Dr. Heidenhoff's Process

by Edward Bellamy

  CHAPTER VI.

  There was one person, at least, in the village who had viewed the successof the new drug-clerk in carrying off the belle of Newville with entirecomplacency, and that was Ida Lewis, the girl with a poor complexion andbeautiful brown eyes, who had cherished a rather hopeless inclination forHenry; now that he had lost that bold girl, she tremulously assuredherself, perhaps it was not quite so hopeless. Laura, too, had an ideathat such might possibly be the case, and hoping at least to distract herbrother, about whom she was becoming quite anxious, she had Ida over totea once or twice, and, by various other devices which with a cleverwoman are matters of course, managed to throw her in his way.

  He was too much absorbed to take any notice of this at first, but, oneevening when Ida was at tea with them, it suddenly flashed upon him, andhis face reddened with annoyed embarrassment. He had never felt such acold anger at Laura as at that moment. He had it in his heart to saysomething very bitter to her. Would she not at least respect his grief?He had ado to control the impulse that prompted him to rise and leave thetable. And then, with that suddenness characteristic of highly wroughtmoods, his feelings changed, and he discovered how soft-hearted his ownsorrow had made him toward all who suffered in the same way. His eyessmarted with pitifulness as he noted the pains with which the little girlopposite him had tried to make the most of her humble charms in the hopeof catching his eye. And the very poverty of those charms made herefforts the more pathetic. He blamed his eyes for the hard clearness withwhich they noted the shortcomings of the small, unformed features, thefreckled skin, the insignificant and niggardly contour, and for thecruelty of the comparison they suggested between all this and Madeline'srich beauty. A boundless pity poured out of his heart to cover andtransfigure these defects, and he had an impulse to make up to her forthem, if he could, by sacrificing himself to her, if she desired. If shefelt toward him as he toward Madeline, it were worth his life to save thepity of another such heart-breaking. So should he atone, perhaps, for thesuffering Madeline had given him.

  After tea he went by himself to nurse these wretched thoughts, andalthough the sight of Ida had suggested them, he went on to think ofhimself, and soon became so absorbed in his own misery that he quiteforgot about her, and, failing to rejoin the girls that evening, Ida hadto go home alone, which was a great disappointment to her. But it was,perhaps, quite as well, on the whole, for both of them that he was notthrown with her again that evening.

  It is never fair to take for granted that the greatness of a sorrow or aloss is a just measure of the fault of the one who causes it. Madelinewas not willingly cruel. She felt sorry in a way for Henry whenever hisset lips and haggard face came under her view, but sorry in a dim anddistant way, as one going on a far and joyous journey is sorry for theformer associates he leaves behind, associates whose faces already, erehe goes, begin to grow faded and indistinct. At the wooing of Cordis herheart had awaked, and in the high, new joy of loving, she scorned thetame delight of being loved, which, until then, had been her only idea ofthe passion.

  Henry presently discovered that, to stay in the village a looker-on whilethe love affair of Madeline and Cordis progressed to its consummation,was going to be too much for him. Instead of his getting used to thesituation, it seemed to grow daily more insufferable. Every evening thethought that they were together made him feverish and restless tilltoward midnight, when, with the reflection that Cordis had surely by thattime left her, came a possibility of sleep.

  And yet, all this time he was not conscious of any special hate towardthat young man.. If he had been in his power he would probably have lefthim unharmed. He could not, indeed, have raised his hand against anythingwhich Madeline cared for. However great his animosity had been, that factwould have made his rival taboo to him. That Madeline had turned awayfrom him was the great matter. Whither she was turned was of subordinateimportance. His trouble was that she loved Cordis, not that Cordis lovedher. It is only low and narrow natures which can find vent for their lovedisappointments in rage against their successors. In the strictest,truest sense, indeed, although it is certainly a hard saying, there is noroom in a clear mind for such a feeling of jealousy. For the way in whichevery two hearts approach each other is necessarily a peculiarcombination of individualities, never before and never after exactlyduplicated in human experience. So that, if we can conceive of a womantruly loving several lovers, whether successively or simultaneously, theywould not be rivals, for the manner of her love for each, and the mannerof each one's love for her, is peculiar and single, even as if they twowere alone in the world. The higher the mental grade of the personsconcerned, the wider their sympathies, and the more delicate theirperceptions, the more true is this.

