As the hart panteth by Hallie Erminie Rives - HTML preview

 

THE WOMAN.

————◆————

CHAPTER I.

Glenn sent his congratulations with a lot of flowers. He did not trust himself to call. That was not indifference, but too much feeling. The following week he sent her a few lines:

“My dear Esther;

“It will be impossible for me to take you to the musicale, but I have arranged to have Mr. Kent call for you, and I feel sure that you will be in good hands.”

This note of mild regret made her a little cross, as it was the first time he had ever consented to have her go out alone with another man. There seemed nothing else to do but submit, wash a tear of vexation from her face, and be ready to go when Mr. Kent called.

From Glenn Andrews’ point of view this privilege was an endorsement of the man he had selected. She was his treasure and he could never entrust it to any man in whom he had not the staunchest faith. Later he learned through Stephen Kent that they had gone together and the affair had been as pleasant as usual. That was satisfactory. He would have them go again together.

Ever since the concert Glenn had tried to think only of his work. His calmness at such a crisis at first led him into the belief that it would be easy to hold himself in check. The revelation that had come to him upon that night had been the work of a strong thing but for a moment. What he was now he would remain. How little did he dream of what a sharp conflict he would have in the strife to conquer himself.

He could not stay away too long—he looked upon it in a measure as his duty to see how the infrequent visits were affecting her.

It was not until he was taking up his hat to leave that he approached the subject of Stephen Kent as her escort to the next musicale.

“He will be very glad to have you go with him.” Glenn pressed her hand in his and he saw tears in her eyes.

“Esther!” He laid aside his hat, drew her down beside him on the divan. He could not leave until he had traced those tears to their source. “What does this mean, tell me?”

“Oh, don’t ask me that!” She folded her hands before her as if in mute emphasis.

He was not suspicious, but this made him afraid—he felt as if something had struck him.

“Did Stephen Kent dare to hurt you. If so, it’s my fault—I introduced you to him.”

“Oh, Mr. Glenn, let it go, but nothing would induce me to go with him again.” She felt the color go out of her face as she became conscious of his fixed gaze.

“Where has your frankness and freedom gone?” He drew her toward him and compelled her to meet his eyes.

His voice was full of power.

“You must tell me what Stephen Kent has done.”

“You like him; I am afraid you will be angry, disappointed.” She made no effort to free herself.

He could not draw a confession from her as he sat some minutes waiting. “Have you that little confidence in my friendship?”

“I don’t want to make you feel that you have not the friendship of that man.”

“Then you know that I haven’t.”

“I know that he told me horrid, false things of your life abroad, and tried to make me lean upon him instead of you. He tried to persuade me to do all the things and go to all the places that you had warned me of. If I had known by nothing else that would have made me know it would be wrong—wickedly wrong.”

“Wolf!” He could scarcely hold his grasp for the trembling of his hands.

“I’ll settle with Stephen Kent,” he said, aloud. “He must answer to me for this.”

Glenn Andrews’ face looked manlier than ever in its rage.

Esther’s heart stood still for a moment, then beat wildly in its fear.

“Don’t risk yourself for me. I’m so sorry I told you.”

“Now I shall take care of myself and of him also. Don’t be fretting about the outcome. This is the last time you need be annoyed with it.” He stroked her hair, and there was a calming tenderness in the way he did it.

She could have borne the indignity alone if only Glenn had not brought the subject up. She had never meant to tell it to anyone.

Glenn left the house and went at once, only to find that Mr. Kent was not at home. Several days in succession he called with the same result. He wondered what impulse would lead him to if he should meet him by chance. Delay could scarcely weaken his determination to even up this score.

When Glenn went to the regular meeting of the club a few days later, it was a little shock of surprise that the name of Stephen Kent was up for membership. With a delicate tact he avoided any part of the proceedings that was not forced upon him. When it came his turn to cast his ballot for the man of whom he could have said a week ago he was all honor, he started, trembling violently as he let fall from his hand—a black ball.

The results of the ballot came as a great surprise to every man of them except the one who had turned the course. Questioning, no doubt, went round the room and there was a ripple of comment passing among the groups after the meeting was over and the members were going out. At the foot of the stairs one man met Stephen Kent and told him the result, which he had come over to learn. The disappointment in his face was intense as he took a few steps more, taking out his penknife to cut his cigar, and met Glenn Andrews.

“Look here, Andrews, what does this mean? They tell me I am blackballed.”

“They told you the truth,” he said, coolly.

