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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dr. Heidenhoff's Process, by Edward Bellamy
+#3 in our series by Edward Bellamy
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+Title: Dr. Heidenhoff's Process
+
+Author: Edward Bellamy
+
+Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7052]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 2, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was prepared by Malcolm Farmer
+
+
+
+
+
+DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS
+
+BY
+
+EDWARD BELLAMY
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The hand of the clock fastened up on the white wall of the conference
+room, just over the framed card bearing the words "Stand up for Jesus,"
+and between two other similar cards, respectively bearing the sentences
+"Come unto Me," and "The Wonderful, the Counsellor," pointed to ten
+minutes of nine. As was usual at this period of Newville prayer-meetings,
+a prolonged pause had supervened. The regular standbyes had all taken
+their usual part, and for any one to speak or pray would have been about
+as irregular as for one of the regulars to fail in doing so. For the
+attendants at Newville prayer-meetings were strictly divided into the two
+classes of speakers and listeners, and, except during revivals or times
+of special interest, the distinction was scrupulously observed.
+
+Deacon Tuttle had spoken and prayed, Deacon Miller had prayed and spoken,
+Brother Hunt had amplified a point in last Sunday's sermon, Brother
+Taylor had called attention to a recent death in the village as a warning
+to sinners, and Sister Morris had prayed twice, the second time it must
+be admitted, with a certain perceptible petulance of tone, as if willing
+to have it understood that she was doing more than ought to be expected
+of her. But while it was extremely improbable that any others of the
+twenty or thirty persons assembled would feel called on to break the
+silence, though it stretched to the crack of doom, yet, on the other
+hand, to close the meeting before the mill bell bad struck nine would
+have been regarded as a dangerous innovation. Accordingly, it only
+remained to wait in decorous silence during the remaining ten minutes.
+
+The clock ticked on with that judicial intonation characteristic of
+time-pieces that measure sacred time and wasted opportunities. At
+intervals the pastor, with an innocent affectation of having just
+observed the silence, would remark: "There is yet opportunity. . . . .
+Time is passing, brethren. . . . . Any brother or sister. . . . . We
+shall be glad to hear from any one." Farmer Bragg, tired with his day's
+hoeing, snored quietly in the corner of a seat. Mrs. Parker dropped a
+hymn-book. Little Tommy Blake, who had fallen over while napping and hit
+his nose, snivelled under his breath. Madeline Brand, as she sat at the
+melodeon below the minister's desk, stifled a small yawn with her pretty
+fingers. A June bug boomed through the open window and circled around
+Deacon Tuttle's head, affecting that good man with the solicitude
+characteristic of bald-headed persons when buzzing things are about. Next
+it made a dive at Madeline, attracted, perhaps, by her shining eyes, and
+the little gesture of panic with which she evaded it was the prettiest
+thing in the world; at least, so it seemed to Henry Burr, a
+broad-shouldered young fellow on the back seat, whose strong, serious
+face is just now lit up by a pleasant smile.
+
+Mr. Lewis, the minister, being seated directly under the clock, cannot
+see it without turning around, wherein the audience has an advantage of
+him, which it makes full use of. Indeed, so closely is the general
+attention concentrated upon the time-piece, that a stranger might draw
+the mistaken inference that this was the object for whose worship the
+little company bad gathered. Finally, making a slight concession of
+etiquette to curiosity, Mr. Lewis turns and looks up at the clock, and,
+again facing the people, observes, with the air of communicating a piece
+of intelligence, "There are yet a few moments."
+
+In fact, and not to put too fine a point upon it, there are five minutes
+left, and the young men on the back seats, who attend prayer-meetings to
+go home with the girls, are experiencing increasing qualms of alternate
+hope and fear as the moment draws near when they shall put their fortune
+to the test, and win or lose it all. As they furtively glance over at the
+girls, how formidable they look, how superior to common affections, how
+serenely and icily indifferent, as if the existence of youth of the other
+sex in their vicinity at that moment was the thought furthest from their
+minds! How presumptuous, how audacious, to those youth themselves now
+appears the design, a little while ago so jauntily entertained, of
+accompanying these dainty beings home, how weak and inadequate the
+phrases of request which they had framed wherewith to accost them!
+Madeline Brand is looking particularly grave, as becomes a young lady who
+knows that she has three would-be escorts waiting for her just outside
+the church door, not to count one or two within, between whose
+conflicting claims she has only five minutes more to make up her mind.
+
+The minister had taken up his hymn-book, and was turning over the leaves
+to select the closing hymn, when some one rose in the back part of the
+room. Every head turned as if pulled by one wire to see who it was, and
+Deacon Tuttle put on his spectacles to inspect more closely this dilatory
+person, who was moved to exhortation at so unnecessary a time.
+
+It was George Bayley, a young man of good education, excellent training,
+and once of great promise, but of most unfortunate recent experience.
+About a year previous he had embezzled a small amount of the funds of a
+corporation in Newville, of which he was paymaster, for the purpose of
+raising money for a pressing emergency. Various circumstances showed that
+his repentance had been poignant, even before his theft was discovered.
+He had reimbursed the corporation, and there was no prosecution, because
+his dishonest act had been no part of generally vicious habits, but a
+single unaccountable deflection from rectitude. The evident intensity of
+his remorse had excited general sympathy, and when Parker, the village
+druggist, gave him employment as clerk, the act was generally applauded,
+and all the village folk had endeavoured with one accord, by a friendly
+and hearty manner, to make him feel that they were disposed to forget the
+past, and help him to begin life over again. He had been converted at a
+revival the previous winter, but was counted to have backslidden of late,
+and become indifferent to religion. He looked badly. His face was
+exceedingly pale, and his eyes were sunken. But these symptoms of mental
+sickness were dominated by an expression of singular peace and profound
+calm. He had the look of one whom, after a wasting illness, the fever has
+finally left; of one who has struggled hard, but whose struggle is over.
+And his voice, when he began to speak, was very soft and clear.
+
+"If it will not be too great an inconvenience," he said; "I should like
+to keep you a few minutes while I talk about myself a little. You
+remember, perhaps, that I professed to be converted last winter. Since
+then I am aware that I have shown a lack of interest in religious
+matters, which has certainly justified you in supposing that I was either
+hasty or insincere in my profession. I have made my arrangements to leave
+you soon, and should be sorry to have that impression remain on the minds
+of my friends. Hasty I may have been, but not insincere. Perhaps you will
+excuse me if I refer to an unpleasant subject, but I can make my meaning
+clearer by reviewing a little of my unfortunate history."
+
+The suavity with which he apologized for alluding to his own ruin, as if
+he had passed beyond the point of any personal feeling in the matter, had
+something uncanny and creeping in its effect on the listeners, as if they
+heard a dead soul speaking through living lips.
+
+"After my disgrace," pursued the young man in the same quietly
+explanatory tone, "the way I felt about myself was very much, I presume,
+as a mechanic feels, who by an unlucky stroke has hopelessly spoiled the
+looks of a piece of work, which he nevertheless has got to go on and
+complete as best he can. Now you know that in order to find any pleasure
+in his work, the workman must be able to take a certain amount of pride
+in it. Nothing is more disheartening for him than to have to keep on with
+a job with which he must be disgusted every time he returns to it, every
+time his eye glances it over. Do I make my meaning clear? I felt like
+that beaten crew in last week's regatta, which, when it saw itself
+hopelessly distanced at the very outset, had no pluck to row out the
+race, but just pulled ashore and went home.
+
+"Why, I remember when I was a little boy in school, and one day made a
+big blot on the very first page of my new copybook, that I didn't have
+the heart to go on any further, and I recollect well how I teased my
+father to buy me a new book, and cried and sulked until he finally took
+his knife and neatly cut out the blotted page. Then I was comforted and
+took heart, and I believe I finished that copybook so well that the
+teacher gave me the prize.
+
+"Now you see, don't you," he continued, the ghost of a smile glimmering
+about his eyes, "how it was that after my disgrace I couldn't seem to
+take an interest any more in anything? Then came the revival, and that
+gave me a notion that religion might help me. I bad heard, from a child,
+that the blood of Christ had a power to wash away sins and to leave one
+white and spotless with a sense of being new and clean every whit. That
+was what I wanted, just what I wanted. I am sure that you never had a
+more sincere, more dead-in-earnest convert than I was."
+
+He paused a moment, as if in mental contemplation, and then the words
+dropped slowly from his lips, as a dim self-pitying smile rested on his
+haggard face.
+
+"I really think you would be sorry for me if you knew how very bitter was
+my disappointment when I found that, these bright promises were only
+figurative expressions which I had taken literally. Doubtless I should
+not have fallen into such a ridiculous mistake if my great need had not
+made my wishes fathers to my thoughts. Nobody was at all to blame but
+myself; nobody at all. I'm blaming no one. Forgiving sins, I should have
+known, is not blotting, them out. The blood of Christ only turns them red
+instead of black. It leaves them in the record. It leaves them in the
+memory. That day when I blotted my copybook at school, to have had the
+teacher forgive me ever so kindly would not have made me feel the least
+bit better so long as the blot was there. It wasn't any penalty from
+without, but the hurt to my own pride which the spot made, that I wanted
+taken away, so I might get heart to go on. Supposing one of you--and
+you'll excuse me for asking you to put yourself a moment in my place--had
+picked a pocket. Would it make a great deal of difference in your state
+of mind that the person whose pocket you had picked kindly forgave you,
+and declined to prosecute? Your offence against him was trifling, and
+easily repaired. Your chief offence was against yourself, and that was
+irreparable. No other person with his forgiveness can mediate between you
+and yourself. Until you have been in such a fix, you can't imagine,
+perhaps, how curiously impertinent it sounds to hear talk about somebody
+else forgiving you for ruining yourself. It is like mocking."
+
+The nine o'clock bell pealed out from the mill tower.
+
+"I am trespassing on your kindness, but I have only a few more words to
+say. The ancients had a beautiful fable about the water of Lethe, in
+which the soul that was bathed straightway forgot all that was sad and
+evil in its previous life; the most stained, disgraced, and mournful of
+souls coming forth fresh, blithe, and bright as a baby's. I suppose my
+absurd misunderstanding arose from a vague notion that the blood of
+Christ had in it something like this virtue of Lethe water. Just think
+how blessed a thing for men it would be if such were indeed the case, if
+their memories could be cleansed and disinfected at the same time their
+hearts were purified! Then the most disgraced and ashamed might live good
+and happy lives again. Men would be redeemed from their sins in fact, and
+not merely in name. The figurative promises of the Gospel would become
+literally true. But this is idle dreaming. I will not keep you," and,
+checking himself abruptly, he sat down.
+
+The moment he did so, Mr. Lewis rose and pronounced the benediction,
+dismissing the meeting without the usual closing hymn. He was afraid that
+something might be said by Deacon Tuttle or Deacon Miller, who were good
+men, but not very subtile in their spiritual insight, which would still
+further alienate the unfortunate young man. His own intention of finding
+opportunity for a little private talk with him after the meeting was,
+however, disappointed by the promptness with which Bayley left the room.
+He did not seem to notice the sympathetic faces and out-stretched hands
+around him. There was a set smile on his face, and his eyes seemed to
+look through people without seeing them. There was a buzz of conversation
+as the people began to talk together of the decided novelty in the line
+of conference-meeting exhortations to which they had just listened. The
+tone of almost all was sympathetic, though many were shocked and pained,
+and others declared that they did not understand what he had meant. Many
+insisted that he must be a little out of his head, calling attention to
+the fact that he looked so pale. None of these good hearts were half so
+much offended by anything heretical in the utterances of the young man as
+they were stirred with sympathy for his evident discouragement. Mr. Lewis
+was perhaps the only one who had received a very distinct impression of
+the line of thought underlying his words, and he came walking down the
+aisle with his head bent and a very grave face, not joining any of the
+groups which were engaged in talk. Henry Burr was standing near the door,
+his hat in his hand, watching Madeline out of the corners of his eyes, as
+she closed the melodeon and adjusted her shawl.
+
+"Good-evening, Henry," said Mr. Lewis, pausing beside the young man. "Do
+you know whether anything unpleasant has happened to George lately to
+account for what he said to-night?"
+
+"I do not, sir," replied Henry.
+
+"I had a fancy that he might have been slighted by some one, or given the
+cold shoulder. He is very sensitive."
+
+"I don't think any one in the village would slight him," said Henry.
+
+"I should have said so too," remarked the minister, reflectively. "Poor
+boy, poor boy! He seems to feel very badly, and it is hard to know how to
+cheer him."
+
+"Yes, sir----that is--certainly," replied Henry incoherently, for
+Madeline was now coming down the aisle.
+
+In his own preoccupation not noticing the young man's, Mr. Lewis passed
+out.
+
+As she approached the door Madeline was talking animatedly with another
+young lady.
+
+"Good-evening," said Henry.
+
+"Poor fellow!" continued Madeline to her companion, "he seemed quite
+hopeless."
+
+"Good-evening," repeated Henry.
+
+Looking around, she appeared to observe him for the first time.
+"Good-evening," she said.
+
+"May I escort you home?" he asked, becoming slightly red in the face.
+
+She looked at him for a moment as if she could scarcely believe her ears
+that such an audacious proposal had been made to her. Then she said, with
+a bewitching smile--
+
+"I shall be much obliged."
+
+As he drew her arm beneath his own the contact diffused an ecstatic
+sensation of security through his stalwart but tremulous limbs. He had
+got her, and his tribulations were forgotten. For a while they walked
+silently along the dark streets, both too much impressed by the tragic
+suggestions of poor Bayley's outbreak to drop at once into trivialities.
+For it must be understood that Madeline's little touch of coquetry had
+been merely instinctive, a sort of unconscious reflex action of the
+feminine nervous system, quite consistent with very lugubrious
+engrossments.
+
+To Henry there was something strangely sweet in sharing with her for the
+first time a mood of solemnity, seeing that their intercourse had always
+before been in the vein of pleasantry and badinage common to the first
+stages of courtships. This new experience appeared to dignify their
+relation, and weave them together with a new strand. At length she said--
+
+"Why didn't you go after poor George and cheer him up instead of going
+home with me? Anybody could have done that."
+
+"No doubt," replied Henry, seriously; "but, if I'd left anybody else to
+do it, I should have needed cheering up as much as George does."
+
+"Dear me," she exclaimed, as a little smile, not exactly of vexation,
+curved her lips under cover of the darkness, "you take a most
+unwarrantable liberty in being jealous of me. I never gave you nor
+anybody else any right to be, and I won't have it!"
+
+"Very well. It shall be just as you say," he replied. The sarcastic
+humility of his tone made her laugh in spite of herself, and she
+immediately changed the subject, demanding--
+
+"Where is Laura to-night?"
+
+"She's at home, making cake for the picnic," he said.
+
+"The good girl! and I ought to be making some, too. I wonder if poor
+George will be at the picnic?"
+
+"I doubt it," said Henry. "You know he never goes to any sort of party.
+The last time I saw him at such a place was at Mr. Bradford's. He was
+playing whist, and they were joking about cheating. Somebody said--Mr.
+Bradford it was--'I can trust my wife's honesty. She doesn't know enough
+to cheat, but I don't know about George.' George was her partner.
+Bradford didn't mean any harm; he forgot, you see. He'd have bitten his
+tongue off otherwise sooner than have said it. But everybody saw the
+application, and there was a dead silence. George got red as fire, and
+then pale as death. I don't know how they finished the hand, but
+presently somebody made an excuse, and the game was broken off."
+
+"Oh, dear! dear! That was cruel! cruel! How could Mr. Bradford do it? I
+should think he would never forgive himself! never!" exclaimed Madeline,
+with an accent of poignant sympathy, involuntarily pressing Henry's arm,
+and thereby causing him instantly to forget all about George and his
+misfortunes, and setting his heart to beating so tumultuously that he was
+afraid she would notice it and be offended. But she did not seem to be
+conscious of the intoxicating effluence she was giving forth, and
+presently added, in a tone of sweetest pity--
+
+"He used to be so frank and dashing in his manner, and now when he meets
+one of us girls on the street he seems so embarrassed, and looks away or
+at the ground, as if he thought we should not like to bow to him, or
+meant to cut him. I'm sure we'd cut our heads off sooner. It's enough to
+make one cry, such times, to see how wretched he is, and so sensitive
+that no one can say a word to cheer him. Did you notice what he said
+about leaving town? I hadn't heard anything about it before, had you?"
+
+"No," said Henry, "not a word. Wonder where he's going. Perhaps he thinks
+it will be easier for him in some place where they don't know him."
+
+They walked on in silence a few moments, and then Madeline said, in a
+musing tone--
+
+"How strange it would seem if one really could have unpleasant things
+blotted out of their memories! What dreadful thing would you forget now,
+if you could? Confess."
+
+"I would blot out the recollection that you went boat-riding with Will
+Taylor last Wednesday afternoon, and what I've felt about it ever since."
+
+"Dear me, Mr. Henry Burr," said Madeline, with an air of excessive
+disdain, "how long is it since I authorized you to concern yourself with
+my affairs? If it wouldn't please you too much, I'd certainly box your
+ears.
+
+"I think you're rather unreasonable," he protested, in a hurt tone. "You
+said a minute ago that you wouldn't permit me to be jealous of you, and
+just because I'm so anxious to obey you that I want to forget that I ever
+was, you are vexed."
+
+A small noise, expressive of scorn, and not to be represented by letters
+of the alphabet, was all the reply she deigned to this more ingenious
+than ingenuous plea.
+
+"I've made my confession, and it's only fair you should make yours," he
+said next. "What remorseful deed have you done that you'd like to
+forget?"
+
+"You needn't speak in that babying tone. I fancy I could commit sins as
+well as you, with all your big moustache, if I wanted to. I don't believe
+you'd hurt a fly, although you do look so like a pirate. You've probably
+got a goody little conscience, so white and soft that you'd die of shame
+to have people see it."
+
+"Excuse me, Lady Macbeth," he said, laughing; "I don't wish to underrate
+your powers of depravity, but which of your soul-destroying sins would
+you prefer to forget, if indeed any of them are shocking enough to
+trouble your excessively hardened conscience?
+
+"Well, I must admit," said Madeline, seriously, "that I wouldn't care to
+forget anything I've done, not even my faults and follies. I should be
+afraid if they were taken away that I shouldn't have any character left."
+
+"Don't put it on that ground," said Henry, "it's sheer vanity that makes
+you say so. You know your faults are just big enough to be beauty-spots,
+and that's why you'd rather keep 'em."
+
+She reflected a moment, and then said, decisively--
+
+"That's a compliment. I don't believe I like 'em from you. Don't make me
+any more."
+
+Perhaps she did not take the trouble to analyse the sentiment that
+prompted her words. Had she done so, she would doubtless have found it in
+a consciousness when in his presence of being surrounded with so fine and
+delicate an atmosphere of unspoken devotion that words of flattery sounded
+almost gross.
+
+They paused before a gate. Pushing it open and passing within, she said,
+"Good-night."
+
+"One word more. I have a favour to ask," he said. "May I take you to the
+picnic?"
+
+"Why, I think no escort will be necessary," she replied; "we go in broad
+daylight; and there are no bears or Indians at Hemlock Hollow."
+
+"But your basket. You'll need somebody to carry your basket."
+
+"Oh yes, to be sure, my basket," she exclaimed, with an ironical accent.
+"It will weigh at least two pounds, and I couldn't possibly carry it
+myself, of course. By all means come, and much obliged for your
+thoughtfulness."
+
+But as she turned to go in she gave him a glance which had just enough
+sweetness in it to neutralize the irony of her words. In the treatment of
+her lovers, Madeline always punctured the skin before applying a drop of
+sweetness, and perhaps this accounted for the potent effect it had to
+inflame the blood, compared with more profuse but superficial
+applications of less sharp-tongued maidens.
+
+Henry waited until the graceful figure had a moment revealed its charming
+outline against the lamp-lit interior, as she half turned to close the
+door. Love has occasional metaphysical turns, and it was an odd feeling
+that came over him as he walked away, being nothing less than a rush of
+thankfulness and self-congratulation that he was not Madeline. For, if he
+had been she, he would have lost the ecstasy of loving her, of
+worshipping her. Ah, how much she lost, how much all those lose, who,
+fated to be the incarnations of beauty, goodness, and grace, are
+precluded from being their own worshippers! Well, it was a consolation
+that she didn't know it, that she actually thought that, with her little
+coquetries and exactions, she was enjoying the chief usufruct of her
+beauty. God make up to the haughty, wilful darling in some other way for
+missing the passing sweetness of the thrall she held her lovers in!
+
+When Burr reached home, he found his sister Laura standing at the gate in
+a patch of moonlight.
+
+"How pretty you look to-night!" he said, pinching her round cheek.
+
+The young lady merely shrugged her shoulders, and replied dryly--
+
+"So she let you go home with her."
+
+"How do you know that?" he asked, laughing at her shrewd guess.
+
+"Because you're so sweet, you goosey, of course."
+
+But, in truth, any such mode of accounting for Henry's favourable comment
+on her appearance was quite unnecessary. Laura, with her petite, plump
+figure, sloe-black eyes, quick in moving, curly head, and dark, clear
+cheeks, carnation-tinted, would have been thought by many quite as
+charming a specimen of American girlhood as the stately pale brunette who
+swayed her brother's affections.
+
+"Come for a walk, chicken! It is much too pretty a night to go indoors,"
+he said.
+
+"Yes, and furnish ears for Madeline's praises, with a few more reflected
+compliments for pay, perhaps," she replied, contemptuously. "Besides,"
+she added, "I must go into the house and keep father company. I only came
+out to cool off after baking the cake. You'd better come in too. These
+moonlight nights always make him specially sad, you know."
+
+The brother and sister had been left motherless not long before, and
+Laura, in trying to fill her mother's place in the household, so far as
+she might, was always looking out that her father should have as little
+opportunity as possible to brood alone over his companionless condition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+That same night toward morning Henry suddenly awoke from a sound sleep.
+Drowsiness, by some strange influence, had been completely banished from
+his eyes, and in its stead he became sensible of a profound depression of
+spirits. Physically, he was entirely comfortable, nor could he trace to
+any sensation from without either this sudden awakening or the mental
+condition in which he found himself. It was not that he thought of
+anything in particular that was gloomy or discouraging, but that all the
+ends and aims, not only of his own individual life, but of life in
+general, had assumed an aspect so empty, vain, and colourless, that he
+felt he would not rise from his bed for anything existence had to offer.
+He recalled his usual frame of mind, in which these things seemed
+attractive, with a dull wonderment that so baseless a delusion should be
+so strong and so general. He wondered if it were possible that it should
+ever again come over him.
+
+The cold, grey light of earliest morning, that light which is rather the
+fading of night than the coming of day, filled the room with a faint hue,
+more cheerless than pitchiest darkness. A distant bell, with slow and
+heavy strokes, struck three. It was the dead point in the daily
+revolution of the earth's life, that point just before dawn, when men
+oftenest die; when surely, but for the force of momentum, the course of
+nature would stop, and at which doubtless it will one day pause
+eternally, when the clock is run down. The long-drawn reverberations of
+the bell, turning remoteness into music, full of the pathos of a sad and
+infinite patience, died away with an effect unspeakably dreary. His
+spirit, drawn forth after the vanishing vibrations, seemed to traverse
+waste spaces without beginning or ending, and aeons of monotonous
+duration. A sense of utter loneliness--loneliness inevitable, crushing,
+eternal, the loneliness of existence, encompassed by the infinite void of
+unconsciousness--enfolded him as a pall. Life lay like an incubus on his
+bosom. He shuddered at the thought that death might overlook him, and
+deny him its refuge. Even Madeline's face, as he conjured it up, seemed
+wan and pale, moving to unutterable pity, powerless to cheer, and all the
+illusions and passions of love were dim as ball-room candles in the grey
+light of dawn.
+
+Gradually the moon passed, and he slept again.
+
+As early as half-past eight the following forenoon, groups of men with
+very serious faces were to be seen standing at the corners of the
+streets, conversing in hushed tones, and women with awed voices were
+talking across the fences which divided adjoining yards. Even the
+children, as they went to school, forgot to play, and talked in whispers
+together, or lingered near the groups of men to catch a word or two of
+their conversation, or, maybe, walked silently along with a puzzled,
+solemn look upon their bright faces.
+
+For a tragedy had occurred at dead of night which never had been
+paralleled in the history of the village. That morning the sun, as it
+peered through the closed shutters of an upper chamber, had relieved the
+darkness of a thing it had been afraid of. George Bayley sat there in a
+chair, his head sunk on his breast, a small, blue hole in his temple,
+whence a drop or two of blood had oozed, quite dead.
+
+This, then, was what he meant when he said that he had made arrangements
+for leaving the village. The doctor thought that the fatal shot must have
+been fired about three o'clock that morning, and, when Henry heard this,
+he knew that it was the breath of the angel of death as he flew by that
+had chilled the genial current in his veins.
+
+Bayley's family lived elsewhere, and his father, a stern, cold,
+haughty-looking man, was the only relative present at the funeral. When
+Mr. Lewis undertook to tell him, for his comfort, that there was reason
+to believe that George was out of his head when he took his life, Mr.
+Bayley interrupted him.
+
+"Don't say that," he said. "He knew what he was doing. I should not wish
+any one to think otherwise. I am prouder of him than I had ever expected
+to be again."
+
+A choir of girls with glistening eyes sang sweet, sad songs at the
+funeral, songs which, while they lasted, took away the ache of
+bereavement, like a cool sponge pressed upon a smarting spot. It seemed
+almost cruel that they must ever cease. And, after the funeral, the young
+men and girls who had known George, not feeling like returning that day
+to their ordinary thoughts and occupations, gathered at the house of one
+of them and passed the hours till dusk, talking tenderly of the departed,
+and recalling his generous traits and gracious ways.
+
+The funeral had taken place on the day fixed for the picnic. The latter,
+in consideration of the saddened temper of the young people, was put off
+a fortnight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+About half-past eight on the morning of the day set for the postponed
+picnic, Henry knocked at Widow Brand's door. He had by no means forgotten
+Madeline's consent to allow him to carry her basket, although two weeks
+had intervened.
+
+She came to the door herself. He had never seen her in anything that set
+off her dark eyes and olive complexion more richly than the simple picnic
+dress of white, trimmed with a little crimson braid about the neck and
+sleeves, which she wore to-day. It was gathered up at the bottom for
+wandering in the woods, just enough to show the little boots. She looked
+surprised at seeing him, and exclaimed--
+
+"You haven't come to tell me that the picnic is put off again, or Laura's
+sick?"
+
+"The picnic is all right, and Laura too. I've come to carry your basket
+for you."
+
+"Why, you're really very kind," said she, as if she thought him slightly
+officious.
+
+"Don't you remember you told me I might do so?" he said, getting a little
+red under her cool inspection.
+
+"When did I?"
+
+"Two weeks ago, that evening poor George spoke in meeting."
+
+"Oh!" she answered, smiling, "so long ago as that? What a terrible memory
+you have! Come in just a moment, please; I'm nearly ready."
+
+Whether she merely took his word for it, or whether she had remembered
+her promise perfectly well all the time, and only wanted to make him ask
+twice for the favour, lest he should feel too presumptuous, I don't
+pretend to know. Mrs. Brand set a chair for him with much cordiality. She
+was a gentle, mild-mannered little lady, such a contrast in style and
+character to Madeline that there was a certain amusing fitness in the
+latter's habit of calling her "My baby."
+
+"You have a very pleasant day for your picnic, Mr. Burr," said she.
+
+"Yes, we are very lucky," replied Henry, his eyes following Madeline's
+movements as she stood before the glass, putting on her hat, which had a
+red feather in it.
+
+To have her thus add the last touches to her toilet in his presence was a
+suggestion of familiarity, of domesticity, that was very intoxicating to
+his imagination.
+
+"Is your father well?" inquired Mrs. Brand, affably.
+
+"Very well, thank you, very well indeed," he replied
+
+"There; now I'm ready," said Madeline. "Here's the basket, Henry.
+Good-bye, mother."
+
+They were a well-matched pair, the stalwart young man and the tall,
+graceful girl, and it is no wonder the girl's mother stood in the door
+looking after them with a thoughtful smile.
+
+Hemlock Hollow was a glen between wooded bluffs, about a mile up the
+beautiful river on which Newville was situated, and boats had been
+collected at the rendezvous on the river-bank to convey the picnickers
+thither. On arriving, Madeline and Henry found all the party assembled
+and in capital spirits; There was still just enough shadow on their
+merriment to leave the disposition to laugh slightly in excess of its
+indulgence, than which no condition of mind more favourable to a good
+time can be imagined.
+
+Laura was there, and to her Will Taylor had attached himself. He was a
+dapper little black-eyed fellow, a clerk in the dry-goods store, full of
+fun and good-nature, and a general favourite, but it was certainly rather
+absurd that Henry should be apprehensive of him as a rival. There also
+was Fanny Miller, who had the prettiest arm in Newville, a fact
+discovered once when she wore a Martha Washington toilet at a masquerade
+sociable, and since circulated from mouth to mouth among the young men.
+And there, too, was Emily Hunt, who had shocked the girls and thrown the
+youth into a pleasing panic by appearing at a young people's party the
+previous winter in low neck and short sleeves. It is to be remarked in
+extenuation that she had then but recently come from the city, and was
+not familiar with Newville etiquette. Nor must I forget to mention Ida
+Lewis, the minister's daughter, a little girl with poor complexion and
+beautiful brown eyes, who cherished a hopeless passion for Henry. Among
+the young men was Harry Tuttle, the clerk in the confectionery and fancy
+goods store, a young man whose father had once sent him for a term to a
+neighbouring seminary, as a result of which classical experience he still
+retained a certain jaunty student air verging on the rakish, that was
+admired by the girls and envied by the young men.
+
+And there, above all, was Tom Longman. Tom was a big, hulking fellow,
+good-natured and simple-hearted in the extreme. He was the victim of an
+intense susceptibility to the girls' charms, joined with an intolerable
+shyness and self-consciousness when in their presence. From this
+consuming embarrassment he would seek relief by working like a horse
+whenever there was anything to do. With his hands occupied he had an
+excuse for not talking to the girls or being addressed by them, and, thus
+shielded from the, direct rays of their society, basked with
+inexpressible emotions in the general atmosphere of sweetness and light
+which they diffused. He liked picnics because there was much work to do,
+and never attended indoor parties because there was none. This inordinate
+taste for industry in connection with social enjoyment on Tom's part was
+strongly encouraged by the other young men, and they were the ones who
+always stipulated that he should be of the party when there was likely to
+be any call for rowing, taking care of horses, carrying of loads, putting
+out of croquet sets, or other manual exertion. He was generally an odd
+one in such companies. It would be no kindness to provide him a partner,
+and, besides, everybody made so many jokes about him that none of the
+girls quite cared to have their names coupled with his, although they all
+had a compassionate liking for him.
+
+On the present occasion this poor slave of the petticoat had been at work
+preparing the boats all the morning.
+
+"Why, how nicely you have arranged everything!" said Madeline kindly, as
+she stood on the sand waiting for Henry to bring up a boat.
+
+"What?" replied Tom, laughing in a flustered way.
+
+He always laughed just so and said "what?" when any of the girls spoke to
+him, being too much confused by the fact of being addressed to catch what
+was said the first time.
+
+"It's very good of you to arrange the boats for us, Madeline repeated.
+
+"Oh, 'tain't anything, 'tain't anything at all," he blurted out, with a
+very red face.
+
+"You are going up in our boat, ain't you, Longman?" said Harry Tuttle.
+
+"No, Tom, you're going with us," cried another young man.
+
+"He's going with us, like a sensible fellow," said Will Taylor, who, with
+Laura Burr, was sitting on the forward thwart of the boat, into the stern
+of which Henry was now assisting Madeline.
+
+"Tom, these lazy young men are just wanting you to do their rowing for
+them," said she. "Get into our boat, and I'll make Henry row you."
+
+"What do you say to that, Henry?" said Tom, snickering.
+
+"It isn't for me to say anything after Madeline has spoken," replied the
+young man.
+
+"She has him in good subjection," remarked Ida Lewis, not over-sweetly.
+
+"All right, I'll come in your boat, Miss Brand, if you'll take care of
+me," said Tom, with a sudden spasm of boldness, followed by violent
+blushes at the thought that perhaps be had said something too free.
+The boat was pushed off. Nobody took the oars.
+
+"I thought you were going to row?" said Madeline, turning to Henry, who
+sat beside her in the stern.
+
+"Certainly," said he, making as if he would rise. "Tom, you just sit here
+while I row."
+
+"Oh no, I'd just as lief row," said Tom, seizing the oars with feverish
+haste.
+
+"So would I, Tom; I want a little exercise," urged Henry with a
+hypocritical grin, as he stood up in an attitude of readiness.
+
+"Oh, I like to row. 'I'd a great deal rather. Honestly," asseverated Tom,
+as he made the water foam with the violence of his strokes, compelling
+Henry to resume his seat to preserve his equilibrium.
+
+"It's perfectly plain that you don't want to sit by me, Tom. That hurts
+my feelings," said Madeline, pretending to pout.
+
+"Oh no, it isn't that," protested Tom. "Only I'd rather row; that is, I
+mean, you know, it's such fun rowing."
+
+"Very well, then," said Madeline, "I sha'n't help you any more; and here
+they all are tying their boats on to ours."
+
+Sure enough, one of the other boats had fastened its chain to the stern
+of theirs, and the others had fastened to that; their oarsmen were lying
+off and Tom was propelling the entire flotilla.
+
+"Oh, I can row 'em all just as easy's not," gasped the devoted youth, the
+perspiration rolling down his forehead.
+
+But this was a little too bad, and Henry soon cast off the other boats,
+in spite of the protests of their occupants, who regarded Tom's brawn and
+muscle as the common stock of the entire party, which no one boat had a
+right to appropriate.
+
+On reaching Hemlock Hollow, Madeline asked the poor young man for his
+hat, and returned it to him adorned with evergreens, which nearly
+distracted him with bashfulness and delight, and drove him to seek a
+safety-valve for his excitement in superhuman activity all the rest of
+the morning, arranging croquet sets, hanging swings, breaking ice,
+squeezing lemons, and fetching water.
+
+"Oh, how thirsty I am!" sighed Madeline, throwing down her croquet
+mallet.
+
+"The ice-water is not yet ready, but I know a spring a little way off
+where the water is cold as ice," said Henry.
+
+"Show it to me this instant," she cried, and they walked off together,
+followed by Ida Lewis's unhappy eyes.
+
+The distance to the spring was not great, but the way was rough, and once
+or twice he had to help her over fallen trees and steep banks. Once she
+slipped a little, and for, a single supreme moment he held her whole
+weight in his arms. Before, they had been talking and laughing gaily, but
+that made a sudden silence. He dared not look at her for some moments,
+and when he did there was a slight flush tingeing her usually colourless
+cheek.
+
+His pulses were already bounding wildly, and, at this betrayal that she
+had shared his consciousness at that moment, his agitation was tenfold
+increased. It was the first time she had ever shown a sign of confusion
+in his presence. The sensation of mastery, of power over her, which it
+gave, was so utterly new that it put a sort of madness in his blood.
+Without a word they came to the spring and pretended to drink. As she
+turned to go back, he lightly caught her fingers in a detaining clasp,
+and said, in a voice rendered harsh by suppressed emotion--
+
+"Don't be in such a hurry. Where will you find a cooler spot?"
+
+"Oh, it's cool enough anywhere! Let's go back," she replied, starting to
+return as she spoke. She saw his excitement, and, being herself a little
+confused, had no idea of allowing a scene to be precipitated just then.
+She flitted on before with so light a foot that he did not overtake her
+until she came to a bank too steep for her to surmount without aid. He
+sprang up and extended her his hand. Assuming an expression as if she
+were unconscious who was helping her, she took it, and he drew her up to
+his side. Then with a sudden, audacious impulse, half hoping she would
+not be angry, half reckless if she were, he clasped her closely in his
+arms, and kissed her lips. She gasped, and freed herself.
+
+"How dared you do such a thing to me?" she cried.
+
+The big fellow stood before her, sheepish, dogged, contrite, desperate,
+all in one.
+
+"I couldn't help it," he blurted out. The plea was somehow absurdly
+simple, and yet rather unanswerable. Angry as she was, she really
+couldn't think of anything to say, except--
+
+"You'd better help it," with which rather ineffective rebuke she turned
+away and walked toward the picnic ground. Henry followed in a demoralized
+frame. His mind was in a ferment. He could not realize what had happened.
+He could scarcely believe that he had actually done it. He could not
+conceive how he had dared it. And now what penalty would she inflict?
+What if she should not forgive him? His soul was dissolved in fears, But,
+sooth to say, the young lady's actual state of mind was by no means so
+implacable as he apprehended. She had been ready to be very angry, but
+the suddenness and depth of his contrition had disarmed her. It took all
+the force out of her indignation to see that he actually seemed to have a
+deeper sense of the enormity of his act than she herself had. And when,
+after they had rejoined the party, she saw that, instead of taking part
+in the sports, he kept aloof, wandering aimless and disconsolate by
+himself among the pines, she took compassion on him and sent some one to
+tell him she wanted him to come and push her in the swing. People had
+kissed her before. She was not going to leave the first person who had
+seemed to fully realize the importance of the proceeding to suffer unduly
+from a susceptibility which did him so much credit. As for Henry, he
+hardly believed his ears when he heard the summons to attend her. At that
+the kiss which her rebuke had turned cold on his lips began to glow
+afresh, and for the first time he tasted its exceeding sweetness; for her
+calling to him seemed to ratify and consent to it. There were others
+standing about as he came up to where Madeline sat in the swing, and he
+was silent, for he could not talk of indifferent things.
+
+With what a fresh charm, with what new sweet suggestions of complaisance
+that kiss had invested every line and curve of her, from hat-plume to
+boot-tip! A delicious tremulous sense of proprietorship tinged his every
+thought of her. He touched the swing-rope as fondly as if it were an
+electric chain that could communicate the caress to her. Tom Longman,
+having done all the work that offered itself, had been wandering about in
+a state of acute embarrassment, not daring to join himself to any of the
+groups, much less accost a young lady who might be alone. As he drifted
+near the swing, Madeline said to Henry--
+
+"You may stop swinging me now. I think I'd like to go out rowing." The
+young man's cup seemed running over. He could scarcely command his voice
+for delight as he said--
+
+"It will be jolly rowing just now. I'm sure we can get some pond-lilies."
+
+"Really," she replied, airily, "you take too much for granted. I was
+going to ask Tom Longman to take me out."
