 | CHAPTER XXXV.
THE SECOND CHANCE. Outpost |  |
35. CHAPTER XXXV.
THE SECOND CHANCE.
Reining up her horse under the shadow of a clump of
trees, Dora waited, as her cousin had requested, for his
return; and so much pre-occupied was she with her own
thoughts, that she failed to hear the quick footfalls of an
approaching horse, until his rider slackened speed beside
her, and Dora, looking up, saw that it was Mr. Brown.
She grew a little pale, divining, not only from the presence
of the chaplain, but from a joyous and significant light in the
eyes that encountered hers, what might be his errand; and
though she had not failed to foresee this moment, no man,
and surely no woman, is ever so prepared for the great
crises of life that they fail to come at the last with almost as
much of a shock as if they came quite unawares.
She turned her horse into the track, and rode on, her eyes
fixed upon the wide prairie-view, which seemed to dance
and shimmer before them as if all Nature had suddenly
grown as strange and unreal as she felt herself.
Her companion spoke, and in her ears his voice sounded
as from some far mountain-cave, hollow, broken, and vague;
and yet the words were far from momentous.
“Dora, I must leave you to-morrow.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” faltered Dora; and Mr. Brown,
glancing at her face, could not but notice its unwonted
agitation. His own wishes, and his sex, led him to misconstrue
it; and, pressing his horse closer to her side, he said
joyfully, —
“And so am I sorry, Dora; but I need not be gone long
if you wish for my return.”
Dora did not speak; indeed, she could not: for the wild
dance of sky and plain, of prairie and forest, grew yet
wilder; and in her ears the voice of the chaplain mingled
with a dizzy hum that almost drowned the words. She
grasped the horn of her saddle with both hands, and only
thought of saving herself from falling. The horse was
halted, an arm was about her waist, her head drawn to a
resting-place upon a steady shoulder; and that strange, far-off
voice murmured, —
“My darling, my long-loved, long-sought treasure, calm
yourself; be happy and secure in my love. Did you ever
doubt that it was yours?”
He stooped to kiss her: but, at the motion, the virginal
instincts of the young girl's nature rallied to the defence;
and, with a sudden spring, Dora sat upright, her face very
pale, but her eyes clear and steadfast as their wont.
“Oh, sir, indeed you must not!” cried she, as pleadingly
as a little child, who will not be caressed, yet knows not
why he should refuse.
“Must not, Dora?” persisted the lover gayly. “But why
must I not kiss my own betrothed?”
“But I am not; I cannot be. Don't be angry, sir: I
would have spoken sooner; but I could not. I believe I
was a little faint;” and Dora's eyes timidly sought those
of the chaplain, who, meeting them, remembered many such
a glance when his pupil had feared to displease him by
inattention or disobedience. Again he thought to have
discovered the source of her refusal, and again he failed.
“Dora,” said he grently, “you do not forget, that, some
years ago, we bore the relation of master and pupil; and
you still regard me with a certain deference and reserve,
which, perhaps, blinds you to the true relation existing
between us now. Remember, dear, that I am yet a young
man; and although my profession may have induced a
certain gravity of manner, contrasting, perhaps unpleasantly,
than all, of his fervency of feeling; far more, I trust, of
depth and steadfastness in my love for you.”
“Please, Mr. Brown,” interposed Dora, “do not let us
say any thing about Karl. He is not concerned in this.”
“You are right, Dora, and I was wrong,” said Mr.
Brown with a little effort of magnanimity. “But I was
only trying to convince you that my love is quite as ardent,
and quite as tender, as that of a younger and gayer man
could be.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dora timidly, as he paused for her
assent.
“Not `Yes, sir,' child!” exclaimed the chaplain impatiently.
“Don't treat me with this distant respect and
timid reverence. I am your lover, your would-be comrade
through life, as once through the less earnest battles of
war. Call me Frank, and look into my face and smile as
I have seen you smile on Karl.”
A quick smile dimpled Dora's cheek, and passed.
“Not Karl, please, sir.”
“Dora, if you say `sir' to me again, I'll kiss you.”
“Please not, Mr. Brown,” said Dora demurely, “until
you quite understand me.”