“Well! that’s damned strange.” Kent’s answer had in it the sting of humiliation.

“If I knew the man who did it, I would thrash him within an inch of his life. The sneak!”

Glenn Andrews’ eyes were dilated and flashing.

“Stephen Kent, you don’t have to go very far to find him. I am the man.”

“You; and may I ask why?”

“Because your dishonorable conduct to Miss Powel proved to me that you are not a gentleman.”

He was fearless in speech and action. His exultant manliness made the other cower.

“A man generally knows the lay of the land. She is pretty free.”

“Free, my God!” Glenn Andrews’ face flashed fire. “You are a liar!”

The next moment the two grappled. A crowd gathered around in wild excitement. Before they could be parted the battle had been fought. With the first lift of his hand, Stephen Kent’s penknife had slipped across and cut the radial artery of Glenn Andrews’ wrist. Regardless of the flow of blood, he had dealt the blow that laid the other at his feet.

 

CHAPTER II.

IT was several days before Glenn felt able to resume his work. He kept away from Esther until he could give himself a chance to recover from the acute anaemia from which he suffered. Finally, when he called, he found that she had left that place, and her address could not be given him.

He was worried and bitterly wounded.

This girl, wild of heart, full of all sorts of emotions, full of unreasoning impulses who had once been easy for him to understand, had gained a complexity and subtlety new to him.

Yet he could do nothing now but treat it as a recurrence of her old fits of childish petulance. If, by some unaccountable chance, there was any finality in this step of hers, and her motive was to break off their old blameless intimacy, he would watch over her from afar. There was no malice in his heart for her. Nobody could make him believe a story, the truth of which would be unworthy of her. Yet the dim, persistent sense of dissatisfaction which he tried so hard to stifle, under a rush of work and recreation, would not vanish. Time, which he filled with the fever of his literary passion, together with keeping in touch with a few old friends, had become so strained, so intense, that in spite of the firm strength he had, the inordinate will, sheer physical weariness conquered, the tense nerves for a time relaxed.

It was in the latter part of April that Richmond Briarley happened to stop in a flower store to order a palm for some friend. At the counter stood a slender girl. There was something very unusual about her or he would not have given her a moment’s thought, nor the second look.

Her hair swept back in deep waves from her brow, under the wide, soft hat. The dark blue of her eyes seemed to gently motion as she looked at the delicate orchids the clerk held across to her.

“That’s what I want.”

Then she turned away as he went to wrap them for her. She felt a sudden swelling of the heart, as she faced Richmond Briarley.

“How do you do, Miss Powel,” he said in acknowledgment of her recognition.

“I have quite lost track of you since our friend Andrews has been ill. You’ll be glad to know his doctor now thinks he may pull through.”

“Mr. Glenn ill—dangerously ill?” She was white to the lips.

The look on her face he would never forget while he lived.

“Where? Where?” she said, eagerly clasping her hands. “Let me go to him.”

“He has someone—you can do nothing. She does everything.”

He said very little beyond the bare statement, but his answer added to the pain of her wound.

There was nothing she could do. This was the bitterest, cruelest thought—she was not needed—she who would have died to spare him pain.

Richmond Briarley knew what it meant; his heart was touched for her.

“I’m going to see him now, if you care to send him a word.”

“Tell him how sorry I am, and would you take these flowers to him—orchids are his favorite flowers. I was going to wear them to a musicale to-night.”

“Certainly I will take them.”

“Wait just a minute.”

She took the pencil of her chatelaine and wrote her new address on the box; her fingers were trembling, so she doubted if he would recognize her signature.

She smiled a little as he lifted his hat, when he bade her good-by. Pride was a matter of principle with her.

What she suffered in the days that came after could not be told.

It was early in May before Glenn was able to be out again.

To see Esther was one of his first visits. She greeted him with a grave, solicitous face.

“I am glad you are better. I didn’t even know it until you had passed the crisis.”

“Whose fault was it?” That old perversity had not been subdued by suffering.

“Oh, don’t; not to-day, anyhow.” She put her hands up and gently turned down the collar of his coat. “Come, now; lie down on the divan. You’ve overdone your strength.”

His fingers in her folded grasp were trembling.

“I’m not equal to my work yet,” he said, as he stretched out among the pillows, closing his eyes wearily.

“I wouldn’t have come if it had not been your birthday,” turning his head, revealing the painful clearness of his profile.

“I remembered you had someone who loved you; to think of it always before—now there’s nobody.”

