 | CHAPTER XXXIX.
IF HE KNEW! Barriers burned away |  |
39. CHAPTER XXXIX.
IF HE KNEW!
Christine sat for a little time after the angry tread of
Dennis died away almost paralyzed by surprise and deeper
emotions. Her mind, though usually clear and rapid in its
action, was too confused to realize the truth. Suddenly
she sprang up, gathered together her sketching materials,
and drawing a thick veil over her face sped through the
store, through the streets, to the refuge of her own room.
She must be alone.
Hastily throwing aside her wrappings, she commenced
walking up and down in her excitement. Her listlessness
was gone now in very truth, and her eye and cheek
glowed as never before. As if it had become the great
vivifying principle of her own life, she kept repeating continually
in a low ecstatic tone:
“He lives! he lives! he is not dead; his blood is not
upon my conscience!”
At last she sat down in her luxurious chair before the
window to think it all over—to commune with herself—
often the habit of the reserved and solitary. From the
disjointed sentences she let fall, from the reflection of her
excited face in yonder glass, we gather quite correctly the
workings of her mind. Her first words were:
“Thank heaven! thank something or other, I have
not blotted out that true strong genius.”
Again—“What untold wretchedness I might have saved
myself if I had only asked the question in a casual way,
How is Mr. Fleet? Christine Ludolph, with all your
pride and imagined superiority, you can be very foolish.
“How he hates and despises me now! little wonder!
“But if he knew!
“Knew what? Why could you not ask after him, as
any other sick man? You have had a score or so of
offers, and did not trouble yourself as to the fate of the lovelorn
swains. Seems to me your conscience has been very
tender in this case. And the fact that he misjudges you,
thinks you callous, heartless, and is angry, troubles you
beyond measure.
“When before were you so sensitive to the opinion of
clerks and trades-people, or even the proudest suitors for
your hand? But in this case you must cry out in a tone
of sentimental agony—`Oh, if he only knew.'
“Knew what?”
Her face in yonder mirror has a strange introverted
expression, as if she were scanning her own soul. Her
brow contracted with thought and perplexity.
Gradually a warm beautiful light steals into her face
like the scowl of a winter morning turning into a dawn of
color comes out upon her cheeks, spreads up her temples,
mantles her brow, and pours a crimson torrent down her
snowy neck. Suddenly she drops her burning face into her
hands, and hides a vision one would gladly look longer
upon. But see, even her little ears have become as red
coral.
The bleakest landscape in the world brightens into
something like beauty when the sun shines upon it. So
love, the richer, sweeter light of the soul, makes the plainest
face almost beautiful. But when it changed Christine
Ludolph's faultless, but too cold and classical, features
into those of a loving woman's, it suggested a beauty
scarcely human.
A moment later there came a faint whisper:
“I fear—I almost fear I love him.” Then she lifted a
startled, frightened face and looked timidly around as if,
in truth, walls had ears.
Reassured by the consciousness of solitude, her head
dropped on her wrist and her revery went forward. Her
eyes became dreamy, and a half smile played upon her lips
as she recalled proof after proof of his affection, for she
knew the cruel words of the last interview were the result
of misunderstanding.
But suddenly she sprang from her seat and commenced
pacing the room in the strongest perturbation.
“Mocked again!” she cried; “the same cruel fate!
My old miserable experience in a new aspect. Everything
within my reach, save the one thing I want, I possess the
means of all kinds of happiness except that which makes
me happy. In every possible way I am pledged to a career
and future in which he can take no part. Though my
heart is full of the strangest, sweetest chaos, and I do not
truly understand myself, yet I am satisfied that this is not
Gudgeon farce repeated. Already he suspects and frowns
upon the whole thing. I should have to break with him
utterly and forever. I should have to give up all my ambitious
plans and towering hopes of life abroad. A plain
Mrs. in this city of shops is a poor substitute for a countess'
coronet and a villa on the Rhine.”
Her cheek flushed and lip curled.
