Sherwood was a very old place. It had been built a hundred years at least before the Revolution in the days when the States had English governors, and when its founder had been governor of Rhode Island. His last descendant in the direct line was Sybil Brandon’s great-uncle.
The old country-seat was remarkable chiefly for the extent of the gardens attached to the house, and for the singularly advanced state of dilapidation in which everything was allowed to remain. Beyond the gardens the woods stretched down to the sea, unpruned and thick with a heavy undergrowth; from the road the gardens were hidden by thick hedges, and by the forbidding gray front of the building. It was not an attractive place to look at, and once within the precincts there was a heavy sense of loneliness and utter desolation, that seemed to fit it for the very home of melancholy.
The damp sea air had drawn green streaks of mould downwards from each several jointing of the stones; the long-closed shutters of some of the windows were more than half hidden by creepers, bushy and straggling by turns, and the eaves were all green with moss and mould. From the deep-arched porch at the back a weed-grown gravel walk led away through untrimmed hedges of box and myrtle to an ancient summer-house on the edge of a steep slope of grass. To right and left of this path, the rose-trees and box that had once marked the gayest of flower gardens now grew in such exuberance of wild profusion that it would have needed strong arms and a sharp axe to cut a way through. Far away on a wooded knoll above the sea was the old graveyard, where generations of Sherwoods lay dead in their quiet rest, side by side.
But for a space in every year the desolation was touched with the breath of life, and the sweet June air blew away the mould and the smell of death, and the wild flowers and roses sprang up joyfully in the wilderness to greet the song-birds and the butterflies of summer. And in this copious year a double spring had come to Sherwood, for Sybil Brandon had arrived one day, and her soft eyes and golden hair had banished all sadness and shadow from the old place. Even the thin old man, who lived there among the ghosts and shadows of the dead and dying past, smoothed the wrinkles from his forehead, forgetting to long selfishly for his own death, when Sybil came; and with touching thoughtfulness he strove to amuse her, and to be younger for her sake. He found old garments of a gayer time, full thirty years hidden away in the great wardrobes up-stairs, and he put them on and wore them, though they hung loosely about his shaken and withered frame, lest he should be too sad a thing for such young eyes to look upon.
Then Ronald came one day, and the old man took kindly to him, and bade him come often. In the innocence of his old age it seemed good that what youth and life there was in the world should come together; and Ronald treated him with a deference and respect to which he had long been unused. Moreover, Ronald accepted the invitation given him and came as often as he pleased, which, before long, meant every day. When he came in the morning he generally stayed until the evening, and when he came in the afternoon he always stayed as long as Sybil would let him, and rode home late through the misty June moonlight pondering on the happiness the world had suddenly brought forth for him who had supposed, but a few months ago, that all happiness was at an end.
Six months had gone by since Ronald had first seen Sybil, and he had changed in that time from boy to man. Looking back through the past years he knew that he was glad Joe had not married him, for the new purpose of his new life was to love and marry Sybil Brandon. There was no doubt in his mind as to what he would do; the strong nature in him was at last roused, and he was capable of anything in reason or without it to get what he wanted.
Some one has said that an Englishman’s idea of happiness is to find something he can kill and to hunt it. That is a metaphor as well as a fact. It may take an Englishman half a lifetime to find out what he wants, but when he is once decided he is very likely to get it, or to die in the attempt. The American is fond of trying everything until he reaches the age at which Americans normally become dyspeptic, and during his comparatively brief career he succeeds in experiencing a surprising variety of sensations. Both Americans and English are tenacious in their different ways, and it is certain that between them they have gotten more things that they have wanted than any other existing nation.
What most surprised Ronald was that, having made up his mind to marry Sybil, he should not have had the opportunity, or perhaps the courage, to tell her so. He remembered how easily he had always been able to speak to Joe about matrimony, and he wondered why it should be so hard to approach the subject with one whom he loved infinitely more dearly than he had ever loved his cousin. But love brings tact and the knowledge of fitness, besides having the effect of partially hiding the past and exaggerating the future into an eternity of rose-colored happiness; wherefore Ronald supposed that everything would come right in time, and that the time for everything to come right could not possibly be very far off.