Sitting beside him she stroked his forehead very tenderly.

“You were always thoughtful of me.”

They were silent for a time.

“Sometimes I longed for the warm, sweet touch of your hand on my head,” he said at last; “it throbbed so, and ached.”

“Oh, dear, why didn’t you send for me?”

“You forget, I didn’t know where to send.”

She paled under the answer. “But you had someone you wanted more.” She said this with an impulsive touch of resentment.

“She was the best one I ever had. Professional nurses are not always as solicitous or as kind.”

“Professional,” Esther repeated to herself, betraying no sign of the relief it gave her.

The soft wind moved the curtains and let a flash of sunlight in. Glenn looked out; the air was full of spring.

He could not but think of the old days, the paths upon which they had strolled now lay green and solitary through field and woods.

For a man who loved to steep himself in the sunshine and open air, he but seldom indulged himself.

“Esther, get your hat; it’s too fine a day to be indoors. I’ll take you away, out to Van Cortlandt Park.”

“Are you able to stand the trip? Don’t go just for my pleasure.”

“I shall enjoy it more than you will,” he said. “It’s what I need. Haven’t I always told you how selfish I was.”

Without another word she obeyed him, delighted at the prospect. Van Cortlandt was beautiful. They took a little boat and went out on the lake. So precious was the silence—the solitude—the shadow of the willows, that Glenn allowed Esther to take the oars he had taught her to handle and stretched himself full length in the boat. The water trembled under the sweet wind that blew fresh upon him.

Esther was in one of her rapturous moods, gazing with wide, dilated eyes upon the spring woods opening out to screen the unresponsive world—leaving them alone together. She could see it all reviving him like wine.

“Esther?” The name and touch thrilled her.

“When they told me I might not get well, I thought of you—I had something to tell you.”

“Tell me now.”

“That was if I had to die.”

“Oh, don’t speak of your death!” Her voice thrilled with a passion she herself did not understand.

“What I said as a child is still true. Life could not be sweet to me with you out of it.”

“Nonsense! With a great future flashing before you.”

“Could any fortune be sweet, or any gift it brought a woman be worth having, if the one for whom she cared were not there to share it with her?”

“A woman’s love is essentially spiritual in its nature. It does not depend so much upon sight,” he said.

She had dropped the oars. They were drifting dreamily.

The sun had gone down below the horizon, leaving purple shadows on its rim. The willows sent their seductive motions across the face of the waters.

She looked at him as though to draw him nearer and enfold him in her stretched-out arms. The warm impulses of her heart were warring in their wild effort to be free. Silence was the language of youth and love to him—they needed no words.

The force and the sweetness, the purity and power of his nature as she interpreted it, was the complete realization of her beautiful dreams.

“Have you ever forgiven me for spilling your blood and leaving a scar?” Her thrillingly delicate touch on his knee swept him with a swift, vigorous delight.

“Forgiven! I’ve blessed you. That is something from you that I shall carry with me through life. And there’s another I want—a memory. You never have called me by my name.”

Looking into his fine, clear face, she felt the love flowing softly like a fountain in her heart. “Glenn,” she whispered his beloved name.

“Esther! dearest!” Drawing her toward him, he kissed her on her lips as he held her close in the clasp of his arms with the intensity of his commanding love. Her hat had fallen off; he caught the dank fragrance of her hair.

Something fluttered in her breast—something new and strange and strong. She did not understand that she had left girlhood behind and become a woman. All the woman in her was quickened by his kiss.

“Oh, how I love to feel your heart beating against mine.”

Her words, her kiss, touched his soul to its depths. He was startled at the depths he had stirred.

“Heart! dear heart of mine!” She was in a fit of adoring fury. Her lips met his, again and again. She loved him so humanly and yet there was only the tender throb and thrill of the sensitive nature in all its refinement. Sweet emotions shot through her breast.

“Love me, no matter what comes, Esther, love me.”

He too felt some hurting power bound through his blood, and wrestle with his reserve—his equilibrium.

His low voice, his soft eyes, held her; not a tone, not a look but it caressed her.

The soft shadows, the limpid waters, the open air—with it altogether he felt a strange softening.

“You never said sweet words straight from your heart to me before.”

“Why words? Instinct, nature, tells us when a thing is true. That great silent power often stands between the soul and what it loves. It is too deep for speech. Did you ever drop a pebble into a well to sound its depth? If it is shallow, you hear it when it strikes the bottom. But if you wait and never hear a sound, you know it is very deep.”

