"After years of travel, adventure and folly, when a wearisome ennui toward the whole world had taken possession of me, I met a lovely woman.
"She also abhorred marriage, and had sworn eternal warfare against it.
She was more p.r.o.nounced and bitter in her denunciations of the social system than I. She was a charming companion; but I felt that the a.s.sociation was dangerous, and tried to fly from it. A perverse fate, however, constantly threw us together. Finally, she was left entirely alone in the world. In an evil hour, when she was weeping because her life was so desolate, I asked her to decide between the society she despised, and my companionship and protection."
He paused. It was hard to go on with those truthful, earnest, pure eyes gazing at him. How could he make her understand?
"Well--and what was her answer?" Helena asked, almost in a whisper.
"She has been living in pleasant apartments in New York, as my friend and comrade, for almost two years. Do you understand?"
"I understand," she answered, and a sudden chill shook her from head to foot.
"We were very happy for a year--for longer," he went on, hurriedly. "She was perfectly happy, because she believed she was doing right. I was not as happy as I had expected to be. My conscience seemed often to cry out, after years of silence; but I would not listen to it. We pa.s.sed many delightful hours together, and I was always proud to think my friend was a beautiful, refined and true woman. I congratulated myself, that at least, I had shown better taste in the selection of my companion, than many of my friends who were similarly situated. The lady was independently wealthy, and our a.s.sociation was prompted by congenial tastes and affection.
"Then I met you. Your voice woke all the higher impulses of my nature: your conversation lifted me into a strangely rarified atmosphere; I abhorred my old life from the hour I met you. I have tried to break away from it, but I cannot without crushing a human heart.
Unfortunately, my friend has pa.s.sed through no such change of feeling.
She is happy, and she loves me. To leave her alone, to desert her, seems heartless and cruel. The way of escape is hedged about with unforeseen difficulties. I am tortured from within and without. Surely the way of the transgressor _is_ hard. I would reform my life, if I knew how. Can you tell me what is right to do under the circ.u.mstances?"
She was very pale. Her hands were clasped tightly before her. Her breath came hard. "There is one way--only one," she said. "I wonder it has not suggested itself to you. Make the tie that binds you to your friend a legal one. Make her your wife, and let the future atone for the past."
He started to his feet as if she had struck him.
"It is impossible!" he said. "She would never consent. It is opposed to all her theories."
Helena looked at him coldly, a dumb pain in her face.
"I fear you can not understand our very peculiar situation," he went on.
"But you _must_ believe I am telling you the whole truth. I am not misstating one thing. There has been no effort at misleading this woman--this friend of mine. There never was any talk of marriage between us, save to condemn it. She often said she liked me first, because I did not endeavor to convert her from her pet theories, as many men had done.
She is very beautiful, and has been annoyed by many suitors. But she is almost a monomaniac upon the subject. You would find less to condemn in my course, if you could understand how peculiar and deep-rooted were her prejudices."
"I _do_ understand," Helena answered. "I once knew just such a person as you describe. We were school-mates, and she shocked us all on graduating day, by an anti-marriage address. So I can understand the type of woman you describe. Yet these views of hers did not necessitate the grave course of action you suggested to her later on, surely."
Percy flushed. "No," he said, "that was the result of our dangerous companionship, and my selfishness. I could not continue in the platonic a.s.sociation so satisfactory to her, and I could not give her up easily, and so the great mistake was made. The error of a lifetime is often committed in a moment, you know. And now--"
"And now," Helena continued, calmly, with white lips as he paused, "now the right course of action for you seems very clearly defined. You can at least tell her of your changed ideas, and offer her marriage. If she declines, you are justified in leaving her. She has no right to compel you to live an unprincipled life. But she will not decline your offer.
Even Heloise yielded her opinions and liberal theories to the request of Abelard, and became his wife, you know."
Percy had been walking the room excitedly while she spoke. As she ceased, he turned, and stood facing her with his arms folded.
"There is one more thing to tell you," he said. "Something which renders the advice you give impossible for me to follow. I love another woman with all the fervor of my soul, with all the strength of my heart. Love her with a love that lifts me up to the very gates of heaven, and purifies my whole nature like a refining fire. I see her face, waking or sleeping. I hear her voice in the silence of the night, and above the roar of the street, by day. It is a love which only comes to one man in a thousand, because only one woman in a million can inspire it. This love is at once an agony and a rapture. It asks, it expects no return.