  Henry had been recently offered a very good position in an armsmanufactory in Boston, and, having made up his mind to leave the village,he wrote to accept it, and promptly followed his letter, having firstpledged his sole Newville correspondent, Laura, to make no references toMadeline in her letters.

  "If they should be married," he was particular to say, "don't tell meabout it till some time afterward."

  Perhaps he worked the better in his new place because he was unhappy.The foe of good work is too easy self-complacency, too readyself-satisfaction, and the tendency to a pleased and relaxedcontemplation of life and one's surroundings, growing out of awell-to-do state. Such a smarting sense of defeat, of endless achingloss as filled his mind at this time, was a most exacting background forhis daily achievements in business and money-making to show up against.He had lost that power of enjoying rest which is at once the reward andlimitation of human endeavour. Work was his nepenthe, and the differencebetween poor, superficial work and the best, most absorbing, was simplythat between a weaker and a stronger opiate. He prospered in his affairs,was promoted to a position of responsibility with a good salary, and,moreover, was able to dispose of a patent in gun-barrels at a handsomeprice.

  With the hope of distracting his mind from morbid brooding over what waspast helping, he went into society, and endeavoured to interest himselfin young ladies. But in these efforts his success was indifferent.Whenever he began to flatter himself that he was gaining a philosophicalcalm, the glimpse of some face on the street that reminded him ofMadeline's, an accent of a voice that recalled hers, the sight of her ina dream, brought back in a moment the old thrall and the old bitternesswith undiminished strength.

  Eight or nine months after he had left home the longing to return and seewhat had happened became irresistible. Perhaps, after all--

  Although this faint glimmer of a doubt was of his own making, and existedonly because he had forbidden Laura to tell him to the contrary, heactually took some comfort in it. While he did not dare to put thequestion to Laura, yet he allowed himself to dream that something mightpossibly have happened to break off the match. He was far, indeed, fromformally consenting to entertain such a hope. He professed to himselfthat he had no doubt that she was married and lost to him for ever. Hadanything happened to break off the match, Laura would certainly have lostno time in telling him such good news. It was childishness to fancy aughtelse. But no effort of the reason can quite close the windows of theheart against hope, and, like a furtive ray of sunshine finding its waythrough a closed shutter, the thought that, after all, she might be freesurreptitiously illumined the dark place in which he sat.

  When the train stopped at Newville he slipped through the crowd at thestation with the briefest possible greetings to the acquaintances he saw,and set out to gain his father's house by a back street.

  On the way he met Harry Tuttle, and could not avoid stopping to exchangea few words with him.. As they talked, he was in a miserable panic ofapprehension lest Harry should blurt out something about Madeline's beingmarried. He felt that he could only bear to hear it from Laura's lips.Whenever the other opened his mouth to speak, a cold dew started out onHenry's forehead for fear he was going to make some allusion to Madeline;and when at last they separated without his having done so, there
wassuch weakness in his limbs as one feels who first walks after a sickness.

  He saw his folly now, his madness, in allowing himself to dally with abaseless hope, which, while never daring to own its own existence, hadyet so mingled its enervating poison with every vein that he had now nostrength left to endure the disappointment so certain and so near. At thevery gate of his father's house he paused. A powerful impulse seized himto fly. It was not yet too late. Why had he come? He would go back toBoston, and write Laura by the next mail, and adjure her to tell himnothing. Some time he might bear to hear the truth, but not to-day, notnow; no, not now. What had he been thinking of to risk it? He would getaway where nobody could reach him to slay with a word this shadow of ahope which had become such a necessity of life to him, as is opium to thevictim whose strength it has sapped and alone replaces. It was too late!Laura, as she sat sewing by the window, had looked up and seen him, andnow as he came slowly up the walk she appeared at the door, full ofexclamations of surprise and pleasure. He went in, and they sat down.

