CHAPTER XXVII.
“As a guide my umpire conscience.”
Morning accompanied as far as Chicago the special trains containing those of the European guests whose official duties required their immediate departure, but very many, including the Baron Von Eulaw and his party, remained at Coronado.
With a good deal of effort, the episode of the baron’s conduct, and the circumstances of the rescue of his wife and himself, were kept out of the press reports, yet the affair was, nevertheless, one of those open secrets with which many people enliven conversation.
Mrs. Thornton was, for once, disinclined to suffer her admiration for a title to induce her to overlook the homicidal freak of her son-in-law, and she urged Ellen in vain to formally separate her life from that of her husband. Possibly her appreciation of the fact that Morning was now more renowed than any European potentate, and outranked any king on earth, and her comprehension of the further fact that he was still deeply in love with her daughter, may have influenced her counsel.
Moved by some impulse, which perhaps she could not have explained to herself, she took occasion when thanking Morning for saving her daughter’s life, to confide to him the history of how Ellen’s marriage had been brought about, to which she added the story of her married life, and concluded by pressing upon him for perusal, a package of her daughter’s letters. These Morning carried with him to Chicago, and their reading induced him, after parting with his distinguished guests, to hasten his return to Coronado, where he was advised that the Von Eulaw party would remain for some weeks.
On a delicious afternoon the baroness, with Mrs. Thornton and Miss Winters, sat in the gallery overhanging the old music hall on the sea. Although a new and costlier edifice had been built, with improved acoustics and elaborate design, the little gem at the corner of the hotel, long washed by the waves and threatened by the breakers, seemed still a favorite resort for concert and afternoon recitals, and thither came many who sought for a restful hour under the eloquent discourse of the old white-haired professor’s violin.
“It is a pity for the world,” said Miss Winters, during a pause in the performance, “that so few are able to look into the soul of Tolstoi’s labors. In one of his chapters he expresses the epitome of all musical sensations in half a dozen lines.”
“I hope you are not referring to the ‘Kreutzer Sonata,’ Miss Winters,” broke in Mrs. Thornton.
Miss Winters smiled rather than spoke reply. But the baroness took greater liberty and rejoined rather saucily, “The regular thing, dear mother, is to ask for some palliative to remove the taste from your mouth after the mention of the much-abused ‘Kreutzer Sonata.’”
Mrs. Thornton replied with a look of high disdain and much fluttering of ribbons.
“I am not punctilious, but I could not sit and listen to a defense of that man.”
“I am not defending him, though I might, especially if he were my client,” laughed Miss Winters. “I am only deploring that the world will not forgive his truths nor forget his faults in the universal power of his genius.”
It was well that the next on the programme was Beethoven’s seventh symphony, and that the men strolled in soon afterwards, for nothing is so prolific of enmities as the subject of Tolstoi, unless it be that of tariff.
The enchanting numbers were ended, and the ladies left the hall, the men taking another direction. At the foot of the stairway they were accosted by David Morning, who, after a greeting, turned and joined the baroness.
“When did you return?” said she, looking full into his bronzed face, and again at his traveling clothes.
“Only this moment. And how are you? and has the baron entirely recovered?”
“Completely, I believe, and for me, one could not be so ungrateful as to be ill in this place.”
“I trust not,” replied Morning absently.
There was silence for a moment, then, turning shortly, and looking into the handsome face of the baroness, he said, without calling her by name, but earnestly, and it may be added a little peremptorily, “I wish to have a few moments’ conversation with you after dinner, if you will be good enough to consent.”
“For what purpose? When? Alone?”
“Your first question let me answer later. Here, under the palms, on the beach, anywhere, but alone, certainly.”
Each question was superfluous, of course, but she was gaining time. At length she answered slowly, “I could wish you had not asked me for this meeting, Mr. Morning.”
“But I am going away. Will you, knowing this, still refuse?”
“I will come,” she said after a pause. “We will sit here upon the veranda, after eight. The others are going, I believe, to look at the dancers.”
And, thanking her, he lifted his hat and withdrew.