“That indeed would be the very extravagance of romance,
and how could I, least of all, who so long have
scoffed at such things, explain my action? These mushroom
shop-keepers, who were all nobodies the other day,
elevate their eyebrows when a merchant's daughter marries
her father's clerk. But when would the wonder cease if
a German lady of rank followed suit?
“Then again my word, my honor, every sacred pledge
I could give, forbids the whole thing.
“Would to heaven I had never seen him, for this unfortunate
fancy of mine must be crushed in its inception;
strangled before it comes to master me as it has him.”
After a long and weary sigh she continued: “Well,
everything is favorable for a complete and final break between
us. He believes me heartless and wicked to the
last degree. I cannot undeceive him without showing
more than he should know. I have only to avoid him, to
say nothing, and we drift apart.
“If we could only have been friends, he might have
helped me so much; but that now is clearly impossible—
yes, for both of us.
“Truly one of these American poets was right—
The saddest are these—It might have been.
“But, thanks to the immortal gods, as the pious heathen
used to say, his blood is not on my hands, and this
perhaps forget all the miserable business. The Fates
forbid that I, as it has forbidden that many another high-born
woman, should marry where she might have loved.”
If Christine's heart was wronged, her pride was highly
gratified by this conclusion. Here was a new and strong
resemblance between herself and the great. In mind she
recalled the titled unfortunates who had “loved where
they could not marry,” and with the air and feeling of a
martyr to ancestral grandeur she pensively added her name
to the list.
With her conscience freed from its burden of remorse,
with the consciousness, so sweet to every woman, that she
might accept if she would, in spite of her airs of martyrdom,
the world had changed greatly for the better, and
with the natural buoyancy of youth she reacted into quite a
cheerful and hopeful state.
Her father noticed this on his return to dinner in the
evening, and sought to learn its cause. He asked:
“How did you make out with your sketch?”
“I made a beginning,” she answered, with some little
color rising to her cheek.
“Perhaps you were interrupted?”
“Why did you not tell me that Mr. Fleet had recovered?”
she asked abruptly.
“Why, did you think he was dead?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Ludolph indulged in a hearty laugh (he knew the
power of ridicule).
“Well, that is excellent!” he said. “You thought the
callow youth had died on account of your hardness of heart;
and this explains your rather peculiar moods and tenses of
late. Let me assure you that a Yankee never dies from
such a cause.”
Mr. Ludolph determined if possible to break down her
reserve and let in the garish light, which he knew to be
most fatal to all romantic fancies, that ever thrive best in
the twilight of secrecy.
But she was on the alert now, and in relief of mind had
regained her poise and power to mask her feeling. So
she said in a tone tinged with cold indifference:
“You may be right, but I had good reason to believe
to the contrary, and as I am not altogether without a conscience,
you might have saved much pain by merely mentioning
the fact of his recovery.”
“But you had adjured me with frightful solemnity
never to mention his name again,” said her father, still
laughing.
Christine colored and bit her lip. She had forgotten
for the moment this awkward fact.
“I was nervous, sick, and not myself that day, and every
one I met could speak of nothing but Mr. Fleet.”
“Well really,” he said, “in the long list of the victims
that you have wounded, if not slain, I never supposed my
clerk and quondam man-of-all-work would prove so serious
a case.”
“A truce to your bantering, father! Mr. Fleet is humble
only in station, not in character, not in ability. You know
I have never been very tender with the `victims,' as you designate
them, of the Mellen stamp; but Mr. Fleet is a man,
in the best sense of the word, and one that I have wronged.
Now that the folly is past I may as well explain to you some
things that have appeared strange. I think I can truly say
that I have given those gentlemen who have honored, or
rather annoyed me, by their unwished for regard, very little
encouragement. Therefore, I was not responsible for any
follies they might commit. But for artistic reasons I did
encourage Mr. Fleet's infatuation. You remember how I
to succeed, I hit upon the rather novel expedient of
inspiring and copying the genuine thing. You know my
imitative power is better than my imagination, and I thought
that by often witnessing the expression of feeling and passion,
I might learn to portray it without the disagreeable
necessity of passing through any such experiences myself.