On the day after he had seen Joe in Boston he rode over to Sherwood in the morning, as usual, upon one of Vancouver’s horses. He was lighter at heart than ever, for he had somewhat dreaded the revelation of his intentions to Joe; but she had so led him on and helped him that it had all seemed very easy. He was not long in reaching his destination, and having put his horse in the hands of the single man who did duty as gardener, groom, and dairyman for old Mr. Sherwood, he entered the garden, where he hoped to meet Sybil alone. He was not disappointed, for as he walked down the path through the wilderness of shrubbery he caught sight of her near the summer-house, stooping down in the act of plucking certain flowers that grew there.
She, too, was dressed all in white, as he had seen his cousin on the previous day; but the difference struck him forcibly as he came up and took her outstretched hand. They had changed places and character, one could almost have thought. Joe had looked so tired and weary, so “wilted,” as they say in Boston, that it had shocked Ronald to see her. Sybil, who had formerly been so pale and cold, now was the very incarnation of life; delicate and exquisitely fine in every movement and expression, but most thoroughly alive. The fresh soft color seemed to float beneath the transparent skin, and her deep eyes were full of light and laughter and sunshine. Ronald’s heart leaped in his breast for love and pride as she greeted him, and his brow turned hot and his hands cold in the confusion of his happiness.
“You have been away again?” she asked presently, looking down at the wild white lilies which she had been gathering.
“Yes, I was in Boston yesterday,” answered Ronald, who had immediately begun to help in plucking the flowers. “I went to see Joe. She looks dreadfully knocked up with the heat, poor child.”
And so they talked about Joe and Boston for a little while, and Sybil sat upon the steps of the summer-house on the side where there was shade from the hot morning sun, while Ronald brought her handfuls of the white lilies. At last there were enough, and he came and stood before her. She was so radiantly lovely as she sat in the warm shade with the still slanting sunlight just falling over her white dress, he thought her so super-humanly beautiful that he stood watching her without thinking of speaking or caring that she should speak to him. She looked up and smiled, a quick bright smile, for she was woman enough to know his thoughts. But she busied herself with the lilies and looked down again.
“Let me help you,” said Ronald suddenly, kneeling down before her on the path.
“I don’t think you can–very much,” said Sybil, demurely. “You are not very clever about flowers, you know. Oh, take care! You will crush it– give it back to me!”
Ronald had taken one of the lilies and was smelling it, but it looked to Sybil very much as though he were pressing it to his lips. He would not give it back, but held it away at arm’s length as he knelt. Sybil made as though she were annoyed.
“Of course,” said she, “I cannot take it, if you will not give it to me.” Ronald gently laid the flower in her lap with the others. She pretended to take no notice of what he did, but went on composing her nosegay.
“Miss Brandon”–began Ronald, and stopped.
“Well?” said Sybil, without looking up.
“May I tell you something?” he asked.
“That depends,” said Sybil. “Is it anything very interesting?”
“Yes,” said Ronald. There seemed to be something the matter with his throat all at once, as though he were going to choke. Sybil looked up and saw that he was very pale. She had never seen him otherwise than ruddy before, and she was startled; she dropped the lilies on her knees and looked at him anxiously. Ronald suddenly laid his hands over hers and held them. Still she faced him.
“I am very unworthy of you–I know I am-but I love you very, very much.” He spoke distinctly enough now, and slowly. He was as white as marble, and his fingers were cold, and trembled as they held hers.
For an instant after he had spoken, Sybil did not move. Then she quietly drew back her hands and hid her face in a sudden, convulsive movement. She, too, trembled, and her heart beat as though it would break; but she said nothing. Ronald sprang from the ground and kneeled again upon the step beside her; very gently his arm stole about her and drew her to him. She took one hand from her face and tried to disentangle his hold, but he held her strongly, and whispered in her ear,–
“Sybil, I love you–do you love me?”
Sybil made a struggle to rise, but it was not a very brave struggle, and in another moment she had fallen into his arms and was sobbing out her whole love passionately.
“Oh, Ronald, you mu–must not!” But Ronald did.
Half an hour later they were still sitting side by side on the steps, but the storm of uncertainty was passed, and they had plighted their faith for better and for worse, for this world and the next. Ronald had foreseen the event, and had hoped for it as he never had hoped for anything in his life; Sybil had perhaps guessed it; at all events, now that the supreme moment was over, they both felt that it was the natural climax to all that had happened during the spring.
“I think,” said Sybil, quietly, “that we ought to tell my uncle at once. He is the only relation I have in the world.”
