Three millions! or, The way of the world
“Miss Hungerford, perhaps I am rash and foolhardy. I feel that I am;
but I cannot endure the painful anxiety in which I have existed during
the last two months,” the doctor began. “You despise me; you are
disgusted with me.”
“You wrong me, and you wrong yourself, Dr. Lynch.”
“It would not be unnatural that you should do so.”
“On the contrary, it would be more than strange if one for whom you
have done so much should regard you with any other feelings than
respect and esteem.”
“Miss Hungerford, you know what wrong I have done; you know how grossly
and inexcusably I have injured your brother’s best friend--one who had
been more than a friend to me.”
“Why need you mention this unpleasant matter, doctor? It is past and
forgotten.”
“It cannot be forgotten; at least, not by me. The wrong was too
grievous to rest lightly on my awakened conscience.”
“It was a grievous wrong, Dr. Lynch; it would be worse than foolish to
deny it.”
The doctor did not appear to be encouraged by this remark.
“There was nothing to palliate it,” he added, meekly.
“Nothing, doctor; no attempt was made on your part to justify or excuse
your conduct, which makes your friends all the more ready to forget and
forgive.”
“I may be forgiven as the condemned criminal is forgiven, but I am
despised as he is despised.”
“Far from it, doctor. Your confession, and the manly reparation you
made, have atoned for the error; and for one, I must beg you never to
allude to it again. One who has been so kind to us cannot be despised,
or even regarded with coldness.”
“Miss Hungerford, you do not know what I have suffered. Long before the
trial, long before Mr. Birch had the means of proving his innocence, I
was convicted of my error. My penitence dates, not from the day Ross
Kingman was tried, but from the day when you, lying at death’s door,
opened your eyes and smiled upon me. It was your look that conquered
me, not the fear of public disgrace. Miss Hungerford, I love you! Do
not spurn me.”
“I am honored by your preference,” stammered Julia.
“You saved me from myself. As I bent over you, pale, wasted, almost
in heaven, you seemed like an angel sent to convict and condemn me. I
was convicted and condemned. O, how I loathed myself!” continued the
doctor, earnestly.
“You were very kind to me then.”
“If I could have lain down in the grave, and gone to heaven with you,
how happy I should have been! I was not fit for heaven; I was not fit
even for the presence of the angel whom I had labored to save from the
arms of death.”
“You are sentimental, doctor,” added Julia, trying to smile.
“The feeling of my own unworthiness as I looked upon you, as I watched
your dimmed eye and your wasted form, was terrible to me, for I could
not help loving you. When you were better, I tried to tear the idol
from my soul. I could not; it had become part of my being. I was
banished from your presence. Every day of absence was a day of misery.
I would not even have you know what I endured. There was no hope, no
comfort for me. But I had been so base and wicked that I deserved to
suffer. I could reproach no one but myself.”
“Why need you indulge in this morbid self-condemnation? You have
confessed your error; you have atoned for it as far as you can. Why
need you repine any more?”
“Because my error has robbed me of all the joys of life,” replied the
doctor, in the bitterness of desperation.
“That cannot be.”
“It can be; it is.”
“Your profession still enables you to do good to your fellow-beings,
and your kind heart finds abundant objects of charity. You can be happy
in being true to yourself and useful to others.”
Dr. Lynch was surprised into an expression of contempt, but it was
instantly supplanted by his sad look of humiliation and self-abasement.
“You did not quite understand me. I have all these joys, and they are
joys indeed. I am human, and therefore selfish. That which I have
regarded as the greatest joy of earth has fled from my grasp, if it
were ever within my reach.”
Julia knew what he meant, and her cheek betrayed her consciousness.
“If you desire any selfish joy, you should be willing to dispense with
it. We should not repine because we cannot have all that we desire in
this world; that is the common lot of humanity.”
“What I desire is absolutely necessary to save me from hopeless misery.”
“I trust not.”
“Miss Hungerford, I have been self-banished from this house for your
sake.”
“For my sake!”
“Truly for your sake.”
“I should always have been glad to see you.”
“The feeling that I was not worthy to come into your presence has made
me an exile from the society which I have longed for, pined for. I had
fully resolved, bitter and terrible as was the fate to which I doomed
myself, never again to see you.”
“Why should you?”
“Because I love you! You spurn me; you shrink from me!” exclaimed the
doctor, with passionate earnestness.
Julia did not move, did not start, did not shrink. As she had no
feeling of disgust, she did not manifest any. The suitor was poetic,
rather dramatic, in his demonstrations. Julia looked anxious, troubled,
rather than agitated.
“I am sure, Dr. Lynch, no one of our family, least of all myself,
regards you with aversion. We are weighed down with obligations to you;
and if we were so disposed, we could not afford to think unkindly of
you.”
“You are noble and generous, and your generosity makes my error all the
more loathsome to me. I have never ceased to feel your kindness and
generosity; but I could not tax it to the extent of compelling you to
tolerate one so base and despicable as myself.”
“You really hurt my feelings by applying such epithets to yourself.”
Perhaps that was what the doctor intended to do.
