CHAPTER XXXVIIINEW LIFE
“We avoided the ‘highways’ and public resorts of travel—the grand railway lines, the great cities, the famous spas, the big hotels, and we sought out the by-ways—unfrequented hamlets and villages on mountain heights or in forest depths, as yet undiscovered by the eyes, unprofaned by the feet of speculators.
“We had seen enough of the splendor and magnificence of Europe; we wished to see some of its real, working life.
“Yes, we wished to lose ourselves and find repose in obscurity.
“Yet where can one go and avoid fate? Or where, let me ask you, Abel, can we travel and not meet an American tourist?
“You remember the day and the place of our first meeting. It was on a glorious afternoon in July, when the sun was sinking in the west and kindling all the horizon into a conflagration. We were in a little chalet at the foot of the mountain. We had come out to view the magnificence of the sunset. The cowherd was penning his cattle; the shepherd was folding his sheep.
“Coming down the mountain path we saw a solitary tourist, knapsack on back and alpenstock in hand.
“That was my first sight of you, Abel; a tall, athletic, black-bearded man, whom we all first took for a Tyrolesian.
“You came up to the door of the chalet, raised your hat to us and asked the cottagers if you could have a night’s lodging.
“Do you remember, Abel? Of course you could beaccommodated—roughly; we were all ‘roughing it’ for the time being.
“So our acquaintance began.
“That night you introduced yourself to us by name and nationality—Abel Force, of Maryland, United States; and when my father, in return, named himself and me your face brightened. You told him that on leaving America you had brought letters of introduction—among which was one from your late minister to St. James, addressed to the Earl of Enderby. These letters were all with your luggage at your hotel at Berne, where you had left them to come on this pedestrian excursion to the mountain. You added that you had missed Lord Enderby in England and learned that he was traveling on the Continent; that you deemed yourself strangely fortunate in having thus met him, and would present your credentials in the form of the ex-minister’s letter, as soon as we should reach Berne.
“The next day we all returned to Berne in company—you, at my father’s invitation, taking a seat in our carriage.
“At the Bernerhof Hotel we stopped but one night. There you found and presented your letter—to prove that you were no impostor, you said. You joined our company and traveled where we traveled, and stopped where we stopped.
“Why should I repeat this to you, you know it already?
“Only because it is a visible link in the chain of our destiny.
“That long summer, Abel, we spent together! That long summer, every day of which drew our hearts nearer and nearer! Even my father, who was ever most reserved to all but oldest friends and nearest kin, came to love you like a son.
“I—feeling then, for the first time, all the bitter significanceof my own antecedents—resisted the sweet influence that was flowing into my soul, yet—resisted it in vain!
“You know how silently our love grew, during those delightful weeks and months we lived and traveled together.
“I knew then, though we might never marry in this world, even as I know now—though this confession may part us for this earth—that we are mates for all eternity.
“There came a day, at last, when we were all in the ancient city of Grenada, that you went to my father and asked his consent to win me for your wife. He told you that he would have a talk with me first, and then give you an answer.
“My father came to me and told me all that had passed between himself and you, and of your proposal for my hand, and he asked me how I felt disposed toward ‘Mr. Force.’
“Oh! the bitter sweet of that moment.
“I told my father I felt so well disposed toward you, that but for my past calamity and its living evidence I should accept your hand.
“Oh, Abel! my answer did not express the hundredth part of the love, the joy and the sorrow that strove in my heart at the time; but I had to control myself and speak quietly, almost indifferently, in the presence of my father.
“He replied by assuring me that he should approve my marriage with Mr. Force; that as for my calamity, it was no crime, no fault of mine, but the result of circumstances—that I was so perfectly and unquestionably innocent that I might tell the whole story to Mr. Force without losing a degree of his love and esteem.
“At that I became very much alarmed. I declared to my father that I should die on the spot if ever my suitor should be told the story of my humiliation; forunder such circumstances I could not look him in the face and live.
“My father attempted to argue with me, to call me morbid, my thoughts and feelings extravagant, exaggerated; but the violence of my agitation bore him down and silenced him at last.
“‘What am I to say to Force?’ he inquired.
“‘Tell him anything you like—except the story of my fall—or that I can accept his suit.’
“‘You refuse him, then?’