“Well, then, let me quite understand you very quick; for
I think I shall exact the penalty, even without further
offence.”
“But I cannot promise, — I cannot be what you said,”
stammered Dora, half terrified, half confused.
“Nay, darling, — I am going to always call you that,
as expressive both of name and nature, — it is you who do not
quite understand either yourself or me. I do not expect, or
even wish, you to profess a love for me as ardent, open,
and pronounced as my own: that were to make you other
than the modest and delicately reserved maiden I have
loved so long. All I ask you to feel is, that you can trust
yourself to my guidance through life; that you can place
your future in my hands, believing me capable of shaping
it aright; that you can promise to tread with me the path
I have selected, sure that it shall be my care to remove
from it all thorns, all obstacles that mortal power may
control, and that my arms shall bear you tenderly over the
rough places I cannot make smooth for you.
“Dora, years ago I resolved that you should be my wife,
God and you consenting. I have waited until I thought
you old enough to decide calmly and wisely; but, through
these years of waiting, I have cherished a hope, almost a
very foundations of my life. You will not tear it away!
Dora, you do not know me: you cannot guess at the
ardor or the power of a love I have never dared wholly to
reveal even to myself. Trust it, Dora: it cannot but make
you happy. Give yourself to me, dear child; and I will
account to God for the precious charge.”
Never man was more in earnest, never was wooing at
once so fervent and so lofty in its tone; and so Dora felt it.
The temptation to yield, without further struggle, to the
belief that Mr. Brown knew better what was good for her
than she knew for herself, was very great; but, even while
she hesitated, the inherent truthfulness of her nature rose
up, and cried, “No, no! you shall not do such wrong to
me who am the Right!” and turning, with an effort, to
meet the keen eyes reading her face, she said, still timidly
perhaps, but very calmly, —
“I am but a simple girl, almost a child in some things,
and you are a wise and good man, learned in books and in
the way of the world; but I must judge for myself, and
must believe my own heart sooner than you in such matters
as these. Years ago, as you say, I was your pupil, and
you then nobly offered to adopt me as your child or sister.”
“As my future wife, Dora. I meant it from the very
first,” interposed the chaplain impetuously.
“I did not know that: perhaps it makes a difference
But, at any rate, I promised then, that if I went home with
Capt. Karl, and you wanted me afterward, I would come
to you whenever you said so.”
“Yes, yes; that is quite true: well?” demanded Mr.
Brown eagerly.
“Well, sir, a promise is a promise; and, if you demand
it now, I will come and live with you, or you can come and
live with me, — not as your wife, however, but as your sister
and child and friend.”
“You will come and live with me, but not marry me!”
exclaimed the young man, with a gleam of amusement at
the unworldly proposal lighting his dark eyes.
“Yes, sir,” replied Dora, without looking up.
To her infinite astonishment and dismay, she found herself
suddenly embraced, and a hearty kiss tingling upon her
lips.
“I am sorry if you don't like it, Dora; but I said I
would if you called me `sir' again; and you are so scrupulous
about your promises, you cannot wish me to break
mine.”
“Then I am afraid I must promise, if you do so again.
to go back and ride with Kitty all the rest of the way,”
said Dora, as, with heightened color and a decided pout,
she drew her left-hand rein so sharply as to wheel Max to
the other side of the road.
“Dora, I am afraid you are a little of a coquette, after
all!” exclaimed the lover, gazing at her with admiration.
“Oh, no indeed, Mr. Brown! I wouldn't be for the
world! I said just what I meant to you. I always do.”
“But why, then, if you love me well enough to live with
me as sister, child, or friend, can't you also live with me as
wife?”
“Because, sir, — oh, no! I didn't mean sir, — because”
—
“Frank, I told you to call me.”
“Because, Frank, I don't love you that way.”
The answer was so explicit, so unembarrassed, and so
quiet, that, for the first time, Mr. Brown believed it.
“Not love me, Dora, when I love you so much!” exclaimed
he in dismay.
“Not love you in a wife way, Frank, but a great deal in
every other way. And then I don't think we should be
happy together if we were married.”
