CHAPTER XXXII.

"I AM A MAN, AND I WILL HAVE JUSTICE."

"I know," said Earle, gently. "I know; you are afraid to tell me; Doris is dead."

"It would be better, perhaps," said Mrs. Brace; "death is not always the greatest trouble that can happen to us."

Then Earle drew nearer, and a more terrible fear came over him. There were troubles worse than death! Surely not for him. Great drops stood on his brow, the veins in his hands swelled like huge cords, his lips grew white as the lips of the dead.

"Tell me what it is," cried he, in a hoarse voice. "You are killing me by inches. What is it?"

"She has gone away from us," said Mrs. Brace. "She has gone and left us."

He started back as though the words had stabbed his heart.

Mattie laid her hand on his arm. By the might of her own love she understood his fears.

"Not with any one else, Earle," she said. "Do listen to me, dear. She has not gone away with anyone else; but life here was dull for her; she did not like it; she has gone abroad to teach little children. It is not so dreadful, Earle, after all."

But he looked at her with vague, dull eyes.

"Not like the life!" he repeated. "But I am here! Dull! How could it be dull? I am here!"

"Tell him the truth, Mattie," said Mrs. Brace; "there is no use in deceiving him any more; he has been deceived long enough; tell him the truth."

He looked from one to the other with haggard eyes.

"Yes, tell me," he said; "tell me the worst."

"She did not love you, Earle," said Mattie, with a deep sob; "she has gone away because she did not want to marry you."

"I do not believe it!" he gasped. "I will not believe it! Oh, Heaven! How do you dare to slander her so? She did love me. Why should she pretend? She promised to be my wife; why should she if she did not love me?"

"My poor Earle," said Mattie; and in his hand she placed the letter. "I never thought there was anything wrong," she continued; "but when neither of you returned, I went back into her room to look for something, and found these letters. They were pinned to the toilet cushion. One is for us, one for you. Oh, Earle, if I could but bear your sorrow for you."

He turned away, without one word, and opened the letter. They could never tell how he had read it, how long he was in mastering its contents, what he thought of them, or how he bore the pain. He made no comment as he read, his white lips never moved, no murmur escaped him; but, after a time--it seemed to them endless time--he fell with his face to the ground, as a brave man falls when he receives a death-wound.

"It has killed him," said Mrs. Brace. "Oh! that false, wicked girl! He is dead, Mattie?"

But Mattie, quick as thought, had raised his head and held it in her arms.

"He is not dead, mother," she said. "Run for my father." For one short minute she was left with him alone, then she raised her troubled face, repeated her well-known prayer: "God save Earle! If I could but have borne it for him!" she thought.

Then the farmer came in, utterly useless and incompetent, as men are in the presence of great trouble which they cannot understand. He commenced his assistance by talking loudly against the perfidy of women; and when his daughter sensibly reminded him that that was no longer any use, he began to lament the folly of men in loving women so madly; reminded again that this was still more useless, Mark raised the helpless figure in his strong arms, tears running down his face. He laid Earle on a couch, and then looked helplessly at him.

"I do not know what is to be done for him," he said. "His mother will go distracted. Ah! wife, she would have done a kinder deed, that golden-haired lassie of ours, if she had killed him at once."

Then Mark Brace went away.

"The women must manage it," he said to himself. His tender heart was wrung by the sight of that anguish.

It was Mattie who ministered to him, until Earle opened his eyes, and looked at her with a glance that frightened her.

"I remember it all," he said, hoarsely; "she has gone away because she did not love me--did not want to marry me. Will you leave me alone, Mattie?"

"If you will promise me not to do anything to hurt yourself," she said.

"I shall not do that. Do you know why? She promised to marry me, and she shall do it. To find her I will search the wide world through. I will follow her, even to the valley of the shadow of death, but she shall be my wife as she has promised to be--I swear it to the just high God!"

"Hush, my dear; your great sorrow drives you mad. You will think differently after a time."

"I shall not," he replied; "she shall be my wife. Listen, Mattie; bend down to me while I whisper. She shall be my wife, or I will kill her!"

"Hush! You do not mean it. Your sorrow has made you mad."

"No, I am not mad, Mattie." He held both her hands tightly in his own. "I am not mad, but I will have my just rights, or my just revenge." His breath flamed hotly upon her face. "You will remember that, on the day she fled from me, I swore never to rest until I found her; never to rest until she was my wife, and if she refused to be that, I swore to murder her!"

Mattie shrank from him, trembling and frightened.

"No wonder," he said, "that men go mad; women make devils of them. No wonder they slay that which they love best; women madden them. What have I done?--oh, Heaven! what have I done that I should suffer this? Listen to me before you go. I gave her my love--she has mocked it, laughed at it. I gave her my genius--she has blighted it, she has crushed it. I gave her my heart--it has been her toy and her plaything for a few short months, she has broken it with her white hands, she has danced over it with her light feet. I gave her my life, and she has destroyed it. I am a man, and I will have justice; she shall give back to me what I have given her, or I will kill her."