Her sweet, low laugh rippled out over the waters.

“Your laugh is like that of a child in a happy dream. I hope it will always keep that sound.”

Straining her to him a moment, he then put his hands to his face to shut out the dangerous sweetness.

“Nobody but you will ever understand what my nature is, because they have never so nearly felt it.”

“That’s true,” he said, “the only difference is that I know what is best for us and what is not.”

“To make music, one must have genuine feeling for it; that is true of love. There has always been a sympathy between us, but never before so deep as now. The greater the love, you know, the stronger the sympathy. Natures so well tempered, so sympathetically adapted, very seldom can endure; neither can afford to indulge in the beauty of one he loves, for he may lose his own seekings in sharing hers. Ideal love is not to be satisfied.”

He said this with such an expression of grief and sentiment that no one could doubt his belief in his own philosophy.

This was life indeed. If he could only hold it forever. He wanted to—he longed to—might he not desecrate this beautiful soul, by intruding his upon it for so short a time?

A sudden chill went through him. The horror of their ideals being endangered made him draw back. He had never entirely lost sight of the delicacy and nobility of the relation. He was her friend—her protector.

Slightly moving his position, he said: “Esther, what is sweeter than comprehensive sympathy? Each knows the other’s highest aims and hopes, and each tries to help the other reach and preserve those ideals. There is something beautiful, noble in the endeavor to sustain the ideals of one we love, even though they should not always succeed.”

“I believe that. The desire, the effort—shouldn’t that go for something?”

“I think so, but will you always think it?”

“I hope I shall.”

As they anchored alongside the bank, Glenn held out his hand to help her; her cheeks were in bloom with life, and he was going home rested, with all his senses and passions much keener and many degrees finer in their possibilities.

“We have had a day of delicious happiness, we should be thankful for that,” he said. “In a whole life there are but a few days in which we really live—we only exist most of the time,” lowering his voice and looking into her sweet eyes.

“To be wholly happy is to forget the world and one’s obligations to it.” There was almost a caress in the way Glenn took out his handkerchief and lightly brushed the drops of water from her skirt. In putting the handkerchief back he touched the pretty trifle—a souvenir to recall her twenty-first birthday. Twirling it between his fingers he said:

“This is for you. Wear it for the sake of the man who became a boy and learned what May meant.”

 

CHAPTER III.

GLENN knew now that he had been mistaken. The heart he had tended drew all its life still from him. His knowledge of men and women was great. He could not deceive himself. Nature demanded a climax. He must advance or retreat. He realized that he was coming to love her too well—in a sweeter, nearer way. They were to each other now more of a necessity than an inspirational force. He must go away—it was best: for their art, for their peace of mind. It was some time before he could tell her this. He could no longer trust himself to be tender with her. He dared not risk himself; he was not equal to it. It seemed to him their companionship was never so beautiful as now when he was about to break it. He was testing his strength and asking his own soul if it were fit for the work and the awful sacrifice. It was during a short interview that he found courage to tell her how his doctor had advised a change of scene and air. A sea voyage, with perhaps a year abroad; possibly Egypt—personally he hardly expected to get beyond the old yellow city of his youthful escapades—Paris, where the aromatic breath of absinthe had tinged the air. There would be no strain then. She knew what it meant. She knew it was not for his health alone that he was putting the sea between them.

“It may be just what you need to strengthen you. In travel I fancy you will find oceans of material for penwork and gulfs of inspiration. And in Paris, that you have learned to love, you might know real life and real joy.” The words cost her an effort, but they were bravely said.

Richmond Briarley sat in his office alone that night. He had just opened his safe and from a package of legal documents drawn a paper which he unfolded and read, a note secured by mortgage, now past due. At the bottom it was signed by the husband and wife. “Albert Winston and Mildred Hughes Winston.” His lips clamped, the circular wrinkles deepened round his mouth. When he first knew Mildred Hughes he was very young and poorer than he was young. He had gone away and left her to this man, who was well launched, expecting her to escape the hardships of the poor. In time he would forget her. He remembered how he had told her so and left her—that day was more to him than all the rest of his life. It was full of her. “Forgetfulness!” He had never learned the meaning of the word. With one swift survey of the room, he slowly tore off the woman’s signature—this was the last remnant of a life that had been lived. As someone opened the door his dream faded with the sound. The next minute Glenn Andrews had come in, and was standing behind him. He rose abruptly, closed the safe door, and hid the small paper in his hand. “Hello, Andrews.” He held himself down to a semblance of calm. “I thought it was about time that you blew in. What are you doing with that grip?”

