St. Elmo Part 24

"You entirely mistake them, Mr. Leigh, in supposing that you can ever be more to me than a very dear and valued friend. It grieves me very much to be forced to give you pain or cause you disappointment; but I should wrong you even more than myself, were I to leave you in doubt concerning my feeling toward you. I like your society, and you have my entire confidence and highest esteem; but it is impossible that I can ever be your wife."

"Why impossible?"

"Because I never could love you as I think I ought to love the man I marry."

"My dear Edna, answer one question candidly. Do you love any one else better than you love me?"

"No, Mr. Leigh."

"Does Mr. Murray stand between your heart and mine?"

"Oh! no, Mr. Leigh."

"Then I will not yield the hope of winning your love. If your heart is free, I will have it all my own one day! O Edna! why can not you love me? I would make you very happy. My darling's home should possess all that fortune and devoted affection could supply; not one wish should remain ungratified."

"I am able to earn a home; I do not intend to marry for one."

"Ah! your pride is your only fault, and it will cause us both much suffering, I fear. Edna, I know how sensitive you are, and how deeply your delicacy has been wounded by the malicious meddling of ill-mannered gossips. I know why you abandoned your Hebrew recitations, and a wish to spare your feelings alone prevented me from punis.h.i.+ng certain scandal-mongers as they deserved. But, dearest, do not visit their offences upon me! Because they dared ascribe their own ign.o.ble motives to you, do not lock your heart against me and refuse me the privilege of making your life happy."

"Mr. Leigh, you are not necessary to my happiness. While our tastes are in many respects congenial, and it is pleasant to be with you occasionally, it would not cause me any deep grief if I were never to see you again."

"O Edna! you are cruel, unlike yourself!" "Forgive me, sir, if I seem so, and believe me when I a.s.sure you that it pains me more to say it than you to hear it. No woman should marry a man whose affection and society are not absolutely essential to her peace of mind and heart. Applying this test to you, I find that mine is in no degree dependent on you; and, though you may have no warmer friend, I must tell you it is utterly useless for you to hope that I shall ever love you as you wish, Mr. Leigh, I regret that I can not; and if my heart were only puppet of my will, I would try to reciprocate your affection, because I appreciate so fully and so gratefully all that you generously offer me. To-day you stretch out your hand to a poor girl, of unknown parentage, reared by charity--a girl considered by your family and friends an obscure interloper in aristocratic circles, and with a n.o.ble magnanimity, for which I shall thank you always, you say, 'Come, take my name, share my fortune, wrap yourself in my love, and be happy! I will give you a lofty position in society, whence you can look down on those who sneer at your poverty and lineage.' O, Mr. Leigh! G.o.d knows I wish I loved you as you deserve! Ambition and grat.i.tude alike plead for you; but it is impossible that I could ever consent to be your wife."

Her eyes were full of tears as she looked in his handsome face, hitherto so bright and genial; now clouded and saddened by a bitter disappointment; and suddenly catching both his hands in hers, she stooped and pressed her lips to them.

"Although you refuse to encourage, you cannot crush the hope that my affection will, after a while, win yours in return. You are very young, and as yet scarcely know your own heart, and unshaken constancy on my part will plead for me in coming years. I will be patient, and as long as you are Edna Earl--as long as you remain mistress of your own heart--I shall cling fondly to the only hope that gladdens my future. Over my feelings you have no control; you may refuse me your hand--that is your right--but while I shall abstain from demonstrations of affection, I shall certainly cherish the hope of possessing it. Meantime, permit me to ask whether you still contemplate leaving Mrs. Murray's house? Miss Harding told my sister yesterday that in a few months you would obtain a situation as governess or teacher in a school."

"Such is certainly my intention; but I am at a loss to conjecture how Miss Harding obtained her information, as the matter has not been alluded to since her arrival."

"I trust you will pardon me the liberty I take, in warning you to be exceedingly circ.u.mspect in your intercourse with her, for I have reason to believe that her sentiments toward you are not so friendly as might be desired."

"Thank you, Mr. Leigh. I am aware of her antipathy, though of its cause I am ignorant; and our intercourse is limited to the salutations of the day, and the courtesies of the table."

