University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXX.
BEATRICE LOSES HER FRIEND.

The rain continued all night, and by morning
the roads had become so bad that Aaron
Bunce decided that the risk to his horse's
legs and the integrity of his coach was greater
than any hope of gain in prosecuting his
usual journey, and therefore remained quietly
at home. Whether Mr. Manckton would
have gone with him had he driven to Bloom
remains an open question; but at all events,
he acquiesced very amiably in the necessity
of remaining at Milvor, and divided his time
through the day between fireside conversations
with the old people, good-humored aid
to Miss Barstow, who pervaded the house like
a revolution, setting right the wrongs of the
past, at expense of the peace of the present,
and unobtrusive watchfulness of Beatrice,
who went languidly about her various duties,
and alternated in her mood between fictitious
gayety and undisguised depression.

In the evening twilight, he saw her steal
softly into the empty parlor, and as quietly
followed her.

Beatrice looked round at the opening door
with obvious annoyance.

Monckton quietly approached, and seated
himself upon the sofa beside her.

“I know that you came here to be alone,
and that you regard my presence as an intrusion,”
said he. “But you will remember that

I told you yesterday, I wished to see you for a
few moments alone, and this, my first opportunity,
will probably be my last, as I leave
Milvor early in the morning.”

“We shall be very sorry to lose you,” murmured
Beatrice, courteous amid all the suffering
she controlled so painfully.

“Thanks. You reproached me bitterly a
little while ago, Beatrice, for want of candor
to you, who have a right, as my intimate
friend, to claim my utmost truth. Now, you
will be tempted to reproach me for over-much
candor, and meddling with affairs which are
not for the touch of any hand save your own.
Shall I speak, or may I keep silence, and yet
preserve our compact of perfect sincerity?”

“Speak,” whispered Beatrice, averting her
head.

“Well, then, I heard that woman's words.
I heard that Marston Brent, in his forest solitudes,
is training to his own liking a wife to
take the place of a lost love, and that this
lost love is no longer regretted. Now, tell
me, Beatrice—that is, if you will—was this
report the blow that prostrated you so suddenly
yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Then you still love this Marston Brent?”

“No.”

“Forgive me if I trespass, but I wish to
help you. This report may be false—very
possibly it is; at any rate, before you fully
credit it, allow me to go and ascertain the
facts. Will you?”

“What, go to Wahtahree? It is five hundred
miles from here.”

“If it were five thousand, I would go, if,
by going, I could set your heart at rest.”

“Then friendship is something better worth
than love.”

“That is another question, and, besides, you
overrate my offer. Travelling is my profession,
and I have been quiet too long. Shall I
go to Wahtahree?”

“No, not for me.”

“But why do you refuse?”

“I do not wish news of Marston Brent.”

“But you believe this old wives' tale, and it
distresses you.”

“I believe it, and I am indifferent to it.”

“Indifference does not show like this.”

“Mr. Monckton, your inquisition partakes
of the nature of torture. You have passed
the question ordinary, and reached the question
extraordinary.”

“You shall not discourage me by a petulance
that arises from overwrought nerves.
I wish to serve you, even in your own despite.
Is it to be done by clearing away this cloud between
you and Marston Brent?”

“No, a thousand times no. Were this story
proved the most baseless fiction, you can
bring us no nearer together. We are separated
forever.”

“By your will, or his, or circumstance?”

“Both—all—every thing. Must I tell you
the whole story before you will let me rest?
Six months ago, we two were compelled to
settle our future paths through life; he asked
me to follow his—I bid him follow mine; both
refused, and so we separated, and every step
since has led us farther apart. Stop, I have
not told you the greatest final barrier: I, setting
forth alone, would have faltered and
turned back to join him; and he—he bid me
hold to my determination, and respect my
own word, or he should cease to respect me.
What more can be said between us? The
shock of hearing that he loved another woman,
and already made himself happy with her,
was, as you too clearly perceived, a severe
one; but it is over now, and it has never for
one moment meant regret—that is, not a regret
that softens my resolution never to yield one
half inch to any temptation such as you place
before me.”

“The temptation to recall yourself to his
mind?”

“Yes, or to recall him to mine. All I desire
is to place an impassable barrier between
those days and these — to forget Marston
Brent and the life we lived together—to blot
out the past.”

Monckton rose and paced the dusky room
up and down, his arms folded, his head bent
upon his breast. Beatrice, watching his lithe
figure and dark face, passing and re-passing—
now shrouded in the gloom filling the farther
end of the apartment, now showing in the
gray light near the windows—thought of that
maniac ancestor of hers who, not yet mad
enough to wear the fetters, whose scar she
had so often traced upon the beam in the east
parlor, may thus have paced the gloomy twilight
rooms, fighting down the crowd of visionary
enemies who, at the last, conquered
him.

“I wonder if I shall go mad too,” whispered
she, shivering down in the corner of
the great sofa.

Just then, Monckton paused before her.

