Book 2 - Chapter 10. In The Depths

________________________________________________
_ BOOK II CHAPTER X. IN THE DEPTHS

I awoke late Sunday morning and found Reuben watching beside me.

"Thee's better, isn't thee?" he asked eagerly.

"Well, I ought to be. You're a good fellow, Reuben. What time is it?-- nearly night again, I hope."

"Oh, no, it's only about eleven; they're all gone to meeting. I made 'em leave you in my care. Adah would have stayed, but mother told her she was to go. Emily Warren's grandfather wanted to go spooning off in the woods, but she made him go to meeting too. I don't see how she ever came to like him, with his grand airs."

"She has good reasons, rest assured."

"Well, he ain't the kind of a man I'd go for if I was a girl."

"Miss Warren is not the girl to go for any man, Reuben. He had to seek her long and patiently. But that's their affair--we have nothing to do with it."

"I thought thee was taken with her at first," said Reuben innocently.

"I do admire Miss Warren very much--now as much as ever. I admire a great many ladies, especially your mother. I never knew a truer, kinder lady."

"And if it had not been for thee, Richard, she might have been burned up," and tears came into his eyes.

"Oh, no, Reuben. You could have got them all out easily enough."

"I fear I would have lost my head."

"No, you wouldn't; you are not of that kind. Please say no more about that affair. I've heard too much of it."

"Does thee think thee'll be able to come down to dinner? Mother and father and all of us will be awfully disappointed if thee isn't."

"Yes, I'll come down if you'll stand by me, and help me back when I give you the wink. I won't go down till dinner's ready; after it's over you can help me out under some tree. I'm just wild to get out of doors."

I had a consuming desire to retrieve myself, and prove that I was not weakness personified, and I passed through the ordeal of dinner much better than I expected. Mr. Hearn was benignness itself, but I saw that he was very observant. The shrewd Wall Street man had the eye of an eagle when his interests were concerned, and he very naturally surmised that no one could have seen so much of Miss Warren as I had, and still remain entirely indifferent; besides, he may have detected something in my manner or imagined that the peculiar events of the past few weeks had made us better acquainted than he cared to have us.

Miss Warren's greeting was cordial, but her manner toward me was so quiet and natural that he had no cause for complaint, and I felt that I had rather be drawn asunder by wild horses than give him a clew to my feelings. I took a seat next to Mr. Yocomb, and we chatted quietly most of the time. The old gentleman was greatly pleased about something, and it soon came out that Mr. Hearn had promised him five hundred dollars to put a new roof on the meeting-house and make other improvements. I drew all the facts readily from the zealous Friend, together with quite a history of the old meeting-house, for I proposed to make a complimentary item of the matter in my paper, well knowing how grateful such incense was to the banker's soul. Mr. Hearn, who sat nearest to us, may have heard my questions and divined my purpose, for he was peculiarly gracious.

I was not able to do very much justice to Mrs. Yocomb's grand dinner, but was unstinted in my praise. The banker made amends for my inability, and declared he had never enjoyed such a repast, even at Delmonico's. I though Miss Warren's appetite flagged a little, but to the utmost extent of my power I kept my eyes and thoughts from her.

After dinner Reuben helped me to a breezy knoll behind the dwelling, and spreading some robes from the carriage-house under a wide- branching tree, left me, at my request, to myself. The banker now had his way, and carried Miss Warren off to a distant grove. I would not look at them as they went down the lane together, but shut my eyes and tried to breathe in life and health.

Adah read to the two little girls for some time, and then came hesitatingly toward me. I feigned sleep, for I was too weak and miserable to treat the girl as she deserved. She stood irresolutely a moment or two, and then slowly and lingeringly returned to the house.

My feigning soon became reality, and when I awoke Reuben was sitting beside me, and I found had covered me well to guard against the dampness of the declining day.

"You are always on hand when I need you most," I said smilingly. "I think I will go back to my room now, while able to make a respectable retreat."

