University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXXI.
IN WHICH THE STRONG-MINDED WOMAN BECOMES WEAK.

It did not require the sound of a living voice to inspire
Hannah Thurston with sympathy for the story which she had
just read. Never before had any man so freely revealed to
her the sanctities of his experience of women. Completely
absorbed in the recital, she gave herself up to the first strong
impressions of alternate indignation and pity, without reflecting
upon the deeper significance of the letter. Woodbury's
second episode of passion at first conflicted harshly with the
pure ideal in her own mind; the shock was perhaps greater
to her than the confession of actual guilt would have been to
a woman better acquainted with the world. Having grown
up in the chaste atmosphere of her sect, and that subdued life
of the emotions which the seclusion of the country creates, it
startled her to contemplate a love forbidden by the world, yet
justifying itself to the heart. Nevertheless, the profound pity
which came upon her as she read took away from her the
power of condemnation. The wrong, she felt, was not so much
in the love which had unsuspectedly mastered both, as in the
impulse to indulge rather than suppress it; but having been
suppressed—passion having been purified by self-abnegation
and by death, she could not withhold a tender human charity
even for this feature of the confession.

Woodbury's questions, however, referred to the future, no
less than to the past. They hinted at the possibility of a new
love visiting his heart. The desire for it, he confessed, had not
grown cold. Deceit and fate had not mastered, in him, the

immortal yearning: was he unworthy to receive it? “Try
me,” he had written, “by the sacred instincts of your own
nature, and according to them pardon or condemn me.” She
had already pardoned. Perhaps, had she read the same words
coming from a stranger, or as an incident of a romance, she
would have paused and deliberated; her natural severity
would have been slow to relax; but knowing Woodbury as
she had latterly learned to know him, in his frankness, his
manly firmness and justice, his noble consideration for herself,
her heart did not delay the answer to his questions. He had
put her to shame by voluntarily revealing his weakness, while
she had determined that she would never allow him to discover
her own.

Little by little, however, after it became clear that her sympathy
and her charity were justifiable, the deeper questions
which lay hidden beneath the ostensible purpose of his letter
crept to the surface. In her ignorance of the coming confession,
she had not asked herself, in advance, why it should have
been made; she supposed it would be its own explanation.
The reason he had given was not in itself sufficient, but presupposed
something more important which he had not expressed.
No man makes such a confidence from a mere feeling
of curiosity. Simultaneously with this question came another
—why should he fancy that his act might possibly set a gulf
between them? Was it simply the sensitiveness of a nature
which would feel itself profaned by having its secrets misunderstood?
No; a heart thus sensitive would prefer the security
of silence. Was he conscious of a dawning love, and,
doubtful of himself, did he ask for a woman's truer interpretation
of his capacity to give and keep faith? “It is cruel in
him to ask me,” she said to herself; “does he think my heart
is insensible as marble, that I should probe it with thoughts,
every one of which inflicts a wound? Why does he not
send his confession at once to her? It is she who should hear
it, not I! He is already guilty of treason to her, in asking
the question of me!”

She put the letter suddenly on the table, and half rose
from her chair, in the excitement of the thought. Then, as if
struck by a stunning blow, she dropped back again. Her face
grew cold and deadly pale, and her arms fell nerveless at her
sides. Her eyes closed, and her breath came in long, labored
sighs. After a few minutes she sat up, placed her elbow on
the table and rested her forehead on her hand. “I am growing
idiotic,” she whispered, with an attempt to smile; “my
brain is giving way—it is only a woman's brain.”

The fire had long been extinct. The room was cold, and a
chill crept over her. She rose, secured the letter and the
book, and went to bed. As the balmy warmth stole over her
frame, it seemed to soften and thaw the painful constriction
of her heart, and she wept herself into a sad quiet. “Oh, if
it should be so,” she said, “I must henceforth be doubly
wretched! What shall I do? I cannot give up the truths
to which I have devoted my life, and they now stand between
my heart and the heart of the noblest man I have ever known.
Yes: my pride is broken at last, and I will confess to myself
how much I honor and esteem him—not love—but even there
I am no longer secure. We were so far apart—how could I
dream of danger? But I recognize it now, too late for him
—almost too late for me!”

