Part 2

With a sigh of relief he shut the door, and walked once or twice about the room, as though trying to shake off other people’s affairs; then he bit off the end of a cigar, struck a match, and sat down. He put his hands deep into his pockets, and stretched his feet straight out in front of him.

“It must be five years since I’ve thought of it,” he said to himself.

He held his lighted cigar between his fingers, his chin sunk on his breast, his mouth set in that hard line which refuses to extenuate or evade; his eyes narrowed with thought. Five years: Yes, the memory had so faded and lessened that by and by it had ceased, and now it was as though, as he walked along the level path of daily life, a serpent suddenly lifted its evil head from the dust, and struck at him, hissing.

“I was eighteen,” he said to himself; “no, nineteen. And now I’m forty-two! Twenty-nine, thirty-nine--it’s twenty-three years ago.”

There is a hideous consciousness which comes to most of us men and women at one time or another in our lives, of our inability to get away from the past. From out of the “roaring loom of Time” comes the fabric of our lives; white, run, perhaps, with a warp of silver in our latter years; set, even, by the mercy of God, with deep jewels of experience; spangled with golden threads of opportunity; but back, in its beginnings--what stains, what rents! dragged through what foul and primeval experiences of youth! Some, by environment and temperament, have nothing to blush for but follies; the joyous baseness of the young animal never broke through the conditions of their lives, or the dullness of their minds. But for most there are black spots from which, with wonder and disgust, the adult turns away his eyes: the cruelty and impurity of childhood; the ingratitude and meanness of youth. With the man, as with the race, that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural.

Twenty-three years ago: is there any connection between a fault committed then and the William West of to-day? None! What has he in common with the boy of nineteen? Nothing!

Suppose he told Amy, would she understand that? Why, the very fact that he had forgotten it meant that he did not belong to it, nor it to him. And yet he wanted to tell her!

William West got up with an impatient gesture. How absurd this sort of mental posturing and agonizing was! What folly, to think of burdening Amy with the miserable facts. Told now, twenty-three years afterwards, their relation to his present life could not be seen in true proportion. It would be an amazement and a shame to her to think that her lover, her husband, had done thus and so. Yet, it would not be her husband who was the sinner; it was that poor, foolish, wicked boy of so many years ago; that boy upon whom he looked back with the amazement and disgust of an outside observer. What a curious untruth, then, in confessing it. He gave a sigh of relief as he reached this conclusion; it was as if he had stumbled for a moment, but had got his balance again.

But, in spite of himself, his mind crept back to the brink of that black abyss of memory: those were dreadful days, those days of repentance twenty years ago. The remembrance of his sin would surge over him at the most unexpected moments--in the midst of work or study; when he was talking; when he was praying; when, perhaps, he was helping some other human creature stagger along under a burden of remorse. The deeper he went into the new life he had begun to lead--the clearer the heavenly vision grew before his eyes--the blacker the sin seemed. For years, the memory of it used to come over him with a sudden sinking and sickening of the soul. He remembered how inescapable the torment of his regret had been. There would be periods of forgetfulness, when he was plunged into work, and life, because it was service, seemed good and sweet; then, at some word, or the look of the sky, or the smell of a flower--the evil spirit of recollection would leap upon him and tear him. Yet the periods of forgetfulness had lengthened and lengthened. The pain and shame had faded and faded. The thing that gave him this sick feeling, as he sat here in his study at midnight, was not the fact that he had sinned; it was the memory of how he had suffered for his sin. The sin itself, now, was too remote, too separate from himself for any more repentance; it had ceased to be real. But the suffering!--he could not bear to think of that.

“How mad this is!” he said to himself, with a curious terror lest the old anguish should come back: the horror a man might feel who sees the surgeon’s knife under which he has once agonized.

For very fear of memory, William West drove his thoughts back to the question of his duty to Amy; that was plain reasoning, and had nothing to do with this nightmare.

He lighted another match, but held it absently, until it scorched his fingers, then flung it down with an angry exclamation. It seemed as though the pain burned through all this fog of the past, and showed him the facts which he must judge, and the folly of his uncertainty. For, after all, what was this matter he was trying to decide? Was it not merely the question of what was best for Amy, not what was most comfortable for himself? It was that abstraction called Honor, as applied to Amy’s happiness.

What was for her happiness, or, as he had put it first, what was his duty to her? To let her know his past, or to keep a secret from her, and allow her to suppose that she knew his life as she did her own?

Admit that it was his impulse to tell her; what did that impulse really mean? Primarily, that it would be a great relief to him; the idea of having any reserves was most repugnant to him. For the moment the instinct was again strong to tell her. But, frowning, he went on with his argument: A relief to him; but what to her? A pain and a shame; a memory that might outlast another twenty-three years, perhaps. But she might want to know it? Well, that was no reason. If she wanted poison, should he give it to her? And this was poison. Did he not know that? Good God!

