Hearts Afire

by J. D Rawden

  “Tell me what it is,” she insisted, trembling with anger and anguish.

  He remained silent. Perhaps he was weeping behind his hands.

  “If you don’t tell me what it is, I’ll go back home,” she said.

  He did not speak.

  “You despise me because I have left my home.’'

  “No, Charlotte,” Harleigh murmured.

  “You think I’m dreadful—you think of me as an abandoned creature.”

  “No, dear one—no.”

  “Perhaps—you—love another woman.”

  “You can’t think that.”

  “Perhaps — you have—another tie—without love.”

  “None; I am bound to no one.”

  “You have promised yourself to no one?” “To no one.”

  “Then why are you so sad? Why do you weep? Why do you tremble? It is I who ought to weep and tremble, and yet I don’t weep unless to see you weep. Your weeping breaks my heart, makes me desperate.”

  “Charlotte, listen to me. By the memory of what is good I implore you to listen, to understand. I am miserable because of you, on your account— in thinking of what I have allowed you to do, of how you are throwing away your future, of the unhappiness that awaits you; without a home, without a name, persecuted by your family.”

  “If you loved me, you wouldn’t think these things; you wouldn’t say them.”

  “I have always said them, Charlotte; I have always repeated them. I have ruined you. For three days I have been in an agony of remorse; it is the same today. Though you are the love of my life, I must say it to you. Today I can’t forgive myself; tomorrow you will be unable to forgive me. Oh, my love! I am a man of good upbringing, I am a man of morals; and yet I have been weak enough to allow you and me to commit this sin, this fault.”

  Speaking thus, with an infinite earnestness, all the honesty of his noble soul showed itself, a soul bowed down by remorse. She looked at him and listened to him with stupefaction, amazed at this spectacle of a rectitude, of a virtue that was greater than love, for she believed only in love.

  “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. Yo
u 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.”

  SICK WITH LOVE.

  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 g
ood-night she would return to Charlotte, slowly, with her light footsteps that merely brushed the carpet.

  At this time Joris Morgan saw his opportunity to make his sick daughter over morally, the time was at hand, while her body was weak and her soul malleable. It would be impossible to transform her spirit after she had once got back her strength. Charlotte was completely prostrated, passing the entire day without moving, her arms stretched out at full length, her hands pale and cold, her face turned on the side, her two rich plaits of brown hair extended on her pillow; bloodless her cheeks, her lips, her brow; lifeless the glance of her eyes. When spoken to, she answered with a slight movement of the head, or, at most, one or two words—always the same. “How do you feel?”

  “Better.”

  “Do you wish for anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is there nothing you would like?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Whereupon she would close her eyes again, exhausted. Nothing more would be said by those round her, but Charlotte knew that they were there, silent, talking together by means of significant glances.

  One day, Joris Morgan and Lysbet Morgan felt that they could mark a progress in Charlotte’s convalescence, because two or three times she had looked at them with an expression of such earnest repentance, with such an eager prayer for pardon, in her sad eyes, that words were not necessary to tell what she felt. Soon afterward Charlotte seemed to wish to be left alone with her father, as if she had a secret to confide to him; but he cautiously thought it best to defer any private talk. However, one morning it so happened that he found himself alone in her room. He was reading a newspaper when a soft voice said:

  “Listen father.”

  He looked at her. Her sad eyes were again beseeching forgiveness, and Charlotte stammered:

  “What must you have thought—what must you have said of me!”

  “You must not excite yourself, my dear,” Mr. Morgan said kindly.

  “I was so wicked,” Charlotte sobbed.

  “Don’t talk like that, dear Charlotte; you were guilty of nothing more than a girlish folly.”

  “A sin, a sin.”

  “You must call things by their right names, and not let your imagination get the better of you,” Joris Morgan answered, somewhat somberly. “A youthful folly.”