“Oh yes, of course,” said Ronald, holding her hand. “That is, you know, I think we might tell him after lunch. Because I suppose it would not be the right thing for me to stay all day after he knows. Would it?”
“Why not?” asked Sybil. “He must know it soon, and you will come to-morrow.”
“To-morrow, and the next day, and the day after that, and always,” said Ronald, lovingly. “But he will not like it, I suppose.”
“Why not?” asked Sybil, again.
“Because I am poor,” said Ronald, quietly. “You know I am not rich at all, Sybil dearest. We shall have to be very economical, and live on the place in Scotland. But it is a very pretty place,” he added, reassuringly.
Sybil flushed a little. He did not know, then, that she had a fortune of her own. It was a new pleasure. She did not say anything for a moment.
“Do you mind very much, dearest?” asked Ronald, doubtfully. “Do you think it would bore you dreadfully to live in the country?”
Sybil hesitated before she answered. She hardly knew whether to tell him or not, but at last she decided it would be better.
“No, Ronald,” said she, smiling a little; “I like the country. But, you know, we can live anywhere we please. I am rich, Ronald–you did not know it?”
Ronald started slightly. It was indeed an unexpected revelation.
“Really?” he cried. “Oh, I am so glad for you. You will not miss anything, then. I was so afraid.”
That evening Ronald telegraphed to Joe the news of his engagement, and the next day he wrote her a long letter, which was more remarkable for the redundant passion expressed than for the literary merit of the expression. It seemed far easier to write it since he had seen her and talked with her about Sybil, not because he felt in the least ashamed of having fallen in love within six months of the dissolution of his former engagement with Joe, but because it seemed a terribly difficult thing to speak to any one about Sybil. Ronald was very far from being poetical, or in any way given to lofty and medieval reflections of the chivalric sort, but he was a very honest fellow, loving for the first time, and he understood that his love was something more to be guarded and respected than anything that had yet come into his life; wherefore it seemed almost ungentlemanly to speak about it.
When Joe received the intelligence her satisfaction knew no bounds, for although she had guessed that the climax of the affair was not far off, she had not expected it so very soon. Had she searched through the whole of her acquaintance at home and in America she could have found no one whom she considered more fit to be Ronald’s wife, and that alone was enough to make her very happy; but the sensation of freedom from all further responsibility to Ronald, and the consciousness that every possible good result had followed upon her action, added so much to her pleasure in the matter, that for a time she utterly forgot herself and her own troubles. She instantly wrote a long and sympathetic letter to Ronald, and another to Sybil.
Sybil replied at once, begging Joe to come and spend a month at Sherwood, or as much time as she was able to give.
“I expect you had best go,” remarked Miss Schenectady. “It is getting pretty hot here, and you look quite sick.”
“Oh no, I am very well,” said Joe; “but I think I will go for a week or ten days.”
“Well, if you find you are going to have a good time, you can always stay, any way,” replied the old lady. “I think if I were you I would take some books and a Bible and a pair of old boots.”
Miss Schenectady did not smile, but Joe laughed outright.
“A Bible and a pair of old boots!” she cried.
“Yes, I would,” said her aunt. “Old Tom Sherwood cannot have seen a Bible for fifty years, I expect, and it might sort of freshen him up.” The old lady’s eye twinkled slightly and the corners of her mouth twitched a little. “As for the old boots, if you conclude to go, you will want them, for you will be right out in the country there.”
Joe laughed again, but she took her aunt’s advice; and on the following day she reached Newport, and was met by Sybil and Ronald, who conveyed her to Sherwood in a thing which Joe learned was called a “carryall.”
Late in the afternoon, when Ronald was gone, the two girls sat in an angle of the old walls, looking over the sea to eastward. The glow of the setting sun behind them touched them softly, and threw a rosy color upon Joe’s pale face, and gilded Sybil’s bright hair, hovering about her brows in a halo of radiant glory. Joe looked at her and wondered at the change love had wrought in so short a time. Sybil had once seemed so cold and white that only a nun’s veil could be a fit thing to bind upon her saintly head; but now the orange blossoms would look better there, Joe thought, twined in a bride’s wreath of white and green, of purity and hope.
“My Snow Angel,” she exclaimed, “the sun has melted you at last!”
“Tell me the story of the Snow Angel,” said Sybil, smiling. “You once said that you would.”