The halls were not ablaze on this night, for there is not light enough in the world to coax the sullen shadows from their lurking-places in a modern interior. But the arches of heaven, albeit moonless, were more obedient, and the electric scintillations searched and filled every rood of ground with their unwarm but willing light, or chased with exact pencil the willful outlines of orange and oleander, or the more tender ways of acanthus, pepper, and palm.
Morning had wheeled a luxurious easy-chair alongside of his veranda “shaker,” and sat with his hands upon the upholstered back, waiting for the one woman in the world to him, while the promenaders, in full evening toilet, filed in pairs along the thronged corridors, and the soft strains of “La Paloma” floated down from the balcony and mingled with the plash of the sea.
“Engaged,” spoke Morning curtly, as a youthful lord, accompanying the British delegation, attempted to move the fanteuil aside.
“Beg pardon, I wish I were,” retorted the scion of a noble house, striding away with the fair one upon his arm.
“There is hope for that fellow,” Morning muttered.
“I left the baron to be taken to his room by his valet,” explained the baroness approaching. “He is a little tired and nervous,” and she loosened the lace about her throat impatiently.
“Yes,” dryly, was the only comment.
“He said he might get around here before he retired. I hope you would not mind, he is so very capricious, you don’t know.”
“Oh, no, I don’t mind, but if he comes I am going, for I ‘don’t mind’ saying also I’ve had enough of that fellow!”
The baroness looked up with surprise, but Morning went on excitedly:—
“Oh, I know I ought not to say this to you, but I must say it, and a great deal more, unless you stop me! I say you are in deadly terror of that man, and you hate him beside, as you ought.”
“How can you—who told you this? Surely you are assuming—”
“No, pardon me, I am assuming nothing. I read your letters.”
“Who gave you my letters?” asked the baroness in amazement.
“Your mother urged them upon me, and I was disloyal enough to read them, every line,” a little triumphantly. He arose hastily and walked away for a few paces, drying and fanning his face with his handkerchief, then, returning, he leaned upon the back of her chair, and, dropping his voice, said huskily, and with quite uncontrollable emotion:—
“Ellen—let me call you so this once, it remains with you whether I ever utter the name again—dear Ellen, answer this from your own sweet lips, have you a spark of love for that beas—man?” correcting himself too late. “I know how capricious the heart of a woman is, and perhaps—but no! take your time to answer, only give me your word,” and he walked swiftly away, and looked out on the sea, and saw the waves beat their soft white arms upon the sands, then returned.
The woman had turned to ashen paleness. The ever-repeating and distributing electric light had forgotten the delicate tints of her dainty gown, and the color of her hair and brows, with the roses upon her bosom, and only the waxen face, with its dark eyes filled with glistening tears, uprose whiter than the beams.
“Poor heart!” said he, noting the quiver of the sensitive mouth. “It ought not to be so difficult to speak the truth.”
At length the tortured woman found voice:—
“David Morning,” she said, in tremulous tones, “I am not meaning to question your right to give challenge to my despair, though, for reasons you can understand, it is from you, more than from all the world, I would have disguised it. You ask me if I love that man? I answer, No, no, a thousand times no! But my sense of obligation as his wife is as much stronger than my hate as misery is stronger than the social bars which contain it, and I deem it neither noble nor just to utter complaints against one who is, whatever may be said, my legal protector before the world. I do not deny that I have suffered untold agonies, but I may as well bear them in one cause as another.”
“I confess,” said Morning, with a manner suddenly grown cold, “I do not fully understand you. You speak of ‘obligations,’ and ‘social bars;’ you cannot mean that you would deliberately sacrifice your woman’s soul, with all its honor and its aims, to a life of dishonor and deceit—for so I dare to name it—for dread of the idle dictum of a malicious social scarecrow?”
The baroness winced, but quickly rallied, and, leaning forward in her chair, so near that he caught the perfume of the roses on her corsage, she replied:—
“No! though I will say in passing that, whatever I might do, no woman, be she termagant or angel, has ever lived long enough to escape the opprobrium arising from the poisonous effluvia of the divorce courts! However, that is not the subject under discussion, and my unhappy feet are placed upon more tenable ground. I confess myself, then, not strong enough to defy the convictions of a life given much—the maturer portion, at least—to an examination of the ethics of the question. And I resolutely affirm that, in my own mind, I am convinced that to seek to evade the results of my own deliberate action, would be sinful, and in violation of my own conscientious perceptions—‘a grieving of the Spirit,’ in the language of a very old author, and, therefore, a sin against the Holy Ghost.”
