The Mettle of the Pasture Part 20

"It will never become my duty. But if it should, I would never marry without being true to the woman; and to be true is to tell the truth."

"You mean that you would tell her?"

"I mean that I would tell her."

After a little silence she stirred in her seat and spoke, all her anger gone:

"I am going to ask you, if you ever do, not to tell her as you have told me--after it is too late. If you cannot find some way of letting her know the truth before she loves you, then do not tell her afterward, when you have won her life away from her. If there is deception at all, then it is not worse to go on deceiving her than it was to begin to deceive her. Tell her, if you must, while she is indifferent and will not care, not after she has given herself to you and will then have to give you up. But what can you, a man, know what it means to a woman to tell her this! How can you know, how can you ever, ever know!"

She covered her face with her hands and her voice broke with tears.

"Isabel--"

"You have no right to call me by my name, and I have no right to hear it, as though nothing were changed between us."

"I have not changed."

"How could you tell me! Why did you ever tell me!" she cried abruptly, grief breaking her down.

"There was a time when I did not expect to tell you. I expected to do as other men do."

"Ah, you would have deceived me!" she exclaimed, turning upon him with fresh suffering. "You would have taken advantage of my ignorance and have married me and never have let me know! And you would have called that deception love and you would have called yourself a true man!"

"But I did not do this! It was yourself who helped me to see that the beginning of morality is to stop lying and deception."

"But if you had this on your conscience already, what right had you ever to come near me?"

"I had come to love you!"

"Did your love of me give you the right to win mine?"

"It gave me the temptation."

"And what did you expect when you determined to tell me this? What did you suppose such a confession would mean to me? Did you imagine that while it was still fresh on your lips, I would smile in your face and tell you it made no difference? Was I to hear you speak of one whose youth and innocence you took away through her frailties, and then step joyously into her place? Was this the unfeeling, the degraded soul you thought to be mine? Would I have been worthy even of the poor love you could give me, if I had done that?"

"I expected you to marry me! I expected you to forgive. I have this at least to remember: I lost you honestly when I could have won you falsely."

"Ah, you have no right to seek any happiness in what is all sadness to me! And all the sadness, the ruin of everything, comes from your wrong-doing."

"Remember that my wrong-doing did not begin with me. I bear my share: it is enough: I will bear no more."

A long silence followed. She spoke at last, checking her tears:

"And so this is the end of my dream! This is what life has brought me to! And what have I done to deserve it? To leave home, to shun friends, to dread scandal, to be misjudged, to bear the burden of your secret and share with you its shame, to see my years stretch out before me with no love in them, no ambitions, no ties--this is what life has brought me, and what have I done to deserve it?"

As her tears ceased, her eyes seemed to be looking into a future that lacked the relief of tears. As though she were already pa.s.sed far on into it and were looking back to this moment, she went on, speaking very slowly and sadly:

"We shall not see each other again in a long time, and whenever we do, we shall be nothing to each other and we shall never speak of this. There is one thing I wish to tell you. Some day you may have false thoughts of me. You may think that I had no deep feeling, no constancy, no mercy, no forgiveness; that it was easy to give you up, because I never loved you. I shall have enough to bear and I cannot bear that. So I want to tell you that you will never know what my love for you was. A woman cannot speak till she has the right; and before you gave me the right, you took it away.

For some little happiness it may bring me hereafter let me tell you that you were everything to me, everything! If I had taught myself to make allowances for you, if I had seen things to forgive in you, what you told me would have been only one thing more and I might have forgiven. But all that I saw in you I loved. Rowan, and I believed that I saw everything. Remember this, if false thoughts of me ever come to you! I expect to live a long time: the memory of my love of you will be the sorrow that will keep me alive."

After a few moments of silent struggle she moved nearer.

"Do not touch me," she said; "remember that what love makes dear, it makes sacred."

She put out a hand in the darkness and, closing her eyes over welling tears, pa.s.sed it for long remembrance over his features: letting the palm lie close against his forehead with her fingers in his hair; afterward pressing it softly over his eyes and pa.s.sing it around his neck. Then she took her hand away as though fearful of an impulse. Then she put her hand out again and laid her fingers across his lips. Then she took her hand away, and leaning over, laid her lips on his lips:

"Good-by!" she murmured against his face, "good-by! good-by!

good-by!"

