From the Housetops Part 53

But he did not know that in her secret heart she was crying out in ecstasy: "G.o.d, how I love him-and _how he loves me_!"

"He is a good old scout," said he lamely, hardly conscious of the words.

Then abruptly: "I can't stay, Anne. I came down to tell you that-that I was a dog to say what I did in my note to you. I knew the construction you would put upon the-well, the injunction. It wasn't fair. I led you to believe that if you came down here to live that sometime I would-"

"Just a moment, Braden," she interrupted, steadily. "You are finding it very difficult to say just the right thing to me. Let me help you, please.

I fear that I have a more ready tongue than you and certainly I am less agitated. I confess that your note decided me. I confess that I believed my coming here to live would result in-well, forgiveness is as good a word as any at this time. Now you have come to me to say that I have nothing to gain by living in this house, that I have nothing to gain by living in a place which revolts and terrifies me,-not always, but at times. Well, you may spare yourself the pain of saying all that to me. I shall continue to live here, even though nothing comes of it, as you say. I shall continue to sit here in this rather enchanting place and wait for you to come and share it with me. If you-"

"Good G.o.d! That is just what I am trying to tell you that I cannot-"

"I know, I know," she broke in impatiently. "That is just what you are trying to tell me, and this is just what I am trying to tell you. I do not say that you will ever come to me here, Braden. I am only saying to you that I shall wait for you. If you do not come, that is your affair, not mine. I love you. I love you with every bit of selfishness that is in my soul, every bit of goodness that is in my heart, and every bit of badness that is in my blood. I am proud to tell you that I am selfish in this one respect, if no longer in any other. I would give up everything else in the world to have you. That is how selfish I am. I want to be happy and I selfishly want you to be happy-for my sake if not for your own. Do you suppose that I am glorifying myself by living here? Do you suppose that I am justifying myself? If you do, you are very greatly mistaken. I am here because you led me to believe that-that things might be altered if I-" Her lips trembled despite the brave countenance she presented to him. In a second she had quelled the threatened weakness. "I have made this house a paradise. I have made it a place in which you may find happiness if you care to seek for it here. At night I shudder and cringe, because I am the coward you would try to reform. I hide nothing from myself. I am afraid to be alone in this house. But I shall stay-I shall stay."

"Do you think that I could ever find happiness in this house-now?" he demanded hoa.r.s.ely.

"Do you expect to find happiness anywhere else, Braden?" she asked, a little break in her voice.

"No. I shall never find happiness anywhere else,-real happiness, I mean. I cannot be happy without you, Anne."

"Nor I without you," she said simply. "I don't see that it makes very much difference _where_ we choose to be unhappy, Braden, so I shall take mine here,-where it is likely to be complete."

"But that is just what I don't want you to do," he cried angrily. "I don't want you to stay here. You must leave this place. You have had h.e.l.l enough. I insist that you-"

"No use arguing," she said, shaking her head. "I can love you here as well as anywhere else, and that is all I care for,-just my love for you."

"G.o.d, what a cruel thing love is, after all. If there was no such thing as love, we could-"

"Don't say that!" she cried out sharply. "Love is everything. It conquers everything. It is both good and evil. It makes happiness and it makes misery. Braden,-oh, my dearest!-see what it has made for us? Love! Why, don't you know it is Love that we love? _We love Love._ I would not love you if you were not Love itself. I treated you abominably, but you still love me. You performed an act of mercy for the man you loved, and he loved you. You cursed me in your heart, and I still love you. We cannot escape love, my friend. It rules us,-it rules all of us. The thing that you say stands between us-that act of mercy, dearest,-what effect has it had upon either of us? I would come to you to-morrow, to-day,-this very hour if you asked me to do so, and not in all the years that are left to me would I see the shadow you shrink from."

"The shadow extends back a great deal farther, Anne," he said, closing his eyes as if in pain. "It began long before my grandfather found the peace which I have yet to find. It began when you sold yourself to him."

She shrank slightly. "But even that did not kill your love for me," she cried out, defensively. "I did not sell my love,-just my soul, if you must have a charge against me. I've got it back, thank G.o.d, and it is worth a good deal more to me to-day than it was when Mr. Thorpe bargained for it.

Two million dollars!" She spoke ironically, yet with great seriousness.

"If he could have bought my love for that amount, his bargain would have been a good one. If I were to discover now that you do not care for me, Braden, and if I could buy your love, which is the most precious thing in the world to me, I would not hesitate a second to pay out every dollar I have in-"

"Stop!" he cried eagerly, drawing a step nearer and fixing her with a look that puzzled and yet thrilled her. "Would you give up everything-everything, mind you,-if I were to ask you to do so?"

"You said something like that a few months ago," she said, after a moment's hesitation. There was a troubled, hunted look in her eyes, as of a creature at bay. "You make it hard for me, Braden. I don't believe I could give up everything. I have found that all this money does not give me happiness. It does provide me with comfort, with independence, with a certain amount of power. It does not bring me the thing I want more than anything else in the world, however. Still I cannot say to you now that I would willingly give it up, Braden. You would not ask it of me, of course.

You are too fair and big-"

"But it is exactly what I would ask of you, Anne," he said earnestly, "if it came to an issue. You could not be anything more to me than you are now if you retained a dollar of that money."

She drew a long, deep breath. "Would you take me back, Braden,-would you let me be your wife if I-if I were to give up all that I received from Mr.

Thorpe?" She was watching his face closely, ready to seize upon the slightest expression that might direct her course, now or afterwards.

"I-I-Oh, Anne, we must not hara.s.s ourselves like this," he groaned. "It is all so hopeless, so useless. It never can be, so what is the use in talking about it?"

