CHAPTER XXIV. OF THE WORLD, UNWORLDLY.
It was true that Robert was dead—dead drunk, and to drink was his purpose in leaving Marrion at home. He had been held in check until he could not—he felt it was impossible—work any longer until he had gotten under the influence of drink.
It was more than a week before he was able to resume his work. Marrion put his best efforts forth to sober him, but all resulted in failure. This annoyed him more than he dared tell Cherokee. He felt that Robert had not the proper appreciation; for here he had given up his work and pleasures for a time, that he might aid in the artist’s advancement. It surely seemed a thankless task.
One day, when patience was exhausted, he poured forth his very soul in one long, fervent—swear; took up his hat and started out for a walk.
As he tramped, wondered, swore, he strolled on toward the stream. He always was a dream-haunter of the woods, realizing that communion with nature strangely ministers to heart wounds and breathes sweetened memories.
Suddenly his steps were arrested by the spectacle of Cherokee lying at full length upon the grass, one arm lay across her eyes, the other was stretched on the ground. She had never looked prettier. He sat down by her and took her hand. A thousand thoughts chased themselves with lightning speed through his brain; meanwhile the pressure of that hand continued; he leaned over, took her arm away, and looked down into her face.
Whether it came to him suddenly as a revelation, or grew upon him like a widening light—that knowledge of a love that wronged his honor—it had come too late. Had he been asleep, or mad, that this should have conquered him unawares.
Where was his experience of human nature—his worldly wisdom—his ever abiding sense of honor—that he should have allowed a love for another man’s wife to enter his thoughts and take possession, and that man his dearest friend!
It seemed but yesterday that this woman was to him only as dear as a friend might be, without wrong to his or her own faith. Now he knew she was more—a thousand times dearer than all life lives for—dearer than all save honor, if, indeed, he questioned, that were not already lost.
Yet no, there was no wrong. His love was worship, instinct with reverence, he could not for that very love’s sake destroy its object.
“You want me to go away and leave you alone, Cherokee?” he asked.
“No, Marrion, no! I am too much alone, and that makes me hungry, desperately hungry, for companionship,” she stammered. “But, tell me, how is Robert?”
“No better; I am almost ashamed to ask you to be brave any more, for I’ve hoped so long without fulfillment.”
She answered: “I ask myself how long this banishment is to last—this exile from joy.”
“Everything here has an end; the brighter side may come at last.”
“No, it will never come, it is all a mistake; even life itself.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Cherokee; I am with you. Don’t you care for——” Here he stopped, but she understood, and her answer, said in silence, was the sweetest word of all.
“I must speak this once at any cost—Great God! and forgive me, I love her so,” he whispered, as he seized her listless form, so unresisting, and wildly kissed her brow, her lips, her hair, her eyelids—sealed her to him by those caresses that were prompted by love’s unreasoning fury.
The whole earth revolved in one vast throb of song, and the wind, entuned, seemed to catch the music in its chase. Nothing under the sun could equal those moments with them.
At first they were so happy; then there came a desire—which comes to those of deep and tender sensibilities when their felicity becomes so acute that it verges upon pain—the desire, the involuntary longing, to die—an abandon of self—a forgetting.
In this moment of delirium he was the first to speak.
“I have known from the first that we were meant for each other.”
She did not answer; she was so thoroughly intoxicated just then, that if he should have dared to give her blows her heart would have arraigned him at its bar, with weeping paid the costs, and swore the blow was kind—she loved him so.
“I say that we were meant for each other,” he repeated. “Love like ours should be the first law of the universe, after love of God.”
“I am thy neighbor’s wife,” she answered, slowly.
“I now admit no ties except the one that fate has made between your heart and mine.”
“Think, Marrion, of what you say. Is it a sin for us to love?”
He could not answer at once—all the iron in his strong nature was broken down. His emotions, so long withheld, and now uncontrolled, were more than he could bear.
He looked long into her trusting countenance. He was seeking by a violent effort to master himself; but it was only by the heaving of his breast, and now and then a gasp for breath, that he betrayed the stormy struggle within. Though his nature was full of the softer sympathies he could not call them to the front—he was but man. This was the crucial test.
There is in some affections so much to purify and exalt, that even an erring love, conceived without a cold design, and wrestled against with a noble spirit, leaves the heart more tolerant and tender if it leaves it in time.
