The Belle of Bowling Green
that he has made for himself.”
“You do not know what you are saying, Annette. Your temper carries you
beyond truth. Leonard did not make this trouble----”
“Oh, yes, he did. His pride and self-conceit are intolerable. His
patronage of people is offensive. And Achille and I have often noticed
how purse-proud he was----”
“It is a shame to say such things, Annette. You know they are
slander--wicked slander! No man was ever less concerned about his
wealth, in fact, he----”
“Oh, we can let that subject drop--we all know how he spreads abroad his
money. I am speaking now of his cowardice. Every one is speaking of it;
rich and poor alike. He is a byword on the Exchange. He will never have
another invitation to any respectable house. Even I must shut my doors
against him--and, to be sure, no nice girl will ever be seen with him
again.”
“All that you are saying is cruelly false, Annette; you are trying to
pain and terrify me----”
“What good would that do me? I am only telling you what you ought to
know.”
“But why? Why are you telling me?”
“Because I am angry at you. Why did you advise Leonard to come to
Achille for help?”
“I did not advise him to come to Achille. How could Achille help
Leonard? The idea!”
“I say plainly that Achille is now seeking that man Gilson, and if he
meets him before Leonard does--which he is sure to do--he will challenge
him at once.”
“How ridiculous! Achille has no quarrel with Gilson. Why should he
challenge him?”
“Because of the things he has charged Leonard with. And Achille’s honour
is so sensitive, and he is so passionate, the dispute will end in
Achille making it his own quarrel. Then he will fight Gilson, before
Leonard even succeeds in meeting him.”
“I hope he will!” said Sappha with affected satisfaction.
“You wicked girl! To say such a thing to a wife and a mother! Oh, now, I
think you are none too good for Leonard Murray! By all means marry
him--only for decency’s sake take yourselves out of New York! There are
places where wealth will cloak cowardice. England, for instance!”
“All these stories you tell about Leonard are downright lies. Yes, I
shall marry him, and we shall stay here--in New York. Do you understand?
And if you were not insane with temper I would promise myself never to
speak to you again, Annette St. Ange. Cowardice, indeed! You, yourself,
are at this moment suffering from cowardice. Your fear of Achille being
hurt has made you suspicious, unjust, slanderous. And Leonard and I must
endure your shameful words--a woman has no redress. I am going to leave
you. You have willingly wounded and insulted me--without any reason at
all. I hope you will be sorry for it----”
“I am sorry, Sappha. Do not go away. I am sorry for you--that is the
reason of my temper; and it is Leonard, not you, I am angry at.”
“We will not name Leonard. If he is all you say, he is not fit for you
to talk about.”
“No, indeed!”
“I think you had better go home, Annette. You are making yourself, and
me, also, ill; for nothing.”
“For nothing! That is all the thanks I receive for getting up so early
and coming to warn and advise you.”
“I wish you had not come.”
“I shall go now and tell grandmother. She will perhaps be able to make
you see things properly. I hope you will not make yourself sick about
Leonard----”
“It is not my way.”
“If a girl’s lover turns out badly, she ought not to cry about him--it
is neither moral nor respectable. I say this, Sappha, politely and
kindly.”
“Thank you, politely and kindly, Annette.”
“I hope Leonard may come out of this affair better than we think.”
“Thank you. I hope Achille may come out of this affair better than we
think.”
The clash of the front door emphasised this provoking bit of courtesy,
and Sappha flew like a bird to her room, that she might conceal the
tumult of outraged feelings warring within her. And then as soon as she
was alone all her anger fled from Annette to Leonard. She accused him
with bitter unreason; for at this hour she was insensible to everything
but the painfully humiliating results of what she still mentally called
“his quarrel” with Horace Gilson. And, oh, how Annette had hurt her! For
Annette had not yet learned how to endure; and they who can bear
nothing are themselves unbearable.
For two hours she gave full sway to her insurgent feelings; but at the
last every mental struggle ended in her blaming Leonard. Leonard, for
her sake, ought to have avoided such a degrading quarrel--Leonard ought
to have faced it the first thing the following morning, instead of that
he had trifled away the whole day in Nassau Street, and the next day at
Annette’s, and now Annette felt that she had the right to call his
courtesy cowardice.
“Well, then, it looks like cowardice!” she sobbed passionately, “and
then Saturday he told me some story about his lawyer detaining
him--never once did he name Gilson to me. It looks like---- _Oh, wee!
oh, wee!_ my heart will break with the shame of it! Every one will pity
me. Even if some make excuses for Leonard, I shall know it is only pity
for me--only pity! I cannot bear it! I cannot think of it! Father and
mother must take me away--no, no, I must face the shame, smile at it,
what they call ‘live it down.’ Oh, what shall I say? What shall I do?
And mother is too ill to trouble. And to father I cannot complain of
Leonard. Oh, Leonard! Leonard! Leonard!”
And it was while tossed from wave to wave on this flood tide of anger
and sorrow that she was told Leonard was waiting to see her. She rose up
hastily. Had she taken a few moments to calm herself everything might
have been different. But even her opening of the doors between herself
and her lover betrayed the whirl and tumult of the feelings that
distracted her. Nor was this mental storm soothed by Leonard’s presence.
