His face was a study, and, more clearly than he realized, betrayed the perplexity and trouble of his mind. How could he give up the lovely girl at his side, whose very imperfection and need won more upon him than any display of conscious strength and advanced spirituality? Her frankness, her humility and severe self-condemnation, appealed to every generous trait of his large, charitable nature.
He now believed, as never before, that she was "capable of the n.o.blest things," and he began to suffer from the torturing thought that his course was a mistaken one, and that he wronged her by acting upon the supposition that her old surroundings of luxury and culture were essential to her happiness. Might it not be true that, in a nature like hers, something far more profound was needed to create and sustain true serenity of heart? Had she not in effect plainly said that she had fathomed the shallow depths of luxury, wealth, and general flattering attention? Had she not unconsciously given him a severe rebuke? What right had he to a.s.sume that he was any more capable of heroic self-sacrifice than she? Only the certainty that he was sacrificing himself for her happiness enabled him to make the sacrifice at all, and now he began to think that his course might be a wretched blunder which would blight them both.
The very possibility of making such a mistake was agony. To have come so near happiness, and then to miss it by as great a wrong to her as to himself, would be more than fort.i.tude itself could endure. His uncle"s words were ever present: "If Lottie loved, it would be no half-way business. He had no right to sacrifice her happiness." It was her happiness that he was thinking of, and if he could secure it best by consummating his own at the same time, it seemed to him that heaven would begin at once.
A trivial circ.u.mstance had enabled Lottie to intimate plainly to him that he had virtually a.s.serted, "I am a man, and can do that of which only the n.o.blest and most unselfish natures are capable.
You are not only a woman, but you cannot rise to the level of many of your sisters, who have left on history"s page the heroic record of their triumphs over the supposed weakness of their s.e.x." What he had not meant, but still had appeared to hint from his language, was he not, in fact, practically acting upon as true? While he had taken his course in the spirit of the most generous self-sacrifice, might he not, at the same time, be ignoring the fact that she was as capable of self-sacrifice and n.o.ble consecration to a sacred cause as himself?
If she had been sincere in her religious experiences, and in all her words and actions in that direction, how could he help believing that she was equally sincere in the language of tone and eye, which had revealed her heart so plainly that even he, who was the last in the world to presume, had come to think that she loved him? And yet he was about to make his life, and perhaps hers also, one long regret, because he had quietly a.s.sumed that she was one of those women whose life depends on surroundings, and to whose souls mere things can minister more than love and the consciousness of an heroic devotion to a sacred cause. Lottie had skilfully and clearly given the impression she sought to convey; and this impression, uniting with the student"s love, formed a combination whose a.s.saults caused his supposed inflexible purpose to waver.
Lottie"s quick intuition enabled her to see that she had led him far enough at present, while they were in such close proximity to jealous, observant eyes and attentive ears, and so, with equal tact, she led his thoughts to more tranquillizing topics. She was employing all the skill and finesse of which she had been mistress in the days of her insincerity and heartless coquetry. These gifts were still hers, as much as ever. But now they were under the control of conscience, and would henceforth be used to secure and promote happiness, not to destroy it.
And she felt that she had need of tact and skill. The situation was not so very peculiar. Many had pa.s.sed through just such experiences before, but have all pa.s.sed on to lives of consummated happiness?
She loved the man at her side devotedly, and was perfectly aware of his love for her, and yet woman"s silence was upon her lips. They were soon to separate, not to meet again for many years, if ever.
She could not speak. If from any motive, even the n.o.blest, he did not speak, how could she meet the long, lonely future, in which every day would make more clear the dreary truth that she had missed her true life and happiness?--missed it through no necessity that might in the end bring resignation, but through a mistake,--the unselfish blundering of a man who wrongly supposed she could be happier without than with him. It was her delicate task to show him, without abating one jot of woman"s jealous reserve, that she was capable of all the self-sacrifice to which he looked forward, and that, as his uncle had told him, he had no right to sacrifice her happiness.
He was one of those single-hearted, resolute fellows, who have the greatest faculty for persistently blundering under an honest but wrong impression. But, in this case, his impression was natural, and he was wrong, only because Lottie was "capable of n.o.ble things,"--only because she did belong to that cla.s.s of women to whom the love of their heart counts for infinitely more than all externals. If he had fallen in love with a very goodish sort of girl of the Bel Parton type, the course he had marked out would have been the wisest and best, eventually, for both, even though it involved, at first, a good deal of suffering.
