"I have at least given him my respect and admiration," she replied, rising and wiping her eyes before resuming her work. Suddenly she paused, and in a serio-comic att.i.tude she pointed with the roller as she said, "Mara, suppose you insisted that that kitchen table was a cathedral, would it be a cathedral to me? No more so than that your indiscriminate prejudices against Northern people are grand, heroic, or based on truth. So there, now. I've got to unburden my feelings somewhere; although I expect sympathy from no one, I believe in the angels' song of 'Peace on earth and good will toward men.'"

"I fear your good will toward one man," said Mara, very sadly, "is taking you out of sympathy with those who love you, and who have the best and most natural right to your love."

"See how mistaken you are! I shall never be out of sympathy with you, papa, or Cousin Sophy. But how can I sympathize with some of your views when G.o.d has given me a nature that revolts at them? If you ever love a good man, G.o.d and your own heart will teach you what a sacred thing it is.

What if I am poor, and lacking in graces and accomplishments, I know I have an honest, loving nature. Think of that old man Houghton condemning and threatening his son, as if he had committed a vile crime in his most honorable intentions toward me! Well, well, it's all over. I've given my word to papa that I'll do nothing without his consent, and he'll see me buried before he'll give it. Don't you worry, I'm not going to pine and live on moonshine. I'll prove that I'm a Bodine in my own way."

"Yes, Ella, you will, and eventually it will be in the right way."

"Mara, what I have said is in confidence, and since I've had my say I'd rather not talk about it any more."

Mara was glad enough to drop the subject, for Ella had been saying things to which her own heart echoed most uncomfortably. She and Mrs. Hunter accepted Mrs. Bodine's invitation to dine that evening, and, in her sympathy for Bodine, was kinder to him than ever, thus reviving his hopes and deepening his feelings.

Time pa.s.sed, bringing changes scarcely perceptible on the surface, yet indicating to observant eyes concealed and silent forces at work. And these were observant eyes; Mrs. Bodine saw that Ella was masking feelings and memories to which no reference was made. Ella began to observe that her father's demeanor toward Mara was not the same as that by which he manifested his affection for her. While she was glad for his sake, and hoped that Mara would respond favorably, she had an increased sense of injustice that he should seek happiness in a way forbidden to her. The thought would arise, "I am not so much to him after all."

One day, near the end of July, Ella, her father, Mrs. Hunter and Mara, were on the Battery, sitting beneath the shade of a live oak. The raised promenade, overlooking the water, was not far away, and among the pa.s.sers-by Mara saw Clancy and Miss Ainsley approaching. Apparently they were absorbed in each other, but, when opposite, Clancy turned and looked her full in the face. She gave no sign of recognition nor did he. That mutual and un.o.bserved encounter of their eyes set its seal on their last interview. They were strangers.

"There goes a pair, billing and cooing," said Ella with a laugh.

"Mara, don't you feel well?" asked the captain anxiously. "You look very pale."

"I felt the heat very much to-day," she replied evasively. "I am longing for August and rest."

"Oh, Mara! let us shut up shop at once," cried Ella. "Papa is at leisure now and we can make little expeditions down the bay, out to Summerville and elsewhere."

"No," Mara replied, "I would rather do just what we agreed upon. It's only a few days now."

"You are as sot as the everlasting hills."

Mara was silent, and glad indeed that her quiet face gave no hint of the tumult in her heart.

Mrs. Hunter's eyes were angrily following Clancy and Miss Ainsley. "Well,"

she said, with a scornful laugh, "that renegade Southerner has found his proper match in that Yankee coquette. I doubt whether he gets her though, if a man ever does get a born flirt. When she's through with Charleston she'll be through with him, if all I hear of her is true."

"Oh, you're mistaken, Mrs. Hunter," Ella answered. "She fairly dotes on him, and if he don't marry her he's a worse flirt than she is. Think of Mr. Clancy's blue blood. She undoubtedly appreciates that."

"I'm inclined to think that he was a changeling, and that old Colonel Clancy's child was spirited away."

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hunter, but I differ with you. While I cannot share in many of Mr. Clancy's views and affiliations, he has the reputation of being sincere and straightforward. Even his enemies must admit that he seeks to make his friendliness to the North conducive to Southern interests."

Mara's heart smote her that even Captain Bodine had been fairer to Clancy than she had been.

Words rose to Ella's lips, but she repressed them, and soon afterward they returned to their respective homes.

Mara early retired to the solitude of her own room, for that cold mutual glance on the Battery had suggested a new thought not yet entertained. In her mental excitement it promised to banish the dreary stagnation of her life. She must have a motive, and if it involved the very self-sacrifice that she had been warned against, so much the better.

