Chapter V: A Director of Destinies

When Mary Elton was able to be out and about once more, she seemed to have undergone what she herself termed “a change of heart, from bad to worse.”

“A peep inside Death’s door would soften and chasten most people,” she told her bewildered uncle, “but on me it has had just the opposite effect. I suppose it’s because I made all my plans for a death-bed repentance, and now that the Devil is well, the devil a nun is she. I always did hate to have my calculations upset, and this recovery is too much of a surprise for an old maid to adjust herself to all of a sudden.”

But if the physical shock of a serious operation was hard to recover from, the mental torment caused by the recollection of her confession to Philip Morley was a thousand times more difficult to endure. She knew that the thought of it would poison her whole life. It had been hard enough before to bear the anguish of a kind of love known only to deep and undemonstrative natures, a love doomed to remain unrequited, but now added to biting sorrow was the sting of shame and humiliation that Philip should have heard from her own lips of her love for him.

“I might have known I shouldn’t die,” Mary berated herself fiercely. “The Fates have too much sense of humor to lose the joke of my recovery. Well, Destiny has beaten me again; but my will is not defeated, and though I can’t die, I shall at least go abroad. When bad Americans can’t die, they go to Paris. Uncle Charles shall take me if the eloquence of one risen from the bed can move him to action.”

On Edith Dudley’s return from the mountains she had gone directly to Mrs. Warner’s, feeling that her visit to the Eltons had better be shortened, in view of Mary’s unexpected illness. She came to see Mary every few days, and their friendship continued the same, although Mary detected a subtle change in Edith, the clue to which lay in the circumstance that Philip’s name had not once been mentioned between them.

Mary’s clear vision and quick mind had jumped to a conclusion which made even the most tactful interference seem an impertinence, and yet she felt that she held, in a way, the reins of her two friends’ destinies. She herself had seen Philip only in the most casual way, but she was not so utterly self-absorbed as to be blind to the difficulties and painfulness of his situation, which she interpreted thus: knowing, as he did, that she (Mary) was in love with him, he had determined not to persist in his courtship of her friend, who had already refused him. He was not so stupid as to greet Mary’s recovery with a proposal of marriage, but she knew him well enough to suspect the line of conduct he meant to pursue. Having accepted Edith’s refusal as final, he would, after she had left the house, resume his friendly visits to Mary, then slowly,--very slowly,--he would show her that not her declaration of love, but her own fine qualities, had magically touched his heart, transforming friendship into a more vital emotion.

And, after all, Mary asked herself, might not the result bring happiness to both? Once married to him, Mary would _make_ him love her, for he would know by the revelations of daily life the depth and strength of her affection. She knew that no one else could make the man of him that she would make. All the latent sweetness of her nature, all the buried wealths of tenderness and unselfishness would blossom under his hand. Each would be the best for each, and yet--he did not love her.

Mary’s qualities, good and bad, were vigorous. Capable of two extremes of conduct, she recognized the situation as demanding a great act of heroism, or an equally large act of selfishness. In the wakeful hours of many nights, her conflicting emotions met and fought bloody battles, till the final victory was won. Her irrevocable decision was made. She dispatched two notes, one to Edith Dudley, asking her to come and see her at four o’clock the next afternoon, the other to Philip Morley, summoning him half an hour later.

Mary never indulged in the tentative tactics known as beating about the bush. Edith and she had hardly exchanged greetings when Mary made a bold attack. “Edith Dudley, now that your old Dr. Fell is out of the way, should you accept Philip Morley, if he proposed again?”

Poor Edith looked vainly about for escape from the revolver of truth with which her friend was holding her up. The sight of her gave Mary a curiously complex emotion, in which scorn, admiration, pity, and wonder were blended. How was it possible that this beautiful, clever creature, who was neither good nor bad, and who was to all outside influences as the weathercock to the breeze, could yet subdue criticism to a blind acceptance of her with all her weakness and weaknesses, and her irresistible charm?

“If Philip Morley should ask me now, I should accept him,” she said, her luminous eyes shining like mirrors of truth. “But it will be better for him if he does not ask me again.” Then, with a passionate gesture unusual to her, “Mary, Mary, don’t desert me! Don’t go back on me ever,--whatever happens!” she cried earnestly. “Let me feel that you are always here, firm and sure, a rock for me to cling to,--poor helpless seaweed that I am,--when the waves get too strong for me. No one else has ever made me feel as you do--that perhaps I have a soul and a will somewhere. I am generally conscious only of being _nothing_; a Laodicean, from whom the power to feel hot and cold and love and hate have been squeezed out by early training. I should like to be the wife for Philip. Perhaps, if he is strong enough, he can make something out of me; or if he is weak enough, he may never find me out. But I think he is neither. He is simply human. He loves me a great deal. I feel it even when I am away from him, and I don’t with every one,” she naïvely added.