She saw that he was growing more wild with every word: his face flushed hotly, his lips burned like fire, his eyes were filled with flame. She was afraid of him; and yet in this, the darkest hour of his need, she could not leave him. Again and again from her lips, as she knelt there trying to console him, came the prayer of which she never tired--"God save Earle."

At last the wild raving--she could only think it raving--ceased; she saw his eyes darken and droop.

"He will sleep now," thought Mattie, "and sleep will save him."

She drew down the blinds, and shut out the bright sunshine; then, with a long, lingering look at the changed, haggard face, she left him.

Mrs. Brace saw her come from the little parlor, looking so white and wan that her mother's heart ached for her. She kissed the pale face.

"That wicked girl is not going to kill you as well as Earle," she said. "I will not have you distressed in this way."

"Oh, mother!" cried Mattie, "never mind my distress, think of Earle. Earle will go mad or die."

"Nothing of the kind, my dear. He was sure to feel very keenly. He loved Doris very much, but he will not die. It takes a great deal to kill. He has too much sense to go mad. He will get over it in time, and be just as fond of some one else."

Mattie had a truer insight into his nature than had Mrs. Brace.

They went in several times that day to look at him; he lay always in the same position, his face shaded with his hand and turned from the light, sleeping heavily they thought, but sleep and Earle were strangers. He lay there--only Heaven knew what he suffered during these hours of silence and solitude--going over and over again in his own mind all that he had ever said or done to Doris. She had been difficult to win; she had been coy, and he thought proud, sensitive; but he did really believe, from the depths of his heart, that she loved him. What motive could she have had in deceiving him if she had not really loved him? It would have been just as easy to have said so as not. There was no need for the deception. She could have rejected him just as easily as she accepted him.

He alternated between hope and despair. At one time he felt quite sure that she loved him, and that this was only a caprice, nothing more; she was determined not to be easily won. Then his mood changed, and he despaired. She had never loved him, and preferred leaving home and every one rather than marry him.

Still, in one thing, he was inflexible; let it be how it might, he was determined to find her. He would search the whole world through, but find her he would.

He was spared, in that hour of anguish, one trial; no pang of jealousy came to him; he felt certain of one thing, at least, if Doris did not love him, she loved no one else. If she would not marry him, she was not going to marry another. He knew quite well that here at Brackenside she had seen no one; thank Heaven at least for that.

Then a deep, heavy, dreamless sleep came over him. When he woke again it was night and honest Mark, with a face full of bewildered pain, was standing over him.

"Come, Earle," he said, "this will never do; you have been here all day without food. You must not give way after this fashion."

But the troubled eyes raised to his had no understanding in them.

"Remember," continued Mark, with his simple eloquence, "you are the only son of your mother, and she is a widow."

The words, in their simple pathos, struck Earle. He rose from his couch, and Mark saw, as he did so, that he shuddered and trembled like one seized with mortal cold.

"What do you wish me to do, Mark?" he said.

"Take something to eat, then go home to your mother. The world is not all ended because a golden-haired lassie has chosen to run away from you. Women are all very well," continued Mark, with an air of oracular wisdom, "but the man who trusted his whole heart in them would not be a wise man."

"Then I have been foolish," said Earle, "for I trusted my life and my love together."

He was standing up then, looking around him with vague, bewildered eyes.

"I am to go home, Mark?" he said at last.

And the farmer, believing that air and exercise would be best for him, said "Yes."

But Earle turned away with a sick shudder from the food that was offered to him.

"I could sooner eat ashes," he said.

And they forebore to press him.

"You will feel better to-morrow," said Mark. "A night's sleep makes a wonderful difference in our way of looking at matters."

But Mattie and her mother followed him with wistful eyes.

"She has spoiled his life," said Mrs. Brace.

"She has broken his heart," said Mattie.

Then they seemed to remember that all their sympathy was given to Earle, and they had not thought of being sorry for themselves.

Mattie had lost, as she believed, her sister, yet her thoughts were all for Earle.

The three sat in silence. It was Mark who broke it first:

"So, after all, it was to Earle and to us she was writing," he said, "and not to her school-fellows. I wish I had gone in the room and looked over her shoulder; I should have known, then, what she was doing."

"It would not have prevented it," said Mrs. Brace. "Doris has always had her own way, no matter who suffered by it; if she had not gone now, she would have gone another time."

Then Mark looked up with a puzzled face.

"She has seen no one, to my knowledge," he said, "since she left school. How did she manage, I wonder, to get this situation?"

The solution of that problem occupied the remainder of the evening. They could not imagine how she had contrived it. To them it was another proof of her indomitable will, proving that she would accomplish her ends, no matter what they were, or at what cost.