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An American Politician: A Novel, a novel by F. Marion Crawford |
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Chapter 22 |
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_ CHAPTER XXII Joe was frightened; she stood and looked into Harrington's eyes, doubting what she should do, not understanding what was occurring. He looked so pale and strange as he sat there, that she was terrified. She came a step nearer to him, and tried to speak. "What is the matter, Mr. Harrington?" she stammered. "Speak--you frighten me!" Harrington looked at her for one moment more, and then, without speaking, buried his face in his hands. Joe clasped her hands to her side in a sudden pain; her heart beat as though it would break, and the scene swam round before her in the hot air. She tried to move another step towards the bench, and her strength almost failed her; she caught at the lattice of the old summer-house, still pressing one hand to her breast. The rotten slabs of the wood-work cracked under her light weight. She breathed hard, and her face was as pale as the shadows on driven snow; in another moment she sank down upon the bench beside John, and sat there, staring vacantly out at the sunlight. Harrington felt her gentle presence close to him and at last looked up; every feature of his strong face seemed changed in the convulsive fight that rent his heart and soul to their very depths; the enormous strength of his cold and dominant nature rose with tremendous force to meet and quell the tempest of his passion, and could not; dark circles made heavy shadows under his deep-set eyes, and his even lips, left colorless and white, were strained upon his clenched teeth. "God help me--I love you." That was all he said, but in his words the deep agony of a mortal struggle rang strangely--the knell of the old life and the birth-chime of the new. One by one, the words he had never thought to speak fell from his lips, distinctly; the oracle of the heart answered the great question of fate in its own way. Josephine Thorn sat by his side, her hands lying idly in her lap, her thin white face pressing against the old brown lattice, while a spray of the sweet honeysuckle that climbed over the wood-work just touched her bright brown hair. As John spoke she tried to lift her head and struggled to put out her hand, but could not. As the shadows steal at evening over the earth, softly closing the flowers and touching them to sleep, silently and lovingly, in the promise of a bright waking--so, as she sat there, her eyelids drooped and the light faded gently from her face, her lips parted a very little, and with a soft-breathed sigh she sank into unconsciousness. John Harrington was in no state to be surprised or startled by anything that happened. He saw, indeed, that she had fainted, but with the unerring instinct of a great love he understood. With the tenderness of his strength he put one arm about her, and drew her to him till her fair head rested upon his shoulder, and he looked into her face. In a few moments he had passed completely from the old life to a life which he had never believed possible, but which had nevertheless been long present with him. He knew it and felt it, quickly realizing that for the first time since he could remember he was wholly and perfectly happy. He was a man who had dreamed of all that is noble and great for man to do, who had consecrated his every hour and minute to the attainment of his end; and though his aim was in itself a good one, the undivided concentration which the pursuit of it required had driven him into a state outwardly resembling extreme egotism. He had loved his own purposes as he had loved nothing else, and as he had been persuaded that he could love nothing else, in the whole world. Now, suddenly, he knew his own heart. There is something beyond mere greatness, beyond the pursuit of even the highest worldly aims; there is something which is not a means to the attainment of happiness, which is happiness itself. It is an inner sympathy of hearts and souls and minds, a perfect union of all that is most worthy in the natures of man and woman; it is a plant so sensitive that a breath of unkindness will hurt it and blight its beauty, and yet it is a tree so strong that neither time nor tempest can overthrow it when it has taken root; and if you would tear it out and destroy it, the place where it grew is as deep and as wide as a grave. It is a bond that is as soft as silk and as strong as death, binding hearts, not hands; so long as it is not strained a man will hardly know that he is bound, but if he would break it he will spend his strength in vain and suffer the pains of hell, for it is the very essence and nature of a true love that it cannot be broken. With such men as John Harrington love at first sight is an utter impossibility. The strong dominant aspirations that lead them are a light too brilliant to be outshone by any sudden flash of hot passion. Love, when it comes to them, is of slow growth, but enduring in the same proportion as it is slow; identifying itself, by degrees so small that a man himself is unconscious of it, with the deepest feelings of the heart and the highest workings of the intellect. It steals silently into the soul in the guise of friendship, asking nothing but loyal friendship in return; in the appearance of kindness which asks but a little gratitude; in the semblance of a calm and passionless trustfulness, demanding only a like trust as its equivalent pledge, a like faith as a gauge for its own, an equal measure of charity for an equal; and so love builds himself a temple of faith and charity, and trust and kindness, and honest friendship, and rejoices exceedingly in the whole goodness and strength and beauty of the place where he will presently worship. When that day comes he stands in the midst and kindles a strong clear