The look that Elsie turned upon him was so filled with agony that he cried remorsefully as he caught her hand and endeavored to draw her toward him: “Forgive me, Elsie, darling! I am not worthy of your love, I know; but I hunger so for it—I can’t give it up!”
Elsie drew back with the despairing cry, “We are so wide apart, Herbert.”
“We needn’t be if you would trust more to me and less to that hypersensitive soul of yours.”
A look of scorn not usual to Elsie’s face met Herbert’s appealing gaze. She rose to her feet and stood stiffly before him.
“You are centuries too late. My hypersensitive soul has a right to its own distinct existence. Your prescience should have told you how little I could strike palms with you in utter self-annihilation.”
A faint smile crossed Herbert’s face at Elsie’s grandiloquent words and air, but it died quickly away as she swept haughtily from the room and would not come back, though he called her repeatedly. Angrily he snatched his hat and left the house. Abused, insulted, hurt, misunderstood, he felt himself to be, and the more he reviewed the situation the more he felt that Elsie’s obstinacy, as he termed it, had raised an impassible barrier between them. Still his heart would not be stifled, and it was not till after dispatching a note to her and despairingly reading her answer—that marriage between people so distinctly at variance could never bring happiness—that he wholly lost hope. It was but the work of a few hours to make arrangements to join his sister abroad. At the last moment he dispatched a note to Elsie containing these words: “I have placed the sum of five thousand dollars in the C—— National Bank, subject to your call. If you love me as devotedly as I can assure you I shall ever cherish your memory, you cannot do less than make me happy by using it. You owe me this small recompense for the suffering that will be mine to the day of my death.”
CHAPTER XXII.
To Margaret alone Elsie opened the flood-gates of her heart, and it was only after days of overwhelming grief that she could again take up the burden of life. Margaret’s tears of sisterly sympathy and words of counsel could not at first still the torrent of heart-broken tears with which she mourned her lost love. Not even Herbert had known how precious it had been to her—how everything high and holy had seemed to be the offspring of that vitalizing force in her heart. Now, because having lived up to its highest revelations and endeavored to be true to its holiest purposes, she had crossed a counter-current of thought and will, this love had been taken from her. Had she been wrong, opinionated, obstinate, as Herbert called her? Had she forgotten the sweet submission of the weaker unto the stronger in that natural order of divine and human love which popular clamor voices as the proper sphere of woman? Often as she asked herself these questions—and with the not unnatural hope of finding herself in the wrong, since her heart prompted the slave-like humility of a perfect love—just so often conscience answered, “No!” Stronger still, as she reasoned, grew the feeling that her soul had a right to its own individuality, and that whatever it cost her, she had no right to bind its wings, even though the fetters were silken and lightly held by the hand of love. Neither Margaret, Lizzette, Antoine, nor Gilbert dared offer a verbal sympathy to the sore heart behind the white, set face that confronted them when Elsie had fought her battle alone. The sparkle was irretrievably gone from the dark eyes, and the curved lips drooped pitifully at times; but in all the earnestness of purpose, the kindliness of spirit, she was still the same Elsie.
The work of the Children’s Home Meetings grew almost hourly under her efforts; for now that she had sacrificed her heart on the altar of this work, she meant to make the sacrifice acceptable in its good results. Every hour that she and Margaret could snatch from the demands of their daily work, they spent in forming what they called “Conscience Classes.” The system of ethics taught was as simple as the minds with which they came in contact, and bore the stamp of the ever-living truth. The magnetic presence of the four chief workers grew to be a living delight to all who came from motives of curiosity or interest within its circle. Beginning at first only with what Herbert had been pleased to term “the riff-raff of society,” the circumference of the circle had gradually widened until a better-educated and more self-respecting class had found its way among them. Yet even with intelligence gaining upon them, the one great need of basing all reform, all happiness, all prosperity upon the code of ethics which, while it demands the highest development of the individual, yet takes its inspiration from the thought of a common welfare, was never lost sight of. Earnestness is the great lever of the world, and while there were many to oppose the idea as of disproportionate value to the need and development of the times, the effort still found many adherents. To be called cranks, laughed at by unbelievers, and derided by the class for which nothing is holy but success, came to be, as Elsie said, “normal as the air they breathed;” but after the first sharp sting these shafts remained unnoticed, and the one or two perishing ones uplifted, helped into the light and warmed by the sunshine of human kindliness into a knowledge of the great inspirer of their work, was balm enough to heal all the wounds of a scoffing world.
Margaret had also formed a Mother’s Class, in which everything pertaining to motherhood and its duties, was thoughtfully discussed. This class came in time to be presided over by Mrs. Carson, who, partially recovered, found no greater delight than in seconding the good work which had saved her in her hour of need. The Daughters of the Carpenter was a class headed by Elsie and especially devoted to helpfulness wherever it was needed. A list of the regular attendants of the meeting was kept, and if a mother was found to be sick or overworked, some one of the Daughters was appointed to render the needed assistance. Among the men and elder boys Gilbert formed a reading class, in which history and the science of government were brought down to the comprehension of the illiterate, and men were shown that if they were dissatisfied with existing social conditions, the remedy lay in their own hands in a rightful use of the ballot, and that if they sold that ballot to a ring or combination they only forged new links in the chains that bound them to a slavery against which they were constantly rebelling. Nor were the children forgotten in this work. Every original “Busy Fingers” boy and girl had a new class, in which were resown the good seeds implanted by Margaret and Gilbert. Thought and action were growing slowly but surely in the little community; but already a serious question was confronting them. The rental of the hall had easily been effected by the subscription of a few cents from every regular attendant; but the work, especially among the mothers’ and children’s classes, required money to prosecute it. They were all poor, living from hand to mouth, and while the work was growing there was no money to help the growth.