Drawing from her finger the emerald which had occasioned so many disquieting reflections, Edna continued:

"You must allow me to return the ring, which I have hitherto worn as a token of friends.h.i.+p, and which I cannot consent to retain any longer. 'Peace be with you,' dear friend, is the earnest prayer of my heart. Our paths in life will soon diverge so widely that we shall probably see each other rarely; but none of your friends will rejoice more sincerely than I to hear of your happiness and prosperity, for no one else has such cause to hold you in grateful remembrance. Good-bye, Mr. Leigh. Think of me hereafter only as a friend."

She gave him both hands for a minute, left the ring in his palm, and, with tears in her eyes, went back to the tables and platforms.

Very rapidly chattering groups of happy children collected in the grove; red-cheeked boys clad in white linen suits, with new straw hats belted with black, and fair-browed girls robed in spotless muslin, garlanded with flowers, and bright with rosy badges.

Sparkling eyes, laughing lips, sweet, mirthful, eager voices, and shadowless hearts. Ah! that Mayday could stretch from the fairy tropic-land of childhood to the Arctic zone of age, where snows fall chilling and desolate, drifting over the dead but unburied hopes which the great stream of time bears and buffets on its broad, swift surface.

The celebration was a complete success; even awkward Jamie acquitted himself with more ease and grace than his friends had dared to hope.

Speeches and songs were warmly applauded, proud parents watched their merry darlings with eyes that brimmed with tenderness; and the heart of Semiramis never throbbed more triumphantly than that of the delighted young Queen of May, who would not have exchanged her floral crown for all the jewels that glittered in the diadem of the a.s.syrian sovereign.

Late in the evening of that festal day Mr. Hammond sat alone on the portico of the old-fas.h.i.+oned parsonage. The full moon, rising over the arched windows of the neighboring church, shone on the marble monuments that marked the rows of graves; and the golden beams stealing through the thick vines which cl.u.s.tered around the wooden columns, broidered in glittering arabesque the polished floor at the old man's feet.

That solemn, mysterious silence which nature reverently folds like a velvet pall over the bier of the pale, dead day, when the sky is

"Filling more and more with crystal light, As pensive evening deepens into night,"

was now hus.h.i.+ng the hum and stir of the village; and only the occasional far-off bark of a dog, and the clear, sweet vesper-song of a mocking-bird singing in the myrtle tree, broke the repose so soothing after the bustle of the day. To labor and to pray from dawn till dusk is the sole legacy which sin-stained man brought through the flaming gate of Eden, and, in the gray gloaming, mother Earth stretches her vast hands tenderly over her drooping, toil-spent children, and mercifully murmurs nunc dimillis.

Close to the minister's armchair stood a small table covered with a snowy cloth, on which was placed the evening meal, consisting of strawberries, honey, bread, b.u.t.ter and milk. At his feet lay the white cat, bathed in moons.h.i.+ne, and playing with a fragrant spray of honeysuckle which trailed within reach of her paws, and swung to and fro, like a spicy censer, as the soft breeze stole up from the starry south. The supper was untasted, the old man's silvered head leaned wearily on his shrunken hand, and through a tearful mist his mild eyes looked toward the churchyard, where gleamed the monumental shafts that guarded his mouldering household idols, his white-robed, darling dead.

His past was a wide, fair, fruitful field of hallowed labor, bounteous with promise for that prophetic harvest whereof G.o.d's angels are reapers; and his future, whose near horizon was already rimmed with the light of eternity, was full of that blessed 'peace which pa.s.seth all understanding.' Yet to-night, precious reminiscences laid their soft, mesmeric fingers on his heart, and before him, all unbidden, floated visions of other Maydays, long, long ago, when the queen of his boyish affections had worn her crown of flowers; and many, many years later, when, as the queen of his home, and the proud mother of his children, she had stood with her quivering hand nestled in his, listening breathlessly to the Mayday speech of their golden-haired daughter,

"Why does the sea of thought thus backward roll? Memory's the breeze that through the cordage raves, And ever drives us on some homeward shoal, As if she loved the melancholy waves That, murmuring sh.o.r.eward, break o'er a reef of graves."

The song of the mocking-bird still rang from the downy cradle of myrtle blossoms, and a whip-poor-will answered from a cedar in the churchyard, when the slamming of the parsonage gate startled the shy thrush that slept in the vines that overarched it, and Mr. Leigh came slowly up the walk, which was lined with purple and white lilies whose loveliness, undiminished by the wear of centuries, still rivaled the glory of Solomon.

As he ascended the steps and removed his hat, the pastor rose and placed a chair for him near his own.