But she had a right to know it? Here he was perfectly clear; certainly not. It in no wise bore upon his relation to her. Furthermore, the question of prudence was not involved; there was no chance that some day, somehow, it might come to her ears. She could never hear it, except from him. If this were not the case, of course he would tell her.

But was he deceiving her? Was he, as she put it, “taking her love on false pretenses”? William West got up and walked the length of his library; then he stopped by the open window, and looked out on the silent street; a policeman on his beat glanced up and saw him, and touched his helmet with two fingers.

“Good-evening, sir; don’t know but what I’d better say good-morning!”

“What! Is it as late as all that, Reilly?” the minister said; and added a friendly inquiry about the man’s hand, which seemed to be hurt. Amy’s stern sense of the retributive justice of the accident came into his mind, and he smiled involuntarily. The policeman looked sheepish, as the clergyman meant he should, and turned the conversation by remarking that he would “be lookin’ after the rectory special when Mr. West was away on his weddin’ tower.”

“Thank you, Reilly!” the other answered heartily.

The policeman’s steps went echoing off into the night; a street lamp flickered, and a puff of soft wind wandered into the window.

_Deceiving her: taking her love under false pretenses._

Was he anything but the man Amy supposed him to be? Very humbly, very truly, he said to himself that, by the grace of God, he was an honest, pure, God-fearing man. That sin of twenty-three years ago was not his sin. He, William West, forty-two years old, whose honorable record in the community was spread through all these years of service, was not that base, mean, wicked boy. The sin was not his. It was a sin of youth; a sin almost of childhood. It meant nothing to him now.

“It is nothing now,” he insisted, passionately. Accustomed to weigh other people’s actions and motives, he knew that he was discriminating with almost judicial impartiality when he thus looked himself in the face. “_A repentant man has no more to do with his sin, for which he has repented and made reparation, than a well man has to do with the disease of which he has been cured._” He remembered that he had used this illustration once to some one else; he must apply it now to himself. No; he was not deceiving Amy. He was only sparing her--sparing her, to be sure, from a pain she might wish to bear, but that had nothing to do with the question. If she knew, she would suffer; not from a fact, but from an illusion; for he would be confessing a sin which was not his sin. Honor? The word seemed artificial as he thus put the situation before him.

No; it would be cowardly to tell her, and it would be untrue. There was nothing for him to do but face the fact that, to spare her, he must bear, for the rest of his life, the wretched burden of realizing that he had a secret from her.

Sanely, truly, this good man believed that his impulse to tell the woman he loved was selfish and cowardly; it was an impulse to make her share a burden which he deserved to bear alone. Furthermore, it was the effect, not of reason, not of religion, not of love; it was the effect, first, of the selfish desire to seek relief by sharing a cruel knowledge; secondly, of a traditional sentimentality, the weak and driveling outcome of that sense of justice which is expressed in the willingness to bear consequences.

Well, the boy who had sinned had borne the consequences; he had suffered.

For the man to suffer now, twenty-three years after, was unreasonable, but inevitable.

For a woman, who had no part or lot in that young past, to suffer now, twenty-three years afterwards, was foolish and useless.

If the man permitted it, he was a coward and a fool.

This, at least, was what William West told himself.

IV

The conclusion to which the Rev. Mr. West came was that, if his love for Amy was deep enough and unselfish enough, he would hold his tongue. He believed that confession, apart from reparation, was the refuge of the weak mind.

Having thus decided to bear alone the burden of his secret, he went, early in the morning, and told the woman he loved.

Of course, there is no explanation of this vacillation and indifference to his own judgment, except the mere statement that he was in love.

“Amy is trying on her dress,” Mrs. Paul said, when he was ushered into the library, “so, if you want to see her, you can go home at once. But perhaps you may condescend to talk to me a little while?”

“I must see Amy, please,” he said. He had a way of putting people aside so gently and peremptorily that Mrs. Paul, who was not a yielding person, never dreamed of protesting.

“I’ll tell her. But she really can’t come down for ten minutes. Do you mind waiting?”

“Very much,” he said smiling. “Tell her to come down just as she is, and let me see her frock.”

“Indeed, she shan’t do anything of the sort,” said Mrs. Paul, with indignation; but relented to the extent of letting him have the library to himself, and going upstairs to send the girl to him.

Amy came floating in with a snowy gleam and rustle, and stood before him, bidding him not to dare to touch her; though, indeed, being a mere man, he was far too uncomfortably awed to think of taking this glorious white creature into his poor human arms.

“You are magnificent, but you are not Amy,” he said; “do get on some common clothes. I’m afraid of you.”

“That is as it should be, sir!” she told him. “I shall dress like this every day if it keeps you obedient. If I had had on my wedding-dress last night, you would not have dared not to stay to dinner when I--wanted you.”