“Taking it up to pack it,” he said, as he took out cigars for both.

“Indeed! Are you really off? Are you romancing?”

“Most of my romancing is set to the same notes—bank notes. It serves that purpose well enough. I sail day after to-morrow,” he added, carelessly.

“So you are going to kick over the traces, eh? It’s lucky not to be tied so that you couldn’t break away.”

“New York becomes more and more intolerable every day, and I feel that I must get out of it for awhile. I will still do some work on the magazine, of course. Wait; give me a light.” Andrews took the paper that Briarley had twisted and touched it to the gas jet above his head. It went out before it reached the cigar. With a gesture of impatience he looked around and found the matches.

They smoked on, talking together for some time, Glenn toying with the paper in his hand, carelessly rolling and unrolling it. He got a glimpse of it, and said, quickly: “Look here,” passing it over. “Is this of much importance? Maybe you have burned the wrong thing.”

“Oh, no! That’s nothing,” Briarley answered, with an indifferent gesture. “Albert Winston, the poor devil, is dead, and he died beaten. One man has no business to take a mortgage on another’s home, anyhow. I may be an unresponsive brute, but I couldn’t turn a woman and children into the street.” His throat was dry as he turned his back and laid the scorched paper over the flames. “We might as well finish it—let the ashes settle it.”

“Do you mean to say that Winston died in poverty?” Andrews asked, as he got up to leave.

“He hadn’t a dollar.”

“Let me see; whom did he marry?”

“Mildred Hughes,” Briarley hazarded, repeating her name calmly.

“Oh, that’s so; I do remember her. Half the fellows at college were daft about her. Winston’s money won her, they thought.”

“Where are you off to, now?” asked Briarley.

Andrews turned. “I’ve got the ends of a million threads to wind up before I start.”

“And some to break, no doubt.”

“Let me hear from you occasionally,” Glenn said, as he grasped the other’s hand, and felt like adding, “I have guessed your secret, Briarley, my friend. Some men are heroes simply because they didn’t marry.”

“I’ll try to come down to see you off. But if I shouldn’t make it, remember to get all you can out of life, my boy, and I wish you the best of good luck.”

Andrews looked worn, overworked. Richmond Briarley had hoped that the returns from the opera would take some of the strain off of the ambitious fellow—but the unfortunate affair with Stephen Kent had ended that hope.

 

CHAPTER IV.

FOR two weeks Esther had been at the seaside. She had grown pale and tired from the ceaseless round of work and social play. This life had glamour, had charm, but no contentment. Her pleasure in it was not real. She entered it with the belief that it was sweet to love, natural to trust. There was nothing in life but faith and love. She was now in the midst of people who talked with a sceptical contempt of all that she had held sacred. They laughed at her simple faith in the old-fashioned morality taught her by cherished lips.

Glenn Andrews could not leave without seeing her again. He had sent her a message. In the afternoon of the last day he went down to the seaside where she was stopping. The expression on his face was one of unrelenting yet melancholy determination. She was not in, so he struck across the sand and strolled along the beach until he found her. In spite of the pain in her heart, her sensitive, proud face denied it. There was a smile on her pale lips.

“You’re about as hard to reach as the bag of gold at the rainbow’s end,” Glenn said, “but I am glad to find that the other hunters have not reached here. From stories that came back to town, you don’t often escape all of your admirers at once. I am fortunate to find you alone.”

“They are fairy stories that every girl has a right to be a heroine of during the season.”

“I ventured to ask you to be so good as to give me an hour, only because I am going away so soon, and I may not see you again.”

“Your ‘so’ is femininely unsatisfactory. That is the speech of a woman. How soon is that?”

He pointed across the water. “You see that ship? Just about this time to-morrow, when the Majestic sails that way, you may know I am aboard of her. I will wave you a farewell.”

Esther felt a tremor run over her. She looked past him at the baffled surf, as, white with rage, it sprang against the pier, retreating with a roar, leaving a glimpse of the green sea stones beneath.

“So soon as that?” she said, her eyes opening and closing convulsively. “I must have been asleep; I didn’t realize that the time was so near.”

“Time is a mule; it always takes the opposite gait from that which you want it to take. This month has taken wings.” He gave a swift glance at her. “And I expect the next one to crawl—that is, after the voyage. I love the water.”

“As the doctor thinks the sea air so good for you, why don’t you cruise along the shores of France?”