He came eagerly forward to meet her; a pleasant smile on his face and a
white rose in his hand. She took the flower from him, and threw it down
upon the table; and he regarded her with amazement. Her face, her
attitude, the passion of her movements, arrested the words he was eager
to utter; and in that fateful pause Sappha’s unguarded, unconsidered
accusations fell like the voice of doom upon his senses.
“You are a byword among men! No nice girl will be seen with you! You
will never again be asked to any respectable house! Annette says so! She
will be even compelled to shut her door against you!”
“Sappha, Sappha! Do you know what you are saying?”
“Only too well I know it. Annette has just been here. She has told me
all. You left her to tell me. Why did you not come yourself? Sunday,
Monday, Tuesday, all these days I have been in suspense and misery.”
“Listen to me, Sappha, I----”
“It is too late now. Annette has told me. I have heard it all--my heart
is broken--I shall die of shame. Every one will pity me. I cannot, I
cannot bear it----”
“Stop one moment, Sappha. Do you believe Annette? Do you think she will
be forced to shut her door against me?”
“She says so.”
“Then Judge Bloommaert may have the same obligation--and you also. If
you can believe this, you can believe anything that is said against me,
your promised husband. It is I who am heartbroken. It is I who must feel
shame. It is I who must go all my life in the fiery shadow of wrong and
injustice. Sappha, you have known me as no other person has known
me,--in my inmost soul,--and yet you can believe I deserve such
treatment?”
“How can I tell? If you had done anything to right yourself----”
“Oh, that is not the question. You should have trusted me through
everything, and in spite of every one. You have failed me just when I
needed most your love and confidence. If Annette tells you I ought to be
shut out of your heart and house, you will believe her! What is your
love worth? It is only a summer day’s idyll. The first chill wind of
disapproval kills it. I will go before I am shut out. In future days it
may be easier for you to remember that I closed the door on my own
happiness. Oh, Sappha, Sappha! lighter than vapour is your love--and I
had built my life upon it!”
His face expressed more indignation than distress. He lifted the rose
she had flung down and looked at it with a moment’s pity; then he pushed
it toward her.
“It is my last offering,” he said. “Take it. And as it fades, forget me.
I shall never give you shame or trouble again.”
Then anger took entire possession of Sappha; and anger does everything
wrong. She lifted the rose and cried out amid her passionate weeping:
“I will not wait for it to fade. No, I will forget you _now! now! now!_”
and as she uttered the words she ruthlessly tore off the white petals,
scattered them on the floor at his feet--and was gone.
Her tears, her shivering words, the utter passion of misery and
tenderness that made the action almost like the slaying of a living
creature, so stupefied and fascinated Leonard that for a moment he could
neither move nor speak. When he recovered himself he ran to the foot of
the stairs and called her. “Sappha! Sappha!” he cried. “Sappha, come
back to me, I have something to tell you.” But she was gone. A slight
flutter of her white gown as she turned the last angle was all he saw;
and if she heard his appeal she did not answer it.
For a few minutes he waited, but the laughter of the negroes in the
kitchen, coming faintly through the baize-lined doors, was the only
sound he heard. Then he returned to the parlour and carefully gathered,
one by one, the torn leaves. The last note Sappha had sent him was in
his pocket book. He placed them between the sheets and, shutting them in
the book, put it in his breast.
What was he so still for? What had he done? What had come to him? Blast,
or blight, or fire, or fever? He picked up the torn rose leaves as if
they were bits of his heart, and the door clashed behind him and seemed
to shake the very foundations of his life. He knew that he was walking,
but his heart hung heavy at his feet. All he loved was behind him--he
was drifting, drifting into a darkness where love and joy would never
again find him. Oh, it is only
“---- the Lord above,
He only knows the strength of Love;
He only knows, and He only can,
The root of Love that is in a man.”
CHAPTER NINE
_The Reproof of the Sword_
Leonard’s suffering was very great, but Sappha’s was still greater.
Wounded love, injustice, and disappointment can inflict mental distress
that has no parallel in physical pain, but with Sappha’s misery was
mingled the intolerable drop of remorse for her hasty passion. Now that
all was over, now that Leonard had gone away forever, there came to her
the clearest conviction that she had done him a great wrong. She
remembered that she had not even given him an opportunity to explain
circumstances--she had met him with passionate reproaches and flung his
love gift, torn and mutilated, at his feet. After that shameful, piteous
rejection what could Leonard do but go away? It was an act for which
there could be no apology and no forgiveness. She cried out with the
anguish this cruel, hopeless reflection caused her; and had Leonard been
really present she would have fallen at his feet in an agony of love and
repentance.
Prone upon her bed she lay, torturing herself by a thousand
self-reproaches, and by a perpetual memory of that last look of pained
amazement with which her lover had regarded her. She could not put it
from her, it seemed to have exorcised every other memory of his face.
With heartbroken sobs she sent after him one cry, “Forgive me! Oh,
Leonard, forgive me!” But the void between them swallowed it up in
silence. There was nothing to be done. The long, long days and years
before her held only frustrate longings and despair. This reflection