Hearts Afire (15 page)

“I don’t understand you” Charlotte said.

And yet you must—you must. If you don’t see the reasons for my conduct you
will despise me, you will hate me. You must try, with all your heart, with all
your mind, to understand. You mustn't let yourself be carried away by your
love. You must be calm, you must be cool headed.”

“I can’t.”

“O Charlotte!” he said in despair.

Again he was silent. She mechanically, to overcome the trembling of her
hands, pulled at the fringe of the tablecloth. She tried to reflect, to
understand. And always, always, she had the same feeling, the same idea, and
she could not help trying to express it in words: “You don’t love me enough.”
She looked into his eyes as she spoke, concentrating her whole soul in her
voice and in her gaze.

“It is true, I don’t love you enough,” he answered.

She made no sound: she was cut to the heart. The little sitting-room, the
inn, the room, the whole world appeared to go whirling round her dizzily. She
had a feeling as if her temples would burst open, and pressed her hands to them
instinctively.

“Ah, then,” she said, after a long pause, in a broken voice—“ah, then, you
have deceived me?”

I have deceived you,” he murmured humbly.

“You haven’t loved me?”

“Not enough to forget everything else. I have already said so.”

“I understand. What was the use of lying?”

“Because you were beautiful and good, and you loved me, and I didn't see
this danger. I didn’t dream that you would wish to give up everything in this
way, that
I should be unable to prevent.”

“Words, words. The essential is, you don’t love me.”

“As you wish to be loved, as you deserve to be loved—no.”

“That is, without blind passion?”

“Without blind passion.”

“That is, without fire, without enthusiasm?”

“Without fire, without enthusiasm.”

“Then, with what?”

“With tenderness, with affection, with devotion.” “It is not enough, not
enough, not enough,” Charlotte said monotonously, as if talking in her sleep.
“Don’t you know how to love differently? More—as I love?”

“No, I don’t know how.”

“Do you think you never can? Perhaps you can tomorrow, or in the future?”

“No, I never can, Charlotte. I shall always prefer duty to happiness.”

“Poor, weak creature “Charlotte murmured with immense scorn.

Harleigh
lifted his eyes towards heaven, as if
seeking strength to endure his martyrdom.

“So,” Charlotte went on, slowly, “if we were to live together, you would be
unhappy?”

“We should both be unhappy, and the sight of your unhappiness, of which I
should be the cause, would kill me.”

“Well, then?”

“It’s for you to say what you wish.”

The cruel, the terrible reality was clear to her; there was only one thing
to be said, and that was so unexpectedly dreadful that she hesitated to say it.
The truth was so horrible, she could not bear to give it shape in speech. She
looked at him— at this man who, to save her, inflicted such inexpressible pain
upon her. And he understood that Charlotte could not pronounce the last words.
He himself, in spite of his great courage, could not speak them, those last
words, for he loved the girl truly. The terrible truth appalled them both.

Charlotte e got up stiffly and went to the window and leaned her forehead
against the glass, looking out over the town and down the road that led to the
little carriage station. Twice before that day she had looked at the same
silent landscape; but in the early afternoon, when she was alone, waiting,
thrilling with hope, and again, only an hour ago, leaning on
Harleigh’s
arm, she had possessed entire the priceless
treasure of a great love. Now, now all was over; nevermore, nevermore would she
know the delight of love: all was over, all, all.

Harleigh
had not moved from where he sat with his
face buried in his hands. Suddenly Charlotte seized him by the shoulders, forced
him to raise his head, and began to speak, so close to him that he could feel
her warm breath on his cheek.

“And yet you did love me” she said, passionately, “You can’t deny it; I know
it. I have seen you turn pale when you met me, as pale as I myself. If I spoke
to you my voice made your eyes brighten, as your voice made my heart leap. You
looked for me everywhere, as I looked for you, feeling that the world would be
colorless without love. And your letters bore the imprint of a great
tenderness. But that is love, true love, passionate love, which isn’t forgotten
in a day or in a year, for which a whole lifetime is not sufficient. It isn’t
possible that you don’t love me anymore. You do love me; you are deceiving me
when you say you don’t. I don’t know why. But speak the truth—tell me that it
is impossible for you to have got over such a passion.”

