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Page 31
Latimer stopped and took a step back as though some one had struck
him, and then stood silent with his face flushed and his eyes
flashing. It was not in answer to anything that they said that he
spoke, but to their attitude and what it suggested. "You stand there,"
he began, "you two stand there as though I were something unclean, as
though I had committed some crime. You look at me as though I were on
trial for murder or worse. Both of you together against me. What have
I done? What difference is there? You loved me a half-hour ago, Ellen;
you said you did. I know you loved me; and you, sir," he added, more
quietly, "treated me like a friend. Has anything come since then to
change me or you? Be fair to me, be sensible. What is the use of this?
It is a silly, needless, horrible mistake. You know I love you, Ellen;
love you better than all the world. I don't have to tell you that; you
know it, you can see and feel it. It does not need to be said; words
can't make it any truer. You have confused yourselves and stultified
yourselves with this trick, this test by hypothetical conditions, by
considering what is not real or possible. It is simple enough; it is
plain enough. You know I love you, Ellen, and you only, and that is
all there is to it, and all that there is of any consequence in the
world to me. The matter stops there; that is all there is for you to
consider. Answer me, Ellen, speak to me. Tell me that you believe me."
He stopped and moved a step toward her, but as he did so, the girl,
still without looking up, drew herself nearer to her father and shrank
more closely into his arms; but the father's face was troubled and
doubtful, and he regarded the younger man with a look of the most
anxious scrutiny. Latimer did not regard this. Their hands were raised
against him as far as he could understand, and he broke forth again
proudly, and with a defiant indignation:
"What right have you to judge me?" he began; "what do you know of what
I have suffered, and endured, and overcome? How can you know what I
have had to give up and put away from me? It's easy enough for you to
draw your skirts around you, but what can a woman bred as you have
been bred know of what I've had to fight against and keep under and
cut away? It was an easy, beautiful idyl to you; your love came to you
only when it should have come, and for a man who was good and worthy,
and distinctly eligible--I don't mean that; forgive me, Ellen, but you
drive me beside myself. But he is good and he believes himself worthy,
and I say that myself before you both. But I am only worthy and only
good because of that other love that I put away when it became a
crime, when it became impossible. Do you know what it cost me? Do you
know what it meant to me, and what I went through, and how I suffered?
Do you know who this other woman is whom you are insulting with your
doubts and guesses in the dark? Can't you spare her? Am I not enough?
Perhaps it was easy for her, too; perhaps her silence cost her
nothing; perhaps she did not suffer and has nothing but happiness and
content to look forward to for the rest of her life; and I tell you
that it is because we did put it away, and kill it, and not give way
to it that I am whatever I am to-day; whatever good there is in me is
due to that temptation and to the fact that I beat it and overcame it
and kept myself honest and clean. And when I met you and learned to
know you I believed in my heart that God had sent you to me that I
might know what it was to love a woman whom I could marry and who
could be my wife; that you were the reward for my having overcome
temptation and the sign that I had done well. And now you throw me
over and put me aside as though I were something low and unworthy,
because of this temptation, because of this very thing that has made
me know myself and my own strength and that has kept me up for you."
As the young man had been speaking, the bishop's eyes had never left
his face, and as he finished, the face of the priest grew clearer and
decided, and calmly exultant. And as Latimer ceased he bent his head
above his daughter's, and said in a voice that seemed to speak with
more than human inspiration. "My child," he said, "if God had given me
a son I should have been proud if he could have spoken as this young
man has done."
But the woman only said, "Let him go to her."
"Ellen, oh, Ellen!" cried the father.
He drew back from the girl in his arms and looked anxiously and
feelingly at her lover. "How could you, Ellen," he said, "how could
you?" He was watching the young man's face with eyes full of sympathy
and concern. "How little you know him," he said, "how little you
understand. He will not do that," he added quickly, but looking
questioningly at Latimer and speaking in a tone almost of command. "He
will not undo all that he has done; I know him better than that." But
Latimer made no answer, and for a moment the two men stood watching
each other and questioning each other with their eyes. Then Latimer
turned, and without again so much as glancing at the girl walked
steadily to the door and left the room. He passed on slowly down the
stairs and out into the night, and paused upon the top of the steps
leading to the street. Below him lay the avenue with its double line
of lights stretching off in two long perspectives. The lamps of
hundreds of cabs and carriages flashed as they advanced toward him and
shone for a moment at the turnings of the cross-streets, and from
either side came the ceaseless rush and murmur, and over all hung the
strange mystery that covers a great city at night. Latimer's rooms lay
to the south, but he stood looking toward a spot to the north with a
reckless, harassed look in his face that had not been there for many
months. He stood so for a minute, and then gave a short shrug of
disgust at his momentary doubt and ran quickly down the steps. "No,"
he said, "if it were for a month, yes; but it is to be for many years,
many more long years." And turning his back resolutely to the north he
went slowly home.
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