“And why not?” asked the young man, smiling in spite
of himself at the quiet opinion.
“Because, as you said, you want me to put my life into
your hands, and you will shape it; and you want me to set
my feet in your path, and follow it with you; and you want
me to trust my soul to you, and you will guide it: but I
could never do that, Mr. Brown; never for any man, I think.
I could never forget that God has given me a life, and a
path, and a soul, all my own, and not to be judged except
by Him and myself: and I am afraid I should always be
asking if your guiding was in the same direction that I was
meant to go; and, if I thought it was not, I should be very
unhappy, and should try to live my own life, and not yours;
and that would make trouble.”
“Yes, that would make trouble certainly, Dora,” said
the chaplain gravely. “But are you sure that a young
and comparatively unlearned woman like yourself would
be a better judge of what was right and best than a man
of mature years, who has made the care of souls his profession
and most earnest duty?”
“No, Mr. Brown, not if I judged for myself: but I think
God has especial care of those, who, like me, have none
else to guide them; and I think this voice in my heart is
the surest teaching of all.”
The profound conviction of her tone was final; the
simple faith of her argument was unassailable: and Mr.
Brown, skilful polemic that he was, found himself silenced.
After a moment, he said calmly, —
“Dora, you will not forget that this is, to me at least, a
very serious, indeed a vital matter. Is what you have just
said the solemn conviction of your own heart? or have you
suffered yourself to be misled by the tendency to self-esteem
and perverseness I have sometimes had occasion to reprove
in you? Have you thoroughly searched your own heart to
its deepest depths? and is not your refusal tinctured by the
natural reluctance of a determined nature to yield to a love,
which, in woman, must bring with it some degree of dependence
and deference?”
He looked almost severely into the pale face and earnest
eyes upraised to his, and read there pain, anxiety, an
humble appeal, but not one trace of hesitation, not one
shade of duplicity.
“I have searched my own heart, Mr. Brown; and I am
sure of its answer. I never, never, can be your wife, so
long as we both live.”
“That is sufficient, Dora. I am rightly punished for
building my hopes and my happiness upon the sandy foundations
desolate; but, among the ruins, I yet can say, `It is rightly
and justly done.”'
The bitter pain in his voice pierced to Dora's very heart,
and wounded it almost as sorely as she had wounded his.
The rare tears overflowed her eyes; and, pressing close to
his side, she laid a hand upon his own, saying, —
“Oh, forgive me! — say you forgive me! Indeed, I
must do and say what conscience bids me, at all cost.”
“It is not for me to gainsay such a precept as that,” said
the chaplain.
“But I will come to you, and live as long as you want
me. I will be every thing but wife. Say I may do this,
or I shall never forgive myself. Say I may make some
amends for the pain I have given you.”
The young man laughed bitterly, then, turning suddenly,
seized both her hands, and looked deep into her eyes.
“My poor child,” cried he, “my innocent lamb, who
turns from the shepherd because she will not be guided,
and yet is all unfit to guide herself! Do not even you,
Dora, guileless and unworldly as you are, see how impossible
it would be for a young and beautiful girl to live with
a man who admires and loves her openly, without such
they saved their own souls unspotted?”
Dora snatched away her hands, and her whole face
flamed with a sudden shame.
She was learning fast to-day in the book of human
passion, suffering, and sin.
Without comment upon her embarrassment, the chaplain
went on: —
“No, Dora: I must lay aside the dream of four sweet
years, and take up my lonely life without disguise or
embellishment. I cannot dispute your decision. I will
not by one word or look urge you to change it; for I too
deeply respect the truthfulness of your character to dream
that it is capable of change. I do not say that I forgive
you, for you have done nothing calling for forgiveness; and
yet, if your tender heart should suffer in thinking of my
suffering, remember always that what you have to-day
said has increased my respect and esteem for you fourfold:
and, if it has also added to the bitterness of my disappointment,
I will not have you reproach yourself; for I would
rather reverence you as the wife of another than to claim
you as my own, and know you untrue to yourself. And
now, dear, the subject is closed utterly and forever.”
| CHAPTER XXXV.
THE SECOND CHANCE. Outpost | |