The Darrow Enigma, Melvin L. Severy [free biff chip and kipper ebooks TXT] 📗
- Author: Melvin L. Severy
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to - to - ” She hesitated and Maitland did not permit her to
finish her sentence.
“You must pardon me, Miss Darrow,” he replied, “but I can accept no
further payment for the little I have done. It has been a pleasure
to do it and the knowledge that you are now released from the
disagreeable possibilities of your father’s will is more than
sufficient remuneration. If you still feel that you owe me anything,
perhaps you will be willing to grant me a favour.”
“There is nothing,” she said earnestly, “within my power to grant
for which you shall ask in vain.”
“Let me beg of you then,” he replied, “never again to seek to repay
me for any services you may fancy I have rendered. There is nothing
you could bestow upon me which I would accept.” She gave him a
quick, searching glance and I noticed a look of pain upon her face,
but Maitland gave it no heed, for, indeed, he seemed to have much
ado either to know what he wanted to say, or knowing it, to say it.
“And now,” he continued, “I must no longer presume to order your
actions. You have considered my wishes so conscientiously, have
kept your covenant so absolutely, that what promised to be a
disagreeable responsibility has become a pleasure which I find
myself loth to discontinue. All power leads to tyranny. Man cannot
be trusted with it. Its exercise becomes a consuming passion, and
he abuses it. The story is the same, whether nations or individuals
be considered. I myself, you see, am a case in point. I thank you
for the patience you have shown and the pains you have taken to make
everything easy and pleasant for me; and now I must be going, as I
have yet much to do in this matter. “It may be a long time,” he
said, extending his hand to her, “before we meet again. We have
travelled the same path - ” but he paused as if unable to proceed,
and a deadly pallor overspread his face as he let fall both her hand
and his own. He made a heroic effort to proceed.
“I - I shall miss - very - very much miss - pray pardon me - I - I
believe I’m ill - a little faint I’d - I’d better get out into the
air - I shall - shall miss - pardon - I - I’m not quite myself -
goodbye, goodbye!” and he staggered unsteadily, half blindly to the
door and out into the street without another word. He certainly
did look ill.
Gwen’s face was a study. In it surprise, fear, pain, and dismay,
each struggled for predominance. She tried to retain her
self-control while I was present, but it was all in vain. A moment
later she threw herself upon the sofa, and, burying her face in the
cushions, wept long and bitterly. I stole quietly away and sent
Alice to her, and after a time she regained her self-control, if
not her usual interest in affairs.
As day after day passed, however, and Maitland neglected to call,
transacting such business as he had through me, the shadow on
Gwen’s face deepened, and the elasticity of manner, whereof she
had given such promise at Maitland’s last visit, totally deserted
her, giving place to a dreamy, far-away stolidity of disposition
which I knew full well boded no good. I stood this sort of thing
as long as I could, and then I determined to call on Maitland and
give him a “piece of my mind.”
I did call, but when I saw him all my belligerent resolutions
vanished. He was sitting at his table trying to work out some
complicated problem, and he was utterly unfitted for a single
minute’s consecutive thought. I had not seen him for more than two
weeks, and during that time he had grown to look ten years older.
His face was drawn, haggard, and deathly pale.
“For Heaven’s sake, George,” I exclaimed, “what is the matter with
you?”
“I’ve an idea I’m spleeny,” he replied with a ghastly attempt at a
smile. This was too much for me. He should have the lecture after
all. The man who thinks he is dying may be spleeny, but the man
who says he is spleeny is, of the two, the one more likely to be
dying.
“See here, old man,” I began, “don’t you get to thinking that when
you hide your own head in the sand no one can see the colour of
your feathers. You might as well try to cover up Bunker Hill
Monument with a wisp of straw. Don’t you suppose I know you love
Gwen Darrow? That’s what’s the matter with you.”
“Well,” he replied, “and if it is, what then?”
“What then?” I ejaculated. “What then? Why go to her like a man;
tell her you love her and ask her to be your wife. That’s what I’d
do if I loved - ” But he interrupted me before I had finished the
lie, and I was not sorry, for, if I had thought before I became
involved in that last sentence, how I feared to speak to Jeannette
- well, I should have left it unsaid. I have made my living
giving advice till it has become a fixed habit.
“See here, Doc,” he broke in upon me, “I do love Gwen Darrow as few
men ever love a woman, and the knowledge that she can never be my
wife is killing me. Don’t interrupt me! I know what I am saying.
She can never be my wife! Do you think I would sue for her hand?