“I will tell you,” said Joe, “as well I can remember it. Mamma used to tell it to me years and years ago, when I was quite a small thing. It is a pretty story. Listen.”
“Once on a time, far away in the north, there lived an angel. She was very, very beautiful, and all of the purest snow, quite white, her face and her hands and her dress and her wings. She lived alone, ever so far away, all through the long winter, in a valley of beautiful snow, where the sun never shone even in the summer. She was the most lovely angel that ever was, but she was so cold that she could not fly at all, and so she waited in the valley, always looking southward and wishing with all her heart that the sun would rise above the hill.
“Sometimes people passed, far down below, in sledges, and she almost would have asked some one of them to take her out of the valley. But once, when she came near the track, a man came by and saw her, and he was so dreadfully frightened that he almost fell out of the sled.
“Sometimes, too, the little angels, who were young and curious, would fly down into the cold valley and look at her and speak to her.
“‘Pretty angel,’ they would say, ’why do you stay all alone in this dreary place?’
“‘They forgot me here,’ she used to answer, ’and now I cannot fly until the sun is over the hill. But I am very happy. It will soon come.’
“It was too cold for the little angels, and so they soon flew away and left her; and they began to call her the Snow Angel among themselves, and some of them said she was not real, but the other ones said she must be, because she was so beautiful. She was not unhappy, because angels never can be, you know; only it seemed a long time to wait for the sun to come.
“But at last the sun heard of her, and the little angels who had seen her told him it was a shame that he should not rise high enough to warm her and help her to fly. So, as he is big and good-natured and strong, he said he would try, and would do his best; and on midsummer’s day he determined to make a great effort. He shook himself, and pushed and struggled very hard, and got hotter than he had ever been in his whole life with his exertions, but at last, with a great brave leap, he found himself so high that he could see right down into the valley, and he saw the Snow Angel standing there, and she was so beautiful that he almost cried with joy. And then, as he looked, he saw a very wonderful sight.
“The Snow Angel, all white and glistening, looked up into the sun’s face and stretched her arms towards him and trembled all over; and as she felt that he was come at last and had begun to warm her, she thrust out her delicate long wings, and they gleamed and shone and struck the cold clear air. Then the least possible tinge of exquisite color came into her face, and she opened her lips and sang for joy; and presently, as she was singing, she rose straight upward with a rushing sound, like a lark in the sunlight, the whitest and purest and most beautiful angel that ever flew in the sky. And her voice was so grand and clear and ringing, that all the other angels stopped in their songs to listen, and then sang with her in joy because the Snow Angel was free at last.
“That is the story mamma used to tell me, long ago, and when I first saw you I thought of it, because you were so cold and beautiful that you seemed all made of snow. But now the sun is over the hill, Sybil dear, is it not?”
“Dear Joe,” said Sybil, winding her arm round her friend’s neck and laying her face close to hers, “you are so nice.”
The sun sank suddenly behind them, and all the eastern water caught the purple glow. It was dark when the two girls walked slowly back to the old house.
Joe stayed many days with Sybil at Sherwood, and the days ran into weeks and the weeks to months as the summer sped by. Ronald came and went daily, spending long hours with Sybil in the garden, and growing more manly and quiet in his happiness, while Sybil grew ever fairer in the gradual perfecting of her beauty. It was comforting to Joe to see them together, knowing what honest hearts they were. She occupied herself as she could with books and a few letters, but she would often sit for hours in a deep chair under the overhanging porch, where the untrimmed honeysuckle waved in the summer breeze like a living curtain, and the birds would come and swing themselves upon its tendrils. But Joe’s cheek was always pale, and her heart weary with longing and with fighting against the poor imprisoned love that no one must ever guess.
The wedding-day was fixed for the middle of August, and the ceremony was to take place in Newport. It is not an easy matter to arrange the marriage of two young people neither of whom has father or mother, though their subsequent happiness is not likely to suffer much by the bereavement. It was agreed, however, that Mrs. Wyndham, who was Sybil’s oldest friend, should come and stay at Sherwood until everything was finished; and she answered the invitation by saying she was “perfectly wild to come,”–and she came at once. Uncle Tom Sherwood was a little confused at the notion of having his house full of people; but Sybil had been amusing herself by reorganizing the place for some time back, and there is nothing easier than to render a great old-fashioned country mansion habitable for a few days in the summer, when carpets are useless and smoking chimneys are not a necessity.