“It may be wrong,” he said, at length, “but this is our fate—our fate,” as if waking from some hideous dream.
“We are creatures of destiny, I have fought this love but it would not die. The very loneliness of your existence appeals to me; but for that, I might have conquered.”
“And your tender care and help have often reconciled me to my lot, and extinguished many bitter feelings in me.”
“You trusted me, Cherokee, and I believe there is a kind of sanctity in your ignorance and trust—there is a soul about you as well as a body. Is it with that soul you have loved me?”
“Yes, Marrion, I love you better than life now.”
“Then our love can surely not be wrong. Depend upon it, that God Almighty, who sums up all the good and evil done by his children, will not judge the world with the same unequal severity as those drones of society. Surely He requires not such sacrifices from us; no, not even the wrathful, avenging Father.”
His tone was one of infinite persuasion.
“God understands what you are to me—youth, beauty, truth, hope and life.”
“You forget your friend, my husband,” she warned.
“No, I do not forget. He is a man for whom I would all but die, but I love you better than anything else.”
“And that is more than he does,” she broke in, sorrowfully.
“Cherokee, be mine in spirit? I plead as an innocent man pleads for justice.”
“Stop!” she cried, “let me speak. You have a profound and generous soul to hear me. Let me ask you not to tempt me; we have gone already too far.”
“Not too far when it is with me that you go.”
“Yes, Marrion it is, unless we could go all of life’s road together. I love you, that you know, but I come to you now, begging you not to tempt me, but to help to make me strong, and to follow the road of sacrifice and duty. My heart cries out to you, but let me not hear. If you love me, prove it, and leave me.” Her voice died in a wail, it was a loving, weak soul’s despairing cry.
Marrion stood for a moment immovable, then he took her hand with reverential homage.
“Cherokee, you have raised all womankind in my eyes. I did love you—now I worship you. Your open frankness is so unlike the irresolute frailty, the miserable wiles of your sex. You have touched a chord in my heart that has been mute for years. To me you are a garden of roses, you have bloomed even under blight. Beholding you now, I am enabled to forget that the world is evil.”
“Blessed be that influence,” she murmured, sweetly.
“Yes, God’s blessing upon it,” he repeated. And he thought of what pangs her high spirit must have endured ere it had submitted to the avowal it had made. She had been honest enough to confess that she was weak—that she loved him, but that very confession was as a tower of strength to him.
“Cherokee, my idol, what will you of me?” he asked, in tender manly tones.
“I want you to promise, Marrion that you will always like me; let us be what human nature and worldly forms seldom allow those of opposite sexes to be—friends; having for each other that esteem which would be love if the hearts were unadulterated by clay. Your memory will be my nearest approach to happiness. I shall never be happy unless Robert reforms; then the old love and joy would come again.”
There was on her face an expression, in her voice a tone, so appealing that it inspired him to say:
“I will save him by my life if need be.”
She looked at him with an admiring, grateful gaze:
“Your friendship is even better than love.”
“That is both,” he answered.
“You will promise to go away at once, or I cannot live near you and without you.”
“Yes, Cherokee, I promise,” he said firmly, and continued:
“To-day for a short interval we have belonged to each other. Heart has spoken to heart. To-morrow you are only my friend’s wife. Not a word, not a thought of yours or mine must destroy his trust. Our past will lie buried as in a deep grave, no tears bedewing it, no flowers marking the spot.”
So sorrowfully, even despairingly, were the words uttered that it seemed Cherokee’s turn to comfort.
“Think of me as almost happy since I know that you love me so,” she said, smiling through her tears.
“Tears from you for me,” he cried. “Bless you, bless you; may you think of me as one whose loyalty to another is loyalty to yourself,” he murmured. “I must go away and meet you no more. Pass a few busy, taskful years, come and go a few brief seasons of stimulating activity and wholesome intercourse; then I can hold out my untrembling hand to Robert’s wife, and forget the lover in the friend; now let us part.”
She stepped forward and extended her hand; he kissed it and pressed it warmly, and then the dream was ended. A matter of a moment, true enough, but death itself is but a moment, yet eternity is its successor.
Cherokee took the path to the house; her eyes held a troubled light as they looked back, Marrion was standing where she had left him, in a hopeless attitude. His head drooped low with a slow motion of despair, which seemed almost tranquil in its acceptance of destiny.
A low, late sunshine crept through the swathing blue, softly bright upon him.