Then, again, she doubted every thing. The knowledge had
come too swiftly and suddenly to be accepted at once. He
could not love her; it was preposterous. Until a few days
ago he had thought her cold and severe: now, he acknowledged
her to be true, and his letter simply appealed to that
truth, unsuspicious of the secret slumbering in her heart. He
had spoken of the possibility of a pure and exalted friendship
between the sexes, such as already existed between himself
and Mrs. Blake: perhaps he aimed at nothing more, in this
instance. Somehow, the thought was not so consoling as it
ought properly to have been, and the next moment the skilful
explanation which she had built up tumbled into ruins.

She slept but little, that night, and all the next day went

about her duties as if in a dream. She knew that her mother's
eye sometimes rested uneasily on her pale face, and the confession
of her trouble more than once rose to her tongue, but
she resolutely determined to postpone it until the dreaded
crisis was past. She would not agitate the invalid with her
confused apprehensions, all of which, moreover, might prove
themselves to have been needless. With every fresh conflict
in her mind her judgment seemed to become more unsteady.
The thought of Woodbury's love, having once revealed itself
to her, would not be banished, and every time it returned, it
seemed to bring a gentler and tenderer feeling for him into her
heart. On the other hand her dreams of a career devoted to
the cause of Woman ranged themselves before her mental
vision, in an attitude of desperate resistance. “Now is the
test!” they seemed to say: “vindicate your sex, or yield to
the weakness of your heart, and add to its reproach!”

When Monday came, it brought no cessation of the struggle,
but she had recovered something of her usual self-control. She
had put aside, temporarily, the consideration of her doubts;
the deeper she penetrated into the labyrinth, the more she
became entangled, and she made up her mind to wait, with as
much calmness as she could command, for the approaching
solution. The forms of terror, of longing, of defence and of
submission continually made their presence felt by turns, or
chaotically together, but the only distinct sensation she permitted
herself to acknowledge was this: that if her forebodings
were true, the severest trial of her life awaited her. Her
pride forbade her to shrink from the trial, yet every hour
that brought her nearer to it increased her dread of the meeting.

Her mother's strength was failing rapidly, and on this day
she required Hannah's constant attendance. When, at last,
the latter was relieved for the night, her fatigue, combined
with the wakeful torment of the two preceding nights, completely
overpowered her and she slumbered fast and heavily
until morning. Her first waking thought was—“The day is

come, and I am not prepared to meet him.” The morning
was dull and windless, and as she looked upon the valley from
her window, a thick blue film enveloped the distant woods, the
dark pines and brown oaks mingling with it indistinctly, while
the golden and orange tints of the maples shone through. Her
physical mood corresponded with the day. The forces of her
spirit were sluggish and apathetic, and she felt that the resistance
which, in the contingency she dreaded, must be made,
would be obstinately passive, rather than active and self-contained.
A sense of inexpressible weariness stole over her.
Oh, she thought, if she only could be spared the trial! Yet,
how easily it might be avoided! She needed only to omit her
accustomed walk: she could write to him, afterwards, and
honor his confidence as it deserved. But an instinct told her
that this would only postpone the avowal, not avert it. If she
was wrong, she had nothing to fear; if she was right, it would
be cowardly, and unjust to him, to delay the answer she must
give.

Her mother had slightly rallied, and when Mrs. Styles
arrived, as usual, early in the afternoon, the invalid could be
safely left in her charge. Nevertheless, Hannah, after having
put on her bonnet and shawl, lingered in the room, with a last,
anxious hope that something might happen which would give
her a pretext to remain.

“Child, isn't thee going?” the widow finally asked.

“Mother, perhaps I had better stay with thee this afternoon?”
was the hesitating answer.

“Indeed, thee shall not do any such thing! Thee's not been
thyself for the last two days, and I know thee always comes
back from thy walks fresher and better. Bring me a handful
of gentians, won't thee?”