+
+She called to Tom, and as he came up, grinning and shambling, she
+indicated to him her pleasure that be should row her upon the river. The
+idea of being alone in a small boat for perhaps fifteen minutes with the
+belle of Newville, and the object of his own secret and distant
+adoration, paralysed Tom's faculties with an agony of embarrassment. He
+grew very red, and there was such a buzzing in his ears that he could not
+feel sure he heard aright, and Madeline had to repeat herself several
+times before he seemed to fully realize the appalling nature of the
+proposition. As they walked down to the shore she chatted with him, but
+he only responded with a profusion of vacant laughs. When he had pulled
+out on the river, his rowing, from his desire to make an excuse for not
+talking, was so tremendous that they cheered him from the shore, at the
+same time shouting--
+
+"Keep her straight! You're going into the bank!"
+
+The truth was, that Tom could not guide the boat because he did not dare
+to look astern for fear of meeting Madeline's eyes, which, to judge from
+the space his eyes left around her, he must have supposed to fill at
+least a quarter of the horizon, like an aurora, in fact. But, all the
+same, he was having an awfully good time, although perhaps it would be
+more proper to say he would have a good time when he came to think it
+over afterward. It was an experience which would prove a mine of gold in
+his memory, rich enough to furnish for years the gilding to his modest
+day-dreams. Beauty, like wealth, should make its owners generous. It is a
+gracious thing in fair women at times to make largesse of their beauty,
+bestowing its light more freely on tongue-tied, timid adorers than on
+their bolder suitors, giving to them who dare not ask. Their beauty never
+can seem more precious to women than when for charity's sake they
+brighten with its lustre the eyes of shy and retiring admirers.
+
+As Henry was ruefully meditating upon the uncertainty of the sex, and
+debating the probability that Madeline had called him to swing her for
+the express purpose of getting a chance to snub him, Ida Lewis came to
+him, and said--
+
+"Mr. Burr, we're getting up a game of croquet. Won't you play?"
+
+"If I can be on your side," he answered, civilly.
+
+He knew the girl's liking for him, and was always kind to her. At his
+answer her face flushed with pleasure, and she replied shyly--
+
+"If you'd like to, you may."
+
+Henry was not in the least a conceited fellow, but it was impossible that
+he should not understand the reason why Ida, who all the morning had
+looked forlorn enough, was now the life of the croquet-ground, and full
+of smiles and flushes. She was a good player, and had a corresponding
+interest in beating, but her equanimity on the present occasion was not
+in the least disturbed by the disgraceful defeat which Henry's
+awkwardness and absence of mind entailed on their aide.
+
+But her portion of sunshine for that day was brief enough, for Madeline
+soon returned from her boat-ride, and Henry found an excuse for leaving
+the game and joining her where she sat on the ground between the knees of
+a gigantic oak sorting pond-lilies, which the girls were admiring. As he
+came up, she did not appear to notice him. As soon as he had a chance
+to speak without being overheard, he said, soberly--
+
+"Tom ought to thank me for that boat-ride, I suppose."
+
+"I don't know what you mean," she answered, with assumed carelessness.
+
+"I mean that you went to punish me."
+
+"You're sufficiently conceited," she replied. "Laura, come here; your
+brother is teasing me."
+
+"And do you think I want to be teased to?" replied that young lady,
+pertly, as she walked off.
+
+Madeline would have risen and left Henry, but she was too proud to let
+him think that she was afraid of him.. Neither was she afraid, but she
+was confused, and momentarily without her usual self-confidence. One
+reason for her running off with Tom had been to get a chance to think. No
+girl, however coolly her blood may flow, can be pressed to a man's
+breast, wildly throbbing with love for her, and not experience some
+agitation in consequence. Whatever may be the state of her sentiments,
+there is a magnetism in such a contact which she cannot at once throw
+off. That kiss had brought her relations with Henry to a crisis. It had
+precipitated the necessity of some decision. She could no longer hold him
+off, and play with him. By that bold dash he had gained a vantage-ground,
+a certain masterful attitude which he had never held before. Yet, after
+all, I am not sure that she was not just a little afraid of him, and,
+moreover, that she did not like him all the better for it. It was such a
+novel feeling that it began to make some things, thought of in connection
+with him, seem more possible to her mind than they had ever seemed
+before. As she peeped furtively at this young man, so suddenly grown
+formidable, as he reclined carelessly on the ground at her feet, she
+admitted to herself that there was something very manly in the sturdy
+figure and square forehead, with the curly black locks hanging over it.
+She looked at him with a new interest, half shrinking, half attracted, as
+one who might come into a very close relation with herself. She scarcely
+knew whether the thought was agreeable or not.
+
+"Give me your hat," she said, "and I'll put some lilies in it."
+
+"You are very good," said he, handing it to her.
+
+"Does it strike you so?" she replied, hesitatingly. "Then I won't do it.
+I don't want to appear particularly good to you. I didn't know just how
+it would seem."
+
+"Oh, it won't seem very good; only about middling," he urged, upon which
+representation she took the hat.
+
+He watched her admiringly as she deftly wreathed the lilies around it,
+holding it up, now this way and now that, while she critically inspected
+the effect.
+
+Then her caprice changed. "I've half a mind to drop it into the river.
+Would you jump after it?" she said, twirling it by the brim, and looking
+over the steep bank, near which she sat, into the deep, dark water almost
+perpendicularly below.
+
+"If it were anything of yours instead of mine, I would jump quickly
+enough," he replied.
+
+She looked at him with a reckless gleam in her eyes.
+
+"You mustn't talk chaff to me, sir; we'll see," and, snatching a glove
+from her pocket, she held it out over the water. They were both of them
+in that state of suppressed excitement which made such an experiment on
+each other's nerve dangerous. Their eyes met, and neither flinched. If
+she had dropped it, he would have gone after it.
+
+"After all," she said, suddenly, "that would be taking a good deal of
+trouble to get a mitten. If you are so anxious for it, I will give it to
+you now;" and she held out the glove to him with an inscrutable face.
+
+He sprang up from the ground. "Madeline, do you mean it?" he asked,
+scarcely audibly, his face grown white and pinched. She crumpled the
+obnoxious glove into her pocket.
+
+"Why, you poor fellow!" she exclaimed, the wildfire in her eyes quenched
+in a moment with the dew of pity. "Do you care so much?"
+
+"I care everything," he said, huskily.
+
+But, as luck would have it, just at that instant Will Taylor came running
+up, pursued by Laura, and threw himself upon Madeline's protection. It
+appeared that he had confessed to the possession of a secret, and on
+being requested by Laura to impart it had flatly refused to do so.
+
+"I can't really interfere to protect any young man who refuses to tell a
+secret to a young lady," said Madeline, gravely. "Neglect to tell her the
+secret, without being particularly asked to do so, would be bad enough,
+but to refuse after being requested is an offence which calls for the
+sharpest correction."
+
+"And that isn't all, either," said Laura, vindictively flirting the
+switch with which she had pursued him. "He used offensive language."
+
+"What did he say?" demanded Madeline, judicially.
+
+"I asked him if he was sure it was a secret that I didn't know already,
+and he said he was; and I asked him what made him sure, and he said
+because if I knew it everybody else would. As much as to say I couldn't
+keep a secret."
+
+"This looks worse and worse, young man," said the judge, severely. "The
+only course left for you is to make a clean breast of the affair, and
+throw yourself on the mercy of the court. If the secret turns out to be a
+good one, I'll let you off as easily as I can."
+
+"It's about the new drug-clerk, the one who is going to take George
+Bayley's place," said Will, laughing.
+
+"Oh, do tell, quick!" exclaimed Laura.
+
+"I don't care who it is. I sha'n't like him," said Madeline. "Poor
+George! and here we are forgetting all about him this beautiful day!"
+
+"What's the new clerk's name?" said Laura, impatiently.
+
+"Harrison Cordis."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Harrison Cordis."
+
+"Rather an odd name," said Laura. "I never heard it."
+
+"No," said Will; "he comes all the way from Boston."
+
+"Is he handsome?" inquired Laura.
+
+"I really don't know," replied Will. "I presume Parker failed to make
+that a condition, although really he ought to, for the looks of the clerk
+is the principal element in the sale of soda-water, seeing girls are the
+only ones who drink it."
+
+"Of course it is," said Laura, frankly. "I didn't drink any all last
+summer, because poor George's sad face took away my disposition. Never
+mind," she added, "we shall all have a chance to see how he looks at
+church to-morrow;" and with that the two girls went off together to help
+set the table for lunch.
+
+The picnickers did not row home till sunset, but Henry found no
+opportunity to resume the conversation with Madeline which had been
+broken off at such an interesting point.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The advent of a stranger was an event of importance in the small social
+world of Newville. Mr. Harrison Cordis, the new clerk in the drug-store,
+might well have been flattered by the attention which he excited at
+church the next day, especially from the fairer half of the congregation.
+Far, however, from appearing discomposed thereby, he returned it with
+such interest that at least half the girls thought they had captivated
+him by the end of the morning service. They all agreed that he was
+awfully handsome, though Laura maintained that he was rather too pretty
+for a man. He was certainly very pretty. His figure was tall, slight, and
+elegant. He had delicate hands and feet, a white forehead, deep blue,
+smiling eyes, short, curly, yellow, hair, and a small moustache, drooping
+over lips as enticing as a girl's. But the ladies voted his manners yet
+more pleasing than his appearance. They were charmed by his easy
+self-possession, and constant alertness as to details of courtesy. The
+village beaus scornfully called him "cityfied," and secretly longed to be
+like him. A shrewder criticism than that to which he was exposed would,
+however, have found the fault with Cordis's manners that, under a show of
+superior ease and affability, he was disposed to take liberties with his
+new acquaintances, and exploit their simplicity for his own
+entertainment. Evidently he felt that he was in the country.
+
+That very first Sunday, after evening meeting, he induced Fanny Miller,
+at whose father's house he boarded, to introduce him to Madeline, and
+afterward walked home with her, making himself very agreeable, and
+crowning his audacity by asking permission to call. Fanny, who went along
+with them, tattled of this, and it produced a considerable sensation
+among the girls, for it was the wont of Newville wooers to make very
+gradual approaches. Laura warmly expressed to Madeline her indignation at
+the impudence of the proceeding, but that young lady was sure she did not
+see any harm in it; whereupon Laura lost her temper a little, and hinted
+that it might be more to her credit if she did. Madeline replied
+pointedly, and the result was a little spat, from which Laura issued
+second best, as people generally did who provoked a verbal strife with
+Madeline. Meanwhile it was rumoured that Cordis had availed himself of
+the permission that he had asked, and that he had, moreover, been seen
+talking with her in the post-office several times.
+
+The drug-store being next door to the post-office, it was easy for him,
+under pretence of calling for the mail, to waylay there any one he might
+wish to meet. The last of the week Fanny Miller gave a little tea-party,
+to make Cordis more generally acquainted. On that occasion he singled out
+Madeline with his attentions in such a pronounced manner that the other
+girls were somewhat piqued. Laura, having her brother's interest at
+heart, had much more serious reasons for being uneasy at the look of
+things. They all remarked how queerly Madeline acted that evening. She
+was so subdued and quiet, not a bit like herself. When the party broke
+up, Cordis walked home with Madeline and Laura, whose paths lay together.
+
+"I'm extremely fortunate," said he, as he was walking on with Laura, after
+leaving Madeline at her house, "to have a chance to escort the two belles
+of Newville at once."
+
+"I'm not so foolish as I look, Mr. Cordis," said she, rather sharply. She
+was not going to let him think he could turn the head of every Newville
+girl as he had Madeline's with his city airs and compliments.
+
+"You might be, and not mind owning it," he replied, making an excuse of
+her words to scrutinise her face with a frank admiration that sent the
+colour to her cheeks, though she was more vexed than pleased.
+
+"I mean that I don't like flattery."
+
+"Are you sure?" he asked, with apparent surprise.
+
+"Of course I am. What a question!"
+
+"Excuse me; I only asked because I never met any one before who didn't."
+
+"Never met anybody who didn't like to be told things about themselves
+which they knew weren't true, and were just said because somebody thought
+they were foolish enough to believe 'em?"
+
+"I don't expect you to believe 'em yourself," he replied; "only vain
+people believe the good things people say about them; but I wouldn't give
+a cent for friends who didn't think better of me than I think of myself,
+and tell me so occasionally, too."
+
+They stood a moment at Laura's gate, and just then Henry, coming home
+from the gun-shop of which he was foreman, passed them, and entered the
+house. "Is that your brother?" asked Cordis.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It does one's eyes good to see such a powerful looking young man. Is
+your brother married, may I ask?"
+
+"He is not."
+
+"In coming into a new circle as I have done, you understand, Miss Burr, I
+often feel a certain awkwardness on account of not knowing the relations
+between the persons I meet," he said, apologizing for his questions.
+
+Laura saw her opportunity, and promptly improved it.
+
+"My brother has been attentive to Miss Brand for a long time. They are
+about as good as engaged. Good-evening, Mr. Cordis."
+
+It so happened that several days after this conversation, as Madeline was
+walking home one afternoon, she glanced back at a crossing of the street,
+and saw Harrison Cordis coming behind her on his way to tea. At the rate
+she was walking she would reach home before he overtook her, but, if she
+walked a very little slower, he would overtake her. Her pace slackened.
+She blushed at her conduct, but she did not hurry.
+
+The most dangerous lovers women have are men of Cordis's feminine
+temperament. Such men, by the delicacy and sensitiveness of their own
+organizations, read women as easily and accurately as women read each
+other. They are alert to detect and interpret those smallest trifles in
+tone, expression, and bearing, which betray the real mood far more
+unmistakably than more obvious signs. Cordis had seen her backward
+glance, and noted her steps grow slower with a complacent smile. It was
+this which emboldened him, in spite of the short acquaintance, to venture
+on the line he did.
+
+"Good-evening, Miss Brand," he said, as he over took her. "I don't really
+think it's fair to begin to hurry when you hear somebody trying to
+overtake you.
+
+"I'm sure I didn't mean to," she replied, glad to have a chance to tell
+the truth, without suspecting, poor girl, that he knew very well she was
+telling it.
+
+"It isn't safe to," he said, laughing. "You can't tell who it may be.
+Now, it might have been Mr. Burr, instead of only me."
+
+She understood instantly. Somebody had been telling him about Henry's
+attentions to her. A bitter anger, a feeling of which a moment before she
+would have deemed herself utterly incapable, surged up in her heart
+against the person, whoever it was, who bad told him this. For several
+seconds she could not control herself to speak. Finally, she said--
+
+"I don't understand you. Why do you speak of Mr. Burr to me?"
+
+"I beg pardon. I should not have done so."
+
+"Please explain what you mean.
+
+"You'll excuse me, I hope," he said, as if quite distressed to have
+displeased her. "It was an unpardonable indiscretion on my part, but
+somebody told me, or at least I understood, that you were engaged to
+him."
+
+"Somebody has told you a falsehood, then," she replied, and, with a bow
+of rather strained dignity turned in at the gate of a house where a
+moment before she had not had the remotest intention of stopping. If she
+had been in a boat with him, she would have jumped into the water sooner
+than protract the inter-view a moment after she had said that.
+Mechanically she walked up the path and knocked at the door. Until the
+lady of the house opened it, she did not notice where she had stopped.
+
+Good-afternoon, Madeline. I'm glad to see you. You haven't made me a call
+this ever so long."
+
+"I'm sorry, Mrs. Tuttle, but I haven't time to stop to-day. Ha--have you
+got a--a pattern of a working apron? I'd like to borrow it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Now, Henry had not chanced to be at church that first Sunday evening when
+Cordis obtained an introduction to Madeline, nor was he at Fanny Miller's
+teaparty. Of the rapidly progressing flirtation between his sweetheart
+and the handsome drug-clerk he had all this time no suspicion whatever.
+Spending his days from dawn to sunset in the shop among men, he was not
+in the way of hearing gossip on that sort of subject; and Laura, who
+ordinarily kept him posted on village news, had, deemed it best to tell
+him as yet nothing of her apprehensions. She was aware that the affection
+between her brother and Madeline was chiefly on his side, and knew enough
+of her wilfulness to be sure that any attempted interference by him would
+only make matters worse. Moreover, now that she had warned Cordis that
+Madeline was pre-empted property, she hoped he would turn his attention
+elsewhere.
+
+And so, while half the village was agog over the flirtation of the new
+drug-clerk with Madeline Brand, and Laura was lying awake nights fretting
+about it, Henry went gaily to and from his work in a state of blissful
+ignorance. And it was very blissful. He was exultant over the progress he
+had made in his courtship at the picnic. He had told his love--he had
+kissed her. If he had not been accepted, he had, at least, not been
+rejected, and that was a measure of success quite enough to intoxicate so
+ardent and humble a lover as he. And, indeed, what lover might not have
+taken courage at remembering the sweet pity that shone in her eyes at the
+revelation of his love-lorn state? The fruition of his hopes, to which he
+had only dared look forward as possibly awaiting him somewhere in the dim
+future, was, maybe, almost at hand. Circumstances combined to prolong
+these rose-tinted dreams. A sudden press of orders made it necessary to
+run the shop till late nights. He contrived with difficulty to get out
+early one evening so as to call on Madeline; but she had gone out, and he
+failed to see her. It was some ten days after the picnic that, on calling
+a second time, he found her at home. It chanced to be the very evening of
+the day on which the conversation between Madeline and Cordis, narrated
+in the last chapter, had taken place.
+
+She did not come in till Henry had waited some time in the parlour, and
+then gave him her hand in a very lifeless way. She said she had a bad
+head-ache, and seemed disposed to leave the talking to him. He spoke of
+the picnic, but she rather sharply remarked that it was so long ago that
+she had forgotten all about it. It did seem very long ago to her, but to
+him it was very fresh. This cool ignoring of all that had happened that
+day in modifying their relations at one blow knocked the bottom out of
+all his thinking for the past week, and left him, as it were, all in the
+air. While he felt that the moment was not propitious for pursuing that
+topic, he could not for the moment turn his mind to anything else, and,
+as for Madeline, it appeared to be a matter of entire indifference to her
+whether anything further was said on any subject. Finally, he remarked,
+with an effort to which the result may appear disproportionate--
+
+"Mr. Taylor has been making quite extensive alterations on his house,
+hasn't he?"
+
+"I should think you ought to know, if any one. You pass his house every
+day," was her response.
+
+"Why, of course I know," he said, staring at her.
+
+"So I thought, but you said 'hasn't he?' And naturally I presumed that
+you were not quite certain."
+
+She was evidently quizzing him, but her face was inscrutable. She looked
+only as if patiently and rather wearily explaining a misunderstanding. As
+she played with her fan, she had an unmistakable expression of being
+slightly bored.
+
+"Madeline, do you know what I should say was the matter with you if you'
+were a man?" he said, desperately, yet trying to laugh.
+
+"Well, really"--and her eyes had a rather hard expression--"if you prefer
+gentlemen's society, you'd better seek it, instead of trying to get along
+by supposing me to be a gentleman."
+
+"It seems as if I couldn't say anything right," said Henry.
+
+"I think you do talk a little strangely," she admitted, with a faint
+smile. Her look was quite like that of an uncomplaining martyr.
+
+"What's the matter with you to-night, Madeline? Tell me, for God's sake!"
+he cried, overcome with sudden grief and alarm.
+
+"I thought I told you I had a headache, and I really wish you wouldn't
+use profane language," she replied, regarding him with lack-lustre eyes.
+
+"And that's all? It's only a headache?"
+
+"That's quite enough, I'm sure. Would you like me to have toothache
+besides?"
+
+"You know I didn't mean that."
+
+"Well, earache, then?" she said, wearily, allowing her head to rest back
+on the top of her chair, as if it were too much of an effort to hold it
+up, and half shutting her eyes.
+
+"Excuse me, I ought not to have kept you. I'll go now.'
+
+"Don't hurry," she observed, languidly.
+
+"I hope you'll feel better in the morning."
+
+He offered her his hand, and she put hers in his for an instant, but
+withdrew it without returning his pressure, and he went away, sorely
+perplexed and bitterly disappointed.
+
+He would have been still more puzzled if he had been told that not only
+had Madeline not forgotten about what had happened at the picnic, but
+had, in fact, thought of scarcely anything else during his call. It was
+that which made her so hard with him, that lent such acid to her tone and
+such cold aversion to her whole manner. As he went from the house, she
+stood looking after him through the parlour window, murmuring to
+herself--.
+
+"Thank Heaven, I'm not engaged to him. How could I think I would ever
+marry him? Oh, if a girl only knew!"
+
+Henry could not rest until he had seen her again, and found out whether
+her coldness was a mere freak of coquetry, or something more. One evening
+when, thanks to the long twilight, it was not yet dark, he called again.
+She came to the door with hat and gloves on. Was she going out? he asked.
+She admitted that she had been on the point of going across the street to
+make a call which had been too long delayed, but wouldn't be come in. No,
+he would not detain her; be would call again. But he lingered a moment on
+the steps while, standing on the threshold, she played with a button of a
+glove. Suddenly he raised his eyes and regarded her in a quite particular
+manner. She was suddenly absorbed with her glove, but he fancied that her
+cheek slightly flushed. Just at the moment when he was calculating that
+she could no longer well avoid looking up, she exclaimed--
+
+"Dear me, how vexatious! there goes another of those buttons. I shall
+have to sew it on again before I go," and she looked at him with a
+charmingly frank air of asking for sympathy, at the same time that it
+conveyed the obvious idea that she ought to lose no time in making the
+necessary repairs.
+
+"I will not keep you, then," he said, somewhat sadly, and turned away.
+
+Was the accident intentional? Did she want to avoid him? he could not
+help the thought, and yet what could be more frank and sunshiny than the
+smile with which she responded to his parting salutation?
+
+The next Sunday Laura and he were at church in the evening.
+
+"I wonder why Madeline was not out. Do you know?" he said as they were
+walking home.
+
+"No."
+
+"You're not nearly so friendly with her as you used to be. What's the
+matter?"
+
+She did not reply, for just then at a turning of the street, they met the
+young lady of whom they were speaking. She looked smiling and happy, and
+very handsome, with a flush in either cheek, and walking with her was the
+new drug-clerk. She seemed a little confused at meeting Henry, and for a
+moment appeared to avoid his glance. Then, with a certain bravado, oddly
+mingled with a deprecating air, she raised her eyes to his and bowed.
+
+It was the first intimation be had had of the true reason of her
+alienation. Mechanically he walked on and on, too stunned to think as
+yet, feeling only that there was a terrible time of thinking ahead.
+
+"Hadn't we better turn back, hear?" said Laura, very gently.
+
+He looked up. They were a mile or two out of the village on a lonely
+country road. They turned, and she said, softly, in the tone like the
+touch of tender fingers on an aching spot--
+
+"I knew it long ago, but I hadn't the heart to tell you. She set her cap
+at him from the first. Don't take it too much to heart. She is not good
+enough for you."
+
+Sweet compassion! Idle words! Is there any such sense of ownership,
+reaching even to the feeling of identity, as that which the lover has in
+the one he loves? His thoughts and affections, however short the time,
+had so grown about her and encased her, as the hardened clay imbeds the
+fossil flower buried ages ago. It rather seems as if he had found her by
+quarrying in the depths of his own heart than as if he had picked her
+from the outside world, from among foreign things. She was never foreign,
+else he could not have had that intuitive sense of intimateness with her
+which makes each new trait which she reveals, while a sweet surprise, yet
+seem in a deeper sense familiar, as if answering to some pre-existing
+ideal pattern in his own heart, as if it were something that could not
+have been different. In after years he may grow rich in land and gold,
+but he never again will have such sense of absolute right and eternally
+foreordained ownership in any thing as he had long years ago in that
+sweet girl whom some other fellow married. For, alas! this seemingly
+inviolable divine title is really no security at all. Love is liable to
+ten million suits for breach of warranty. The title-deeds he gives to
+lovers, taking for price their hearts' first-fruits, turn out no titles
+at all. Half the time, title to the same property is given to several
+claimants, and the one to finally take possession is often enough one who
+has no title from love at all.
+
+Henry had been hit hard, but there was a dogged persistence in his
+disposition that would not allow him to give up till he had tested his
+fortune to the uttermost. His love was quite unmixed with vanity, for
+Madeline had never given him any real reason to think that she loved him,
+and, therefore, the risk of an additional snub or two counted for nothing
+to deter him. The very next day he left the shop in the afternoon and
+called on her. Her rather constrained and guarded manner was as if she
+thought he had come to call her to account, and was prepared for him. He,
+on the contrary, tried to look as affable and well satisfied as if he
+were the most prosperous of lovers. When he asked her if she would go out
+driving with him that afternoon, she was evidently taken quite off her
+guard. For recrimination she was prepared, but not for this smiling
+proposal. But she recovered herself in an instant, and said--
+
+"I'm really very much obliged. It is very considerate of you, but my
+mother is not very well this afternoon, and I feel that I ought not to
+leave her." Smothering a sick feeling of discouragement, he said, as
+cheerfully as possible--
+
+"I'm very sorry indeed. Is your mother seriously sick?"
+
+"Oh no, thank you. I presume she will be quite well by morning."
+
+"Won't you, perhaps, go to-morrow afternoon, if she is better? The river
+road which you admire so much is in all its midsummer glory."
+
+"Thank you. Really; you are quite too good, but I think riding is rather
+likely to give me the headache lately."
+
+The way she answered him, without being in the least uncivil, left the
+impression on his mind that he had been duly persistent. There was an
+awkward silence of a few moments, and he was just about to burst forth
+with he knew not what exclamations and entreaties, when Madeline rose,
+saying--
+
+"Excuse me a moment; I think I hear my mother calling," and left the
+room.
+
+She was gone some time, and returned and sat down with an absent and
+preoccupied expression of face, and he did not linger.
+
+The next Thursday evening he was at conference meeting, intending to walk
+home with Madeline if she would let him; to ask her, at least. She was
+there, as usual, and sat at the melodeon. A few minutes before nine
+Cordis came in, evidently for the mere purpose of escorting her home.
+Henry doggedly resolved that she should choose between them then and
+there, before all the people. The closing hymn was sung, and the buzz of
+the departing congregation sounded in his ears as if it were far away. He
+rose and took his place near the door, his face pale, his lips set,
+regardless of all observers. Cordis, with whom he was unacquainted save
+by sight, stood near by, good-humouredly smiling, and greeting the people
+as they passed out.
+
+In general, Madeline liked well enough the excitement of electing between
+rival suitors, but she would rather, far rather, have avoided this public
+choice tonight. She had begun to be sorry for Henry. She was as long as
+possible about closing the melodeon. She opened and closed it again. At
+length, finding no further excuse for delaying, she came slowly down the
+aisle, looking a little pale herself. Several of the village young folks
+who understood the situation lingered, smiling at one other, to see the
+fun out, and Cordis himself recognized his rival's tragical look with an
+amused expression, at the same time that he seemed entirely disposed to
+cross lances with him.
+
+As Madeline approached the door, Henry stepped forward and huskily asked
+if he might take her home. Bowing to him with a gracious smile of
+declination, she said, "Thanks," and, taking Cordis's arm, passed out
+with him.
+
+As they came forth into the shadow of the night, beyond the illumination
+of the porch lamps of the church, Cordis observed--
+
+"Really, that was quite tragical. I half expected he would pull out a
+revolver and shoot us both. Poor fellow, I'm sorry for him."
+
+"He was sorrier than you are glad, I dare say, said Madeline.
+
+"Well, I don't know about that," he replied; "I'm as glad as I can be,
+and I suppose he's as sorry as he can be. I can't imagine any man in love
+with such a girl as you not being one or the other all the while."
+
+But the tone was a little, a very little, colder than the words, and her
+quick ear caught the difference.
+
+"What's the matter? Are you vexed about anything? What have I done?" she
+asked, in a tone of anxious deprecation which no other person but
+Harrison Cordis had ever heard from her lips.
+
+"You have done nothing," he answered, passing his arm round her waist in
+a momentary embrace of reassurance. "It is I that am ill-tempered. I
+couldn't help thinking from the way this Burr pursues you that there must
+have been something in the story about your having been engaged, after
+all."
+
+"It is not true. I never was engaged. I couldn't bear him. I don't like
+him. Only he--he--------"
+
+"I don't want to pry into your secrets. Don't make any confessions to me.
+I have no right to call you to account," he interrupted her, rather
+stiffly.
+
+"Please don't say that. Oh, please don't talk that way!" she cried out,
+as if the words had hurt her like a knife. "He liked me, but I didn't
+like him. I truly didn't. Don't you believe me? What shall I do if you
+don't?"
+
+It must not be supposed that Cordis had inspired so sudden and strong a
+passion in Madeline without a reciprocal sentiment. He had been
+infatuated from the first with the brilliant, beautiful girl, and his
+jealousy was at least half real, Her piteous distress at his slight show
+of coldness melted him to tenderness. There was an impassioned
+reconciliation, to which poor Henry was the sacrifice. Now that he
+threatened to cost her the smiles of the man she loved, her pity for him
+was changed into resentment. She said to herself that it was mean and
+cruel in him to keep pursuing her. It never occurred to her to find
+Cordis's conduct unfair in reproaching her for not having lived solely
+for him, before she knew even of his existence. She was rather inclined
+to side with him, and blame herself for having lacked an intuitive
+prescience of his coming, which should have kept her a nun in heart and
+soul.
+
+The next evening, about dusk, Henry was wandering sadly and aimlessly
+about the streets when he met Madeline face to face. At first she seemed
+rather unpleasantly startled, and made as if she would pass him without
+giving him an opportunity to speak to her. Then she appeared to change
+her mind, and, stopping directly before him, said, in a low voice--
+
+"Won't you please leave me alone, after this? Your attentions are not
+welcome."
+
+Without giving him a chance to reply, she passed on and walked swiftly up
+the street. He leaned against the fence, and stood motionless for a long
+time. That was all that was wanting to make his loss complete--an angry
+word from her. At last his lips moved a little, and slowly formed these
+words in a husky, very pitiful whisper--
+
+"That's the end,"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+There was one person, at least, in the village who had viewed the success
+of the new drug-clerk in carrying off the belle of Newville with entire
+complacency, and that was Ida Lewis, the girl with a poor complexion and
+beautiful brown eyes, who had cherished a rather hopeless inclination for
+Henry; now that he had lost that bold girl, she tremulously assured
+herself, perhaps it was not quite so hopeless. Laura, too, had an idea
+that such might possibly be the case, and hoping at least to distract her
+brother, about whom she was becoming quite anxious, she had Ida over to
+tea once or twice, and, by various other devices which with a clever
+woman are matters of course, managed to throw her in his way.
+
+He was too much absorbed to take any notice of this at first, but, one
+evening when Ida was at tea with them, it suddenly flashed upon him, and
+his face reddened with annoyed embarrassment. He had never felt such a
+cold anger at Laura as at that moment. He had it in his heart to say
+something very bitter to her. Would she not at least respect his grief?
+He had ado to control the impulse that prompted him to rise and leave the
+table. And then, with that suddenness characteristic of highly wrought
+moods, his feelings changed, and he discovered how soft-hearted his own
+sorrow had made him toward all who suffered in the same way. His eyes
+smarted with pitifulness as he noted the pains with which the little girl
+opposite him had tried to make the most of her humble charms in the hope
+of catching his eye. And the very poverty of those charms made her
+efforts the more pathetic. He blamed his eyes for the hard clearness with
+which they noted the shortcomings of the small, unformed features, the
+freckled skin, the insignificant and niggardly contour, and for the
+cruelty of the comparison they suggested between all this and Madeline's
+rich beauty. A boundless pity poured out of his heart to cover and
+transfigure these defects, and he had an impulse to make up to her for
+them, if he could, by sacrificing himself to her, if she desired. If she
+felt toward him as he toward Madeline, it were worth his life to save the
+pity of another such heart-breaking. So should he atone, perhaps, for the
+suffering Madeline had given him.
+
+After tea he went by himself to nurse these wretched thoughts, and
+although the sight of Ida had suggested them, he went on to think of
+himself, and soon became so absorbed in his own misery that he quite
+forgot about her, and, failing to rejoin the girls that evening, Ida had
+to go home alone, which was a great disappointment to her. But it was,
+perhaps, quite as well, on the whole, for both of them that he was not
+thrown with her again that evening.
+
+It is never fair to take for granted that the greatness of a sorrow or a
+loss is a just measure of the fault of the one who causes it. Madeline
+was not willingly cruel. She felt sorry in a way for Henry whenever his
+set lips and haggard face came under her view, but sorry in a dim and
+distant way, as one going on a far and joyous journey is sorry for the
+former associates he leaves behind, associates whose faces already, ere
+he goes, begin to grow faded and indistinct. At the wooing of Cordis her
+heart had awaked, and in the high, new joy of loving, she scorned the
+tame delight of being loved, which, until then, had been her only idea of
+the passion.
+
+Henry presently discovered that, to stay in the village a looker-on while
+the love affair of Madeline and Cordis progressed to its consummation,
+was going to be too much for him. Instead of his getting used to the
+situation, it seemed to grow daily more insufferable. Every evening the
+thought that they were together made him feverish and restless till
+toward midnight, when, with the reflection that Cordis had surely by that
+time left her, came a possibility of sleep.
+
+And yet, all this time he was not conscious of any special hate toward
+that young man.. If he had been in his power he would probably have left
+him unharmed. He could not, indeed, have raised his hand against anything
+which Madeline cared for. However great his animosity had been, that fact
+would have made his rival taboo to him. That Madeline had turned away
+from him was the great matter. Whither she was turned was of subordinate
+importance. His trouble was that she loved Cordis, not that Cordis loved
+her. It is only low and narrow natures which can find vent for their love
+disappointments in rage against their successors. In the strictest,
+truest sense, indeed, although it is certainly a hard saying, there is no
+room in a clear mind for such a feeling of jealousy. For the way in which
+every two hearts approach each other is necessarily a peculiar
+combination of individualities, never before and never after exactly
+duplicated in human experience. So that, if we can conceive of a woman
+truly loving several lovers, whether successively or simultaneously, they
+would not be rivals, for the manner of her love for each, and the manner
+of each one's love for her, is peculiar and single, even as if they two
+were alone in the world. The higher the mental grade of the persons
+concerned, the wider their sympathies, and the more delicate their
+perceptions, the more true is this.
+
+Henry had been recently offered a very good position in an arms
+manufactory in Boston, and, having made up his mind to leave the village,
+he wrote to accept it, and promptly followed his letter, having first
+pledged his sole Newville correspondent, Laura, to make no references to
+Madeline in her letters.
+
+"If they should be married," he was particular to say, "don't tell me
+about it till some time afterward."
+
+Perhaps he worked the better in his new place because he was unhappy. The
+foe of good work is too easy self-complacency, too ready self-satisfaction,
+and the tendency to a pleased and relaxed contemplation of life and one's
+surroundings, growing out of a well-to-do state. Such a smarting sense of
+defeat, of endless aching loss as filled his mind at this time, was a
+most exacting background for his daily achievements in business and
+money-making to show up against. He had lost that power of enjoying rest
+which is at once the reward and limitation of human endeavour. Work was
+his nepenthe, and the difference between poor, superficial work and the
+best, most absorbing, was simply that between a weaker and a stronger
+opiate. He prospered in his affairs, was promoted to a position of
+responsibility with a good salary, and, moreover, was able to dispose of
+a patent in gun-barrels at a handsome price.
+
+With the hope of distracting his mind from morbid brooding over what was
+past helping, he went into society, and endeavoured to interest himself
+in young ladies. But in these efforts his success was indifferent.
+Whenever he began to flatter himself that he was gaining a philosophical
+calm, the glimpse of some face on the street that reminded him of
+Madeline's, an accent of a voice that recalled hers, the sight of her in
+a dream, brought back in a moment the old thrall and the old bitterness
+with undiminished strength.
+
+Eight or nine months after he had left home the longing to return and see
+what had happened became irresistible. Perhaps, after all----
+
+Although this faint glimmer of a doubt was of his own making, and existed
+only because he had forbidden Laura to tell him to the contrary, he
+actually took some comfort in it. While he did not dare to put the
+question to Laura, yet he allowed himself to dream that something might
+possibly have happened to break off the match. He was far, indeed, from
+formally consenting to entertain such a hope. He professed to himself
+that he had no doubt that she was married and lost to him for ever. Had
+anything happened to break off the match, Laura would certainly have lost
+no time in telling him such good news. It was childishness to fancy aught
+else. But no effort of the reason can quite close the windows of the
+heart against hope, and, like a furtive ray of sunshine finding its way
+through a closed shutter, the thought that, after all, she might be free
+surreptitiously illumined the dark place in which he sat.
+
+When the train stopped at Newville he slipped through the crowd at the
+station with the briefest possible greetings to the acquaintances he saw,
+and set out to gain his father's house by a back street.
+
+On the way he met Harry Tuttle, and could not avoid stopping to exchange
+a few words with him.. As they talked, he was in a miserable panic of
+apprehension lest Harry should blurt out something about Madeline's being
+married. He felt that he could only bear to hear it from Laura's lips.
+Whenever the other opened his mouth to speak, a cold dew started out on
+Henry's forehead for fear he was going to make some allusion to Madeline;
+and when at last they separated without his having done so, there was
+such weakness in his limbs as one feels who first walks after a sickness.
+
+He saw his folly now, his madness, in allowing himself to dally with a
+baseless hope, which, while never daring to own its own existence, had
+yet so mingled its enervating poison with every vein that he had now no
+strength left to endure the disappointment so certain and so near. At the
+very gate of his father's house he paused. A powerful impulse seized him
+to fly. It was not yet too late. Why had he come? He would go back to
+Boston, and write Laura by the next mail, and adjure her to tell him
+nothing. Some time he might bear to hear the truth, but not to-day, not
+now; no, not now. What had he been thinking of to risk it? He would get
+away where nobody could reach him to slay with a word this shadow of a
+hope which had become such a necessity of life to him, as is opium to the
+victim whose strength it has sapped and alone replaces. It was too late!
+Laura, as she sat sewing by the window, had looked up and seen him, and
+now as he came slowly up the walk she appeared at the door, full of
+exclamations of surprise and pleasure. He went in, and they sat down.
+
+"I thought I'd run out and see how you all were," he said, with a ghastly
+smile.
+
+"I'm so glad you did! Father was wondering only this morning if you were
+never coming to see us again."
+
+He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
+
+"I thought I'd just run out and see you."
+
+"Yes, I'm so glad you did!"
+
+She did not show that she noticed his merely having said the same thing
+over.
