University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
THE TEMPTATION.

THE same mail brought them a long bill from
Mr. Hard, accompanied with a very polite but
decisive note saying that it was his custom to have
a monthly settlement with his customers.

The rest of the family looked with new dismay
and helplessness at this, and Edith added bitterly,

“There are half a dozen other bills also.”

“What can we do?” again Mrs. Allen cried
piteously. “If you girls had only accepted some of
your splendid offers—”

“Hush, mother,” said Edith imperiously. “I
have heard that refrain too often already,” and the
resolute practical girl went to her room and shut
herself up to think.

Two hours later she came down to lunch with
the determined air of one who had come to a conclusion.

“These bills must be met or in part at least,”
she said, “and the sooner the better. After that
we must buy no more than we can pay for, if it's
only a crust of bread. I shall take the first train
to-morrow, and dispose of some of my jewelry.
Who of you will contribute some also? We all
have more than we shall ever need.”

“Pawn our jewelry!” they all shrieked.

“No, sell it,” said Edith firmly.

“You hateful creature,” sobbed Zell, “if Mr.
Van Dam heard it he would never come near me
again.”

“If he's that kind of a man, he had better not,”
was the sharp retort.

“I'll never forgive you, if you do it. You shall
not spoil all my chances and your own too. He as
good as offered himself to me, and I insist on your
giving me a chance to write to him before you take
one of your mad steps.”

They all clamored against her purpose so strongly
that Edith was borne down and reluctantly gave
way. Zell wrote immediately a touching pathetic
letter that would have moved a man of one knightly
instinct to come to her rescue. Van Dam read
it with a look of fiendish exultation, and calling on
Gus, said,—

“We will go up to-morrow. The right time
has come. They won't be nice as to terms any
longer.”

It was an unfortunate thing for Edith that she
had yielded at this time to the policy of waiting
one hour longer. In the two days that intervened
before the young men appeared there was time for
that kind of thought that tempts and weakens.
She was in that most dangerous attitude of irresolution.
The toilsome path of independent labor
looked very hard and thorny—more than that it
looked lonely. This latter aspect causes multitudes

to shrink, where the work would not. She knew
enough of society to feel sure that her mother was
right, and that the moment she entered on bread
winning by any form of honest labor, her old fashionable
world was lost to her forever. And she
knew of no other world, she had no other friends
save those of the gilded past. She did not with
her healthful frame and energetic spirit, shrink so
much from labor as from association with the laboring
classes. She had been educated to think
of them only as coarse and common, and make no
distinctions.

“Even if a few are good and intelligent as these
Laceys seem, they can't understand my feelings and
past life, so there will be no congeniality, and I
shall have to work practically alone. Perhaps in
time I shall become coarse and common like the
rest,” she said with a half shudder at the thought
of old fashioned garb, slipshod dressing, and long
monotonous hours at one thing. All these were
inseparable in her mind from poverty and labor.

Then after a long silence, during which she had
sat with her chin resting on her hands, she continued,—

“I believe I could stand it if I could earn a
support out of the garden with such a man as
Malcom to help me. There is variety and beauty
there, and scope for constant improvement. But
I fear a woman can't make a livelihood by such out
of door, man-like work. Good heavens! what will
my Fifth Avenue friends say if it should get to their

ears that Edith Allen is raising cabbage for market.”

Then in contrast, as the alternative to labor,
Gus Elliot continually presented himself.

“If he were only more of a man,” she thought,
“but if he loves so well as to marry me in view of
my poverty, he must have some true manhood
about him. I suppose I could learn to love him
after a fashion, and I certainly like him as well as
any one I know. Perhaps if I was with him to
cheer, incite and scold, he might become a fair
business man after all.”

And so Edith in her helplessness and fear of
work was tempted to enter on that forlorn experiment
which so many energetic women of decided
character have made—that of marrying a man who
can't stand alone, or do anything but dawdle, in
the hope they may be able to infuse some of their
own moral and intellectual backbone.

