Adah"s laugh rang out a little harshly.
I hastened to the rescue of the embarra.s.sed girl, saying, "I don"t see why you should beg my pardon. We"re all Friends here. At least I"m trying to be one as fast as a leopard can change his spots and the Ethiopian his skin. As for you, a tailor would say you were cut from the same cloth as Mrs. Yocomb."
But for some reason she could not recover herself. She probably realized, in the tumult of her feeling, that she had revealed her heart too clearly, and she could not help seeing that Adah understood her.
She was too confused for further pretence, and too unnerved to attempt it. After a moment of pitiful hesitation she fled with a scarlet face to her room.
"Well," said Adah, with a slight hysterical laugh, "I understand Emily Warren now."
"Pardon me, Miss Adah, I don"t think you do," I began.
"If thee doesn"t, thee"s blind indeed."
"I am blind."
"Be a.s.sured I"m not any longer," and with a deep angry flush she, too, left us.
I turned to Mrs. Yocomb, and taking both of her hands I entreated, "As you have the heart of a woman, never let Emily Warren marry that man.
Help me--help us both!"
"My poor boy," she began, "this is a serious matter--"
"It is indeed," I said, pa.s.sionately; "it"s a question of life and death to us both."
"Well," she said, thoughtfully, "I think time and truth will be on thy side in the end; but I would advise thee not to do or say anything rash or hasty. She is very resolute. Give her time."
Would to G.o.d I had taken her advice!
CHAPTER XVII
MY WORST BLUNDER
I scarcely could foresee how we should get through the following day. I both longed for and dreaded it, feeling that though it might pa.s.s quietly enough, it would probably be decisive in its bearing on the problem of my life. Miss Warren would at last be compelled to face the truth squarely, that she had promised a man what she could not give, and that to permit him to go on blindly trusting would be impossible.
The moment she realized fully that she had never truly loved him, and now never could, she would give up the pretence. Then why should she not see that love, duty, and truth could go together? That she had struggled desperately to be loyal to Mr. Hearn was sadly proved by her thin face and wasted form; but with a nature like hers, when once her genuine love was evoked, the effort to repress it was as vain as seeking to curb a rising tide. I now saw, as I looked back over the past weeks, that her love had grown steadily and irresistibly till it had overwhelmed all save her will and conscience; that these stood, the two solitary landmarks of her former world. And I knew they would stand, and that my only hope was to stand with them. Her love had gone out to me as mine had to her, from a constraint that she could not resist, and this fact I hoped would reveal to her its sacred right to live. With every motive that would naturally bind her to a man who could give her so much, her heart claimed its mate in one who must daily toil long hours for subsistence. It would be like her to recognize that a love so unthrifty and unselfish must spring from the deepest truths and needs of her being rather than from any pa.s.sing causes. She would come to believe as I did, that G.o.d had created us for each other.
But it seemed as if the whole world had changed and gone awry when we sat down to breakfast the next morning. Adah was polite to me, but she was cool and distant. She no longer addressed me in the Friendly tongue. It was "you" now. I had ceased to be one of them, in her estimation. Her father and mother looked grave and worried, but they were as kind and cordial to me as ever. Reuben and the little girls were evidently mystified by the great change in the social atmosphere, but were too inexperienced to understand it. I was pained by Adah"s manner, but did not let it trouble me, feeling a.s.sured that as she thought the past over she would do me justice, and that our relations would become substantially those of a brother and sister.
But I was puzzled and alarmed beyond measure by Miss Warren"s manner and appearance, and my feelings alternated between the deepest sympathy and the strongest fear. She looked as if she had grown old in the night, and was haggard from sleeplessness. Her deep eyes had sunken deeper than ever, and the lines under them were dark indeed, but her white face was full of a cold scorn, and she held herself aloof from us all.
She looked again as if capable of any blind, desperate self-sacrifice.
Simple, honest Mr. Yocomb was sorely perplexed, but his wife"s face was grave and inscrutable. If I had only gone quietly away and left the whole problem to her, how much better it would have been!
I tried to speak to Miss Warren in a pleasant, natural way; her answers were brief and polite, but nothing more. Before the meal was over she excused herself and returned to her room. I felt almost indignant. What had I--most of all, what had her kind, true friends, Mr. and Mrs.
Yocomb--done to warrant that cold, half--scornful face? Her coming to breakfast was but a form, and she clearly wished to leave us at the earliest possible moment. Adah smiled satirically as she pa.s.sed out, and the expression did not become her fair face.
I strode out to the arbor in the garden and stared moodily at the floor, I know not how long, for I was greatly mystified and baffled, and my very soul was consumed with anxiety.
