University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
MARSTON'S CHOICE.

Following the waters of Milvor Branch ten
miles back from “The Haven,” as Milvor folk
loved to call their little seaport, one finds their
source in the confluence of two or three merry
little brooks near the foot of Moloch Mountain.
Each one of these brooks is a beauty in
its way, and as full of character as most beauties
are not; but the loveliest, the most piquant,
and utterly fascinating of them all is the
tricksy watercourse known as the Millbrook.
As the name implies, the little stream has
been utilized, or rather practicalized; for let
no man deny that beauty is also use, and
that to be is to be utilized; but it chanced
one day that Millbrook, dancing along in
her usual heedless fashion, found a barrier
across her path, and after a little pause of indignant
astonishment, gathered her forces and
leaped it. The fall was not high, and rather
enjoying it than otherwise, the brook, hurrying
on, next encountered a large wooden wheel,
which, as she dashed through and by, began
to revolve—slowly at first, then faster, snatching
up masses of the bright water, scattering
them in the sunshine, and letting them fall
again into the sparkling torrent, like a giant
baby playing with his mother's diamonds.

“Ha! ha!” laughed the brook. “This is
fun—now, isn't it?” and slipping by the wheel,
she danced out into the sunlight again, all
dimpled with laughter and bubbling with fun,
as she held her course to the rendezvous where
she and her sisters were to join forces and rechristen
themselves Milvor Branch.

And from that day to this, Millbrook tumbles
over the dam and through the wheel—not
because she can't help it—oh! no; but because
it is so capital a joke, and really such an
amusing little variety to the old routine; and
always when she reappears, it is with a whirl
and a slide, and bubbling and dimpling all
over with fun, and a new joy in sunshine
and liberty. But one cannot expect human
nature to go to school to the brooks, or if he
does, he will probably be disappointed.

Just where Millbrook, yet unconscious of
what life means, comes rioting down the side
of Moloch Mountain, and, making a sudden

fantastic twist, crosses the path ascending that
eminence, two lovers lingered to watch the
setting of the sun whose rising had seen Peleg
Brewster sitting before his farm-house door,
and bidding good-by to the familiar scenes
and memories of a lifetime.

Two lovers, and yet as unloverlike as a six-months'
married couple, with whom the honeymoon
is over, and the serene sun of marriage
not yet risen; for Marston Brent, leaning
against a tree-boll, with his arms folded, his
heavy jaw set, and his black brows drawn
low over his moody eyes, looked more like a
Brutus than a Romeo; and Beatrice Wansted,
spite of her yellow hair and soft hazel eyes,
had more of Kate than Juliet in her present
mien.

Was it an odd chance, a presentiment, or a
cause working out its own effect, that had led
the girl's dead mother to call her Beatrice?
One thing was certain, that when Alice Wansted
returned a poor widow to her father's house,
the only relic of her brief magnificence that
she brought with her was an exquisite copy of
the Cenci, done by a young Italian artist whom
Arthur Wansted had fancied to patronize during
the winter in Rome that had opened a new
life to his young wife, and ended in his own
death. So, the poor young widow, creeping home
to the quiet country fireside where she had been
born, brought hardly more than this exquisite
picture, her broken heart, and the unborn
child whom, with one of the few faint breaths
drawn between its birth and her own death,
she named Beatrice. The desire was heeded,
as dying people's wishes occasionally are, and
the little girl, developing, year by year, into
rarer beauty, developed too so striking a resemblance
to the pictured face she best loved
to contemplate, that the country-folk who visited
at the old house could not be persuaded
but that the picture was a likeness of Mrs.
Wansted, although her husband and the
artist might, perhaps, have given it the untoward
name now borne by the child. Even
the expression, the melancholy beseeching,
mingled with an indomitable resolution, “the
stern, yet piteous look,” that tells the story of
Beatrice Cenci to-day, from Guido's canvas,
as it spoke from her living lineaments two
hundred years ago, was to be found, latent
as yet, perhaps, in this young girl's face.
There, too, the sensitive and exquisite lines
that told of a heart to love till death; a pride
that would hide that love beneath the ruin of
a life; passion, resolution, and over all an invincible
purity and refinement.

Just now, however, that fair face expressed
no more than vexation and astonishment, as,
looking up in her lover's face, Beatrice quietly
asked:

“You don't mean to refuse my uncle's offer,
do you?”

“Why, yes, Beatrice; I have just explained
to you that I should do so, and why.”

“What folly!” ejaculated the young lady
pettishly. “He said himself that before ten
years were out, you might be an equal partner
with himself, and meantime would be sure of
a handsome salary.”

