Hearts Afire (16 page)

At this time
Joris
Morgan saw his opportunity to
make his sick daughter over morally, the time was at hand, while her body was
weak and her soul malleable. It would be impossible to transform her spirit
after she had once got back her strength. Charlotte was completely prostrated,
passing the entire day without moving, her arms stretched out at full length,
her hands pale and cold, her face turned on the side, her two rich plaits of
brown hair extended on her pillow; bloodless her cheeks, her lips, her brow;
lifeless the glance of her eyes. When spoken to, she answered with a slight
movement of the head, or, at most, one or two words—always the same. “How do
you feel?”

“Better.”

“Do you wish for anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Is there nothing you would like?”

“No, thanks.”

Whereupon she would close her eyes again, exhausted. Nothing more would be
said
by those round her, but Charlotte knew that they were
there, silent, talking together by means of significant glances.

One day,
Joris
Morgan and
Lysbet
Morgan felt that they could mark a progress in Charlotte’s convalescence,
because two or three times she had looked at them with an expression of such
earnest repentance, with such an eager prayer for pardon, in her sad eyes, that
words were not necessary to tell what she felt. Soon afterward Charlotte seemed
to wish to be left alone with her father, as if she had a secret to confide to
him; but he cautiously thought it best to defer any private talk. However, one
morning it so happened that he found himself alone in her room. He was reading
a newspaper when a soft voice said:

“Listen father.”

He looked at her. Her sad eyes were again beseeching forgiveness, and
Charlotte stammered:

“What must you have thought—what must you have said of me!”

“You must not excite yourself, my dear,” Mr. Morgan said kindly.

“I was so wicked,” Charlotte sobbed.

“Don’t talk like that, dear Charlotte; you were guilty of nothing more than
a girlish folly.”

“A sin, a sin.”

“You must call things by their right names, and not let your imagination get
the better of you,”
Joris
Morgan answered, somewhat
somberly. “A youthful folly.”

“Well, be it as you wish,” Charlotte said, humbly;

“There, there,” murmured
Joris
Morgan with the
shadow of a frown, “calm yourself; we’ll speak of this another day.”

Sister Louisa had come back into the room, and her presence cut short their
talk.

While Charlotte was broken in health, disturbed in spirit, and miserable in
thinking of her past, its deceits, its errors, its thousand shameful
aberrations, and its lack of maidenly decorum. When she drew a mental
comparison between
Harleigh
Daly and these two
persons whom she had wished to desert for him—between
Harleigh
,
so timid, so poor in all right feeling, so bankrupt in passion, and them, so
magnanimous, so forgetful of her fault—her repentance grew apace. It was the
exaggerated repentance of a noble nature, which magnifies the moral gravity of
its own transgressions. She felt herself to be quite undeserving of the
sympathy and affection with which they treated her. Their kindness was an act
of gratuitous charity beyond her merits.

Charlotte sole desire was to show herself absolutely obedient to whatever
her Father demanded, to whatever her mother advised.

She gave herself over, bound hand and foot, to these two beings whom she had
so cruelly forgotten on the day of her mad adventure; in her convalescence she
found a great joy in throwing herself absolutely upon their wisdom and their
goodness.

The more Charlotte mended, the more she
shared with Guy Barrington; she told him everything that happened; she opened
to him her every fancy, her every dream; she talked with the emotion of a
passionate woman. Guy Barrington came to her as often as he could, and not at
length; but in each visit there would be, if not a word of love, at least some
kindly phrase. He was genuinely in love with her: in his own way, of course. He
was in love, as men are in love who have loved many times before. Sometimes he
lost his head a little in her presence, but never more than a little. He
retained his mastery of himself sufficiently to pursue his own well-proved
methods of love-making. He covered his real passion with a semblance of levity
which served admirably to compel Charlotte to tolerate it.