But the experiment, as you know, did not work well.
These living subjects are hard to manage, and, as I have
said, I am troubled by a conscience.”
Mr. Ludolph's eyes sparkled, and a look of genuine admiration
lighted up his features.
“Bravo!” he cried, “your plan was worthy of you and
of your ancestry. It was a real stroke of genius. You
were too tender-hearted, otherwise it would have been perfect.
What are the lives of a dozen such young fellows to
be compared with the development and perfection of such
a woman as you bid fair to be?”
Christine had displayed in this transaction just the
qualities that her father most admired. But even she was
shocked at his callousness, and lifted a somewhat startled
face to his.
“Your estimate of human life is rather low,” she
said.
“Not at all. Is not one perfect plant better than a
dozen imperfect ones? The gardener often pulls up the
crowding and inferior ones to throw them about the roots
of the strongest, that in their death and decay they may
nourish it to the most perfect development. What the
gardener does for his plants, we certainly can do for ourselves.
They secure most in this world who have the skill
and power to grasp most.”
“But how about the rights of others? Human plants
would naturally object to the uprooting process.”
“Let them be on their guard and prevent it then.
Every one is for himself in this world. That can be plainly
seen through the thin disguises that some try to assume.
After all, half the people we meet are little better than summer
weeds.”
Christine almost shuddered to think that the one bound
to her by closest ties cherished such sentiments toward the
world, and probably, to a certain extent, toward herself,
but she only said quietly:
“I can hardly subscribe to your philosophy as yet,
though I fear I act upon it too often. Still it does not apply
to Mr. Fleet. He is gifted in no ordinary degree, and
doubtless will stand high here in his own land in time. And
now as explanation has been made, with your permission
we will drop this subject out of our conversation as before.”
“Well,” said Mr. Ludolph to himself, between sips of
his favorite Rhine wine, “I have gained much light on the
subject to-night, and I must confess, that even with my
rather wide experience, the whole thing is a decided novelty.
If Christine were only less troubled with conscience,
over-fastidiousness, or whatever it is—if she were more
moderate in her ambition as an artist, and could be satisfied
with power and admiration, as other women are, what
a star she might become in the fashionable world of Europe!
But, for some reason, I never feel sure of her. Her
spirit is so wilful and obstinate, and she seems full of vague
longing after an ideal, impossible world, that I live in constant
dread that she may be led into some folly, fatal to my
ambition. This Fleet is a most dangerous fellow. I wish
I were well rid of him; still, matters are not so bad as I
fear, that is, if she told me the whole truth; which I
am inclined to doubt. But I had better keep him in my
employ during the few months we still remain in this land,
better than if he were beyond my control. But no more
promotion or encouragement does he get from me.”
Janette, Christine's French maid, passed the open
door. The thought struck Mr. Ludolph that he might secure
an ally in her.
The unscrupulous creature was summoned, and agreed
for no very large sum to become a spy upon Christine, and
report anything looking toward intercourse with Dennis
Fleet.
“The game is still in my hands,” said the wary man.
“I will yet steer my richly-freighted argosy up the Rhine.
Here's to Christine, the belle of the German court!” and
he filled a slender Venetian glass to the brim, as if the
reality were before him, and then retired.
Christine, on reaching her room, muttered to herself,
“He now knows all that I mean he ever shall. We are one
in our ambition, if nothing else, and therefore our relations
must be, to a certain degree, confidential and amicable.
And now forget you have a conscience, forget you have
a heart, and, above all things, forget that you have ever
seen or known Dennis Fleet.”
Thus, the impetuosity of a false education, a proud, selfish,
ambitious life, decided her choice.
She plunged as resolutely into the whirl of fashionable
gayety about her as she had in the dissipations of New
York, determined to forget the past, and kill the time that
must intervene before she could sail away to her brilliant
future in Germany.
But she gradually learned that if conscience robbed
her of peace before, something else disturbed her now, and
rendered her efforts futile. She found that there was a
principle at work in her heart stronger even than her resolute
will.