He felt all his courage leaving him under this tumult of words.

“
Harleigh
,
Harleigh
,
think of what you are doing in denying our love. Think of the two lives you are
ruining; for you yourself will be as miserable as I.
Harleigh
,
you will kill me; if you leave me here, I shall kill myself. Let us go away;
let us go away together. Take me away.”

It seemed for a moment as if he were on the point of giving way, He was a
man with a man’s nerves, a man’s senses, a man’s heart; and he loved her
ardently. But when again she begged him to fly with her, and he felt himself
almost yielding, he made a great effort to resist her.

“I can’t, Charlotte; I cannot,” he said in a low voice.

“Then you wish me to die?”

“You won’t die. You are young. You will live to be happy again.”

“All is over for me,
Harleigh
. This is death.”

“No, it’s not death, Charlotte.”

“You talk like father” she cried, moving away from him. “You speak like a
skeptic who has neither love nor faith. You are just like him.”

“You insult me; but you’re right.”

“I am dishonored: do you realize that? I am a fugitive from my family; I am
alone here with you in a hotel. I am dishonored, dishonored, coward that you
are. You can go home quietly, having had an amusing adventure; but I—I have no
home any more. I was a good girl; now I am lost.”

“Your people know where you are and what you have done—that you have done
nothing wrong. They know that you have done it in response to a generous
impulse for one who was not worthy of you, but who has respected you.”

“And who told them?”

“I did.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

“To whom did you tell it?”

“To your mother and your father.”

“Did they come to ask you?”

“No, I went to them.”

“And what did you agree upon amongst you?”

“That I should come here and meet you.”

“And then?”

“That I should leave you.”

“When?”

“When your father was ready to come and fetch you.”

“It’s a beautiful plan,” Charlotte said, icily. “The plan of calm, practical
men. Bravo, bravo! You—you ran to my family, to exculpate yourself, to accuse
me, to reassure them. Good, good! I am a mad child, guilty of a youthful
escapade, which fortunately hasn’t touched my reputation. You denounced me,
told them that I wanted to elope with you; and you are a gentleman! Good! The
whole thing was wonderfully well combined. I am to return home with father as
if I had made a harmless little excursion, and what’s done is done. You’re
right, of course; Father is right, mother is right; you are all right. I alone
am wrong. Oh, the laughable adventure! To attempt an elopement, and to fail in
it, because the man won’t elope. To return home because your lover has
denounced you to your family! What a comedy! You are right. There has been
great catastrophe. The solution is immensely humorous: I know it. I am like a
suicide who didn’t kill herself. You are right. I am wrong. And she looked
Harleigh
full in the face, withering him with her glance.
“Be gone! I despise you. Be gone!”

“Charlotte, Charlotte, don’t send me away like this.”

“Be gone! The cowardly way in which you have behaved is past contempt. Be
gone!”

“We mustn’t part like this.”

“We are already parted, utterly separated. We have always been separated. Go
away.”

“Charlotte, what I have done I have done for your sake, for your good. Now
you send me away. Afterwards you will do me justice. I am an honorable man—that
is my fault.”

“I don’t know you. Good-day.”

“But what will you do alone here?”

“That doesn’t concern you. Good-day.”

“Let me wait for your father.”

“If you don’t go at once I’ll open the window and throw myself from the
balcony,” Charlotte said, with so much firmness that he believed her.

“Good-bye, then.”

“Good-bye.”

Charlotte stood in the middle of the room, a small red spot burning in each
of her cheeks, and watched him go out, heard him descend the staircase, slowly,
with the heavy step of one bearing a great burden. She leaned from the window
and saw the shadow of a man issue from the door of the inn—it was
Harleigh
. He stood still for a moment, and then turned into
the high road that leads back to the garden, and again stood still, as if to
wait for somebody there. Charlotte saw him turn towards the windows of the
hotel, and gaze up at them earnestly. At last he moved slowly away and
disappeared.