+
+"Are you pretty well this spring?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I'm pretty well."
+
+"Father was so much pleased about your patent. He's ever so proud of
+you."
+
+After a pause, during which Henry looked nervously from point to point
+about the room, be said--
+
+"Is he?"
+
+"Yes, very, and so am I."
+
+There was a long silence, and Laura took up her work-basket, and bent her
+face over it, and seemed to have a good deal of trouble in finding some
+article in it.
+
+Suddenly he said, in a quick, spasmodic way--
+
+"Is Madeline married?"
+
+Good God! Would she never speak!
+
+"No," she answered, with a falling inflection.
+
+His heart, which had stopped beating, sent a flood of blood through every
+artery. But she had spoken as if it were the worst of news, instead of
+good. Ah! could it be? In all his thoughts, in all his dreams by night or
+day, he had never thought, he had never dreamed of that.
+
+"Is she dead?" he asked, slowly, with difficulty, his will stamping the
+shuddering thought into words, as the steel die stamps coins from strips
+of metal.
+
+"No," she replied again, with the same ill-boding tone.
+
+"In God's name, what is it?" he cried, springing to his feet. Laura
+looked out at the window so that she might not meet his eye as she
+answered, in a barely audible voice--
+
+"There was a scandal, and he deserted her; and afterward--only last
+week--she ran away, nobody knows where, but they think to Boston."
+
+It was about two o'clock in the afternoon when Henry heard the fate of
+Madeline. By four o'clock he was on his way back to Boston. The
+expression of his face as he sits in the car is not that which might be
+expected under the circumstances. It is not that of a man crushed by a
+hopeless calamity, but rather of one sorely stricken indeed, but still
+resolute, supported by some strong determination which is not without
+hope.
+
+Before leaving Newville he called on Mrs. Brand, who still lived in the
+same house. His interview with her was very painful. The sight of him set
+her into vehement weeping, and it was long before he could get her to
+talk. In the injustice of her sorrow, she reproached him almost bitterly
+for not marrying Madeline, instead of going off and leaving her a victim
+to Cordis. It was rather hard for him to be reproached in this way, but
+he did not think of saying anything in self-justification. He was ready
+to take blame upon himself.' He remembered no more now how she had
+rejected, rebuffed, and dismissed him. He told himself that he had
+cruelly deserted her, and hung his head before the mother's reproaches.
+
+The room in which they sat was the same in which he had waited that
+morning of the picnic, while in his presence she had put the finishing
+touches to her toilet. There, above the table, hung against the wall the
+selfsame mirror that on that morning had given back the picture of a girl
+in white, with crimson braid about her neck and wrists, and a red feather
+in the hat so jauntily perched above the low forehead--altogether a
+maiden exceedingly to be desired. Perhaps, somewhere, she was standing
+before a mirror at that moment. But what sort of a flush is it upon her
+cheeks? What sort of a look is it in her eyes? What is this fell shadow
+that has passed upon her face?
+
+By the time Henry was ready to leave the poor mother had ceased her
+upbraidings, and had yielded quite to the sense of a sympathy, founded in
+a loss as great as her own, which his presence gave her. Re was the only
+one in all the world from whom she could have accepted sympathy, and in
+her lonely desolation it was very sweet. And at the last, when, as he was
+about to go, her grief burst forth afresh, he put his arm around her and
+drew her head to his shoulder, and tenderly soothed her, and stroked the
+thin grey hair, till at last the long, shuddering sobs grew a little
+calmer. It was natural that he should be the one to comfort her. It was
+his privilege. In the adoption of sorrow, and not of joy, he had taken
+this mother of his love to be his mother.
+
+"Don't give her up," he said. "I will find her if she is alive."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+A search, continued unintermittingly for a week among the hotels and
+lodging-houses of Boston, proved finally successful. He found her. As she
+opened the door of the miserable apartment which she occupied, and saw
+who it was that had knocked, the hard, unbeautiful red of shame covered
+her face. She would have closed the door against him, had he not quickly
+stepped within. Her eyelids fluttered a moment, and then she met his gaze
+with a look of reckless hardihood. Still holding the door half open, she
+said--
+
+"Henry Burr, what do you want?"
+
+The masses of her dark hairs hung low about her neck in disorder, and
+even in that first glance his eye bad noted a certain negligent
+untidiness about her toilet most different from her former ways. Her face
+was worn and strangely aged and saddened, but beautiful still with the
+quenchless beauty of the glorious eyes, though sleepless nights had left
+their dark traces round them;
+
+"What do you want? Why do you come here?" she demanded again, in harsh,
+hard tones; for he had been too much moved in looking at her to reply at
+once.
+
+Now, however, he took the door-handle out of her hand and closed the
+door, and said, with only the boundless tenderness of his moist eyes to
+mend the bluntness of the words--
+
+"Madeline, I want you. I want you for my wife."
+
+The faintest possible trace of scorn was perceptible about her lips, but
+her former expression of hard indifference was otherwise quite unchanged
+as she replied, in a spiritless voice--
+
+"So you came here to mock me? It was taking a good deal of trouble, but
+it is fair you should have your revenge."
+
+He came close up to her.
+
+"I'm not mocking. I'm in earnest. I'm one of those fellows who can never
+love but one woman, and love her for ever and ever. If there were not a
+scrap of you left bigger than your thumb, I'd rather have it than any
+woman in the world."
+
+And now her face changed. There came into it the wistful look of those
+before whom passes a vision of happiness not for them, a look such as
+might be in the face of a doomed spirit which, floating by, should catch
+a glimpse of heavenly meads, and be glad to have had it, although its own
+way lay toward perdition. With a sudden impulse she dropped upon her
+knee, and seizing the hem of his coat pressed it to her lips, and then,
+before he could catch her, sprang away, and stood with one arm extended
+toward him, the palm turned outward, warning him not to touch her. Her
+eyes were marvellously softened with the tears that suffused them, and
+she said--
+
+"I thank you, Henry. You are very good. I did not think any man could be
+so good. Now I remember, you always were very good to me. It will make
+the laudanum taste much sweeter. No! no! don't! Pity my shame. Spare me
+that! Oh, don't!"
+
+But he was stronger than she, and kissed her. It was the second time he
+had ever done it. Her eyes flashed angrily, but that was instantly past,
+and she fell upon a chair crying as if her heart would break, her hands
+dropping nervously by her sides; for this was that miserable, desolate
+sorrow which does not care to hide its flowing tears and wrung face.
+
+"Oh, you might have spared me that! O God! was it not hard enough
+before?" she sobbed.
+
+In his loving stupidity, thinking to reassure her, he had wounded the
+pride of shame, the last retreat of self-respect, that cruellest hurt of
+all. There was a long silence. She seemed to have forgotten that he was
+there. Looking down upon her as she sat desolate, degraded, hopeless
+before him, not caring to cover her face, his heart swelled till it
+seemed as if it would burst, with such a sense of piteous loyalty and
+sublimed devotion as a faithful subject in the brave old times might have
+felt towards his queen whom he has found in exile, rags, and penury.
+Deserted by gods and men she might be, but his queen for ever she was,
+whose feet he was honoured to kiss. But what a gulf between feeling this
+and making her understand his feeling!
+
+At length, when her sobs had ceased, he said, quietly--
+
+"Forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
+
+"It's all the same. It's no matter," she answered, listlessly, wiping her
+eyes with her hand. "I wish you would go away, though, and leave me
+alone. What do you want with me?"
+
+"I want what I have always wanted: I want you for my wife."
+
+She looked at him with stupid amazement, as if the real meaning of this
+already once declared desire had only just distinctly reached her mind,
+or as if the effect of its first announcement had been quite effaced by
+the succeeding outburst.
+
+"Why, I thought you knew! You can't have heard--about me," she said.
+
+"I have heard, I know all," he exclaimed, taking a step forward and
+standing over her. "Forgive me, darling! forgive me for being almost glad
+when I heard that you were free, and not married out of my reach. I can't
+think of anything except that I've found you. It is you, isn't it? It is
+you. I don't care what's happened to you, if it is only you."
+
+As he spoke in this vehement, fiery way, she had been regarding him with
+an expression of faint curiosity. "I believe you do really mean it," she
+said, wonderingly, lingering over the words; "you always were a queer
+fellow."
+
+"Mean it!" he exclaimed, kneeling before her, his voice all tremulous
+with the hope which the slightly yielding intonation of her words had
+given him. "Yes--yes--I mean it."
+
+The faint ghost of a smile, which only brought out the sadness of her
+face, as a taper in a crypt reveals its gloom, hovered about her eyes.
+
+"Poor boy!" she said; "I've, treated you very badly. I was going to make
+an end of myself this afternoon, but I will wait till you are tired of
+your fancy for me. It will make but little difference. There! there!
+Please don't kiss me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+He did not insist on their marriage taking place at once, although in her
+mood of dull indifference she would not have objected to anything he
+might have proposed. It was his hope that after a while she might become
+calmer, and more cheerful. He hoped to take in his at the altar a hand a
+little less like that of a dead person.
+
+Introducing her as his betrothed wife, he found her very pleasant
+lodgings with an excellent family, where he was acquainted, provided her
+with books and a piano, took her constantly out to places of amusement,
+and, in every way which his ingenuity could suggest, endeavoured to
+distract and divert her. To all this she offered neither objection nor
+suggestion, nor did she, beyond the usual conventional responses, show
+the slightest gratitude. It was as if she took it for granted that he
+understood, as she did, that all this was being done for himself, and not
+for her, she being quite past having anything done for her. Her only
+recognition of the reverential and considerate tenderness which he showed
+her was an occasional air of wonder that cut him to the quick. Shame,
+sorrow, and despair had incrusted her heart with a hard shell,
+impenetrable to genial emotions. Nor would all his love help him to get
+over the impression that she was no longer an acquaintance and familiar
+friend, but somehow a stranger.
+
+So far as he could find out, she did absolutely nothing all day except to
+sit brooding. He could not discover that she so much as opened the books
+and magazines he sent her, and, to the best of his knowledge, she made
+little more use of her piano. His calls were sadly dreary affairs. He
+would ask perhaps half a dozen questions, which he had spent much care in
+framing with a view to interesting her. She would reply in monosyllables,
+with sometimes a constrained smile or two, and then, after sitting a
+while in silence, he would take his hat and bid her good-evening.
+
+She always sat nowadays in an attitude which he had never seen her adopt
+in former times, her hands lying in her lap before her, and an absent
+expression on her face. As he looked at her sitting thus, and recalled
+her former vivacious self-assertion and ever-new caprices, he was
+overcome with the sadness of the contrast.
+
+Whenever he asked her about her health, she replied that she was well;
+and, indeed, she had that appearance. Grief is slow to sap the basis of a
+healthy physical constitution. She retained all the contour of cheek and
+rounded fulness of figure which had first captivated his fancy in the
+days, as it seemed, so long ago.
+
+He took her often to the theatre, because in the action of the play she
+seemed at times momentarily carried out of herself. Once, when they were
+coming home from a play, she called attention to some feature of it. It
+was the first independent remark she had made since he had brought her to
+her lodgings. In itself it was of no importance at all, but he was
+overcome with delight, as people are delighted with the first words that
+show returning interest in earthly matters on the part of a convalescing
+friend whose soul has long been hovering on the borders of death. It
+would sound laughable to explain how much he made of that little remark,
+how he spun it out, and turned it in and out, and returned to it for days
+afterward. But it remained isolated. She did not make another.
+
+Nevertheless, her mind was not so entirely torpid as it appeared, nor was
+she so absolutely self-absorbed. One idea was rising day by day out of
+the dark confusion of her thoughts, and that was the goodness and
+generosity of her lover. In this appreciation there was not the faintest
+glows of gratitude. She left herself wholly out of the account as only
+one could do with whom wretchedness has abolished for the time all
+interest in self. She was personally past being benefited. Her sense of
+his love and generosity was as disinterested as if some other person had
+been their object. Her admiration was such as one feels for a hero of
+history or fiction.
+
+Often, when all within her seemed growing hard and still and dead, she
+felt that crying would make her feel better. At such times, to help her
+to cry, for the tears did not flow easily, she would sit down to the
+piano, the only times she ever touched it, and play over some of the
+simple airs associated with her life at home. Sometimes, after playing
+and crying a while, she would lapse into sweetly mournful day-dreams of
+how happy she might have been if she had returned Henry's love in those
+old days. She wondered in a puzzled way why it was that she had not. It
+seemed so strange to her now that she could have failed in doing so. But
+all this time it was only as a might-have-been that she thought of loving
+him, as one who feels himself mortally sick thinks of what he might have
+done when he was well, as a life-convict thinks of what he might have
+done when free, as a disembodied spirit might think of what it might have
+done when living. The consciousness of her disgrace, ever with her, had,
+in the past month or two, built up an impassable wall between her past
+life and her present state of existence. She no longer thought of herself
+in the present tense, still less the future.
+
+He had not kissed her since that kiss at their first interview, which
+threw her into such a paroxysm of weeping. But one evening, when she had
+been more silent and dull than usual, and more unresponsive to his
+efforts to interest her, as he rose to go he drew her a moment to his
+side and pressed his lips to hers, as if constrained to find some
+expression for the tenderness so cruelly balked of any outflow in words.
+He went quickly out, but she continued to stand motionless, in the
+attitude of one startled by a sudden discovery. There was a frightened
+look in her dilated eyes. Her face was flooded to the roots of her hair
+with a deep flush. It was a crimson most unlike the tint of blissful
+shame with which the cheeks announce love's dawn in happy hearts. She
+threw herself upon the sofa, and buried her scorched face in the pillow
+while her form shook with dry sobs.
+
+Love had, in a moment, stripped the protecting cicatrice of a hard
+indifference from her smarting shame, and it was as if for the first time
+she were made fully conscious of the desperation of her condition.
+
+The maiden who finds her stainless purity all too lustreless a gift for
+him she loves, may fancy what were the feelings of Madeline, as love,
+with its royal longing to give, was born in her heart. With what lilies
+of virgin innocence would she fain have rewarded her lover! but her
+lilies were yellow, their fragrance was stale. With what an unworn crown
+would she have crowned him! but she had rifled her maiden regalia to
+adorn an impostor. And love came to her now, not as to others, but
+whetting the fangs of remorse and blowing the fires of shame.
+
+But one thing it opened her eyes to, and made certain from the first
+instant of her new consciousness, namely, that since she loved him she
+could not keep her promise to marry him. In her previous mood of dead
+indifference to all things, it had not mattered to her one way or the
+other. Reckless what became of her, she had only a feeling that seeing he
+had been so good he ought to have any satisfaction he could find in
+marrying her. But what her indifference would have abandoned to him her
+love could not endure the thought of giving. The worthlessness of the
+gift, which before had not concerned her, now made its giving impossible.
+While before she had thought with indifference of submitting to a love
+she did not return, now that she returned it the idea of being happy in
+it seemed to her guilty and shameless. Thus to gather the honey of
+happiness from her own abasement was a further degradation, compared with
+which she could now almost respect herself. The consciousness that she
+had taken pleasure in that kiss made her seem to herself a brazen thing.
+
+Her heart ached with a helpless yearning over him for the disappointment
+she knew he must now suffer at her hands. She tried, but in vain, to feel
+that she might, after all, marry him, might do this crowning violence to
+her nature, and accept a shameful happiness for his sake.
+
+One morning a bitter thing happened to her. She had slept unusually well,
+and her dreams had been sweet and serene, untinged by any shadow of her
+waking thoughts, as if, indeed, the visions intended for the sleeping
+brain of some fortunate woman had by mistake strayed into hers. For a
+while she had lain, half dozing, half awake, pleasantly conscious of the
+soft, warm bed, and only half emerged from the atmosphere of dreamland.
+As at last she opened her eyes, the newly risen sun, bright from his
+ocean bath, was shining into the room, and the birds were singing. A
+lilac bush before the window was moving in the breeze, and the shadows of
+its twigs were netting the sunbeams on the wall as they danced to and
+fro.
+
+The spirit of the jocund morn quite carried her away, and all
+unthinkingly she bounded out into the room and, stood there with a smile
+of sheer delight upon her face. She had forgotten all about her shame and
+sorrow. For an instant they were as completely gone from her mind as if
+they had never been, and for that instant nowhere did the sun's
+far-reaching eye rest on a blither or more innocent face. Then memory
+laid its icy finger on her heart and stilled its bounding pulse. The glad
+smile went out, like a taper quenched in Acheron, and she fell prone upon
+the floor, crying with hard, dry sobs, "O God! O God! O God!"
+
+That day, and for many days afterward, she thought again and again of
+that single happy instant ere memory reclaimed its victim. It was the
+first for so long a time, and it was so very sweet, like a drop of water
+to one in torment. What a heaven a life must be which had many such
+moments! Was it possible that once, long ago, her life had been such an
+one--that she could awake mornings and not be afraid of remembering? Had
+there ever been a time when the ravens of shame and remorse had not
+perched above her bed as she slept, waiting her waking to plunge their
+beaks afresh into her heart? That instant of happiness which had been
+given her, how full it had been of blithe thanks to God and sympathy with
+the beautiful life of the world! Surely it showed that she was not bad,
+that she could have such a moment. It showed her heart was pure; it was
+only her memory that was foul. It was in vain that she swept and washed
+all within, and was good, when all the while her memory, like a ditch
+from a distant morass, emptied its vile stream of recollections into her
+heart, poisoning all the issues of life.
+
+Years before, in one of the periodical religious revivals at Newville,
+she had passed through the usual girlish experience of conversion. Now,
+indeed, was a time when the heavenly compensations to which religion
+invites the thoughts of the sorrowful might surely have been a source of
+dome relief. But a certain cruel clearness of vision, or so at least it
+seemed to her, made all reflections on this theme but an aggravation of
+her despair. Since the shadow had fallen on her life, with every day the
+sense of shame and grief had grown more insupportable. In proportion as
+her loathing of the sin had grown, her anguish on account of it had
+increased. It was a poison-tree which her tears watered and caused to
+shoot forth yet deeper roots, yet wider branches, overspreading her life
+with ever denser, more noxious shadows. Since, then, on earth the
+purification of repentance does but deepen the soul's anguish over the
+past, how should it be otherwise in heaven, all through eternity? The
+pure in heart that see God, thought the unhappy girl, must only be those
+that have always been so, for such as become pure by repentance and tears
+do but see their impurity plainer every day.
+
+Her horror of such a heaven, where through eternity perfect purification
+should keep her shame undying, taught her unbelief, and turned her for
+comfort to that other deep instinct of humanity, which sees in death the
+promise of eternal sleep, rest, and oblivion. In these days she thought
+much of poor George Bayley, and his talk in the prayer-meeting the night
+before he killed himself. By the mystic kinship that had declared itself
+between their sorrowful destinies, she felt a sense of nearness to him
+greater than her new love had given or ever could give her toward Henry.
+She recalled how she had sat listening to George's talk that evening,
+pitifully, indeed, but only half comprehending what he meant, with no
+dim, foreboding warning that she was fated to reproduce his experience so
+closely. Yes, reproduce it, perhaps, God only knew, even to the end. She
+could not bear this always. She understood now--ah! how well--his longing
+for the river of Lethe whose waters give forgetfulness. She often saw his
+pale face in dreams, wearing the smile he wore as he lay in the coffin, a
+smile as if he bad been washed in those waters he sighed for.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Henry had not referred to their marriage after the first interview. From
+day to day, and week to week, he had put off doing so, hoping that she
+might grow into a more serene condition of mind. But in this respect the
+result had sadly failed to answer his expectation. He could not deny to
+himself that, instead of becoming more cheerful, she was relapsing into a
+more and more settled melancholy. From day to day he noted the change,
+like that of a gradual petrifaction, which went on in her face. It was as
+if before his eyes she were sinking into a fatal stupor, from which all
+his efforts could not rouse her.
