Chapter 24

AN AVOWAL OF LOVE

Winston sat gazing at the delicate contour of her face, partially turned away from him, the long, silken lashes shading eyes lowered upon the floor. A single gleam of the westering sun rested in golden beauty across her dark hair, stirred by the slight breeze blowing through the open window. In the silence he could hear his heart beat, and distinguish the faint sound of her breathing. She was the first to speak, yet without moving her head.

"Is it true that you are now under arrest?" she questioned, her voice scarcely audible.

"Technically yes, although, as you may perceive, the sheriff is powerless to prevent an escape if I desired to attempt one."

"Is it because of that--that charge he made?"

He arose to his feet in brave attempt at self-control.

"Oh, no, certainly not! I think that was merely a threat, a cowardly threat, utterly without provocation, without purpose, unless he sought in that way to work you a serious injury. The real charge against me is murder. It appears that the man I fought with in the mine later died from his injuries."

She turned both face and body toward him, her eyes filled with agony.

"The man died? Will it be possible for you to prove yourself innocent?"

"It may be possible, but it does not appear easy. I hope to show that all I did was in self-defence. I did not strike the man a deadly blow; in the struggle he fell and was injured on the sharp rocks. In every sense his death was unintentional, yet there is nothing to sustain me but my own testimony. But I shall not flee from the issue. If I have taken human life I will abide the judgment. God knows I never dreamed of killing the man; never once supposed him seriously injured. You, at least, believe this?"

"I believe all you tell me."

The man's grasp on the casing of the window tightened, his eyes upon the mass of black hair.

"Strangely enough," he continued, "this whole affair has gone wrong from the start; nothing has turned out in the natural way. Criminals have been made into officers of the law, and honest men changed into outlaws. Now it seems impossible to conjecture how the adventure will terminate."

She sat looking up at him, scarcely seeing his face, her hands clasped in her lap.

"'All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players,'" she said, quoting the familiar words as if in a dream. "We are such puppets in the great play! How strange it all is! How dangerously close real life is, always skirting the precipice of tragedy! Plans fail, lines tangle, and lives are changed forever by events seemingly insignificant. To-morrow is always mystery. I wonder, is it not a dim consciousness of this that renders the stage so attractive to the multitude? Even its burlesques, its lurid melodramas, are never utterly beyond the possible. Everywhere are found stranger stories than any romancer can invent; and yet we sometimes term our lives commonplace." She leaned back against the wall, a sob coming into her voice. "What--what is going to be the end of this--for me?"

"Whatever you will," he exclaimed passionately, forgetful of all but her power over him. "It is you who must choose."

"Yes, it is I who must choose," her face still uplifted. "Because I am not a leaf to float on the air, my destiny decided by a breath of wind, I must choose; yet how can I know I decide rightly? When heart and conscience stand opposed, any decision means sacrifice and pain. I meant those hasty words wrung out of me in shame, and spoken yonder; I meant them then, and yet they haunt me like so many sheeted ghosts. 'Tis not their untruth, but the thought will not down that the real cause of their utterance was not the wrong done me. It had other birth."

"In what?"

She did not in the least hesitate to answer, her eyes clear and honest upon his own.

"In my love for you," she answered, quietly, her cheeks reddening to the frank avowal.

He grasped her hands, drawing her, unresisting, toward him.

"You confess this to me?"

"Yes, to you; but to you only because I trust you, because I know you as an honorable man," she said, speaking with an earnest simplicity irresistible. "I am not ashamed of the truth, not afraid to acknowledge it frankly. If there be wrong in this; that wrong has already been accomplished; the mere uttering of it cannot harm either of us. We know the fact without words. I love you; with all my heart I love you. I can say this to you here in the silence, yet I could not speak it openly before the world. Why? Because such love is wrong? Under God I do not know; only, the world would misunderstand, would question my motives, would misjudge my faith. By the code I am not the mistress of my heart; it has been legally surrendered. But you will not misjudge, or question. If I could not trust, I could not love you; I do both. Now and here, I put my hands in yours, I place my life, my conscience, in your keeping. For good or evil, for heaven or hell, I yield to you my faith. Tell me what I am utterly unable to decide for myself alone: What is my duty, the duty of a woman situated as I am?"