Mrs. Wyndham said that Sam would come down for the wedding and stay over the day, but that she expected he was pretty busy just now.
“By the way,” she remarked, “you know John Harrington has come home. We must send him an invitation.”
The three ladies were walking in the garden after breakfast, hatless and armed with parasols. Joe started slightly, but no one noticed it.
“When did he come–where has he been all this time?” asked Sybil.
“Oh, I do not know. He came down to see Sam the other day at our place. He seems to have taken to business. They talked about the Monroe doctrine and the Panama canal, and all kinds of things. Sam says somebody has died and left him money. Anyway, he seems a good deal interested in the canal.”
Mrs. Wyndham chatted on, planning with Sybil the details of the wedding. The breakfast was to be at Sherwood, and there were not to be many people. Indeed, the distance would keep many away, a fact for which no one of those principally concerned was at all sorry. John Harrington, sweltering in the heat of New York, and busier than he had ever been in his life, received an engraved card to the effect that Mr. Thomas Sherwood requested the pleasure of Mr. Harrington’s company at the marriage of his grandniece, Miss Sybil Brandon, to Mr. Ronald Surbiton, at Sherwood, on the 15th of August. There was also a note from Mrs. Wyndham, saying that she was staying at Sherwood, and that she hoped John would be able to come.
John had, of course, heard of the engagement, but he had not suspected that the wedding would take place so soon. In spite of his business, however, he determined to be present. A great change had come over his life since he had bid Joe good-by six months earlier. He had been called to London as he had expected, and had arrived there to find that Z was dead, and that he was to take his place in the council. The fiery old man had died very suddenly, having worked almost to his last hour, in spite of desperate illness; but when it was suspected that his case was hopeless, John Harrington was warned that he must be ready to join the survivors at once.
In the great excitement, and amidst the constant labor of his new position, the past seemed to sink away to utter insignificance. His previous exertions, the short sharp struggle for the senatorship ending in defeat, the hopes and fears of ten years of a most active life, were forgotten and despised in the realization of what he had so long and so ardently desired, and now at last he saw that his dreams were no impossibility, and that his theories were not myths. But he knew also that, with all his strength and devotion and energy, he was as yet no match for the two men with whom he had to do. Their vast experience of men and things threw his own knowledge into the shade, and cool as he was in emergencies, he recognized that the magnitude of the matters they handled astonished and even startled him more than he could have believed possible. Years must elapse before he understood what seemed as plain as the day to them, and he must fight many desperate battles before he was their equal. But the determination to devote his life wholly and honestly to the one object for which a man should live had grown stronger than ever. In his exalted view the ideal republic assumed grand and noble proportions, and already overshadowed the whole earth with the glory of honor and peace and perfect justice. Before the advancing tide of a spotless civilization, all poverty, all corruption and filthiness, all crime, all war and corroding seeds of discord were swept utterly away and washed from the world, to leave only forever and ever the magnificent harmony of nations and peoples, wherein none of those vile, base, and wicked things should even be dreamed of, or so much as remembered.
He thought of Joe sometimes, wondering rather vaguely why she had acted as she had, and whether any other motive than pure sympathy with his work had made her resent so violently Vancouver’s position towards him. It was odd, he thought, that an English girl should find such extreme interest in American political doings, and then the scene in the dim sitting-room during the ball came vividly back to his memory. It was not in his nature to fancy that every woman who was taken with a fit of coughing was in love with him, but the conviction formed itself in his mind that he might possibly have fallen in love with Joe if things had been different. As it was, he had put away such childish things, and meant to live out his years of work, with their failure or success, without love and without a wife. He would always be grateful to Joe, but that would be all, and he would be glad to see her whenever an opportunity offered, just as he would be glad to see any other friend. In this frame of mind he arrived in Newport on the morning of the wedding, and reached the little church among the trees just in time to witness the ceremony.
It was not different from other weddings, excepting perhaps that the place where the High Church portion of Newport elects to worship is probably smaller than any other consecrated building in the world. Every seat was crowded, and it was with difficulty that John could find standing room just within the door. The heat was intense, and the horses that stood waiting in the avenue, sweated in the sun as they fought the flies, and pawed the hard road in an agony of impatience.