Mrs. Conyers had seen Rowan and Isabel together in the parlors early in the evening. She had seen them, late in the evening, quit the house. She had counted the minutes till they returned and she had marked their agitation as they parted. The closest a.s.sociation lasting from childhood until now had convinced her of the straightforwardness of Isabel's character; and the events of the night were naturally accepted by her as evidences of the renewal of relations.h.i.+p with Rowan, if not as yet of complete reconciliation.

She herself had encountered during the evening unexpected slights and repulses. Her hostesses had been cool, but she expected them to be cool: they did not like her nor she them. But Judge Morris had avoided her; the Hardages had avoided her; each member of the Meredith family had avoided her; Isabel had avoided her; even Harriet, when once she crossed the rooms to her, had with an incomprehensible flare of temper turned her back and sought refuge with Miss Anna. She was very angry.

But overbalancing the indignities of the evening was now this supreme joy of Isabel's return to what she believed to be Isabel's destiny. She sent her grandson home that she might have the drive with the girl alone. When Isabel, upon entering the carriage, her head and eyes closely m.u.f.fled in her shawl, had withdrawn as far as possible into one corner and remained silent on the way, she refrained from intrusion, believing that she understood the emotions dominating her behavior.

The carriage drew up at the door. She got out quickly and pa.s.sed to her room--with a motive of her own.

Isabel lingered. She ascended the steps without conscious will.

At the top she missed her shawl: it had become entangled in the fringe of a window strap, had slipped from her bare shoulders as she set her foot on the pavement, and now lay in the track of the carriage wheels. As she picked it up, an owl flew viciously close to her face. What memories, what memories came back to her! With a s.h.i.+ver she went over to a frame-like opening in the foliage on one side of the veranda and stood looking toward the horizon where the moon had sunk on that other night--that first night of her sorrow. How long it was since then!

At any other time she would have dreaded the parting which must take place with her grandmother: now what a little matter it seemed!

As she tapped and opened the door, she put her hand quickly before her eyes, blinded by the flood of light which streamed out into the dark hall. Every gas-jet was turned on--around the walls, in the chandelier; and under the chandelier stood her grandmother, waiting, her eyes fixed expectantly on the door, her countenance softened with returning affection, the fire of triumph in her eyes.

She had unclasped from around her neck the diamond necklace of old family jewels, and held it in the pool of her rosy palms, as though it were a ma.s.s of clear separate raindrops rainbow-kindled. It was looped about the tips of her two upright thumbs; part of it had slipped through the palms and flashed like a pendent arc of light below.

The necklace was an heirloom; it had started to grow in England of old; it had grown through the generations of the family in the New World.

It had begun as a ring--given with the plighting of troth; it had become ear-rings; it had become a pendant; it had become a tiara; it had become part of a necklace; it had become a necklace--completed circlet of many hopes.

As Isabel entered Mrs. Conyers started forward, smiling, to clasp it around her neck as the expression of her love and pleasure; then she caught sight of Isabel's face, and with parted lips she stood still.

Isabel, white, listless, had sunk into the nearest chair, and now said, quietly and wearily, noticing nothing:

"Grandmother, do not get up to see me off in the morning. My trunk is packed; the others are already at the station. All my arrangements are made. I'll say good-by to you now," and she stood up.

Mrs. Conyers stood looking at her. Gradually a change pa.s.sed over her face; her eyes grew dull, the eyelids narrowed upon the b.a.l.l.s; the round jaws relaxed; and instead of the smile, hatred came mysteriously out and spread itself rapidly over her features: true horrible revelation. Her fingers tightened and loosened about the necklace until it was forced out through them, until it glided, crawled, as though it were alive and were being strangled and were writhing. She spoke with entire quietness:

"After all that I have seen to-night, are you not going to marry Rowan?"

Isabel stirred listlessly as with remembrance of a duty:

"I had forgotten, grandmother, that I owe you an explanation. I found, after all, that I should have to see Rowan again: there was a matter about which I was compelled to speak with him. That is all I meant by being with him to-night: everything now is ended between us."

"And you are going away without giving me the reason of all this?"

Isabel gathered her gloves and shawl together and said with simple distaste: