The Masked Bridal Part 46

"Certainly; that is exactly what I came here to do," she answered, as, with a dexterous movement, she tore the gla.s.ses from her eyes, and swept the moles from her face, after which she s.n.a.t.c.hed the cap and wig from her head, and stood before her companion revealed as Isabel Stewart herself.

"Good Heaven!" he gasped, then sank back upon his chair, staring in blank amazement at her.

Mrs. Stewart seized this opportunity to again slip from the room, and when she returned, a few minutes later, her superabundance of cellular tissue (?) had disappeared and she was her own peerless self once more.

She quietly resumed her seat, gravely remarking, as she did so:

"A woman who has been wronged as you have wronged me, Gerald G.o.ddard, will risk a great deal to re-establish her good name. When I first learned of your whereabouts I thought I would go and boldly demand that certificate of you. I tried to meet you in society here, but, strange to say, I failed in this attempt, for, as it happened, neither you nor your--Anna Correlli frequented the places where I was entertained, although I did meet Monsieur Correlli two or three times.

Then I saw that advertis.e.m.e.nt for a housekeeper to go out to Wyoming, to take charge of your house during a mid-winter frolic; and, prompted by a feeling of curiosity to learn something of your private life with the woman who had supplanted me, I conceived the idea of applying for the situation and thus trying to obtain that certificate by strategy.

How did I know that it was you who advertised?" she interposed, as Mr.

G.o.ddard looked up inquiringly. "Because I chanced to overhear some one say that the G.o.ddards were going out of town for the same purpose as that which your notice mentioned. So I disguised myself, as you have seen, went to your office, found I was right, and secured the position."

"Now I know why I was so startled that day, when you dropped your gla.s.ses in the dining-room," groaned the wretched man.

"Yes; I saw that you had never forgotten the eyes which you used to call your 'windows of paradise,'" responded his companion, with quiet irony, and Gerald G.o.ddard shrank under the familiar smile as under a blow.

"Gerald," she went on, after a moment of painful silence, but with a note of pity pervading her musical tones, "a man can never escape the galling consciousness of wrong that he has done until he repents of it; even then the consequences of his sin must follow him through life. Yours was a nature of splendid possibilities; there was scarcely any height to which you might not have attained, had you lived up to your opportunities. You had wealth and position, and a physique such as few men possess; you were finely educated, and you were a superior artist. What have you to show for all this? what have you done with your G.o.d-given talents? how will you answer to Him, when He calls you to account for the gifts intrusted to your care? What excuse, also, will you give for the wreck you have made of two women's lives? You began all wrong; in the first place, you weakly yielded to the selfish gratification of your own pleasure; you lived upon the principle that you must have a good time, no matter who suffered in consequence--you must be amused, regardless of who or what was sacrificed to subserve that end--"

"You are very hard upon me, Isabel; I have been no worse than hundreds of other men in those respects," interposed Gerald G.o.ddard, who smarted under her searching questions and scathing charges as under a lash.

"Granted that you 'are no worse than hundreds of other men,'" she retorted, with scornful emphasis, "and more's the pity. But how does that lessen the measure of your responsibility, pray tell me? There will come a time when each and every man must answer for himself. I have nothing to do with any one else, but I have the right to call you to account for the selfishness and sins which have had such a baneful influence upon my life; I have the right, by reason of all that I have suffered at your hands--by the broken heart of my youth--the loss of my self-respect--the despair which so nearly drove me to crime--and, more than all else, by that terrible renunciation that deprived me of my child, that innocent baby whom I loved with no ordinary affection--I say I have the right to arraign you in the sight of Heaven and of your own conscience, and to make one last attempt to save you, if you will be saved."

"What do you care--what does it matter to you now whether I am saved or lost?" the man huskily demanded, and in a tone of intense bitterness, for her solemn words had pierced his heart like a double-edged dagger.

"I care because you are a human being, with a soul that must live eternally--because I am striving to serve One who has commanded us to follow Him in seeking to save that which is lost," the fair woman gravely replied. "Look at yourself, Gerald--your inner self, I mean.

Outwardly you are a specimen of G.o.d's n.o.blest handiwork. How does your spiritual self compare with your physical frame?--has it attained the same perfection? No; it has become so dwarfed and misshapen by your indulgence in sin and vice--so hardened by yielding to so-called 'pleasure,' your intellect so warped, your talents so misapplied that even your Maker would scarcely recognize the being that He Himself had brought into existence. You are forty-nine years old, Gerald--you may have ten, twenty, even thirty more to live. How will you spend them?

Will you go on as you have been living for almost half a century, or is there still a germ of good within you that you will have strength and resolution to develop, as far as may be, toward that perfect symmetry which G.o.d desires every human soul to attain? Think!--choose!

Make this hour the turning point in your career; go back to your painting, retrieve your skill, and work to some purpose and for some worthy object. If you do not need the money such work will bring, for your own support, use it for the good of others--of those unfortunate ones, perchance, whose lives have been blighted, as mine was blighted, by those 'hundreds of other men' like you."

As the beautiful woman concluded her earnest appeal, the conscience-smitten man dropped his head upon the table beside which he sat, and groaned aloud.

For the first time in his life he saw himself as he was, and loathed himself, his past life, and all the alluring influences that had conspired to decoy him into the downward path which he had trodden.

"I will! I will! Oh, Isabel, forgive and help me," he pleaded, in a voice thrilling with despair.

"I help you?" she repeated, in an inquiring tone, in which there was a note of surprise.

"Yes, with your sweet counsel, your pure example and influence."

