There was no chance of Lady Beauchamp's "comprehending" Everett in this matter. There was something almost pathetic in her mingled anger, perplexity, and disappointment. She could only look on him as a headstrong young man, suicidally bent on his own ruin,—turning obstinately from every offered aid, and putting the last climax of wretchedness to his isolated and fallen position by "turning from the faith of his fathers," as she rather imaginatively described his secession from Orthodoxy.
And, as may be concluded, the mother of Rosa was inexorable, as regarded the engagement between the young people. It must at once be cancelled. She could not for one moment suffer the idea of her daughter's remaining betrothed to the mere adventurer she considered Everett Gray had now become. If, poor as he was, he had thought fit to embrace a profession worthy of a gentleman, the case would have been different. But if his romantic notions led him to pursue such an out-of-the-way course as he had laid out for himself, he must excuse her, if she forbade her child from sharing it. Under present circumstances, his alliance could but be declined by the Beauchamp family, she said, with her stateliest air. And the next minute, as Everett held her hand, and said good-bye, she melted again from that frigid dignity, and, looking into the frank, manly, yet gentle face of the young man, cried,—
"Are you quite decided, Everett? Will you take time to consider? Will you talk to Rosa about it, first?"
"No, dear Lady Beauchamp. I know already what she would say. I have quite decided. Thank you for all your purposed kindness. Believe that I am not ungrateful, even if I seem so."
"Oh, Everett,—Everett Gray! I am very sorry for you, and for your mother, and for all connected with you. It is a most unhappy business. It gives me great pain thus to part with you," said Lady Beauchamp, with real feeling.
And so the interview ended, and so ended the engagement.
Nothing else could have been expected, every one said who heard the state of the case, and knew what Lady Beauchamp had wished and Everett had declined. There were no words to describe how foolishly and weakly he had acted. "Everybody" quite gave him up now. With his romantic, transcendental notions, what would become of him, when he had his own way to make in the world?
But Everett had consolation and help through it all; for Rosa, the woman he loved, his mother, and his sister believed in him, and gloried in what other people called his want of common sense. Ay, though the horrible wrench of parting was suffered by Rosa every minute of every day, and the shadow of that dreadful, unnatural separation began to blacken her life even before it actually fell upon her,—through it all, she never wavered. When he first told her that he must go, that it was the one thing he held it wise and right to do, she shrunk back affrighted, trembling at the coming blankness of a life without him. But after a while, seeing the misery that came into his face reflected from hers, she rose bravely above the terrible woe, and then, with her arms round him and her eyes looking steadfastly into his, she said, "I love you better than the life you are to me. So I can bear that you should go."
And he said, "There can be no real severance between those who love as we do. God, in His mercy and tenderness, will help us to feel that truth, every hour and every day."
For they believed thus,—these two young Visionaries,—and lived upon that belief, perhaps, when the time of parting came. And it may be that the thought of each was very constantly, very intimately present to the other, during the many years that followed. It may be that this species of mental atmosphere, so surrounding and commingling with all other things more visibly and palpably about them, did cause these dreamers to be happier in their love than many externally united ones, whose lot appears to us most fair and smooth and blissful. Time and distance, leagues of ocean and years of suspense, are not the most terrible things that can come between two people who love one another.