“Yes, mother.” She stooped and kissed the old woman's
forehead, and then left the house.

The sky was still heavy and gray, and there was an oppressive
warmth in the air. Crickets chirped loud among the dying
weeds along the garden-palings, and crows cawed hoarsely

from the tops of the elms. The road was deserted, as far as
she could see, but the sound of farmers calling to their oxen
came distinctly across the valley from the fields on the eastern
hill. Nature seemed to lie benumbed, in drowsy half-consciousness
of her being, as if under some narcotic influence.

She walked slowly forward, striving to subdue the anxious
beating of her heart. At the junction of the highways, she
stole a glance down the Anacreon road: nobody was to be
seen. Down the other: a farm-wagon was on its way home
from Ptolemy—that was all. To the first throb of relief succeeded
a feeling of disappointment. The walk through the
meadow-thickets would be more lonely than ever, remembering
the last time she had seen them. As she looked towards
their dark-green mounds, drifted over with the downy tufts
of the seeded clematis, a figure suddenly emerged from the
nearest path and hastened towards her across the meadow!

He let down the bars for her entrance and stood waiting
for her. His brown eyes shone with a still, happy light, and
his face brightened as if struck by a wandering sunbeam. He
looked so frank and kind—so cheered by her coming—so unembarrassed
by the knowledge of the confession he had made,
that the wild beating of her heart was partially soothed, and
she grew calmer in his presence.

“Thank you!” he said, as he took her hand, both in greeting
and to assist her over the fallen rails. When he had put them
up, and regained her side, he spoke again: “Shall we not go
on to that lovely nook of yours beside the creek? I have
taken a great fancy to the spot; I have recalled it to my
memory a thousand times since then.”

“Yes, if you wish it,” she answered.

As they threaded the tangled paths, he spoke cheerfully
and pleasantly, drawing her into talk of the autumnal plants,
of the wayward rapids and eddies of the stream, of all sights
and sounds around them. A balmy quiet, which she mistook
for strength, took possession of her heart. She reached the
secluded nook, with a feeling of timid expectancy, it is true,

but with scarcely a trace of her former overpowering dread.
There lay the log, as if awaiting them, and the stream gurgled
contentedly around the point, and the hills closed loftily
through blue vapor, up the valley, like the entrance to an
Alpine gorge.

As soon as they were seated, Woodbury spoke. “Can you
answer my questions?”

“You have made that easy for me,” she replied, in a low
voice. “It seems to me rather a question of character than
of experience. A man naturally false and inconstant might
have the same history to relate, but I am sure you are true.
You should ask those questions of your own heart; where
you are sure of giving fidelity, you would commit no treason
in bestowing—attachment.”

She dared not utter the other word in her mind.

“I was not mistaken in you!” he exclaimed. “You have
the one quality which I demand of every man or woman in
whom I confide; you distinguish between what is true in
human nature and what is conventionally true. I must show
myself to you as I am, though the knowledge should give you
pain. The absolution of the sinner,” he added, smiling, “is
already half-pronounced in his confession.”

“Why should I be your confessor?” she asked. “The
knowledge of yourself which you have confided to me, thus
far, does not give me pain. It has not lowered you in my
esteem, but I feel, nevertheless, that your confidence is a gift
which I have done nothing to deserve, and which I ought not
to accept unless—unless I were able to make some return. If
I had answered your questions otherwise, I do not think it
would have convinced you, against your own feelings. With
your integrity of heart, you do not need the aid of a woman
whose experience of life is so much more limited than yours.”

She spoke very slowly and deliberately, and the sentences
seemed to come with an effort. Woodbury saw that her
clear vision had pierced through his flimsy stratagem, and
guessed that she must necessarily suspect the truth. Still, he

drew back from the final venture upon which so much depended.
He would first sound the depth of her suspicions.

“No man,” he said, gently, “can be independent of woman's
judgment, without loss to himself. Her purer nature is a
better guide to him than his own clouded instincts. I should
not have attributed a different answer to your true self, but to
the severe ideas of duty which I imagined you to possess.
You were right to suppose that I had already answered for
myself, but can you not understand the joy of hearing it thus
confirmed? Can you not appreciate the happy knowledge
that one's heart has not been opened in vain?”

