CHAPTER XIII.

A REVELATION.

Philip Wentworth, when he began his impulsive declaration, had no more intention of making her a definite proposal of marriage than he had of hanging himself. It had been, and still was, his one aim in life to marry Mollie Heatherford, just as soon as his college course was completed.

Mr. Heatherford was numbered among New York’s richest men, and, as Mollie was his only child, Philip was looking forward to the handling of her magnificent inheritance, “when the old man should pass in his checks,” as he was wont to express it to himself.

The moment he stood committed to Miss Athol he could almost have bitten his tongue out with mingled anger and chagrin. He had simply been amusing himself in seeking her society, and making love to her something after the fashion of the story which they had read and discussed in “The Glen” on the day of Minnie’s accident, but, even though he saw he was winning the girl’s heart, he had never intended carrying the affair to a point-blank offer of marriage.

But egotism, vanity, and obstinacy were the strongest characteristics of his nature, and when Gertrude had so dauntlessly turned upon him, expressing her contempt for his conduct in no measured terms, and so fearlessly manifesting her admiration for, and espousing the cause of, Clifford Faxon, he had been goaded to jealous fury beyond all self-control, and a rash determination to conquer her and make her confess her love for him had taken possession of him. But instead of entangling her helplessly in his net, he had unthinkingly fallen into his own trap.

Gertrude was startled, to say the least, with the turn the conversation had taken. She had been conscious for some time that Philip Wentworth held a very warm place in her heart. He was handsome and brilliant, and had made himself attractive to her by those thousand and one flattering little attentions which render men captivating in the eyes of women.

But at heart she was a noble and most conscientious girl, and she had been bitterly disappointed upon discovering such weak and despicable traits in the character of her admirer as Philip had manifested, and the suffering which this had caused had carried her beyond herself, and thus she had given vent to the scorn that has been described.

But a sudden revulsion of feeling had come when he confessed his affection for her, and appealed so humbly, apparently, for her forgiveness, and she began to feel that it would not be so very difficult to pardon him and influence him to nobler sentiments, and, womanlike, she at once began to reproach herself for her harsh judgment of him.

“Why,” she exclaimed, with crimson cheeks and averted eyes when he paused for her reply to his suit, “you have literally taken my breath away, Mr. Wentworth.”

“And what have you done to me, I should like to know?” he retorted, as he shot her a roguish look, while he lifted one of her hands and imprinted a deferential caress upon it. “You have just flayed me alive, figuratively speaking.”

“Forgive me,” she murmured. “I am afraid I have said more than I ought.”

“Ah! but the sting lies in the fact that you could have thought such hard things of me,” Philip replied, in a tone of tender reproach. “Still,” he continued, drawing her gently toward him, “if you will only forgive the sinner and try to help make him a better man in the future, all that will be wiped out. Dearest, you can mold me to your own sweet will. I know that I am full of faults, but I am also your willing slave, eager to be led where you will. Gertrude, command me and love me, and no one was ever more tractable than I will be.”

Little by little he had drawn her toward him while he was speaking, until he had slipped his arms around her unresisting form, and she lay upon his breast, all her scorn, contempt, and indignation merged and swallowed up in her all-absorbing love for him.

It was very easy to forgive such an earnest pleader, and she told herself that one so ready to confess his faults would be easily reformed, and she was not averse to undertaking the task.

“Darling, you do love me; you will be mine?” he pleaded, in a tender whisper, with his lips close to her glowing cheek.

“Yes, Phil, I am forced to confess that I do love you,” Gertrude replied, in low, tremulous tones.

“And you are mine—you give yourself to me,” he persisted.

“Yes, dear, when the proper times comes—when you have completed your college course and are ready for me.”

A wave of triumph swept over the young man’s features. He had won his cause, he had gained his point, and that was the most he cared for.