Sybil was exquisitely lovely as she went by on old Mr. Sherwood’s arm. The old gentleman had consented to assume a civilized garb for once in his life, and looked pleased with his aged self, as well he might be, seeing that the engagement had been made under his roof. Then Ronald passed, paler than usual, but certainly the handsomest man present, carrying himself with a new dignity, as though he knew himself a better man than ever in being found worthy of his beautiful bride. It was soon over, and the crowd streamed out after the bride and bridegroom.
“Hallo, Harrington, how are you?” said Vancouver, overtaking John as he turned into the road. “You had better get in with me and drive out. I have not seen you for an age.”
John stood still and surveyed Vancouver with a curiously calm air of absolute superiority.
“Thank you very much,” he answered civilly. “I have hired a carriage to take me there. I dare say we shall meet. Good-morning.”
John had been to Sherwood some years before, but he was surprised at the change that had been wrought in honor of the marriage. The place looked inhabited, the windows were all open, and the paths had been weeded, though Sybil had not allowed the wild shrubbery to be pruned nor the box hedges to be trimmed. She loved the pathless confusion of the old grounds, and most of all she loved the dilapidated summer-house.
John shook hands with many people that he knew. Mrs. Wyndham led him aside a little way.
“Is it not just perfectly splendid?” she exclaimed. “They are so exactly suited to each other. I feel as if I had done it all. You are not at all enthusiastic.”
“On the contrary,” said John, “I am very enthusiastic. It is the best thing that could possibly have happened.”
“Then go and do likewise,” returned Mrs. Sam, laughing. Then she changed her tone. “There is a young lady here who will be very glad to see you. Go and try and cheer her up a little, can’t you?”
“Who is that?”
“A young lady over there–close to Sybil-dressed in white with roses. Don’t you see? How stupid you are! There–the second on the left.”
“Do you mean to say that is Miss Thorn?” exclaimed John in much surprise, and looking where Mrs. Sam directed him. “Good Heavens! How she has changed!”
“Yes, she has changed a good deal,” said Mrs. Wyndham, looking at John’s face.
“I hardly think I should have known her,” said John. “She must have been very ill; what has been the matter?”
“The matter? Well, perhaps if you will go and speak to her, you will see what the matter is,” answered Mrs. Sam, enigmatically.
“What do you mean?” John looked at his companion in astonishment.
“I mean just exactly what I say. Go and talk to her, and cheer her up a little.” She dropped her voice, and spoke close to Harrington’s ear–“No one else in the world can,” she added.
John’s impulse was to answer Mrs. Wyndham sharply. What possible right could she have to say such things? It was extremely bad taste, if it was nothing worse, even with an old friend like John. But he checked the words on his lips and spoke coldly.
“It is not fair to say things like that about any girl,” he answered. “I will certainly go and speak to her at once, and if you will be good enough to watch, you will see that I am the most indifferent of persons in her eyes.”
“Very well, I will watch,” said Mrs. Wyndham, not in the least disconcerted. “Only take care.”
John smiled quietly, and made his way through the crowd of gaily-dressed, laughing people to here Joe was standing. She had not yet caught sight of him, but she knew he was in the room, and she felt very nervous. She intended to treat him with friendly coolness, as a protest against her conduct in former days.
Poor Joe! she was very miserable, but she had made a brave effort. Her pale cheeks and darkened eyes contrasted painfully with the roses she wore, and her short nervous remarks to those who spoke to her sounded very unlike her former self.
“How do you do, Miss Thorn?” John said, very quietly. “It is a long time since we met.”
Joe put her small cold hand in his, and it trembled so much that John noticed it. She turned her head a little away from him, frightened now that he was at last come.
“Yes,” she said in a low voice, “it is a long time.” She felt herself turn red and then pale, and as she looked away from John she met Mrs. Wyndham’s black eyes turned full upon her in an inquiring way. She started as though she had been caught in some wrong thing; but she was naturally brave, and after the first shock she spoke to John more naturally.
“We seem destined for festivities, Mr. Harrington,” she said, trying to laugh. “We parted at a ball, and we meet again at a wedding.”
“It is always more gay to meet than to part,” answered John. “I think this is altogether one of the gayest things I ever saw. What a splendid fellow your cousin is. It does one good to see men like that.”
“Yes, Ronald is very good-looking,” said Joe. “I am so very glad, you do not know; and he is so happy.”