But Gus Elliot was not man enough, had not
sense enough, to give her this poor chance of
matrimonial escape from labor that seemed to her
like a giant taskmaster, waiting with grimy, horny
hand to claim her as another of his innumerable
slaves. Though a life of lonely, ill-paid toil would
have been better for Edith, than marriage to Gus,
he was missing the one golden opportunity of his
life, when he thought of Edith Allen in other character
than his wife. God uses instruments, and
she alone could give him a chance of being a man

among men. In his meditated baseness toward her,
he aimed a fatal blow at his own life.

And this is ever true of sins against the human
brotherhood. The recoil of a blow struck at
another's interests, has often the vengeful wrath of
heaven in it, and the selfish soul that would destroy
a fellow-creature for its own pleasure, is itself
destroyed.

False pride, false education, helpless unskilled
hands, an untaught, unbraced moral nature, made
strong, resolute, beautiful Edith Allen so weak, so
untrue to herself, that she was ready to throw herself
away on so thin a shadow of a man as Gus Elliot.
She might have known, indeed she half
feared that wretchedness would follow such a union.
It is torment to a large strong-souled woman to
utterly despise the man to whom she is chained.
His weakness and irresolution nauseates her, and
the probabilities are that she will sink into that
worst phase of feminine drudgery, the supporting
of a husband, who though able, will not work, and
become that social monster, of whom it is said with
significant laugh,—

“She is the man of the house.”

The only thing that reconciled her to the
thought of marrying Gus was the hope that she
could inspire him to better things and he seemed
the only refuge from the pressing troubles that environed
her and a lonely life of labor; for the
thought that she could bring herself to marry among
the laboring classes had never occurred to her.

So she came to the miserable conclusion on the
afternoon of the second day,

“I'll take him if he will me, knowing how I am
situated.”—

If Gus could have been true and manly one
evening he might have secured a prop that would
have kept him up though it would have been at
sad cost to Edith.

On the afternoon of Friday, Zell returned from
the village with radiant face, and waving a letter
before Edith where she sat moping in her room,
exclaimed with a thrill of ecstacy in her tone,—

“They are coming. Help make me irresistible.”

Edith felt the contagion of Zell's excitement,
and the mysteries of the toilet commenced. Nature
had done much for these girls, and they knew
how to further every charm by art. Edith good-naturedly
helped her sister, weaving the pure shimmering
pearls in the dark heavy braids of her hair,
and arranging all about the fair face that needed no
cosmetics. The toilet-table of a queen had not
the secrets of Zell's beauty, for the most skilful art
must deal with the surface, while Zell's loveliness
glowed from within. Her rich young blood mantled
her cheek with a color that came and went
with her passing thoughts, and was as unlike the
flaming unchanging red of a painted face, as sun-light
that flickers through a breezy grove differs
from a gas-jet. Her eyes glowed with the deep excitement
of a passionate love and the feeling that
the crisis of her life was near. Even Edith gazed

with wondering admiration at her beauty, as she
gave the finishing touches to her toilet, before she
commenced her own.

Discarded Laura had a sorry part in the poor
little play. She was to be ill and unable to appear,
and so resigned herself to a novel and solitude.
Mrs. Allen was to discreetly have a headache and
retire early, and thus all embarrassing third parties
should be kept out of the way.

The late afternoon of Friday (unlucky day for
once) brought the gentlemen, dressed as exquisitely
as ever, but the visions on the rustic little porch
almost dazzled even their experienced eyes. They
had seen these girls more richly dressed before and
more radiant. Indeed there was a delicious
pensiveness hanging over them now, like those delicate
veils that enhance beauty and conceal nothing.
And there was a deep undertone of excitement
that gave them a magnetic power that they
could not have in quieter moods.

Their appearance and manner of greeting caused
secret exultation in the black hearts that they
expected would be offered to them that night, but
Edith looked so noble as well as beautiful, that
Gus rather trembled in view of his part in the proposed
tragedy. As warm and gentle as had been
her greeting, she did not appear like a girl that
could be safely trifled with. However, Gus knew
his one source of courage and kept up on brandy
all day, and he proposed a heavier onslaught than
ever on poor Mrs. Allen's wine. But Edith did

not bring it out. She meant that all that was said
that night should be spoken in sober earnest.