In spite of her purpose to the contrary, she caught
herself continually thinking of him, and indulging in
strange delicious reveries in regard to him.
At last she ceased to shun the store as she had done
at first, but with increasing frequency found some necessity
for going there.
After the interview in the show-room, Dennis was
driven to the bitter conclusion that Christine was utterly
heartless, and cared not a jot for him. His impression
was confirmed by the fact that she shunned the store, and
that he soon heard of her as a belle and leader in the ultra-fashionable
world. He, too, bitterly lamented that he had
ever seen her, and was struggling with all the whole power
of his will to forget her. He fiercely resolved that, since
she wished him dead, she should become dead to him.
As the weeks passed on, he apparently succeeded
better than she. There was nothing in her character, as
she then appeared, that appealed to anything gentle or
generous. She seemed so proud, so strong and resolute
in her choice of evil, so devoid of the true womanly
nature, as he had learned to reverence it in his mother,
that he could not pity, much less respect her, and even his
love could scarcely survive under such circumstances.
When she began coming to the store again, though his
heart beat thick and fast at her presence, he turned his
back and seemed not to see her, or made an errand to a
remote part of the building.
At first she thought this might be accident, but she
soon found it a resolute purpose to ignore her very existence.
By reason of a trait said to be peculiarly feminine,
certainly peculiar to Christine, this was only the more
stimulating. She craved all the more that which was
seemingly denied.
Accustomed to every gratification, to see all yield to
her wishes, and especially to regard gentlemen as almost
powerless to resist her beauty, this one stern, averted
face became to her infinitely more attractive than all the
rest in the world.
“That he so steadily avoids me, proves that he is
anything but indifferent,” she said one day.
She condemned her visits to the store, and often
repeated to herself what utter folly it was, but a secret
powerful magnetism drew her thither in spite of herself.
Dennis, too, soon noticed that she came quite often,
and the fact awakened a faint hope within him. He
learned that his love was not dead, but only chilled and
chained by circumstances and his own strong will. True,
apart from the fact of her coming, she gave him no
encouragement.
She was as distant and seemingly oblivious of his
existence as he of hers, but love can gather hope from
a marvellously little thing.
But one day Christine detected her father watching her
movements with the keenest scrutiny, and after that she
came more and more rarely.
The hope that for a moment had tinged the darkness
that had gathered around Dennis, died away like the meteor's
transient light.
He went into society very little after his sickness, and
shunned large companies. He preferred spending his
evenings with his mother and in study. The Winthrops
were gone, having removed to their old home in Boston,
and he had not formed very intimate acquaintances elsewhere.
Moreover, his limited circle, though of the best
and most refined, was not one in which Christine often
appeared.
But one evening his cheek paled and his heart fluttered
been invited to meet a few friends. For some little time
he studiously avoided her, but at last his hostess, with
well-meant zeal, formally presented him.
They bowed very politely and very coldly. The lady
surmised that Christine did not care about the acquaintance
of her father's clerk, and so brought them no more
together. But Christine was pained by Dennis' icy manner,
and saw that she was thoroughly misunderstood. When
asked to sing, she chose a rather significant ditty:
Every dancing wavelet gleam
In the noonday bright;
Children think the surface glow
Reaches to the depths below,
Hidden from the light.
Human faces often seem
Like the sparkle of the stream,
In the social glare;
Some assert, in wisdom's guise,
(Look they not with children's eyes?)
All is surface there.
As she rose from the piano her glance met his with
something like meaning in it, he imagined. He started,
flushed, and his face became full of eager questioning. But
her father was on the watch also, and placing his daughter's
hand within his arm, led her into the front parlor, and soon
after they pleaded another engagement and vanished
altogether.
No chance for explanation came, and soon a new and
all-absorbing anxiety filled Dennis' heart, and the shadow
of the greatest sorrow that he had yet experienced daily
grew nearer.
| CHAPTER XXXIX.
IF HE KNEW! Barriers burned away | |