University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXX.

Parke went to see Elsa next, and for the sake of reflection,
perhaps, walked to her house, a distance of
three miles. She saw him coming up the lane, threshing
the thistles with a cane, and kicking the loose pebbles
down the gullies.

“I am barrelling my potatoes to-day,” she screamed
at the door, when he came within hearing.

“I wish you would include me with them,” he replied,
taking her hand. She drew him into the house, to her
own little sitting-room, and bade him take his ease on
her new moreen-covered lounge. A wood fire burned
on the hearth, which led to inquiries concerning the
merits of her woodland, and then she asked him for
news, being as famished as a dog for the article.

“I am going to Venezuela, Elsa.”

“Vene—cat's foot.”

“Cat's paw, possibly, for I mean that you shall tell
Philippa my purpose. An impression seems to have
got abroad that my going will have a disagreeable
effect upon her, which effect I do not like to face.”

“I shan't do any such thing for you, sir. I have
withdrawn my finger from all your pies. Since I have
eaten humble pie with you, somehow I have lost my
relish for any more of your baking. I don't think your
going will kill Philippa, however. I suppose Jason is
worried about her—there is nobody else to take her
part; he is apt to think of other people's feelings.”

“I never thought him apt that way; indeed, he is
too indifferent. You are a cunning, cruel jade, and I
am sorry I came to you.”

She was angry with him for telling her that what she
had foreseen and waited for was at hand, but rather enjoyed
his calling her names. Disposed to aggravate
him, she said: “At any rate, Jason knows when he is
in the right place. I must say, that if I admire any
thing, I admire a steadfast disposition, and that is his.”

“I did not come to discuss his character. However,
I will agree with you on that point. He is all that you
say, and a great deal more. I find him not only the
right kind of a father, but a friend.”

“Yet he consents to your leaving home, and with
Osmond?”

“Will you, or will you not, tell Philippa?”

“Why has she been kept in the dark till now?”

“It seems to be considered my business to inform her,
and hear her opposition. She is so queer, though, she
may not mind it at all.”

“Now you are lying.”

“You and Sam Rogers have had a quiet way of holding
her up to me as a terror of tacit superiority. We
are mutually attached, I hope, but my idea of attachment
leaves us perfect freedom still. I trust she would
dislike this silent interference she has been made, as
much as I do.”

“Bats, moles, and men are akin,” thought Elsa; but
she said aloud, “The sooner the better. You talk with
her; I refuse flat to open the subject. I am going up
to the shore about dark, and I reckon I'll stay all night,
to look over your shirts.”

“Never mind the shirts.”

“Somebody must bear them in mind, or you won't
have any on your body—though I don't know as the
foreign beasts you are going amongst wear such things.
I might have known the day Osmond Luce came back,
that you would go off with him. I did look for it pretty
soon after.”

“His influence was nothing.”

“There is some good in him, though, if you'll have
patience to look for it.”

“Elsa!” and Parke took her chin in his hand, compelling
her to meet his eye, “between man and woman
now, do you not think that I had better go from Crest?”

“I think that you could not do a wiser thing, and I
hope you will stay forever.”

“Enough! I am off.”

The thistles were unmolested, and the pebbles were
suffered to rattle without his aid on the walk home.
Instead of going in at the main door, he entered the
premises by the barnyard gate. He saw Gilbert milking
in a corner, and, on the other side of the fence, Philippa
going up the garden with a shawl over her head.
A resolve took possession of him. Waiting till she was
beyond view, he leaped the fence, and followed her
slowly, till he saw her seated among the trees on the
top of the hill. A line of crimson light gleamed in the
west—the arc of sunset; overhead the purple clouds of
November rolled together and drew apart in the tumult
of the sea-wind, which tossed them as it tossed the waves
whose deep moan rose and fell round him as if baffled
by the height he had reached.

“I thought I saw you,” Philippa said quickly. “Isn't
it could up here?”

“Too cold to spend the evening, but I like it just now.
What are you up here for?”

“I often come.”

“I had no idea you indulged in sunset reveries. How
far out to sea can you look?”

