'Twixt love and law; a novel

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

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CHAPTER I. “ By the way, Miss Blaine, have you read — ”

“ Don’t, Mr. Derwent, I beg, ” implored the girl, “ I have not read the latest novel, nor the morning paper.”

“ Caught again, Teddy ! The astonishing faculty which you have for putting your foot into things amounts to genius,” said provok-. ing Burt Sloane. “Really, one would not expect even you, my boy, to be so obtuse, when everybody knows that Miss Blaine is a sceptic concerning all things.”

“ But I didn’t,” complained Teddy. “ I am never given the chance. The facts are — ”

“That you’re a good fellow, Teddy, but slow.”

“ But I am not supposed to know what Miss Blaine does not approve unless she tells me,” protested the young man ; “ and beside, everybody reads the latest novel,” — appealing to her.

“ Yes, I suppose so,” admitted Margaret Blaine, ready to drop the subject because she felt that Yandell was waiting for her answer, and anticipating an argument between herself and the others.

“ But why should you not read novels. Miss Blaine ? ” urged Teddy. “ I can understand about the newspaper, but. there are novels orthodox as the creeds.”

Margaret was conscious of a pair of dark, searching, indescribable eyes.

“ Nonsense, Mr. Derwent,” she said, “ I am a wretched heretic. Mr. Sloane has just given you a composite of my virtues. Beside,” playfully rebuking his curiosity, what does it matter whether one person or another turns off the highway of popular opinion while the crowd remains ? ”

“ Of course it does not matter about everybody,” replied the honest youth, “ but you are

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different ; one always expects you to have opinions worth hearing.”

The others laughed.

Again, Teddy,” groaned Burt Sloane.

But Margaret answered gently, knowing that the boy was honestly attached to her, and meant a compliment.

“ I have opinions, certainly, Teddy, but they are of little consequence.”

She had called him by his name, feeling that to do so would take the sting out of Burt Sloane’s raillery. Nevertheless, she was annoyed that Yandell should think it a momentary coquetry on her part; it nettled her.

“ Everything that you think and do is of consequence,” said the grateful Teddy, his voice mellowed by the first passion of his life, which he could not disguise when she was kind to hhn.

“You are too generous;” laughed Margaret, “but I will not allow you to flatter me into a crime against the prejudices of my friends.”

“Then let us have it out alone in the garden. Come, you cannot refuse to cure iny dense ignorance; it is a matter of human charity.”

He took a step nearer, careless of the others in his anxiety that she should walk with him through the cool, shadowy paths, where the dewy breath of the young aiorning still rested in sun-kissed iridescence upon the living green.

For an instant doubt held her prisoner ; then moved by a swift impulse she slipped her slender, palpitating hand through his arm, saying gaily :

“ So be it, since you are generous enough to spare the others.”

Her eyes met YandelPs, and she thought there was a touch of disappointment in their depths ; the next instant, she was sure that it was rebuke ; but she was committed to the moment, and with the least perceptible hauteur arching her slender throat, she went off with the enraptured boy, who had forgotten everything except* her thrilling touch upon his arm.

And why should one not suspect her of being a coquette — a woman of twenty-eight, who knew the world and the ways of men too well not to be aware that a tete-^-tete with Theodore Derwent at this moment, although he was five years her junior, was a direct invitation to speak the emotion which dominated him.

But she was more sincere than any of them, Yandell excepted, gave her credit for, and they were no sooner out of sight than she withdrew her hand from Derwent’s arm, and said abruptly but not unkindly :

“ Teddy, you’re a foolish boy ; you make the others laugh at you, and I am sorry for it.”

“ I do not care for the others,” replied- the impulsive fellow ; “ I am lost in you ! ”

“But that is absurd,” she hurried on.. “I am five calendar years older than you, and at least twenty years older in experience; I have gray hairs, genuine ones ; anything between us would be out of the question ; I am too old, if there were no other reason.”

“You are perpetual youth to me, Margaret,” declared the passionate fellow.