She never allowed him—especially at home, where she was alone and where she
was very sad —to speak of love; but she could not forbid him to call
occasionally at
Semple
House, nor could she help
meeting him here and there in the town. Guy Barrington did not pay too open a
court to her, did not affect too great an intimacy; but he was never far from
her. For a whole evening he would hover near her at a party, waiting for the
moment when he might seat himself beside her; he would leave when she left, and
on the pretext of taking a little walk in the moonlight, would accompany her to
the door of her house. He was persevering, with a gentle, continuous, untiring
perseverance that nothing could overcome, neither Charlotte’s silence, nor her
coldness, nor her melancholy. She often spoke to him of
Harleigh
,
and with so much feeling in her voice that he turned pale, wounded in his
pride, disappointed in his desire, yet not despairing, for it is always a
hopeful sign when a woman loves, even though she loves another. Then the only
difficulty (though an immense one) is to change the face of the man she loves
to your own, by a sort of sentimental sleight of hand.

“How strange is love,” Guy Barrington said once to Charlotte, finding her
home alone.

“Love is good, though,” said Charlotte, thoughtfully.

“Does love seem so to you?”

“Yes.”

“You know very little. You’re very naive. Love is a monster of perfidy,” Guy
Barrington said softly.

“Why do you say that to me? Don’t you know that I dislike such talk?”

“If I offend you, I’ll hold my tongue. I keep my opinion, though. Someday
you’ll agree with me.”

“Be quiet, Guy. You distress me.”

“It’s much better to have no illusions; then we can’t lose them, dear
Charlotte”

“It is better to lose illusions, than never to have had them.”

“What a deep heart is yours! How I should like to drown in it! Let me drown
myself in your heart, Charlotte.”

“It is but a dark place,” Charlotte said.

“Why not open the curtains of your heart to me?” Guy Barrington asked.

She did not answer. She sat down in an arm-chair.

“Tell me that you love me a little, Charlotte.”

“I don’t love you.”

“Dear Charlotte, dear Charlotte,” Guy Barrington murmured with his caressing
voice, “How can I believe you, since you allow me in. “Tell me that you love me
a little. For I have waited for that word. Dear Charlotte, sweet Charlotte, you
know that I have adored you for so long a time. Charlotte, Charlotte!”

“What has happened with your feelings was bound to happen,” Charlotte said.

“Charlotte, I conjure you, tell me that you love me.”

“I don’t know. I know nothing.”

“Dear one, dear one,” Guy Barrington murmured, trembling with hope, in an immense
transport of love.

He drew nearer to her and kissed her on the cheek.

A cry of pain burst from her, and she sprang up, horrified, terrified, and
tried to leave the room.

“Oh, for mercy’s sake, forgive me. Don’t go away. Charlotte, Charlotte,
forgive me if I have offended you. I love you so! If you go away I shall die.”

“People don’t die for such slight things” Said Charlotte.

“People die of love.”

“Yes. But one must have courage to die for love.”

“Don’t let us talk of these dismal things. My love, we mustn’t talk of
things that will sadden you. Your beautiful face is troubled. Tell me that you
forgive me. Do you forgive me?”

“I forgive you.”

“I don’t believe it. You don’t forgive me. You love another.”

“No, no—no other.”

“And
Harleigh
Daly?”

But scarcely had Guy Barrington spoken the fatal name when he saw his error.
Her eyes blazed; she trembled from head to foot, in a nervous convulsion.

“Listen,” she said. “If you have a heart, if you have any pity, if you wish
me to stay here with you, never name him again, never name him.”

“You are right.” But then he added, “And yet you loved him, you love him
still.”

“No. I love no one anymore.”

“Why would you not accept me when I proposed for you?”

‘‘Because.”

“Why did you love him?”

“Because.”

“And now why do you love him? Why do you love him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You see, you do love him,” Guy Barrington cried in despair.

“Oh, Guy, oh, Guy!” Charlotte sobbed.

“Oh, I am a fool. Forgive me, forgive me. But I love you, and I lose my
head. I love you, and I am desperate. And I need to know if you still love him.
You will always love him? Is it so?”

“Till death,” Charlotte said, with a strange look and accent.

“Say it again.”

“Till death,” Charlotte repeated, with the same strange intonation.

They were silent.

Guy Barrington put his arm round her waist, and drew her slowly towards him.