+
+There were moments when he experienced the chilling premonition of a
+disappointment, the possibility of which he still refused to actually
+entertain. He owned to himself that it was a harder task than he had
+thought to bring back to life one whose veins the frost of despair has
+chilled. There were, perhaps, some things too hard even for his love. It
+was doubly disheartening for him thus to lose confidence; not only on his
+own account, but on hers. Not only had he to ask himself what would
+become of his life in the event of failure, but what would become of
+hers? One day overcome by this sort of discouragement, feeling that he
+was not equal to the case, that matters were growing worse instead of
+better, and that he needed help from some source, he asked Madeline if he
+had not better write to her mother to come to Boston, so that they two
+could keep house together.
+
+"No," she said in a quick, startled voice, looking up at him in a scared
+way.
+
+He hastened to reassure her, and say that he had not seriously thought of
+it, but he noticed that during the rest of the evening she cast furtive
+glances of apprehension at him, as if suspicious that he had some plot
+against her. She had fled from home because she could not bear her
+mother's eyes.
+
+Meanwhile he was becoming almost as preoccupied and gloomy as she, and
+their dreary interviews grew more dreary than ever, for she was now
+scarcely more silent than he. His constant and increasing anxiety, in
+addition to the duties of a responsible business position, began to tell
+on his health. The owner of the manufactory of which he was
+superintendent, called him into his office one day, and told him he was
+working too hard, and must take a little vacation. But be declined. Soon
+after a physician whom he knew buttonholed him on the street, and managed
+to get in some shrewd questions about his health. Henry owned he did not
+sleep much nights. The doctor said he must take a vacation, and, this
+being declared impossible, forced a box of sleeping powders on him, and
+made him promise to try them.
+
+All this talk about his health; as well as his own sensations, set him to
+thinking of the desperate position in which Madeline would be left in the
+event of his serious sickness or death.
+
+That very day he made up his mind that it would not do to postpone their
+marriage any longer. It seemed almost brutal to urge it on her in her
+present frame of mind, and yet it was clearly out of the question to
+protract the present situation.
+
+The quarter of the city in which he resided was suburban, and he went
+home every night by the steam cars. As he sat in the car that evening
+waiting for the train to start, two gentlemen in the seat behind fell to
+conversing about a new book on mental physiology, embodying the latest
+discoveries. They kept up a brisk talk on this subject till Henry left
+the car. He could not, however, have repeated a single thing which they
+had said. Preoccupied with his own thoughts, he had only been dimly
+conscious what they were talking about. His ears had taken in their
+words, but he had heard as not hearing.
+
+After tea, in the gloaming, he called, as usual, on Madeline. After a few
+casual words, he said, gently--
+
+"Madeline, you remember you promised to marry me a few weeks ago. I have
+not hurried you, but I want you now. There is no use in waiting any
+longer, dear, and I want you."
+
+She was sitting in a low chair, her hands folded in her lap, and as he
+spoke her head sank so low upon her breast that he could not see her
+face. He was silent for some moments waiting a reply, but she made none.
+
+"I know it was only for my sake you promised," he said again. "I know it
+will be nothing to you, and yet I would not press you if I did not think
+I could make you happier so. I will give up my business for a. time, and
+we will travel and see the world a little."
+
+Still she did not speak, but it was to some extent a reassurance to him
+that she showed no agitation.
+
+"Are you willing that we should be married in a few days?" he asked.
+
+She lifted her head slowly, and looked at him steadfastly.
+
+"You are right," she said. "It is useless to keep on this way any
+longer."
+
+"You consent, then?" said he, quite encouraged by her quiet air and
+apparent willingness.
+
+"Don't press me for an answer to-night," she replied, after a pause,
+during which she regarded him with a singular fixity of expression. "Wait
+till to-morrow. You shall have an answer to-morrow. You are quite right.
+I've been thinking so myself. It is no use to put it off any longer."
+
+He spoke to her once or twice after this, but she was gazing out through
+the window into the darkening sky, and did not seem to hear him. He rose
+to go, and had already reached the hail, when she called him--
+
+"Come back a moment Henry."
+
+He came back.
+
+"I want you to kiss me," she said.
+
+She was standing in the middle of the room. Her tall figure in its black
+dress was flooded with the weird radiance of the rising moon, nor was the
+moonshine whiter than her cheek, nor sadder than her steadfast eyes. Her
+lips were soft and yielding, clinging, dewy wet. He had never thought a
+kiss could be so sweet, and yet he could have wept, he knew not why.
+
+When he reached his lodgings he was in an extremely nervous condition. In
+spite of all that was painful and depressing in the associations of the
+event, the idea of having Madeline for his wife in a few days more had
+power to fill him with feverish excitement, an excitement all the more
+agitating because it was so composite in its elements, and had so little
+in common with the exhilaration and light-heartedness of successful
+lovers in general. He took one of the doctor's sleeping powders, tried to
+read a dry book oil electricity, endeavoured to write a business letter,
+smoked a cigar, and finally went to bed.
+
+It seemed to him that he went all the next day in a dazed, dreaming
+state, until the moment when he presented himself, after tea, at
+Madeline's lodgings, and she opened the door to him. The surprise which
+he then experienced was calculated to arouse him had he been indeed
+dreaming. His first thought was that she had gone crazy, or else had been
+drinking wine to raise her spirits; for there was a flush of excitement
+on either cheek, and her eyes were bright and unsteady. In one hand she
+held, with a clasp that crumpled the leaves, a small scientific magazine,
+which be recognized as having been one of a bundle of periodicals that he
+had sent her. With her other hand, instead of taking the hand which he
+extended, she clutched his arm and almost pulled him inside the door.
+
+"Henry, do you remember what George Bayley said that might in meeting,
+about the river of Lethe, in which, souls were bathed and forgot the
+past?"
+
+"I remember something about it," he answered.
+
+"There is such a river. It was not a fable. It has been found again," she
+cried.
+
+"Come and sit down, dear don't excite yourself so much. We will talk
+quietly," he replied, with a pitiful effort to speak soothingly, for he
+made no question that her long brooding had affected her mind.
+
+"Quietly! How do you suppose I can talk quietly?" she exclaimed
+excitedly, in her nervous irritation throwing off the hand which he had
+laid on her arm. "Henry, see here, I want to ask you something. Supposing
+anybody had done something bad and had been very sorry for it, and then
+had forgotten it all, forgotten it wholly, would you think that made them
+good again? Would it seem so to you? Tell me!"
+
+"Yes, surely; but it isn't necessary they should forget, so long us
+they're sorry."
+
+"But supposing they had forgotten too?"
+
+"Yes, surely, it would be as if it had never been."
+
+"Henry," she said, her voice dropping to a low, hushed tone of wonder,
+while her eyes were full of mingled awe and exultation, "what if I were
+to forget it, forget that you know, forget it all, everything, just as if
+it had never been?"
+
+He stared at her with fascinated eyes. She was, indeed, beside herself.
+Grief had made her mad.. The significance of his expression seemed to
+recall her to herself, and she said--
+
+"You don't understand. Of course not. You think I'm crazy. Here, take it.
+Go somewhere and read it. Don't stay here to do it. I couldn't stand to
+look on. Go! Hurry! Read it, and then come back."
+
+She thrust the magazine into his hand, and almost pushed him out of the
+door. But he went no further than the hall. He could not think of leaving
+her in that condition. Then it occurred to him to look at the magazine.
+he opened it by the light of the hall lamp, and his eyes fell on these
+words, the title of an article: "The Extirpation of Thought Processes. A
+New Invention."
+
+If she were crazy, here was at least the clue to her condition. He read
+on; his eyes leaped along the lines.
+
+The writer began with a clear account of the discoveries of modern
+psychologists and physiologists as to the physical basis of the
+intellect, by which it has been ascertained that certain ones of the
+millions of nerve corpuscles or fibres in the grey substance in the
+brain, record certain classes of sensations and the ideas directly
+connected with them, other classes of sensations with the corresponding
+ideas being elsewhere recorded by other groups of corpuscles. These
+corpuscles of the grey matter, these mysterious and infinitesimal
+hieroglyphics, constitute the memory of the record of the life, so that
+when any particular fibre or group of fibres is destroyed certain
+memories or classes of memories are destroyed, without affecting others
+which are elsewhere embodied in other fibres. Of the many scientific and
+popular demonstrations of these facts which were adduced, reference was
+made to the generally known fact that the effect of disease or injury at
+certain points in the brain is to destroy definite classes of
+acquisitions or recollections, leaving others untouched. The article then
+went on to refer to the fact that one of the known effects of the
+galvanic battery as medically applied, is to destroy and dissolve morbid
+tissues, while leaving healthy ones unimpaired. Given then a patient, who
+by excessive indulgence of any particular train of thought, had brought
+the group of fibres which were the physical seat of such thoughts into a
+diseased condition, Dr. Gustav Heidenhoff had invented a mode of applying
+the galvanic battery so as to destroy the diseased corpuscles, and thus
+annihilate the class of morbid ideas involved beyond the possibility of
+recollection, and entirely without affecting other parts of the brain or
+other classes of ideas. The doctor saw patients Tuesdays and Saturdays at
+his office, 79 ----- Street.
+
+Madeline was not crazy, thought Henry, as still standing under the hall
+lamp he closed the article, but Dr. Heidenhoff certainly was. Never had
+such a sad sense of the misery of her condition been borne in upon him,
+as when he reflected that it had been able to make such a farrago of
+nonsense seem actually creditable to her. Overcome with poignant
+sympathy, and in serious perplexity how best he could deal with her
+excited condition, he slipped out of the house and walked for an hour
+about the streets. Returning, he knocked again at the door of her
+parlour.
+
+"Have you read it?" she asked, eagerly, as she opened it.
+
+"Yes, I've read it. I did not mean to send you such trash. The man must
+be either an escaped lunatic or has tried his hand at a hoax. It is a
+tissue of absurdity."
+
+He spoke bluntly, almost harshly, because he was in terror at the thought
+that she might be allowing herself to be deluded by this wild and
+baseless fancy, but he looked away as he spoke. He could not bear to see
+the effect of his words.
+
+"It is not absurd," she cried, clasping his arm convulsively with both
+hands so that she hurt him, and looking fiercely at him out of hot,
+fevered eyes. "It is the most reasonable thing in the world. It must be
+true. There can be no mistake. God would not let me be so deceived. He is
+not so cruel. Don't tell me anything else."
+
+She was in such a hysterical condition that he saw he must be very
+gentle.
+
+"But, Madeline, you will admit that if he is not the greatest of all
+discoverers, he must be a dangerous quack. His process might kill you or
+make you insane. It must be very perilous."
+
+"If I knew there were a hundred chances that it would kill me to one that
+it would succeed, do you think I would hesitate?" she cried.
+
+The utmost concession that he could obtain her consent to was that he
+should first visit this Dr. Heidenhoff alone, and make some inquiries of
+and about him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+The next day he called at 79 ----- Street. There was a modest shingle
+bearing the name "Dr. Gustav Heidenhoff" fastened up on the side of the
+house, which was in the middle of a brick block. On announcing that he
+wanted to see the doctor, he was ushered into a waiting-room, whose walls
+were hung with charts of the brain and nervous system, and presently a
+tall, scholarly-looking man, with a clean-shaven face, frosty hair, and
+very genial blue eyes, deep set beneath extremely bushy grey eyebrows,
+entered and announced himself as Dr. Heidenhoff. Henry, who could not
+help being very favourably impressed by his appearance, opened the
+conversation by saying that he wanted to make some inquiries about the
+Thought-extirpation process in behalf of a friend who was thinking of
+trying it. The doctor, who spoke English with idiomatic accuracy, though
+with a slightly German accent, expressed his willingness to give him all
+possible information, and answered all his questions with great apparent
+candour, illustrating his explanations by references to the charts which
+covered the walls of the office. He took him into an inner office and
+showed his batteries, and explained that the peculiarity of his process
+consisted, not in any new general laws and facts of physiology which he
+had discovered, but entirely in peculiarities in his manner of applying
+his galvanic current, talking much about apodes, cathodes,
+catelectrotonus and anelectrotonus, resistance and rheostat, reactions,
+fluctuations, and other terms of galvano-therapeutics. The doctor frankly
+admitted that he was not in a way of making a great deal of money or
+reputation by his discovery. It promised too much, and people
+consequently thought it must be quackery, and as sufficient proof of this
+he mentioned that he had now been five years engaged in practising the
+Thought-extirpation process without having attained any considerable
+celebrity or attracting a great number of patients. But he had a
+sufficient support in other branches of medical practice, he added, and,
+so long as he had patients enough for experimentation with the aim of
+improving the process, he was quite satisfied.
+
+He listened with great interest to Henry's account of Madeline's case.
+The success of galvanism in obliterating the obnoxious train of
+recollections in her case would depend, he said, on whether it had been
+indulged to an extent to bring about a morbid state of the brain fibres
+concerned. What might be conventionally or morally morbid or
+objectionable, was not, however, necessarily disease in the material
+sense, and nothing but experiment could absolutely determine whether the
+two conditions coincided in any case. At any rate, he positively assured
+Henry that no harm could ensue to the patient, whether the operation
+succeeded or not.
+
+"It is a pity, young man," he said, with a flash of enthusiasm, "that you
+don't come to me twenty years later. Then I could guarantee your friend
+the complete extirpation of any class of inconvenient recollections she
+might desire removed, whether they were morbid or healthy; for since the
+great fact of the physical basis of the intellect has been established, I
+deem it only a question of time when science shall have so accurately
+located the various departments of thought and mastered the laws of their
+processes, that, whether by galvanism or some better process, the mental
+physician will be able to extract a specific recollection from the memory
+as readily as a dentist pulls a tooth, and as finally, so far as the
+prevention of any future twinges in that quarter are concerned. Macbeth's
+question, 'Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased; pluck from the
+memory a rooted sorrow; raze out the written troubles of the brain?' was
+a puzzler to the sixteenth century doctor, but he of the twentieth, yes,
+perhaps of the nineteenth, will be able to answer it affirmatively."
+
+"Is the process at all painful ?"
+
+"In no degree, my dear sir. Patients have described to me their
+sensations many times, and their testimony is quite in agreement. When
+the circuit is closed there is a bubbling, murmurous sound in the ears, a
+warm sensation where the wires touch the cranium, and a feeling as of a
+motion through the brain, entering at one point and going out at another.
+There are also sparks of fire seen under the closed eyelids, an
+unpleasant taste in the mouth, and a sensation of smell; that is all."
+
+"But the mental sensations ?" said Henry. "I should think they must be
+very peculiar, the sense of forgetting in spite of one's self, for I
+suppose the patient's mind is fixed on the very thoughts which the intent
+of the operation is to extirpate."
+
+"Peculiar? Oh no, not at all peculiar," replied the doctor. "There are
+abundant analogies for it in our daily experience. From the accounts of
+patients I infer that it is not different from one's sensations in
+falling asleep while thinking of something. You know that we find
+ourselves forgetting preceding links in the train of thought, and in
+turning back to recall what went before, what came after is meanwhile
+forgotten, the clue is lost, and we yield to a pleasing bewilderment
+which is presently itself forgotten in sleep. The next morning we may or
+may not recall the matter. The only difference is that after the deep
+sleep which always follows the application of my process we never recall
+it, that is, if the operation has been successful. It seems to involve no
+more interference with the continuity of the normal physical and mental
+functions than does an afternoon's nap."
+
+"But the after-effects!" persisted Henry. "Patients must surely feel that
+they have forgotten something, even if they do not know what it is. They
+must feel that there is something gone out of their minds. I should think
+this sensation would leave them in a painfully bewildered state."
+
+"There seems to be a feeling of slight confusion," said the doctor; "but
+it is not painful, not more pronounced, indeed, than that of persons who
+are trying to bring back a dream which they remember having had without
+being able to recall the first thing about what it was. Of course, the
+patient subsequently finds shreds and fragments of ideas, as well as
+facts in his external relations, which, having been connected with the
+extirpated subject, are now unaccountable. About these the feeling is, I
+suppose, like that of a man who, when he gets over a fit of drunkenness
+or somnambulism, finds himself unable to account for things which he has
+unconsciously said or done. The immediate effect of the operation, as I
+intimated before, is to leave the patient very drowsy, and the first
+desire is to sleep."
+
+"Doctor," said Henry, "when you talk it all seems for the moment quite
+reasonable, but you will pardon me for saying that, as soon as you stop,
+the whole thing appears to be such an incredible piece of nonsense that I
+have to pinch myself to be sure I am not dreaming."
+
+The doctor smiled.
+
+"Well," said he, "I have been so long engaged in the practical
+application of the process that I confess I can't realize any element of
+the strange or mysterious about it. To the eye of the philosopher nothing
+is wonderful, or else you may say all things are equally so. The
+commonest and so-called simplest fact in the entire order of nature is
+precisely as marvellous and incomprehensible at bottom as the most
+uncommon and startling. You will pardon me if I say that it is only to
+the unscientific that it seems otherwise. But really, my dear sir, my
+process for the extirpation of thoughts was but the most obvious
+consequence of the discovery that different classes of sensations and
+ideas are localized in the brain, and are permanently identified with
+particular groups of corpuscles of the grey matter. As soon as that was
+known, the extirpating of special clusters of thoughts became merely a
+question of mechanical difficulties to be overcome, merely a nice problem
+in surgery, and not more complex than many which my brethren have solved
+in lithotomy and lithotrity, for instance."
+
+"I suppose what makes the idea a little more startling," said Henry, "is
+the odd intermingling of moral and physical conceptions in the idea of
+curing pangs of conscience by a surgical operation."
+
+"I should think that intermingling ought not to be very bewildering,"
+replied the doctor, "since it is the usual rule. Why is it more curious
+to cure remorse by a physical act than to cause remorse by a physical
+act? And I believe such is the origin of most remorse."
+
+"Yes," said Henry, still struggling to preserve his mental equilibrium
+against this general overturning of his prejudices. "Yes, but the mind
+consents to the act which causes the remorse, and I suppose that is what
+gives it a moral quality."
+
+"Assuredly," replied the doctor; "and I take it for granted that patients
+don't generally come to me unless they have experienced very genuine and
+profound regret and sorrow for the act they wish to forget. They have
+already repented it, and, according to every theory of moral
+accountability, I believe it is held that repentance balances the moral
+accounts. My process, you see then, only completes physically what is
+already done morally. The ministers and moralists preach forgiveness and
+absolution on repentance, but the perennial fountain of the penitent's
+tears testifies how empty and vain such assurances are. I fulfil what
+they promise. They tell the penitent he is forgiven. I free him from his
+sin. Remorse and shame and wan regret have wielded their cruel sceptres
+over human lives from the beginning until now. Seated within the
+mysterious labyrinths of the brain, they have deemed their sway secure,
+but the lightning of science has reached them on their thrones and set
+their bondmen free;" and with an impressive gesture the doctor touched
+the battery at his side.