flame upon the altar, and the fire burns and leaps and illuminates the whole temple of love, which is indeed the holy of holies of the temple of life. John Harrington, through five and thirty years of his life, had believed that the patient labor of a powerful intellect could suffice to a man, in its results, for the attainment of all that humanity most honors, even for the wise and unerring government of humanity itself. To that end and in that belief he had honestly given every energy he possessed, and had sternly choked down every tendency he felt in his inner nature toward a life less intellectual and more full of sympathy for the affairs of individual mankind. With him to be strong was to be cold--to be warm was to be weak and subject to error; a supreme devotion to his career and a supreme disdain of all personal affections were the conditions of success which he deemed foremostly necessary, and he had come to an almost superstitious belief in the idea that the love of woman is the destruction of the intellectual man. Himself ready to sacrifice all he possessed, and to spend his last strength in the struggle for an ideal, he had nevertheless so identified his own person with the object he strove to attain that he regarded all the means he could possibly control with as much jealousy as though he had been the most selfish of men. Friends he looked upon as tools for his trade, and he valued them not only in proportion to their honesty and loyalty of heart, but also in the degree of their power and intelligence. He sought no friendships which could not help him, and relinquished none that could be of service in the future. But the world is not ruled by intellect, though it is sometimes governed by brute force and yet more brutal passions. The dominant power in the affairs of men is the heart. Humanity is moved far more by what it feels than by what it knows, and those who would be rulers of men must before all things be men themselves, and not merely highly finished intellectual machines. The guests were gone, no one had missed Harrington and Joe, and Ronald and Sybil had gone into the house. They sat side by side in the little bower at the end of the long walk--Joe's fair head resting in her unconsciousness upon John's shoulder. Presently she stirred, and opening her eyes, looked up into his face. She drew gently away from him, and a warm blush spread quickly over her pale cheek; she glanced down at her small white hands and they clasped each other convulsively. John looked at her; suddenly his gray eyes grew dark and deep, and the mighty passion took all his strength into its own, so that he trembled and turned pale again. But the words failed him no longer now. He knew in a moment all that he had to say, and he said it. "You must not be angry with me, Miss Thorn," he began, "you must not think I am losing my head. Let me tell you now--perhaps you will listen to me. God knows, I am not worthy to say such things to you, but I will try to be. It is soon said. I love you; I can no more help loving you than I can help breathing. You have utterly changed me, and saved me, and made a life for me out of what was not life at all. Do not think it is sudden--what is really to last forever must take some time in growing. I never knew till to-day-I honored you and would have done everything in the world for you, and I was more grateful to you than I ever was to any human being. But I thought when we met we should be friends just as we always were, and instead of that I know that this is the great day of my life, and that my life with all that it holds is yours now, for always, to do with as you will. Pray hear me out, do not be afraid; no man ever honored you as I honor you." Joe glanced quickly at him and then again looked down; but the surging blood came and went in her face, coursing madly in her pulses, every beat of her heart crying gladness. "It is little enough I have to offer you," said John, his voice growing unsteady in the great effort to speak calmly. There was something almost terrible in the strength of his rising passion. "It is little enough--my poor life, with its wretched struggles after what is perhaps far too great for me. But such as it is I offer it to you. Take it if you will. Be my wife, and give me the right to do all I do for your sake, and for your sake only." He stretched out his hand and took hers, very gently, but the strained sinews of his wrist trembled violently. Josephine made no resistance, but she still looked down and said nothing. "Use me as you will," he continued almost in a whisper. "I will be all to you that man ever was to a living woman. Do not say I have no right to ask you for as much. I have this right, that I love you beyond the love of other men, so truly and wholly I love you; I will serve you so faithfully, I will honor you so loyally that you will love me too. Say the word, my beloved, say that it is not impossible! I will wait--I will work--I will strive to be worthy of you." He pressed his white lips to her white hand, and tried to look into her eyes, but she turned away from him. "Will you not speak to me? Will you not give to me some word--some hope? I can never love you less, whatever you may answer me--yes or no--but oh, if you knew the difference to me!" Pale as death, John looked at Joe. She turned to him, very white, and gazed into the dark gray depths of his eyes, where the raging force of a transcendent passion played so wildly; but she felt no fear, only a mad longing to speak. "Tell me--for God's sake tell me," John said in low, trembling tones, "have I hurt you? Is it too much that I ask?" For one moment there was silence as they gazed at each other. Then with a passionate impulse Josephine buried her face in her hands upon John's shoulder. "No, it is not that!" she sobbed. "I love you so much--I have loved you so long!" _ |
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