“I may,” hesitatingly he answered; a sense of guilt came over him at the thought of his deception.

“How long do you expect to be gone?”

“I don’t know,” he said, absently; he knew this was not curiosity, but personal concern; “it may be three months, or three years.”

“Which do you expect it to be?”

“I do not expect, because to do that is to rob one’s self of the emotion of surprise, without which there is little pleasure in living.”

“I don’t believe I could be surprised any more. I know how little there is ahead. I have been arranging it all in my mind.”

He looked seaward. “How’s that?”

“Well, Mrs. Low goes home with her daughter.” Here she touched her hands together impulsively.

“You both are going; that leaves me alone.”

“If thoughts count for anything, you will never be alone.”

“How am I to know that?”

“You have the word of Glenn Andrews,” he said quickly; “besides you have a glorious future to look forward to. You have attained! What happiness is there like unto it? Among the many desires of my heart, the first is of your happiness, which I believe lies through your art. I am proud for you. Let me have one comfort before we part. Promise me that you will not disappoint me in my hopes for you. Your success has come high.”

“Well, your future, tell me of that and what your art has cost you.”

“What I have suffered is too late to discuss. One can rate truly only as far as one has gone. I cannot see as far ahead for myself as for my friends.”

“I can see for you.” She spoke slowly, and with difficulty. “Not only perfect health, but laurels. I hope my little spot in your heart may not be entirely shadowed by the lustre of that hour.” Her composure was returning. “I shall miss you; I want you to know that I appreciate the value of your friendship, of which I stood in need. You have helped me by your fond belief in me.”

He didn’t raise his head, but his hand.

“Oh, I have done so little; don’t shame me. You have been taking care of me instead. You have made my life richer—deeper—brought back some of the old faith in my own ideals that was gradually being crushed out. I can understand how men can be forced to such a height that falling would seem too far and hard. I wish I could feel that I had brought half the sunlight into your life as you have into mine.”

“You have brought the most that will ever be there.”

“Oh, don’t say that just as I am going; that kind of sun shines not only through the senses, but through the soul. It will always shine if you will only think so.”

She bowed her head, the wide fringe of brown seaweed trembled under the waves that ran up on the warm-hued sand.

“And I am glad that we have had this year. With all its pain—it is ours. Think of me sometimes when I am gone, Esther. Be good—by that I mean, brave.”

His voice broke.

The tense strain of the moment was ended, as he bent forward. His heart was in the kiss he left on her hair. He turned and walked quickly away without looking back.

In the darkness of her room, a young figure lay stricken with grief across her bed, mourning the vision of her ideals that seemed gone without fulfillment. In the morning when she heard the happy sound of laughing voices the hopelessness of her bereavement came over her afresh. She was alone in her sorrow and memories. She was so weak that her body felt bruised, and her arms lay like a dead weight at her side. Was her courage broken? She prayed a passionate prayer for the poor, heartless women who had kept faith with virtue, and had not been rewarded—who had scattered their broken ideals along the road that they went, that all who followed must bleed and suffer. She reached out for her violin; for a while she lay still with it in her arms. It was not sufficient. She needed some human thing for companionship. Her soul hated its bodily enthrallment—she would fly out of it—she must. With a supreme effort she raised herself, and faced the mirror. Her wide, dim eyes looked out at her in pity. Then from her window she saw a steamer going out. It was time for the Majestic that was to take Glenn Andrews out of New York—out of her life. The two loves of her life—they must die together. Suddenly grasping the neck of her violin, she struck it against the side of the bed and shattered the exquisite thing. She fell back prostrate, and there for weeks she lay between this life and the eternal.

 

CHAPTER V.

GLENN ANDREWS went to France, to Moret-sur-Loing, an old cathedral town, thinly peopled, on the skirts of the forest of Fontainbleu. It was secluded and out of the way. Here he would lead a quiet life of study and work. This was his delight. A poet-soul living in the pursuit, not possession of the ideal. He had taken up his abode in a little, old inn. Away from the world and yet so near it. This was a beautiful country; the sight of it did his spirit good. He loved the hills and valleys and streams. On one side the ruins of an old Keep belting him, and on the other, the mills with long rows of deep windows, from which the workers looked out upon the sunshine and their homes. The small mill-houses nestled low in the leaves.

