Beulah Part 66

She fancied his tone was slightly sneering; but his countenance wore the expression of anxious, protecting interest which she had so prized in days past, and, as her hands trembled in his clasp and his firm hold tightened, she felt that it was useless to attempt to conceal the truth longer.

"I didn't know I was feverish; but for some time I have daily grown weaker; I tremble when I stand or walk, and am not able to sleep.

That is all."

He smiled down at her earnest face, and asked:

"Is that all, child? Is that all?"

"Yes, sir; all."

"And here you have been, with a continued, wasting nervous fever for you know not how many days, yet keep on your round of labors without cessation!"

He dropped her hands and folded his arms across his broad chest, keeping his eyes upon her.

"I am not at all ill; but believe I need some medicine to strengthen me."

"Yes, child; you do, indeed, need a medicine, but it is one you will never take."

"Try me, sir," answered she, smiling.

"Try you? I might as well try to win an eagle from its lonely rocky home. Beulah, you need rest. Rest for mind, body, and heart. But you will not take it; oh, no, of course you won't!"

He pa.s.sed his hand over his brow, and swept back the glossy chestnut hair, as if it oppressed him.

"I would willingly take it, sir, if I could; but the summer vacation is still distant, and, besides, my engagements oblige me to exert myself. It is a necessity with me."

"Rather say sheer obstinacy," said he sternly.

"You are severe, sir," replied Beulah, lifting her head haughtily.

"No; I only call things by their proper names."

"Very well; if you prefer it, then, obstinacy compels me just now to deny myself the rest you prescribe."

"Yes; rightly spoken; and it will soon compel you to a long rest, in the quiet place where Cornelia waits for you. You are a mere shadow now, and a few more months will complete your design. I have blamed myself more than once that I did not suffer you to die with Lilly, as you certainly would have done had I not tended you so closely.

Your death then would have saved me much care and sorrow, and you many struggles."

There was a shadow on his face, and his voice had the deep, musical tone which always made her heart thrill. Her eyelids drooped, as she said sadly:

"You are unjust. We meet rarely enough, Heaven knows. Why do you invariably make these occasions seasons of upbraiding, of taunts and sneers. Sir, I owe you my life, and more than my life, and never can I forget or cancel my obligations; but are you no longer my friend?"

His whole face lighted up; the firm mouth trembled.

"No, Beulah. I am no longer your friend."

She looked up at him, and a quiver crept across her lips. She had never seen that eager expression in his stern face before. His dark, fascinating eyes were full of pleading tenderness, and, as she drooped her head on her lap, she knew that Clara was right, that she was dearer to her guardian than anyone else. A half-smothered groan escaped her, and there was a short pause.

Dr. Hartwell put his hands gently on her bowed head and lifted the face.

"Child, does it surprise you?"

She said nothing, and, leaning her head against him, as she had often done years before, he pa.s.sed his hand caressingly over the folds of hair, and added:

"You call me your guardian; make me such. I can no longer be only your friend; I must either be more, or henceforth a stranger. My life has been full of sorrow and bitterness, but you can bring sunlight to my home and heart. You were too proud to be adopted.

Once I asked you to be my child. Ah! I did not know my own heart then. Our separation during the yellow-fever season first taught me how inexpressibly dear you were to me, how entirely you filled my heart. Now I ask you to be my wife, to give yourself to me. Oh, Beulah, come back to my cheerless home! Best your lonely heart, my proud darling."

"Impossible. Do not ask it. I cannot! I cannot!" cried Beulah, shuddering violently.

"Why not, my little Beulah?"

He clasped his arm around her and drew her close to him, while his head was bent so low that his brown hair touched her cheek.

"Oh, sir, I would rather die! I should be miserable as your wife.

You do not love me, sir; you are lonely, and miss my presence in your house; but that is not love, and marriage would be a mockery.

You would despise a wife who was such only from grat.i.tude. Do not ask this of me; we would both be wretched. You pity my loneliness and poverty, and I reverence you; nay, more, I love you, sir, as my best friend; I love you as my protector. You are all I have on earth to look to for sympathy and guidance. You are all I have; but I cannot marry you; oh, no; no! a thousand times, no!" She shrank away from the touch of his lips on her brow, and an expression of hopeless suffering settled upon her face.

He withdrew his arm, and rose.

"Beulah, I have seen sunlit bubbles gliding swiftly on the bosom of a clear brook and casting golden shadows down upon the pebbly bed.

Such a shadow you are now chasing--ah, child, the shadow of a gilded bubble! Panting and eager, you clutch at it; the bubble dances on, the shadow with it; and Beulah, you will never, never grasp it.

Ambition such as yours, which aims at literary fame, is the deadliest foe to happiness. Man may content himself with the applause of the world and the homage paid to his intellect; but woman's heart has holier idols. You cue young, and impulsive, and aspiring, and Fame beckons you on, like the siren of antiquity; but the months and years will surely come when, with wasted energies and embittered heart, you are left to mourn your infatuation. I would save you from this; but you will drain the very dregs rather than forsake your tempting fiend, for such is ambition to the female heart. Yes, you will spend the springtime of your life chasing a painted specter, and go down to a premature grave, disappointed and miserable. Poor child, it needs no prophetic vision to predict your ill-starred career! Already the consuming fever has begun its march.

