The First Violin Part 66

"Yours and my honor's. What then?"

"This," I answered, stooping, sweeping the loose hair from that broad, sad forehead, and pressing my lips upon it. "This: accept the gift or reject it. As your heart is mine, so mine is yours--for ever and ever."

A momentary silence as I raised myself, trembling, and stood aside; and the water rushed, and the storm-birds on untiring wing beat the sky and croaked of the gale.

Then he drew me to him, folded me to his breast without speaking, and gave me a long, tender, yearning kiss, with unspeakable love, little pa.s.sion in it, fit seal of a love that was deeper and sadder than it was triumphant.

"Let me have a few moments of this," said he, "just a few moments, May.

Let me believe that I may hold you to your n.o.ble, pitying words. Then I shall be my own master again."

Ignoring this hint, I laid my hands upon his arm, and eying him steadily, went on:

"But understand, the man I love must not be my servant. If you want to keep me you must be the master; I brook no feeble curb; no weak hand can hold me. You must rule, or I shall rebel; you must show the way, for I don't know it. I don't know whether you understand what you have undertaken."

"My dear, you are excited. Your generosity carries you away, and your divine, womanly pity and kindness. You speak without thinking. You will repent to-morrow."

"That is not kind nor worthy of you," said I. "I have thought about it for sixteen months, and the end of my thought has always been the same: I love Eugen Courvoisier, and if he had loved me I should have been a happy woman, and if--though I thought it too good to be true, you know--if he ever should tell me so, nothing in this world shall make me spoil our two lives by cowardice; I will hold to him against the whole world."

"It is impossible, May," he said, quietly, after a pause. "I wish you had never seen me."

"It is only impossible if you make it so."

"My sin found me out even here, in this quiet place, where I knew no one. It will find me out again. You--if ever you were married to me--would be pointed out as the wife of a man who had disgraced his honor in the blackest, foulest way. I must and will live it out alone."

"You shall not live it out alone," I said.

The idea that I could not stand by him--the fact that he was not prosperous, not stainless before the world--that mine would be no ordinary flouris.h.i.+ng, meaningless marriage, in which "for better, for worse" signifies nothing but better, no worse--all this poured strength on strength into my heart, and seemed to warm it and do it good.

"I will tell you your duty," said he. "Your duty is to go home and forget me. In due time some one else will find the loveliest and dearest being in the world--"

"Eugen! Eugen!" I cried, stabbed to the quick. "How can you? You can not love me, or you could not coldly turn me over to some other man, some abstraction--"

"Perhaps if he were not an abstraction I might not be able to do it," he said, suddenly clasping me to him with a jealous movement. "No; I am sure I should not be able to do it. Nevertheless, while he yet is an abstraction, and because of that, I say, leave me!"

"Eugen, I do not love lightly!" I began, with forced calm. "I do not love twice. My love for you is not a mere fancy--I fought against it with all my strength; it mastered me in spite of myself--now I can not tear it away. If you send me away it will be barbarous; away to be alone, to England again, when I love you with my whole soul. No one but a man--no one but you could have said such a thing. If you do," I added, terror at the prospect overcoming me, "if you do I shall die--I shall die."

I could command myself no longer, but sobbed aloud.

"You will have to answer for it," I repeated; "but you will not send me away."

"What, in Heaven's name, makes you love me so?" he asked, as if lost in wonder.

"I don't know. I can not imagine," said I, with happy politeness. "It is no fault of mine." I took his hand in mine. "Eugen, look at me." His eyes met mine. They brightened as he looked at me. "That crime of which you were accused--you did not do it."

Silence!

"Look at me and say that you did," I continued.

Silence still.

"Friedhelm Helfen always said you had not done it. He was more loyal than I," said I, contritely; "but," I added, jealously, "he did not love you better than I, for I loved you all the same even though I almost believed you had done it. Well, that is an easy secret to keep, because it is to your credit."

"That is just what makes it hard. If it were true, one would be anxious rather than not to conceal it; but as it is not true, don't you see?

Whenever you see me suspected, it will be the impulse of your loyal, impetuous heart to silence the offender, and tell him he lies."

In my haste I had not seen this aspect of the question. It was quite a new idea to me. Yes, I began to see in truer proportions the kind of suffering he had suffered, the kind of trials he had gone through, and my breath failed at the idea. When they pointed at him I must not say, "It is a lie; he is as honest as you." It was a solemn prospect. It overpowered me.

"You quail before that?" said he, gently, after a pause.

"No; I realize it. I do not quail before it," said I, firmly. "But," I added, looking at him with a new element in my glance--that of awe--"do you mean that for five years you have effaced yourself thus, knowing all the while that you were not guilty?"

"It was a matter of the clearest duty--and honor," he replied, flus.h.i.+ng and looking somewhat embarra.s.sed.

"Of duty!" I cried, strangely moved. "If you did not do it, who did? Why are you silent?"

Our eyes met. I shall never forget that glance. It had the concentrated patience, love, and pride, and loyalty, of all the years of suffering past and--to come.

"May, that is the test for you! That is what I shrink from exposing you to, what I know it is wrong to expose you to. I can not tell you. No one knows but I, and I shall never tell any one, not even you, if you become my other self and soul and thought. Now you know all."

He was silent.

"So that is the truth?" said I. "Thank you for telling it to me. I always thought you were a hero; now I am sure of it. Oh, Eugen! how I do love you for this! And you need not be afraid. I have been learning to keep secrets lately. I shall help, not hinder you. Eugen, we will live it down together."

At last we understood each other. At last our hands clasped and our lips met upon the perfect union of feeling and purpose for all our future lives. All was clear between us, bright, calm; and I, at least, was supremely happy. How little my past looked now; how petty and insignificant all my former hopes and fears!

Dawn was breaking over the river. Wild and storm-beaten was the scene on which we looked. A huge waste of swollen waters around us, devastated villages, great piles of wreck on all sides; a watery sun casting pallid beams upon the swollen river. We were sailing Hollandward upon a fragment of the bridge, and in the distance were the spires and towers of a town gleaming in the sickly sun-rays. I stood up and gazed toward that town, and he stood by my side, his arm round my waist. My chief wish was that our sail could go on forever.

"Do you know what is ringing in my ears and will not leave my mind?" I asked.

"Indeed, no! You are a riddle and a mystery to me."

I hummed the splendid air from the Choral Symphony, the _motif_ of the music to the choruses to "Joy" which follow.

"Ah!" said he, taking up its deep, solemn gladness, "you are right, May--quite right. There is a joy, if it be 'beyond the starry belt.'"

"I wonder what that town is?" I said, after a pause.

"I am not sure, but I fancy it is Emmerich. I am sure I hope so."

Whatever the town, we were floating straight toward it. I suddenly thought of my dream long ago, and told it to him, adding:

"I think this must have been the floating wreck to which you and I seemed clinging; though I thought that all of the dream that was going to be fulfilled had already come to pa.s.s on that Carnival Monday afternoon."

The boat had got into one of the twisting currents, and was being propelled directly toward the town.

Eugen looked at me and laughed. I asked why.