"How clear and beautiful you make it all seem!" he said, aloud. "To listen to your words makes one long for death. And yet, if our lives have been selfish, immoral, unworthy, if we have wasted our time in mere earthly or sensual pleasures, how terrible must be the consciousness of it to the freed spirit."
"Yes, terrible, indeed. There comes the real h.e.l.l of the suffering conscience. The soul will see its fearful mistake, and see how long and dreary is the pathway before it. Yet, it will realize, that G.o.d has left that lonely path open for it, and that it may by hard toil climb up to the position it might have occupied at the hour of its entering on the new life. I think the capability of a soul to suffer at that time, must be beyond our comprehension. It is terrible on earth to realize our lost opportunities. It will be far more intense there. But even the most depraved will be given a chance to rise, through centuries of striving.
There is no eternal d.a.m.nation, any more than there is instantaneous salvation."
Percy rose to go, stirred to the very depths of his better nature by her words. As he made his adieus, he said:
"Miss Maxon, will you write to me? I am in great trouble, as I told you; a trouble that seems to shut out every particle of light from the universe. Your words afford me the only comfort I have had for weeks.
Will you write to me and cheer me a little through the gloomy days that lie before me?"
Helena"s heart welled full of sympathy toward all the suffering world.
Her creed of life was, to give all the comfort, and help, and cheer, possible to every troubled mortal on life"s highway. She was never afraid to reach out her hand to a weak fallen creature, for fear of soiling it.
It is the woman, who feels herself the strongest and most secure in her virtue and her social position, who is most fearless in her efforts to uplift the unfortunate: and a very benevolent heart, is seldom coupled with a cautious brain.
There was such real suffering in Percy"s face and voice, that Helena"s heart was moved with pity. She held out her hand and looked him full in the eyes, her own full of sweetest sympathy.
"Yes, I will write to you," she said. "I am very sorry for you, if you are in such trouble. But you must remember, that in this life, to grow means to suffer. I found actual happiness in pain, when I fully realized the truth of that."
"But you have never suffered, and made another suffer, by your own selfish folly," Percy said, as he turned away. "Good by, and G.o.d bless you for your promise to write to me."
CHAPTER XVIII.
APPLES OF SODOM.
He went away a thousand times more hopelessly entangled in the meshes of fate than ever.
He loved Helena with a pa.s.sion that frightened him, so mysterious, so sudden, so exalted, so intense in its spiritual force was it.
He who said that love, to be sincere, must be of slow growth, that man was a fool.
As G.o.d said, unto the darkened world, "Let there be light" and there was light, so, unto many a slumbering heart, He has said, "Let there be love," and there was love--radiant, glorious, eternal, as is the splendor of the sun in the heavens.
So had love sprung to life in the heart of Percy Durand--a love that the waters of death could not quench.
"Never since my mother died," he whispered to his heart, "have I felt such an adoring affection bordering upon worship, as I feel for this girl. I could be any thing, do any thing, with her beside me--my guide, my friend, my mate, _my wife_."
Wife! Yes, that was how he thought of Helena. All his old theories and cynical beliefs fell away from him, like dead leaves from a tree, in the presence of this beautiful new love.
All his old life of license, and bachelor freedom, and secret companionship with a charming woman, seemed like the apples of Sodom to him now.
He wanted a home where he could proudly welcome the whole world, if need be, to witness his happiness. He wanted a wife to entertain his friends--not a mistress to hide from them; and he wanted children to crown his life and perpetuate his name.
These highest human instincts come knocking at the door of every man"s heart, some time in his life.
He may bolt the door with avarice or pride, curtain the windows with lawless pa.s.sions, and block the entrance with worldly ambitions and pleasure. But the Creator who meant him to be a part of that holy earthly trinity,--father, mother, and child,--shall send a great unrest upon his soul; and despite all his precautions, a longing for the love of a pure woman and a little child shall take possession of his heart.
That time had come to Percy: come as suddenly and unexpectedly as the greatest eras almost always come in human existence.
He closed his eyes and indulged in wild dreams.
