you mean that there is any doubt about it?"
"I supposed that was what you wanted to talk about," answered Strong
with some surprise. "Is any thing else the matter?"
"You always put facts in a horribly materialistic way," responded
Hazard. "I wanted to consult you about making things easier for her, not
about broken engagements."
"Bless your idealistic soul!" said Strong. "I have already tried to help
her in that way, and made a shocking piece of work. Has not Esther told
you?" and he went on to give his friend an account of the morning's
conversation in which his attempt to preach the orthodox faith had
suffered disastrous defeat. Hazard listened closely, and at the end sat
for some time silent in deep thought. Then he said:
"Esther told me something of this, though I did not get the idea it was
so serious. I am glad to know the whole; but you should not have tried
to discipline her. Leave the thunders of the church to me."
"What could I do?" asked Strong. "She jammed me close up to the wall. I
did not know where to turn. You would have been still less pleased if I
had done what she wanted, and given her the whole Agnostic creed."
"I am not quite so sure about that," rejoined Hazard thoughtfully. "I am
never afraid of pure atheism; it is the flabby kind of sentimental deism
that annoys me, because it is as slippery as air. If you will tell her
honestly what your skepticism means, I will risk the consequences."
"Just as you like!" said Strong; "if she attacks me again, I will give
her the strongest kind of a dose of what you are pleased to call pure
atheism. Not that I mind what it is called. She shall have it crude.
Only remember that I prefer to tackle her on the other side."
"Do as you please!" said Hazard. "Now let us come to business. All
Esther wants is time. I am as certain as I can be of any thing in this
uncertain world, that a few weeks, or at the outside a few months, will
quiet all her fears. What I want is to stop this immediate strain which
is enough to distract any woman."
"Stop the strain of course!" said Strong. "I want to stop it almost as
much as you do, but it looked to me this morning as though what you call
strain were a steady drift which pays no sort of heed to our trying to
stop it."
"I feel sure it is only nervousness," said Hazard earnestly. "Give her
time, quiet and rest! She will come out right."
"Then what is it that I can do?"
"Help me to get her out of New York."
"I will ask my aunt to help you," replied Strong; "but how are we to do
it? The earthly paradise is not to be found in this neighborhood in the
middle of February."
"Never mind! If you and she will back me, we can do it, and it must be
done instantly to be of use. There is no end of parish gossip which must
not come to Esther's ears, or it will drive her wild. Take her to
Florida, California, or even to Europe if you can! Give me time to
smooth things down! If she stays here we shall all be the worse for it."
As usual, Hazard had his way. George consented to do all he asked and
even to take Esther away himself if it were necessary. The next morning
he appeared soon after breakfast at his aunt's to report Hazard's
wishes and to devise the means of satisfying them. Much to his relief,
and rather to his astonishment, he found Mrs. Murray disposed to look
with favor on the idea. She listened quietly to his story, and after a
little reflection, asked:
"Where do you think we had best go?"
"Do you mean to go too?" asked Strong in surprise. "Why should you tear
yourself up by the roots to please Hazard?"
"Those two girls can't go alone," said Mrs. Murray; "and as for me, I
don't go to please Mr. Hazard. I don't think he is going to be pleased."
"Now what mischief are you brewing, Aunt Sarah? I am Hazard's friend,
and bound to see him through. Don't make me a party to any scheme
against him!"
"You are not very bright, George, and just now you are rather
ridiculous, because you do not in the least know what you are about."
"Go on!" said Strong with irrepressible good nature. "Play out all your
trumps and let my suit in!"
"Could you be ready to start for Niagara by to-morrow morning?" asked
his aunt.
"To-morrow is Saturday. Yes! I could manage it."
"Could you get some pleasant man to go with you?"
"Not much chance!" he replied. "I might ask Wharton, but he is very
busy."
"Try for him! I will send you a note to your club early this evening to
say whether I shall want you or not. If I make you go, I shall go too,
and take Esther and Catherine."