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“ What do I care for years ? I defy them ! one or fifty against an eternity of love with you.”

She retreated a step as he advanced, and put up her open hands between them to ward off his touch.

“ Do not be foolish, Teddy, and spoil a friendship,” she said, gravely. “I am really fond of you in a way, but when you love me like that it is not reasonable.”

“ But you know that it is the only way that I ever shall love you,” he said, facing her with dilated nostrils, like a fine animal at bay.

“ So it seems to you now ; but in time you would hate me, and with just cause : besides, I could not feel anything for you except kindness — it seems insipid to even think of loving a man younger than myself ; the feeling does not come.”

“ That does not prove that it never would come ; Margaret, Margaret, trust me ; I will make you love me.”

He stretched forth his strong, athletic arms entreatingly.

She shook her head.

“ It is useless, Teddy. I do not want to

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I hurt you ; but you absolutely have not the power to touch my life.’'

“ You can never know unless you let me try,” he said, a little desperately, with an irresistible movement toward her.

She clasped her hands together like one nerving for a struggle.

“ Don’t make me cruel to you, ” she pleaded, almost piteously ; “ don’t, I pray you. I am thinking more of you than of myself. I am naturally a selfish woman, and there have been times when I could have done this wrong you ask, just to be taken out of myself.”

“ It would not be a wrong, Margaret,” he urged, tumultuously, the wild hope which her words inspired driving him on. “ Give yourself to me, and if I fail to win your love, possession will be enough.”

It never occurred to him that her happiness as well as his own was at stake ; the woman’s side of the question never does appeal to a man at such a time. But she had no thought of yielding.

“ It is impossible — absolutely and forever,”

she said, sorrowfully. “ To say more will be cruel to us both. Do, Teddy, go away — back to your ship, I beg you.”

“ Then I am rejected,” he groaned.

“ No,” hastily interposed Margaret, “do not say that; you have not proposed, — I have warned you before the folly was committed.”

“Then, by heaven! I will compel you. to reject me,” he said, vehemently, beside himself with pain.

“Teddy, Teddy,” she remonstrated, in a voice of deep reproach, “ why will you not let me save you from yourself ? who knows how much I wish to do it ? ”

He laughed bitterly : “ Why should you

care ? ”

“ Because I know the misery of it.”

“ You, Margaret I ” Amazement had sobered him instantly. She was very pale, and he saw that she was struggling for composure.

“ Yes, I,” she whispered under her breath, glancing around feverishly, as if in fear lest the very trees and shrubs, the sighing breeze and singing birds, should hear and repeat her confession.

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A great silence fell between them.

“What an infernal brute I must seem to you, Margaret,” he said at length, despairingly ; “ you will never forgive me after this.”

“ Hush, Teddy, you could not know,” she whispered, gently laying her hand upon his lips, as a mother might have done.

He pressed his own hand over hers to keep it there, and fell to kissing the open palm.

She did not rebuke the caress ; with a sigh of human longing her empty heart yielded to the momentary sweetness of his glowing vital sympathy. When the emotion had spent itself, their eyes met.

“ You could not tell me about it ? ” he ventured, nervously.

“ No,” sadly.

“ Is it death 1 ”

“ Worse, than that.”

“ Worse .? ”

“ Yes, more hopeless.”

He looked at her dumbly. What could be worse than death ? She answered his unspoken question with pale lips:

To know that one must breathe and move and speak through a dead self forever ; to be always yearning, yearning, for the love with which all the rest of nature is bursting ! To see the sun shine — and not feel its warmth ! to everywhere hear the rich voice of passion, and know that its fulness mocks the desolation of one’s own heart ! to be always and everywhere starved ! starved ! starved ! ” Her voice had risen to a wail. “ Oh ! how cruel it is ! ”

She shivered in the clutch of her despair, and moaning, threw herself face downward upon the bosom of Mother Earth.