Her eyes were fixed and void. She did not feel his arms about her. She did
not feel his kisses. He kissed her hair, he kissed her sweet white throat, and
he kissed her little rosy ear. Charlotte was absorbed in a desperate
meditation, far from all human things. He kissed her face, her eyes, her lips;
she did not know it. But suddenly she felt his embrace become closer, stronger;
she heard his voice change, it was no longer tender and caressing, it was
fervid with tumultuous passion, it uttered confused delirious words. Silently,
looking at him with burning eyes, she tried to disengage herself.

“Let me go,” she said.

“Charlotte, Charlotte, I love you so—I have loved you so long!”

Let me go, let me go!”

“You are my adored one—I adore you above all things.”

“Let me go. You horrify me.”

Guy Barrington finally let her go.

“You, are too good,” Guy Barrington murmured, absently.

“Am I—so Good?” Charlotte pleaded, with tears in her eyes.

“Everybody is good, according to you,” he said. “Then I suppose your old
lover,
Harleigh
Daly, is good too?”

He was. He was absolutely good,” Charlotte cried, her voice softening as she
spoke of
Harleigh
Daly.

Guy Barrington looked at her anxiously. Merely to hear her pronounce her
lover’s name proved that she adored him. Guy Barrington was too expert a
student of women not to interpret rightly her pallor, her emotion, and her
distress. He did not know, but he could easily guess that Charlotte thought of
Harleigh
. He understood how heavy her long hours of
solitude must be, amid the blue and green of the New York landscape, passed in
constant longing for her lover’s presence. He understood perfectly that she was
consumed by secret jealousy, and that he tortured her cruelly when by a word,
or an insinuation he inspired her with new suspicions. He could read her heart
like an open book; but he loved her all the better for the intense passion that
breathed from its pages. He did not despair. Sooner or later, he was convinced,
he would succeed in overcoming the obstacle in his way. He adopted the ancient
method of assailing the character of the absent man.

Guy Barrington would mention her prearranged marriage to Sir Edward, or he
would speak of
Harleigh
Daly’s desertion of his young
love, he saw Charlotte’s face change; he knew the anguish that he woke in her
heart, and he suffered wretchedly to realize that it was for the love of
another man. His weapon was a double-edged sword that wounded her and wounded
him. But what of that? He continued to wield it, believing that thus little by
little he could deface the image of
Harleigh
Daly.

Charlotte became more and more ready to talk of her lover, and that gave Guy
Barrington his opportunity for putting in his innuendos. At the same time it
caused him much bitterness of spirit, and sometimes he would say, “We are
three. How do you do,
Harleigh
? “Bowing to an
imaginary presence.

Charlotte’s eyes filled with tears at such moments.

“Forgive me, forgive me,” He cried. “But when you introduce his name into
our conversation, you cause me such agony that I feel I am winning my place in
heaven. Go on: I am already tied to the rack; force your knife into my heart,
gentle
torturess
.”

And she, at first timidly, but then with the impetuousness of an open and
generous nature, would continue to talk of
Harleigh
.
Where was he, what was he doing, when would he return? She would ask; and
he
by-and-by would interrupt her speculations to suggest
that
Harleigh
was probably loving another, one of his
old loves, whom he met every month in the city; and that he would very likely
not return.

“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it,” Charlotte protested.

“You don’t believe it? But it’s his usual habit. Why should he alter it this
month?”

“He has me to think of now.”

“Oh, dear Charlotte, dear Charlotte, he thinks of you so little!”

“Not so, not so,” she murmured very low.

Charlotte was silent, oppressed and pained by his philosophy, by its
bitterness, its sterile pride, its egotism and cruelty. It seemed as if he had
built a sepulcher from the ruins of her life. She felt that she no longer
understood either her own nature or the external world; a sense of fear and of
confusion had taken the place of her old principles and aspirations. And there
was a great home-sickness in her heart for love, for devotion, for tenderness,
for enthusiasm; a great melancholy at the thought that she would never thrill
with them again, that she would never weep again. She felt a great indefinable
longing, not for the past, not for the present, not for the future, a longing
that related itself to nothing. And she realized that what Guy Barrington had
said was true— horribly, dreadfully, certainly true. She could be sure of
nothing after this, she had lost her bearings, she was being swept round and
round in
a
emotional
whirlpool.