What is there to tell? I could have no secrets--"
Then there rushed to his memory with a force that sent the blood to his brow and almost took his breath, the conviction that he _had_ a secret from her--that he _was_ deceiving her--that it was unmanly to seek her love with a lie on his lips. For a brief season his engagement had been forgotten, or ignored. He had hugged to his breast with unreasoning apathy the theory that the present was enough to consider--that the future must care for itself--that once his promised wife, Lina Dent should be his if all the world conspired against it. But now came the hated thought that Evelyn Howard stood between him and the precious one who had been his day-star since the night when he had nursed her back to life.
Starting up, he strode back and forth, not noting the pale cheeks and startled eyes of the girl who watched him in ill-repressed anxiety.
At length, sitting down beside her, he seized her soft fingers with a grasp of which he was hardly aware. Then instantly relaxing the rigor of his clasp, he pleaded:
"Let me hold this pure little hand while I confess to you, my only love, that your clear eyes have read my soul--that I have deceived you--that I love you beyond all else this world contains; but that the most cruel fate man ever before suffered, keeps me from you, unless, indeed, your love will help me to remove the barrier."
And while the young girl listened, with drooping head, he told her of his hated engagement--of the painful circ.u.mstances that had betrayed him into compliance.
"But I never dreamed of this sort of Nemesis! I could not have been in my senses to thus barter my freedom forever."
Slowly withdrawing her hand, the girl said, still in the same low tones:
"And you do not love your betrothed?"
"Love her?" he echoed. "I tell you, Lina, I have never even seen her.
Her people have been abroad for an age. She was in New York a few weeks ago and, I understand, took offense at my continued absence from her side, and went back to England. This is what she left for me;" and plunging his hand into his breast pocket he selected from his note-case a fragrant little billet-doux, formally desiring Dr. Gardner to explain his strange conduct at his leisure--that the next opportunity granted him of seeing Evelyn Howard must be of his own seeking.
There was a pause after the reading of this aggrieved, dignified little message.
"And can you, as a gentleman of honor, reconcile your neglect of the writer?" asked Lina Dent, in a voice in which a cadence of scorn involuntarily sounded.
"Honor! Can"t you see that honor was what kept me from her? Such honor as a man feels when he knows that he is poised between a Scylla and a Charybdis of desperate fatality?"
"There can be but one answer to all this, Dr. Gardner," the girl replied with proud dignity. "It would ill become me to sit in judgment on you after what I have received at your hands; but you will acknowledge that it was cruelly inconsiderate to seek my love while a barrier such as this existed. How do I know that you will not love your betrothed after you have seen her?"
"Love her--love any other than you, my beautiful, peerless one? Do not torture me with such a supposition. I care nothing for Evelyn Howard; I do not know her; I do not care to know her; nor is she in the least dependent upon me for happiness. She has vast wealth, and can command whatever fate she chooses."
"But wealth cannot buy happiness," she sadly replied, "and our course is clear. I can see you no more till you have met your betrothed and received your dismissal--or,"--and her clear cheek paled again--"made up your mind to fulfill your promise to her. Farewell! I thank you for your unwise devotion to me, but I can see you no more."
"Oh, Lina, do not doom me to this total separation. Why it seems an eternity. Where and when can I see you again? Why didn"t I go to that girl when she was here? Fool, coward that I was! And now I cannot leave New York. Grant me some respite, my love--I cannot live without you!"
But much as she sympathized with him she was firm; and when Weldon Gardner left the house, with despair tugging at his heart, the only ray of sunshine that pierced the gloom was the conviction that she did love him--that should anything occur to separate them forever, her heart would plead strongly for him, and her love would strive with his to overcome the barrier.
Months went by, and still Evelyn Howard eluded Weldon Gardner"s pursuit.
Bitterly was he punished for his culpable neglect of her. In vain he wrote letters urging her to come to New York. She was traveling with friends and declined to change her course. He followed her to London, to Paris. In vain! She was ever just before him on his journey: always missing, never meeting him. Then he wrote to Lina Dent, beseeching her to relent, since he had done all in his power to carry out her wishes.
She did not reply. Then in sullen despair he gave up the pursuit. He carefully avoided going out except to see patients, declined all invitations, and took solitary refuge in the stern exactions of duty.
