He tried honestly to crush out the passion, but found that neither will nor duty could destroy love. It rose up and swept imperiously through every pulse of his being, it flooded his heart like a mighty current, it would fain have drowned out his sense of honor to his friend; and he learned presently that it was of no avail to fight battles with this unconquerable foe. He must always love her, therefore he could only bury the passion out of the sight of all other eyes. To him it would be the root of higher resolves and purer motives. When he had made this great sacrifice for his friend, he had offered silently the highest atonement in his power.
But his temptation was not to end so soon. He was to be led through the fire, that he might be purified and ennobled in other virtues beside that of abnegation. He was to learn how sacred a thing strength might become; he was to hold the soft hand on his arm, and never clasp it, to feel the pressure of the dainty fingers, and make no sign; to meet her bewildering smiles with the calmness of a strong spirit held in thrall; to listen to words that seemed cruelly pregnant with the dangerous glamour of hope, and yet to steel his heart against it all. In such times as these we come to believe in a living, loving God, who gathers up these great drops of agony as he "makes up his jewels," and that to him this pearl of inward anguish is above price. Then, of all times, we need to know that he cares for us, that we are not mere atoms floating in unregarded space.
Dr. Maverick decided that his patient must have a change. She had attained a certain amount of physical strength while her brain still lay dormant, utterly exhausted after the great drain upon it. Now it began to act again, and, not being in sympathy with the body, consequently re-acted upon it. She walked about her room a little; she viewed herself in the mirror, a horrid shadow, a mere caricature of her former beauty. Dr. Maverick had tried his best to save her hair; but the fever had burned out its vital essence, making it dry and harsh, so he had uttered his reluctant edict. It was cropped short, and had lost its gloss; her brilliant complexion was a ghostly, sallow, opaque white, her eyes large and melancholy, every feature sharpened into that thin, worn, hungry appearance. "A perfect fright," she said to herself. Why had they not let her die? Of what avail was life to her?
Before her illness, in her desperate impatience with circumstances, she had fancied herself a martyr, with the fagot and stake of a conventional marriage on one hand, and the dreary desert of neglect and enforced seclusion on the other. She had tried to make her own wretched and passionate imaginings consume her very soul. She could rule no longer. She could not exact homage and admiration from society; and, though in her secret soul she despised it, yet what was there to life beside it? No one wanted or needed her. No human being cared for her above all others. She had gone on in ruthless pride, trampling, crushing, and now the great world would be only too glad to pay her back; but it never should. Even in this extreme bitterness of spirit an acknowledgment of that divine rule of love was wrested from her. She had never offered love and tenderness and sympathy to others, and it would not come back to her: it was just and right that it should not.
Why then vegetate through a narrow, dreary existence? She was only a drag on Fred. Even if she were willing to make an essay of work, he would not consent, partly from pride, but still more from that innate sense of chivalry, a part of some men, who would be more cruelly wounded to see a woman dear to them, struggling with distasteful toil, than to make any sacrifice on their own part. If she were a man she would starve in secret before it should be done. David Lawrence had in him some of this pure, nobly generous blood; and many of his finer virtues seemed to have been transmitted to these two children. The mother's individuality had been absorbed by the two elder ones. Gertrude would be just such a woman when she came to her mother's time of life.
Mr. Eastman had floated into another channel of prosperity. He was to go to Russia as a railroad-director at a large salary, and ample chance for speculation. Gertrude was all elation. She wrote to Irene, generously forgiving her for not having submitted to be buried alive at Frodsham Park, and proposed that she should rejoin her as soon as she was able to travel. They would go to Vienna and Berlin, and spend the winter in St. Petersburg. "I hope your beauty has not gone off," she wrote very kindly. "One needs it to compare with some of the Russian women I have seen."
Mrs. Minor had taken a summer cottage at Long Branch. Servants, children, horses and carriages, were to go thither. Irene and her mother must spend the season with them.
"You do look dreadfully," she said to Irene; "but moping here will not mend you. It was a most absurd step for Fred to come back to Yerbury, and take that paltry position! He has no real Lawrence pride, and I don't see that his elegant education has done much for him. Why didn't he study law, and go into politics? With his style and Mr. Minor's connection, he might have filled some high position."
"Really," returned Irene, with a touch of the old sarcasm, "I suppose he thought starving hardly a pleasant process while he was waiting for this high position. I have sometimes wondered why Mr. Minor did not take him into his office, and induct him into the mysteries of stock-broking."
Agatha bit her lip.