It was one thing for her to light-heartedly announce that she loved Martin Howe and would marry him; but it was quite another matter for him to reach a corresponding conclusion. To her vengeance was an antiquated creed, a remnant of a past decade, which it cost her no effort to brush aside. Martin, on the contrary, was built of sterner stuff. He hated with the vigor of the red-blooded hater, fostering with sincerity the old-fashioned dogmas of justice and retribution. “An eye 262 for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was a matter of right; and the mercy that would temper it was not always a virtue. More often it was a weakness.
To be caught in Ellen Webster’s toils and own himself beaten would, Lucy well understood, be to his mind a humiliating fate.
Only a compelling, unreasoning love that swept over him like some mighty tidal wave, wrenching from its foundations every impeding barrier, could move him to surrender; and who was she to arouse such passion in any lover? She was only a woman human and faulty. She had indeed a heart to bestow, and without vain boasting it was a heart worth the winning; she held herself in sufficient esteem to set a price on the treasure. But was it jewel enough to prompt a man to uproot every tradition of his moral world for its possession?
Sadly she shook her head. No, Martin would never be lost in a mood of such over-mastering love as this for her. If he made a proposal of marriage, it would be because he was spurred by impulses of justice and pity; and no matter how worthy these motives, he would degenerate into the laughing stock of the community the instant he began to carry 263 out the terms of the will and reconstruct the wall. She could hear now the taunts and jests of the townsfolk. Some of them would speak in good-humored banter, some with premeditated malice; but their jibes would sting.
“So you’re tacklin’ that wall in spite of all you said, are you, Martin?”
“Ellen Webster’s got you where she wanted you at last, ain’t she, Martin?”
“This would be a proud day for the Websters, Martin!”
There would even be those who would meanly assert that a man could be made to do anything for money.
Ah, she knew what the villagers would say, and so, too, would Martin. How his proud spirit would writhe and smart under the lash of their tongues! Neither pity nor love for her should ever place him in a position of such humiliation.
Before he was confronted by the choice of turning her out of doors, or marrying her and making himself the butt of the county wits, she must clear his path from embarrassment and be gone. She had a pittance of her own that would support her until she could find employment that would render her independent of 264 charity. Her future would unquestionably be lonely, since she must leave behind her not only the man she loved but the home about which her fondest dreams centered. Nevertheless, she had never lacked courage to do what must be done; and in the present emergency the pride of the Websters came surging to re-enforce her in her purpose.