Do you think I would be guilty of making traffic of her gratitude?
Has she not her father’s command to wed me if I but ask her, even
as she would have wed that scoundrel, Godin, had things gone as he
planned them? Did she not tell us both that she should keep her
covenant with her father though it meant for her a fate worse than
death? And you would have me profit by her sacrifice? For shame!
Love may wither my heart till it rustles in my breast like a dried
leaf, but I will never, never let her know how I love her. And see
here, Doc, promise me that you will not tell her I love her - nay,
I insist on it.”
Thus importuned I said, though it went much against the grain, for
that was the very thing I had intended, “She shall not learn it
first through me.” This seemed to satisfy him, for he said no more
upon the subject. When I went back to Gwen I was in no better frame
of mind than when I left her. Here were two people so determined
to be miserable in spite of everything and everybody that I sought
Jeannette by way of counter-irritant for my wounded sympathy.
Ah, Jeannette! Jeannette! to this day the sound of your sweet name
is like a flash of colour to the eye. You were a bachelor’s first
and last love, and he will never forget you.
All human things cease - some end. Happy are they who can spring
the hard and brittle bar of experience into a bow of promise. For
such, there shall ever more be an orderly gravitation.
My next call on Maitland was professional. I found him abed and in
a critical condition. I blamed myself severely that I had allowed
other duties to keep me so long away, and had him at once removed to
the house, where I might, by constant attendance in the future,
atone for my negligence in the past. Despite all our efforts,
however, Maitland steadily grew worse. Gwen watched by him night
and day until I was finally obliged to insist, on account of her
own health, that she should leave the sick room long enough to take
the rest she so needed. Indeed, I feared lest I should soon have
two invalids upon my hands, but Gwen yielded her place to Jeannette
and Alice during the nights and soon began to show the good effects
of sleep.
I should have told you that, during all this time, Jeannette was
staying with us as a guest. I had convinced her father that it was
best she should remain with us until the unpleasant notoriety caused
by his arrest had, in a measure, subsided. Then, too, I told him
with a frankness warranted, I thought, by circumstances that he
could not hope to live many weeks longer, and that every effort
should be made to make the blow his death would deal Jeannette as
light as possible. At this he almost lost his self-control. “What
will become of my child when I am gone?” he moaned. “I shall leave
her penniless and without any means of support.”
“My dear Mr. Latour,” I replied, “you need give yourself no
uneasiness on that score. I will give you my word, as a man of
honour, that so long as Miss Darrow and I live we will see that your
daughter wants for none of the necessities of life, - unless she
shall find someone who shall have a better right than either of us
to care for her.” This promise acted like magic upon him. He
showered his blessings upon me, exclaiming, “You have lifted a great
load from my heart, and I can now die in peace!” And so, indeed,
he did. In less than a week he was dead. I had prepared Jeannette
for the shock and so had her father, but, for all this, her grief
was intense, for she loved her father with a strength of love few
children give their parents. In time, however, her grief grew less
insistent and she began to gain something of her old buoyancy.
In the meantime, Maitland’s life seemed to hang by a single thread.
It was the very worst case of nervous prostration I have ever been
called to combat, and for weeks we had to be contented if we enabled
him to hold his own. During all this time Gwen watched both
Maitland and myself with a closeness that suffered nothing to escape
her. I think she knew the changes in his condition better even than
I did.
And now I am to relate a most singular action on Gwen’s part. I
doubt not most of her own sex would have considered it very
unfeminine, but anyone who saw it all as I did could not, I think,
fail to appreciate the nobility of womanhood which made it possible.
Gwen was not dominated by those characteristics usually epitomised
in the epithet ‘lady.’ She was a woman, and she possessed, in a
remarkable degree, that fineness of fibre, that solidity of
character, and that largeness of soul which rise above the petty
conventionalities of life into the broad realm of the real verities
of existence.
It occurred on the afternoon of the first day that Maitland showed
the slightest improvement. I remember distinctly how he had fallen
into a troubled sleep from which he would occasionally cry out in a
half-articulate manner, and how Gwen and I sat beside him waiting for
him to awaken. Suddenly he said something in his sleep that riveted
our attention. “I tell you, Doc,” he muttered, “though love of her
burn my heart to a cinder, I will never trade upon her gratitude,
nor seek to profit by the promise she made her father. Never, so
help me God!”
Gwen gave me one hurried, sweeping glance and then, throwing herself
upon the sofa, buried her face in the cushions. I forbore to
disturb her till
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