He was beside her in a moment, saying simply, as children say it when their tender hearts are touched with the evidence of a sorrow which they cannot understand :

“ I love you, I love you, I love you ! ”

It was all that he could say, while the tempest raged and swelled within her; but when the last fitful gust of passion had abated, when the dry sobs shook and sighed and hushed, he reached down a pair of strong arms to raise and hold her against his breast. He was no longer thinking of himself, but only of comforting her.

She put her hands to his shoulders after a while, and pushed herself away from him feebly.

“ Thank you ; I think that I will rest.”

“ In the house ? ”

“ No, no, not yet ! there,” pointing to a vineembowered seat. “ The others must not know.”

“ No, they must not know,” he repeated, mechanically.

When she was seated as she had desired, he said, divining her wish :

“ Perhaps you would rather that I should go away.”

She looked at him wistfully.

“ It would be better.”

“ Forever ? ” his voice was growing tense.

She nodded dumbly.

“ You do not need me ? ”

“ No,” she whispered.

“ If you should ? ”

She answered him mutely with a gesture.

“ I am going,” he said, and still lingered.

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“ There is nothing else to be done/^

“ Nothing ? ”

“ Nothing, Margaret ? ”

“ Nothing.”

“ I could not make you — forget ? ”

“ If I were your slave — if every hour of my life were given to thoughts of you — you only ! if your happiness were my prayer morning, noon, and night, forever ? ” he pleaded, with blanching face.

“ I could not forget through all eternity.”

“ It is strange that both of our lives should be that way,” he said, in a strangled voice.

“ It is strange,” she replied, piteously.

“ Good-bye, Margaret.”

“ Good-bye.”

“ I am going.”

“ I know it, Teddy.”

Not to return.”

“ No, there will be nothing to return for.”

She sat with pathetic hands clasping each other, mute and tearless, listening while his footstep grew fainter and fainter in the distance ; then lifting her face, full of sensitive pain, to the sunshine which struggled through the interlacing branches of the trees, and the shadowy green of the creeping trumpet vine above her head, she shivered in the warm embrace.

“ Poor boy ! poor, unhappy boy ! ” she said. 2

Chapter II

No more genial host than Colonel Conant could be desired. He was a man of noble bearing, of wide travel and general culture, but his most distinguished characteristic was the happy faculty which he had for surrounding himself with people who were equally delightful. Indeed, it was the colonel’s proud boast, his one pardonable vanity, that neither pedants nor fools partook his hospitality.

“ They are equally bad, my dear fellow,” he said, “ the man who indulges verbal hieroglyphics, and the empty-pated rattler ; we can’t abide either species down at Glenmere. We don’t pretend down there ; we are simply a set of pretty decent people in the main, who are after all the happiness there is in life, when it is taken under clear skies, with wind and weather favoring.”

And that was certainly the atmosphere of i8

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the place. One fortunate enough to secure the colonel’s invitation came under the influence of gracious and refining forces the moment that the massive iron gates swung welcomingly upon their great hinges, between the carved stone posts.

Within this charming spot, conventional boredom was forbidden as a misdemeanor, and men and women were expected to show up themselves; and the colonel’s marvellous tact lay in the fact that he was rarely deceived in the character of a guest.

With few breaks in his triumphant reign, the little god Pleasure ruled the spirit of the great house from the opening of the guest season in May, until the last autumnal days, when falling leaves and whistling winds covered the bier and chanted the dirge of departing summer glories.

Mehitable, the bachelor colonel’s old-fashioned sister, presided over the house, lending added dignity to every occasion by her gentle manners and crown of snowy hair, framing a face of benevolent virtue. The w^ar of the rebellion had left Mrs. Douglas a childless widow, and her life’s joy had been found in administering to that of others.

Margaret Blaine was Mehitable’s ward, and the daughter of her husband’s only sister, who, married to a man unworthy, and early overwhelmed with disappointments, had long since closed her eyes in the sweet forgetfulness of the dreamless sleep. It will be seen, therefore, that Margaret had no claim of blood relationship upon the tender love which the colonel and Mrs. Douglas bestowed.

