A Romantic Young Lady Part 23

In the morning I decided that I had probably overestimated his feelings toward me, and that although I had better go home on the following day, there was no reason why I should treat Mr. Prime other than as usual. He was not in love with me; or if he were, he was not man enough to acknowledge it. I should refuse him if he did; but I hated to feel that I had been expending so much friendship on a man whose soul could not soar beyond birth and fortune. Had he not told me that money was the greatest power on earth? So, too, he had said to my face that a lady could not be made, but was born. I was irrational, and I was conscious of being irrational; but I did not care. I would make him wince at least, and feel for a time the tortures of a love he did not dare to express. Ah! but such a love was not worthy of the name, and it was I who was become the fitting subject for the finger of derision, because I had put my faith in him.

These were the thoughts that hara.s.sed me before I met Mr. Prime on Sunday, and we turned our steps with tacit unanimity toward the Park. I walked in silence, chafing inwardly; and he too, I fancy, was nervous and self-absorbed, though I paid little heed to his emotions, so complex were my own. We had not proceeded very far before he turned to me and said simply,--

"What is the matter? Have I offended you in any way?"

"Do you think then, Mr. Prime, that my thoughts must always be of you?"

I answered.

"Alas! no. But something has happened. You cannot deceive me."

I was silent a moment. "Yes, something has happened. I am going to leave New York."

"Going to leave New York!" he stopped abruptly, and looked at me with amazement.

"Yes," I said quietly. "My aunt has sent for me, and it is imperative that I should go. She is in trouble and needs me. It is a long story, and one with which I will not weary you. It is not necessary that you should be burdened with my private affairs; you have enough troubles of your own. Let us change the subject, please. But you will have to let me go to-morrow, Mr. Prime. I am very sorry to inconvenience you, but, as I have already said, it is imperative."

My words were so cold that I could see he was puzzled, and my heart softened toward him a little. At least he had been kind to me. He walked on for a few moments without speaking. We entered the Park, and turned into a path where we should be un.o.bserved.

"I have no right to inquire into your private affairs, I well know," he said presently, "but I wish you would let me help you."

"I am sure of your sympathy, Mr. Prime; and if you could be of any service in the matter, I would call upon you."

"Where does your aunt live?"

"I had rather not answer that question."

He looked grave, and as I glanced at him a frown pa.s.sed over his face.

"He is thinking doubtless," thought I, "that it is I who have done something wrong, and am trying to mislead him; or he is reflecting how wise he was not to offer himself to a woman with whose antecedents he is unacquainted. He mistrusts me at the first hint of suspicion, and would sacrifice his love on the altar of conventionality." Curiously enough, I seemed to take it for granted that he was in love with me.

"And you must go to-morrow?" he asked.

"To-morrow, without fail."

"But you will return soon?"

"I do not expect to return at all."

"Impossible! You cannot go!" he said with a sudden outburst; but he corrected himself in a restrained voice: "I do not mean, of course, that you cannot go if you choose."

"I am quite aware, Mr. Prime, that this will cause you great annoyance,"

said I. "If it were possible for me to remain until you could find another a.s.sistant without neglecting duties that are still more important, I would do so."

He made a motion as though to wave that consideration aside. "No one can take your place. But that is not all. Let us sit down, Miss Bailey; I have something to say to you. I had meant to say it very soon, but it must be said now or never. I love you!"

I trembled like a leaf at his avowal,--I did not even yet know why.

"I love you from the bottom of my soul," he said once more, and now his words were poured out in a pa.s.sionate flood, to which I listened with a strange joy that thrilled me through and through.

"I have never loved before. You are the first, the very first woman in the world who has ever touched my heart. I did not know what it was to love until a few days ago, and I could not understand how friendship should seem so sweet. But last night, when I saw you almost trampled under foot and swept away forever from me, I knew that what I had begun to guess, was the truth."

"It is impossible for you to love me. I am merely a poor friendless girl, without fortune or position," I murmured.

"Yes, yes, you are; and that is the strange and wonderful part of it all. I love and adore you, in spite of theory and principle and the judgment of wise men. But I defy their laughter and their sneers, for I can point to you and say, 'Show me her match among the daughters of the proud and wealthy. She is the peer of any.' I disbelieved in the power of Nature to imitate the excellence of woman, and I am punished for my lack of faith. And how sweet and exquisite the punishment, if only, Alice, you will tell me that my prayer is granted, and that you will be my wife."

"Ah! but I should only be a burden to you. I can bring you nothing, not even an untarnished name, for though you see me as I am, you do not know what others whose blood is in my veins have done."

"What is that to me?" he cried fiercely; "it is you that I love!"

"But you are striving to become rich. It is your ambition. Have you not told me so? Money is the greatest power on earth. You said that, too."

"And it was a lie. I had never loved. What is money to me now? But, no, I am wrong. It _is_ my ambition, and without your sympathy and affection I shall never attain it."

He gazed at me imploringly, and yet though my eyes were overflowing with tears in the fulness of my new-found happiness, I still shook my head.