Climbing the rock against which she rested, he peered
through the bare boughs rattling over her head, and continued:
“Oh yes, the high bank at the south end of
Prince Island is illuminated with the rays of the sun
that has left us, and the outlet next it looks like a dark
tunnel. Don't it make you think of Sam Rogers when
you look out there?” And he carelessly dropped down
beside her.

“I never look there.”

“What do you look at?”

“Myself.”

A conviction that his task might be more difficult
than he had supposed fastened upon him, but it steeled
his purpose, and somewhat increased his irritation against
those who had thrown it upon him.

“Give me a corner of your shawl to keep off the
wind—there—this is comfortable.” His arm was round
her waist, and her head was against his shoulder. “Will
you look out seaward for me?”

“Why should I?”

“Figuratively speaking, I shall be behind the outlet;
literally, I am going away with your father.”

Her fingers twisted in the lapels of his coat; she held
him down with a strength that made him catch his
breath with the effort to release himself.

“You shall not go.”

“Oh yes, Philippa,” and, tearing from her, he bounded
to his feet, “and you must consent. Do you want me
to remain in this wretched spot? I can be little to you
—miserable myself. You must make some change, too.
You have the right and the means to be free and happy.”

The sea roared in her ears, the wind tossed her hair
across her eyes; she threw back her head madly, and he
caught the knowledge in her face which struck him like
lightning, and she rolled over at his feet as if she were
stone dead.

“Why, she loves me!” he said, in a loud, stupefied
voice, looking down upon her. “My God, what is there
in me to love?”

He tried to raise her from the ground, but she lay like
lead, heavy and lifeless. He shook her, rubbed her
hands, pinched her cheeks, and at last she opened her
eyes.

“I want you,” she said.

“No, you don't. I am a worthless fellow. Do you
desire Charlotte Lang's lover, husband, in your presence
always?”

“I am so dizzy,” she said, trying to get up.

“I know you are.” And he wrapped her shawl round
her, kissing her hand, and then trying to kiss her lips.

“Don't kiss me.”

“Very well.”

“If you do, I must remember it,” and she burst into
a wild fit of crying, which drove Parke to his wits' end.
The tears fell from his own eyes without his knowing it.
They descended the hill, but stopped again in the orchard,
as if by mutual consent.

“I suppose you think me a dreadful fool, Philippa, but
I never dreamed of this.”

“It was always so.”

Again she looked at him with such an unutterable
passion in her face, that he knew he stood by the portals
of a world he alone could enter, and, that once shut from
his vision, he would never see it again. His own act had
shut it out forever, and her innocence could not comprehend
it!

“Now, now, by God, I will go. I am not base enough
to take you—to give myself to you.”

She loosed her hold, and they walked on again.

“I am not sorry,” she said in a moment, restored to
that calmness which the sea shows after a storm, “that I
have told you the motive of my life; it may protect you.”

“It may, but I shall not return; and, wherever I am,
I shall escape from that protection, if possible.”

Going on as if he had not spoken, and still calmer,
she said: “Telling it, has prevented me from dragging
it round as a purpose. Telling it, has put it to death
with so much ease! All the care and fostering of this
motive is buried in the grave of your knowledge. Its
ghost will never rise. Was I not foolish with plans—
which even God's judgment did not avert?”

It was not necessary for him to speak; he had dismissed
the subject.

“I shall always love you, though,” she concluded as
he opened the porch-door, “because you are beautiful.”

An expression of self-contempt passed over his face;
it was impossible for him to appreciate the value of being
loved for that.

Elsa was warming her hands by the kitchen fire.

“Ha!” she exclaimed, surveying their pale faces—
“hum; I have been looking round this kitchen, and it
is just as I expected—a place for nothing, and nothing
in its place. I told Parke his going away would not
kill you.”

“No more than your going did.”

“Oh, lud a massy!”