He held her hands still, crushing them within his own, yet the color, the hope which had brightened his face, faded. A moment the two sat silent, their eyes meeting, searching the depths.

"Beth," he asked at last, "is this right?"

"Is what right?"

"That you should cast such a burden upon me. I told you I could not be your conscience. All my desire, all my hope tends in one direction. That which to you appears wrong, to me seems the only right course. My heart responded eagerly to every word of renunciation spoken out there in your indignation. They were just and true. They gave me courage to believe the battle was over; that in soul and heart you were at last free."

She lowered her eyes in confusion to the floor, her bosom rising and falling to quick breathing.

"And now you discover me hesitating, undecided," she whispered, her lips trembling. "I know I am; there are moments when I hold myself unworthy of love. Yet believe me, I am honest, sincere, unselfish in all my thought regarding you. Perhaps the trouble is that I know myself, my nature, far too well; I dare not trust it to bring you happiness, unless I can come to you with unsullied conscience."

"Is it thought of divorce which yet remains so repugnant?"

She glanced up into his questioning face, her own cheeks flushing.

"I shrink from it in actual pain," she confessed, in instant frankness. "My whole nature revolts. Believe me, I am not blind, not insensible; I recognize the truth--all you would tell me--of the inalienable rights of womanhood. Neglect, distrust, brutality, open insult have all been my portion. The thousands all over the world accept these as worthy reasons for breaking their marriage vows. But can I? Can I who have ever condemned those others for doing so? Can I, who have ever held that sacrament to be sacred and enduring? And I realize that the temptation has not come because of the wrongs done to me. He has been all this before, many, many times, yet I have remained true and loyal, not questioning my duty. It is the birth of a new love--God alone knows if I should say a guilty love--which has thus changed me, which has brought to my mind dreams of release. I pray you, try to understand me! How could happiness ever prove my portion, or yours through me, while such questionings continued to haunt my soul like ghosts?"

He released her clinging hands, turning away from her, his eyes staring unseeing out of the window. A moment she continued looking at him, her dry eyes anxiously pleading. Then she buried her face within her hands and waited, her whole body trembling. Twice Winston sought to speak, before sufficient courage came to him to allow of his turning back, and looking down upon her bowed figure.

"Beth," he said at last, his struggle revealed in his voice, "I should not be worthy that love you have given me so unreservedly, did I stoop now to its abuse. I could never forgive myself were I to urge you to do that which your conscience so clearly condemns. To me there is a marriage far more sacred and enduring than any witnessed by man, or solemnized by formal service--the secret union of hearts. We are one in this, and nothing can ever come between us. Then let all else wait; let it wait until God shall open a way along which we may walk in honor. Mutual sacrifice can never make us any less dear to each other. This condition may serve to separate us for a while, yet I believe the path will open, and that you will learn to perceive your duty from a broader view-point--one that will permit you to find happiness in true love, unhaunted by any memory of the false."

She arose slowly to her feet, the tears clinging to her lashes, both hands outstretched.

"Oh, I thank you! I thank you!" she exclaimed with deep fervor. "Those words prove you all I ever believed you to be. They give me hope, courage, patience to remain true to myself, true to my lifelong ideals of womanhood. I am certain you trust me, comprehend my motives, and will think no less of me because of my unwillingness to forfeit a conception of right. He is absolutely nothing to me--nothing. He never could be. There are times when I feel that his death even could not fitly atone for the evil he has wrought me. Never again will his influence touch my life to change its purpose. It is not he that keeps us apart; it is a solemn, sacred pledge made by a trusting girl in God's presence--a pledge I cannot forget, cannot break without forfeiting my self-respect, my honor."