I saw Mr. Hearn and Miss Warren entering the house, and thought that they had had a long afternoon together, but that time no doubt had passed more quickly with them than with me, even though I had slept for hours. When reaching the parlor door I saw Miss Warren at the piano; she turned so quickly as almost to give me the impression that she was waiting to intercept me.

"Would you not like to hear your favorite nocturne again?" she asked, with a friendly smile.

I hesitated, and half entered the parlor. Her face seemed to light up with pleasure at my compliance. How divine she appeared in the quaint, simple room! I felt that I would gladly give the best years of my life for the right to sit there and feast my eyes on a grace and beauty that to me were indescribable and irresistible; but the heavy tread of the banker in the adjoining room reminded me that I had no right--that to see her and to listen would soon become unendurable pain. I had twice been taught my weakness.

"Thank you," I said, with a short, dry laugh; "I'm sorely tempted, but it's time I learned that for me discretion is certainly the better part of valor," and I turned away, but not too soon to see that her face grew sad and wistful.

"Heaven bless her kind heart!" I murmured as I wearily climbed the stairs.

Adah brought me up my supper long before the others were through, and I felt a faint remorse that I had feigned sleep in the afternoon, even though my motive had been consideration for her as truly as for myself.

"Miss Adah!" I exclaimed, "you are growing much too unselfish. Why didn't you get your supper first?"

"I've had all I wish. I'm not hungry to-night."

"Truly, you look as if you lived on roses; but you can't thrive long on such unsubstantial diet. It was real good of you to read to those children so long. If I had been an artist, I would have made a sketch of you three. You and that little dark-eyed girl make a lovely contrast."

"I like her," she said simply; "I feel as if I wanted some one to pet. Can't I read to you while you eat your supper?"

"I'd rather have you talk to me: what do you think of the little girl's father?"

"I haven't thought much about him."

"I wish you could see his house in New York; it's a superb one, and on your favorite Fifth Avenue."

"Yes, I know," she replied absently.

"I should think you would envy Miss Warren."

"I don't," she said emphatically; "the man is more than the house."

"I don't think you would have said that a month ago."

"I fear not. I fear thee didn't like me that Sunday afternoon when I was so self-satisfied. I've thought it over."

"Indeed, Miss Adah, I would gladly be struck by lightning myself if it would change me for the better as greatly as you are changed."

"It wasn't the lightning," she said, blushing and slowly shaking her head. "I've been thinking."

"Ah," I laughed, "you are shrewd. If women only knew it, there's nothing that gives beauty like thought, and it's a charm that increases every year. Well," I continued, with the utmost frankness, "I do like you now, and what is more, I honestly respect you. When you come to New York again, I am going to ask your mother to trust me as if I were your older brother, and I'll take you to see and hear much that I'm sure you'll enjoy."

"Oh, that will be splendid!" she cried gladly. "I know mother will let me go with thee, because--because--well, she says thee is a gentleman."

"Do you know, Miss Adah, I'd rather have your mother say that than have all Mr. Hearn's thousands. But your mother judges me leniently. To tell you the honest truth, I've come lately to have a very poor opinion of myself. I feel that I would have been a much better man if, in past years, I had seen more of such people as dwell in this house."

"Thee remembers what father said to thee," she replied, shyly, with downcast eyes; "this is thy home hereafter."

"She looks now," I thought, "as if she might fulfil the dream I wove about her on that memorable day when I first saw her in the meeting- house. How perverse my fate has been, giving me that for which I might well thank God on my knees, and yet which my heart refuses, and withholding that which will impoverish my whole life. Why must the heart be so imperious and self-willed in these matters? An elderly gentleman would say, Everything is just right as it is. It would be the absurdity of folly for Miss Warren to give up her magnificent prospects because of your sudden and sickly sentiment; and what more could you ask or wish than this beautiful girl, whose womanhood has awakened and developed under your very eyes, almost as unconsciously as if a rosebud had opened and shown you its heart? Indeed, but a brief time since I would have berated any friend of mine who would not take the sensible course which would make all happy. If I could but become 'sane and reasonable,' as Miss Warren would say, how she would beam upon me, and, the thought of my disappointment and woe-begone aspect banished, how serenely she would go toward her bright future! And yet in taking this sane and sensible course I would be false to my very soul--false to this simple, true-hearted girl, to whom I could give but a cold, hollow pretence in return for honest love. I would become an arrant hypocrite, devoid of honor and self-respect."

