From Jest to Earnest Part 32

"You cannot feel otherwise, Miss Marsden. You have been seeking to keep and use for yourself what G.o.d meant you should use for Him.

You feel very much as you would, did you take a large sum of money, left in your hands as a sacred trust, and go on a pleasure trip with it. He has intrusted to you the richest and rarest gifts, and every day that you have misappropriated them is a burden upon your conscience. You will feel the same after a long life of adulation, in which every whim has been gratified. Believe me, Miss Marsden, it is a very sad thing to come to the end of one's life with no other possession than a burdened conscience and a heavy, guilty heart. I long to save you from such a fate. That would be a wretchedly poor result of a lifetime for one endowed as you are."

"Your words are very severe, Mr. Hemstead," she said in a low tone, burying her face in her hands.

"Faithful are the wounds of a friend," he replied.

"I never thought I could permit any one to speak to me as you have done, nor would I endure it from you, did I not recognize something like sympathy in the voice with which you speak such cutting words.

But I fear they are true, after all. A burdened conscience and a guilty heart seem all there is of me to-night."

He was about to reverse the picture, and portray in strong and hopeful terms what she might be, and what she could accomplish, when the sleigh-bells announced the return of the rest of the party.

She sprang up and said hastily: "I do not wish to meet them to-night, and so will retire at once. As physician of the 'mind diseased'

you dearly believe in what is termed the 'heroic treatment.' Your scalpel is sharp, and you cut deeply. But as proof that I have kept my word, and am not offended, I give you my hand."

He took it in both of his, but did not speak. She looked up at him through the tears that still lingered, and was touched to see that his eyes were as moist as hers. Giving his hand a cordial pressure, she said as she left him: "You cannot look at me in harsh criticism through tears of sympathy. Your face is kinder than your words. I am glad you do not despise me."

Hemstead admitted Harcourt and the young ladies into the shadowy hall, and then bade them good night. He, too, was in no mood for Addie's gossip or Bel's satire. They had also found Harcourt strangely silent and pre-occupied.

The evident influence of Miss Martell over Harcourt, and their intimate relations require some explanation. He was an orphan, and his father had been a friend of Mr. Martell. During the last illness of the elder Mr. Harcourt, he had asked his friend to take some interest in his son, and, when possible, to give him friendly counsel. To a man like Mr. Martell such a request was like a sacred obligation; and he had sought to do more than was asked. He wrote the young man almost fatherly letters, and often invited him to his house. Thus it came about that the influence of Mr. Martell and his daughter did more to restrain the wayward tendencies of young Harcourt than all other things combined; and it must be confessed that the little blue-eyed girl had more influence than the wise old father. She seemed to take almost a sisterly interest in him, and occasionally wrote such a sweet little letter that he would reform his college life for a week thereafter. But he seemed to have a dash of wild blood that would break out only too often into indiscretions, the rumors of which filled his kind friend Mr.

Martell with anxiety. But Alice, his daughter ever insisted that he would "come out all right."

"Tom has a good heart, father," she would say; and so, with woman's faith, she hoped where her father feared.

If Harcourt could have been continually under their influence he would undoubtedly have developed into a far better man. But, between absence at college and the law-school and some travel during vacations, he saw less and less of them. Alice also was kept very steadily at school, and during the last two years of her studies they had missed each other in vacations, and seldom met.

But something more than maidenly modesty and pride made Alice shy and reserved when with Harcourt. She would think more about him, but talk less to him than to others when in company. She was a peculiarly sensitive, diffident girl, and instinctively shrank from the man who had for her the strongest interest.

On the completion of her studies her father had taken her abroad, and they had spent two or three years in travel. The extraordinary graces of her person were but the reflex of her richly cultivated mind. Even abroad she had many admirers; but with tact, firmness, and inimitable grace, she ever sought to prevent false hopes, and so had fewer offers than an ordinary coquette. But many who soon learned that they could never establish a dearer relation became strong friends, and also better men; for Alice Martell seemed to have the power of evoking all the good there was in a man, and of putting him under a kind of sacred obligation to be true and manly, as the result of her acquaintance. However deep and lasting regret may have been, no man ever left her presence in harsh and bitter contempt for the--very name of woman, as too often had been the case with Lottie Marsden. Those who knew her least said she was cold, and those who knew her true, womanly heart best wondered at her continued indifference to every suit. And sometimes she wondered at herself,--how it was that all the attention she received scarcely ever quickened her pulse.

