University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.
CAN THIS BE LOVE?

Meantime my intimacy with the Denmans had
been growing closer.

With me Mr. Denman laid aside his usual
manner, a mixture of reserve and uneasiness.
He forgot his preoccupations, and talked with
me frankly.

“If I had had a son, Byng,” said he, “I could
have wished him a young man like yourself. I
suppose you will not quarrel with me if I expend
a little fatherliness on you.”

I was touched by this kindness. My distrust
of him wore away. It is my nature to think
gently and tenderly of others. I was in those
relations with Mr. Denman where one sees the
better side of character. I shared his liberal
hospitality. I perceived that he did not love
wealth for itself, but as power; and that he used
this power often judiciously, always generously.
The vanity of exercising power, the mistake of
fancying himself a being of higher order than
men of lesser influence, he seemed to have outgrown.

And the power, with its duties attached,
he often found a weary burden. I saw him
a tired and saddened man, thankful for the freshening
friendship of his junior. I gave him mine
frankly.

Could such a man be called, as Churm had
harshly called him, the murderer of his daughter?
Surely not! I might believe him to have
erred in that business; I could not deem him
criminal. And, justifying him, I even did injustice
to the memory of the dead Clara. Who
knew what undiscovered or unpublished sorrowful
motive she might not have had for a suicide?
The dead have no friends to justify them.

But there was another reason for my favorable
judgment on Mr. Denman. I loved, or thought
I loved, or wished that I loved, his daughter.

Ever since my conversation with Cecil Dreeme,
I had encouraged this passion. I had seen Emma
Denman frequently, then constantly; it was now
every day.

Her fascination grew in power. There was a
certain effort in it; but what man disputes a
woman's right to make effort to please him?
With me her manner was anxious, and even agitated.
Other men, now that the blackness of
first mourning was past, began to be at the house.
Them she treated with civil indifference, or indifferent
cordiality, as they merited. With me she

seemed always eagerly striving that I should not
misapprehend her, always protesting against some
possibility of a false impression.

Ah! now that I look back upon it all, how I
pity her! No wonder that she grew thin and
worn! No wonder that her gayety often struck
me as forced or fantastic! When it did so
seem, I said to myself that she was determined
not to be crushed by that sad tragedy of her
sister's death. I did not dream that her eager
moods were tokens of the desperate struggle
she was making against the inevitable tragedy
of her own life.

Shall I go through all the history of the progress
of my passion? Shall I say how, day by
day, my sympathy for this motherless, sisterless
girl deepend, — how I sorrowed for her that,
amid all the splendor of her life, her heart was
sad and empty, and so the life a vain show?
how I, dreading what might be the fate of her
father's wealth, pleased myself with the thought
that, if disaster befell him, I could offer her the
home and the heart of a hopeful working-man?
Shall I re-edit such an old, old story, with the new
illustrations drawn from my own experience?

I shrink from the task of opening an ancient
wound.

I shrink, but yet I force myself to the anguish.

And time has changed that bygone grief into a

lesson. I must write. No matter how dark, the
story shall be told. Every man's precious or
costly experience belongs to every brother-man.
No man may be a miser of the sorrows by which
he has bought the power to be strong, to be
tender, to pardon the weak and the guilty. Perhaps
by some warning I here utter I may persuade
a young and hesitating soul to shudder
back from the brink of sin. Often a timely trifle
of a gentle word of admonition has struck a foully
fair temptation dead. I know how the recurring
fragrance of a flower that childhood loved, how
the far-away sound of breakers on a beach where
childhood wandered, how a weft of cloud, how
the leap of a sunbeam, how the sudden jubilant
carol of a bird, how a portrait of the pure Madonna
on the wall, how a chance line on an open
page, — how any such momentous trifle will save
a wavering soul from a treachery or a crime, —
will interpose an instant's check, and rescue the
life from a remorse, guarding it for a repentance.
Yes; whatever agony it costs me to revive
this old history, I do now, after its lesson is fully
thought out, of my sober judgment, revive it, —
let who will murmur, “Bad taste!” let who will
cry out, “Unhealthy!” let who will sigh, “Alas!
have we not our own griefs? why burden us
with yours?”