One day, returning late from a long walk, Glenn passed a peasant mother, poorly clothed, seated in her doorway; her child was sitting by with its hands about its knees. She kept pointing to the path that led to the mill. She was evidently looking for some one. Soon a man came in sight. A glow lit in the sombre eyes of the mother, and a smile leaped from her haggard face to the weary man, who suddenly straightened his drooping shoulders. There was something besides pain and work in the world, and they had found it. He took the child in his arms, tossing it up and letting it fall back again—this human miniature of their love and youth. Many a day, Glenn strolled at evening to see their meeting when the father came home from the mill. It rested him. He became absorbed in his work, reading the proof of the third book that was to add something to, or take from, the name of the lyrical poet.

It was not long until he heard of Esther’s illness. It gave him a stab of remorse and distressed him sorely. Had he, who had nurtured her soul so carefully, injured it more deeply than the careless world? He who had enthralled her childhood, steadfastly guided her girlhood—in whose woman’s destiny he had played so fatal a part. Here the pathos and the irony were strangely interwoven. Would it have been better had she never known the broader, fuller world? Had she now been living away her life contentedly in the dark? These questions came between him and his work. As he gazed dreamily out, the leaves were swaying carelessly. A vision of the dependent, lovely girl overwhelmed him. In the wind he seemed to hear Esther’s voice—all the youth and laughter gone out of it. It was not like that day when he held her face between his hands and gave her the kiss of love. He sighed for the virginal softness of her tremulous lips. The wind went wandering along the wood’s green edge, like a miserable thing, offering no consolation. From his meditation came like an accusing ghost the realization that there is but one true aim in life—to seek and find the soul’s complement. He had sought. He had found, but he had sacrificed. The spiritual need of his soul had been set aside. For what? An agony of yearning welled up in his heart—a yearning for the sense of her sweet presence which thrilled him with a joy of pain. The best of love they had missed—the supreme surrender.

 

CHAPTER VI.

ESTHER’S health was returning, and with it her strength. Her pride and her spirit, both, were fired. There was one thing left to her in her grief—concealment. She bound this thought to her heart, and held it close—so close. She was a soldier’s daughter, and came of a stock whose fortitude in defeat had been even more splendid than their valor in war. To her the secret of love had been harshly told, but she would hear it with courage. In the swiftest current of destiny, she would show her womanly strength.

 

CHAPTER VII.

“YOU will wonder at seeing this letter from me,” Glenn wrote to Esther, “for it will not be a usual one—not at all the sort of letter you have been accustomed to receiving from me. Perhaps it is that I have changed—greatly changed from that old self you knew—most of all changed from what I used to be to you. I can see you now as you looked to me that afternoon at Indian Well, when I first spoke to you. You touched me so closely then—so nearly—and you were such a child.

“All through that first year I think you could never have guessed how much the blossoming of that little wild heart of yours meant to me. I watched it from day to day, from month to month, so closely. Maybe I watered it some, and pulled some of the weeds that might have crowded its roots. I hope so. You were a child then and I a man, yet I had been a man without a passion. I thought much in those days, and dreamed that I knew myself. Achievement was my god. I told myself that my interest in you was the interest of the philosopher—the master—and I watched your mind unfold with a curious delight. I know now, dear, that it was a far different feeling from that—one that went far deeper and meant much more to me, even when I would not admit it to myself. It is to his own heart last of all that a man admits his own error. And yet, as I look back at it now, I think that I meant to be honest with myself. When you came to the city and I saw the wondrous woman that had grown—when I saw your flower heart—still the heart of the child in all that was sweet and innocent—turning more and more towards me for its sun—it waked something new within me. I saw the problem. I felt your dependence grow each day stronger. You leaned upon me so that I thought sometimes I could feel every throb of your heart. You were achieving. Your art was growing. Your genius was lifting. You were coming nearer and nearer to the ideal that I had imagined for you. When such a development has become the great and absorbing passion of a man’s life, I cannot express to you how haunting becomes the fear of disappointment, how terrible the jealousy of circumstance that may step between him and its fulfillment. You had beautiful ideals—such as I have had—and they had grown a part of you. To lose them would have ashed the ember; it would have deadened the quick sensibilities and wounded that soul-instinct of yours in which your music lived. And when I saw these ideals dependent upon me—upon my presence—upon the sympathy of mine, which I could not have denied if I had tried—I stood by them and you. Dear, the soul of a woman is a wonderful thing. It will not bear experiment. Yours was like a sensitive plant that cannot bear the light, and sheds its loveliest perfume in the dark. So I tried to give it the darkness—to cloud the glare of hollowness that was in our world—to let the light in slowly and only when the leaves were strong enough to bear it. All this time I could not help but see that when I went from you the shock would be great. My philosophy taught me the penalty of emotion, and I thought I had much to do in the world. I dreamed of work that would absorb me utterly—that would take the best that was in me, of feeling and of effort. All my life I had denied myself the passion that my eyes told me was growing in you. I had grown to consider myself apart from others—a mental solitary who had locked the door of his heart because he had work to do. It had not occurred to me that the Juggernaut whose rumbling wheels I would not hear might crush you. It was the concert at the Metropolitan that opened my eyes. I knew then that your art and your heart had twined together so intimately that if one were cut, the other would bleed. I knew then that I must either go or stay, that if I became a stronger part of you my going would be fatal to your own achievement and to mine. Dear, it was not all selfishness—this resolve of mine. You will never know what it meant to me to tear up the roots that had grown in spite of me: it was like tearing the flesh and leaving it quivering. But that I could have borne if it left you better able to go on. I did not know then what I know now. I blame myself that I did not read truer. The news of your breakdown and the giving up of your music came to me like a blow in the dark. In showing me yours, it has shown me my own heart. The depths of my self-condemnation have taught me myself. It has taught me that achievement is a pitiful thing compared with a woman’s love—that your happiness means more to me—a thousand times more—than success: that I love you—I love you—utterly and wholly—and that I want you to be my wife. The future is impossible to me without you. Each day since I saw you, your step has been in every sound. Each night your face has been my vision. Here from my window I can see a little knoll on which is a cross, where the peasants go to pray to the patron saint of the village. It is ugly, and battered, and old, but it has come to be beautiful to me, for I know now what they are praying for. The hills are gold with the grain, and a little winding path runs down toward my eyrie. I can almost imagine you coming down it now to meet me, with your dear face raised to my window—”