“I am quite aware of his affection,” Mary acquiesced grimly. “Let’s talk of something else,--me, for instance. One reason why I wanted you to come and see me this afternoon, is to tell you that I have at last succeeded in persuading Uncle Charles to take a holiday. He and I are going abroad next month, to be gone a year. Isn’t that splendid? You know how I’ve always wanted to see Paris and London, and this means Italy and Egypt added. Don’t you congratulate me?”

“Oh, Mary, I do, I do!” cried Edith, instantly radiant with sympathy. “And I congratulate Europe! Won’t you say nice, funny, original things about everything, and make the antiquities feel that they’ve never been appreciated before? And, oh Mary, how you’ll _hate_ the traveling Americans,--and the traveling English, and worst of all the traveling Germans!”

Her voice rose in a crescendo of amused horror. Philip was forgotten, she herself was forgotten,--she was living only in Mary’s prospective travels.

They talked for some time, till presently the door-bell rang, and Mary jumped up saying, “I don’t want to see any one,--I’ll just tell the maid,” and with that she slipped out of the room.

At the head of the stairs she met Philip Morley. He had not been in the house since the night before she went to the hospital, and for a moment the recollection of their talk that evening gripped them both by the throat. Then the girl recovered herself, and she smiled courageously. “Go in there. Tell her she’s _got_ to marry you,--don’t ask her whether she will or not,” she said rather incoherently, then turned and dashed upstairs, and Philip heard her chamber door slam after her.

Feeling as if he were a puppet to which Mary held the string, he obediently went into the room she had just quitted. Edith Dudley stood by the mantelpiece, lightly touching a bunch of pink and white roses in an iridescent vase--suggestive of herself as was everything delicately lovely and changing. To Philip her beauty was so overwhelming that even his love seemed a sacrilege, yet the rush of warm emotion which filled him at the sight of her--even if unreciprocated--was something for which a man would give all other bliss. She was dressed in gray, except for a touch of blended colors in her hat and at her throat,--her “trade-mark,” she called this opal touch in which her nature seemed to express itself. She was waiting for the intruder to be dismissed, and for Mary’s return, and a sunny smile warmed her face as the door opened and Philip entered. She was not disconcerted, but she instantly realized that she was the victim of a plot. “How do you do, Mr. Morley! This is just where we first met, isn’t it? Did Mary send for you, too, to tell you her great news? Where is she?”

“She went upstairs,” Philip said stupidly, still dazed by the part he was expected by Mary to play in the scene she had arranged.

Miss Dudley sat down and motioned to a sofa with her muff. “We are evidently expected to entertain each other,” she went on lightly, “and I’m going to punish Mary for her rudeness in deserting us, by telling you her secret. She’s going abroad with her uncle for a year.”

Philip’s handsome face was working with emotion like that of a girl. “It’s no use,” he burst out, hypnotized by her mere presence, and paying no attention to her words, “I didn’t mean to ask you again; I know it’s useless, you wonderful, beautiful creature,--you could marry any one in the whole world; but I’ve got to go away somewhere--anywhere--unless you can care a little for me. I’m too unspeakably wretched! You don’t know what it is,--this feeling I have about you. I didn’t know there were such feelings in the world, myself.” He saw her eyes looking towards him, softened with affection, and he jumped to his feet. He rushed to her, and grasped her hand. “Edith, you’ve _got_ to marry me!” he cried, the gentleman for once lost in the man. “You’ve _got_ to. I shan’t take no, again. I am mad with love for you, or I shouldn’t ask you this, here in this house. You don’t know what I’ve been through. I didn’t mean to do this again. I tried not to. It’s Mary’s fault. Edith, I love you with all there is in me of good or bad, and my love demands a return!” His gaze pierced her.

Her face cleared into an expression of exquisite happiness. Oh, the peace of being told to do something so easy! She showed no instinct of the flirt, who likes to torture her prey. With childlike confidence she gave him both her hands, and her eyes spoke as eloquently as her lips. “Philip, I will love you. I will be to you as good a wife as I can be, if you are _sure, sure_ you want me. There were reasons why I could not say yes, the last time you asked me. Now I _can_ say it, indeed I _must_ say it.”