As the year drew to a close he noticed in the list of arrivals from Europe, Miss Evelyn Howard and her party; and among the personals he saw that the beautiful Miss Howard would appear at Governor B"s reception on the next evening. He had received cards to this party, and now, with the fierce desire to end his torture reawakened, he prepared to accept the invitation. As he entered the brilliant rooms his eye fell upon the form and face of Lina Dent, attired in an exquisite costume, and looking far more radiant than in his wildest dreams he had ever pictured her.
Feasting upon her loveliness, with eyes hungry in their wistfulness, he was about to approach her when she suddenly looked toward him and their eyes met. He caught the quick flash of feeling; he knew that he was still beloved! But even as he drank in the delicious confirmation of his hopes, she pa.s.sed him without recognition, and he knew that she would not break her vow--that she would not meet him till he had fulfilled her conditions. Too miserable to seek Miss Howard in the throng, the young physician pleaded an urgent call to a patient, and left his host almost before he had fairly entered upon the festivities.
One evening, soon after the last fearful disappointment, Dr. Gardner received a note asking him to come to a certain number on Fifth Avenue, and there he should meet Evelyn Howard. She inferred that he had had ample time to learn if he really desired to form her acquaintance, and she was ready now to see him.
Tearing the paper to atoms in sudden irritation and setting his teeth, the young physician was soon at the appointed place, an elegant brown-stone mansion, quite familiar to his eyes in his drives about the city.
He was not left long in suspense. There was a sound of rapid steps descending the stairs, with a frou-frou of silken skirts, and in a moment Lina Dent stood before him, her face aglow with a proud light he had never seen there, and her hands extended in glad welcome.
"You, Lina! You here? You have relented? This is too much happiness!"
Catching both soft white hands in his, he bent his lips to them, full of the rapture he could not speak. He forgot to wonder why she was there.
He forgot everything but the love in her eyes and the joyous ring of her voice.
Ere they could be seated the door again opened and admitted an elderly lady, who approached smiling.
"My dear aunt!" exclaimed the young lover. "You, too? This _is_ a surprise! What does it all mean? How did you get here, and when?"
The ladies stood smiling at each other and gazing upon him with a significance that indeed clamored for explanation.
"Weldon, is it possible you do not guess?" asked his aunt.
"What? Why, what do you mean? I am all bewildered!" he exclaimed, looking from one to the other till a faint glimmer of the truth began to appear through the mists.
"Stupid boy!" again emphasized the lady, "whom did you come here to see?"
Quickly glancing at the beautiful, radiant, still-smiling face of the young girl, and then at the impressive features of the elder lady, Weldon Gardner, with bated breath and a dazed expression in his startled eyes, exclaimed:
"You--are--Evelyn Howard--you?"
"Exactly so. Doctor Gardner--Evelina Dent Howard--at your service!"
As she spoke, she placed her hand in his, and asked, in the liquid tones whose cadences he so well remembered, "Have you been punished enough for your unknightly scorn of the girl you condemned without trial?"
"Oh, forgive!" he pleaded, drawing her to a seat beside him. "I see it all now. What a dolt you must have thought me! How could you ever have tolerated me?"
"There is the conspirator," archly said Evelyn, pointing to Mrs. Duke.
"She it was who enabled me to deceive you. I wrote to her immediately upon leaving your house for my cousin"s, in Brooklyn, and she at once devised the scheme that I have found so hard to carry out. Meanwhile, she never lost sight of you."
It was long before the necessary explanations were exhausted, and when the new day dawned no happier man proudly entered upon his duties than did Weldon Gardner.
It is upon a soft September afternoon that we last see Dr. Gardner and his lovely wife. Within a snug little arbor beside the lake in Central Park the two sit side by side, watching the idly-floating pleasure crafts, and noting the lazy ripples of the green wavelets. Their hearts grow tender with a mighty love that finds no language in which to clothe itself.
Every blessing of life is theirs; every cadence that affection knows makes harmony in their words. Gayly-dressed children pa.s.s by, some with toy balloons, bounding into air. Evelyn shuddered at even this tiny reminder of her reckless adventure, and clinging to her husband"s arm, blesses him and the day that confided her to his keeping. Accident had tested his n.o.ble nature as the ordinary course of events never could have done; and now was fulfilled the last wish of his parents, that in Evelyn Howard should Weldon Gardner find the glory of heaven"s last, best gift to man.
Hezekiah"s Wooing
A FIRESIDE SKETCH
"Walk right in, Mr. Lightus, do," said the cheery voice of the Widow Partridge, as the portly figure of Mr. Hezekiah Lighthouse appeared in her hospitable doorway.