Rutledge

by Miriam Coles Harris

All that the wit and knowledge and virtue of man could teach, Alice Rutledge had been taught; but the only lesson that could have done her any good in that day, she had never learned. The lesson that she should have lisped at her mother's knee, that should have been implanted before any earthly desire had taken root in her flexile soul, had never been given to her. The "sign to angels known," had not marked her baby-forehead, holy hands had not overshadowed her before the strife began, all her goodness and strength were of the earth, earthy, and the prince of this world won an easy victory over them. When temptation came, it found her careless, secure. How was it a possible thing for her to fall? Why need she renounce what was but a pleasant dream, as innocent as it was secret. She was promised to one whom she had meant to love; she had, perhaps, loved him at first, but with a shade too much of awe to make it perfect love, and the weakness and timidity of her nature made her shrink involuntarily from what was higher and stronger, and cling to what was lower, and nearer to her own level. And so she yielded, little by little, to the fascinations of an intercourse that, had she listened to it, even her own weak heart would have told her was a sin. She was bound by betrothal, her tempter was bound by marriage; if the glamour of destruction had not been over her already, she could have seen the madness of such an intimacy, the sure perdition that such a violation of right, even in thought, must lead to. But it was the very impossibility and security that ensnared her, that blinded those around her. Richard's dearest friend, the most desired and welcome guest at her father's house, the most accomplished and refined gentleman she knew, how could she see in him the traitor that he was? She, almost a child in years and inexperience, and he, a man of the world, with the world's worst principles, and withal, so wily, so eloquent, so impassioned, was it strange that before she dreamed of danger, she was snared beyond redemption. The destruction of her principles had been so gradual, the instilling of his so artful, that the work was nearly done before the lost girl saw her peril. Then, no one can tell the struggles of her tempted soul; duty and reason against sinful love and guilty passion; but who can question for a moment which way the balance turned? There was none of whom she could ask counsel. She had deceived and outraged all she loved, so shamefully, by the very thought of what now tempted her, that it was worse than death to betray in the least her misery. The one to whom at last she turned, was the one least fitted to direct her; her companion, governess and friend was only less worldly and thoughtless than her charge; she loved her with all her heart, would have sacrificed anything to serve her; she never dreamed of the danger she was in till too late; terrified, she strove to bring her back to reason, but in vain. Alice's was the stronger will, and she weakly yielded to it, and became the reluctant tool in the hands of the seducer.

In one awful moment it burst upon the proud old man that his name was branded with disgrace, his daughter fled, his love outraged, his honor stabbed a deadly blow; all that he had lived for lost; all that he had hoped for blighted.

In that household there was such amazement and wrath and desolation as are horrible but to imagine. Love outraged most cruelly, friendship betrayed most vilely, all that was pure turned into sin, all that was true turned false. In one short hour, the pride of that ungodly home was humbled to the dust, its fair name stained with shame, its very life's blood oozing from that cruel wound. "Therefore revenge became it well?" Therefore the agony that nothing else could allay, should seek to dull itself in vengeance, should hunt to the very death the shameless traitor? Should hurl blighting curses on the head of her who had brought this ruin on her home?

But God stayed the impotent wrath of man. He took the vengeance that alone is His, in His own hands; the curses that the outraged father called down on his erring child, clustered, a black and ghastly troop, around his own dying bed, and shut off the last ray of mercy. Before a hand could be raised to deal vengeance, death struck down the father, and but few days and nights of anguish and solicitude had passed before his heir lay dead beside him, and the life of the boy who alone of all survived, lay trembling in the balance. For a long while it seemed uncertain whether God had not forgotten the race that had so long forgotten Him; whether He had not turned away His face, and they should all die and turn again to their dust; whether the memory of them should not be rooted off of the earth, and their name perish from among the children of men. For a long while, the boy lay between life and death, but when at last life conquered, and he came back to the changed and desolated world, it was with but little gratitude for the boon that had been granted him, with almost a loathing of the life that had been spared to him.

It is not necessary to the purposes of my story nor will it further its elucidation, to repeat the history of the years that followed. It is sufficient that they were years of misanthropy and misery, almost of infidelity. Travel, change, society, neither attracted nor soothed him; the life he led it suited no one to join him in, and in the midst of the world he lived unmolested by it and regardless of it. At last—what need to tell when or how—there came an awakening; he saw the truth he had been so long shutting his eyes from, he saw God's mercy and his own sin, and rousing from his apathy he bent himself to the work that lay before him. We know what that work was, and how well he fulfilled it; from the misanthropic recluse, he became the Christian. I knew all this, and much more, that he did not tell me.

"The story has been too long already, I will leave you now," said Mr. Rutledge with a sudden change of voice; "I have finished my office of raconteur, you have listened well; almost I could swear to having seen a tear glisten in your eye, almost I could take my oath you have not once thought of yourself and your young lady sensibilities, but have been absorbed to forgetfulness of them all by the story of one who is almost a stranger to you, quite a stranger, indeed, you said not long ago."

"I did not mean that when I said it, Mr. Rutledge, I repented of it a minute afterward. And I want to say to you now—I am sorry from my heart for that, and the many other hypocrisies you know I have been guilty of. You don't know all, you would despise me if you did; if you knew how cowardly I have been, and how deceitful. I have not meant it; I have said a hundred things that I have cried for afterward, that I never would have said if I had not been too proud and too angry to have controlled myself. But believe me, I am miserably sorry now. Will you forgive me?"

He leaned forward for a moment on the table, and shading his eyes with his hand, fixed them on my face. "Forgive you?" he said in a low, clear tone, "Forgive you? no—not yet—you must not ask it yet! When I have conquered my pride and my passion, you may ask me to forgive you, but not now—not now!"

"Aunt Edith, do you want me?" I faltered, starting up. Mrs. Churchill moved from where she stood beside the doorway and entered the room.

"You have been absent a long while," she said in a soft voice, "we have been wondering where you were. Mr. Rutledge, how have you managed to amuse my listless and distraite young niece so long? Have you been studying a map of France with her, or poring over a chart of the Atlantic? For such pursuits are all, I believe, that have any interest for her now."