True and Other Stories Part 15

"Willingly."

"About poor Dennie. Has it ever occurred to you, Ned, that you may be doing him a great injury by sending Adela off in this way, and throwing her with Sylv?"

"No, of course not," answered Lance, somewhat nettled. "Would I have been a party to it if I had thought so?" But the mention of Sylv in this sort of way caused him an inward shudder. If there were any peril of Dennie's losing Adela, why should it be Sylv who should win her?

"I think you are helping to separate them," Jessie continued, "and you ought to reflect, and stop. Besides, why should you go on so, mixing yourself up in her affairs?"

"I'm not. I ought at least to see her and tell her my discovery."

Jessie suddenly rose. "I _hate_ that woman!" she cried, sharply. And, at the same instant, Lance saw his engagement ring flashing upon her finger.

"You shall not hate her," he declared, with pa.s.sion. "She is your kinswoman--one of us. It isn't right that you should say that, and I won't endure it."

"Never mind whether you will endure it or not," Jessie retorted. "She has occupied enough of your attention already."

"My dear child," Lance remonstrated, "it's impossible that you should be jealous of that girl! But what else can you mean? What do you demand?"

"I think that you ought to just drop her, from this time on," said Jessie, closing her lips decisively.

There are scientific thinkers who tell us that the will is not a cause, but merely a state of consciousness resulting from previous conditions of the nerves and the emotions. However this may be, Lance's will a.s.serted itself in strong opposition to Jessie's. The probability that Adela was a lineal descendant of Gertrude Wylde appealed strongly to his imagination. Now that his theory seemed so well established, he was resolved to have her kinship acknowledged; and, further, he experienced a strong attraction toward her, the stress of which he did not fully comprehend. He himself represented the man who had loved Gertrude, who had vainly searched for and lost her. Was it not fair that he should have some hand in the destiny of the girl thus reclaimed, after the lapse of centuries, from the oblivion which had overtaken Gertrude's life?

"I will not drop her," he said, unyieldingly. "And, what's more, Jessie, I am going to see her, and shall stand by her."

CHAPTER XII.

SYLV'S TROUBLE.

Exactly what was to be the issue of Lance's sentiment respecting Adela, it would have been hard to say. No fatal breach had as yet been made in his relations with Jessie; yet they parted, after the difference which I have just detailed, with a coldness that promised ill; and, for the first time, Lance met the issue that had for weeks past un.o.btrusively put itself in his way. If Jessie would persist in being so narrow, so unsympathetic, what was to come? And if any trouble from this source should divide them, what was there left to him? Facing this alternative, Lance was forced to perceive that the interest which he had allowed himself to feel in Adela had, unawares, grown into a dangerous emotion.

In one way it seemed absurd. In another, it was tragical. Did he actually, in view of the rupture which now seemed likely to occur between himself and Jessie, contemplate such a possibility as giving his life up to Adela? If he were to do that, the question of treachery to his humble friend, Dennis De Vine, would be involved. Nevertheless, some unseen power seemed to propel him toward an erratic solution of this sort. He wondered whether at last the yearning of his ancestor, long ago, was fated to meet fulfilment by his own union with the latest offspring of Gertrude Wylde. No! he would not think of it: he refused to surrender himself to such fantasies. And still he could not escape their importuning.

He was involved in a struggle. He did not know what to make of it; but he resolved to maintain his own dignity, first, by going to see Adela, and then, after that, everything concerning Jessie and himself might be righted. Meanwhile he kept one idea firmly before him, which was, to remain true to Jessie so long as she would let him do so without sacrificing Adela.

But before he had time to carry out his determination of seeing Adela, an unlooked-for incident occurred, which altered the situation materially.

The last bell for the day had sounded at the "academy" where Adela pursued her studies, or rather was pursued by them, for they followed her steps from morning to night in a race with which it was hard to keep even, notwithstanding her prowess. The bell signified freedom for a brief period. When it sounded she was allowed to go out for a walk, the usual discipline of the school having been relaxed in her favor, to admit of her taking her recreation in Sylv's company. Sylv was duly accredited as Dennie's amba.s.sador, to look after Adela's welfare; hence it was considered very proper that he should see her every day. In this way he had taken a great many walks with her.

When the bell rang, therefore, he met her at the gate of the garden surrounding the academy, and they strolled away together. Had Lance seen them at that moment, he would have been surprised by the noticeable change which had come over them both. Adela had now been at school some ten months--nearly a year--and her steady application, with the loss of that out-door life to which she had been accustomed, had subdued the color in her cheeks, though it had not made them pale. The delicate brown tinge was always there. But the stiff black hair that had formerly blown so carelessly about her head was demurely combed and orderly, now, and a serene, womanly thoughtfulness had somehow drifted into the lines of her face, making its wild beauty sweeter.

Sylv, too, had acquired a more polished air. It was not a gawky polish.

His clothes were very plain, but he appeared at ease in them; and although his tangled beard was reduced to comparative trimness, it hinted nothing of the incipient dandy. On the whole, they were a very serious and simple pair, who would have looked extremely "countrified"

in Richmond, and still more so in New York. But they had altered very much since the days on the sh.o.r.e.