Is it possible, thought Morning, forgetful for the moment of the purpose that had brought him there, that in this evening of the nineteenth century a cultivated woman, herself the victim of a system fiendish in its power to forge public opinion, and cruel as the Inquisition, should have the courage thus to look her awful destiny in the face tranquilly, and smilingly set upon it the cold white seal of conscience? And for a brief moment he wondered if she were a saint or a lunatic.
Then he thought of the many shafts of argument that might be let loose to pierce the diseased cuticle of her morbid philosophy, but he had not the heart, or, rather, he lacked entire faith in their efficacy, so he sat silently counting his heart beats. Finally, taking alarm at his protracted silence, she resumed:—
“Do not misunderstand me; I am not narrow enough to convict, or egotist enough to try to convert, others to my way of thinking; I only speak for myself.”
“Your missionary seed would fall upon stony ground if you were so disposed,” he answered quickly, almost rudely. “Ellen Thornton,” he continued, ignoring the hateful title that seemed to have engulfed her body and soul for all of him, “for thirteen years fate has been circumventing our lives. I have heard your name over seas as you have heard mine, familiar to all but each other. I have loved you with hope and without it. Great wealth has been my portion, yet I would be a beggar to-night if you would but share my crust with me, with love like mine.”
Into the eyes of the woman, fierce with resolution and despair, there came tears, half of pity, half of joy—pity for his fate and hers, joy for that the love she had deemed lost and gone from their lives was here, tireless and strong as the sea, immortal and sweet as the morning, and the voice of the man whose head was bent near her own thrilled her with its music.
“During all the years of parting,” continued Morning, “I have been neither despairing nor misanthropic, but I knew that the passion of my life had glowed and burned, and—as I thought—died to ashes upon the altar whose goddess was the dark-eyed maiden whom my young manhood adored. When, less than a fortnight ago, I was able to deliver you from the awful death that madman would have inflicted upon you, my exultation had but one sting, that I had saved you for another, and for such a fate; and then, in my insane rage, I cursed myself that I had not let you die under my dizzy eyes, and so have rounded my despair.
“But I have come near to you now, our paths have crossed. O God, how I have waited for the hour! and how can I let you go? If I do, our ways will again diverge, and every remove will bring us farther apart. Do you know what this means to me? It is the dividing of my soul from my body, of my heart from my brain; it means a galvanized life, a career of eviscerated motives, a gibbering, masquerading existence, emasculate of manly and fruitful purpose, a hopeless love”—and his voice trembled and sank—“ashes and dust and nothing more.”
The baroness listened with passion tearing at her heart, while her white lips were fashioning word of wise restraint. Could she trust herself to speak? She envied in her soul the women she had known abroad, women of convictions, with uncoddled consciences, charming, virtuous women too, but without the monitor to guide the wayward thought, a sky without a polar star, a ship without a rudder, and then she recalled the burning words of the man beside her.
“I know,” said she at length, “that I owe you my life, and, in the logic of natural sequence, I should give back that which you won. But it is love’s sophistry, and, in truth, perhaps for no better reason than because I so much desire it, I dare not. One phase of your argument pricks my conscience in turn. You tell me that your usefulness must pay the penalty of my decision. Unsay those words, I entreat you”—and she leaned far toward him. “God has singled you out for a great destiny. Fulfill it. You have the world at your feet; let that suffice you for the present. I do not ask you to forget me!”—and her lips grew tremulous. “I should die if I thought you could. But work on, as you have been doing, for the sake of humanity, and wait heroically, as you have done.”
“Wait for what? for somebody to die?” broke in Morning hotly. “For somebody to die, that is the English of it. Most lives are made what they are by some woman. She may be a mother, a sister not likely. Since I received that long-lost letter—anathemas upon that circular desk,” and he pounded the “shaker” arm with his fist—“I have had but one inspiration in my projects, one question always ringing in my ears,—‘What will she think of it?’ Now I have found you only to hear from your own lips that my life is a failure, and yours a moral suicide, which I seem as helpless to prevent as I am to put a stay upon yonder waves that lash themselves to spray upon the rocks.”