“I can understand it, though I have had little experience of
such knowledge. But I had not supposed that you needed it,
Mr. Woodbury—least of all from me. We seem to have had
so little in common—”

“Not so!” he interrupted. “Opinions, no matter how
powerfully they may operate to shape our lives, are external
circumstances, compared with the deep, original springs of
character. You and I have only differed on the outside, and
hence we first clashed when we came in contact; but now I
recognize in you a nature for which I have sought long and
wearily. I seek some answering recognition, and in my haste
have scarcely given you time to examine whether any features
in myself have grown familiar to you. I see now that I was
hasty: I should have waited until the first false impression
was removed.”

The memory of Mrs. Waldo's reproach arose in Hannah
Thurston's mind. “Oh no, you mistake me!” she cried. “I
am no longer unjust to you. But you surpass me in magnanimity
as you have already done in justice. You surprised
me by a sacred confidence which is generally accorded only to
a tried friend. I had given you no reason to suppose that I
was a friend: I had almost made myself an enemy.”

“Let the Past be past: I know you now. My confidence
was not entirely magnanimous. It was a test.”

“And I have stood it?” she faltered.

“Not yet,” he answered, and his voice trembled into a
sweet and solemn strain, to which every nerve in her body
seemed to listen. “Not yet! You must hear it now. I
questioned you, after you knew the history of my heart, in
order that you might decide for yourself as well as me. Love
purifies itself at each return. My unfortunate experience has
not prevented me from loving again, and with a purity and intensity
deeper than that of my early days, because the passion
was doubted and resisted instead of being received in my
heart as a coveted guest. I am beyond the delusions of youth,
but not beyond the wants of manhood. I described to you,
the other day, on this spot, my dream of marriage. It was
not an ideal picture. Hannah Thurston, I thought of you!”

The crisis had come, and she was not prepared to meet it.
As he paused, she pressed one hand upon her heart, as if it
might be controlled by physical means, and moved her lips,
but no sound came from them.

“I knew you could not have anticipated this,” he continued;
“I should have allowed you time to test me, in return, but
when the knowledge of your womanly purity and gentleness
penetrated me, to the overthrow of all antagonism based on
shallow impressions, I parted with judgment and will. A
power stronger than myself drove me onward to the point I
have now reached—the moment of time which must decide
your fate and mine.”

She turned upon him with a wild, desperate energy in her
face and words. “Why did you come,” she cried, “to drive
me to madness? Was it not enough to undermine the foundations
of my faith, to crush me with the cold, destroying
knowledge you have gained in the world? My life was fixed,
before I knew you; I was sure of myself and satisfied with
the work that was before me: but now I am sure of nothing.
You have assailed me until you have discovered my weakness,
and you cruelly tear down every prop on which I try to lean!
If I could hate you I should regain my strength, but I cannot
do that—you know I cannot!”

He did not misinterpret her excitement, which yielded more
than it assailed. “No, Hannah!” he said tenderly, “I would
give you strength, not take it from you—the strength of my
love, and sympathy, and encouragement. I know how these
aims have taken hold upon you: they are built upon a basis
of earnest truth which I recognize, and though I differ
with you as to the ends to be attained, we may both enlighten
each other, and mutual tenderness and mutual respect govern
our relations in this as in all else. Do not think that I would
make my love a fetter. I can trust to your nature working
itself into harmony with mine. If I find, through the dearer
knowledge of you, that I have misunderstood Woman, I will
atone for the error; and I will ask nothing of you but that
which I know you will give—the acknowledgment of the
deeper truth that is developed with the progress of life.”

She trembled from head to foot. “Say no more,” she murmured,
in a faint, hollow voice, “I cannot bear it. Oh, what
will become of me? You are noble and generous—I was
learning to look up to you and to accept your help, and now
you torture me!”