Had Lance seen them then, he would have been surprised--and perhaps displeased--by another thing. This was, that as they moved down the road leading away from the town, they looked so like a pair of lovers.

Ah, while they had been growing so neat and orderly on the surface, and had come to show marks of the educational mould, had they possibly undergone another change of an opposite kind, within? Were their hearts as well regulated, as calm, as their dress and their faces?

Through the long period of their sojourn together, they had lived upon hopes, interests, ambitions common to both. Adela had been fired with zeal for her new occupation; they had talked over their daily successes or reverses every afternoon; and though I have not said much about Sylv's natural refinement, and his quiet, persuasive quality, these two things--combined with constant a.s.sociation--had exercised a great influence upon Adela. Imperceptibly she had grown into a life which belonged to them alone, apart from every one else.

"How did you get along to-day?" asked Sylv.

"All right," said Adela. "But the algebra was hard. It seems as if I couldn't think of anything but squares and roots and coefficients. It appears to me like I'll have to extract the square root of my head right soon; and if I do, there won't be anything left."

"You're getting tired, I reckon," Sylv suggested. "Maybe you ought not to work so much. How would it suit you, Deely, to go home for a few days and rest?"

"Oh, vacation's coming in a few weeks," she answered, wearily. "It ain't that, Sylv. I ain't tired with the work; but it's because my life seems so queer, and I don't know what I want. I don't want to stay here, or to go home. I'm afraid I'll never be happy any more."

They were now in a quiet spot outside of the town. Some willows grew beside the road, which was here carried over a small bridge that covered the gurgling flow of a brook. Sylv stopped short, and eyed her meditatively.

"Not happy?" he questioned. "Why not, Deely? Wouldn't you be if you were with Dennie again?"

Adela paused, too. "I can't tell," she said. "I don't know what is the matter with me, but I don't seem to be satisfied with anything, Sylv. I never can go back to what I was, but I don't see that I can go forward, either."

"But Dennie loves you just the same," said Sylv, rather falteringly.

The girl clasped her hands and gazed absently in front of her. "I know he does," she said, in an inert way. "I know it well enough."

"And you know he has been trying to learn to read, just to please you, and so as to keep up with you as well as he can."

"Yes." But still her face did not lighten. The gathering sadness deepened upon it, if anything. "Oh, why did I come here!" she suddenly cried, despairingly. "If Mr. Lance had not sent me! Ah, what was the use?"

Sylv regarded her compa.s.sionately, but he was himself undergoing an anguish that it seemed impossible to withstand.

"Come," he said, soothingly, "let's go down yonder among the trees and talk about it. We'll see if there isn't some way of making you happy. I reckon the time has come for a change, and we ought to see what is needed."

She yielded, as though he were ent.i.tled to lead her. Taking his hand, she walked with him down on to the young gra.s.s at the side of the highway, and in among the trees alongside the "run." In the retired nook that they came to they seated themselves, while the spring breeze murmured through the light leaves above them, unsuspicious of any woe in the minds of these two young persons.

"I was angry with Dennie," said Adela, speaking low, "and that was why I left him to come here. But he has been so good, and so patient."

"Yes, that he has!" Sylv corroborated, fervently. "Why don't you go back to him?"

The gaze which Sylv fixed upon her, in asking this question, was very unlike that of an impartial and philosophic adviser. His eyes burned with a rapacious though restrained fire. Yet his tone was composed.

Adela broke into moaning. "Why do you ask me that?" she exclaimed. "Oh, don't you _know_ how hard it is to go back? Do you think it can ever be the same? I don't want that kind of life any more: I am for something different now. You see, all this studying and thinking and reading has given me a new idea, and there's no one to take a share in it. When I go back and marry Dennie that part of me will be alone. What am I to do; oh, what _am_ I to do?"

Her distress was so acute that she gave way to tears, which she helplessly tried to press back with a hand at her eyes.

"Don't cry, Deely," said Sylv, taking her other hand. "You're tired out, and you're troubling yourself, but you don't need to. By and by you'll be happy; never fear!"

Adela clung to his hand instinctively. "You're a kind fellow, Sylv,"

said she, ceasing to sob. "I know you wish me well. But it's all over with me. I ought not to think of anything but Dennie. If I can make _him_ happy, why--I ought--to be satisfied." But the stifled tone in which she uttered the words showed how far she fell short of that duty.

Sylv longed to speak more tenderly to her. The touch of her trusting hand in his was maddening. He would have laid down his life, at that instant, to comfort her; and if he was ready to sacrifice his own, what mattered the life and happiness of any other? But there was only one way in which he felt sure that he could secure lasting comfort to her, so far as one man might; and that way he dared not propose. Why had he not foreseen this difficulty and this peril in time to evade them? He had imagined that his whole life depended on books, and here he found that it was nothing as compared with a woman. He had indulged in the tranquil belief that he was a disinterested student; but now he awoke to the fact that he was a reckless lover!

"Deely," he exclaimed, rising, but still keeping her hand in his, "if you don't love Dennie enough to go back to him, you must not do it!"