“David Morning,” and her voice was firm now, “I think I owe it to you as well as myself to tell you, even with the marriage ring upon my finger, that I wish I were free from the yoke of this fateful marriage; that if I could be delivered from the body of this death, then could I mount with glad wings the great height to which your love would raise me. But I could have no weight of a crying conscience upon my feet, no wail of wounded justice behind me, and so I will bear it to the end.”
“You say, even with that marriage ring upon your finger. What care I,” said he, rising and standing before her, “for that circlet of gold upon your beautiful hand? I know it is a mockery, so do you, and but for it that hand might have been mine, and all these years have been saved to love and the heart’s gladness. What signifies the sanction of the law if you have not the sanction of your own soul? I shall not seek to dissuade you more, but one question I will ask of you, and if wealth could buy words eloquent enough to couch it in, I would surrender my possessions and delve for it again, if need be, in the depths of the earth. But truth is simple, and so I beg of you to answer from your soul, and thereafter I will do as you bid me. Do you love me, darling? do you?” and he bent over her chair.
She lifted a face radiant with beautiful light. “Dearest,” said she softly, and David Morning thrilled with delight—“dearest, I am glad that this meeting and this understanding have come to us just here, where hundreds of eyes are upon us, for, if it were otherwise, I should forget all else except my desire to comfort you, and should place my arms about your neck, and ask you to seal upon my lips your forgiveness of me for all that I have made you suffer. God help me, I do love you, and I never loved any other. You are my hero, my darling, and my heart’s delight. All these years I have loved you, until the hour of death I shall love you, and beyond the gates I shall love you forever, and forever more.”
Only a great sob came from the breast of David Morning.
“Noble man,” she continued, “you have accomplished a great work in the world. God has selected and armed you for the deliverance of his nations. You have other and greater work to do. In the doing it the luster of your shield shall never be tarnished, as it would be were we to wrong another now. Go forth, my hero, my life, and my darling; go forth panoplied in your high manhood to your duty. In spirit I shall be with you ever. I shall rejoice in your mighty deeds. I shall live in your nobler thoughts. Day and night, my beloved, will my soul dwell with yours. Only in perfect honor and faith can I join you. If the hour for such union shall ever be given to us on earth, come to me and you will find me waiting. If it come only in the other land, I shall still be waiting. But here, my darling, my own, my heart’s solace, here we must meet not again.”
And she placed her ungloved fingers in his.
The man and the woman sat silently hand in hand. The music floated out from the lighted ballroom, where “the dancers were dancing in tune;” the sea curled its beryl depths to crests of foam, and sounded in musical monotones upon the beach which lay a white line upon the edge of the dusk, and the old, old world, the sorrowful, disappointing world, the weary world, was as sweet and young as when the first dawns were filtrated from chaotic mists.
She broke the silence and withdrew her hand: “Yonder comes the baron.”
“Good-by,” said he, and he walked away into the night, and as he reached the edge of the balcony overhanging the beach, and felt the sting of the salt spray in his eyes, he muttered something. It might have been a good-night prayer, but it sounded like, “Damn the baron.”
[From the San Diego Union, May 15, 1896.]
We regret to announce the death yesterday, at the Coronado Hotel, of Baron Frederick Augustus Eulaw Von Eulaw, eleventh Count of Walderberg, eighth Baron of Weinerstrath, and Knight Commander of the order of the Golden Tulip.
The immediate cause of the baron’s death was hyperemia of the brain, but he never recovered from the nervous prostration induced by heat and long exposure to the sun, while in the performance of his duty as one of the representatives of the German Empire, on the occasion of the dynamic exposition.
This distinguished nobleman, during his brief sojourn among us, had endeared himself to all with whom he came in contact, by the gentleness and grace of his manner, his kindly sympathies, and unselfish courtesy. The Wilhelm II. has been detailed to receive his remains, which will be embalmed for transportation in state to Berlin, where they will be interred with fitting pomp.
The baroness, who to the last was devoted in her attentions to the late baron, will, it is understood, remain in this country in the home of her parents, Professor and Mrs. John Thornton.