“Beatrice, I have turned coward all at once.
I wish to speak to you, and I dare not,” said
he.

“Afraid of me! Your friend, as you have
liked to call me!”

“It is just because I have called you so,
and because you have for that name's sake
given me your confidence, and showed me
the wound you hide from others—just for that
reason, I dread to speak.”

“What can you mean?”

“I fear lest you should call me false to my
own professions, lest you should deem me a
traitor, who, having the key of the treasure-casket
given him, uses it to possess himself of
the jewels he was sworn to guard. Beatrice,
you have granted me your friendship, and
from that fair height I see the Paradise of
your love, and, man-like, I wish to attain the
best. Have you one word of hope for me?”

But Beatrice, spreading both hands before
her, as to ward off a blow, could only cry:

“No, no, no! Do not say it, do not think
it! Must I lose you too?”

“Beatrice, you said you desired only to place
an impassable barrier between yourself and
Brent, to prove to him that you have forgotten
him, as he you. How could you do this more
surely than by marriage?”

“No, a thousand times no. You were right,
Mr. Monckton, when you feared to make this
proposition to me, and I was weaker than
weak to believe that any man is capable
of a pure and disinterested friendship. Oh!
why could not you have been content? for already
I was turning to this friendship as my
comfort and my refuge against utter desolation.
I believed in you, and you have deceived
me.”

“I deceived myself as well, for until within
this last four-and-twenty hours I believed as
fully as yourself that my feeling was one of
purest friendship. Your distress, your helplessness,
your unmerited mortification changed
every thing at a blow.”

“And I have lost my friend, and gained
nothing in his place.”

“If you would accept him, you have gained
a true and tender lover in his place.”

“I do not want your love, Mr. Monckton—I
have none to give in place of it, no room for
it in my heart. I asked you for bread and
water, and you offer me spices and wine.”

“I have committed a great mistake, and I
felt it to be such even while yielding to the
temptation,” said Monckton bitterly. “And
yet, God knows, Beatrice, I never intended to
deceive you.”

“Well, well, it is of small importance now.
All is alike wearisome and disheartening.
Let all pass together.”

And Beatrice, with a gesture of sullen despair,
turned her face toward the pillow, shutting
out sight and sound, and, if she might,
all-memory of the world whose fair fruit had
already turned to ashes upon her lips.

Monckton stood looking at her, the vast
pity in his heart gradually absorbing the mortification
he had endured, and even the disappointment
of his love. Then he said:

“Beatrice, forget this hour. Fancy that,
sleeping here in the dusky room, you have
dreamed a dream, and, waking, smile and let
it pass. Look upon me with the coming daylight
as your firm, fast friend, steadfast for the
future against even the tempting of his own
heart, and true to you through all the chances
of both our lives. Beatrice, will you do this?”

“How can I, how can I? How shall I forget,
or, remembering, how shall I trust myself
not to recall these feelings which you
banish now? I should be afraid to speak
or look or behave toward you with the unguarded
confidence that friendship should
permit. I never could be sure that you forget.
I never could forget myself.”

“Oh! fool that I was, and traitor—not to you
alone, but to the whole tenor of my life!” exclaimed
Monckton bitterly. “What had I
to do with woman's love, and the tender hope
and peace that make gardens in the desert of
other men's lives? Have I not known it and
felt it since consciousness began, and from that
day to this have cheated fate by denying my
heart all interest in man or woman? And
now, one moment of weakness has destroyed
the care of years; for, Beatrice, I shall not forget
you, I shall not cease to love you while I
live.”

“Stay! Where are you going? What do
you mean?” exclaimed Beatrice, as Monckton
turned abruptly from her side.

“I am going to leave you for the moment.
To-morrow, I return to the city, and from
thence I go — where the wind goes. Good-by.”

“No, no, I cannot bid you good-by thus.
I did not know that you felt so deeply, so
bitterly—”

“Child, do you think a man, in the vigor of
his manhood, uncloses his grasp of the one
thing he prizes on earth as easily as a girl
drops a withered flower? Because this love
of mine is the idlest of all follies, it is none
the less a real thing to me, and the heart
that has never been touched until now will
not heal easily over its wound.”

“But wait one moment. You said but now
that you would forget it, that you would return
to yesterday, and be again my true, calm
friend, and nothing more. If that were possible!”

“It is not. The effort would be a fresh
treachery, and would end as this has done. I
might hide the true feeling for months, for
years perhaps, but it would always be there,
and some day the volcano would burst forth
afresh. I am glad your eyes were clear
enough to read the proposition rightly.”

“Then I have lost my friend, as before I
lost my love, and now must set my face toward
the end, unguided, unaided, alone.”

“Hush, for God's sake, hush! You bring
my selfish folly too hideously to light. Had
I contented myself with friendship, you never
need have uttered that lament. O Beatrice!
try to forgive me, for I never can forgive myself.”

He hastened from her presence, and Beatrice,
alone in the darkness and the gloom, fell upon
her knees crying: “God help me! God help
me, for I have no other friend!”