Wait, and Love himself will bring
The drooping flower of knowledge, changed to fruit
Of wisdom.
And so Arthur Forrest's little love-dream was dispelled. In Margaret's presence, with her calm, saddened beauty before him, her gentle words in his ears, he had not seemed to feel it; for as at the first her beauty had come upon him like a heaven-sent message, arousing dormant emotion, awaking his spirit from youth's self-worship, so now it continued its work by slaying absolutely the still dominant self within him. He had thought and hoped and longed and chafed through the weeks of London life, haunted by her presence and by the dream of gaining her. He saw her again, he recognized that she was not for him, and he submitted, without a single wish to drag down the goddess of his idolatry from her seat in the clouds to a lower seat by his side. Arthur was young. Had the dream come later he might have acted differently, but as yet he was tolerably free from the world-wisdom which so many able teachers were ready to impart; besides, there was that in her quiet dignity, in her ready confidence, in her natural way of accepting his knight-errantry, that would have effectually checked any presumption. She did not even seem to imagine that the passion she had inspired in the breast of this man, so much her junior, could be anything but transitory, and in her presence he acquiesced calmly.
The reaction came when he was alone in the hotel that night. To lose no time he had started for York in the evening, and the officious waiter, his friend of the day before, had procured for him the same rooms which he had occupied then. Peopled they had been with the creations of his fancy evoked by her, and the prospect of seeing her again; he returned to them disappointed, denuded of hope, and there was a rue look in his young face as once more he inflicted the echo of his restlessness on the innocent occupant of the room below. For when all had been said and done—when he should have compassed heaven and earth to restore her to happiness and peace—when (for Arthur never dreamt of failure) through his efforts, and his alone, she should be enjoying once more the position from which by no fault of her own she had been torn—when her husband should return to his faith and devotion, and her child be given back to her arms,—then for himself, what? A grateful remembrance at most. Their lives would drift apart, ever more widely: he who believed he should be able to make her joy would yet form no part of it. His very love would have to be smothered—to be as if it had not been. With all the grand sentiments in the world to set against it, this is not an easy thing to bear.
The greatest hero, the most self-abnegating being that ever lived, must, I think, have had these moments of reaction—moments when the heart, looking inward, aches a little for the poor trembling self which must be buried, hidden away out of sight, if the life would be whole and consistent.
And Arthur Forrest was no hero; only a young gentleman trained in the school of luxury and self-pleasing, and for the first time brought face to face with necessity. One thing in his favor was that it was necessity—that there could be no beating about the bush, no half measures. As a gentleman and a man of honor he was bound to serve the lady of his choice, and to serve without hope of recompense—such recompense, at least, as he had pictured to himself only twenty-four hours before.
Perhaps nothing better could have happened to the young man than this early enforced lesson of submission to the law of necessity. Young men start off on life's race like well-fed stallions, scenting the goal afar off, and if the world be moderately submissive they ride over her rough-shod till her weeds and nettles sting them and they fall back panting from the course. But if the yoke be borne early, submission becomes a habit and its difficulty is infinitely less. Arthur, however, could not be expected to be thankful for the salutary lesson, and what wonder that when the first excitement of planning and scheming, of playing the grand rôle of disinterested benefactor was over, he looked a trifle blue and crestfallen, called himself hard names, and quarrelled with what he was for the moment pleased to look upon as his "ridiculous age!"
There is something in the forced inaction of night, when it is not occupied entirely with its legitimate tenant, Sleep, to nurture morbid thoughts and gloomy ideas. Like misshapen ghosts they flee with the daylight—when, that is to say, their sources are not very deep in the spirit, imbedded there by cruel, unbending circumstance, for then night is the relief-bringer, morning has the pale terrors of reality in its train. Arthur's woes were rather of the imagination than the heart. Morning and action dissipated them.
He was up early, and before midday had satisfied the proprietor of the hotel about the ownership of the Indian scarf, had gathered fresh particulars from the waiter, had cross-examined Jane, the soft-hearted chambermaid, with all the acumen of a barrister, had caught the morning mail, and was far on his way to London.
The fruit of his first day's exertions—for he could not rest until something had been done—was that he had obtained the permission of his guardians (merely nominal, for he was within three weeks of attaining his majority) for a lengthened absence from England, and that by the next morning's mail a messenger was ready to start for Middlethorpe, with a hopeful missive from himself and a little casket containing the jewelry which had been left to the grasping hands and predatory instincts of Mr. Robinson.