"Good evening, Gordon. Where did you immure yourself all day? I expected to find you taking part in the children's festival, and hunted for you in the crowd."

"I expected to attend, but this morning something occurred which unfitted me for enjoyment of any kind; consequently I thought it best to keep myself and my moodiness out of sight."

"I trust nothing serious has happened?"

"Yes, something that threatens to blast all my hopes, and make my life one great disappointment. Has not Edna told you?"

"She has told me nothing relative to yourself, but I noticed that she was depressed and grieved about something. She was abstracted and restless, and went home very early, pleading fatigue and headache."

"I wish I had a shadow of hope that her heart ached also! Mr.

Hammond, I am very wretched, and have come to you for sympathy and counsel. Of course you have seen for a long time that I loved her very devotedly, that I intended if possible to make her my wife.

Although she was very shy and guarded, and never gave me any reason to believe she returned my affection, I thought--I hoped she would not reject me, and I admired her even more because of her reticence, for I could not value a love which I knew was mine unasked. To-day I mentioned the subject to her, told her how entirely my heart was hers, offered her my hand and fortune, and was refused most decidedly. Her manner more than her words distressed and discouraged me. She showed so plainly that she felt only friends.h.i.+p for me, and entertained only regret for the pain she gave me. She was kind and delicate, but oh! so crus.h.i.+ngly positive! I saw that I had no more place in her heart than that whip-poor-will in the cedars yonder.

And yet I shall not give her up; while I live I will cling to the hope that I may finally win her. Thousands of women have rejected a man again and again and at last yielded and accepted him; and I do not believe Edna can withstand the devotion of a lifetime."

"Do not deceive yourself, Gordon. It is true many women are flattered by a man's perseverance, their vanity is gratified. They first reproach themselves for the suffering they inflict, then grat.i.tude for constancy comes to plead for the inconsolable suitor, and at last they persuade themselves that such devotion can not fail to make them happy. Such a woman Edna is not, and if I have correctly understood her character, never can be. I sympathize with you, Gordon, and it is because I love you so sincerely that I warn you against a hope destined to cheat you."

"But she admitted that she loved no one else, and I can see no reason why, after a while, she may not give me her heart."

"I have watched her for years. I think I know her nature better than any other human being, and I tell you, Edna Earl will never coax and persuade herself to marry any man, no matter what his position and endowments may be. She is not a dependent woman; the circ.u.mstances of her life have forced her to dispense with companions.h.i.+p, she is sufficient for herself; and while she loves her friends warmly and tenderly, she feels the need of no one. If she ever marries, it will not be from grat.i.tude or devotion, but because she learned to love, almost against her will, some strong, vigorous thinker, some man whose will and intellect masters hers, who compels her heart's homage, and without whose society she can not persuade herself to live."

"And why may I not hope that such will, one day, be my good fortune?"

For a few minutes Mr. Hammond was silent, walking up and down the wide portico; and when he resumed his seat, he laid his hand affectionately on the young man's shoulder, saying:

"My dear Gordon, your happiness as well as hers is very dear to me.

I love you both, and you will, you must, forgive me if what I am about to say should wound or mortify you. Knowing you both as I do, and wis.h.i.+ng to save you future disappointment, I should, even were you my own son, certainly tell you. Gordon, you will never be Edna's husband, because intellectually she is your superior. She feels this, and will not marry one to whose mind her own does not bow in reverence. To rule the man she married would make her miserable, and she could only find happiness in being ruled by an intellect to which she looked up admiringly. I know that many very gifted women have married their inferiors, but Edna is peculiar, and in some respects totally unlike any other woman whose character I have carefully studied. Gordon, you are not offended with me?"

Mr. Leigh put out his hand, grasped that of his companion, and his voice was marked by unwonted tremor as he answered:

"You pain and humiliate me beyond expression, but I could never be offended at words which I am obliged to feel are dictated by genuine affection. Mr. Hammond, might not years of thought and study remove the obstacle to which you allude? Can I not acquire all that you deem requisite? I would dedicate my life to the attainment of knowledge, to the improvement of my faculties."

"Erudition would not satisfy her. Do you suppose she could wed a mere walking encyclopaedia? She is naturally more gifted than you are, and, unfortunately for you, she discovered the fact when you were studying together."

"But, sir, women listen to the promptings of heart much oftener than to the cold, stern dictates of reason."