"Heaven bless you, Adah!" I murmured. "I love you too well for all your kindness and goodness to pretend to love you so ill."

Thoughts like these passed through my mind as I thanked her for all that she had done for me, and told her of such phases of New York life as I thought would interest her. She listened with so intent and childlike an expression on her face that I could scarcely realize that I was talking to one in whose bosom beat the heart of a woman. I felt rather as if I were telling Zillah a fairy story.

Still I had faith in her intuition, and believed that after I was gone she would recognize and accept the frank, brotherly regard that I now cherished toward her.

Reuben was not very long in joining us, and boy-like did not note that his sister evidently wished him far away. My greeting was so cordial that she noted with a sigh that I did not regard him as the unwelcome third party. Then Mr. Yocomb and the little girls came to the door and asked if there was room for a crowd. Soon after Mrs. Yocomb appeared, with her comely face ruddy from exercise.

"I've hurried all I could," she said, "but thee knows how it is with housekeepers; and yet how should thee know, living all thy life alone in dens, as thee said? Why, thee's having a reception."

"I fear your guests downstairs will feel neglected, Mrs. Yocomb."

"Don't thee worry about that, Richard," Mr. Yocomb said, laughing. "I'm not so old, mother, but I can remember when we could get through an evening together without help from anybody. I reckon we could do so again--eh? mother? Ha, ha, ha! so thee isn't too old to blush yet? How's that, Richard, for a young girl of sixty? Don't thee worry about Emily Warren. I fear that any one of us would make a large crowd in the old parlor."

This was sorry comfort, and I fear that my laugh was anything but honest, while Mrs. Yocomb stared out of the window, at which she sat fanning herself, with a fixedness that I well understood.

But they were all so kind and hearty that I could no more give way to dejection than to chill and cheerlessness before a genial wood fire. They seemed in truth to have taken me into the family. Barely was I now addressed formally as Richard Morton. It was simply "Richard," spoken with the unpremeditated friendliness characteristic of family intercourse. Heathen though I was, I thanked God that he had brought me among these true-hearted people; "and may He blast me," I muttered, "if I ever relapse into the old sneering cynicism that I once affected. Let me at least leave that vice to half-fledged young men and to bad old men."

One thing puzzled me. Miss Warren remained at her piano, and it struck me as a little odd that she did not find the music of her lover's voice preferable, but I concluded that music was one of the strongest bonds of sympathy between them, and one of the means by which he had won her affection. Sometimes, as her voice rose clear and sweet to my open windows, I answered remarks addressed to me with an inaptness that only Mrs. Yocomb understood.

Before very long, that considerate lady looked into my face a moment, and then said decisively:

"Richard, thee is getting tired. We must all bid thee good-night at once."

Adah looked almost resentfully at her mother, and lingered a little behind the others. As they passed out she stepped hastily back, and unclasping a rosebud from her breastpin laid it on the table beside me.

"It was the last one I could find in the garden," she said, breathlessly, and with its color in her cheeks. Before I could speak she was gone.

"It shall be treated with reverence, like the feeling which led to the gift," I murmured sadly. "Heaven grant that it may be only the impulse of a girlish fancy;" and I filled a little vase with water and placed the bud near the window, where the cool night air could blow upon it.

Still Miss Warren remained at the piano. "How singularly fond of music he is!" I thought.

