"I think I mentioned her to you when I told you the story of my Uncle"s death," she answered, pleasantly, eager to win him to good humor again.
"While abroad, our lives drifted so far apart, I seldom recalled the old intimacy. Since my return--I have hardly felt situated to seek a renewal of our acquaintance. It might have been embarra.s.sing for both of us, Percy, and you know I have not felt the need of any friend or companion but you."
He laid down the picture and covered his eyes as if to shut out the sight of it.
"My G.o.d!" he cried, suddenly, "it cannot be true--it is too terrible."
Dolores" jealous suspicions concerning the letter took definite shape and form.
"Why are you talking so strangely?" she asked, facing him suddenly. "Do you know Helena Maxon, Percy? Have you ever met her?"
"Yes," he answered, "I know her--I have met her. Oh, Dolores, I wish to G.o.d I were dead."
"I wish we both were!" she cried pa.s.sionately. "I wish G.o.d had sent death to us there in that Andean valley, when something told me, that we were never to be so happy again." Then, growing excited, she clenched her slender hands and stood before him, speaking in a low suppressed voice. "You shall never marry her, never!" she cried. "I can hinder it.
When we were in Santiago, you registered me as your wife, to avoid gossip. To Lorette, you have called me Madame Percy--your wife. These things, told in a court of justice, would prevent you from making another woman your wife. I will follow you to the ends of the earth to prevent it."
Percy put his hands to his head in a dazed way.
"Don"t!" he protested wearily. "I am ill, suffering, Dolores. Let us end this miserable scene. I have no idea of making any woman my wife. It would be an insult to any good woman to ask her to take the remnant of my miserable existence.
"I am going abroad at once--to-morrow; and I hope you will continue your preparations for your journey. And now, good by--I am too ill to endure another word to-day."
He loosened the hold she had taken on his arm in her excitement, and almost staggered out of the room and down the stairs.
CHAPTER XXI.
A STRANGE MARRIAGE.
When Percy returned to his apartments he found a letter from Helena awaiting him. It was written in reply to his, posted to her before leaving Centerville.
His head was aching, and his vision blurred strangely as he read the written words. It began without an address, abruptly.
"I, too, have worshiped an ideal all my life. A man without reproach, and above dishonor. A man strong in all manly attributes, strong in his loves and his emotions, but strong, too, in his pride, and in his will power. I think G.o.d never bestows the one without the other; but man too often cultivates the former and leaves the latter unused. For the ideal I so worshiped, I kept my heart free and my soul unsullied. When you came, all unconsciously I invested you with the attributes of my ideal. All unconsciously--until too late to place a guard upon my unwise heart--it poured out its long-hidden treasures. So suddenly the knowledge came upon me, that I betrayed to you what had been wiser to conceal. Wiser, because added to the Creator"s uneven distribution of pains and penalties, the world bestows its merciless condemnation upon the woman who reveals that which is so difficult to hide.
G.o.d formed man and woman out of the self-same clay! breathed into their bodies the self-same breath of life--endowed them with the self-same human nature. But a civilized Society permits man to exult in a display of the emotions which it demands that woman shall mask or deny.
Upon the weaker being devolves the double duty of fighting against the aggressive impulses of the stronger, while she controls her own.
She who fails to do this, loses the esteem of the man who has awakened the slumbering pa.s.sions of her heart.
That I love you, I will not attempt to deny. I think G.o.d meant us for each other in the beginning. But I give much to the man I love, when I give myself, penniless and nameless though I am, I give a whole heart, untouched by any belittling half-loves or debasing jealousies. While I have waited for the coming of the King, I have allowed no pretender to occupy the throne in my heart, even for an hour. I have given no man on earth the right to think I loved him, until you came. No man exists who can point his hand at me and say, "we were lovers once." Has not she who gives a stainless womanhood, a pure, wholesome body, and a true, warm heart, the right to demand much in return? She either undervalues her own worth, or overvalues the worth of any man, it seems to me, who does not demand it.
