Daphne: An Autumn Pastoral

by Margaret Pollock Sherwood

"Then my hard-won control vanished, and I felt that I could stake my hopes of heaven and my fears of hell to win you."

"A Greek god, with thoughts of hell?" murmured Daphne.

"Hell," he answered, "is a feeling, not a place, as has often been observed. I happen to be in it now, but it does not matter. Yes, I am going away, Daphne, Daphne. You say that there are claims upon you that you cannot thrust aside. I shall go, but in some life, some time, I shall find you again."

Daphne looked at him with soft triumph in her eyes. Secure in the possession of that letter on the table, she would not tell him yet! This note of struggle gave deeper melody to the joyous music of the shepherd on the hills.

"I asked you once about your life and all that had happened to you: do you remember?" he inquired. "I have never told you of my own. Will you let me tell you now?"

"If you do not tell too much and explain yourself away," she answered.

"It is a story of tragedy, and of folly, recognized too late. I have never told it to any human being, but I should like you to understand. It has been an easy life, so far as outer circumstances go. Until I was eighteen I was lord and dictator in a household of women, spoiled by mother and sisters alike. Then came the grief of my life. Oh, I cannot tell it, even to you!"

The veins stood out on his forehead, and his face was indeed like the face of a tortured Saint Sebastian. The girl's eyes were sweet with sympathy, and with something else that he did not look to see.

"There was a plan made for a journey. I opposed it for some selfish whim, for I had a scheme of my own. They yielded to me as they always did, and took my way. That day there was a terrible accident, and all who were dear to me were killed, while I, the murderer, was cursed with life. So, when I was eighteen, my world was made up of four graves in the cemetery at Rome, and of that memory. Whatever the world may say, I was as guilty of those deaths as if I had caused them by my own hand."

He had covered his face with his palms, and his head was bent. The girl reached out as if to touch the rumpled brown hair with consoling fingers, then drew her hand back. In a moment, when her courage came, he should know what share of comfort she was ready to give him. Meanwhile, she hungered to make the farthest reach of his suffering her own.