Alex. McVeigh Miller - The Senator's Bride

"My affection!"

No words can do justice to the reckless cynicism of his look and tone.

"Aunt Conway, I have very little affection to give any one. My heart seems dead in my bosom. I came home, so full of noble resolves, so full of hope, that my downfall has almost banished reason from its throne. And as for my company, I fear I cannot even give you that. I owe it to myself, to you, more than all to the wife of Senator Winans, to take myself away from here, where no sight of me can recall my injustice to her, and my crowning folly of last night."

"Bruce!"

"Well?"

"You shall not talk so—shall not leave me again. Let Mrs. Winans alone. You have been in banishment three—nay, four years for her already. You shall not go again. Norfolk is surely large enough for you two to live in without crossing the path of each other. As for what happened last night, it is rather mortifying, but it will soon be forgotten. Stay with me, Bruce; there are plenty of beauties in Norfolk who will soon teach you to forget Mrs. Winans."

"Forget her! Is it likely, when the prevailing topic of Norfolk is the lovely Mrs. Winans, the brilliant Mrs. Winans, the accomplished Mrs. Winans, with her accomplishments of fashion and folly? It seems quite the fashion to talk about her now. No, Aunt Conway, you cannot dissuade me from my purpose. I shall go away from here until I can learn to be a man. Here I renounce my ill-fated love for her, and pledge myself to forget her as an honorable man should do."

His aunt looked at him, her regret and pain mingled with admiration. He looked so noble, so proud, so manly as he spoke, that for a moment she felt a pang at the thought of the wrong she had done; for that she had done wrong she knew full well. She had known of her nephew's passionate love for Grace Grey and knew that with her he would have found all the happiness that is vouchsafed to mortals. But for a scruple of worldly pride and position she had separated them, punishing herself thereby; for in the long years of his banishment she had felt too truly that she had, in tearing apart those two loving hearts, bitterly wounded her own. The repressed longing for her boy, the pain of knowing herself unloved and uncared for, had been a daily thorn in her heart, a wound

For a moment, as she looked at him in his manly beauty and brave renunciation, a better impulse stirred her heart, and thinking of the fair young creature who had made such sunlight in this dreary, splendid home, a vague wish came into her soul that she had let them have their way, and not so rudely sundered what God had joined together.

Too late! When we take it upon ourselves to shape the life-destinies of others we must not expect to undo our work when we find it completed and unsatisfactory to us. When we see the hearts that our intermeddling has bruised and torn go from us hungry and empty we must not expect them to turn to us for the happiness we denied them.

Oh, fathers and mothers, maneuvering sisters, aunts, and relatives, when the young birds are mating and building, why cannot you let them alone? Why cannot you understand that your special experience and wisdom were given you by God for your guidance alone, and that every one cannot walk the same chalked-out path, that every thinking, living mind must choose for itself whether or not it be wisely or well?

"As we make our beds we lie" has passed into a truth, but is it likely that any other will make it better for us than we try to do for ourselves? To be plain, no one has a right to dictate to us the way we are to walk in life; or, if they have, why has God given to every one of us thinking, reasoning, yearning minds, capable of knowing what we want and what we need better than any one can know for us?

"Bruce," she said, gently, "I have wronged you, you know. It was wrong of me to tempt you with my gold to desert the girl you loved, and who loved you. I never felt until this hour how basely I had acted. If I could undo my work I would. But I trust you may yet find happiness, and that the memory of all this suffering may pass from your soul as rain-drops from a rose, leaving it brighter and lovelier after the storm."

"Nay," he said, smiling faintly and sadly, "since you have descended to simile, let me remind you that there are two sides thereto. How often have I seen in this lovely garden of yours the crushed rose-leaves covering the ground, rain-beaten, pallid, and torn, as the storm had passed and left them. So it is most likely to be with me."

"I trust not. At any rate, Bruce, I ask your forgiveness. It is asking much, I know, when I reflect that but for me you would have wedded the girl you loved, and who, through my fault, is irrevocably lost to you. But you are all I have to love—all I have to love! Don't deny me."

"I do not," he answered, slowly. "Don't blame yourself entirely Aunt Conway. Blame my weak, wavering, vacillating will, that made me hesitate between Grace Grey and the noble inheritance you offered me. We are about equal, I think. I sold myself—you bought me!"

Oh, Grace, you are avenged! Deeply as you scorned him your contempt was not deeper than that which in this hour he felt for himself.

"I thank you, Bruce, dear boy, that you do not accord me all the blame, though I feel I fully deserve it. Let us change the subject to one more pleasant."

"In one moment, but first I have a confession to make. You may hear it from others, so I would like you to hear it first from me. You know that I am truthful, though unstable, and you can believe just what I say—not all the varnished reports you may hear."

"Go on," she said anxiously, as he paused.

"Well, then, I left you last night in a bad state of mind. I was mad, I think—simply mad—and in Norfolk I took more wine than was good for me. I swore to myself that I would not give up Grace. I hated her husband for having won her—I hated the child that calls her mother and him father—I hated you for separating us, and I swore that as she had loved me once she should love me again. Under the influence of this madness I took a guitar and sung under the window of the grand Winans' mansion a love-song—yes, aunt," laughing a little as she recoiled in dismay, "I dared to sing a love-song—I dared to serenade the married belle of society and queen of beauty with a love-song she had sung for me on the eve of our parting four years ago."

"Oh, Bruce! what have you done?"

"Gotten myself into a difficulty, perhaps. The question is, did they hear me, or were they all asleep? If they heard and know me, I have undoubtedly provoked the wrath of that haughty Senator who calls her his own. I propose to extricate myself from this dilemma by leaving the place as quietly as I returned; not through cowardice, Aunt Conway, I won't have you think that," his eye flashed proudly, "but because I have caused her trouble enough already. I'll not stay here to bring further trouble and comment upon her. I won't have her pure name dragged through the scandal of an affair of honor. The only thing is to go away—that is the only reparation I can make, to go away and forget her, and be myself forgotten."

There was much that was noble in him yet; much that was high-toned, chivalric, high-spirited, and tender—all of it, alas, marred by that vacillating will, that wavering, doubting nature that was so long in making its mind up, and when made up soon changed it again.

The tea-bell suspended further converse on the subject. He gave her his arm in courtly fashion, and they descended to the dining-room, both too preoccupied to observe the curious kindly black faces that peeped at them from obscure stations, eager to see the handsome young master they remembered so well, and to see how he looked "since he'd come back and found his sweetheart married and gone," as if people wore their hearts in their faces. Ah, if they did what a gruesome looking crowd would meet us whithersoever we went.