He saw himself sitting before an open fire-place: a little distance from him, Helena, in flowing white robes, singing a golden-haired child to sleep upon her breast. Near by, a friend, some of his bachelor companions, perhaps, envying his happiness, as he looked upon the scene with admiring eyes.
Then he sprang up and fairly groaned aloud.
"I must guard myself in my letters," he said. "I will only write to Helena, as a suffering man might address a Sister of Charity. She shall never know how I love her, until my life is free from every fetter of sin and folly, and until I have made myself worthy by years of n.o.ble living."
But you may as well talk of hiding the glory of the sunrise from the earth, as the fervor of a great pa.s.sion from the object which inspired it.
Careful as were his expressions, his letters breathed an atmosphere of love as pa.s.sionate as his mysterious sorrow seemed hopeless.
Helena"s nature was deeply romantic and profoundly sympathetic. These letters, therefore, appealed to the strongest elements of her being.
All through her girlhood she had jealously guarded her heart"s vast store of intense love for an ideal lover whom she had never yet seen.
And now through the medium of an earnest sympathy she was bestowing upon Percy all the lavish wealth of her rich nature, just as one might give a five-dollar gold piece, thinking it was only a shining penny, to a mendicant. She lived in a dream world; she performed her duties as music teacher and choir singer mechanically. The people with whom she a.s.sociated were shadowy and unreal forms. The only person who really existed for her, was Percy, with his load of mysterious sorrow, which she and her glorious horde of spirit friends would somehow lift from him.
With her slight knowledge of the world at large, and society as it exists in cities, Helena had no comprehension of what that sorrow might be. She did not puzzle her head to divine it. She was willing to wait Percy"s own time. Whatever it was, she knew he deserved her sympathy and her prayers.
Almost daily Percy saw Dolores. Each day he promised himself, that he would tell her what was in his heart. Each day he delayed the dreaded scene.
Upon Dolores, the terrible and overwhelming conviction was forcing itself, that Percy no longer loved her. The thought of a rival never once presented itself to her. She knew that she was beautiful, accomplished, congenial--every thing, in fact, which he could desire in a companion.
"But," she reasoned, "it is a man"s nature to tire of that which is his.
Somewhere I have read, "who ever gives too much in love, is certain not to receive enough in return;" and I am proving it true. It would be the same, were I his wife."
Then, in spite of herself, back upon her mind rushed the recollection of a quotation once made by Mrs. Butler in her arguments in favor of marriage: "If the fickle husband goes, he returns; but the lover, once gone, he never returns." She remembered how scornfully she had regarded such an argument. "What woman of pride or self-respect would desire the fickle husband to return?" she had said. "I should want him to go speedily, the moment his heart strayed from me, or tired of me. And better by far, for both, if there were no legal ties to sever."
All this sophistry she recalled now, with a dull pain at her heart. The time had come, when she felt positive, that Percy no longer loved her.
Yet she could not tell him to go. The very thought of a separation was like a knife in her breast.
"How vain it is to a.s.sert what we would do in any situation in life,"
she said, "until we have loved. Love changes everything, even to one"s whole nature. May G.o.d help me to bear this."
She had an instinctive knowledge, that Percy was trying to summon courage to tell her of his changed feelings. She shrank from it, as from a blow.
"I cannot hear him say the words," she moaned. "I cannot _live_ and hear them from his lips; and I cannot let him go--I cannot, I cannot."
She grew thin and hollow-eyed, and the pathos of her face was heartrending. She tried to be cheerful and amuse Percy with her old flow of wit and anecdote. They took their usual drives, and indulged in theatres, and _pet.i.ts soupers_ afterward, as of old, but it was all a melancholy failure, a farce of their former happy days. Though he gave her the same gallant attentions, she knew his heart was not in it.
It was like looking on the dead face of a dear one: the features unchanged, but the spirit fled.
One day as he sat smoking a cigar in their pretty artistic rooms, while Dolores played a melancholy air on the piano, he determined to tell her of his resolution to leave her and go abroad. "I will not tell her that I love another," he thought; "that will give needless pain. But I cannot keep up this farce any longer. It must end."
"Dolores," he said, throwing away his cigar, "come and sit beside me on this ottoman. I want to talk with you."