"She shall listen to reason," I muttered again and again. "This question must be settled in accordance with truth--the simple, natural truth--and nothing else. She"s mine, and nothing shall separate us--not even her perverse will and conscience;" and so the heavy hours pa.s.sed in deep perturbation.
At last I heard a step, and looking through the leaves I saw the object of my thoughts coming through the garden, reading a letter. My eyes glistened with triumph. "The chance I coveted has come," I muttered, and I watched her intently. She soon crushed the letter in her hand and came swiftly toward the arbor, with a face so full of deep and almost wild distress that my heart relented, and I resolved to be as gentle as I before had intended to be decisive and argumentative. I hastily changed my seat to the angle by the entrance, so that I could intercept her should she try to escape the interview.
She entered, and throwing herself down on the seat, buried her face in her arm.
"Miss Warren," I began.
She started up with a pa.s.sionate gesture. "You have no right to intrude on me now," she said, almost sternly.
"Pardon me, were I not here when you entered, I would still have a right to come. You are in deep distress. Why must I be inhuman any more than yourself? You have at least promised me friendship, but you treat me like an enemy."
"You have been my worst enemy."
"I take issue with you there at once. I"ve never had a thought toward you that was not most kind and loyal.
"Loyal!" she replied, bitterly; "that word in itself is a stab."
"Miss Warren," I said, very gently, "you make discord in the old garden to-day."
She dropped her letter on the ground and sank on the seat again. Such a pa.s.sion of sobs shook her slight frame that I trembled with apprehension. But I kept quiet, believing that Nature could care for her child better than I could, and that her outburst of feeling would bring relief. At last, as she became a little more self-controlled, I said, gravely and kindly:
"There must be some deep cause for this deep grief."
"Oh, what shall I do?" she sobbed. "What shall I do? I wish the earth would open and swallow me up."
"That wish is as vain as it is cruel. I wish you would tell me all, and let me help you. I think I deserve it at your hands."
"Well, since you know so much, you may as well know all. It doesn"t matter now, since every one will soon know. He has written that his business will take him to Europe within a month--that we must be married--that he will bring his sister here to-night to help me make arrangements. Oh! oh! I"d rather die than ever see him again. I"ve wronged him so cruelly, so causelessly."
In wild exultation I s.n.a.t.c.hed a pocketbook from my coat and cried:
"Miss Warren--Emily--do you remember this little York and Lancaster bud that you gave me the day we first met? Do you remember my half-jesting, random words, "To the victor belong the spoils"? See, the victor is at your feet."
She sprang up and turned her back upon me. "Rise!" she said, in a voice so cold and stern that, bewildered, I obeyed.
She soon became as calm as before she had been pa.s.sionate and unrestrained in her grief; but it was a stony quietness that chilled and disheartened me before she spoke.
"It does indeed seem as if the truth between us could never be hidden,"
she said, bitterly. "You have now very clearly shown your estimate of me. You regard me as one of those weak women of the past whom the strongest carry off. You have been the stronger in this case--oh, you know it well! Not even in the house of G.o.d could I escape your vigilant scrutiny. You hoped and watched and waited for me to be false. Should I yield to you, you would never forget that I had been false, and, in accordance with your creed, you would ever fear--that is, if your pa.s.sion lasted long enough--the coming of one still stronger, to whom in the weak necessity of my nature, I again would yield. Low as I have fallen, I will never accept from a man a mere pa.s.sion devoid of respect and honor. I"m no longer ent.i.tled to these, therefore I"ll accept nothing."
She poured out these words like a torrent, in spite of my gestures of pa.s.sionate dissent, and my efforts to be heard; but it was a cold, pitiless torrent. Excited as I was, I saw how intense was her self-loathing. I also saw despairingly that she embraced me in her scorn.
"Miss Warren," I said, dejectedly, "since you are so unjust to yourself, what hope have I?"
"There is little enough for either of us," she continued, more bitterly; "at least there is none for me. You will, no doubt, get bravely over it, as you said. Men generally do, especially when in their hearts they have no respect for the woman with whom they are infatuated. Mr. Morton, the day of your coming was indeed the day of _my_ fate. I wish you could have saved the lives of the others, but not mine. I could then have died in peace, with honor unstained. But now, what is my life but an intolerable burden of shame and self-reproach?
Without cause and beyond the thought of forgiveness, I"ve wronged a good, honorable man, who has been a kind and faithful friend for years.
He is bringing his proud, aristocratic sister here to-night to learn how false and contemptible I am. The people among whom I earned my humble livelihood will soon know how unfit I am to be trusted with their daughters--that I am one who falls a spoil to the strongest. I have lost everything--chief of all my pearl of great price--my truth.