Strangers always wondered to hear the girl call the sweet-faced old lady “ Mother Hetty,” but so it had been from her babyhood, and so it would always be between them. Probably the least disappointing emotion of all Margaret’s life was this one toward Mother Hetty, for the girl was instinctively grateful for the unselfishness that had surrounded all her years with maternal solicitude and forethought ; and she was too keen a psychologist not to know that Mehitable’s devotion was the result of a generous resolve to shield her from orphan desolation, rather than the expression of the mighty mother passion which wraps

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and enfolds with irresistible and deathless tenderness the being whose life has been drawn from her own veins.

Certainly it was a' wonderful piece of good luck that befell the child ; but it was greater good fortune to the budding woman to enjoy the social protection and advantages which the colonel’s home afforded her ; for Margaret’s father devoted no thought or care to her, not even the money necessary for her support and education after her mother’s death ; thinking only of himself and his own reckless and expensive pleasures. But Margaret was never allowed to know that she was the child of such far-reaching kindness and generosity, until long years had passed. When she was of age to enquire into her pecuniary circumstances, it could not be helped, shrewdly as the colonel and Mehitable tried to avoid the subject.

The knowledge of her dependence nearly overwhelmed the proud girl, and she passionately resisted it, declaring that she would work or starve rather than burden them longer.

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“ I cannot bear it, mother Hetty, 1 cannot ! ” was her wild declaration, fraught with the full poignancy of the belief that she had been forced upon them by circumstances. But wherr she saw that her wilful and rebellious spirit nearly broke the dear old lady’s heart, with an intolerable pang for her ingratitude, Margaret settled back again into her former place.

Her- sensitive soul was nevertheless stung almost beyond endurance by the shameful neglect of her father, for whom she sought desperately and stealthily, until she got traces of him away off in Australia. She wrote to him there, letters intense and reproachful — letters which led in the end to his sending her a small yearly pittance, a sum quite insufficient for the bare necessities, a sum which, by the way, she rejected later on with impassioned scorn, preferring (when she reasoned about it) the gifts which the gods gave freely, to the grudging tribute of an unloving and unnatural parent.

Such circumctances, together with her natural disposition, made of Margaret a somewhat restless and discontented woman at twenty-five ; when, by a strange circumstance of fate, her father died, leaving her an almost limitless fortune, the result of very recent speculative and mining ventures in the Australian Colonies.

This fortune was with Margaret the signal for plunging into all sorts of wild and extravagant philanthropies ; for taking up, one after another, every “ ism ” of the day ; for devoting herself to impractical schemes for ridding the world of orphans, and it might be of children altogether. She rushed on from one thing to another, through asylums, through hospitals, through prisons, into reforms of every conceivable sort, kind, and description. From philanthropy and philosophy she leaped to the high places of government, and dove down into social conditions and conditions of society, growing more erratic, more unstable, and more bewildered at each turn ; until she suddenly brought up before the certainty that everything leads to nothing in particular, except it may be to a better understanding of “ What fools we mortals be.” And there she remained — a woman of more or less actual experience, but somewhat acquainted with the external phases of nearly every condition of life ; a woman who had read a little of almost everything, drawn hasty conclusions about other things, and finally admitted to herself that she had been cruelly, cruelly outwitted in her efforts to find perfect contentment by rushing hither and yon after it. And the day came when she tore the mask from the hidden face of Truth with sudden and ruthless hands, involuntarily accusing her own cringing heart.

“ Love ! love ! love ! that is what you want, Margaret Blaine,” she said, with annihilating plainness. “ Do you hear ? that is what you are always longing for — love — nothing else. That is what you have been tearing up and down the earth in search of — love, forever love ! You may call it philosophy, ha 1 ha ! or science, ha ! ha ! or philan- Ihrophy, or charity ; but I say that it is love — nothing else — love ! love ! Do you hear, Margaret ? Then say it — I want love, I want love ! Let the world hear you speak the truth. You need not be ashamed of it, girl ! Don’t pretend that you despise the emotion. Goodness help the woman who says that she does not want love — what an unnatural thing she is ! But that isn’t you, Margaret — not you. You are not afraid to call things by their right names.”

