Floyd Grandon's Honor Part 66

Ah, she dare not say! People live through miserable times, sorrow does not kill them!

He is chagrined, disappointed at her silence. It is unnatural for her to be so calm. She may even be glad--monstrous thought! His impatience and resentment are roused.

"Violet," he begins, with a certain asperity, "there occasionally comes a time in life, married life, when the mistake one has made is realized in its full force. That we have made a mistake becomes more apparent as time goes by. If I could give you back your liberty"--and his voice softens unconsciously--"G.o.d knows I would gladly do it. I could not see how events would shape themselves when I took it from you, and your father during his illness----"

Her calmness breaks. She throws up her hand in pitiful entreaty, her old gesture to shelter herself in time of trouble. She cannot have her father indirectly censured, she cannot listen to that humiliating episode from _his_ lips. If she understood him better she would know the almost brutal frankness, a kind of family usage, is not one of his faults.

"Oh," she cries, in anguish, "I know! I know! You were very good, you were generous. I know now it was not as most people marry, and that you could not love me, that you did it to save me, but almost, I think, it would have been better----" for Jasper Wilmarth to have taken me, she is on the point of saying, but she ends with a strong, convulsive shudder.

Who has been so cruel and dastardly as to tell her this? Ah! he guesses wildly.

"This is Eugene's tale!" he cries, angrily, his face in the white heat of pa.s.sion. "He shall answer to me as surely as there is a heaven!" and he springs up.

Her arms are round him in their frantic endeavor to drag him back, her face is pressed against his breast, her silken hair blinds his very eyes.

"You shall not!" she declares, in her brave, unshrinking voice, that, somehow, she has found again. "There shall be no disturbance on my account! Eugene did not tell me until I compelled him, it was some one else. I think you have wronged him in your mind. He was kind, tender, brotherly."

"Whom then?" he demands, in a tone that terrifies her, and she sways like a lily.

"It was Marcia; she was vexed about something, but you will forgive her. And Denise told me about Mr. Wilmarth--in all honor to you. She adores you. And, I could not remain blind, there were many things. But I do not want to be free, indeed I do not. I will be content"; and she gives a long, heart-breaking sob.

"My poor child! my little darling!" and his arms enclose her with a fond clasp, though her face is still hidden. It is so easy to go through a labyrinth with a clew. This is what Eugene's fondness meant, and he forgives him much. This is why she has grown grave and cold and retiring! He is back again with her dying father--has he kept faith?

She has been his wife, it is true, but was there not a higher meaning in the bond? Her heart beats against his like some prisoned bird. She is so near--are they to be kept asunder all their lives? If she did not love Eugene, may she not learn to love him?

"You said I could not love you," he cries. "How do you know, who told you? Is your wisdom of so blind a quality?" and he raises the face full of tears, that shrinks from being seen with all its secrets written in a burning blush.

"Violet! Violet! are we both to blame? Is there not some certainty when people love each other?" He bends his face to hers, and kisses into the lips the sweet and sacred knowledge that electrifies her, that seems to rend the horizon of remembrance with a flash. Out there on the porch in that first entrancing waltz he half told his secret, that he had begun to love her! The knowledge comes with a thrill of exultation.

"I think you love me a little," he says, "but, Violet, I want no grateful, gentle, pa.s.sive regard. I must have my wife sweet, fond, adoring! Am I not as worthy of love as other men?"

She raises her face and they glance steadily into each other's eyes, then hers droop under the stronger and more imperious will, the lip quivers, the flush deepens.

"If you will--be glad--to have me love you," she murmurs, brokenly.

"Glad!" And the tone tells the rest.

He brings her back to the seat where they were so cold and grave a brief while ago. Is there any need of envying Polly in the great drawing-room? The rain pours in torrents, but it is a divine summer within.

"Violet," he says, a long while afterward, "we have never been real lovers, you know. I am not sure but it would be better for me to go abroad. We could write letters, and you could decide how much you cared."

She glances up in a dismay so wild that he feels inclined to laugh in pure joy. She studies out the meaning: it is for _her_ to say whether he shall go or not.

"Oh, I shall keep you here! I shall be jealous and exigeant like Polly, and you----"

She is the bright-eyed, sunny-faced girl he found on the rocky sh.o.r.e, and there is the same buoyant ring in her voice.

"I shall be a jealous, tyrannical husband," he rejoins, giving the rose-leaf cheek a soft pinch. "You will hardly dare dream your soul is your own."

"No, I shall not dream it," she answers, with gay audacity.

John Latimer is greatly disappointed, as well as the professor, at Grandon's defection. There is a charming dinner party at the Latimers', and Mrs. Latimer dolefully declares that she must be the single spear of gra.s.s. The following Sat.u.r.day the friends go to see the travellers off. Gertrude may remain abroad several years, "Unless," says the professor, "I grow homesick for my little cottage among the cliffs and my good Denise."

If her husband's eyes study all the changes that make Violet's face radiant and fascinating, some other eyes watch them with a vague suspicion. Has the chasm been bridged over? Has the man found the chords of his own soul, and united them in the divine melody to which exceptional lives are set? He may have friends among women, for he is chivalrous, high-minded, and attractive, but he will never need any _one_ friend greater than the rest. There is no secret niche for her, they are all open-columned temples, that the world may see, except the Holy of Holies where he will keep his wife.

The world is all before Madame Lepelletier. She can marry well, if she chooses, she can make a charmed circle for herself if she so elects, but she feels strangely old and _ennuied_, as if she must have lived in centuries past, and there was no new thing. Yet the face in the mirror does not tell that story. How curiously she has come into the lives of these Grandons a second time, and gone out with as little result. Is the stone of Sisyphus the veiled myth of life?

Violet and Grandon are not unblus.h.i.+ng lovers like Polly and Eugene, and their most p.r.o.nounced honeymoon hours are spent in the little cottage, under Denise's rejoicing eyes. There are always so many things to talk over, and the years to come must be the more crowded to make up for one lost in the desert.

Polly's engagement gets shortened from two years to six months. Mr.

Murray sets up a house, and Eugene is an important factor. He fits admirably into the life that has come to him; men of this stamp are saved or lost simply by the result of circ.u.mstances, and his are sufficiently strong to save him.

Marcia will flit and flutter about until she captures another husband.

She makes an attractive heroine of herself, but how near she came to tragedy she will never know. Floyd Grandon dismisses these ugly blots on the old life; he can well afford it in the perfect enjoyment that comes to him, a little fame, much honor, and a great deal of love.

The Douglas Novels

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