As Glenn finished the page, the boy tapped at the little door with the daily mail, and he reached out an indifferent hand to take it. A familiar flourish caught his eye, and, recognizing Richmond Briarley’s penmanship, he opened a bulky envelope. A card, closely written, and a small book met his gaze.

 

CHAPTER VIII.

“MY young Idealist, I send you a clever story, one which shows remarkable talent, and which you really must read. There is, or was, once upon a time in this town, another consummate young Idealist like yourself, but of the female persuasion; a protegé of yours who fiddled. She, I remember, believed in a few things; among others, that there was a little to be considered besides art, and that she had a lump somewhere which she called a heart. You have always been troubled with the same feature, I believe.

“The lady has just issued a story, which I send you to-day. Just take a look at it and find me that lump, will you? Cold as an icicle! By the way, I understand that the lady in question was quite a social success here in our city, and very much sought after in drawing rooms, in which she earned about her own price. She has come to the philosophical conclusion that you used to uphold: which is, that as long as a person does, it don’t much matter what a person feels. Anyway, she is doing it; and I take it from this novel that she is not feeling much either.

“Yours, Briarley.”

Glenn read the letter with a curious shock, and opened the novelette. As he finished the last page and laid it down on the table beside him—this story with the heart of a stone—he sat looking out the window with a daze of anguish in his eyes. His hands were supporting his bearded chin. Without, the splendid sunset, the gilding flame of which caused his features to shine resplendently. His sad, wistful face, convulsed with emotion. What a tumult of silent, unspeakable memories; what feelings of regret and longing! Instinct does not always point the truth. No suspicion of the brave ruse of Esther came to him now—no apprehension of the hurt pride whose strain of revolt forced from her this literary lie. He had been driven blindly on by his yearning for the more perfect art. He didn’t care for laurels now, nor for that art for whose sake he had destroyed the best thing in his life. Was ever heart-break more cruel? He sat for an hour in silence. The sunset had lost its beauty. The grain on the hills had lost its gold. He took the letter he had been writing to Esther, tore it up, and flung the fragments of what, if he had known, was the best of his life, out the window. A lazy breeze caught them up and scattered them. A single one with the word “love” on it was blown back and settled slowly in his hat. A bell was ringing for compline. He saw the peasants in their simple devotion going slowly to worship. He took his hat and walked across the street to the little café. There two comrades called him over to have a bottle of wine with them.

“Ah, poet!” one said, laughing as he reached over and took the stray bit of paper that lay on his hair. “Still the philosopher! Making love with your head?”

“You’re wrong, this time, it was from the heart,” and Glenn Andrews forced the shadow of a smile into his lips.

 

THE END.