The Story of an Untold Love

by Paul Leicester Ford

At moments, too, when with you, I have had to exercise the greatest self-control not to tell you what I feel. If I were only some one else than Donald Maitland, so that I might say to you:—

“You should know that your guardian was incapable of the lowness the world imputes to him! I am not trying to belittle the sin, but to distinguish the motive. His wrong was no mean attempt to enrich himself at the expense of one he loved, for his nature was wholly unmercenary, and his transgression originated, not through greed, but through lack of it. Like all men of true intellect, he was heedless in money matters, and I am conscious that there was in him, as there is in me, the certain weakness which is almost inevitable with mind cultivation,—an engulfing, as it were, of the big principles of right and wrong in the complexities and the refinements of cultivated thought. His birthright was scholarship, but in place of the life he was fitted for he was forced into Wall Street, and toiled there without sympathy or aptitude for his work. Do you not remember how, aside from our companionship, his books were his one great pleasure? The wealth of mind he gave to us tells the story of how he must have neglected his office in favor of his library. Yet though this preference might have made him a poor man, I cannot think his studies would ever have led him into dishonesty. I have never had the heart to trace the history of his act, but Mr. Blodgett tells me that shortly after his marriage he first began to speculate, and knowing as I do my mother’s extravagance and my father’s love for her, I can understand the motive. The inevitable result came presently, and, as a temporary expedient, a small part of your property was used. Then a desperate attempt was made to recover this by the risking of a larger portion, and after that there was nothing left but confession or flight. I wish he had spoken, but the weakness that produced the first wrong accounts for the second, and I believe his chief thought was of me, and how I might be saved from the consequences of his guilt. Unless you have put him wholly out of your heart, you must appreciate that it was no sordid scheme to cheat you, but a surrender to the love strong enough to overcome his honesty. You must know that he loved you too well to wrong you willingly, and I think with pain of what I am sure he must have suffered in his shame at having robbed you. Do you not remember the sadness in his face in those later years, and his tenderness to both of us? Can you not see that his kindness, his patience, and his care of us were his endeavored atonement?”

Oh, Maizie, I ask nothing for myself, but if you could be brought to think of him, to love him, as you once did, my greatest grief would be ended.

Bitter as my misery was after Mr. Blodgett’s revelation, there was still some sweetness to make it bearable. For years I had thought of you as heartless and forgetful, and even in my love had hated and despised you at moments, as only love can hate and despise. The world thinks that animosity is always strongest against enemies, though daily it sees the intensest feuds between those nations and individuals who are most closely related, and never learns that the deepest hatred comes from love. Now I knew that you had cause for slighting my letters and gift, and the knowledge of my injustice and the thought that you were more lovable than ever were the silver lining to my cloud of shame.

My first meeting with you was a pure chance, yet it shaped my life. For three weeks after my call on Mr. Blodgett I pondered and vacillated over what I should do, without reaching any decision. At the end of that time I went to his office again.

“Mr. Blodgett has asked two or three times if you hadn’t called,” the boy informed me; adding, as he opened the door to the private office, “He told me, if you ever came again, sir, to show you right in.”

I passed through the doorway, and then faltered, for you were sitting beside the banker, overlooking a paper that he was commenting upon. Could I have escaped unnoticed, I should have done so; but you both glanced up as I entered.

The moment you saw me you rose, with an exclamation of recognition and surprise, which meant to me that you knew your old friend in spite of the changes. Do you wonder that, not foreseeing what was to come, I stood there as if turned to stone? My manner evidently made you question your own eyes, for you asked, “Is not this Dr. Hartzmann?”

“Of course it is!” cried Mr. Blodgett, with a quickness and heartiness which proved that your question was almost as great a relief to him as it was to me.

“I did not think, Miss Walton,” I replied, steadying my voice as best I could, “that you saw my face clearly enough that evening, to recollect it?”