“Any man ought to be who marries such a woman,” said John. “By the bye,” he added with a smile, “Vancouver takes it all very comfortably, does he not? I would like to know what he really feels.”
“I am sure that whatever it is, it is something bad,” said Joe.
“How you hate him!” exclaimed John with a laugh.
“I–I do not hate him. But you ought to, Mr. Harrington. I simply despise him, that is all.”
“No, I do not hate him either,” answered John. “I would not disturb my peace of mind for the sake of hating any one. It is not worth while.”
Some one came and spoke to Joe, and John moved away in the crowd, more disturbed in mind than he cared to acknowledge. He had gone to Joe’s side in the firm conviction that Mrs. Wyndham was only making an untimely jest, and that Joe would greet him indifferently. Instead she had blushed, turned paler, hesitated in her speech, and had shown every sign of confusion and embarrassment. He knew that Mrs. Wyndham was right, after all, and he avoided her, not wishing to give a fresh opportunity for making remarks upon Joe’s manner.
The breakfast progressed, and the people wandered out into the garden from the hot rooms, seeking some coolness in the shady walks. By some chain of circumstances which John could not explain, he found himself left alone with Joe an hour after he had first met her in the house. A little knot of acquaintances had gone out to the end of one of the walks, where there was a shady old bower, and presently they had paired off and moved away in various directions, leaving John and Joe together. The excitement had brought the faint color to the girl’s face at last, and she was more than usually inclined to talk, partly from nervous embarrassment, and partly from the enlivening effect of so many faces she had not seen for so long.
“Tell me,” she said, pulling a leaf from the creepers and twisting it in her fingers–“tell me, how long was it before you forgot your disappointment about the election? Or did you think it was not worth while to disturb your peace of mind for anything so trivial?”
“I suppose I could not help it,” said John. “I was dreadfully depressed at first. I told you so, do you remember?”
“Of course you were, and I was very sorry for you. I told you you would lose it, long before, but you do not seem to care in the least now. I do not understand you at all.”
“I soon got over it,” said John. “I left Boston on the day after I saw you, and went straight to London. And then I found that a friend of mine was dead, and I had so much to do that I forgot everything that had gone before.”
Joe gave a little sigh, short and sharp, and quickly checked.
“You have a great many friends, have you not?” she said.
“Yes, very many. A man cannot have too many of the right sort.”
“I do not think you and I mean the same thing by friendship,” said Joe. “I should say one cannot have too few.”
“I mean friends who will help you at the right moment, that is, when you ask help. Surely it must be good to have many.”
“Everything that you do and say always turns to one and the same end,” said Joe, a little impatiently. “The one thing you live for is power and the hope of power. Is there nothing in the world worth while save that?”
“Power itself is worth nothing. It is the thing one means to get with it that is the real test.”
“Of course. But tell me, is anything you can obtain by all the power the world holds better than the simple happiness of natural people, who are born and live good lives, and–fall in love, and marry, and that sort of thing, and are happy, and die?” Joe looked down and turned the leaf she held in her fingers, as she stated her proposition.
John Harrington paused before he answered. A moment earlier he had been as calm and cold as he was wont to be; now, he suddenly hesitated. The strong blood rushed to his brain and beat furiously in his temples, and then sank heavily back to his heart, leaving his face very pale. His fingers wrung each other fiercely for a moment. He looked away at the trees; he turned to Josephine Thorn; and then once more he gazed at the dark foliage, motionless in the hot air of the summer’s afternoon.
“Yes,” he said, “I think there are things much better than those in the world.” But his voice shook strangely, and there was no true ring in it.
Joe sighed again.
In the distance she could see Ronald and Sybil, as they stood under the porch shaking hands with the departing guests. She looked at them, so radiant and beautiful with the fulfilled joy of a perfect love, and she looked at the stern, strong man by her side, whose commanding face bore already the lines of care and trouble, and who, he said, had found something better than the happiness of yonder bride and bridegroom.
She sighed, and she said in her woman’s heart that they were right, and that John Harrington was wrong.
“Come,” she said, rising, and her words had a bitter tone, “let us go in; it is late.” John did not move. He sat like a stone, paler than death, and said no word in answer. Joe turned and looked at him, as though wondering why he did not follow her. She was terrified at the expression in his face.
“Are you not coming?” she asked, suddenly going close to him and looking into his eyes.
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!”