In far-distant lands, I shall have no tidings of you; but none will be needed. Perhaps when I travel home to die your feverish dream will have ended; or, perchance, sinking to eternal rest in some palm grove of the far East, we shall meet no more. Since the day I took you in my arms from Lilly's coffin you have been my only hope, my all. You little knew how precious you were to me, nor what keen suffering our estrangement cost me. Oh, child, I have loved you as only a strong, suffering, pa.s.sionate heart could love its last idol!

But I, too, chased a shadow. Experience should have taught me wisdom. Now I am a gloomy, joyless man, weary of my home and henceforth a wanderer. Asbury (if he lives) will be truly your friend, and to him T shall commit the legacy which hitherto you have refused to accept. Mr. Graham paid it into my hands after his last unsatisfactory interview with you. The day may come when you will need it. I shall send you some medicine which, for your own sake, you had better take immediately; but you will never grow stronger until you give yourself rest, relaxation, physically and mentally.

Remember, when your health is broken and all your hopes withered, remember I warned you and would have saved you, and you would not."

He stooped and took his hat from the floor.

Beulah sat looking at him, stunned, bewildered, her tearless eyes strained and frightened in their expression. The transient illumination in his face had faded, like sunset tints, leaving dull, leaden clouds behind. His compressed lips were firm again, and the misty eyes became coldly glittering, as one sees stars brighten in a frosty air.

He put on his hat, and they looked at each other fixedly.

"You are not in earnest? you are not going to quit your home?" cried Beulah, in a broken, unsteady tone.

"Yes--going into the far East; to the ruined altars of Baalbec; to Meroe, to Tartary, India, China, and only Fate knows where else.

Perhaps find a cool Nebo in some Himalayan range. Going? Yes. Did you suppose I meant only to operate on your sympathies? I know you too well. What is it to you whether I live or die? whether my weary feet rest in an Indian jungle, or on a sunny slope of the city cemetery? Yes, I am going very soon, and this is our last meeting. I shall not again disturb you in your ambitious pursuits. Ah, child--"

"Oh, don't go! don't leave me! I beg, I implore you, not to leave me. Oh, I am so desolate! don't forsake me! I could not bear to know you were gone. Oh, don't leave me!" She sprang up, and, throwing her arms round his neck, clung to him, trembling like a frightened child. But there was no relaxation of his pale, fixed features, as he coldly answered:

"Once resolved, I never waver. So surely as I live I shall go. It might have been otherwise, but you decided it yourself. An hour ago you held my destiny in your hands; now it is fixed. I should have gone six years since had I not indulged a lingering hope of happiness in your love. Child, don't shiver and cling to me so.

Oceans will soon roll between us, and, for a time, you will have no leisure to regret my absence. Henceforth we are strangers."

"No; that shall never be. You do not mean it; you know it is impossible. You know that I prize your friendship above every earthly thing. You know that I look up to you as to no one else.

That I shall be miserable, oh, how miserable, if you leave me! Oh, sir, I have mourned over your coldness and indifference; don't cast me off! Don't go to distant lands and leave me to struggle without aid or counsel in this selfish, unfriendly world! My heart dies within me at the thought of your being where I shall not be able to see you. Oh, my guardian, don't forsake me!"

She pressed her face against his shoulder and clasped her arms firmly round his neck.

"I am not your guardian, Beulah. You refused to make me such. You are a proud, ambitious woman, solicitous only to secure eminence as an auth.o.r.ess. I asked your heart; you have now none to give; but perhaps some day you will love me as devotedly, nay, as madly, as I have long loved you; for love like mine would wake affection even in a marble image; but then rolling oceans and trackless deserts will divide us. And now, good-by. Make yourself a name; bind your aching brow with the chaplet of fame, and see if ambition can fill your heart. Good-by, dear child."

Gently he drew her arms from his neck, and took her face in his soft palms. He looked at her a moment, sadly and earnestly, as if striving to fix her features in the frame of memory; then bent his head and pressed a long kiss on her lips. She put out her hands, but he had gone, and, sinking down on the step, she hid her face in her arms. A pall seemed suddenly thrown over the future, and the orphaned heart shrank back from the lonely path where only specters were visible. Never before had she realized how dear he was to her, how large a share of her love he possessed, and now the prospect of a long, perhaps final separation, filled her with a shivering, horrible dread. We have seen that self-reliance was a powerful element in her character, and she had learned, from painful necessity, to depend as little as possible upon the sympathies of others; but in this hour of anguish a sense of joyless isolation conquered; her proud soul bowed down beneath the weight of intolerable grief, and acknowledged itself not wholly independent of the love and presence of her guardian.