Marston Brent raised his dark head a trifle
higher, and said quietly:

“I prefer to be my own master even for ten
years.”

“And you prefer to become a miserable—
what shall I call your future occupation?—
wood-chopper, perhaps, to becoming a merchant
prince?” asked Beatrice bitingly.

“I prefer the woods to the cities, nature to
trade—yes,” replied her lover.

“And your own will to my wishes?”

“My own judgment to your fancies.”

“Fancy! No; it is something more than
fancy that makes my taste and my pride, my
whole nature indeed, revolt from the life you
propose to me, especially when we see the
way so fairly opened to another.”

“But, Beatrice, don't you perceive that what
you wish is to sacrifice my pride to yours? It
is not a very amiable quality, to be sure, but as
I have unfortunately as large a share as yourself,
you must allow me to consult it a little;
and to become a clerk in your uncle's counting-house
would injure my pride far more
severely than the mode of life at which you
sneer could injure yours.”

Miss Wansted plucked a handful of leaves
from the alder beside her, and cast them
into the stream with a scornful air, but otherwise
made no reply

Marston Brent looked down at her with the
half-angry, half-loving air of a man at once
vexed and charmed with his antagonist, and
throwing himself upon the sward beside her,
seized her hand, saying good-humoredly:

“Come, Trix, don't be unreasonable. Wait
until I set my plans once more before you, and
see if I cannot make you look at them through
my eyes. When the news of my father's death
reached me, you know, I was on my way home

from the West, and had been for some weeks
visiting Mills in his logging camp, and you
have no idea of the sport we found—”

“You told me all that,” interposed Miss
Wansted, just a little scornfully.

“Excuse me. I remember that I did. I will
try not to weary you more than I can avoid.
Mills had just decided, as I left, to return to
the city and resume his former business, and
was anxious that I should purchase his claim,
including the bark-mill, tannery, and all the
logging shanties and tools, offering them at
a bargain. I had no money then; but now,
after settling my father's affairs, I find myself
master of very nearly the whole sum Mills
demanded, and shall no doubt be able to
make easy terms with him for the remainder.
Then, Beatrice, the rest depends upon my own
strength, energy, and ambition, and I hope it is
not boasting in me to say, I have no fear of
failing in either of the three.”

He raised his eyes with a proud smile to
those of his betrothed, but found there no answering
expression. No marble could have
been colder than Miss Wansted's face as she
inquired:

“And do you propose to take me to one of
the `shanties,' as you call them, and have
me cook the pork and potatoes for you and
your wood-choppers?”

Brent bit his lip, flushing redly the while,
but answered patiently:

“I told you—did I not?—that I am meaning
in the spring to build a pretty cottage beside
the river, and ask you to furnish it to suit
your own taste. Could not you be happy in
such a home with me, Beatrice, though it
might be many a mile from city or watering-place?”

The girl was silent, and he continued with
a simple pathos in his voice, the more touching
from contrast with the rugged strength
and energy of his former tone:

“Only have faith and patience, Trix, and I
promise that you shall be a rich woman before
you are twenty years older—perhaps before
ten years. Only give me time and the
heart to work, knowing that I am working
for you, and I can do any thing.”

“In twenty years, I shall be forty years old,
and half my life will have been spent in a
wilderness. How shall I be fitted for the society
I may then have an opportunity of enjoying?”
asked Beatrice sullenly. “Not that
I would refuse to consent even to this,” added
she presently in a softened tone, “if you had
no other prospect or hope. But to contrast
with this dreary future, here is my uncle's
letter, offering you a position in one of the
first mercantile houses in the city, and with
such prospects as he himself says not one
young man in a hundred can command. It is
downright folly and perversity for you to refuse,
and I will never consent. Give up the
woods, or give up—”

“Stop, Beatrice! Don't say that, and don't
let us become excited or ill-tempered,” said
Marston, dropping the hand he had held until
now, and sitting upright. Had Beatrice
glanced then at his face, and read there the
nature she had never yet learned to know,
the whole course of her life might have been
changed by the brief lesson; but she only tore
at the alder-leaves in her hand, and set her
lips more firmly together.