But when after long absence she returned and met the friend and playmate of her childhood--the wayward youth to whom she was accustomed to give sisterly counsel--her pulse was so strangely accelerated, and the blood so quick to mount to her face at his every word and look, that she began to understand herself somewhat.

They had but recently returned to their residence on the banks of the Hudson; and Harcourt was made a welcome visitor.

Having completed his professional studies, the young man had succeeded largely to the practice of his deceased father, and was doing well in a business point of view. He had inherited enough property to secure a good start in life, but not enough to rob him of the wholesome stimulus which comes from the need of self-exertion.

He had an acute, active mind. Abundance of intellect and fire flashed from his dark eyes, and we have seen that he was not without good and generous traits. But in his spiritual life he had become materialistic and sceptical. His a.s.sociates were brilliant, but fast men; and for him also the wine-cup was gaining dangerous fascination.

Mr. Martell, in the spirit of the most friendly interest, soon learned these facts after his return, and also the gossip, which brought a sudden paleness to his daughter's cheek, that he was engaged, or virtually engaged, to Addie Marchmont.

While Alice therefore was kind, she seemed to avoid him; and he found it almost impossible to be alone with her. She had always dwelt in his mind, more as a cherished ideal, a revered saint, than as an ordinary flesh-and-blood girl with whom he was fit to a.s.sociate, and for a time after her return her manner increased this impression. He explained the recognized fact that she shunned his society by thinking that she knew his evil tendencies, and that to her believing and Christian spirit his faithless and irregular life was utterly uncongenial. For a short time he had tried to ignore her opinion and society in reckless indifference; but the loveliness of her person and character daily grew more fascinating, and his evil habits lost in power as she gained. For some little time before Mrs. Byram's company, he had been earnestly wis.h.i.+ng that he could become worthy of at least her esteem and old friendly regard, not daring to hope for anything more. It never occurred to him that gossip had coupled his name with his cousin Addie, and that this fact influenced Miss Martell's manner as well as his tendencies toward dissipation. He laid it all to the latter cause, and was beginning to feel that he could live the life of an ascetic, if this lovely saint would only permit his devotion.

And Alice, so sensitive where he was concerned, thought she saw a change in him for the better, and in the spirit of womanly self-sacrifice was resolving to see more of him than was prudent for her peace of mind, if by so doing she could regain her old power to advise and restrain.

With gladness she recognized her influence over him at Mrs. Byram's company, and, as we have seen, made the most of it. But, with surprise and some strange thrills at heart, she noted that he and Addie Marchmont did not act as an engaged couple naturally would; and observed, with disgust, that Miss Marchmont seemed more pleased with Brently's attentions than Lottie Marsden had been.

That a man of Harcourt's force and mind should be captivated by such a girl as Miss Marchmont, had been a mystery; and she thought, when seeing them together in Mrs. Byram's parlors, "They take it more coolly than any people I ever saw."

Addle appeared engrossed with the attentions of others, and Harcourt not in the least jealous or annoyed. In brief, they acted like cousins, and not in the least like lovers.

But in the sensitive delicacy of her character she would not permit her mind to dwell on the problem of their relations, and bent all her thoughts upon her effort to win Harcourt to a better life.

And she had moved him that evening more deeply than she could know.

Neither she, nor any finite power, could plant righteous principle within his soul and transform his character; but she had created, for the time at least, an utter distaste for all low and sensual pleasures, and an honest and absorbing wish to become a true, good man. He felt that he could not, in her society, and breathing the pure atmosphere of her life, be his old self.

Never did a man return from a fas.h.i.+onable revel in a more serious and thoughtful mood, and equally with Lottie and Hemstead he was glad to escape, from the trifling chat and gossip of Addie and Bel Parton, to the solitude of his own loom.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HEMSTEAD'S HEAVY GUN AND ITS RECOIL.

The "day after the ball" has its proverbial character, and Sat.u.r.day was so long and dismal to several of the revellers that it occurred to them that their pleasure had been purchased rather dearly. It seemed an odd coincidence, that those who had been bent on securing all the pleasure possible, with no other thought, suffered the most. Bel and Addie could scarcely endure their own company, they were so weary and stupid; and they yawned through the day, irritable and dishevelled, for it was too stormy for callers.