"I will do any thing you want," said Strong, "on condition that you tell
me what you are about."
Mrs. Murray looked at her nephew with a pitying air, and said:
"Any one with common sense might see that Esther's engagement never
could come to any thing."
"But you are trying to hold her to it."
"I am trying to do no such thing. I expect Esther to dismiss him; then
she will need some change of scene, and I mean to take her away."
"To-day?" asked Strong in alarm.
"To-day or to-morrow! Sooner or later! We have got to be ready for it
at any moment. Now do you understand?"
"I think I am beginning to catch on," replied Strong with a grave face.
"I wish I were out of the scrape."
"I told you never to get into it," rejoined his aunt.
"Poor Hazard!" muttered George, wondering whether he could do anything
to ward off this last blow from his friend.
Even as he spoke, the crisis was at hand. Mrs. Murray's calculations
were exact. While Hazard had been arranging with Strong the plan for
getting Esther away from New York, letting the engagement remain
private, Esther, in a state of feverish restlessness was wearying
Catherine with endless discussion of her trouble. Even Catherine felt
that, one way or the other, it was time for this thing to stop. Esther
had passed the stage of self-submission, and was in a mutinous mood. She
had given up the effort to reconcile herself with her situation, and yet
could talk of nothing but Hazard, until Catherine's good-nature was
sorely tried.
"I never was such a bore till now," said Esther at length, as though she
could not at all understand it. "I could sometimes be quite pleasant. I
used to go about the house singing and laughing. Am I going mad?"
"Suppose we go mad together?" said Catherine. "I will if you will."
"Suppose we elope together!" said Esther. "Will you run off with me?"
"Any where but to Colorado," replied Catherine, "I have seen all I want
of Colorado."
"We will take our wedding journey together and leave our husbands
behind. Let them catch us if they can!" continued Esther, talking
rapidly and feverishly.
"It would be rather fun to see Mr. Hazard driving Mr. Van Dam's fast
trotters after us," remarked Catherine.
"When shall we go? Can we start now?"
"Don't you think we had better go to bed just now, and elope in the
morning?" grumbled Catherine. "They can see us better by daylight."
"I tell you, Catherine, that I am in awful earnest. I mean to go away
somewhere, and if you won't go with me, I shall go alone."
"Suppose they catch us?" said Catherine.
"I don't care! I am hopelessly wicked! I can't be respectable and
believe the thirty-nine articles. I can't go to church every Sunday or
hold my tongue or pretend to be pious."
"Then why don't you tell him so, and let him run away?" asked Catherine.
"Because then he would think it his duty to run," said Esther, "and I
don't want to be run away from. Would you like to have the world think
you were jilted?"
"How you do torture your poor brain!" said Catherine pityingly. "There!
Go to bed now! It is long past midnight. To-morrow I will run you off,
and you never shall go to church any more."
Esther was really in a way to alarm her friends. She went to bed as
Catherine advised, but her sleep was feverish, as though she had dieted
herself on opium. She acted over and over again the scene that lay
before her, until her brain felt physically weary, as though it had run
all night round and round its narrow chamber. Her head was so tired in
the morning that it was a relief to get up and face real life. She
dressed herself with uncommon care. She meant to keep her crown even
though she threw away her kingdom, and though she should lose a husband,
she intended to hold fast her lover. Women have the right to this
coquetry with fate. Iphigenia herself, when the priests, who muffled her
voice, stretched her on the altar and struck the knife in her throat,
tried to charm them with her sad eyes while her saffron blood was
flowing, and they saw that she would have charmed them with her voice
even when hope had vanished.
The unfortunate Hazard was not precisely an Agamemnon, and would have
liked nothing better than to stop the sacrifice which seemed to him much
too closely like a triumph over himself. His own throat was the one
which felt itself in closest danger of the knife. At noon, as usual, he
came in, trying to conceal his anxiety under an appearance of
confidence, but Esther's first words routed all his forces and drove him
back to his last defense.