They sat down to cards for a while after tea,
during which conversation was rather forced, consisting
mainly of extravagant compliments from
the gentlemen, and tender, meaning glances which
the girls did not resent. Mrs. Allen languidly
joined them for a while, and excused herself saying,—

“Her poor head had been too heavily taxed
of late,” though how, save as a small distillery of
helpless tears, we do not remember.

The regret of the young men at being deprived
of her society was quite affecting in view of
the fact that they had often wished her dead and
out of the way.

“Why should we shut ourselves up within
walls this lovely spring evening, this delicious earnest
of the coming summer,” said Mr. Van Dam to
Zell, “Come, put on your shawl and show me your
garden by moonlight.”

Zell exultingly complied, believing that now
she would show him, not their poor little garden,
but the paradise of requited love. A moment later
her graceful form, bending like a willow toward
him, vanished in the dusky light of the rising
moon, down the garden path which led to the little
arbor.

Gus having the parlor to himself, went over to
the sofa, seated himself by the side of Edith and
sought to pass his arm around her waist.

“You have no right,” again said Edith with
dignity, shrinking away.

“But will you not give the right? Behold me
a suppliant at your feet,” said Gus tenderly, but
comfortably keeping his seat.

“Mr. Elliot,” said Edith earnestly, “do you realize
that you are asking a poor girl to marry you?”

“Your own beautiful self is beyond all gold,”
said Gus gushingly.

“You did not think so a month ago,” retorted
Edith bitterly.

“I was a fool. My friends discouraged it, but
I find I cannot live without you.”

This sounded well to poor Edith, but she said
half sadly,—

“Perhaps your friends are right. You cannot
afford to marry me.”

“But I cannot give you up,” said Gus with
much show of feeling. “What would my life be
without you?” I admit to you that my friends are
opposed to my marriage, but am I to blight my life
for them? Am I, who have seen the best of New
York for years, to give up the loveliest girl I have
ever seen in it? I cannot and I will not,” concluded
Gus tragically.

“And are you willing to give up all for me?”
said Edith feelingly, her glorious eyes becoming
gentle and tender.

“Yes, if you will give up all for me,” said Gus
languishingly, taking her hand and drawing her
toward him.

Edith did not resist now, but leaned her head
on his shoulder with the blessed sense of rest and
at least partial security. Her cruelly harassed
heart and burdened, threatened life could welcome
even such poor shelter as Gus Elliot offered.
The spring evening was mild and breathless and
its hush and peace seemed to accord with her
feelings. There was no ecstatic thrilling of her
heart in the divine rapture of mutual and open
recognition of love, for no such love existed on
her part. It was only a languid feeling of contentment,
moon-lighted with sentiment, not sun-lighted
with joy, that she had found some one
who would not leave her to labor and struggle
alone.

“Gus,” she said pathetically, “we are very poor,
we have nothing. We are almost desperate from
want. Think twice ere you engage yourself to a
girl so situated. Are you able to thus burden
yourself?”

Gus thought these words led the way to the
carrying out of Van Dam's instructions, for he said
eagerly,—

“I know how you are situated. I learned all
from Zell's letter to Van Dam, but our hearts only
cling the closer to you, and you must let me take
care of you at once. If you will only consent to a
secret marriage I can manage it.”

Edith slowly raised her head from his shoulder.
Gus could not meet her eyes, but felt them searchingly
on his face. There was a distant mutter of

thunder like a warning voice. He continued hurriedly,—

“I think you will agree with me that such a
marriage would be best when you think of it. It
would be hard for me to break with my family at
once. Indeed I could not afford to anger my father
now. But I would soon get established in business
myself, and I would work so hard if I knew that
you were dependent on me.”

“Then you would wish me to remain here
in obscurity your wife,” said Edith in a low constrained
tone that Gus did not quite like.

“Oh, no, not for the world,” replied Gus hurriedly.
“It is because I so long for your daily and
hourly presence that I urge you to come to the
city at once.”

“What is your plan then?” asked Edith in the
same low tone.

“Go with me to the city, on the boat that
passes here in the evening. I will see that you are
lodged where you will have every comfort, yes
luxury. We can there be quietly married, and
when the right time comes, we can openly acknowledge
it.”