“‘I must.’
“My father left me.
“I kept my room the whole of that day.
“On the next day I went down to the sitting room we three occupied in common. I certainly did not expect to find you there, Abel Force; yet there you were, looking a little graver than usual, but otherwise behaving as if nothing unusual had been said or done. You bade me good-morning, handed me a chair, and inquired after my health.
“Well, though to my surprise I found you in our sitting room that morning, I certainly expected you to leave our party on the first opportunity. But you did not. You remained with us and traveled with us as before.
“I shrank from speaking to my father on the subject, yet at length I summoned courage to ask him if he had given my answer to you. He replied that he had, and that you had said you could wait and hope.
“We spent the autumn together, as we had spent the summer; yet, Abel, we were not happy, and as the time for our return to England and your return to America approached, and we were to separate to meet no more in this world, we both grew more and more miserable. As for me, my heart seemed wasting to death.
“One day in November my father came to me, and said:
“‘Elfrida, do you consider me a man of honor, or not?’
“‘My dear father, what a question!’ was all that I could answer.
“‘But tell me, do you consider me a man of honor? Yes, or no!’
“‘Yes, my dear father; yes. A man of the most perfect and most unquestionable honor,’ I replied.
“‘Good! Then perhaps you will believe me and act upon my words. Elfrida, Mr. Force has this morning begged me to speak for him again. Again he offers you his hand.’
“‘Well, my dear father?’
“‘Well, Elfrida, he loves you, and you know it. You love him, and he knows it. You are both dying for each other, and I know that.’
“‘Well, my dear father?’ I said again.
“‘Have pity on him and on yourself, and accept his suit.’
“‘But, my past—my past—which I can never tell him—never! I could die first.’
“‘Elfrida, do you believe your father to be a man of honor?’ he inquired, for the third time.
“‘Dear sir, how can you ask me? I have said, “a man of indubitable honor,”’ I replied.
“‘Very well, then. On the truth of a man, on the honor of a peer, on the faith of a Christian, I swear to you, Elfrida, that you may marry Force without telling him one word of your past trouble,’ he said to me, so solemnly that I could not question him. I could only receive his words on the high and sacred ground on which he had spoken them.
“Oh, Abel! was I wrong?
“‘I am now going to send Force to see you,’ he repeated, as he left the room.
“Two minutes after that you came to me, and before you left my side I was your promised wife. Oh, Abel! was I wrong? Was my father misled by his love for his child? Was I deceived by my love for you? Oh, Abel! was I wrong? I knew my father’s strict, punctilious sense of honor. I had seen many instances of it. He had been a wealthier man had he been a less fastidiously honorable one. How could I believe that he would sanction a dishonorable concealment of my story, even to secure my own happiness?
“I could not believe this of my father. And yet I doubted—I doubted. And this concealment never did secure my happiness, but has burdened and darkened and sickened my soul for twenty years.
“You remember it was arranged that we should be married at Myrtle Grove.
“We all went to London together. You took apartments at Langham’s. We went down to Myrtle Grove, where you were to meet us, a fortnight later, for the wedding.
“And what did I do at Myrtle Grove? Prepare for my wedding?
“No! I passed but one day there, and then I hurried down into Kent and to the dairy farm to see my boy, whom I had not seen for many months.
“I carried loads of toys, pets, sweetmeats, presents of all sorts—ah! as if gifts could compensate a child for family recognition, for mother’s love.
“I found the boy in high health, happy in his surroundings, in his foster-parents’ affections, and in his foster-brother’s companionship. I spent nearly the whole fortnight preceding my marriage with my child in Kent.
“Two days before the one appointed for the wedding I took leave of my boy, half heartbroken at the forcedseparation, yet comforted with the knowledge that he at least was well and happy, and that he would be faithfully nursed by Mary Chester, and carefully looked after by my father, who had promised to adopt and educate him, and to bring him to see me at intervals.
“I returned to Myrtle Grove, having made no preparations for our marriage, which you know was a strictly private one at the parish church, with only my father to give me away, and my brother and the parish clerk for witnesses.
“After the wedding, you remember, we took leave of my dear father, who promised to visit us the ensuing spring, but who never kept his promise, because he died suddenly of heart disease during that winter.”