"I should not have let you come to-day. I ought to have written to bid
you good-by, but it was too hard not to see you once more. I am going
away."
"I am going with you," said Hazard quietly.
"No, you are not!" replied Esther. "You are to stay here and attend to
your duties. Forget me as soon as you can."
Hazard took this address very good-naturedly, and neither showed nor
felt surprise. "You have been tormented by this idea," he said, "and I
am glad now to meet it face to face. For us to part is impossible. You
and I are one. You cannot get yourself apart from me, though you may
make us both unhappy; and even if you go away forever you will still
belong to me. I could not release you if I would."
"I don't want to be released," said Esther. "If it were only for that, I
would stay with you as long as you would let me. I would do whatever you
told me, and never ask a question. But I will not be your evil genius. I
will be your good genius or nothing."
"Be my good genius then! What stands in your way?"
"I have tried and failed. Already there is not a woman in your parish
who is not saying that I shall ruin you and your career. I would rather
die than run the risk of your thinking I had done you harm."
"If I, seeing all this, am willing to take the risk, why should you ally
yourself against me with all the petty gossip of a parish?" asked
Hazard. "Such talk will stop the moment you say the word. Let me go out
now and announce our engagement! If I did not sometimes shock my parish,
I could never manage them."
"But I would rather not be made useful in that way," said Esther with a
momentary gleam of humor in her eyes. "No woman wants to be shocking.
Now I have a favor to ask of you. It is the last, and I want you to
promise to grant it."
"Not if it is to give you up."
"I want you to make it easy for me. I am trying to do right. I am so
weak and unhappy after all that has happened that if you are cruel to
me, I shall want to die. Be generous! You know I am right. Let me go
quietly, and do not torture me!"
She sat down as they were talking. He, sinking into a chair by her side,
took both her hands in his, and she did not try to free them. When she
made her appeal, he answered as quietly and stubbornly as before:
"Never! You are my wife, and my wife you will always be in my eyes. I
shall not give you up. I shall not make it easy for you to give me up. I
shall make it as hard as I can. I shall prevent it. But I will do
anything you like to make our engagement easy, and I came to-day with
something to propose."
No doubt, had Hazard taken her at her word and coolly walked away,
Esther would have been very unpleasantly surprised. She did not expect
him to obey her first orders, nor did she want to hurry the moment of
separation, or to part from him with a feeling of bitterness. His
presence always soothed and satisfied her, and she had never been calmer
than now, when, with her hands in his, she waited for his new
suggestion.
"I want you to do me a favor not nearly so great as the one you ask of
me," said he. "Give me time! Go abroad, if you think best, but let our
engagement stand! Let me come out and join you in the summer. I am ready
to see you go where you like, and stay as long as you please, if you
take me with you."
Esther reflected for a moment how she should answer. She had thought of
this plan and rejected it long before, because it seemed to her to
combine all possible objections, and to get rid of none. She knew that
neither six months nor six years would make her a fit wife for Hazard,
and that it would be dishonest to lure him on by any hope that she could
change her nature; but it was not easy to put this in delicate words. At
length she answered simply.
"I am almost the last person in the world whom you ought to marry. Time
will only make me more unfit."
"Should you think so," he asked quickly, "if I were a lawyer, or a stock
broker?"
She colored and withdrew her hands. "No!" she said. "If you were a stock
broker I suppose I should be quite satisfied. Now I am low enough, am I
not? Don't make me feel more degraded than I am. Let me go off alone and
forget me!"
But Hazard continued to press his point with infinite patience and
gentle obstinacy, until her powers of resistance were almost worn out.
Again and again the tears came into her eyes, and she would have told
him gladly to take her and do what he liked with her, if she had not
steeled herself with the fixed thought that in this case the whole
struggle must begin again, and he would know no better what to do with
her than before. He would talk only of their love, attacking her where
she could not defend herself, and took almost a pleasure in
acknowledging that she was at his mercy.