Charlotte came back into the room, and threw herself upon the sofa, biting
its cushions to keep herself from screaming. Her head was on fire, but she
couldn’t weep—not a tear, not a single tear.

And in the midst of her trouble, constantly— whether, as at one moment, she
was pitying herself as a poor child to whom a monstrous wrong had been done, or
as, at the next, burning with scorn as a great lady offended in her pride; or
again, blushing with shame as she thought of the imminent arrival of her
father—in the midst of it all, through it all, constantly, one little
agonizing, implacable phrase kept repeating itself: “All is over, all is over.”

By-and-by after
Harleigh
departed she heard her
name called outside the door: “Charlotte! Charlotte!”

She fell on her knees before door, sobbing: “Forgive me father, forgive me
father.”

Joris
Morgan, with a tremor in his voice,
murmured, “My poor child.”

For three weeks Charlotte lay at the point of death, prey to a violent
attack of scarlet fever, alternating between delirium and stupor, and always
moaning in her pain; while
Joris
Morgan,
Lysbet
Morgan, and a Sister of Charity watched at her
bedside.

But she did not die. The fever reached its crisis, and then, little by
little, day by day, abated.

At last her struggle with death was finished, but Charlotte had lost in it
the best part of her youth. Thus a valorous warrior survives the battle indeed,
but returns to his friends the phantom of himself—an object of pity to those
who saw him set forth, strong and gallant.

When the early New York summer began to show itself, she was convalescent,
but so weak that she could scarcely support the weight of her thick brown hair.
Lysbet
Morgan tried very patiently to comb it so
gently that Charlotte should not have to move, braiding it in two long plaits;
in this way it would seem less heavy. From time to time a big tear would roll
down the invalid's cheek.

She was weeping silently, slowly; and when
Lysbet
Morgan, or Sister Louisa would ask her: “What is it; what can we do for you?”
Charlotte would answer with a sign which seemed to say: “Let me weep; perhaps
it will do me good to weep.”

“Let her cry, it will do her good to cry,” was what the great doctor Hervey
Stratford had said also. “Let her do whatever pleases her; refuse her nothing
if you can help it.”

So Sister Louisa, obedient to the doctor, did not try to prevent her
weeping, did not even try to speak comforting words to her. Perhaps it was not
so much an active sorrow that made her shed these tears, as a sort of sad
relief.

Guy Barrington during this anxious time put aside his occupations of a gay
bachelor, and called upon Charlotte every morning, entering the room on tiptoe,
inquiring with a glance how the sufferer was doing, then seating himself at a
distance from the bed, without speaking. If Charlotte looked up, if he felt her
big sorrowful eyes turned upon his face, he would ask in a gentle voice, the
voice of
that day,
how she felt; she would answer with a faint smile,
“Better,” and would shut her eyes again, and go back to her interior
contemplations.

Guy Barrington, after that, would get up noiselessly and go away, to come
again in the afternoon, and still again in the evening, perhaps for a longer
visit.

Sister Louisa, always dressed in white uniform, would meet him in the
sitting-room; and he would ask, “Is she better?”

“She seems to be.”

“Has she been asleep today?”

“No, I don’t think she has been asleep.”

“Has she said anything?” “Not a word.”

“Who is to watch with her tonight?”

“I am.”

“You will wear yourself out.” Said Guy Barrington.

“No, no I shall be fine.”

Often he would arrive in the evening wearing his dress-suit; he had dined at
his club, and was off for a card-party or a first night at a theatre. Then he
would remain standing, with his overcoat open, his hat in his hand. At such a
time, a little warmed up by the dinner he had eaten, or the amusements that
awaited him, Guy Barrington was a handsome man; his bright eyes shone with sober
brightness; his cheeks had a little color in them; and his smooth black hair
gave him almost an appearance of a theatre actor. One who had seen him in the
morning, pale and exhausted, would scarcely have recognized him. Sister Louisa
would meet him and part with him, never asking whence he came or whither he was
bound; when he had said good-night she would return to Charlotte, slowly, with
her light footsteps that merely brushed the carpet.