Part 30 (1/2)
”The day after then.”
”So be it--till then, farewell!”
Flint re-entered the house with his heart beating like a trip-hammer.
CHAPTER XVIII
A MAIDEN'S VOW
”A maiden's vow, old Calham spoke, Is lightly made and lightly broke.”
As the cab rattled down the avenue, Winifred sank back against the cus.h.i.+ons. She sat in the corner in a sort of daze, marking the glimmer of the electric lights, which seemed so many milestones in her life, as she pa.s.sed them one after another. After all, it is experience which marks time, and in this day Winifred Anstice had tasted more of life than in many a year before. Cras.h.i.+ng into her world of calm commonplace had fallen the dynamite bomb of an overwhelming emotion.
Her present, with all its preoccupying trifles, lay in wrecks about her. For the future--it was too tumultuous to be faced.
She was like a person who has been walking in the darkness along a familiar road, and suddenly feels himself plunging over an unsuspected precipice. She was conscious of nothing but a gasping sense of dizziness--all control of herself and her life seemed pa.s.sing out of her hands into those of another, and she scarcely knew whether to be glad or sorry. Was it only this afternoon that she had looked upon a marriage with Jonathan Flint as impossible? If she had thought so a few hours ago, why not now? Nothing had occurred since. No transcendent change had come over him or her--why should it all look so different to her now? Perhaps, she told herself, this mood too would pa.s.s like its precursor. She dared not feel sure of anything--she who had swung round the whole compa.s.s of feeling like a weather-vane before a thunder-storm.
These introspective reflections brought back irresistibly the feelings with which she had read Flint's letter, little dreaming that it was his,--the letter so full of wise and friendly counsel. She remembered how, as she read, she had been filled with a yearning desire to rise to the ideal her unknown counsellor had set before her, and filled too with a longing that Fate might send it in her way, to be something to him, to return in some measure the spiritual aid and comfort which she had received at his hands.
”Well,” she told herself gloomily, ”the opportunity had come, and this was how she had used it--not only by denying his pet.i.tion,--that, of course, was inevitable, feeling as she did,--but by accusing him of selfishness, by insisting that he should accept her terms of friends.h.i.+p. _Friends.h.i.+p_, bah!--how stale and flat it sounded! Could she not have devised some newer way of wounding an honorable man who had offered her his heart?”
It seemed to her excited consciousness that she must appear to him a vain and empty coquette, eager to retain a homage for which she intended no return. When once he awoke to that view, his love would die out, for he was not a man to continue devotion where he had lost respect; and so it was all over, or as good as over, between her and him.
The cab lurched sharply across the tracks at Twenty-Third Street, jostling Winifred's flowers and fan out of her lap. The maid stooped to pick them up. As she returned them she caught a glimpse of the set look in the face of her mistress.
”Are you feelin' bad?” she asked.
”No, no, I am quite well, Maria, only a little tired--are we near home?”
”Yes'm, we've pa.s.sed Gramercy Park, and there's the steeples of St.
George's that you see from your windows.”
”Yes, yes, I see. Here we are close at home. You may go to bed, Maria, after you have lighted the lamp in my room. I shall not need you to-night.”
”Well, well,” thought the maid, ”something's the matter sure. I never knew no one more fussy about the unhooking of her gown. She can't do much herself, but she does know how things ought to be done, and that's what I calls a real lady.”
”Winifred, my dear, is that you?” Professor Anstice called, as the rustle of his daughter's dress caught his ear on the stair.
”Oh, Papa, are you awake still?”
”_Still!_ Why it is not so very late!” said her father, as Winifred entered the study and threw herself into the deep upholstered chair beside the fire, which was just graying into ashes in the grate.
Her father was sitting in his cane-seated study-chair with a conglomeration of volumes piled about the table. His face, perhaps from the reflection of the green-shaded student-lamp, looked pale and worn. His shoulders, too, seemed to Winifred's abnormally quickened perception to have caught a new stoop. The fact forced itself upon her consciousness with a sudden, swift pang, that her father was growing old. She had never thought of age in connection with him before. To her he had been simply and sufficiently ”my father,” without thought of other relations or conditions; but now it rushed upon her with a wave of insistent remorse, that his life was slipping by, while she was doing so little for his happiness. A rather bare and dreary life it seemed to her now, as she contemplated its monotony; for Winifred had no appreciation of ”the still air of delightful studies.” Her world was peopled with live, active figures, always pus.h.i.+ng forward, seeking, striving, loving. And her father had loved once. Yes, that too struck her now, almost with a shock of surprise. He, too, had asked for some one's love as ardently, perhaps, as Jonathan Flint for hers. More than that, he had won the love he sought. Won it and lost it again. Could it ever come to that for her? The thought smote her with an intolerable sharpness.
Mr. Anstice was a strange man to be the parent and guardian of such a girl as Winifred. The world for him was bounded by the walls of his study. Even his teaching seemed an interruption to the real business of his life, and he turned his back upon his cla.s.s-room with a sensation of relief.
He was not a popular professor among the body of the students; but the unfailing courtesy of his manner, and the solidity of his scholars.h.i.+p, won the respect of the many, and the esteem and warm admiration of the few.
His bearing, in spite of the scholar's stoop, was marked by a certain distinction, and the lines of his worn face curiously suggested the fresh curves which marked his daughter's brow and cheek. The beauty of youth is an ivorytype; the beauty of age is an etching, bitten out by the burin and acid of thought, experience, and sorrow.