  "I thought I'd run out and see how you all were," he said, with a ghastlysmile.

  "I'm so glad you did! Father was wondering only this morning if you werenever coming to see us again."

  He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

  "I thought I'd just run out and see you."

  "Yes, I'm so glad you did!"

  She did not show that she noticed his merely having said the same thingover.

  "Are you pretty well this spring?" she asked.

  "Yes, I'm pretty well."

  "Father was so much pleased about your patent. He's ever so proud ofyou."

  After a pause, during which Henry looked nervously from point to pointabout the room, he said--

  "Is he?"

  "Yes, very, and so am I."

  There was a long silence, and Laura took up her work-basket, and bent herface over it, and seemed to have a good deal of trouble in finding somearticle in it.

  Suddenly he said, in a quick, spasmodic way--

  "Is Madeline married?"

  Good God! Would she never speak!

  "No," she answered, with a falling inflection.

  His heart, which had stopped beating, sent a flood of blood through everyartery. But she had spoken as if it were the worst of news, instead ofgood. Ah! could it be? In all his thoughts, in all his dreams by night orday, he had never thought, he had never dreamed of that.

  "Is she dead?" he asked, slowly, with difficulty, his will stamping theshuddering thought into words, as the steel die stamps coins from stripsof metal.

  "No," she replied again, with the same ill-boding tone.

  "In God's name, what is it?" he cried, springing to his feet. Lauralooked out at the window so that she might not meet his eye as sheanswered, in a barely audible voice--

  "There was a scandal, and he deserted her; and afterward--only lastweek--she ran away, nobody knows where, but they think to Boston."

  It was about two o'clock in the afternoon when Henry heard the fate ofMadeline. By four o'clock he was on his way back to Boston. Theexpression of his face as he sits in the car is not that which might beexpected under the circumstances. It is not that of a man crushed by ahopeless calamity, but rather of one sorely stricken indeed, but stillresolute, supported by some strong determination which is not withouthope.

  Before leaving Newville he called on Mrs. Brand, who still lived in thesame house. His interview with her was very painful. The sight of him sether into vehement weeping, and it was long before he could get her totalk. In the injustice of her sorrow, she reproached him almost bitterlyfor not marrying Madeline, instead of going off and leaving her a victimto Cordis. It was rather hard for him to be reproached in this way, buthe did not think of saying anything in self-justification. He was readyto take blame upon himself. He remembered no more now how she hadrejected, rebuffed, and dismissed him. He told himself that he hadcruelly deserted her, and hung his head before the mother's reproaches.

  The room in which they sat was the same in which he had waited thatmorning of the picnic, while in his presence she had put the finishingtouches to her toilet. There, above the table, hung against the wall theselfsame mirror that on that morning had given back the picture of a girlin white, with crimson braid about her neck and wrists, and a red featherin the hat so jauntily perched above the low forehead--altogether amaiden exceedingly to be desired. Perhaps, somewhere, she was standingbefore a mirror at that moment. But what sort of a flush is it upon hercheeks? What sort of a look is it in her eyes? What is this fell shadowthat has passed upon her face?

  By the time Henry was ready to leave the poor mother had ceased herupbraidings, and had yielded quite to the sense of a sympathy, founded ina loss as great as her own, which his presence gave her. He was the onlyone in all the world from whom she could have accepted sympathy, and inher lonely desolation it was very sweet. And at the last, when, as he wasabout to go, her grief burst forth afresh, he put his arm around her anddrew her head to his shoulder, and tenderly soothed her, and stroked thethin grey hair, till at last the long, shuddering sobs grew a littlecalmer. It was natural that he should be the one to comfort her. It washis privilege. In the adoption of sorrow, and not of joy, he had takenthis mother of his love to be his mother.

  "Don't give her up," he said. "I will find her if she is alive."