Elise shut herself in her room and, pitching the paper on the dressing-table, sat down to think. For nearly an hour she sat without turning a hand to undress, trying to unravel the tangled skein of her heart's affairs and see a way out; but she could not get her thoughts to the main issue. Like a fiery barrier to her thinking was the man's burning denunciation: "You are false—unspeakably false!" It had rung in her ears all the evening, and however she tried she could not get away from it. At last she began hurriedly to undress, but before that process was half finished she brushed the toilet articles from a corner of the dressing-table, drew up a chair, and began to write.
"Unspeakably false? No, no, Evans, I am not false. I have not been false: for I love you. Such a long time I have loved you. Sometimes I have believed you loved me, and sometimes I have doubted; but I do not doubt since you told me to-night I was unspeakably false. Shame on you to swear at your sweetheart so!—and bless you for saying it, for now I know. O why did you not say it earlier so that I might not have misread you? I thought you felt yourself committed, and must go on: that your love was dead, but honour held you. You looked so distressed, dear heart, that I was misled. Forgive me. And do not think I do not know your distress. I, too—but no, I must not. I love you, I cannot do more. In your rage were you conscious that your kiss fell upon my lips, dearest? Blind you were when you said I was unspeakably false.—"
She had written rapidly and almost breathlessly while the impulse was warm within her heart. She paused for a moment—held the pen poised as if uncertain what to say next—hesitated as to how to say it—next, as to whether to say it—laid the pen down and picked up the sheet to read what she had written. A blush came to her cheeks as she read, and at the end she dropped her face upon her arm on the table and suffered a revulsion of shame for her unmaidenliness. She tried hard to justify her writing and had all but succeeded when Rutledge's words, "It is better so," put all her love's excuses to final rout. She took the written sheet and went across to drop it on the smoldering fire. But her resolution failed her: she felt that it would be to burn her very heartbeats if she gave these words to the flames.
Going again to the dressing-table she laid the letter upon the scattered sheets of paper to await a more mature decision, and, hurriedly disrobing, went to bed.
She found it very hard to go to sleep. Even in the dark she could feel the continuing blushes in her cheeks as she thought of what she had written. Finally in desperation she tumbled up and in the dim glow of the coals in the grate crossed the room to the dressing-table, snatched up and crumpled in her hand the disturbing letter, hurriedly gathered up the remaining sheets of paper and chucked them in the table drawer, walked quickly over and dropped the offending tender missive upon the coals and went to bed again in the light of its destruction. A very long time after its last gleam was dark and dead she found the sleep she sought.
CHAPTER XXXV
It is not within the province of this chronicle to recall the sensational excitement that swept the nation in those days further than as it affected the persons mentioned in this narrative. The details of that sensation, the screams, the howls, the jeers, the predictions, the warnings, the laments, the philosophizings, a newspaper-reading people but too well remember. They have no proper place of rehearsal in this history; and if they had, a comprehensive statement which would present the matter fairly to those who come after would be too voluminous for the plan upon which this book is projected.
In that time of tumult and of trial Mr. Phillips stood indeed alone. If he had braced himself firmly in his determination to save Helen's happiness at all cost, it was well: for his trial was to the uttermost. Although it would have crushed any other than his adamantine will, the storm-beaten father withstood, as one accustomed to do battle, the pressure from without: but the rebellion of his own soul was an unrelieved tragedy that shook him day and night with its terror. If his love for Helen had not approached the infinite, surely in the shrieking revulsion of his spirit he would have cast her off. There was a demand from loud-mouthed people the nation over that he should disown her and drive her into the outer darkness. Some relief there was in that demand, for it only stirred the combative in his nature. The yells and hoots aroused his fighting blood. But the silence, the unspeaking horror—as if in the presence of death—in which sober-minded friend and foe stood aghast and looked upon Helen's plight, made his courage faint and tremulous. It was so awfully akin to the sickening horror and silence in his own heart.
He was indeed alone; and in that loneliness it was given to him to teach to himself the far bounds of a father's love. If he only could have fought something!—or somebody! If he only openly could have snapped his fingers in the face of public opinion, in the teeth of his own mutinous soul—openly—and told them he cared more for Helen's untroubled laugh than for them all, and be damned to 'em! If he only could have died! But no: he must stand and be still to the most thankless task that ever called for a hidden loyalty. Helen must not know of the travail of his love, lest that defeat love's purpose. It was too late, too late, for knowledge to do other than tear her heart-strings out, blight her young soul, and write Remorse eternally upon her life. She must never know how much he loved her!
There was no lack of personal—and professing—-friends to stand more or less loyally beside the father in that time, but their support was wormwood to him. From the very few who were altogether sincere he turned in aversion even as he suffered their commendations, while for the insincere and sycophantic he had a doubly unspeakable contempt; and that disgust and scorn was agony, for that he must swallow it and belie his own spirit as he listened to these friends.