"Oh, if you want only my love," she said at last with a gesture of
despair, "I have lost all my pride. I would like nothing better than to
lie down and die in your arms. I will promise to be faithful to you all
my life; to go into a convent if you want it; to drown myself, or do any
thing but lose your love."
"It is not so very much I ask," he urged. "You fear hurting me by
marrying me. Do you ever reflect how much you will hurt me by refusing?
Do you know how solitary I am? Not a human being counts for any thing in
my life. When I go to my rooms, I am terrified to think how lonely they
will seem unless I can keep you in my mind. You are the only woman I
ever loved. You are my companion, my ideal, my life. We two souls have
wandered about the universe from all eternity waiting to meet each
other, and now after we have met and become one, you try to part us."
As he went on with this appeal, he wrought himself into stronger and
stronger expression of feeling, while Esther fell back in her chair and
covered her face with her hands.
"If I am willing to risk every thing for you, why should you refuse to
grant me so small a favor as I ask? Look, Esther! What more can I do?
Will you not make a little sacrifice of pride for me? Will you ever find
another man to love you as I do?"
"How merciless you are!" sobbed Esther.
"I ask only for time," he hurried on. "To part from you now, in this
room, at this moment, forever, is awful! You may go if you will, but I
shall follow you. I will never give you up. You are mine--mine--mine!"
His passionate cry of love was more than flesh and blood could bear.
With an uncontrollable impulse of self-abandonment Esther held out her
hand to him and he seized her in his arms, kissing her passionately
again and again, till she tore herself away.
"There, go!" said she, breathlessly. "Go! You are killing me!"
Without waiting an answer, she turned and hurried away to her room,
where, flinging herself down, she sobbed till her hysterical passion
wore itself out.
_Chapter IX_
At her usual hour for taking Esther to drive, Mrs. Murray appeared at
the house, where she found Catherine looking as little pleased as though
she were ordered to return to her native prairie.
"We have sent him off," said she, "and we are clean broke up."
The tears were in her eyes as she thus announced the tragedy which had
been acted only an hour or two before, but her coolness more than ever
won Mrs. Murray's heart.
"Tell me all that has happened," said she.
"I've told you all I know," replied Catherine. "They had it out here for
an hour or more, and then Esther ran up to her room. I've been to the
door half a dozen times, and could hear her crying and moaning inside."
Mrs. Murray sat down with a rueful face and a weary sigh, but there was
no sign of hesitation or doubt in her manner. The time had come for her
to take command, and she did it without fretfulness or unnecessary
words.
"You are the only person I know with a head," said she to Catherine.
"You have some common sense and can help me. I want to take Esther out
of this place within six hours. Can you manage to get every thing
ready?"
"I will run it all if you will take care of Esther," replied Catherine.
"I'm not old enough to boss her."
"All you will have to do is to see that your trunks are packed for a
week's absence and you are both ready to start by eight o'clock,"
answered Mrs. Murray. "Do you attend to that and I will look out for the
rest. Now wait here a few minutes while I go up and see Esther!"
Catherine wished nothing better than to start any where at the shortest
notice. She was tired of the long strain on her sympathies and feelings,
and was glad to be made useful in a way that pleased her practical mind.
Mrs. Murray went up to Esther's room. All was quiet inside. The storm
had spent itself. Knowing that her aunt would come, Esther had made the
effort to be herself again, and when Mrs. Murray knocked at the door,
the voice that told her to come in was firm and sweet as ever. Esther
was getting ready for her drive, and though her eyes, in spite of
bathing, were red and swollen, they had no longer the anxious and
troubled look of a hunted creature which had so much alarmed Mrs. Murray
for the last few days. Her expression was more composed than it had been
for weeks. Her love had already become a sorrow rather than a passion,
and she would not, for a world of lovers, have gone back to the distress
of yesterday.
Mrs. Murray took in the whole situation at a glance and breathed a
breath of relief. At length the crisis was past and she had only to save
the girl from brooding over her pain. Without waiting for an
explanation, she plunged into the torrent of Esther's woes.