He performed all those innumerable outside duties necessitated by illness, and helped sustain Dolores" courage and strength, until at length the patient was p.r.o.nounced on the highway to recovery.
Then there were long health-restoring drives, and pleasant afternoons when Percy read to the convalescent, while Dolores sat near with her sewing or drawing. But by and by there came a day when Percy realized that he must tear himself away, at once.
He had been reading aloud, and, among other things, he read a little poem ent.i.tled "The Farewell." It seemed particularly suited to his case.
"Tis not the untried soldier new to danger Who fears to enter into active strife.
Amidst the roll of drums, the cannons" rattle, He craves adventure, and thinks not of life.
But the scarred veteran knows the price of glory, He does not court the conflict or the fray.
He has no longing to rehea.r.s.e that gory And most dramatic act, of war"s dark play.
He who to love, has always been a stranger, All unafraid may linger in your spell.
My heart has known the warfare, and its danger.
It craves no repet.i.tion--so farewell.
He laid down the book. Mrs. Butler was asleep, lulled by his soothing voice. As he sat looking at Dolores, her beauty, her grace, her intellect, and all her countless charms awoke an irritated sense of injury in his heart.
What right had she to keep her attractions constantly before him, and yet deny him the right of possession? It was the cup of Tantalus. He rose suddenly.
"Dolores," he said, drawing a letter from his pocket, "I wrote this to you before I received your telegram calling me to you. I am going back to London day after to-morrow. I shall call to-morrow to say farewell.
But I want you to read this letter, as it will explain to you my abrupt leave-taking better than I can explain it." And then he left her.
Dolores broke the seal, and began to read the letter, first with wondering curiosity, then with anger. Her eye flashed, her cheek flushed, her lip quivered.
"What right has he to address me--to think of me like this?" she cried bitterly. "I have never given him one liberty--" Then she paused, for over her swept the memory of that single moment on the ice-boat when her heart had rested against his--her head pillowed upon his shoulder. Even now, it thrilled her with an emotion as sweet as it was strange. Her anger gave place to a profound melancholy.
Dimly, and with a sensation approaching terror, she began to understand Percy"s own feelings, and the danger of his position. She could not blame him--she could only blame herself.
"It is my own fault," she said to her aching heart. "I expected too much. There is no possibility of an enduring friendship between man and woman in this world. That, too, is as transient and unreliable as love.
And yet--and yet--how _can_ I give up my friend--how can I?" and, burying her face in her hands, she sobbed aloud.
When Percy called the following day, Mrs. Butler was informed, for the first time, of his intended return to America the succeeding week.
"Then we must be ready to accompany you," she said. "I am convinced that I have only a short time to live. I want to die in my own land. Dolores, we can be ready--can we not--by the time Percy goes?"
"It is not necessary," Dolores replied, blushing painfully. "We could go the next week as well. We need not trouble Mr. Durand to act as our escort on this voyage, Mrs. Butler."
"Why, what in the world has come over you?" cried Mrs. Butler, staring with wondering eyes at Dolores. "You speak as if Percy were a stranger, instead of our almost brother and son. I am sure he will wait for us, if we cannot go next week. I have an unaccountable dread of making the voyage unattended. I shall feel far safer with our friend by my side; and, somehow, I am sure we shall need him."
So again Percy"s earnest desire to fly from an embarra.s.sing position was circ.u.mvented, and he was once more to be the companion of Dolores.
Mrs. Butler seemed to rally with a feverish excitement as they made their preparations for departure. Dolores watched her with anxious eyes.
"I fear you are not strong enough to take the sea-voyage at this time of year," she urged. "Will you not wait until later in the season, dear Mrs. Butler?"
But Mrs. Butler would not listen. "I can scarcely wait until next week;"
she said, "I could not possibly delay my departure another month. It would make me ill, I know. Once on the ocean I shall grow stronger."
But instead she drooped, and failed; and on the fifth day of the stormy voyage, Percy and Dolores stood beside her shrouded form listening to the solemn service for the dead at sea.
They were standing on the deck, quite alone, the evening before they reached harbor....
Dolores drew a long shivering sigh. "Oh," she said, "I dread the sight of land! It seems to me, I am going into some arid desert, where I shall faint, and die, from very loneliness. I have lost my friend who was almost like an own mother to me. And now I am to lose you. Life is cruel to me. I think it is wicked for parents to bring children into this world of trouble and sorrow. Oh, why was I ever born to swell the tide of miserable suffering humanity?"