He drew her gently to him, his eyes no longer filled with passion, yet containing a depth of love that left her helpless to resist his will.

"Beth, dear," he whispered, his lips almost pressing her cheek, "I will not think of him, but only of you. If you love me I am content. The mere knowledge itself is happiness. Tell me once again that this is true."

"It is true, forever true; I love you."

"May I have for this one time the pledge of your lips?"

A single instant she seemed to hesitate, her cheeks flushing hotly, her dark eyes lowered before his. But she lifted her face, and their lips met and clung, as though parting must be forever. Amid the closely gathering shadows he led her back to the vacated stool, and stood beside her, gently stroking the soft dark hair of the bowed head.

"You have plans?" he questioned quietly. "You have decided how you are to live while we await each other?"

"Yes," half timidly, as though fearful he might oppose her decision. "I believe I had better return to my work upon the stage." She glanced up at him anxiously. "You do not care, do you? It seems to me I am best fitted for that; I have ambition to succeed, and--and it affords me something worthy to think about."

"I recall you said once it would be a poor love which should interfere with the ideals of another."

"Yes, I remember. How long ago that seems, and what a change has since come over my conceptions of the power of love! I believe it still, yet in so different a way. Now I would surrender gladly all ambition, all dream of worldly success, merely to fee alone with the man I love, and bring him happiness. That--that is all I want; it is everything."

"And some day it shall be yours," he declared stoutly. "Some day when you comprehend that divorce is not always the evil that some delight to proclaim it; some day when you realize that it must be a far greater sin to wreck irretrievably your own life for a brute than to break those man-made bonds which bind you to him. It cannot be long until you learn this, for all nature condemns so unholy an alliance. Until then let it be the stage; only I ask you to strive for the very best it offers. Have confidence in yourself, little girl, in your ability, your power, your spark of genius touched by suffering. Every hour you pass now in hideous, misshapen melodrama is worse than wasted. You have that within you well worthy of better setting, nobler environment, and you wrong yourself to remain content with less. You are mine now wherever you go, whatever triumphs you win; mine in spite of the law, because I possess your heart. I should doubt myself far sooner than ever question your loyalty. I can lend you to the stage for a while--until I come for you in that glad hour when your lips shall bid me--but in the meantime I want you to be true to yourself, to the spirit of art within you. I want you to accomplish the highest purposes of your dreams; to interpret that in life which is worthy of interpretation."

"You believe I can?"

"I know you can. Never from that first night, when I stood in the wings and watched, have I ever questioned the possibilities of your future. You have art, emotion, depth of true feeling, application, a clear understanding of character--all that ever made any actress great. I love you, Beth; yet mine is a love too unselfish not to tell you this truth and stand aside rather than block your future."

She lifted her eyes to him, now cleared of their tears, and shining with eagerness.

"I will do all you say," she said earnestly, "do it because I love you. It shall not be for the people, the applause, the glitter and display, but alone for you. Whenever a triumph comes to me, I shall meet it whispering your name in my heart, knowing that you rejoice because I am proving worthy of your faith. It will be as if we worked together; the memory must help to make us both strong."

He bent lower, drew her closer to him, and held her thus in silence.

"Yes," he spoke at last, as though in thought, "I shall try to remember and be patient, so long as you feel it must be so."

They were sitting there still, the barest glimmer of twilight brightening the window above, their hands clasped, when Mercedes came back, overflowing with light-heartedness.

"Si, si, sure I did eet," she announced happily, dancing forward into the centre of the darkened room, and seemingly blind to the two before her. "Eet ees I that am to ride. _Bueno_! eet vill be mooch fun! Señor Brown he not like let me go; he tink I do all eet for him. Oh, de conceit of de men, ven I care not for anyting but de fun, de good time! But I talk him long vile, an' Beell he talk, an' maybe he say _si_ for to git us rid of. Tink you not eet vas so, señor?"