He was pitiless. He read her more truly than she read
herself, and he saw that the struggle must now be fought out
to its end. Her agitation gave him hope—it was the surge
and swell of a rising tide of passion which she resisted with the
last exercise of a false strength. He must seem more cruel still,
though the conflict in her heart moved him to infinite pity.
His voice assumed a new power as he spoke again:

“Hannah,” he said, “I must speak. Remember that I am
pleading for all the remaining years of my life—and, it may
be, for yours. Here is no question of subjection; I offer you
the love that believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth
all things. It is not for me to look irreverently into your
maiden heart: but, judging you, as woman, by myself, as man,
you must have dreamed of a moment like this. You must
have tried to imagine the face of the unknown beloved; you
must have prefigured the holy confidence of love which would

force you to give your fate into his hands; you must have
drawn the blessed life, united with his, the community of interest,
of feeling, and of faith, the protecting support on his
side, the consoling tenderness on yours—”

She seized his arm with the hand nearest him, and grasped
it convulsively. Her head dropped towards her breast and
her face was hidden from his view. He gently disengaged the
hand and held it in his own. But he would not be silent, in
obedience to her dumb signal: he steeled his heart against her
pain, and went on:

“You have tried to banish this dream from your heart, but
you have tried in vain. You have turned away from the contemplation
of the lonely future, and cried aloud for its fulfilment
in the silence of your soul. By day and by night it has
clung to you, a torment, but too dear and beautiful to be renounced—”

He paused. She did not withdraw her hand from his,
but she was sobbing passionately. Still, her head was turned
away from him. Her strength was only broken, not subdued.

“Remember,” he said, “that nothing in our lives resembles
the picture which anticipates its coming. I am not the man
of your dreams. Such as I fancy them to be, no man on the
earth would be worthy to represent him. But I can give you
the tenderness, the faith, the support you have claimed from
him, in your heart. Do not reject them while a single voice
of your nature tells you that some portion of your ideal union
may be possible in us. The fate of two lives depends on your
answer: in this hour trust every thing to the true voice of your
heart. You say you cannot hate me?”

She shook her head, without speaking. She was still sobbing
violently.

“I do not ask you, in this moment, if you love me. I cannot
stake my future on a venture which I feel to be perilous.
But I will ask you this: could you love me?”

She made no sign: her hand lay in his, and her face was

bent towards her bosom. He took her other hand, and holding
them both, whispered: “Hannah, look at me.”

She turned her head slowly, with a helpless submission, and
lifted her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and her
lovely dark-gray eyes, dimmed by the floods that had gushed
from them in spite of herself, met his gaze imploringly. The
strong soul of manhood met and conquered the woman in that
glance. He read his triumph, but veiled his own consciousness
of it—curbed his triumphant happiness, lest she should take
alarm. Softly and gently, he stole one arm around her waist
and drew her to his breast. The violence of her agitation
gradually ceased; then, lifting her head, she withdrew from
his clasp, and spoke, very softly and falteringly, with her eyes
fixed on the ground:

“Yes, Maxwell, it is as I have feared. I will not say that I
love you now, for my heart is disturbed. It is powerless to
act for me, in your presence. I have felt and struggled against
your power, but you have conquered me. If you love me, pity
me also, and make a gentle use of your triumph. Do not
bind me by any promise at present. Be satisfied with the
knowledge that has come to me—that I have been afraid to
love you, because I foresaw how easy it would be. Do not
ask any thing more of me now. I can bear no more to-day.
My strength is gone, and I am weak as a child. Be magnanimous.”

He drew her once more softly to his breast and kissed her
lips. There was no resistance, but a timid answering pressure.
He kissed her again, with the passionate clinging sweetness of
a heart that seals an eternal claim. She tore herself loose from
him and cried with a fiery vehemence: “God will curse you
if you deceive me now! You have bound me to think of you,
day and night, to recall your looks and words, to—oh, Maxwell,
to what have you not bound my heart!”

“I would bind you to no more than I give,” he answered.
“I ask no promise. Let us simply be free to find our way to
the full knowledge of each other. When you can trust your

life to me, I will take it in tender and reverent keeping. I
trust mine to you now.”