“I am what I am. I would sacrifice everything to win back the integrity
I have lost. I cannot hide myself from my own eyes. I was willing to
hide myself from yours. I intended not again to burden your family with
the sight of me.”
“We should have been glad to see you every day since your return.
Eugene invited you, and tried to persuade you to come to Pine Hill.
Does not this fact convince you that you would have been welcome here?”
“I have never doubted that I should be welcome. To stay away seemed to
me to be a sacred duty, though it was contrary to my own inclinations.
Does this convince you of the sincerity of my repentance?”
“We knew you were sincere, and we asked no such proof.”
“I believed it was my duty to stay away. I faithfully followed my
conviction. I should have persevered, but your brother insisted that I
should attend your mother in her sickness.”
“Mother could not think of having any other physician.”
“It was not my fault that I came.”
“Your fault! It was kind of you to come. Mother might have died if you
had refused to come.”
“But I dreaded to come; not on your mother’s account, of course, for I
respect and esteem her more than any other woman in the world. I feared
to come.”
“Why should you?”
“I suggested to your brother that he had better call in another
physician.”
“So he told me.”
“If I could honorably have avoided coming, I should have done so.”
“I am sorry you had so strong a dislike to coming to our house.”
“Dislike! Far from it!”
“What was it, then?”
“Simple duty. I could not avoid seeing you.”
“Did you object to seeing me?”
“It was rapture even to look upon you! Julia, I came. Right or wrong,
I cannot help loving you. I would have spared you this, for I know you
hate me, if your gentle nature is capable of hating.”
“I do not hate you; I do not dislike you, doctor. Your words pain me.”
“I have thought that it was the guidings of Providence that brought
me here after I had so solemnly exiled myself from these halls. The
happiest hours of my life have been spent here; but, like our first
parents, I have been driven from Eden by my own transgression.”
“Be more reasonable, doctor. Promise me that you will come here as you
used to come. I will insure you a glad welcome at all times.”
“Heaven knows how joyfully I would give such a promise! Julia--will you
pardon me for speaking to you thus familiarly?”
“Certainly; it is all in the family,” laughed she.
“Julia, how many times have I said I loved you! You do not speak of
this.”
“I cannot,” she replied, with some confusion.
“Do you hate me?”
“No.”
“You despise me.”
“No.”
“You believe that I am unworthy of you.”
“No; we have all done wrong, and we need to be forgiven.”
“Have you forgiven me?”
“I have.”
“Do you regard me now as you did before my great transgression was
exposed?”
“I do not.”
“I feared it,” replied he, with a kind of hopeless gasp between a sigh
and a groan.
“Do not misunderstand me, Dr. Lynch. While I respect and esteem you;
while I am grateful to you to a degree I cannot express; while I
forgive and forget the wrong you have done; while there is nothing in
the world that I would not do for you,--I cannot regard you as I did
before.”
Dr. Lynch breathed forth a sigh which seemed to come from the deepest
depths of a hopeless and desponding soul. He rose from his chair, and
walked across the room, apparently to hide his emotions from Julia.
He stood facing the corner of the room. He took a spotless white
handkerchief from his pocket.
“Doctor, you do not understand me,” said Julia, greatly troubled by the
apparent anguish of her suitor.
“You speak too plainly to have your meaning mistaken,” he replied, as
he turned and walked towards her again.
There was an expression of agony on his face which appealed to her
woman’s heart with tremendous force. His eyes looked misty, and if his
spotless handkerchief was not stained by a tear, perhaps it was because
it is not manly to weep.
“I do not condemn you. I shall meet you as I have always met you. I
shall have the same regard for you.”
“But you have not even forgiven me.”
“I have, fully and freely.”
“You cannot _forget_ my transgressions.”
“I have forgotten them.”
“Then why do you say you shall not again regard me as you did before?”
“You have proved your capacity to do what is as loathsome to you as it
is to me. My estimate of your character has been affected. I cannot
help it. It is involuntary on my part. I can forgive and forget the
wrong, but I cannot blot out the influence which it has had upon my
mind.”
“Then you are always to look down upon me, from the pinnacle of your
own goodness, as a base and hopeless transgressor?”
“How much you wrong me! St. Paul, who called himself the chief of
sinners, came to be the holiest of saints. The stone that was rejected
becomes the head of the corner. I shall not think--none at Pine Hill
will think--of what you were, or what you have done. We shall esteem
you, and judge you by what you are. We may all learn to regard you even
more kindly than before anything occurred to lower our estimate of
you.”
“That is hopeful,” said the doctor, apparently somewhat comforted by
her explanation.
“I trust you are satisfied.”
“As far from it as Tantalus when the cool waters which he could not
drink rippled within reach of his parched lips,” replied the doctor,
vehemently. “Julia, I love you with all my mind, heart, and soul. I
have not a thought of existence which is not wedded to you! I have not
a hope or a joy which is not colored by your smile! I have not a waking
hour which is not haunted by your image! Life without you is misery,
torment, desperation; with you it is heaven. Is there any hope for me?”
“I am afraid not.”
“You do not love me.”
“I do not dislike you.”
“There was a time when I believed you were not wholly indifferent to
me.”
“I am not now, any more than then,” she replied, with a calmness which
almost prostrated the ardent wooer.