"It would teach Owen Clancy how futile were his words," she said to herself. "It would bring happiness to my father's friend; it would become a powerful incentive in my own life, and, above all, would compel me to banish the thought of one to whom I have said I will never speak again."

The more she dwelt upon this course, the more clear it became in her warped judgment the one path of escape from an aimless, hopeless existence fast becoming unendurable. She was not by any means wholly selfish in reaching her decision, for thoughts of her own need did not predominate.

"If I cannot be happy myself," she reasoned, "I can make Captain Bodine happy, for there could not be a more devoted wife than I will become, if he puts into words the language of his eyes. Ella has already ceased to be in true sympathy with him in matters that have made so much of the warp and woof of his life. We two are one in these respects. I can and will cast out all else if my motive is strong enough."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

A SURE TEST

Clancy had gone to Nature to be calmed and healed, but he had brought a spirit at variance with her teachings. He soon recognized that he was neither receptive nor docile. He chafed impatiently and angrily at Mara's obduracy, which, nevertheless, only increased his love for her. The deepest instincts of his nature made him feel that she belonged to him, and he to her. The barrier between them was so intangible that he was in a sort of rage that he could not brush it aside. Reflection always brought him back to the conviction that she did love him. Her pa.s.sionate words: "If my heart break a thousand times I will never speak to you again," grew more and more significant. Odd fancies, half-waking dreams about her, pursued him into the solitude of the forest. She seemed like one imprisoned; he could see, but could not reach and release her. Again she was under a strange, malign spell, which some day might suddenly be broken--broken all too late.

Then she would dwell in his thoughts as the victim of a species of moral insanity which might pa.s.s away. At times her dual life became so clear to him that he was almost impelled to hasten back to the city, in the belief that he could speak such strong, earnest words as would enable her to cast aside her prejudices, and break away from the influences which were darkening and misshaping her life. Then he would despondently recall all that he had said and done, and how futile had been his effort.

He neither fished nor hunted, but pa.s.sed the time either in long tramps, or in sitting idly tormented by perturbed thoughts. Believing that he had reached a crisis in his life, it was his nature to come to some decision.

He was essentially a man of action, strong-willed and resolute. He despised what he termed weakness, forgetting that the impulses of strength often lead to error, for the reason that patience and fort.i.tude are lacking.

In facing the possibilities of the future, he began to yield to the promptings of ambition, a trait which had no mean place in his character.

"If Mara denies her love, and sacrifices herself to Bodine," he reasoned, "what is there left for me but to make the most of my life by attaining power and influence? I can only put pleasures and excitements in the place of happiness. I won't go through life like a winged bird."

When such thoughts were in the ascendant, Miss Ainsley presented herself to his fancy, alluring, fascinating, beckoning. She seemed the embodiment of that brilliant career which he regarded as the best solace he could hope for. Often, however, he would wake in the night, and, from his forest bivouac, look up at the stars. Then a calm, deep voice in his soul would tell him unmistakably that, even if he attained every success that he craved, his heart would not be in it, that he would always hide the melancholy of a lifelong disappointment. All these misgivings and compunctions usually ended in the thought: "Caroline Amsley and all that she represents is the best I can hope for now. She may be playing with me--I'm not sure, if she will marry me, I can probably give her as true a regard as she will bestow upon me. She is not a woman to love devotedly and unselfishly, not counting the cost. I could not marry such a woman, for I feel it would be base to take what I could not return; but I could marry her. I would do her no wrong, for I could give to her all the affection to which she is ent.i.tled, all that she would actually care for.

If I am mistaken, I am totally at fault in the impression which she has made upon me, and I do not think that I am. I am not in love with her, and therefore am not blind. She is not in love with me. It has merely so happened that I have proved agreeable to her, pleased, amused, and interested her. Possibly I have led her to feel that we are so companionable that a life journey together would be quite endurable. My reason, all my instincts, a.s.sure me that this beautiful girl has considered this question more than once before--that she is considering it now, coolly and deliberately. I am being weighed in the balances of her mind, for I do not think she has heart enough to enable that organ to have much voice in the matter. Her views and beliefs are intellectual. No strong, earnest feelings sway her. When have her sympathies been touched in behalf of any one or any cause? Oh, my rare beauty! I am not blind.

Selfishness is the mainspring of your character; but it is a selfishness so refined, so rational and amenable to the laws of good taste, that it can be calculated upon with almost mathematical accuracy. You are no saint, but a saint might be beguiled into faults which to you are impossible. You are a fit bride for ambition, and would be its crown and glory."