I darkened my room, and sat at the window that I might hear every note. The old garden, half hidden by trees, looked cool and Eden-like in the light of the July moon, athwart whose silver hemisphere fleecy clouds were drifting like the traces of thought across a bright face. Motionless shadows stretched toward the east, from which the new day would come, but with a dreary sinking of heart I felt as it each coming day would bring a heavier burden.

But a little time passed before I recognized Chopin's Nocturne, to which I had listened with kindling hope on the night of the storm. Was it my own mood, or did she play it with far more pathos and feeling than on that never-to-be-forgotten evening? Be that as it may, it evoked a fiercer storm of unavailing passion and regret in my mind. In bitterness of heart I groaned aloud and insulted God.

"It was a cruel and terrible thing," I charged, "to mock a creature with such a hope. Why was such power over me given to her when it was of no use?" But I will say no more of that hour of weak human idolatry. It was a revelation to me of the depths of despair and wretchedness into which one can sink when unsustained by manly fortitude or Christian principle. It is in such desperate, irrational moods that undisciplined, ill-balanced souls thrust themselves out from the light of God's sunshine and the abundant possibilities of future good. I now look back on that hour with shame, and cannot excuse it even by the fact that I was enfeebled in mind as well as body by disease. We often never know ourselves or our need until after we have failed miserably under the stress of some strong temptation.

I was the worse the next day for my outburst of passion, and the wretched night that followed, and did not leave my room; but I was grim and rigid in my purpose to retrieve myself. I appeared to be occupied with my mail and paper much of the day, and I wrote a very complimentary paragraph concerning the banker's gift for the meeting- house. Mr. Hearn and Miss Warren were out riding much of the time. I saw them drive away with a lowering brow, and was not disarmed of my bitterness because I saw, through the half-closed blinds, that the young girl stole a swift glance at my window.

Adah was pleased as she saw how I was caring for her gift; but I puzzled and disheartened her by my preoccupation and taciturnity. She took the children off on a long ramble in the afternoon, and heaped coals of fire on my head by bringing me an exquisite collection of ferns.

The next morning I went down to breakfast resolving to take my place in the family, and make no more trouble during the brief remainder of my stay, for I proposed to go back to the city as soon as I had shown enough manhood to satisfy my pride, and had made Miss Warren believe that she could dismiss her solicitude on my account, and thus enjoy the happiness which apparently I had clouded. As I saw her pale face again I condemned my weakness unsparingly, and with the whole force of my will endeavored to act and appear as both she and Mr. Hearn would naturally wish.

"Richard," said Reuben, after breakfast, "I've borrowed a low phaeton, and I'm going to take thee out with Dapple. He'll put life in thee, never fear. He'd cure me if I were half dead."

He was right; the swift motion through the pure air braced me greatly.

When we returned, the banker sat on the piazza. Adah was near, with some light sewing, and the connoisseur was leisurely admiring her. Well he might, for in her neat morning gown she again seemed the embodiment of a June day. She rose to meet me, with a faint accession to her delicate color, and said:

"The ride has done thee good; thee looks better than thee has any day yet."

"Reuben's right," I said, laughing; "Dapple would bring a fossil to life," and the young fellow drove chuckling down toward the barn, making Dapple rear and prance in order to show off a little before Mr. Hearn.

I sat down a few moments to rest. Miss Warren must have heard our voices; but she went on with an intricate piece of music in which she was displaying no mean skill. I did not think Mr. Hearn was as much interested in it as I was. His little girl came out of the house and climbed into Adah's lap. She evidently liked being petted, and was not a little spoiled by it The banker continued to admire the picture they made with undisguised enjoyment, and I admitted that the most critical could have found no fault with the group.

After exerting myself to seem exceedingly cheerful, and laughing heartily at a well-worn jest of Mr. Hearn's, I went to my room and rested till dinner, and I slept away the afternoon as on the previous day.