When a wife a.s.sures her husband, by word or manner, "You took advantage of my love and inexperience to commit me to a life and condition that are distasteful or revolting, and you have thereby inflicted an irreparable injury," the man, if he be fine-fibred and sensitive, can only look forward to a painful and aggravated form of martyrdom. One had better live alone as long as Methuselah than induce a small-souled woman to enter with him on a life involving continual sacrifice. With such women, some men can be tolerably happy, if they have the means to carry out the "gilded cage" principle; but woe to them both if the gilded cage is broken or lost, and they have to go out into the great world and build their nest wherever they can.
Providence had given to Lottie the chance to live the life of ideal womanhood,--the life of love and devotion,--and she did not mean to lose it. While her high spirit would often chafe with a little wholesome friction, it would yet grow sweeter and more patient under the trials of the hardest lot, if they could only be endured at his side to whom, by some mystic necessity of her being, she had given her heart.
Therefore, with unmingled satisfaction she saw that she was sapping the student"s stern resolution not to speak. She would, by a witchery as innocent as subtile, beguile him into just the opposite of what he had proposed. As she had declared to her uncle, he should ask her, in a very humble manner, to become a home missionary, and she, under the circ.u.mstances, was more ready to comply than to become Empress of all the Russias.
But, during the remainder of the ride, she made the time pa.s.s all too quickly, as she led him to speak of his student life, his Western home, and especially of his mother; and Lottie smiled appreciatively over the enthusiasm and affection which he manifested for one concerning whom she had ever heard Mrs. Marchmont speak a little slightingly. The genuine interest which she took in all that related to Mrs. Hemstead touched the young man very closely, and his whole nature was getting under arms against what his heart was beginning to characterize as a most unnatural and stupid resolution.
De Forrest was greatly relieved as he heard Hemstead describing his humble, farm-house home and toiling mother; for the student softened none of the hard outlines of their comparative poverty.
"The great fool!" thought the exquisite. "Even if Lottie were inclined to care for him somewhat, he has repelled her now by revealing his common and poverty-stricken surroundings."
But as Lottie became satisfied that Hemstead would not be able to go away in silence, a new cause of trouble and perplexity claimed her attention. Not that she had not thought of it often since she had realized how irrevocably she had given her love, but other and more immediate questions had occupied her mind. How was she to reconcile her fashionable mother and worldly father to her choice? She clearly recognized that what to her seemed the most natural--indeed, the only thing in life left for her--would appear to one simply monstrous, and to the other the baldest folly.
She loved her parents sincerely, for, with all her faults, she had never been cold-hearted; and, while she proposed to be resolute, it was with the deepest anxiety and regret that she foresaw the inevitable conflict.
But when she was at a loss to think of anything that could be said to soften the blow, or make her course appear right or reasonable, as they would look at it, a circ.u.mstance occurred which led, as she then believed, to the solution of the problem.
After driving between two and three hours, they reached West Point in safety, and, as they were pa.s.sing along by the officers"
quarters, Lottie recognized a young lady who was one of her most intimate city friends, and who, she soon learned, was making a visit in the country, like herself. Lottie told Bel and Addie to go on to the dancing-hall, while she called on her friend, adding, "I will soon join you."
The relations between Lottie and her friend were rather confidential, and the latter soon bubbled over with her secret. She was engaged to a cadet, who would graduate in the following June.
"But he is away down towards the end of his cla.s.s, and so, of course, will have to go out upon the Plains," she said, with a little sigh.
"What will you do then?" asked Lottie, quickly, a bright thought striking her. "You surely will not exchange your elegant city home for barracks in some remote fort, where you may be scalped any night?"
"I surely will," said the vivacious young lady; "and if you ever become half as much in love as I am, it won"t seem a bit strange."
"But what do your parents say to all this?"
"O, well, of course they would much prefer that I should marry and settle in New York. But then, you know, mother always had a great admiration for the army, and it"s quite the thing, in fashionable life, to marry into the army and navy. Why, bless you, Lottie, nearly all the ladies on the post have seen the roughest times imaginable on the frontier, and they come from as good families, and very many of them have left as good homes as mine."
"But how are you going to live on a lieutenant"s pay? I have known you to spend more than that on your own dress in a single year."