+
+Without giving further details of his conversation with this strange
+Master of Life, it is sufficient to say that Henry finally agreed upon an
+appointment for Madeline on the following day, feeling something as if he
+were making an unholy compact with the devil. He could not possibly have
+said whether he really expected anything from it or not. His mind had
+been in a state of bewilderment and constant fluctuation during the
+entire interview, at one moment carried away by the contagious confidence
+of the doctor's tone, and impressed by his calm, clear, scientific
+explanations and the exhibition of the electrical apparatus, and the next
+moment reacting into utter scepticism and contemptuous impatience with
+himself for even listening to such a preposterous piece of imposition. By
+the time he had walked half a block, the sights and sounds of the busy
+street, with their practical and prosaic suggestions, had quite
+dissipated the lingering influence of the necromantic atmosphere of Dr.
+Heidenhoff's office, and he was sure that he had been a fool.
+
+He went to see Madeline that evening, with his mind made up to avoid
+telling her, if possible, that he had made the appointment, and to make
+such a report as should induce her to dismiss the subject. But he found
+it was quite impossible to maintain any such reticence toward one in her
+excited and peremptory mood. He was forced to admit the fact of the
+appointment.
+
+"Why didn't you make it in the forenoon?" she demanded.
+
+"What for? It is only a difference of a few hours," he replied.
+
+"And don't you think a few hours is anything to me?" she cried, bursting
+into hysterical tears.
+
+"You must not be so confident," he expostulated. "It scares me to see you
+so when you are so likely to be disappointed. Even the doctor said he
+could not promise success. It would depend on many things."
+
+"What is the use of telling me that ?" she said, suddenly becoming very
+calm. "When I've just one chance for life, do you think it is kind to
+remind me that it may fail? Let me alone to-night."
+
+The mental agitation of the past two days, supervening on so long a
+period of profound depression, had thrown her into a state of agitation
+bordering on hysteria. She was constantly changing her attitude, rising
+and seating herself, and walking excitedly about. She would talk rapidly
+one moment, and then relapse into a sudden chilled silence in which she
+seemed to hear nothing. Once or twice she laughed a hard, unnatural laugh
+of pure nervousness.
+
+Presently she said--
+
+"After I've forgotten all about myself, and no longer remember any reason
+why I shouldn't marry you, you will still remember what I've forgotten,
+and perhaps you won't want me."
+
+"You know very well that I want you any way, and just the same whatever
+happens or doesn't happen," he answered.
+
+"I wonder whether it will be fair to let you marry me after I've
+forgotten," she continued, thoughtfully. "I don't know, but I ought to
+make you promise now that you won't ask me to be your wife, for, of
+course, I shouldn't then know any reason for refusing you."
+
+"I wouldn't promise that."
+
+"Oh, but you wouldn't do so mean a thing as to take an unfair advantage
+of my ignorance," she replied. "Any way, I now release you from your
+engagement to marry me, and leave you to do as you choose tomorrow after
+I've forgotten. I would make you promise not to let me marry you then, if
+I did not feel that utter forgetfulness of the past will leave me as pure
+and as good as if--as if--I were like other women;" and she burst into
+tears, and cried bitterly for a while.
+
+The completeness with which she had given herself up to the belief that
+on the morrow her memory was to be wiped clean of the sad past,
+alternately terrified him and momentarily seduced him to share the same
+fool's paradise of fancy. And it is needless to say that the thought of
+receiving his wife to his arms as fresh and virgin in heart and memory as
+when her girlish beauty first entranced him, was very sweet to his
+imagination.
+
+"I suppose I'll have mother with me then," she said, musingly. "How
+strange it will be! I've been thinking about it all day. I shall often
+find her looking at me oddly, and ask her what she is thinking of, and
+she will put me off. Why, Henry, I feel as dying persons do about having
+people look at their faces after they are dead. I shouldn't like to have
+any of my enemies who knew all about me see me after I've forgotten.
+You'll take care that they don't, won't you, Henry?"
+
+"Why, dear, that is morbid. What is it to a dead person, whose soul is in
+heaven, who looks at his dead face? It will be so with you after
+to-morrow if the process succeeds."
+
+She thought a while, and then said, shaking her head--
+
+"Well, anyhow, I'd rather none but my friends, of those who used to know
+me, should see me. You'll see to it, Henry. You may look at me all you
+please, and think of what you please as you look. I don't care to take
+away the memory of anything from you. I don't believe a woman ever
+trusted a man as I do you. I'm sure none ever had reason to. I should be
+sorry if you didn't know all my faults. If there's a record to be kept of
+them anywhere in the universe, I'd rather it should be in your heart than
+anywhere else, unless, maybe, God has a heart like yours;" and she smiled
+at him through those sweetest tears that ever well up in human eyes, the
+tears of a limitless and perfect trust.
+
+At one o'clock the next afternoon Madeline was sitting on the sofa in Dr.
+Heidenhoff's reception-room with compressed lips and pale cheeks, while
+Henry was nervously striding to and fro across the room, and furtively
+watching her with anxious looks. Neither had had much to say that
+morning.
+
+"All ready," said the doctor, putting his head in at the door of his
+office and again disappearing. Madeline instantly rose. Henry put his
+hand on her arm, and said--
+
+"Remember, dear, this was your idea, not mine, and if the experiment
+fails that makes no difference to me." She bowed her head without
+replying, and they went into the office. Madeline, trembling and deadly
+pale, sat down in the operating chair, and her head was immovably secured
+by padded clamps. She closed her eyes and put her hand in Henry's.
+
+"Now," said the doctor to her, "fix your attention on the class of
+memories which you wish destroyed; the electric current more readily
+follows the fibres which are being excited by the present passage of
+nervous force. Touch my arm when you find your thoughts somewhat
+concentrated."
+
+In a few moments she pressed the doctor's arm, and instantly the
+murmurous, bubbling hum of the battery began. She, clasped Henry's hand a
+little firmer, but made no other sign. The noise stopped. The doctor was
+removing the clamps. She opened her eyes and closed them again drowsily.
+
+"Oh, I'm so sleepy."
+
+"You shall lie down and take a nap," said the doctor.
+
+There was a little retiring-room connected with the office where there
+was a sofa. No sooner had she laid her head on the pillow than she fell
+asleep. The doctor and Henry remained in the operating office, the door
+into the retiring-room being just ajar, so that they could hear her when
+she awoke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+"How long will she sleep, doctor?" asked Henry, after satisfying himself
+by looking through the crack of the door that she was actually asleep.
+
+"Patients do not usually wake under an hour or two," replied the doctor.
+"She was very drowsy, and that is a good sign. I think we may have the
+best hopes of the result of the operation."
+
+Henry walked restlessly to and fro. After Dr. Heidenhoff had regarded him
+a few moments, he said--
+
+"You are nervous, sir. There is quite a time to wait, and it is better to
+remain as calm as possible, for, in the event of an unsatisfactory
+result, your friend will need soothing, and you will scarcely be equal to
+that if you are yourself excited. I have some very fair cigars here. Do
+me the honour to try one. I prescribe it medicinally. Your nerves need
+quieting;" and he extended his cigar-case to the young man.
+
+As Henry with a nod of acknowledgment took a cigar and lit it, and
+resumed his striding to and fro, the doctor, who had seated himself
+comfortably, began to talk, apparently with the kindly intent of
+diverting the other's mind.
+
+"There are a number of applications of the process I hope to make, which
+will be rather amusing experiments. Take, for instance, the case of a
+person who has committed a murder, come to me, and forgotten all about
+it. Suppose he is subsequently arrested, and the fact ascertained that
+while he undoubtedly committed the crime, he cannot possibly recall his
+guilt, and so far as his conscience is concerned, is as innocent as a
+new-born babe, what then? What do you think the authorities would do?"
+
+"I think," said Henry, "that they would be very much puzzled what to do."
+
+"Exactly," said the doctor; "I think so too. Such a case would bring out
+clearly the utter confusion and contradiction in which the current
+theories of ethics and moral responsibility are involved. It is time the
+world was waked up on that subject. I should hugely enjoy precipitating
+such a problem on the community. I'm hoping every day a murderer will
+come in and require my services.
+
+"There is another sort of case which I should also like to have," he
+continued; shifting his cigar to the other side of his mouth, and
+uncrossing and recrossing his knees. "Suppose a man has dons another a
+great wrong, and, being troubled by remorse, comes to me and has the
+sponge of oblivion passed over that item in his memory. Suppose the man
+he has wronged, pursuing him with a heart full of vengeance, gets him at
+last in his power, but at the same time finds out that he has forgotten,
+and can't be made to remember, the act he desires to punish him for."
+
+"It would be very vexatious," said Henry..
+
+"Wouldn't it, though? I can imagine the pursuer, the avenger, if a really
+virulent fellow, actually weeping tears of despite as he stands before
+his victim and marks the utter unconsciousness of any offence with which
+his eyes meet his own. Such a look would blunt the very stiletto of a
+Corsican. What sweetness would there be in vengeance if the avenger, as
+he plunged the dagger in his victim's bosom, might not hiss in his ear,
+'Remember!' As well find satisfaction in torturing an idiot or mutilating
+a corpse. I am not talking now of brutish fellows, who would kick a stock
+or stone which they stumbled over, but of men intelligent enough to
+understand what vengeance is."
+
+"But don't you fancy the avenger, in the case you supposed, would retain
+some bitterness towards his enemy, even though he had forgotten the
+offence?"
+
+"I fancy he would always feel a certain cold dislike and aversion for
+him," replied the doctor--"an aversion such as one has for an object
+or an animal associated with some painful experience; but any active
+animosity would be a moral impossibility, if he were quite certain that
+there was absolutely no guilty consciousness on the other's part.
+
+"But scarcely any application of the process gives me so much pleasure to
+dream about as its use to make forgiving possible, full, free, perfect,
+joyous forgiving, in cases where otherwise, however good our intentions,
+it is impossible, simply because we cannot forget. Because they cannot
+forget, friends must part from friends who have wronged them, even though
+they do from their hearts wish them well. But they must leave them, for
+they cannot bear to look in their eyes and be reminded every time of
+some bitter thing. To all such what good tidings will it be to learn of
+my process!
+
+"Why, when the world gets to understand about it I expect that two men or
+two women, or a man and a woman, will come in here, and say to me, 'We
+have quarrelled and outraged each other, we have injured our friend, our
+wife, our husband; we regret, we would forgive, but we cannot, because we
+remember. Put between us the atonement of forgetfulness, that we may love
+each other as of old,' and so joyous will be the tidings of forgiveness
+made easy and perfect, that none will be willing to waste even an hour in
+enmity. Raging foes in the heat of their first wrath will bethink
+themselves ere they smite, and come to me for a more perfect satisfaction
+of their feud than any vengeance could promise."
+
+Henry suddenly stopped in his restless pacing, stepped on tiptoe to the
+slightly opened door of the retiring room, and peered anxiously in. He
+thought he heard a slight stir. But no; she was still sleeping deeply,
+her position quite unchanged. He drew noiselessly back, and again almost
+closed the door.
+
+"I suppose," resumed the doctor, after a pause, "that I must prepare
+myself as soon as the process gets well enough known to attract attention
+to be roundly abused by the theologians and moralists. I mean, of course,
+the thicker-headed ones. They'll say I've got a machine for destroying
+conscience, and am sapping the foundations of society. I believe that is
+the phrase. The same class of people will maintain that it's wrong to
+cure the moral pain which results from a bad act who used to think it
+wrong to cure the physical diseases induced by vicious indulgence. But
+the outcry won't last long, for nobody will be long in seeing that the
+morality of the two kinds of cures is precisely the same, If one is
+wrong, the other is. If there is something holy and God-ordained in the
+painful consequences of sin, it is as wrong to meddle with those
+consequences when they are physical as when they are mental. The alleged
+reformatory effect of such suffering is as great in one case as the
+other. But, bless you, nobody nowadays holds that a doctor ought to
+refuse to set a leg which its owner broke when drunk or fighting, so that
+the man may limp through life as a warning to himself and others.
+
+"I know some foggy-minded people hold in a vague way that the working of
+moral retribution is somehow more intelligent, just, and equitable than
+the working of physical retribution. They have a nebulous notion that the
+law of moral retribution is in some peculiar way God's law, while the law
+of physical retribution is the law of what they call nature, somehow not
+quite so much God's law as the other is. Such an absurdity only requires
+to be stated to be exposed. The law of moral retribution is precisely as
+blind, deaf, and meaningless, and entitled to be respected just as
+little, as the law of physical retribution. Why, sir, of the two, the
+much-abused law of physical retribution is decidedly more moral, in the
+sense of obvious fairness, than the so-called law of moral retribution
+itself. For, while the hardened offender virtually escapes all pangs of
+conscience, he can't escape the diseases and accidents which attend vice
+and violence. The whole working of moral retribution, on the contrary, is
+to torture the sensitive-souled, who would never do much harm any way,
+while the really hard cases of society, by their very hardness, avoid all
+suffering. And then, again, see how merciful and reformatory is the
+working of physical retribution compared with the pitilessness of the
+moral retribution of memory. A man gets over his accident or disease and
+is healthy again, having learned his lesson with the renewed health that
+alone makes it of any value to have had that lesson. But shame and sorrow
+for sin and disgrace go on for ever increasing in intensity, in
+proportion as they purify the soul. Their worm dieth not, and their fire
+is not quenched. The deeper the repentance, the more intense the longing
+and love for better things, the more poignant the pang of regret and the
+sense of irreparable loss. There is no sense, no end, no use, in this law
+which increases the severity of the punishment as the victim grows in
+innocency.
+
+"Ah, sir," exclaimed the doctor, rising and laying his hand caressingly
+on the battery, while a triumphant exultation shone in his eyes, "you
+have no idea of the glorious satisfaction I take in crushing, destroying,
+annihilating these black devils of evil memories that feed on hearts. It
+is a triumph like a god's.
+
+"But oh, the pity of it, the pity of it!" he added, sadly, as his hand
+fell by his side, "that this so simple discovery has come so late in the
+world's history! Think of the infinite multitude of lives it would have
+redeemed from the desperation of hopelessness, or the lifelong shadow of
+paralysing grief to all manner of sweet, good, and joyous uses!"
+
+Henry opened the door slightly, and looked into the retiring-room.
+Madeline was lying perfectly motionless, as he had seen her before. She
+had not apparently moved a muscle. With a sudden fear at his heart, he
+softly entered, and on tiptoe crossed the room and stood over her. The
+momentary fear was baseless. Her bosom rose and fell with long, full
+breathing, the faint flush of healthy sleep tinged her cheek, and the
+lips were relaxed in a smile. It was impossible not to feel, seeing her
+slumbering so peacefully, that the marvellous change had been indeed
+wrought, and the cruel demons of memory that had so often lurked behind
+the low, white forehead were at last no more.
+
+When he returned to the office, Dr. Heidenhoff had seated himself, and
+was contemplatively smoking.
+
+"She was sleeping, I presume," he said.
+
+"Soundly," replied Henry.
+
+"That is well. I have the best of hopes. She is young. That is a
+favourable element in an operation of this sort."
+
+Henry said nothing, and there was a considerable silence. Finally the
+doctor observed, with the air of a man who thinks it just as well to
+spend the time talking--
+
+"I am fond of speculating what sort of a world, morally speaking, we
+should have if there were no memory. One thing is clear, we should have
+no such very wicked people as we have now. There would, of course, be
+congenitally good and bad dispositions, but a bad disposition would not
+grow worse and worse as it does now, and without this progressive badness
+the depths of depravity are never attained."
+
+"Why do you think that?"
+
+"Because it is the memory of our past sins which demoralizes as, by
+imparting a sense of weakness and causing loss of self-respect. Take the
+memory away, and a bad act would leave us no worse in character than we
+were before its commission, and not a whit more likely to repeat it than
+we were to commit it the first time."
+
+"But surely our good or bad acts impress our own characters for good or
+evil, and give an increased tendency one way or the other."
+
+"Excuse me, my dear sir. Acts merely express the character. The
+recollection of those acts is what impresses the character, and gives it
+a tendency in a particular direction. And that is why I say, if memory
+were abolished, constitutionally bad people would remain at their
+original and normal degree of badness, instead of going from bad to
+worse, as they always have done hitherto in the history of mankind.
+Memory is the principle of moral degeneration. Remembered sin is the most
+utterly diabolical influence in the universe. It invariably either
+debauches or martyrizes men and women, accordingly as it renders them
+desperate and hardened, or makes them a prey to undying grief and
+self-contempt. When I consider that more sin is the only anodyne for sin,
+and that the only way to cure the ache of conscience is to harden it, I
+marvel that even so many as do essay the bitter and hopeless way of
+repentance and reform. In the main, the pangs of conscience, so much
+vaunted by some, do most certainly drive ten deeper into sin where they
+bring one back to virtue."
+
+"But," remarked Henry, "suppose there were no memory, and men did forget
+their acts, they would remain just as responsible for them as now."
+
+"Precisely; that is, not at all," replied the doctor.
+
+"You. don't mean to say there is no such thing as responsibility, no such
+thing as justice. Oh, I see, you deny free will. You are a
+necessitarian."
+
+The doctor waved his hand rather contemptuously.
+
+"I know nothing about your theological distinctions; I am a doctor. I say
+that there is no such thing as moral responsibility for past acts, no
+such thing as real justice in punishing them, for the reason that human
+beings are not stationary existences, but changing, growing, incessantly
+progressive organisms, which in no two moments are the same. Therefore
+justice, whose only possible mode of proceeding is to punish in present
+time for what is done in past time, must always punish a person more or
+less similar to, but never identical with, the one who committed the
+offence, and therein must be no justice.
+
+"Why, sir, it is no theory of mine, but the testimony of universal
+consciousness, if you interrogate it aright, that the difference between
+the past and present selves of the same individual is so great as to make
+them different persons for all moral purposes. That single fact we were
+just speaking of--the fact that no man would care for vengeance on one
+who had injured him, provided he knew that all memory of the offence had
+been blotted utterly from his enemy's mind--proves the entire
+proposition. It shows that it is not the present self of his enemy that
+the avenger is angry with at all, but the past self. Even in the
+blindness of his wrath he intuitively recognizes the distinction between
+the two. He only hates the present man, and seeks vengeance on him in so
+far as he thinks that he exults in remembering the injury his past self
+did, or, if he does not exult, that he insults and humiliates him by the
+bare fact of remembering it. That is the continuing offence which alone
+keeps alive the avenger's wrath against him. His fault is not that he did
+the injury, for _he_ did not do it, but that he remembers it.
+
+"It is the first principle of justice, isn't it, that nobody ought to be
+punished for what he can't help? Can the man of to-day prevent or affect
+what he did yesterday, let me say, rather, what the man did out of whom
+he has grown--has grown, I repeat, by a physical process which he could
+not check save by suicide. As well punish him for Adam's sin, for he
+might as easily have prevented that, and is every whit as accountable for
+it. You pity the child born, without his choice, of depraved parents.
+Pity the man himself, the man of today who, by a process as inevitable as
+the child's birth, has grown on the rotten stock of yesterday. Think you,
+that it is not sometimes with a sense of loathing and horror unutterable,
+that he feels his fresh life thus inexorably knitting itself on, growing
+on, to that old stem? For, mind you well, the consciousness of the man
+exists alone in the present day and moment. There alone he lives. That is
+himself. The former days are his dead, for whose sins, in which he had no
+part, which perchance by his choice never would have been done, he is
+held to answer and do penance. And you thought, young man, that there was
+such a thing as justice !"