Percy laid his hand gently on her arm.
"You do not lose my friendship," he said. "Remember, I shall always be your loyal friend, ready to do you any favor. But the close companionship and intimate a.s.sociation of the last year becomes every day more impossible. You must realize it yourself."
"I do, I do," she said, and then she put her hands over her face, and her tears fell through the slender fingers.
"I wish I had been buried in the sea, too;" she sobbed. "I would not have been so much alone as I am upon this dreary earth, where every thing dear is taken from me."
He turned and took her hands down from her tear wet face, and drew them closely in his own.
His face was very pale. His voice trembled with the intensity of his emotions.
"Listen to me Dolores," he said, in a low, and almost stern tone. "I think we understand and respect each other"s views perfectly. I think, if in a moment of profound sorrow like this, we disregarded the settled convictions of a life-time, that we should in calmer and brighter hours regret it. But I think also, that when two people have become so necessary to each other"s lives as we have become,--when such perfect sympathy exists, as exists between us,--I think then, Dolores, that it is wicked to throw aside the happiness which might be theirs. George Eliot and Mr. Lewes did not throw it away; Sh.e.l.ley and Mary G.o.dwin did not; Mary Wollstonecraft and Imlay did not. It is simply a question whether a woman cares more for the forms of Society, and the laws made by men, than she cares for the love and companionship of one man. I have found more happiness in this year of a.s.sociation with you, than I supposed it possible for life to afford me. You are to me an ideal comrade: I can picture years of such companionship; happy wanderings, sweet home-comings, quiet evenings, cosy suppers, and all with the perfect knowledge that it might cease at any time either or both wearied of it; all with the knowledge that the individual liberty of each was absolutely untrammeled; and that, when love ceased to exist--there were no bonds to fetter. It seems to me that happiness, as perfect as it ever exists in this world, might bless such an union of two lives. Dolores, will you accept the love and protection I offer you?"
Her hands had rested pa.s.sive in his, while she listened. Her face was turned from him, her eyes gazing out over the expanse of sea. Not a sail was in sight. One solitary gull flapped lonesome wings above the inhospitable waves. It seemed to her that her life was like that gull"s--the world stretched before her, like a great waste of water, sh.o.r.eless and desolate. She thought of the monotonous years awaiting her, homeless and alone as she was; of the ghastly emptiness of every pleasure, if she no more saw _his_ face, no more heard his voice. She shivered slightly, and his hands tightened their clasp upon her own. His touch thrilled her with a sweet inexplicable joy. She ceased to reason or think.
Turning her white, beautiful, strangely calm face up to his, she answered solemnly and distinctly:
"I will."
And just then a star shot down from heaven, and sank into the dark and troubled waters of the sea below.
CHAPTER XIV.
ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN.
Sitting in her bijou apartments, which consisted of a handsome "Flat" in a quiet and respectable portion of New York, Dolores seemed lost in pleasant reverie, when her little French maid, Lorette, appeared before her.
"Everything is done but the dusting of this room, Madame," she said, in her native tongue. "Will Madame sit in the boudoir now--"
"No, Lorette, you can go," Dolores answered, speaking French with as fine an accent as the Parisian _nee_. "I will finish dusting, and as I am to dine out with Monsieur to-day, you need not return before to-morrow."
Lorette, who came every morning to attend to the domestic duties of the little menage, gladly took her conge, and Dolores flitted gayly about, dust-brush in hand, singing a merry s.n.a.t.c.h of opera, pausing at every sound, to listen for a familiar step, the perfect picture of a happy, expectant housewife making ready for the return of a loved one.
Presently a quick footstep bounded up the stairs, and Dolores flew to the door before the latch-key could turn the lock, swung it wide open, and was closely clasped in the arms of Percy, who greeted her with a gay "_Bon matin, chere amie!_ and how have you been all these days?" Then, noticing the dust-brush on the floor beside her: "Why! how is this? has Lorette failed to make her appearance, that my lady-love has to perform her duties?"
"Oh, no! I sent her away," smiled Dolores. "I knew we did not need her to-day--and" (shyly) "I did not want any third person to mar our greeting after your long absence."
"Long!" Percy repeated, laughing, as he threw himself into an easy chair, and drew her down on an ottoman at his side. "Long? three days, _ma pet.i.te_? I am often absent from you as long as that."
"You have never before been absent from the city so long as that, in this year of our new life," she said, as she caressed his hands, "without taking me with you, _mon ami_."