Nevertheless, when the passion of the hour had worn itself out, she hid her heart again with cunning, as women will, and smiled her woman’s smiles, clutching all the while with her strangling woman’s hands at the throat of this new-found consciousness.

But apart from her mental characteristics, to attempt to describe Margaret Blaine would be pure impertinence, for she was like the after-glow of the sunset or the warmth of an Indian summer, or better yet, the subtle fragrance of rich flowers — indescribable ! There was about her an impalpable something, an essence, an atmosphere which she exhaled, that reminded one of no other woman, beautiful or plain. And in spite of her mental restlessness she was full of sensuous physical repose ; but her enemies said that it was the repose of the stealthy cat or the crouching tiger — suggestive.

It must be admitted, however, that she carried herself at all times as a well-bred woman should ; that she smiled serenely, spoke softly — a charming quality in her sex ; that she moved simply and with grace — a rarer gift yet, and one harder to forgive, especially when oneself suffered by comparison ; and that her presence and silence were like the speech and touch of less magnetic women.

She never posed — a positive virtue was this, for although one may conceal what exists, if it be done quietly and well, nothing forgives a pretence which is flaunted with the seriousness due to a principle.

That she had given such sweeping confidence to Theodore Derwent was due to himself and the scrupulous honesty of his purpose toward her when he asked for her love and her life — gifts impossible to bestow ; she showed him with annihilating abandon the barrenness of his hope. But with his departure from Glen mere, which followed immediately after the interview in the garden.

Margaret became filled with passionate regret for what she could not recall.

“ But he will never understand,” she urged to herself; he could not ! Poor Teddy! he is sure to imagine everything else — all kinds of impossible things — but never the truth. No, never that. He is too honest and conventional himself ; he will wonder — but he will never understand — never ! ”

She was pacing feverishly up and down the length of her room, controlled by a burning emotion, her trailing, silken robe rustling softly after her with the undulating grace of a creeping thing gliding over dried forest leaves.

The cathedral chime in the gilt-bronze clock upon the silken-draped mantel slowly counted the hour of twelve. Margaret paused at the sound ; the dim light of a rose-shaded lamp fell upon her hands clasped over her head, and her eyes cast down. She was struggling to resist a force at her heart like the restrained efforts of an imprisoned creature at the bars of its cage.

Suddenly she sensed the glowing sheen of

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her gold-green dress, which had quivered into silence about her feet, like an alert, curious, living thing. She started in superstitious fear.

“ Ugh ! what a terrible gown it is !” she said, tearing open the front ; and, slipping free from its folds, she backed steadily away into the gloom of the far end of the room.

“ How uncanny some things are ! ” she panted, with staring eyes ; “ it is just as if they had worn form, shape, and sense before they were what they are.”

But still she gazed as if fascinated at the glowing mass of silk and lace upon the floor.

“ I hate it,” she whispered, “ the treacherous thing ! ” and making a sudden dash back, she stamped fiercely once, twice, a dozen times upon the shimmering, senseless heap. Her flesh was thrilling, her eyes were ablaze, for the moment was real ; she was battling desperately with an imaginary foe to save her secret from peering, curious, worldly eyes — the midnight seemed full of them.

The moment grew more tense.

“ I cannot stand it ! ” she gasped ; and flinging the shutters wide, she stretched her arms to the embrace of the night.

But in another instant she had recoiled, suffocating, against the window casement.

“ Gracious ! what a night it is !” she breathed, hushed and pale. She had forgotten her bared throat and neck and arms — forgotten everything save the dense fullness of the hour replete with speechless living things ; for the wraith-like shadows among the trees, like spirits returned to the haunts of men, seemed whispering her secret among themselves.