“The time has come,” said Marston very
patiently, “to you and me that must come to
all people who try to make their two lives run
in one channel. One of us must yield a decided
wish, opinion, and plan to the other.
Now, Trix, in choosing the occupation and
whole character of my future life, of my man-work
in the world, it cannot be doubted that
my own capacities, tastes, and ideas of independence
should be the first things to be consulted,
nor can it be doubted that these are
better known to me than they can be to you.
I have chosen, and I am very sure that I have
chosen rightly. More than that,” and he
paused a moment, then went on full-voiced,
“I shall not alter my decision; but though I
cannot give up my manhood to please you,
Beatrice, there is hardly any thing else I would
not do; and I need not tell you again that
your love is the sweetest and dearest thing in
life to me, and that to call you wife has been
for months the fondest hope I have ever
known. Darling, do not fear that you shall
suffer want or care in our forest-home, or that
any ill shall reach you other than those—”

“Stop, if you please, Mr. Brent,” said a
clear, cold voice; and Marston, raising his
honest eyes to those of his mistress, felt an
involuntary thrill of admiration, for never
had Beatrice Wansted looked so beautiful as
now, with her hazel eyes wide and bright, her
creamy cheek lightly flushed, and her mouth
curved with pride and scorn.

“You have given your decision,” said she
slowly, “now hear mine: I will never follow

you to the wigwam you offer. I will never
marry you if you persist in your refusal to accept
my uncle's offer. Choose this moment
between your will—and me.”

With an involuntary motion, Marston
grasped her wrist, and bent his head until
their eyes confronted: in his a sudden anguish,
in hers a scornful assurance—in each an indomitable
will. He was the first to speak:

“Beatrice, be careful. You know that I
love you, heart and soul, and with every fibre
of my whole body. You know that to part
from you in this way would be like dragging
that heart and body asunder. But you do not
know, you cannot know, that to go back from
my pledged word, my solemn purpose, would
be worse. Beatrice, I cannot; I tell you I
cannot yield to you. For God's sake, show in
this moment that you have a woman's softer
nature, and save both our lives from wreck.”

She looked him steadily in the face, marked
with a sort of wonder the terrible emotion
that in one moment had drawn and blanched
it until it might have been the picture of a
malefactor expiring under torture, and then
she slowly repeated:

“Choose between your own will and me.”

“Not now. Let us go home and wait a little—wait
perhaps until I have been away a
year, and then I will come and ask you again.
You shall be free as air in the mean time—
only you will let me come and ask again
when the year is over, and the little cottage
built?”

His deep voice pleaded now like that of a
little child, and the tears stood in his dark
eyes as he sought hers, which for a moment
had turned aside.

“Do you mean by let us wait that perhaps
by morning you may change your mind? Of
course, after a year, you could not,” said Beatrice
coldly.

“My God! Have I not told you that I cannot
change? Ask the rocks, the trees, the
water to change, but not me. It is not in me
anywhere. It can never be,” burst out Marston
in a tone of desperate agony.

“Then we part this moment, and forever,”
said Beatrice, the whole passion of her nature
flaring up through the icy mask she had assumed.
“If you cannot and will not yield to
me in this, neither will I yield to you. I will
not wait; no, not one hour, one moment. I
will never see you, never speak to you, or, if
I can help it, breathe the same air with you
again. You have made me love you, and now
you wish to make a slave of me through that
love. You are hard, and selfish, and obstinate,
and I am well released from you.”

She rose to her feet; he too, and holding
her by the shoulders, looked into her face, his
own white and set.

“Beatrice,” said he slowly, “you are spoiling
both our lives. Have a care, for you will
suffer too. I will not take your answer now;
I will write to you from Wahtahree.”

He was turning away, but she caught him
passionately by the hand. He turned and
met the fiery devil in her eyes with a look of
unmoved determination.

“Stop!” cried she, “stop and hear me! If
you write to me, I will return your letter unopened;
if you try to see me, I will order you
from my doors; if you send me a message, I
will not listen to it; if you leave me now, you
leave me forever—forever, Marston Brent,
though you come but to-morrow to lay yourself
with the world's wealth at my feet. Now
choose, and for the last time—your own will
or my love.”

A moment, another, and another went by,
and still he stood looking into her white face
and burning eyes, with a solemn earnestness
conquering the pain and the bitterness that
had so wrung his soul. At last he said:

“Beatrice, swear before God that what you
say you mean.”

The girl lifted her palm to heaven. Marston
caught it in his own, and a sudden terror
sprung into his eyes as he cried:

“Oh! think once more. Remember how I
love you, remember that the long future lies
before us, and that your next words make or
mar it forever. Wait one moment, think one
moment.”

But Beatrice, tearing away her hand, lifted
it again to heaven, and said slowly:

“I swear before God that what I have just
said I mean and will do. Now choose, Marston
Brent.”

“I choose—liberty,” said he, and without
another word, they parted, going by different
paths, down the mountain-side which they
had climbed, his arm about her waist, her
hand locked in his.