It fills my life full here, and it will pervade eternity for me when I die. But, loving like this, even though hopelessly, it would be sacrilege to ask any other woman to be my wife. Even to right a wrong, one should not commit a greater wrong--that of sinning against the holiest and most sacred emotion which ever entered a human heart."
While he spoke, Helena had grown crimson from brow to chin. Then she turned deathly pale, and, burying her face in her hands, she sank into a chair, sobbing wildly.
When he had told her the story of his life, she had wondered at the terrible pain it gave her to listen. But she had believed it was the disappointment she felt in finding her ideal friend so earthly. This together with her sympathy for the unknown woman.
Now, as she listened to his strangely impa.s.sioned words, there came to her a revelation that she had given him all the pent-up pa.s.sion of her soul, all the pure love of her woman"s heart. And to what end? The knowledge startled, shocked and terrified her, and she sobbed like a frightened child.
Percy was unmanned at the sight of her tears, yet this unexpected outburst filled him with sudden hope. After all, this divine being, this G.o.ddess _did_ love him. He forgot everything, save that one fact.
"Helena!" he cried, kneeling before her, and striving to uncover her face--"my darling, my queen--look at me--speak to me."
She pushed him from her, and rose hurriedly.
"Oh!" she sobbed, "you are cruel. Do you want to break _two_ hearts!"
Then, as if alarmed at her own words, she added quickly, "You must go away now and leave me. I am all unnerved--I can not give you any more advice to-day. Please go." But as he turned to obey her, she called him back.
"One word only I would say to you now. Do not tell--your friend, what you have told me. Do not tell her that you love another woman. It will be hard enough for her to know that you are to go out of her life, without having that bitter knowledge added."
"G.o.d bless you!" he cried, his eyes full of tears. "You are the most generous woman I ever dreamed of in my wildest visions of what was n.o.ble."
Even in the supreme hour of her own new found misery--a misery so vast it seemed to fill the whole earth--Helena thought of her rival and tried to save her pain. Truly had Percy said she was one woman in a million.
CHAPTER XX.
THE HARVEST OF TARES.
Percy returned to the Hotel, and before taking the train for New York, he wrote Helena a letter. Its contents were as follows:
"MY QUEEN:
"All my life I have worshiped an ideal. Just when I had grown to believe, that she did not exist save in my dreams, you flashed upon my horizon. I loved you; but I have not dared dream that you would love me, until to-day. I saw it in your face, dear, and I know that you are a woman who, once loving, will love forever. You know the story of my life. I am going abroad very soon. I shall remain away, until this miserable experience of which I told you, this terrible error, becomes a thing of the past. I shall strive to make myself worthy of your respect, of your love. When I come back, I shall ask you to be my wife, Helena. Until then, farewell. Read the verses I enclose. I found them in the poet"s corner of one of our daily papers, and cut them out, because they seemed like a versified history of my own life. First, the mirage dream--then the jungle of the senses, then the cold world of fashion, until I lost faith in the existence of the storied Land of Love.
"Then I met you, and you taught me that the true kingdom of love lies in the precincts of a pure home. Farewell, my sweet saint, my angel guide.
"PERCY DURAND."
The poem he enclosed we give below.
THE KINGDOM OF LOVE.
In the dawn of the day, when the sea and the earth Reflected the sunrise above, I set forth, with a heart full of courage and mirth, To seek for the Kingdom of Love.
I asked of a Poet I met on the way, Which cross-road would lead me aright.
And he said: "Follow me, and ere long you will see Its glistening turrets of Light."
And soon in the distance a city shone fair; "Look yonder," he said, "there it gleams!"
But alas! for the hopes that were doomed to despair, It was only the Kingdom of Dreams.
Then the next man I asked was a gay cavalier, And he said: "Follow me, follow me,"
And with laughter and song we went speeding along By the sh.o.r.es of life"s beautiful sea,
Till we came to a valley more tropical far, Than the wonderful Vale of Cashmere.
And I saw from a bower a face like a flower, Smile out on the gay cavalier.
And he said: "We have come to humanity"s goal-- Here love and delight are intense."
But alas! and alas! for the hope of my soul-- It was only the Kingdom of Sense.