From Jest to Earnest Part 51

"Pardon me," he said hastily. "It was very stupid in me to thus startle you, but you seemed so intent on something upon the river that I thought you would never see me."

"I--I was not expecting you," she faltered.

"Then I have done wrong--have been mistaken in coming."

"O, no; I did not mean that. I thought you were in New York. We expected you this evening."

"Shall I go away then, and come back this evening?"

"Yes; come back this evening, but do not go now,--that is, just yet. I have something to say to you. Please forgive my confusion.

I fear my nerves have been shaken by what I have pa.s.sed through."

And yet such "confusion" in one usually so composed did puzzle him, but he said hastily, feeling that it would be better to break the ice at once, "I came here not to 'forgive,' but to seek your forgiveness."

"You seeking my forgiveness!" she said in unfeigned surprise.

"Yes," he replied, humbly bowing his head. "Heaven knows that I am weak and faulty enough, but when I have wronged any one, I am willing to make acknowledgment and reparation. I cannot tell you how eager I have been to make such acknowledgment to you, whom I revere as my good angel. I acted like a fool in the chapel last Monday afternoon, and did you great injustice. You have never shone on me 'coldly and distantly like a star,' but again and again have stooped from the height of your heavenly character that you might lift me out of the mire. It's a mystery to me how you can do it.

But believe me, when I am myself, I am grateful; and," he continued slowly, his square jaw growing firm and rigid, and a sombre, resolute light coming into his large dark eyes, "if you will have patience with me, I will yet do credit to the good advice, written in a school-girl's hand, which I keep treasured in my room. Weak and foolish as I have been, I should have been far worse were it not for those letters, and--and your kindness since. But I am offending you," he said sadly, as Alice averted her face. "However the future may separate us, I wanted you to know that I gratefully appreciate all the kindness of the past. I sincerely crave your forgiveness for my folly last Monday. For some reason I was not myself. I was blinded with--I said what I knew to be untrue. Though you might with justice have shone on me as 'coldly and distantly as a star,'

you have treated me almost as a sister might. Please say that I am forgiven, and I will go at once."

Imagine his surprise when, as her only response, she said abruptly, "Mr. Harcourt, come with me."

His wonder increased as he saw that her eyes were moist with tears.

She took him to the bluff, behind the boat-house, where in the snow were the traces of one who had slid and fallen from a perilous height.

"What do these marks mean?" she asked,

"It didn't hurt me any," he replied with rising color.

"Did you stop to think at the time whether it would or not? Have you thought what a chain of circ.u.mstantial evidence you left against you on that dreadful night? Now come with me into the boat-house, and let me tell you in the mean time that a lace curtain in my room is sadly torn, and one of my window-panes broken."

While he yet scarcely understood her, every fibre of his being was beginning to thrill with hope and gladness; but he said deprecatingly: "Please forgive my intrusion. In my haste that night I blundered into a place where I had no right to be. No doubt I was very rough and careless, but I was thinking of the pain of cold and fear which you were suffering. I would gladly have broken that to fragments."

"O, I am not complaining. The abundant proof that you were not deliberate delights me. But come into the boat-house, and I will convict both you and myself, and then we shall see who is the proper one to ask forgiveness. What is this upon these ropes, Mr.

Harcourt? and how did it come here?"

"O, that is nothing; I only bruised my hand a little breaking in the door."

"Is it nothing that you tugged with bleeding hands at these ropes, that you might go alone in this wretched sh.e.l.l of a boat to our aid?

Why, Mr. Harcourt, it would not have floated you a hundred yards, and Burtis told you so. Was it mere vaporing when you said, 'If I cannot save them, I can at least drown with them'?"

"No," he said impetuously, the blood growing dark in his face; "it was not vaporing. Can you believe me capable of hollow acting on the eve, as I feared, of the most awful tragedy that ever threatened?"

"O, not the 'most awful'!"

"The most awful to me."

"No, I cannot. As I said before, I have too much circ.u.mstantial evidence against you. Mr. Harcourt, true justice looks at the intent of the heart. You unconsciously left abundant proof here of what you intended, and I feel that I owe my life to you as truly as to Mr. Hemstead. And yet I was so cruelly unjust yesterday morning as to treat you coldly, because I thought my old friend and playfellow had let strangers go to our help. With far better reason I wish to ask your forgive--"

"No, no," said Harcourt, eagerly; "circ.u.mstances appeared against me that evening, and you only judged naturally. You have no forgiveness to ask, for you have made amends a thousand-fold in this your generous acknowledgment. And yet, Miss Martell, you will never know how hard it was that I could not go to your rescue that night. I never came so near cursing my destiny before."

"I cannot understand it," said Alice, turning away her face.

"It's all painfully plain to me," he said with a spice of bitterness.

"Miss Martell, I am as grateful to Hemstead as you are, for when he saved you he also saved me. If you had perished, I feel that I should have taken the counsel of an ancient fool, who said, 'Curse G.o.d and die.'"

She gave him a quick look of surprise, but said only, "That would be folly indeed."

He took her hand, and earnestly, indeed almost pa.s.sionately continued: "Miss Alice, I pray you teach me how to be a true man.

Have patience with me, and I will try to be worthy of your esteem.

You have made me loathe my old, vile self. You have made true manhood seem so n.o.ble and attractive that I am willing to make every effort, and suffer any pain,--even that of seeing you shine upon me in the unapproachable distance of a star. Make me feel that you do care what I become. Speak to me sometimes as you did the other evening among the flowers. Give me the same advice that I find in the old yellow letters which have been my Bible, and, believe me, you will not regret it."

Alice's hand trembled like a frightened bird as he held it in both of his, and she faltered, "I never had a brother, but I scarcely think I could feel towards one differently--" and then the truthful girl stopped in painful confusion. Her love for Harcourt was not sisterly at all, and how could she say that it was?

But he, only too grateful, filled out the sentence for her, and in a deep, thrilling tone answered, "And if my love for you is warmer than a brother's,--more full of the deep, absorbing pa.s.sion that comes to us but once,--I will try to school it into patience, and live worthily of my love for her who inspired it."

Again she gave him a quick look of startled surprise, and said hastily, "You forget yourself, sir. Such language belongs to another."

"To another?"

"Yes; to Miss Marchmont."

"Miss Marchmont can claim nothing from me, save a slight cousinly regard."

"It is reported that you are engaged."

"It's false," he said pa.s.sionately. "It is true, that before you returned, and while I was reckless because I believed you despised me, I trifled away more time there than I should. But Miss Marchmont, in reality, is as indifferent towards me as I towards her. I am not bound to her by even a gossamer thread."

Alice turned away her face, and was speechless.

"And did you think," he asked reproachfully, "that I could love her after knowing you?"

"Love is blind," she faltered after a moment, "and is often guilty of strange freaks. It does not weigh and estimate."

"But my love for you is all that there is good in me. My love is the most rational thing of my life."

She withdrew her hand from his, and, s.n.a.t.c.hing the rope that was stained with his blood, she kissed it and said, "So is mine."

"O Alice! what do you mean?" and he trembled as violently as she had done when he startled her on the beach.

She shyly lifted her blue eyes to his, and said, "Foolish Tom, surely your love is blind."

Then to Harcourt the door of heaven opened.

When Mr. Martell returned, he saw by the firelight in his dusky study that his daughter had made such ample amends that but little was left for him to do; but he did that right heartily.

Then the Christian man said, "Alice, compare this with the shadow of 'Storm King,' and the grinding ice. Let us thank G.o.d."