She now appeared to be a little more sure of her ground. There was a note of confidence in her voice as she said: "In that event, it can do no harm for me to say that I do not believe I could give it up, Braden."

"You _wouldn't_?"

"If I were to give up all this money, Braden dear, I would prove myself to be the most selfish creature in the world."

"Selfish? Good Lord! It would be the height of self-denial. It-"

"When a woman wants something so much that she will give up everything in the world to get it, I claim that she is selfish to the last degree. She gratifies self, and there is no other way to look at it. And I will admit to you now, Braden, that if there is no other way, I will give up all this money. That may represent to you just how much I think of _self_. But,"

and she smiled confidently, "I don't intend to impoverish myself if I can help it, and I don't believe you are selfish enough to ask it of me."

"Would you call Lutie selfish?" he demanded. "She gave up everything for George."

"Lutie is impulsive. She did it voluntarily. No one demanded it of her.

She was not obliged to give back a penny, you must remember. My case is different. You would demand a sacrifice of me. Lutie did not sell herself in the beginning. She sold George. She bought him back. If George was worth thirty thousand dollars to her, you are worth two millions to me.

She gave her _all_, and that would be my _all_. She was willing to pay. Am I? That is the question."

"You would have to give it up, Anne," said he doggedly.

He saw the colour fade from her cheeks, and the l.u.s.tre from her eyes.

"I am not sure that I could do it, Braden," she said, after a long silence. Then, almost fiercely: "Will you tell me how I should go about getting rid of all this money,-sensibly,-if I were inclined to do so? What could I do with it? Throw it away? Destroy it? Burn-"

"There isn't much use discussing ways and means," he said with finality in his manner. "I'm sorry we brought the subject up. I came here with a very definite object in view, and we-well, you see what we have come to."

"Oh, I-I love you so!" came tremulously from her lips. "I love you so, Braden. I-I don't see how I can go on living without-" She suppressed the wild, pa.s.sionate words by deliberately clapping her hands, one above the other, over her lips. Red surged to her brow and a look of exquisite shame and humiliation leaped into her eyes.

"Anne, Anne-" he began, but she turned on him furiously.

"Why do you lie to me? Why do you lie to yourself? You came here to-day because you were mad with the desire to see me, to be near me, to-Oh, you need not deny it! You have been crying out for me ever since the day you last held me in your arms and kissed me,-ages ago!-just as I have been crying out for you. Don't say that you came here merely to tell me that I must not live in this house if it leads me to hope for-recompense. Don't say that, because it is not the real reason, and you know it. You would have remained in Europe if you were through with me, as you would have yourself believe. But you are not through with me. You never will be. If you cannot be fair with yourself, Braden, you should at least be fair with me. You should not have come here to-day. But you could not help it, you could not resist. It will always be like this, and it is not fair, it is not fair. You say we never can be married to each other. What is there left for us, I ask of you,-what will all this lead to? We are not saints.

We are not made of stone. We-"

"G.o.d in heaven, Anne," he cried, aghast and incredulous. "Do you know what you are saying? Do you think I would drag you down, despoil you-"

"Oh, you would be honest enough to marry me-_then_," she cried out bitterly. "Your sense of honour would attend to all that. You-"

"Stop!" he commanded, standing over her as she shrank back against the wall. "Do you think that I love you so little that I could-Love? Is that the kind of love that you have been extolling to the skies?"

She covered her flaming face with her hands. "Forgive me, forgive me!" she murmured, brokenly. "I am so ashamed of myself."

He was profoundly moved. A great pity for her swept through him. "I shall not come again," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "I will be fair. You are right. You see more clearly than I can see. I must not come to you again unless I come to ask you to be my wife. You are right. We would go mad with-"

"Listen to me, Braden," she interrupted in a strangely quiet manner. "I shall never ask you to come to me. If you want me you must ask me to come to you. I will come. But you are to impose no conditions. You must leave me to fight out my own battle. My love is so great, so honest, so strong that it will triumph over everything else. Listen! Let me say this to you before I send you away from me to-day. Love is relentless. It wrecks homes, it sends men to the gallows and women to the madhouse. It makes drunkards, suicides and murderers of n.o.ble men and women. It causes men and women to abandon homes, children, honour-and all the things that should be dear to them. It impoverishes, corrupts and-defiles. It makes cowards of brave men and brave men of cowards. The thing we call love has a thousand parts. It has purity, n.o.bility, grandeur, greed, envy, l.u.s.t-everything. You have heard of good women abandoning good husbands for bad lovers. You have heard of good mothers giving up the children they wors.h.i.+p. You have heard of women and men murdering husbands and wives in order to remove obstacles from the path of love. One woman whom we both know recently gave up wealth, position, honour, children,-everything,-to go down into poverty and disgrace with the man she loved. You know who I mean. She did it because she could not help herself. Opposed to the evil that love can do, there is always the beautiful, the sweet, the pure,-and it is that kind of love that rules the world. But the other kind _is_ love, just the same, and while it does not govern the world, it is none the less imperial. What I want to say to you is this: while love may govern the world, the world cannot govern love. You cannot govern this love you have for me, although you may control it. Nor can I destroy the love I have for you. I may not deserve your love, but I have it and you cannot take it away from me. Some other woman may rob me of it, perhaps, but you cannot do it, my friend. I will wait for you to come and get me, Braden. Now, go,-please go,-and do not come here again until-" she smiled faintly.

He lowered his head. "I will not come again, Anne," he said huskily.

She did not follow him to the door.

CHAPTER XXIX