She did not venture to meet his eyes again, but she took his
outstretched hand. He led her to the edge of the peninsula,
and they stood thus, side by side, while the liquid, tinkling
semitones of the water made a contented accompaniment to
the holy silence. In that silence the hearts of both were busy.
He felt that though his nature had proved the stronger, she
was not yet completely won: she was like a bird bewildered
by capture, that sits tamely for a moment, afraid to try its
wings. He must complete by gentleness what he had begun
by power. She, at the moment, did not think of escape. She
only felt how hopeless would be the attempt, either to advance
or recede. She had lost the strong position in which she had
so long been intrenched, yet could not subdue her mind to the
inevitable surrender.

“I know that you are troubled,” he said at last, and the
considerate tenderness of his voice fell like a balm upon her
heart, “but do not think that you alone have yielded to a
power which mocks human will. I spoke truly, when I said
that the approach of love, this time, had been met with doubt
and resistance in myself. I have first yielded, and thus knowledge
came to me while you were yet ignorant. From that
ignorance the consciousness of love cannot, perhaps, be born
at once. But I feel that the instinct which led me to seek
you, has not been false. I can now appreciate something of
your struggle, which is so much the more powerful than my
own as woman's stake in marriage is greater than man's. Let
us grant to each other an equally boundless trust, and in that
pure air all remaining doubt, or jealousy, or fear of compromised
rights, will die. Can you grant me this much, Hannah?
It is all I ask now.”

She had no strength to refuse. She trusted his manhood
already with her whole heart, though foreseeing what such
trust implied. “It is myself only, that I doubt,” she answered.

“Be kind to me,” she added, after a pause, releasing her
hand from his clasp and half turning away: “Consider how I
have failed—how I have been deceived in myself. Another
woman would have been justly proud and happy in my place,
for she would not have had the hopes of years to uproot, nor
have had to answer to her heart the accusation of disloyalty to
humanity.”

“We will let that accusation rest,” he soothed her. “Do
not think that you have failed: you never seemed so strong to
me as now. There can be no question of conflicting power
between two equal hearts whom love unites in the same destiny.
The time will come when this apparent discord will appear
to you as a `harmony not understood.' But, until then,
I shall never say a word to you which shall not be meant to
solve doubt, and allay fear, and strengthen confidence.”

“Let me go back, now, to my mother,” she said. “Heaven
pardon me, I had almost forgotten her. She wanted me to
bring her some gentians. It is very late and she will be
alarmed.”

He led her back through the tangled, briery paths. She
took his offered hand with a mechanical submission, but the
touch thrilled her through and through with a sweetness so
new and piercing, that she reproached herself at each return,
as if the sensation were forbidden. Woodbury gathered for
her a bunch of the lovely fringed gentian, with the short autumn
ferns, and the downy, fragrant silver of the life-everlasting.
They walked side by side, silently, down the meadow,
and slowly up the road to the widow's cottage.

“I will deliver the flowers myself,” said he, as they reached
the gate, “Besides, is it not best that your mother should
know of what has passed?”

She could not deny him. In the next moment they were in
the little sitting-room. Mrs. Styles expected company to tea,
and took her leave as soon as they appeared.

“Mother, will thee see Mr. Woodbury?” said Hannah,

opening the door into the adjoining room, where the invalid
sat, comfortably propped up in her bed.

“Thee knows I am always glad to see him,” came the
answer, in a faint voice.

They entered together, and Woodbury laid the flowers on
her bed. The old woman looked from one to another with a
glance which, by a sudden clairvoyance, saw the truth. A
new light came over her face. “Maxwell!” she cried;
“Hannah!”

“Mother!” answered the daughter, sinking on her knees
and burying her face in the bed-clothes.

Tears gushed from the widow's eyes and rolled down her
hollow cheeks. “I see how it is,” she said; “I prayed that
it might happen. The Lord blesses me once more before I
die. Come here, Maxwell, and take a mother's blessing. I
give my dear daughter freely into thy hands.”

Hannah heard the words. She felt that the bond, thus
consecrated by the blessing of her dying mother, dared not be
broken.