It mattered little to him that he was desecrating holy ground in winning the love of this pure and lofty-minded girl. His own future he had marked out for himself, and if Mollie Heatherford returned safe and sound from Europe, and with her fortune intact, he had not the remotest idea of redeeming his troth to Gertrude Athol. He was simply fooling her to the top of his bent, for the sake of conquest and the want of something more to occupy his time.

How he was to get out of the scrape he had so unwittingly got into he did not know; but he did not trouble himself about that just then—he would find a way when the right time came. Meanwhile he would enjoy the present and let the future adjust itself.

So, the two were pledged—at least, so Gertrude understood their relations. But they agreed among themselves that they would preserve the matter a secret until Phil should be through college. It was sufficient, the fair girl said, with a trustfulness worthy of a better return, to know that they belonged to each other, and there would be time enough for their friends and the world to know it when their plans were more mature.

That same day by the evening post there came to Philip Wentworth a dainty missive from across the water, and it was full of entertaining incident and charming descriptions, and bore at the end the signature of Mollie Heatherford.

“By Jove!” the young man exclaimed, with an amused laugh, after he had read the epistle, “this is getting to be highly entertaining—one lady-love in Europe whose thought centers upon me; another here who firmly believes her life to be bound up in mine, and vice versa. Mollie, however, is but a child as yet, and hardly the companion I crave just at present. Gertrude is more to my mind for the time being. She is lovely, bright, and charming, and delightful company, so I will enjoy her society while I may.”

Such were the spirit and reflections of this vain and pleasure-seeking egotist, in whom selfishness was the mainspring of life.

The Athols remained at the mountains only a few days longer, as they had promised to visit some friends living upon the Hudson, while Philip, now that his object had been accomplished, had consented to give up his trip to Maine, and rejoin his mother at Saratoga.

But before their separation Philip—to keep up the farce he was playing—had slipped upon Gertrude’s finger a costly diamond.

“I did not have it marked,” he explained, “because of our agreement to keep our own counsel, but that can easily be done later,” and she, having the utmost confidence in him, was content.

Before her departure Gertrude sought an opportunity to have a little talk with Clifford. She found him, on the morning of the day she was going to leave, on the upper veranda of the hotel, where he was repairing a broken blind.

“You are always busy, Mr. Faxon,” she observed, with a cordial smile, as she seated herself in a rocker near him.

“Yes, Miss Athol,” the young man respectfully replied, as he removed his hat and tossed it upon the floor; “to be busy is a condition inevitable to my position, you know.”

This was said without the slightest evidence of self-consciousness, or of false pride because of the necessity which obliged him to occupy a humble position.

Gertrude watched him in silence for several minutes, admiring his fine, stalwart figure, his easy bearing, and feeling an additional respect for him because he did not pause in his work on account of her presence, and the fact that she had opened a conversation with him.

“I believe you love to work—you always appear to be absorbed in whatever you are doing,” she remarked, at length.

Clifford turned a smiling glance upon her, and she was impressed more than she ever had been before with the frank and genial expression of his face and the depth and earnestness of his clear brown eyes.

“Thank you,” he said. “I am sure that is a tribute worth winning. Yes, I do love to work—that is, I love to do well whatever I have to do.”

“That is certainly a most commendable spirit,” replied the girl, a slight shadow falling over her face as she thought of the aimless, pleasure-loving life that her lover was in the habit of leading—drifting with the tide, culling whatever was agreeable that was within his reach, and seduously avoiding everything that required personal effort, or anything of a self-sacrificing nature. “And I dare say,” she added, “you do your studying with the same cheerfulness and energy. I understand you are a Harvard student.”

Clifford colored a trifle, and wondered why she should be so interested in what concerned him.

“Yes,” he replied, after a slight pause, and with a thrill of feeling in his tones that betrayed more than his words, “I love to study; but, perhaps”—with a light laugh—“my interest in my present occupation is not prompted so much by a genuine love for it as for the privileges I expect to secure by means of it during the coming year.”