There was a tremble in Edith's voice when she
again spoke, it might be from feeling, mere excitement,
or anger. At any rate Gus grew more and
more uncomfortable. He had a vague feeling that
Edith suspected his falseness, and that her seeming
calmness might presage a storm, and he found
it impossible to meet her full searching gaze,

fearing that his face would betray him. He was
bad enough for his project, but not quite brazen
enough.

She detached herself from his encircling arm,
went to a book-stand near and took from it a richly
bound Bible. With this she came and stood before
Gus who was half trembling with fear and perplexity,
and said in a tone so grave and solemn, that
his weak impressible nature was deeply moved,—

“Mr. Elliot, perhaps I do not understand you.
I have received several offers before, but never one
like yours this evening. Indeed I need not remind
you that you have spoken to me in a different
vein. I know circumstances have greatly
altered with me. That I am no longer the
daughter of a millionaire, I am learning to my sorrow,
but I am the same Edith Allen that you knew
of old. I would not like to misjudge you, one of
my oldest, most intimate friends of the happy past.
And yet, as I have said, I do not quite understand
your offer. Place your hand on this sacred book
with me, and as you hope for God's mercy, answer
me this truly. Would you wish your own sister to
accept such an offer, if she were situated like myself?
Look me, an honest girl with all my faults
and poverty, in the face, and tell me as a true
brother.”

Gus felt himself in an awful dilemma. Something
in Edith's solemn tone and manner convinced
him that both he and Van Dam had misjudged
her. His knees so trembled that he could scarcely

rise. A fascination that he could not resist drew
his face, stamped with guilt, toward her, and slowly
he raised his fearful eyes and for a moment met
Edith's searching, questioning gaze, then dropped
them in confusion.

“Why do you not put your hand on the book
and speak?” she asked in the low concentrated
voice of passion.

Again he looked hurriedly at her. A flash of
lightning illumined her features, and he quailed
before an expression such as he had never seen before
on any woman's face.

“I—I—cannot,” he faltered.

The Bible dropped from her hands, they clasped,
and for a moment she seemed to writhe in agony,
and in a low shuddering tone she said,—

“There are none to trust—not one.”

Then as if possessed by a sudden fury, she seized
him roughly by the arm and said hoarsely,—

“Speak, man, what then did you mean? What
have all your tender speeches and caressing actions
meant?”

Her face grew livid with rage and shame as the
truth dawned upon her, while poor feeble Gus lost
his poise utterly and stood like a detected criminal
before her.

“You asked me to marry you,” she hissed.
“Must no one ask your immaculate sisters to do
this, that you could not answer my simple question?
Or, did you mean something else? How
dare you exist longer in the semblance of a man?

You have broken the sacred law of hospitality, and
here in my little home that has sheltered you, you
purpose my destruction. You take mean advantage
of my poverty and trouble, and like a cowardly
hunter must seek out a wounded doe as your
game. My grief and misfortune should have made
a sanctuary about me, but the orphaned and unfortunate,
God's trust to all true men, only invite
your evil designs, because defenceless. Wretch,
would you have made me this offer if my father
had lived, or if I had a brother?”

“It's all Van Dam's work, curse him,” groaned
Gus, white as a ghost.

“Van Dam's work!” shrieked Edith, “and
he's with Zell! So this is a conspiracy. You both
are the flower of chivalry,” and her mocking, half-hysterical
laugh curdled Gus' blood, as her dress
fluttered down the path that led to the arbor.

She appeared in the doorway like a sudden,
supernatural vision. Zell's head rested on Mr.
Van Dam's shoulder, and he was portraying in
low ardent tones the pleasures of city life, which
would be hers as his wife.

“It is true,” he had said, “our marriage must
be secret or the present. You must learn to trust
me. But the time will soon come when I can acknowledge
you as my peerless bride.”

Foolish little Zell was too eager to escape present
miseries to be nice and critical as to the conditions,
and too much in love, too young and unsuspecting
to doubt the man who had petted her

from a child. She agreed to do anything he
thought best.

Then Edith's entrance and terrible words broke
her pretty dream in fragments.

Snatching her sister from Van Dam's embrace,
she cried passionately,—

“Leave this place. Your villany is discovered.”