"Listen to me, Mr. Prime," I said quietly, after a short silence between us. "I am very grateful to you--how could I be otherwise?--for what you have said to me. Yours were the sweetest and most precious words to which I ever listened. You have asked me to become your wife, because you loved me for myself alone: that I can be sure of, since I have nothing but myself to bring you. It makes me more happy than I dare think of; but in spite of all you have said to me, I cannot accept your sacrifice. I cannot consent to mar your hopes for the future with all I lack. You think you love me now, and I believe you; but the time might come when you would see that you had made a mistake, and that would kill me. I am not of your opinion as to the power of Nature to imitate the excellence of woman. You were right at first. Ladies are born, not made; and were you to marry in the station of life in which you see me, the scales would some day drop from your eyes, and you would know that you had been deceived by love. No, Mr. Prime, I should not be worthy to become your wife were I to accept your offer. The difference between us is too great, and the banker and his hired female clerk will never be on an equality to the end of the world. I am sorry--ah, so sorry!--to wound you thus, but I cannot permit you to throw your life away."

"Then you do not love me?" he asked, with a piteous cry.

"Love you?" I gave a little joyous laugh before I said, "I shall never love any one else in the world."

It would take too long to repeat the efforts Mr. Prime made to lead me to reconsider my resolution. Meanwhile I was racking my brains to find a way of letting matters rest without depriving him utterly of hope. As he said, the knowledge that my heart was his only increased the bitterness of his despair. Happy as I was, I felt bewildered and uncertain. I shrank instinctively from revealing my ident.i.ty at once. I wanted time to think. I scarcely knew the character of my own emotions. At one moment I blushed with a sense of the web of deceit that I had wound about him, and at another with the joyful consciousness of our mutual love. What would he say when the truth was made known to him? Ah! but he loves me for myself alone, was the answering thought.

I had continued to shake my head as the sole response to his burning pet.i.tion; but at last I turned to him and said that if he were content to wait, say a year, and let his pa.s.sion have time to cool, I might be less obdurate. But in the interim he was to make no effort to discover my whereabouts, or to follow me. He must not even write to me (perhaps I had a secret idea that too many letters strangle love), but pursue the tenor of his way as though I had never existed. If at the end of that time he still wished me to become his wife, it might be I should no longer refuse. It was better for us both, I said, that we should part for the present. He must consider himself free as air, and I should think him sensible if on reflection he strove to banish me from his thoughts.

"A year is a long time," he answered.

"Long enough, almost, to make a fortune in, as well as to become wise and prudent."

By making him wait, I should let the banking-scheme develop itself a little further.

When by dint of my refusal to yield further he was forced to consent to these terms, we gave ourselves up to enjoyment of the few hours which we could still pa.s.s together. I talked and laughed, over-bubbling with happiness; but he would sigh ever and anon, as though he felt that I were about to slip from his sight to return no more. Once in the gayety of my mood I called Ike to me, and stooped to pat his pudgy sides. "Ike the imperious, beautifully ugly Ike!" I cried with glee, and with a daring that but for its very boldness might have disclosed all.

But my lover was in no mood to make deductions. "You seem so joyous, Alice, one would suppose that you were glad to leave me."

"I am joyous,--yes, very joyous,--for I have been brave enough to save the man I love from a _mesalliance_."

V.

The effect on a woman of the revelation that she loves him who has proffered her his heart, is like the awakening of buds in spring, which beneath the soft mysterious breath of an invisible power burst their bonds with graceful reluctance, and shyly gladden Nature.

It seemed to me as if I had never lived before. Unlike the untutored pa.s.sion of my extreme youth, my happiness was calm and reflective, but none the less satisfying. Under its sway I found it a comparatively easy task to overcome the querulousness and revive the hopes of Aunt Helen on my return home. It was my desire, of course, to avoid any further deception, and I sought refuge in silence, beyond the statement that the future Duke of Clyde had gone to the West without making any definite proposal. But I a.s.sured her that he was certain to visit us within a few months.

I took up the round of my avocations as if nothing had happened. We had hired a cottage at Newport for the summer, and there I ensconced myself, and strove by means of books and friends to keep the alternate exuberance and depression of my spirits within bounds. But though I was at times melancholy for a sight of my lover, joy was chiefly predominant in my heart,--so much so that people commented on my cheerfulness, and Aunt Helen dropped occasional hints which led me to believe she cherished secretly the opinion that I was enamoured of her idol.

My visits to Mr. Chelm's office were of course renewed. I told him that I had visited the street where the office of Francis Prime and Company was situated, and had been pleased at getting a glimpse of it. In answer to my questions as to what he thought of the progress of the firm he said very little, except that all business was in an unsettled state, owing to the speculative spirit that had followed the long period of stagnation. As yet, my protege seemed to have been generally prudent, but it needed the experience of a tried business man to resist the temptations to make money by short cuts presented at the present time.

He judged from the last report sent him, that he had been lately making one or two successful ventures in a doubtful cla.s.s of securities, and he should take it upon himself, with my permission, to give him advice to avoid them for the future.

I felt an eager desire to say he had already promised that the speculation in which he was now engaged should be the last; but that of course was impossible, without disclosing my secret. How should I ever have the face to make confession to Mr. Chelm when the time came, if it ever did come?