Once or twice on these evenings, sometimes alone, and sometimes with John (when he was not at Monk’s Gate), always with her big dog by her side, a girl’s figure had passed the gate as the music was going on. Once it had been a passionate love-song that was borne to her ears, and once again the overpowering sweetness of a movement of the so-called ‘Moonlight’ sonata. She had turned her face towards the place whence the sounds came, but neither hurried nor stayed her sauntering walk, and, returning the greetings of those who loitered and listened, had passed on. Those evenings of music were the only pleasant part of Jerome’s existence at that time. Then he forgot for a moment Nita’s pale face and Sara’s letters; then the old student days seemed to have returned again—the old days of music, of midsummer madness, of ‘carelesse contente.’
Letters came to him there, of course, from Sara and from his sister, letters telling him of their every-day life, and of the incidents of it. With each of these letters his mental debate was opened up afresh, until he began to dread them, for he knew that they were noble. He knew that the atmosphere in which Sara lived—of waiting, of patience, of hope, and of steadfast love, was a reproach to his own wretched vacillations of mind. Her calmness and strength oppressed him, overawed him. It was no longer a question with him as to whether he should tell Nita Bolton that he loved another woman; the question was now, how to approach with Sara the subject of his desiring to be free. He did not in the least know how the position had come about, but it was there. Unable to make up his mind to do anything, he contented himself with answering Sara’s letters in a strain far more ardent than that in which she wrote to him, protesting the entire devotion for her which he felt, as he wrote.
It was, perhaps, Jerome Wellfield’s misfortune that these two women loved him so much and so deeply that they let him see too easily how dear he was to them. It is possible that a featherweight might have turned the scale. Had Sara Ford not confessed her love with such an utter frankness and self-abnegation—had he entertained any doubt as to his success with her, surely he must have been more circumspect. Dire necessity, and the fear of losing the prize, must have kept him honest. And had Nita Bolton’s love been differently shown—in a less subtile, coarser, opener way—most assuredly the charm there of wealth and restored fortunes must have been powerless. But he knew that Sara Ford worshipped him heart and soul, that he was the light of her eyes and the joy of her life. And he knew that Nita Bolton loved him with the love that is patient, and enduring, and tenacious; that his joy was her joy, and his sorrow her sorrow; that for him or for his advantage she would efface herself, and rejoice that she was permitted to do so. And with affairs in this state the Indian summer came to an end.
STAGE III.
CHAPTER I.
INTERMEDIATE.
The Professor’s grand, rugged face and delicate, artist brow were somewhat clouded. He rose from the chair before the easel, on which he had been sitting, and laid his brush down.