“Oh, Father! spare me,’' she cried, in piteous appeal.

Her white bosom tossed and rose and fell ; the burnished masses of her hair escaped their braids and jewelled confining pins, and rioted on the midnight air.

“ Spare me I spare me — Alex ! Alex ! Alex 1 ”

Out of the unyielding density of the night a voice of ecstacy breathed her name.

“ Margaret ! ”

It was the voice of love, distilling sweet hope.

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“ Margaret !”

She had crossed the border land of despair ; and her face was radiant with the welcoming breath of love’s heaven.

“Alex!”

“ Here.”

The earth had changed ; all the speechless things burst into sudden, exultant song, delicious, entrancing; surcharged with the melody of the spheres.

“ I thank the gods.”

The night no longer filled her with alarm, for Love was near.

“ Dear heart 1” he said.

The hour was precious, and would soon be gone.

“ It was so dreary,” she breathed him low.

“And you were afraid,” he accused her, gently.

. “Yes, until you came.”

“ And did nothing tell you that I was near ? ”

The slanting moonlight reflected the overflowing depths of her lifted eyes.

“ You are always near.”

“ And yet you were afraid.”

“ I cannot help it, when — ”

“ I know,” he assured her, softly.

“The world is so cruel,” she shivered. “Oh, why can it never understand? ”

“ Hush, dear one ; it never can.”

“ No, no ; that is what makes it all so hard to bear.”

“ But to-night there is no world — only you and me.”

“ I wish that the night were eternal.”

“ Poor heart ! ” he said, and stroked her hair.

“ When I am so happy — oh ! say it is not strange that one should wish to be happy.”

He was regarding her with solemn pain.

“ It is not strange,” he said.

“ Nor wrong,” she urged, insistently.

“ Margaret ! ”

“ Say, Alex, that it is not wrong.” r

“ Margaret, Margaret ! ”

“ Do, do say that it is not wrong.”

“ It is human ! ” The words burst from him against his will.

“And we must be human, in spite of it all,” she pleaded.

He drew sharply away.

“ We are breaking the faith.”

His voice came harsh and short.

Great billows of contrition surged over her at his tone, and she fell upon her knees in the dewy grass, her hands interlaced in passionate remorse.

“ Forgive me, Alex ; forgive.”

“ How she tears my soul ! ” he whispered hoarsely, holding himself apart by a masterful effort.

“ But I will not do it again, I will not ! I promise you, Alex, and I will not — never again ! Only, to-night,” she hurried on with breathless entreaty, “ I could not bear it. It was terrible — you do not know ! ”

A vague smile, like pain, haunted his lips.

“ Dear heart, I do know,” he said ; “ I know it all— -I lingered here because I knew.”

“ And did you think that I would call ? ” She was straining to catch his answer, the pent-up eagerness of her parted lips, like the up-springing flame from a druidess’ altar, thrilling his blood with the bewildering pain of sacrifice.

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“ I could not tell that.”

“You hoped — ” she was leaning toward him yearningly, the warmth of her breath caressing his cheek, the hunger of a lifetime in her eyes.

He swerved, and in the instant a mortal longing took him to her feet. But she sprang back at the touch which she felt approaching, ere it fell upon her. Her face was blanched with terror.

“ Don’t, don’t ! The faith ! the faith ! ” she cried. “ You shall not touch me ; I am an accursed thing to make you forget the faith.”

The spell was broken ; his muscles relaxed — he breathed again.

“ I shall learn to keep the faith if you trust me,” she said, when the storm had passed.

“ I fear myself more than you,” he replied.

She reached him a hand which held no temptation in its palm, reassuring and warm.

He took it silently, and they walked that way like children for a time.

“ Do not doubt me again,” she whispered at length.

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“ I will not.”

“ I do not mean about the faith.”

“ What then .? ”

“That day in the garden.”

“ Yes,” he said, in the light of a recollection borne in upon him from the world in which they lived, “ I remember.”

“ You did doubt me then ? ”