De Forrest did not appear until dinner, and then came down moody and taciturn. The young ladies had heard of his illness the evening before, with significant glances. Mrs. Marchmont partly surmised the truth, but politely ignored the matter, treating it only as a sudden indisposition; and so the affair was pa.s.sed over, as such matters usually are in fas.h.i.+onable life until they reach a stage too p.r.o.nounced for polite blindness.

De Forrest but dimly recollected the events of the preceding evening.

He was quite certain, however, that he had been drunk, and had made a fool of himself.

Though his conscience was not over tender upon this subject, and though such occurrences were not so exceedingly rare in fas.h.i.+onable life as to be very shocking, he still had the training and instinct of a gentleman, to a sufficient degree to feel deep mortification.

If he had become tipsy among those of his own s.e.x, or while off on a fis.h.i.+ng excursion, he would have regarded it as a light matter; but, even in his eyes, intoxication at an evening company, and before the girl in whose estimation he most wished to stand well, was a very serious matter. He could not remember much after going a second time to the supper-room in compliance with Lottie's request, but had a vague impression that she and Hemstead had brought him home. He was left in torturing uncertainty how far he had disgraced himself, because it was a subject concerning which he could not bring himself to make inquiries. That those he met at the dinner-table treated him with their usual quiet politeness proved nothing.

Human faces mask more thoughts than are expressed. Hemstead's grave silence was somewhat significant; but De Forrest cared so little for his opinion that he scarcely heeded the student's manner.

Lottie Marsden was the one he most wished, and yet most dreaded to see. But Lottie did not appear.

Whether it was true, as she believed, or not, that she was the more guilty, she certainly was the greater sufferer, and that Sat.u.r.day became the longest and dreariest period of pain that she had ever experienced. She awoke in the morning with a nervous headache, which grew so severe that she declined to leave her room during the day.

Bel, Addie, and her aunt all offered to do anything in their power; but she only asked to be left alone. She was so unstrung that even words of kindness and solicitude jarred like discord.

It was torture to think, and yet her brain was unnaturally active.

Everything presented itself in the most painfully bare and accurate manner. The glamour faded out of her gay young life, and she saw only the hard lines of fact. Hemstead's words repeated themselves over and over again, and in their light she questioned the past closely. It was not in keeping with her positive nature and strong mind to do things by halves. With fixed and steady scrutiny she reviewed the motives of her life, and estimated the results. They were so unsatisfactory as to startle her. Although the spent years had been filled with continuous and varied activity, what had she accomplished for herself or any one else? Were not all her past days like water spilled on barren sands, producing nothing?

As she had before intimated, she had been receiving homage, flattery, and even love, all her life, and yet now her heart had no treasures to which she could turn in solid satisfaction, nor could memory recall efforts like that she saw Miss Martell making in behalf of Harcourt. The adulation received was now empty breath and forgotten words, and nothing substantial or comforting remained.

But, if memory could recall little good accomplished, it placed in long and dark array many scenes that she would gladly have forgotten.

What can be worse--what need we fear more--than to be left alone forever with a guilty and accusing conscience, and no respite, no solace? What perdition need a man shrink from more than to go away from his earthly life, to be alone with memory--a pale and silent spectre--who will turn the pages of his daily record, and point to what was, and what might have been?

A shallow-minded girl would have been incapable of this searching self-a.n.a.lysis. A weak, irresolute girl like Bel Parton would have taken a sedative, and escaped a miserable day in sleep. But, with all her faults, Lottie abounded in practical common sense; and Hemstead's words and her own experience suggested that she might be doing herself a very great wrong. She felt that it was no light matter to make one's whole life a blunder, and to invest all one's years and energies in what paid no better interest than she had received that day. Her physical pain and mental distress acted and reacted upon each other, until at last, wearied out, she sobbed herself to sleep.

Both De Forrest and Hemstead were greatly in hopes that she would be at the supper-table, but they did not see her that day. The former, with his aching head and heavy heart, learned, if never before, that the "way of transgressors is hard." But, though the latter could not be regarded as a transgressor, his way was hard also that long day; and he whom Lottie, in the memory of his severe words, regarded somewhat as her stern accuser, would have been more than ready to take all her pains and woes upon himself, could he have relieved her.

He now bitterly condemned himself for having been too harsh in the wholesome truth he had brought home to the nattered girl. It was rather severe treatment; still she was vigorous, and would be all the better for it. But now her faithful physician, as he heard how ill and suffering she was, almost wished that he had but faintly suggested the truth in h.o.m.oeopathic doses.