My plan was now to get sufficiently strong to take my departure by the following Monday, and I was glad indeed that the tonic of out-of-door air promised an escape from a position in which I must continually seem to be what I was not--a cheerful man in the flood tide of convalescence. Were it not that my kind friends at the farmhouse would have been grievously hurt, I would have left at once.

As I returned from my ride the next day, Mr. Hearn greeted me with a newspaper in his hand.

"I'm indebted to you," he said, in his most gracious manner, "for a very kindly mention here. So small a donation was not worth the importance you give it, but you have put the matter so happily and gracefully that it may lead other men of means to do likewise at the various places of their summer sojourn. You editors are able to wield a great deal of influence."

I bowed, and said I was glad the paragraph had been worded in a way not disagreeable to him.

"Oh, it was good taste itself, I assure you, sir. It seemed the natural expression of your interest in that which interests your good friends here."

When I came down to dinner I saw that there was an unwonted fire in Miss Warren's eyes and unusual color in her cheeks. Moreover, I imagined that her replies to the few remarks that I addressed to her were brief and constrained. "She is no dissembler," I thought; "something has gone wrong."

After dinner I went to my room for a book, and as I came out I met her in the hall.

"Mr. Morton," she said, with characteristic directness, "if you had given a sum toward a good object in a quiet country place, would you have been pleased to see the fact paraded before those having no natural interest in the matter?"

"I have never had the power to be munificent, Miss Warren," I replied, with some embarrassment.

"Please answer me," she insisted, with a little impatient tap of the floor with her foot.

"No," I said bluntly.

"Did you think it would be pleasing to me?"

"Pardon me," I began, "that I did not sufficiently identify you with Mr. Hearn--"

"What!" she interrupted, blushing hotly, "have I given any reason for not being identified with him?"

"Not at all--not in one sense," I said bitterly. "Of course you are loyalty itself."

She turned away so abruptly as to surprise me a little.

"You had no more right to think it would be pleasing to him than to me," she resumed coldly.

"Miss Warren," I said, after a moment, "don't turn your back on me. I won't quarrel with you, and I promise to do nothing of the kind again;" and I spoke gravely and a little sadly.

"When you speak in that way you disarm me completely," she said, with one of the sudden illuminations of her face that I so loved to see; but I also noted that she had become very pale, and as my eyes met hers I thought I detected the old frightened look that I had seen when I had revealed my feelings too clearly after my illness.

"She fears that I may again speak as I ought not," I thought; and therefore I bowed quietly and passed on. Mr. Hearn was reading the paper on the piazza. I took a chair and went out under the elm, not far away. In a few moments Miss Warren joined her affianced, and sat down with some light work.

"Emily," I heard the banker say, as if the topic were uppermost in his mind, "I'd like to call your attention to this paragraph. I think our friend has written it with unusual good taste and grace, and I've taken pains to tell him so."

I could not help hearing his words; but I would not look up to see her humiliation, and turned a leaf, as if intent on my author.

After a moment she said, with slight but clear emphasis:

"I can't agree with you."

A little later she went to the piano; but I never heard her play so badly. A glance at Mr. Hearn revealed that his dignity and complacency had received a wound that he was inclined to resent. I strolled away muttering:

"She has idealized him as she did Old Plod, but after all it's not a very serious foible in a man of millions."

Before the day passed she found an opportunity to ask:

"Why did you not tell me that Mr. Hearn had spoken to you approvingly of that paragraph?"

"I would not willingly say anything to annoy you," I replied quietly.

"Did you hear him call my attention to it?"

"I could not help it."

"You did not look up and triumph over me."

"That would have given me no pleasure."

"I believe you," she said, in a low tone; but she devoted herself so assiduously to the stately banker that he became benignness itself. I also observed that Mr. Yocomb looked in vain for the paper after tea. "I happened to destroy the copy," I said very innocently. _

Read next: Book 2: Chapter 11. Poor Acting

Read previous: Book 2: Chapter 9. A Wretched Failure

Table of content of Day Of Fate


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book