Her look, through the mist of tulle, of soft reproach and challenge, was too much for fear, and he boldly kissed her; which made her protest, and fly from further risk of crushing the bravery of her wedding-day. When she came back again, in a blue cotton gown, trig and pretty, with a bunch of pansies in her belt, there was, fortunately, nothing to be hurt by being crushed.

There was a moment of tender and passionate silence. His errand faded from William West’s mind; the reality of life was here! his past was no more to him than the eggshell is to the eagle. So when, later, leaning forward in his chair, holding her hand in his, looking into her pure eyes, he began to speak, it was almost casually. Before the great fact of human love, the question of telling her or not telling her of that old dead and buried sin was suddenly unimportant,--they loved each other!

“Dear,” he said, “I’ve come to tell you something. What you said last night about having no reserves put it into my head. I had forgotten it.”

It was characteristic of the man that there was no preamble; his words were simple, and he was perfectly matter-of-fact and unanxious; so much so that Amy laughed.

“Were you a year-old criminal? Well, tell me at once! I may reconsider, you know.”

There was something in the assurance of her gayety that jarred a little, and he said seriously:--

“It is a wrongdoing of my youth, Amy. I’m not sure that it is not selfish to tell you about it; but I can’t bear the feeling of holding anything back from you.”

An answering gravity came into the girl’s face, but she smiled.

“Tell me anything; I am not afraid to hear!”

Her innocent pride gave him a moment of sharp discomfort. Curiously enough, what he had to tell her had not connected itself, in his mind, with personal embarrassment; it had been too remote from himself. He found himself hesitating for a word, and grasping after that indifference to all but Love which he had felt but a moment before.

“Perhaps I am a fool to tell you,” he began; “it may make you unhappy, and”--

A startled look came into Amy’s eyes; then the color flooded up into her face. She lifted her head with a beautiful, imperious gesture, and stopped him with a word.

“I--understand. Don’t tell me. I--understand.” She bit her lip as she spoke, and her eyelids quivered as though the tears had risen suddenly.

“You understand?” he repeated, in a puzzled voice; “do you mean you don’t want me to tell you?”

“William,” she said, in a low voice, “I do not think a woman has any business with a good man’s life in the past; if--he was not good. I am not a young girl. I am old enough to know that a man’s life and a girl’s life are--different; but don’t tell me. I--love you. Don’t tell me.” She trembled as she spoke, and then her eyes sought his, filled with love and grief.

A wave of tenderness made his whole face melt and quiver. He murmured something of his undesert of such love as this:--

“You are not like other women,” he told her, as every lover has told his mistress since the sun first shone on lovers. “That sin, the mean woman does not forgive. And yet it is so much more pardonable than some other sins! More pardonable, dear, than what I want to tell you.”

She drew a quick breath and smiled. “Ah,” she said, “I’m glad it is not that!” Her relief was so apparent that he realized how austerely sweet her face had been as she forgave him.

“Go on and tell me,” she said; “I am not afraid to hear anything now.”

“That would have been the hardest thing to forgive?” he asked her. She flashed a look of pride at him.

“The things I could not forgive, you could not do!”

This made him glow. After all, who would not confess anything, to be met by such confident love as this?

“This happened long ago, Amy; when I was nineteen. I forged a check for five hundred dollars.”

“Forged!” Her lips fell apart; she sat staring at him.

He was holding her hand, lifting it to his lips sometimes, and looking at it as it lay in his. He went on, quietly:--

“It was when I was at college; I needed money; and--poor, desperate, wicked, silly young man--I forged Professor Wilson’s name. I don’t know what I supposed would become of me when it was found out. And I don’t know what would have become of me, but Henry Wilson died before the month was out, and so, by some strange chance, it never was discovered. If it had been--well, you and I would not have been here to-day. Human justice would have interposed before Divine mercy”--He looked up with a solemn elation which seemed to put self out of his mind. “I might have gone lower and lower! Who can say? It was an easy thing to do, for I was his secretary, and he trusted me. That, of course, was the most horrible part of what I did, the part that now seems to me incomprehensible--the broken trust! Well, of course, I made reparation, as I called it, out of the money he left me. I gave away many times the amount I stole; but it was only because I was scared at the risk I had run, and the thought of it harassed me. It was a sort of expedient morality, you know; a sort of bargain with my conscience for peace of mind. Then, about a year afterwards, I met X----. I heard him preach, and life changed. How extraordinary it seems to look back upon it now! Then I repented. Before, I had only reformed. That was when I entered the divinity school. But just think, Amy, just think of the difference! How life might have gone--yet here I am to-day, your lover, your husband. Oh, the mercy of God!”

He was deeply moved. He got up and walked the length of the room. Amy sat silently looking down at her hands in her lap. When he came back, his eyes were full of peace.