“Really, Miss Edith”—began Van Dam with a
poor show of dignity.

“Leave instantly!” cried Edith imperiously.
“Do you wish me to strike you?”

“Edith, are you mad?” cried Zell.

“Your sister must have lost her reason,” said
Van Dam, approaching Zell.

“Stand back,” cried Edith sternly. “I may
go mad before this hateful night passes, but while
I have strength and reason left, I will drive the
wolves from our fold. Answer me this: have you
not been proposing secret marriage to my sister?”

Her face looked spirit-like in the pale moonlight
and her eyes blazed like coals of fire. As she stood
there with her arm around her bewildered trembling
sister, she seemed a guardian angel holding a baffled
fiend at bay.

This was literally true, for even hardened Van
Dam quailed before her, and took refuge in the
usual resource of his satanic ally—lies.

“I assure you, Miss Edith, you do me great injustice.
I have only asked your sister that our
marriage be private for a time—”

“The same wretched bait—the same transparent
falsehood,” Edith shrieked. “We cannot be
married openly at our own home, but must go
away with you, two spotless knights, to New York.
Do you take us for silly fools? You know well
what the world would say of ladies that so compromised
themselves, and no true man would ask
this of a woman he meant to make his wife.
These premises are mine. Leave them.”

Van Dam was an old villain who had lived life-long
in the atmosphere of brawls and intrigue,
therefore he said brazenly,—

“There is no use of wasting words on an angry
woman. Zell, my darling, do me justice. Don't
give me up, as I never shall you,” and he vanished
on the road toward the village, where Gus was
skulking on before him.

“You, weak unmitigated fool,” said he savagely,
“why did I bring you?”

“Look here, Van Dam,” whined Gus, “that
isn't the way to speak to a gentleman.”

“Gentleman! ha, ha,” laughed Van Dam bitterly.

“I be hanged if I feel like one to-night. A
pretty scrape you have got me into,” snarled Gus.

“Well,” said Van Dam cynically. “I thought I
was too old to learn much more, but you may shoot
me if I ever go on a lark again with one of your
weak villains who is bad enough for anything, but
only has brains enough to get found out. If it
hadn't been for you I would have carried my point.

And I will yet,” he added with an oath. “I never
give up the game I have once started.”

And so they plodded on with mutual revilings
and profanity, till Gus became afraid of Van Dam,
and was silent.

The dark cloud that had risen unnoted in the
south, like the slowly gathering and impending
wrath of God, now broke upon them in sudden
gusts, and then chased them with pelting torrents
of rain and stinging hail, into the village. The sin-wrought
chaos—the hellish discord of their evil
natures seemed to have infected the peaceful spring
evening, for now the very spirit of the storm appeared
abroad. The rush and roar of the wind was
so strong, the lightning so vivid, and the crashing
thunder peals overhead so terrific, that even hardened
Van Dam was awed, and Gus was so frightened
and conscience smitten, that he could scarcely
keep up with his companion, but shuddered at the
thought of being left alone.

At last they reached the tavern, roused the
startled landlord and obtained welcome shelter.

“What!” he said, “are the boys after you?”

“No, no,” said Van Dam impatiently, “the
devil is after us in this infernal storm. Give us
two rooms, a fire, and some brandy as soon as possible,
and charge what you please.”

When Gus viewed himself in the mirror, as he
at once did from long habit, his haggard face,
drenched, mud-splashed form, awakened sincere
self commiseration; and his stained, bedraggled

clothes troubled him more than his soiled character.
He did not remember the time when he had not
been well dressed, and to be so was his religion—
the sacred instinct of his life. Therefore he was
inexpressibly shocked, and almost ready to cry, as
he saw his forlorn reflection in the glass. And he
had no change with him. What should he do? All
other phases of the disastrous night were lost in
this.

“There is nothing to be bought in this mean
little town, and how can I go to the city in this
plight,” he anxiously queried.

“Go to the devil then,” and the sympathetic
Van Dam wrapped himself up and went to sleep.

Gus fussily worked at his clothes till a late hour,
devoutly hoping he would meet no one that he
knew before reaching his dressing-room in New
York.