Did I, or not, love Emma Denman? Why

could I not determine this question? I had
my friends among men. Closest among these
was Cecil Dreeme; his friendship I deemed
more precious than the love of women. But
among women, no other, none, was at all so
charming to me as Emma.

She was to me far more beautiful than any
beauty, — infinitely more beautiful, always, than
any of those round, full, red beauties who are
steadily supplied to the city market, overt or
covert, for wives or mistresses to the men who
pay money for either, and have nothing but
money to give.

She was brilliant, frivolously brilliant perhaps;
but we pardon a dash of frivolity in a
young woman of fashion, all her life flattered
and caressed, and untrained by daily contact
with men of strong minds and women of strong
hearts.

Emma Denman stood just on the hither brink
of genius. It seemed that, if some magnificent
emotion, some heart-opening joy or grief, could
befall her, she would suddenly be promoted to
become herself, and that self a genius. If she
could be once in earnest, she would be a noble
woman. Such a character has a mighty charm
to a lover. He stirs himself with the thought
that his love may give the awakening touch;
that his passion may supply the ripening flame,
and win the bud to bloom.

In music, in art, in thought. I felt that
Emma Denman needed but one step to stand
on the heights among the inspired. She seemed
to feel this also, and to be always pleading tacitly
with me to give her the slight aid she needed.
She could not pass into the realms of the divine
liberty of genius, for some gossamer wall,
invisible to all but her, and against her strong
as adamant.

I was terrified sometimes by her keenness of
insight into bad motives, her comprehension of
the labyrinthine causes of bad acts. It is a perilous
knowledge. We must pay price for power.
How had she bought this unerring perception
of the laws of evil? How came she by this
aged possession in her first youth?

How? I quelled my uneasiness with the
thought that the sensitive touch of innocence
is warned away from poisoned blossoms by the
clammy airs that hang about them, and so recoils,
and will not pluck the flower or gather
the fruit. I said that the mere dread of evil
will instruct a virgin soul where are those paths
of evil it must shun. I said it is better to know
sin and shun it, than to half ignore and half
evade.

Since our first interview, our relations had
grown more and more intimate without check.
We named them brotherly and sisterly, as they

had been in our childish days. She claimed
the sister's privilege of presiding over my social
life, and aiding me to make a choice in love.

Miss Denman led me about the grand round
of society. She took me to see the belles for
beauty, the belles for money, the belles for wit,
the belles for magnetism, the belles for blood.
And all of them she drew out to show their most
attractive side, in fact, their better and more
genuine nature. She persuaded each to reveal
that the belle had not addled the woman.

And then she wondered that she could not
persuade me to fall in love with one of these
ladies.

I could not, of course, if only because her
process made her appear superior to them all.
I admired the kindliness with which she strove
to put sparkle into the stupid girls, to dignify
the trifling, to refine the vulgar, — and the
teacher was to me an infinitely finer being than
her scholars ever could become.

And so I told her, — but never yet with the
words of a lover.

And so she insisted I should not think, — not
craftily and with systematic coquetry. No, poor
child! Ah, no! I acquit her of all such slight
wiles and surface hypocrisy. But how could I
know that she was sincerely striving to save us
both from the tragedy of a mutual love?

And did I love her? The question implied a
doubt, where there should be only undoubting
conviction and compelling impulse.

Why doubt, Robert Byng?

There was surely no other affection in my
heart that I was playing false. Surely none.
My heart was free from any love of woman.

And my doubt was based upon a suspicion.

A suspicion! of what?

If I at all stated to myself, however faintly,
what, it seemed to me such disloyalty that I despised
myself for entertaining the unwholesome
thought.

“You are not fit,” I said, “for the society of a
pure woman! Densdeth has spoilt you.”

Thus I trained my affection the more tenderly
for its weakness. Thus, ignorant and rejecting
the sure law of nature, I strove to create the
uncreatable, to construct what should have come
into being and grown strong without interference,
even without consciousness of mine. Thus I
began to deem the sentiment I was manufacturing
out of ruth and a loyal intention, as genuine,
heart-felt love.

Bitter error! And to be punished bitterly!