“That is all, dearest; now we will forget it. You know my life as you do your own.”

“Forget it?” she repeated, with a sudden, sobbing laugh, that tore at the man’s heart.

“Amy! dearest! have I shocked you so? Remember, it was twenty-three years ago; I was only a boy. Let me tell you how it was: I was madly in love with a woman; at least, it was not love, but I thought it was; she fascinated me, and”--

“Oh, go on--go on!” she interrupted, hoarsely; “as if I cared about that!”

He tried to take her hand, but she made a pretense of arranging the flowers in her belt; her head was turned a little from him. He leaned forward, with a grave authority to command her attention, took the pansies from her, and held them in his hand.

“I was possessed to marry her. Of course, she would not look at me--a penniless, charity student. But I strained every nerve to win her. It was the old story. She took my flowers, or theatre tickets, or anything I could give her. Curious, the mercenariness of the woman did not revolt me! But I was mad about her. I thought, at last, that if I had money I could give her some jewels she wanted, and perhaps she would accept me. That was how it came about. She took the diamonds, and eloped with a married man two days afterwards.”

As he told the story, the grossness of it all came over him,--the offense to the exquisite delicacy of the girl beside him.

“But I ought not to have told you this,” he stammered.

“What?” she said dully. “About the woman? Oh, as if that mattered!” She turned from him sharply, putting the back of her hand against her lips as though to hide their quiver.

Then she burst out: “Oh, why did you tell me? Why? why? Oh, I wish you had not told me!” She shook from head to foot. “But it will make no difference! I will not let it make any difference. I am going to marry you. Only--_I never knew you_!”

Those most terrible words, those words with which Love destroys itself, came like a blow between the eyes. He grew very pale. “‘Not make any difference’?” he repeated, blankly, “why, what difference could it make?”

She stopped crying, suddenly, and stood, panting, steadying herself by her hands upon his breast, and staring at him. There was something almost terrifying in this sudden pause and in her burning look.

“It’s the one thing,” she said, “don’t you see? that lasts. It isn’t like--other things.”

“But it was not I,” he said, mechanically. “Not I, the man you--you thought you knew. It was a boy, twenty-three years ago. Amy, Amy! Twenty-three years ago!”

She did not listen; she kept repeating to herself: “It shall make no difference. I will not let it make any difference.” Alas, it was not for her to say! The difference was made; the jewel crushed under foot is no more a jewel; the rose thrown into the fire is no more a rose. The stained human soul is no more the innocent human soul.

“But you must listen to me, Amy,” he said. “No, I will not speak until you are calm. Sit down. Look at me. Now, listen to what I have to say.” He spoke slowly and gently, as one does to a terrified, unreasonable child.

“Dear, I had forgotten it. So little is it a part of my life that I had forgotten it. When I remembered it last night, it was with a sense of astonishment, a sense of pity for the mad boy who did it. I had no personal shame,--it seemed to belong to some one else, whom I watched with sorrow and indignation. I do not believe that to-day, more than twenty years afterwards, I have any business to think of it.”

“Then why did you tell me?” she said wearily. “Oh, don’t talk about it any more. I am going to forget it. Good-by. I am going upstairs. I have a headache. Good-by.”

She let her hand slip listlessly out of his, and left him standing, blankly, his lips parted for another protest, and the flowers from her belt between his fingers.

V

As he went out past the drawing-room door, Mrs. Paul called to him:--

“Do come here a moment, Mr. West. Isn’t Amy pretty in her wedding-dress? You really must tell me what to do about something. There is a family”--and she entered upon a puzzling question of relief work, her forehead gathering into a frown, yet with her kind eyes denying the severe common-sense of her statement, that if a man will not work neither shall he eat.

“But you see we can’t let the children go hungry,” she ended.

The consideration of other people’s weaknesses and wickedness gave William West time to get his breath; he threw himself into the question with keen and intelligent sympathy. He pointed out this; he suggested that; he cleared the puzzle out of Mrs. Paul’s face, and all the time he was half deafened by a clamoring suspicion: “Have I been a fool? She will never forget it! It will always be between us. I’ve been a cowardly fool.”

“Well, that’s all settled,” said Mrs. Paul, with an air of relief; “now tell me, what day shall I have Amy’s things sent to the rectory? And shall I take the silver from the bank the day before you arrive? Is it safe to leave it at your house? I hate the responsibility of other people’s silver!”

“Oh, certainly, yes,” he answered, suddenly absent; and, with a curt good-by, left her.

Somehow or other, he hardly knew how, he got through the day. There was a service in the afternoon, and there were other people’s affairs and sorrows to remember; fortunately, there always is duty for us poor human creatures as a refuge from our thoughts! Duties to be done saved William West from desperately going back to Amy to explain. For he was guilty of the impulse of “explanation,” the babble with which the weak mind is forever annotating its remarks or its opinions.