"I do not understand you, quite," she responded, her lovely color waning as a suspicion of his meaning began to dawn upon her.

He raised his face, which was drawn and haggard from the remorse he was suffering, and looked appealingly into hers. But, as he met the gaze of her pure, grave eyes, a flush of shame mounted to his brow as he realized how despicable he must appear to her in now suing so humbly for what he had once trampled under foot as worthless.

Yet an unspeakable yearning to regain her love had taken possession of him, and every other emotion was, for the moment, surmounted by that.

"I mean, come back to me! try to love me again! and let me, under the influence of your sweet presence, your precepts and n.o.ble example, strive to become the man you have described, and that, at last, my own heart yearns to be."

His plea was like the cry of a despairing soul, who realized, all too late, the fatal depths of the pit into which he had voluntarily plunged.

Isabel Stewart saw this, and pitied him, as she would have pitied any other human being who had become so lost to all honor and virtue; but his suggestion, his appeal that she would go back to him, live with him, a.s.sociate with him from day to day, was so repulsive to her that she could not quite repress her aversion, and a slight shiver ran over her frame, so chilling that all her color faded, even from her lips; and Gerald G.o.ddard, seeing it, realized the hopelessness of his desire even before she could command herself sufficiently to answer him.

"That would not be possible, Gerald," she finally replied. "Truth compels me to tell you plainly that whatever affection I may once have entertained for you has become an emotion of the past; it was killed outright when I believed myself a deserted outcast in Rome. I should do sinful violence to my own heart and nature if I should heed your request, and also become but a galling reproach to you, rather than a help."

"Then you repudiate me utterly, in spite of the fact that the law yet binds us to each other? I am no more to you than any other human being?" groaned the humbled man.

"Only in the sense that through you I have keenly suffered," she gravely returned.

"Then there is no hope for me," he whispered, hoa.r.s.ely, as his head sank heavily upon his breast.

"You are mistaken, Gerald," his companion responded, with sweet solemnity; "there is every hope for you--the same hope and promise that our Master held out to the woman whom the Pharisees were about to stone to death when he interfered to save her. I presume to cast no revengeful 'stone' at you. I do not arrogantly condemn you. I simply say as he said, 'Go and sin no more.'"

"Oh, Isabel, have mercy! With you to aid me, I could climb to almost any height," cried the broken-spirited man, throwing out his hands in despairing appeal.

"I am more merciful in my rejection of your proposal than I could possibly be in acceding to it," she answered. "You broke every moral tie and obligation that bound me to you when you left me and my child to amuse yourself with another. Legally, I suppose, I am still your wife, but I can never recognize the bond; henceforth, I can be nothing but a stranger to you, though I wish you no ill, and would not lift my hand against you in any way--"

"Do you mean by that that you would not even bring mortification or scandal upon me by seeking to publicly prove the legality of our marriage?" Mr. G.o.ddard interposed, in a tone of surprise.

"Yes, I mean just that. Since the certificate is in my possession, and I have the power to vindicate myself, in case any question regarding the matter arises in the future, I am content."

"But I thought--I supposed--Will you not even use it to obtain a divorce from me?" stammered the man, who suddenly remembered a certain rumor regarding a distinguished gentleman's devotion to the beautiful Mrs. Stewart.

"No; death alone can break the tie that binds me to you," she returned, her lovely lips contracting slightly with pain.

"What! Have you no wish to be free?" he questioned, regarding her with astonishment.

"Yes, I would be very glad to feel that no fetters bound me," she answered, with clouded eyes; "but I vowed to be true as long as life should last, and I will never break my word."

"True!" repeated her companion, bitterly.

A flush of indignation mounted to the beautiful woman's brow at the reproach implied in his word and tone.

But she controlled the impulse to make an equally scathing retort, and remarked, with a quiet irony that was tenfold more effective.

"Well, if that word offends you, I will qualify it so far as to say that, at least, I have never dishonored my marriage vows; I never will dishonor them."

Gerald G.o.ddard threw out his hands with a gesture of torture, and for a moment he became deathly white, showing how keenly his companion's arrow had pierced his conscience.

There was a painful silence of several moments, and then he inquired, in constrained tones:

"What, then, is my duty? What relations must I henceforth sustain toward--Anna?"

"I cannot be conscience for you, Gerald," said Isabel Stewart, coldly; "at least, I could offer no suggestion regarding such a matter as that. I can only live out my own life as my heart and judgment of what is right and wrong approve; but if you have no scruples on that score--if you desire to inst.i.tute proceedings for a divorce, in order to repair, as far as may be, the wrong you have also done Anna Correlli--I shall lay no obstacle in your way."

She arose as she ceased speaking, thus intimating that she desired the interview to terminate.

"And that is all you have to say to me? Oh, Isabel!" Gerald G.o.ddard gasped, and realizing how regally beautiful she had become, how infinitely superior, physically and morally, spiritually and intellectually, she was to the woman for whose sake he had trampled her in the dust. And the fact was forced upon him that she was one to be worshiped for her sweet graciousness and purity of character--to be reverenced for her innate n.o.bility and stanch adherence to principle, and to be exultantly proud of, could he have had the right to be--as a queen among women.

"That is all," she replied, with slow thoughtfulness, "unless, as a woman who is deeply interested in the moral advancement of humanity in general, I urge you once more to make your future better than your past has been, that thus the world may be benefited, in ever so slight a measure, because you have lived. As for you and me, our ways part here, never to cross again, I trust; for, while I have ceased to grieve over the blighted hopes of my youth, it would be painful to be reminded of my early mistakes."