Such was often the tenor of his thoughts, and ambition suggested the many doors to advancement which such an alliance would open. Mr. Ainsley was not only a man of wealth, but also of large, liberal ideas. It certainly would be a pleasure and a constant exhilaration to aid him in carrying out his great enterprises.

Thus Clancy, as well as Mara, was led by disappointment in his dearest hope of happiness to seek what next promised best in his estimation to redeem life from a dreary monotony of negations. He also resolved to have motives and incentives; nor was his ambition purely selfish, for he purposed to use whatever power, wealth and influence he might obtain for the benefit of the people among whom he dwelt. Hers, however, was the n.o.bler motive, and the less selfish, for it involved self-sacrifice, even though it was mistaken, and could lead only to wrong action. It would cost him nothing to carry out his large, beneficent purposes. Indeed, they would add to his pleasures and enhance his reputation. She was but a woman, and saw no other path of escape from the conditions of her lot except the th.o.r.n.y one of self-abnegation.

Alternately cast down, and fired by conflicting thoughts and purposes, Clancy soon discovered that the woods was no place for him, and he resolved to return to the city, there to be guided by the circ.u.mstances of the next few weeks. If it became clear that Mara had not been influenced by his warning, but on the contrary was accepting Bodine's attentions, then he would face the truth that she was lost to him beyond hope. Without compunction he would turn to Miss Ainsley, and, with all the wariness and penetration which he could exercise, seek to discover how far she would go with him in his life campaign to achieve eminence. He was glad, however, that he did not regard her as essential to his plans and hopes. Indeed, he had the odd feeling that even if she rejected him as a husband, he could shake hands with her and say: "Very well, Ainsley, we can be good comrades just the same. We amuse and interest each other, we mutually stimulate our mental faculties. Let it end here."

In this mood he fulfilled his promise and wrote as follows:

"My DEAR AINSLEY--Permit me to remind you of my existence--if one can be said to exist in these wilds. An expedition of this kind is a good thing for a fellow occasionally. It enables him to get acquainted with himself, to indulge in egotism without being a nuisance. I have neither hunted, fished, nor studied the natives. I have not seen a "mountain maid" whose embrace I would prefer to that of a bear. I have merely tramped aimlessly about, meanwhile learning that I am not adapted to communion with nature.

At this moment I should prefer smoking a cigar with you on the balcony to looking at scenery which should inspire artist and poet. I am neither, merely a man of affairs. Humanity interests me more than oaks, however gigantic. You see I have no soul, no heart, no soaring imagination. I am as matter-of-fact a fellow as you are. That's why we get on so well together. We can chaff, spar, and run intellectual tilts as amicably as any two men in town. This proves you to be quite exceptional--delightfully so. I'm not surprised, however, for, as I have said to you, you are sated with the other kind of thing. How long will this fancy last? Now that you are so manly you should not be fickle. You have not half comprehended the penalties of your new _role_, for you may find that it involves a distressing frankness. I think I had better close. Letter-writing pre-supposes literary qualities which I do not possess. Men, unless sentimentally inclined, or given to hobbies, rarely write long letters to each other. If unusually congenial they can talk together as long as women. I do not know of a man in town who can equal you as good company; and with this fact in mind, I shall atone for a brief letter by putting in an appearance at an early date. If you have had any flirtations in my absence I shall expect all the details. You know I do not care for such trivial amus.e.m.e.nts. In this material age, making the world move in the way of business affords ample scope for my limited faculties, while a chat with you is better than a game of chess in the way of recreation, better than moping in the woods. Your friend, CLANCY."

He had barely time to post the letter before the mail-stage left the little hamlet in which it was written. He was soon dissatisfied with himself and the missive, and regretted having written it. Before an hour had pa.s.sed he muttered: "I never wrote such a letter to a woman before, and I won't again. I put myself in the worst light, in fact was unjust to myself. How differently I would write to Mara! Is it the difference in women which inevitably inspires different thought and action? At any rate, there is a touch of coa.r.s.eness in this masculine _persiflage_ which grates. When I return we must become friends as man and woman. I wonder if she will feel as I do about it?"

Miss Ainsley was not satisfied with the letter at all, one reason being that it revealed too much penetration on Clancy's part. While she welcomed him with her old cordiality she took him to task at once.

"This is a spurious letter," she said, holding it up. "You would never write such an affair to a male friend. You betrayed a consciousness of my femininity in every line. You preached to me and warned me with the same penful of ink. You write as if you were a commonplace male cynic, and I a woman who was trying to uns.e.x herself by a lot of ridiculous affectations.

I wished a genial, jolly letter such as you might write to an old college chum."

"Do you know the reason why I did not, rather could not, write such a letter?"

"No."

"Because you are not an old college chum."

"I was not aware that you were so tremendously sincere."