Philip was too dazed with surprise and joy to do anything but foolishly kiss her hands. In a moment he burst out, “It’s no use. I can’t believe it. Tell me again. Are we really to be always together, you and I, after a little while?”

“Oh, I hope not always,” the girl expostulated. “Married people who never get away from each other grow frightfully uninteresting. Listen, Philip,” and she laid a shy finger against his mouth. “This is all Mary’s doing. If we are unhappy it will be her fault. If we are happy it is her we must thank. She made this match.”

“God bless her!” cried Philip fervently, but with a spasm of pain crossing his bliss.

Then a sudden seriousness clouded Edith’s sunshine also. “Philip, I want to tell you something. You won’t believe me, but I shall tell you just the same. _I am nothing_, do you understand? The reason people like me--when they do--is because most people like themselves, and I am rather a flattering mirror, that is all.”

“Then I must be an arch-egotist,” Philip interrupted her.

“You are. Your affection for me proves the extent of your self-love.” She spoke with surprising gravity. “You see, Philip, I was brought up to seem, not to be, and my education was extraordinarily successful. I lost my life in childhood.”

The young man threw back his boyish head and laughed. “Yes, you look as if you were not alive!” he cried. “You, whose every nerve and fibre are instinct with life. You are the epitome of sensation. You respond to every slightest emotion, to every touch of feeling. I would believe anything else you tell me, but not that you are unfeeling and dull of sensation. You are anything but a Belle Dame Sans Merci.”

“Not sans merci alone,” she said sadly, “but sans _every_thing, like Shakespeare’s old man. I have warned you, you see. I have strength enough for that, because I know in my heart that it will make no difference to you, as you won’t believe me; but I haven’t the strength to refuse you, Philip. I will marry you as soon as you want.”

Her personal charm surrounded him like a vapor, and obscured all else. Like two happy children they sat side by side, making plans for the future. All that she stipulated was, that she should be married from her stepmother’s house in Kentucky, and that she should have time to get a few clothes.

“Please always have the rainbow motif in all your dresses,” Philip said, pointing to the opal hues at her neck. “It matches your temperament. I remember when I first saw you here in that wonderful, changing, pinky-grayish-heliotrope, crapy thing. You seemed to me like a woman that Hawthorne would have rejoiced in describing, with your dress the symbol of your nature. Then there is one more thing, dear, I want to ask. Will you let me give you an opal for an engagement ring? It is what I should like best, if you are not superstitious. It is my favorite stone, and I think you said it was yours. You are _my_ opal, you know, and I should like you to have one, beautiful as yourself, with a heart of fire.”

She laughed gayly. “Philip, you are waxing poetic! Of course I’m not superstitious. We defy augury. I will have nothing but an opal. It is alive, though it is not as permanent as I should like the symbol of our love to be. Philip,” she said, a trembling wistfulness in her voice, “you know opals crumble and fall to pieces, and there is no mending them,--they just disappear, and their beauty is gone. Are you sure you want _your_ opal for better or worse?”

“I am quite sure,” he said decisively. “And your opal shall be set in diamonds, to keep it from crumbling and guard its beauty.”

“And so shall yours, Philip, for when I am married to you your opal will be truly set in strong and precious stones, to defend it from its own weakness.” Her little Frenchily sentimental speech did not sound artificial, as with the naturalness of a trustful child she lifted her face to his.

Upstairs a very different drama was in progress. Mary Elton was pacing her room, with hands clenched and brows knit. Now that her self-appointed rôle of fairy godmother was played, she not only wondered how she had found strength to go through with it, but scolded herself for having been sensational. “After all, it was none of my business,” she told herself. “I wish I hadn’t interfered. If I had let things alone, Philip might have come back to me of his own free will, and Edith would have married some one else who would have made her just as happy.”

At the end of half an hour she opened her door and listened. She heard the murmur of low voices, and once Philip’s laugh rang out,--confident, happy, proud.

With a sob between clenched teeth, Mary closed her door again, and seated herself in front of her mirror. She watched the cynical, scornful face before her contort itself into lines of bitterness and grief. Relentlessly she stared at the slowly puffing eyelids, the quavering mouth. Never had she looked less attractive, less romantic.

“A picture of unrequited love,--realistic school,” she announced mockingly, for her own amusement. And as a watery smile intruded upon the grimness of the tragic mask at which she gazed, Mary found herself wondering, irrelevantly, whether Edith Dudley looked pretty when she cried.