“I think you need not have qualified your previous statement, Mr. Faxon,” Gertrude gravely remarked, as she watched the shapely hand that was dexterously manipulating the screw-driver; “or, if it required any qualification at all, I should say that something higher than a mere liking or love for your work prompts you in whatever you do.”

Again Clifford turned a smiling look to her, and the light in his eyes thrilled her strangely.

“Can one be actuated by a higher motive than love?” he questioned.

“Well, I suppose not,” she thoughtfully responded, “and yet I have always regarded duty, or a conscientious desire to do what is exactly right, as a pretty high motive.”

“But what governs conscience?” inquired Clifford.

“God,” said Gertrude gravely.

“Yes, and God is—love,” was the quick, earnest response. “So love fulfills all law, moral as well as civil. Don’t you see that one must have a love for truth and justice in order to obey the dictates of conscience and feel a desire to do what is exactly right?”

“But conscience might sometimes prompt one to do that which would be very disagreeable. My duty to my neighbor or mankind in general might require something of me that I would absolutely hate to do,” Miss Athol argued. “Where would love come in in that case?”

“Yet it would be the very highest type of love that would lead one to obey such a demand of conscience or duty,” Clifford replied, his earnest eyes meeting hers; “it would be love for the principle of right-doing.”

“That seems almost paradoxical, doesn’t it, Mr. Faxon?” said Gertrude, smiling, “that one could love to do what one absolutely hated to do?”

“But the love of the principle that would incite one to adhere to that which was right and just would bring results which would annihilate or make one lose sight of the hatred, and so, after all, it would be love alone that would be the mainspring of the act,” Clifford returned, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone, which plainly indicated that he was wont to argue along this line, and had settled some knotty problems for himself according to this rule.

“Yes, you are right,” Gertrude remarked, after a moment of thoughtful silence, while Clifford, having completed his work, gathered up his tools and arose to go about other business.

She arose, also, and went nearer to him.

“I thank you, Mr. Faxon,” she continued, “for having revealed to me what the highest type of love is; it is, indeed, as you have said, ‘a principle,’ and not a mere sentiment, and if the world were governed by it, according to your interpretation, we should make rapid strides toward the millennium. But, really,” she interposed, with a silvery laugh, “I had no idea we should have such a grave discussion. We have, almost unconsciously, wandered quite deeply into a metaphysical argument, and I have had something of a revelation.”

“A revelation?” Clifford repeated inquiringly.

“Yes; I have learned that love, according to the common acceptation of the term, is a synonym for selfishness; that is, that human affection, when actuated simply by personal attachment, is a selfish love. But, according to your higher interpretation of the word, it is a divine principle. Is not this a revelation?”

“Yes, and you are very receptive to have grasped it so readily,” Clifford replied, while he regarded her expressive face earnestly.

“I am going away after lunch,” Gertrude continued, smiling up at him, “but I shall not forget our little chat of this morning; it has done me good, and, let me add, you have been very kind to us all since we have been here. I am glad to have known you, and I hope we shall meet again some time.”

She frankly extended her jeweled hand to him as she concluded, and her beautiful eyes held something like an expression of reverence in them as they swept the fine face before her. He took her hand in the same spirit of friendliness that it was offered.

“Thank you, Miss Athol,” he said, “it will certainly give me great pleasure if I am ever so fortunate as to have my path cross yours again in the future.”

He bowed courteously to her as he concluded, then turned and quietly left the veranda.

Gertrude Athol’s sweet face was very grave as she stood where he left her, and thought over their recent conversation.

“‘An upstart,’ the ‘window-washer and drudge of Beck Hall,’” she repeated, under her breath and with clouded eyes. “Why, there is the stamp of true royalty on every feature of his grand face! He is the truest gentleman, in every sense of the word, that I have ever met. I am sure he is a man with a wonderful career before him, and he is certainly one of whose acquaintance I shall ever be proud. I wonder——”

What she wondered she did not frame in words, but she lifted her left hand and gazed at the ring which she had worn less than three days, with a look which held in it something of anxiety and doubt.