Parke, lighting a cigar, went out by the same door
that he had just entered. Who can tell what motive or
train of thought led him to Mrs. Lang's? Without
knocking, in the old familiar way, he entered her house
once more. She, with Clarice, was sitting by a table,
singing hymns in rotation from a little hymn-book in her
hand. Her eyes fell on Parke, and she stopped in the
middle of a line to reply to his “Good-evening.” Clarice
did not speak. He threw off his overcoat, took a chair
near the fireplace, and sat buried in thought, smoking
cigar after cigar. The loud tick of the clock, the wind
shaking the windows, and the suppressed yawns of Mrs.
Lang only disturbed the silence, for Clarice was as still
as Parke. The evening wore on. What fascination held
his eyes to the consuming brands? Did he see Mephistopheles
in his scarlet coat and cock's feather, with his
eternal grin? Did he hear Margaret cry: “Day! yes,
it is growing day! The last day is breaking in! My
wedding-day it was to be.”

A despairing, louder yawn from Mrs. Lang roused
him at last; he threw his cigar in the fire, turned from
it, and, in a low voice, asked her if there was any last
favor he could do for her.

“You have done all the favor you could do,” Clarice
interposed, before her mother could speak. “Sent one
of us to the grave.”

“I know it, Clarice,” he replied gently. She looked
at him for the first time since his entrance. A deep sadness
was in his eyes, and his face had grown sharp.

“Do you mourn for her?” she hastily asked.

“I cannot tell you a lie. No.”

“Clarice, you stop,” ordered Mrs. Lang.

“I have come to say, that she has sent me away.”

“Oh, pity, pity,” cried Mrs. Lang; “it would not be
so if we were anywhere else.”

“Slave,” hissed Clarice, “to take part against yourself.”

Parke rose and threw his coat over his arm.

“Stop you, Clarice,” Mrs. Lang continued. “I'll call
it the ole story, then; don't I know that men are men,
and women are women, and I think it is foolish for him
to give up his birthright for a mess of pottage.”

“Go, will you?” begged Clarice.

“As I would take Charlotte always under my wings,
so, Parke, I will take your part,” Mrs. Lang added.

“Well, then, there is no enmity between us. Good-by.”

“Farewell,” she said, and then in an undertone, “It's
all done right now, as the Lord would have it.”

Clarice took up the lamp to follow him out, and shut
the door upon her mother.

“Forget me, Clarice, in mercy to me.”

“It is like going to the grave again, to part with you,
for all that I have hatefully said. You were the link
that attached me to a world I do not belong to. Pray
that I may die. You are lucky, and your prayer may
be answered.”

“If you desire it, and for my own death too.”

They stood in silence a moment, and then parted,
never to meet again.

“Much more of this business will kill me,” he said to
Osmond the next day.

“Let us begone. You will rise elastic in another atmosphere.
Has Jason transferred your bank stock?”

“He is about ready with his statistics.”

“I named Garcia & Co., who have a branch house in
New York, for your bankers. Jason is singular; why
does he want to wash his hands of all your filthy lucre?”

“Between you and me, he has no great opinion of
managing for the Parkes.”

“Right enough. He is a brick, though.”

“Regular.”

“Made himself after the pattern of the Hebrew bricks,
for he wasn't worth a straw when he started.”

“Here he is now.”

“Now,” said Jason, entering, “as far as business is
concerned, you can go.”

“`O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,' then,” said
Osmond.

“Better take Byron along,” said Jason.

“No books allowed. Jason, you are an aboriginal; I
should think my way of life would suit you.”

“Is yours a community of equal rights?”

“If we can take them.”

“Am I really going?” asked Parke of Philippa, as
she came in.

“It seems so.”

“I mind leaving you, girl,” said Osmond. “Take care
of her, Jason.”

“She will take care of herself.”

“Keep yourself safe, old fellow, for she is alone.”

“Hadn't you better bestow that advice on yourself?”

“Last words don't amount to much,” Parke observed.

“It is respectable, though, to say something,” answered
Osmond.

At the last moment, Parke sought Philippa, and was
alone with her till Osmond sent him away.

“Philippa,” said her father, “a man does not escape
from the environments of ten or twenty years scot-free,
many times.”

“You mean, that we may not meet again?”

“That is it.”

“Take me up in your arms, as you did on board the
ship, years ago, and I will kiss you.”

He caught her in his embrace, and when he released
her his tears were on her face, and she turned away
weeping.