Stories by American Authors Volume III Part 11

In a moment he was gone. Vibbard amused himself as well as he could with the books and drawings in the room; then he sat down, looked all about the place, and sighed:

"Poor fellow! he can be more comfortable now."

Before long the tea hour came. Th.o.r.n.y had not returned, and he took the meal alone, watching the sunset out of the window. But by and by he grew restless, and finally, taking his hat and his cane, which had an odd-shaped handle made of two carved snakes at once embracing and wounding one another, he went out and strolled across the bridge toward the Winwoods'. By the time he reached there dusk had closed in, though the horizon afar off was overhung by a faint, stirring light from the rising moon. He remembered Silverthorn's injunction, however, and would not go into the cottage.

He pa.s.sed the lilac-hedge, with its half-pathetic exhalations of delicious odor recalling the past, and was prompted to step through a break in the stone wall and ascend the orchard slope.

He stood there a few minutes enjoying the hush of nightfall and exulting in the full tide of happiness and sweet antic.i.p.ation that streamed silently through his veins. All about him stole up the soft and secret perfumes of the summer's dusk,--perfumes that feel their way through the air like the monitions of early love, going out from one soul to another.

Suddenly, a side-door in the house below was opened, and two figures came forth as if borne upon the flood of genial light that poured itself over the greensward.

They were Silverthorn and Ida.

How graceful they looked, moving together,--the buoyant, beautiful maiden and the slender-shaped young man, who even at a distance impressed one with something ideal in his pose and motion! Vibbard looked at them with a bewildered, shadowy sort of pleasure; but all at once he saw that Silverthorn held Ida's hand in his and had laid his other hand on her shoulder. A frightful tumult of feeling a.s.sailed him. The small, carved serpents on his stick seemed suddenly to drive their fangs into his own palm, as he clutched the handle tighter.

For an instant he hesitated and hoped. Then the pair, pa.s.sing along below the broken wall, came within ear-shot, and he heard his old boon comrade saying, in a pleading voice:

"But you have never quite promised me, Ida! You have never fully engaged yourself to me."

Partly from a feeling of strangulation, partly with a blind impulse to do something violent, Vibbard clutched himself about the throat, tore furiously at his collar till it gave way, and, in a paroxysm little short of madness, he turned and fled--he did not know where nor how--through the darkness.

It seemed to him for a long time as if he was marching and reeling on through the woods, stumbling over roots and fallen trunks, breaking out into open fields upon the full run, then pursuing a road, or rambling hopelessly down by the ebon-hued river,--and as if he was doing all this with some great and urgent purpose of rescuing somebody from a terrible fate. He must go on foot,--there was no other way,--and everything depended on his getting to a certain point by a certain time. The worst of it was, he did not know where it was that he must go to! Then, all at once, he became aware that he had made a mistake. It was not some one else who was to be saved. It was _himself_. He must rescue himself--

From what?

At this, he came to a pause and tried to think. He stood on a commanding spot, somewhere not far from Stansby, though he could not identify it. The moon was up, and the wide, leafy landscape was spread out in utter silence for miles around him. For a brief s.p.a.ce, while collecting his thoughts, he saw everything as it was. Then, as if at the stroke of a wand, horrible deformity appeared to fall upon the whole scene; the thousand trees below him writhed as if in mult.i.tudinous agony; and, where the thick moonlight touched house or road, or left patches of white on river and pool, there the earth seemed smitten as with leprosy. Silverthorn, reaching his room in an hour after Vibbard had left it, was not at first surprised at his absence. Afterward he grew anxious; he went out, ran all the way to Winwood's house, and came back, hoping to find that his friend had returned while he was searching for him. He sat down and waited; he kept awake very late; his head grew heavy, and he fell asleep in his chair, dreaming with a dull sense of pain, and also of excitement, about his new access of comparative wealth.

A heavy step and the turning of the door-k.n.o.b awoke him. Moonlight came in at the window--pale, for the dawn was breaking--and his lamp still flickered on the table. Streaked with these conflicting glimmers, Vibbard stood before him,--his clothes torn, his hat gone, his face pale and fierce.

"What have you been doing?" asked Silverthorn wearily, and without surprise, for he was too much dazed.