"What are dresses compared with Lieutenant Ransom? I can learn to economize as well as the rest of them. You can"t have everything, Lottie. You know what an officer"s rank is. It gives him the entree into the best society of the land, and often opens the way for the most brilliant career. These things reconcile father and mother to it, but I look at the man himself. He"s just splendid! Come, we"ll go over to the hall, and I will introduce you, and let you dance with him once,--only once, you incorrigible flirt, or you will steal him away from me after all. By the way, who was that handsome man who drove? I fear you bewitched him coming over the mountain, from the way his eyes followed you."
"How does he compare with your Lieutenant Ransom?" asked Lottie.
"No one can compare with him. But why do you ask? Is there anything serious?"
"Will you think so when I tell you that he enters, next summer, on the life of a home missionary on the Western frontier?"
"O, how dismal!" exclaimed the young lady. "No, indeed! no danger of your giving him serious thoughts. But you ought not to flirt with such a man, Lottie."
"I do not intend to, nor with any one else, any more. But why do you say "How dismal"? Your lieutenant will have as rough a frontier life as Mr. Hemstead, and, surely, the calling of the ministry is second to none."
"Well, it seems very different. n.o.body thinks much of a home missionary.
Why, Lottie, none of our set ever married a home missionary, while several have married into the army and navy. So, for heaven"s sake, don"t let your head become turned by one who looks forward to such a forlorn life. But here we are, and I will make you envious in a moment."
"Miss Marsden," said Hemstead, stepping forward as they were entering, "I do not like to hasten you, but there is every appearance of a storm, and the wind is rising. I wish you could induce Addie to start soon. I will go to the Trophy room for a little while, and then will drive around."
"You may rest a.s.sured I will do my best," said Lottie. "I am ready to start now."
"Beware of that man," said her friend; "his eyes tell the same story that I see in Lieutenant Ransom"s."
"You have become a little lady of one idea," said Lottie, laughing and blushing, "and all the world is in love, in your estimation."
When Hemstead drove to the door, the snow-flakes were beginning to fly, and the wind had increased in force. But Bel was not ready, and Addie would not hear of their going till the hours set apart for dancing were over. Even then she permitted her cadet friends to detain her several minutes longer.
As the others were, in a certain sense, her guests, they were delicate about urging her departure. Thus it happened that the early December twilight was coming on, and the air was full of wildly-flying snow, as the last words were said, and the horses dashed off for the mountains.
But the storm increased in violence every moment, and the air was so filled with flakes that the young people could not see twenty feet before them. What caused Hemstead uneasiness was the fact that the sheltered road that led from the Point along the southern base of the mountains, for a long distance before coming to any great ascent, was already somewhat clogged with drifts. Above, on the mountain"s crest, he heard a sound as if the north wind were blowing strongly.
He grew very anxious, and finally said, as they reached the point where the road began to rise rapidly, that he thought the attempt to cross that night involved much risk. But Addie would not hear of their returning. Her mother would go wild about them, and would never let her come again.
"It has not snowed very much yet, and if we wait till to-morrow it may be very deep."
"The drifts are what I fear," said Hemstead.
"There were no bad drifts this afternoon," said Addie, "and surely they cannot be deep yet."
Since the following day was Sunday, and New Year"s also, it was agreed that they should push on. To return would involve much that was disagreeable to the party, and create great alarm at Mrs.
Marchmont"s.
"It will just result in their sending after us, this dreadful night," said Addie. "I don"t see why it must storm just when one most wishes it wouldn"t."
"We ought to have started sooner," said Bel. "I knew the delay was very wrong, but we were having such a good time."
De Forrest, having vainly sought to get Lottie to sit with him, had sulkily taken his seat just behind her and Hemstead, where he was the most sheltered of the party, and, not supposing there was any real danger, had m.u.f.fled himself up so that he was almost past speaking or hearing. He had nearly resolved with some sullenness to let matters take their course until the "cursed visit was over."
New York, and not the barbarous, dreary country, was the place where he shone; and when there once more, he would soon regain his old ascendency over Lottie, and she, of course, would forget this Western monster. He noticed, during the first mile, that Hemstead and Lottie scarcely spoke to each other; and, as the storm increased, he concluded there was no danger of their making love when, if they opened their mouths to speak, the wind would fill them with snow.