+
+"I can see," said Henry, after a pause, "that when half a lifetime has
+intervened between a crime and its punishment, and the man has reformed,
+there is a certain lack of identity. I have always thought punishments in
+such cases very barbarous. I know that I should think it hard to answer
+for what I may have done as a boy, twenty years ago.
+
+"Yes," said the doctor, "flagrant cases of that sort take the general
+eye, and people say that they are instances of retribution rather than
+justice. The unlikeness between the extremes of life, as between the babe
+and the man, the lad and the dotard, strikes every mind, and all admit
+that there is not any apparent identity between these widely parted
+points in the progress of a human organism. How then? How soon does
+identity begin to decay, and when is it gone--in one year, five years,
+ten years, twenty years, or how many? Shall we fix fifty years as the
+period of a moral statute of limitation, after which punishment shall be
+deemed barbarous? No, no. The gulf between the man of this instant and
+the man of the last is just as impassable as that between the baby and
+the man. What is past is eternally past. So far as the essence of justice
+is concerned, there is no difference between one of the cases of
+punishment which you called barbarous, and one in which the penalty
+follows the offence within the hour. There is no way of joining the past
+with the present, and there is no difference between what is a moment
+past and what is eternally past."
+
+"Then the assassin as he withdraws the stiletto from his victim's breast
+is not the same man who plunged it in."
+
+"Obviously not," replied the doctor. "He may be exulting in the deed, or,
+more likely, he may be in a reaction of regret. He may be worse, he may
+be better. His being better or worse makes it neither more nor less just
+to punish him, though it may make it more or less expedient. Justice
+demands identity; similarity, however close, will not answer. Though a
+mother could not tell her twin sons apart, it would not make it any more
+just to punish one for the other's sins."
+
+"Then you don't believe in the punishment of crime?" said Henry.
+
+"Most emphatically I do," replied the doctor; "only I don't believe in
+calling it justice or ascribing it a moral significance. The punishment
+of criminals is a matter of public policy and expediency, precisely like
+measures for the suppression of nuisances or the prevention of epidemics.
+It is needful to restrain those who by crime have revealed their
+likelihood to commit further crimes, and to furnish by their punishment a
+motive to deter others from crime."
+
+"And to deter the criminal himself after his release," added Henry.
+
+"I included him in the word 'others,'" said the doctor. "The man who is
+punished is other from the man who did the act, and after punishment he
+is still other."
+
+"Really, doctor," observed Henry, "I don't see that a man who fully
+believes your theory is in any need of your process for obliterating his
+sins. He won't think of blaming himself for them any way."
+
+"True," said the doctor, "perfectly true. My process is for those who
+cannot attain to my philosophy. I break for the weak the chain of memory
+which holds them to the past; but stronger souls are independent of me.
+They can unloose the iron links and free themselves. Would that more had
+the needful wisdom and strength thus serenely to put their past behind
+them, leaving the dead to bury their dead, and go blithely forward,
+taking each new day as a life by itself, and reckoning themselves daily
+new-born, even as verily they are! Physically, mentally, indeed, the
+present must be for ever the outgrowth of the past, conform to its
+conditions, bear its burdens; but moral responsibility for the past the
+present has none, and by the very definition of the words can have none.
+There is no need to tell people that they ought to regret and grieve over
+the errors of the past. They can't help doing that. I myself suffer at
+times pretty sharply from twinges of the rheumatism which I owe to
+youthful dissipation. It would be absurd enough for me, a quiet old
+fellow of sixty, to take blame to myself for what the wild student did,
+but, all the same, I confoundedly wish he hadn't.
+
+"Ah, me!" continued the doctor. "Is there not sorrow and wrong enough in
+the present world without having moralists teach us that it is our duty
+to perpetuate all our past sins and shames in the multiplying mirror of
+memory, as if, forsooth, we were any more the causers of the sins of our
+past selves than of our fathers' sins. How many a man and woman have
+poisoned their lives with tears for some one sin far away in the past!
+Their folly is greater, because sadder, but otherwise just like that of
+one who should devote his life to a mood of fatuous and imbecile
+self-complacency over the recollection of a good act he had once done.
+The consequences of the good and the bad deeds our fathers and we have
+done fall on our heads in showers, now refreshing, now scorching, of
+rewards and of penalties alike undeserved by our present selves. But,
+while we bear them with such equanimity as we may, let us remember that
+as it is only fools who flatter themselves on their past virtues, so it
+is only a sadder sort of fools who plague themselves for their past
+faults."
+
+Henry's quick ear caught a rustle in the retiring-room. He stepped to the
+door and looked in. Madeline was sitting up.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Her attitude was peculiar. Her feet were on the floor, her left hand
+rested on the sofa by her side, her right was raised to one temple and
+checked in the very act of pushing back a heavy braid of hair which had
+been disarranged in sleep. Her eyebrows were slightly contracted, and she
+was staring at the carpet. So concentrated did her faculties appear to be
+in the effort of reflection that she did not notice Henry's entrance
+until, standing by her aide, he asked, in a voice which he vainly tried
+to steady--
+
+"How do you feel ?"
+
+She did not look up at him at all, but replied, in the dreamy, drawling
+tone of one in a brown study--
+
+"I--feel--well. I'm--ever--so--rested."
+
+"Did you just wake up?" he said, after a moment. He did not know what to
+say.
+
+She now glanced up at him, but with an expression of only partial
+attention, as if still retaining a hold on the clue of her thoughts.
+
+"I've been awake some time trying to think it out," she said.
+
+"Think out what?" he asked, with a feeble affectation of ignorance. He
+was entirely at loss what course to take with her.
+
+"Why, what it was that we came here to have me forget," she said,
+sharply. "You needn't think the doctor made quite a fool of me. It was
+something like hewing, harring, Howard. It was something that began with
+'H,' I'm quite sure. 'H,'" she continued, thoughtfully, pressing her hand
+on the braid she was yet in the act of pushing back from her forehead.
+"'H,'--or maybe--' K.' Tell me, Henry. You must know, of course."
+
+"Why--why," he stammered in consternation. "If you came here to forget
+it, what's the use of telling you, now you've forgotten it, that is--I
+mean, supposing there was anything to forget."
+
+"I haven't forgotten it," she declared. "The process has been a failure
+anyhow. It's just puzzled me for a minute. You might as well tell me.
+Why, I've almost got it now. I shall remember it in a minute," and she
+looked up at him as if she were on the point of being vexed with his
+obstinacy. The doctor coming into the room at this moment, Henry turned
+to him in his perplexity, and said--
+
+"Doctor, she wants to know what it was you tried to make her forget."
+
+"What would you say if I told you it was an old love affair?" replied the
+doctor, coolly.
+
+"I should say that you were rather impertinent," answered Madeline,
+looking at him somewhat haughtily.
+
+"I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon, my dear. You do well to resent it,
+but I trust you will not be vexed with an old gentleman," replied the
+doctor, beaming on her from under his bushy eyebrows with an expression
+of gloating benevolence.
+
+"I suppose, doctor, you were only trying to plague me so as to confuse
+me," she said, smiling. "But you can't do it. I shall remember presently.
+It began with 'H'--I am almost sure of that. Let's see--Harrington,
+Harvard. That's like it."
+
+"Harrison Cordis, perhaps," suggested the doctor, gravely.
+
+"Harrison Cordis? Harrison? Harrison?" she repeated, contracting her
+eyebrows thoughtfully; "no, it was more like Harvard. I don't want any
+more of your suggestions. You'd like to get me off the track."
+
+The doctor left the room, laughing, and Henry said to her, his heart
+swelling with an exultation which made his voice husky, "Come, dear, we
+had better go now: the train leaves at four."
+
+"I'll remember yet," she said, smiling at him with a saucy toss of the
+head. He put out his arms and she came into them, and their lips met in a
+kiss, happy and loving on her part, and fraught with no special feeling,
+but the lips which hers touched were tremulous. Slightly surprised at his
+agitation, she leaned back in his clasp, and, resting her glorious black
+eyes on his, said--
+
+"How you love me, dear!"
+
+Oh, the bright, sweet light in her eyes! the light he had not seen since
+she was a girl, and which had never shone for him before. As they were
+about to leave, the doctor drew him aside.
+
+"The most successful operation I ever made, sir," he said,
+enthusiastically. "I saw you were startled that I should tell her so
+frankly what she had forgotten. You need not have been so. That memory is
+absolutely gone, and cannot be restored. She might conclude that what she
+had forgotten was anything else in the world except what if really was.
+You may always allude with perfect safety before her to the real facts,
+the only risk being that, if she doesn't think you are making a bad joke,
+she will be afraid that you are losing your mind."
+
+All the way home Madeline was full of guesses and speculation as to what
+it had been which she had forgotten, finally, however, settling down to
+the conclusion that it had something to do with Harvard College, and
+when Henry refused to deny explicitly that such was the case, she was
+quite sure. She announced that she was going to get a lot of old
+catalogues and read over the names, and also visit the college to see if
+she could not revive the recollection. But, upon his solemnly urging her
+not to do so, lest she might find her associations with that institution
+not altogether agreeable if revived, she consented to give up the plan.
+
+"Although, do you know," she said, "there is nothing in the world which I
+should like to find out so much as what it was we went to Dr. Heidenhoff
+in order to make me forget. What do you look so sober for? Wouldn't I.
+really be glad if I could?"
+
+"It's really nothing of any consequence," he said, pretending to be
+momentarily absorbed in opening his penknife.
+
+"Supposing it isn't, it's just as vexatious not to remember it," she
+declared.
+
+"How did you like Dr. Heidenhoff?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I presume he's a good enough doctor, but I thought that joke about
+an affair of the heart wasn't at all nice. Men are so coarse."
+
+"Oh, he meant no harm," said Henry, hastily.
+
+"I suppose he just tried to say the absurdest thing he could think of to
+put me off the track and make me laugh. I'm sure I felt more like boxing
+his ears. I saw you didn't like it either, sir."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Oh, you needn't think I didn't notice the start you gave when he spoke,
+and the angry way you looked at him. You may pretend all you want to, but
+you can't cheat me. You'd be the very one to make an absurd fuss if you
+thought I had even so much as looked at anybody else." And then she burst
+out laughing at the red and pale confusion of his face. "Why, you're the
+very picture of jealousy at the very mention of the thing. Dear me, what
+a tyrant you are going to be! I was going to confess a lot of my old
+flirtations to you, but now I sha'n't dare to. O Henry, how funny my face
+feels when I laugh, so stiff, as if the muscles were all rusty! I should
+think I hadn't laughed for a year by the feeling."
+
+He scarcely dared leave her when they reached her lodgings, for fear that
+she might get to thinking and puzzling over the matter, and, possibly, at
+length might hit upon a clue which, followed up, would lead her back to
+the grave so recently covered over in her life, and turn her raving mad
+with the horror of the discovery. As soon as he possibly could, he almost
+ran back to her lodgings in a panic. She had evidently been thinking
+matters over.
+
+"How came we here in Boston together, Henry? I don't seem to quite
+understand why I came. I remember you came after me?"
+
+"Yes, I came after you."
+
+"What was the matter? Was I sick?"
+
+"Very sick."
+
+"Out of my head?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's the reason you took me to the doctor, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But why isn't mother here with me?"
+
+"You--you didn't seem to want her," answered Henry, a cold sweat covering
+his face under this terrible inquisition.
+
+"Yes," said she, slowly, "I do remember your proposing she should come
+and my not wanting her. I can't imagine why. I must have been out of my
+head, as you say. Henry," she continued, regarding him with eyes of
+sudden softness, "you must have been very good to me. Dr. Heidenhoff
+could never make me forget that."
+
+The next day her mother came. Henry met her at the station and explained
+everything to her, so that she met Madeline already prepared for the
+transformation, that is, as much prepared as the poor woman could be. The
+idea was evidently more than she could take in. In the days that followed
+she went about with a dazed expression on her face, and said very little.
+When she looked at Henry, it was with a piteous mingling of gratitude and
+appeal. She appeared to regard Madeline with a bewilderment that
+increased rather than decreased from day to day. Instead of becoming
+familiar with the transformation, the wonder of it evidently grew on her.
+The girl's old, buoyant spirits, which had returned in full flow, seemed
+to shock and pain her mother with a sense of incongruity she could not
+get over. When Madeline treated her lover to an exhibition of her old
+imperious tyrannical ways, which to see again was to him sweeter than the
+return of day, her mother appeared frightened, and would try feebly to
+check her, and address little deprecating remarks to Henry that were very
+sad to hear. One evening, when he came in in the twilight, he saw
+Madeline sitting with "her baby," as she had again taken to calling her
+mother, in her arms, rocking and soothing her, while the old lady was
+drying and sobbing on her daughter's bosom.
+
+"She mopes, poor little mother!" said Madeline to Henry. "I can't think
+what's the matter with her. We'll take her off with us on our wedding
+trip. She needs a little change."
+
+"Dear me, no, that will never do," protested the little woman, with her
+usual half-frightened look at Henry. "Mr. Burr wouldn't think that nice
+at all."
+
+"I mean that Mr. Burr shall be too much occupied in thinking how nice I
+am to do any other thinking," said Madeline.
+
+"That's like the dress you wore to the picnic at Hemlock Hollow," said
+Henry.
+
+"Why, no, it isn't either. It only looks a little like it. It's light,
+and cut the same way; that's all the resemblance; but of course a man
+couldn't be expected to know any better."
+
+"It's exactly like it," maintained Henry.
+
+"What'll you bet?"
+
+"I'll bet the prettiest pair of bracelets I can find in the city."
+
+"Betting is wicked," said Madeline, "and so I suppose it's my duty to
+take this bet just to discourage you from betting any more. Being engaged
+makes a girl responsible for a young man's moral culture."
+
+She left the room, and returned in a few moments with the veritable
+picnic dress on.
+
+"There!" she said, as she stepped before the mirror.
+
+"Ah, that's it, that's it! I give in," he exclaimed, regarding her
+ecstatically. "How pretty you were that day! I'd never seen you so pretty
+before. Do you remember that was the day I kissed you first? I should
+never have dared to. I just had to--I couldn't help it."
+
+"So I believe you said at the time," observed Madeline, dryly. "It does
+make me not so bad," she admitted, inspecting herself with a critical
+air. "I really don't believe you could help it. I ought not to have been
+so hard on you, poor boy. There! there! I didn't mean that. Don't! Here
+comes mother."
+
+Mrs. Brand entered the room, bringing a huge pasteboard box.
+
+"Oh, she's got my wedding dress! Haven't you, mother?" exclaimed
+Madeline, pouncing on the box. "Henry, you might as well go right home. I
+can't pay any more attention to you to-night. There's more important
+business."
+
+"But I want to see you with it on," he demurred.
+
+"You do?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very much?"
+
+"The worst kind."
+
+"Well, then, you sit down and wait here by yourself for about an hour,
+and maybe you shall;" and the women were off upstairs.
+
+At length there was a rustling on the stairway, and she re-entered the
+room, all sheeny white in lustrous satin. Behind the gauzy veil that fell
+from the coronal of dark brown hair adown the shoulders her face shone
+with a look he had never seen in it. It was no longer the mirthful,
+self-reliant girl who stood before him, but the shrinking, trustful
+bride. The flashing, imperious expression that so well became her bold
+beauty at other times had given place to a shy and blushing softness,
+inexpressibly charming to her lover. In her shining eyes a host of
+virginal alarms were mingled with the tender, solemn trust of love.
+
+As he gazed, his eyes began to swim with tenderness, and her face grew
+dim and misty to his vision. Then her white dress lost its sheen and
+form, and he found himself staring at the white window-shade of his
+bedroom, through which the morning light was peering. Startled,
+bewildered, he raised himself on his elbow in bed. Yes, he was in bed. He
+looked around, mechanically taking note of one and another familiar
+feature of the apartment to make sure of his condition. There, on the
+stand by his bedside, lay his open watch, still ticking, and indicating
+his customary hour of rising. There, turned on its face, lay that dry
+book on electricity he had been reading himself to sleep with. And there,
+on the bureau, was the white paper that bad contained the morphine
+sleeping powder which he took before going to bed. That was what had made
+him dream. For some of it must have been a dream! But how much of it was
+a dream? Re must think. That was a dream certainly about her wedding
+dress. Yes, and perhaps--yes, surely--that must be a dream about her
+mother's being in Boston. He could not remember writing Mrs. Brand since
+Madeline had been to Dr. Heidenhoff. He put his hand to his forehead,
+then raised his head and looked around the room with an appealing stare.
+Great God! why, that was a dream too! The last waves of sleep ebbed from
+his brain and to his aroused consciousness the clear, hard lines of
+reality dissevered themselves sharply from the vague contours of
+dreamland. Yes, it was all a dream. He remembered how it all was now. He
+had not seen Madeline since the evening before, when he had proposed
+their speedy marriage, and she had called him back in that strange way to
+kiss her. What a dream! That sleeping powder had done it--that, and the
+book on electricity, and that talk on mental physiology which he had
+overheard in the car the afternoon before. These rude materials, as
+unpromising as the shapeless bits of glass which the kaleidoscope turns
+into schemes of symmetrical beauty, were the stuff his dream was made of.
+
+It was a strange dream indeed, such an one as a man has once or twice in
+a lifetime. As he tried to recall it, already it was fading from his
+remembrance. That kiss Madeline had called him back to give him the night
+before; that had been strange enough to have been a part also of the
+dream. What sweetness, what sadness, were in the touch of her lips. Ah!
+when she was once his wife, he could contend at better advantage with her
+depression of spirits, He would hasten their marriage. If possible, it
+should take place that very week.
+
+There was a knock at the door. The house-boy entered, gave him a note,
+and went out. It was in Madeline's hand, and dated the preceding evening.
+It read as follows:--
+
+"You have but just gone away. I was afraid when I kissed you that you
+would guess what I was going to do, and make a scene about it, and oh,
+dear! I am so tired that I couldn't bear a scene. But you didn't think.
+You took the kiss for a promise of what I was to be to you, when it only
+meant what I might have been. Poor, dear boy! it was just a little stupid
+of you not to guess. Did you suppose I would really marry you? Did you
+really think I would let you pick up from the gutter a soiled rose to put
+in your bosom when all the fields are full of fresh daisies? Oh, I love
+you too well for that! Yes, dear, I love you. I've kept the secret pretty
+well, haven't I? You see, loving you has made me more careful of your
+honour than when in my first recklessness I said I would marry you in
+spite of all. But don't think, dear, because I love you that it is a
+sacrifice I make in not being your wife. I do truly love you, but I could
+not be happy with you, for my happiness would be shame to the end. It
+would be always with us as in the dismal weeks that now are over. The way
+I love you is not the way I loved him, but it is a better way. I thought
+perhaps you would like to know that you alone have any right to kiss my
+lips in dreams. I speak plainly of things we never spoke of, for you know
+people talk freely when night hides their faces from each other, and how
+much more if they know that no morning shall ever come to make them
+shamefaced again! A certain cold white hand will have wiped away the
+flush of shame for ever from my face when you look on it again, for I go
+this night to that elder and greater redeemer whose name is death. Don't
+blame me, dear, and say I was not called away. Is it only when death
+touches our bodies that we are called? Oh, I am called, I am called,
+indeed!
+
+"MADELINE."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Dr. Heidenhoff's Process, by Edward Bellamy
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS ***
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+This file should be named heidn10.txt or heidn10.zip
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