"You--_you_!" said Vibbard, hoa.r.s.ely, pointing sharply at him, as if his livid gaze was not enough. "You have been taking her from me!"

"Ida?" queried Silverthorn, with what seemed to the other to be a laughing sneer.

"Are you shameless?" demanded Vibbard. "Why don't you lie down there and ask me to forgive you for demanding so little? I've no doubt you are sorry that you couldn't get the whole of my money! But I suppose you were afraid you wouldn't receive even the half, if you told me beforehand what you meant to do."

Silverthorn was numb from sleeping in a cramped posture and without covering; but a deeper chill shook him at these words. He tried to get up, but felt too weak, and had to abandon it. He shivered heavily.

Then he put his hand carefully into the breast of his coat, and after a moment drew out his pocket-book.

"Here it is," said he, very quietly. "I came home intending to give you back your money, but you were not here."

"You expect me to believe that?" retorted Vibbard, scornfully, "when I know that you went from here after receiving the check, and--ah! I couldn't have believed it, if I hadn't heard--"

"You overheard us, then? You came, though I warned you not to? And what did you hear?" Silverthorn's lips certainly curled with contempt now.

Vibbard answered: "I heard you pleading with Ida to promise herself to you."

"That's a lie," said Silverthorn, calmly.

"Didn't you say to her, 'You have never yet fully engaged yourself to me?' Weren't you pleading?"

"Yes. I was begging that she would forget all the words of love I had ever spoken, and listen to you when you should come to tell her your story."

Vibbard's head bowed itself in humiliation and wonder. He came forward two or three steps, and sank into a chair.

"Is this possible?" he inquired, at last.

"And you, too, had loved her!"

Silverthorn vouchsafed no reply.

Vibbard, struggling with remorse, uncertainty, and a dimly returning hope, brought himself to speak once more, hesitatingly.

"What did she say?"

"At first she would not tolerate my proposal. I saw there was a conflict in her mind. Something warned me what it was, yet I could not help fancying that she might really be unwilling to give me up. So then I said I had made up my mind any way, as things stood, to return you your money. I--forgive me, Bill, but it was not treachery to you--only justice to all--I asked her if she would wish to marry me as I was, poor and without a future."

"And she--" asked Vibbard, trembling. "What did she say?"

Silverthorn let the pocket-book fall, and buried his face in his hands. It was answer enough for his friend.

Vibbard came over and knelt beside him, and tried to rouse him. He stroked his pale brown hair, and called him repeatedly "Dear old boy."

"Poor Th.o.r.n.y, I wish I could do something for you," he said, gently.

"Are you sure you understood her?"

The other suddenly looked up.

"Don't blame her, Bill," he said, beseechingly. "Don't let it hurt your love for her. There was nothing mercenary. She hesitated a moment--and then I saw that it had all been a dream of the impossible.

I had always a.s.sociated this money with myself. It turned back the whole current of her ideas, and upset everything, when I separated myself from it. All the plans of going away--all that life I had talked of--had to be scattered to the winds in a moment. She did not love me enough, for myself alone!"

"Poor Th.o.r.n.y!" again murmured his friend.

Love, amid all its other resemblances, is like the spirit of battle.

It fires men to press on toward the goal, even though a brother by their side, pushing in the same direction, should fall with a mortal wound. And the fighter goes on, to wed with victory, while his brother lies dead far behind cheated of his bride.

Vibbard offered himself to Ida the next day. It was a strange and distressful wooing; but she could not deny that, in a way unknown to herself till now, she had loved Vibbard from the beginning, more than his friend. In her semi-engagement with Silverthorn, she had probably been loving Vibbard through his friend. But when the strong man, who had gained a place in the world for her sake, returned and placed his heart before her, she could no longer make a mistake.

Silverthorn would not keep the money, neither could his friend persuade him to come and take a share in his business. He would not leave Stansby. Where he had first seen Ida, there he resolved to dwell, with the memory of her.

When I saw him again, and he told me of this crisis, he said:

"I am not 'poor Th.o.r.n.y,' as Vibbard called me; for now I have a friendship that will last me through life. It has stood the test of money, and hate, and love, and it is stronger than them all."