And yet, knowing the story of your life, in all its tragic details, its temptations, and its trials, I have felt to-day many times, that I loved as deeply or as unwisely as other women have loved--loved enough to find my happiness in reforming the object of my affections. Let no man consider this a woman"s true sphere. If, out of the vastness of her love, she is willing to lean down to him, let him bow in reverence before her: not lightly taking it as her duty and his right.
But while I love you, and must love you forever, even as you have said, I can never be your wife.
I cannot lead you into your newly-found Kingdom of Love, when by so doing I must tread upon another woman"s bleeding heart. I could not accept happiness bought at the price of another"s misery and despair.
Over the fairest day the future could prepare for us, there would always hang the shadow of another"s life-long sorrow.
Could I answer you otherwise, under the circ.u.mstances, I would not be worthy of your love. Yet, if I did not know that this life is only a very small portion of our existence, I might be so mad with selfish pa.s.sion that I should forget every consideration save my love for you.
But I believe that those who belong to each other spiritually will find each other and dwell together through eternities of love.
I believe we shall. But while here, on earth, we must make ourselves worthy of that life, by unselfish thoughtfulness of others, by self-denial, and suffering, if need be. You have made a terrible mistake, which can only be atoned for by a life of repentance and resolve. And I must suffer with you. The great wrong, in a mistake or a sin like yours, is that it reaches out and injures those who are guiltless. Two people make laws unto themselves and say, "It is no one"s business--we wrong no one save ourselves." Yet invariably others _are_ eventually wronged.
No soul ever transgressed a divine law of morality, without injuring some innocent being.
There is no absolute individuality. We are all linked and lashed together by invisible but indestructible threads, spun down from the Great Source. When any man attempts to extricate himself from others and stand alone, a guide and G.o.d unto himself, he but more hopelessly interlaces and snarls the web which unites us all.
You, my friend, have snarled the threads about us: but even in my pain there lies a joy in the consciousness that I suffer through, and with you. It is sweeter than to rejoice with another. In the beginning of time, G.o.d married our souls; that we are separated during one brief stage of existence cannot hinder our final eternal union. Be true to your new self, and "run your race in patience, for you are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses." G.o.d bless you, and adieu.
"HELENA."
A chill that seemed to shake the marrow in his bones and the core in his heart, seized upon Percy as he laid the letter down. He disrobed as quickly as possible, and rolled himself up in the covers of his warm bed, but he felt as if he were packed in ice, despite all his efforts, until the return of the fever set his veins on fire.
Dr. Sydney smiled grimly, with an "I told you so" expression, when he again stood by Percy"s bed-side. But Percy did not wait to hear his accusing words.
"I have resigned myself to my fate, you see, doctor," he said, "and I am convinced that you know more than I do. I think I am going to be very sick; and I want you to tell me the exact truth about myself, as I have some very important directions to leave concerning my affairs, if there is the least hope of my death."
"Hope!" echoed Dr. Sydney, "Tut, tut, man, what are you talking in that vein for--a young, handsome, fortunate fellow like you, with all your life before you?"
Percy smiled sadly.
"My life is all behind me, unfortunately, Doctor," he said. "At least the best opportunities of it are, and they lie among tares--lost in a rank growth of wild oats. It is all very well to say that every man must plant that crop--but I realize when too late that I must reap the harvest as well; and it has filled my store-house so full, there is no room for one golden sheaf of wheat."
"Might thresh your wheat then, in the stack, and sell it without storing it," suggested the old doctor, facetiously, as he held Percy"s pulse between his thumb and finger. "Fall wheat brings good prices now. H"m!
pretty high fever--how"s your tongue?"
"Pretty sick, pretty sick, my boy!" he said, as he finished his examination. "Liver in an awful state. That"s what makes you want to die, and all that. A diseased liver and melancholy views of life are as natural companions as a boy and a piece of string. If you don"t object, I"ll call counsel?"
Percy looked up quickly.
"Then I am in danger?"
"Possibly, not positively. I see indications that lead me to think an abcess is forming on your liver. But I am not sure of it."
"In case there is?"
"In case there is, you will have to submit to an operation."
"And such operations are often fatal, are they not, in their results?
Frequently so."
Dr. Sydney hesitated.