The Superior Times

A GIRL'S DILEMMA

This is the anniversary of an important day in my life. I will keep it by recording the events that led to my present position; let not those stay to read whose hearts have grown too old to relish a love story.

At 18 I was the most thoughtless of human beings. My widowed father, a rich merchant, had humored every whim from infancy, and asked nothing of me in return but light-heartedness and affection. No one could have known less than I of the shadows and sorrows of life, or been more childishly occupied in the present. It was the night of my first ball, to which I was to be introduced under the most flattering auspices; I was half wild with excitement, and the moment my toilet was completed I flew down stairs to show myself to father, who was not going with me, as at first arranged, being prevented, he said, by sudden and insurmountable engagements. Well I remember how impatiently I burst open the dining-room door, and with what a bound of elation I sprang toward the spot where he stood, spreading out my beautiful dress and making before him a sweeping courtesy. I seem to hear now the soft rustle of lace and satin, to feel the glow that burned on my cheeks, and the quick throbbings of my happy heart. I had not at first noticed, in my eagerness, that the table was covered with papers, and that my father was not alone. Mr. Lacy, barrister-at-law, his friend and mine—for I had known him from my cradle—sat opposite to him, and a second glance showed me how grave and anxious were the faces of both.

"What is the matter?" I asked, laying my hand caressingly on my father's shoulder. He looked at me fondly, till I saw the tears brim his eyes.

"My darling!" he said, in an abrupt, passionate way. "We will not tell her, Lacy—it would be cruel. Let her have at least a few happy hours. She need not know to-night. How will she bear it?"

Mr. Lacy looked increasingly grave. I had become very grave, too, my childish excitement seemed to have given place to a sudden and almost womanly seriousness.

"It is of no use hiding anything from me," I said, trying to smile, though I trembled from head to foot in vague foreboding. "I could not go to the ball now; tell me what has happened." The expression on my father's face deepened to anguish—he put his hands before it, as if the sight of me was too painful to bear. I turned to Mr. Lacy.

"Do you tell me!" I implored. Mr. Lacy fixed upon me the fine, searching eyes, whose reproof had been the sorest penalty of my life hitherto, and kept up the scrutiny till I could bear it no longer, earnest and kindly as it was. I knelt on a cushion before him, and leaning my arms on his knees in a favorite attitude I returned his gaze with a steady though tearful one.

"Try me," I said; "perhaps I am more than the giddy child you think me. Besides, it cannot be so dreadful—you are both alive and well!"

A peculiar expression passed over Mr. Lacy's face. He seemed hesitating whether to draw me into his arms or to push me from him; he did neither, but rose up suddenly, putting me gently back, and took a few turns through the room.

"Halford," he said presently, and in agitated tones, "once more I renew my offer. Of what use is wealth like mine to a lonely man? With the help I can give you may keep your credit and breast the storm. You shrink from an obligation there is a chance of your never being able to cancel? Well, I will change places with you. Give me in return—that is, if I can with her consent first:—your daughter as my wife!" My father looked up with a literal gasp of astonishment. Mr. Lacy went on without needing him. "I am a fool, no doubt," he said, "but the time has long gone by when Mildred was a child to me. For the last two years I have felt from the depth of my heart that she was a woman. I have fought against the insane wish to win her for my wife. My age, my past relations with her, seemed to make it a crime. Now I have spoken, God knows, as much to save you from the disgrace you are so obstinately bent on meeting and her from the poverty that would crush her youth, as to satisfy my own feelings. What she is to me words cannot say; how I will guard and love her, my love only could prove. Mildred, what do you say?"

He paused opposite me and took my hand. I was like one in a dream. Love! Marriage! Brought up as I had been at home, I had speculated less on these points than most girls of my age. I had vague theories, indeed, gathered from poets and novelists, and my feelings for Mr. Lacy, a man 40 years of age, who had known me as an infant, and whom I regarded with unlimited reverence as one of the best and wisest of the race, did not seem to correspond with them. I was unworthy the honor—incapable of fulfilling the office of wife to such a man. Wife! It seemed almost blasphemous to mention the word to such a child as I was. I shrank back from him toward my father, my cheeks burning and my eyes full of tears.

"You refuse me, Mildred?" said he.

"I should be a villain to take advantage of my position and urge you. Yet in my heart I believe I could make you happy. What would you have but youth that I could not give you? There are many chances against your ever being offered again a strong, honest, undivided heart like mine. No young man could love as I do, Mildred, what you might be to me!"

The strange tone of passionate earnestness made my heart beat quickly. I glanced at my father. He was watching me with intense anxiety. No need to question what his wishes were. As for the meaning of this strange scene, I wanted no details; enough that some momentary crisis had come that threatened disgrace and ruin, I could avert it, and how? By marrying one whose affection might have gratified the most ambitious heart; one of the noblest of men; one I loved, though perhaps not as he loved me. In that hour of excitement, and in my undisciplined mind, little was I prepared to weigh remote possibilities and contingencies. Besides, I was ardent, excitable, apt to mistake impulse for sentiment.

"Mildred what you might be to me!" wrought upon my sensibility: his expression of subdued emotion still further moved me. It never occurred to me to demand time for explanation and reflection. I felt constrained to answer him then and there.

"If I were less a child," I said, blushing and trembling, "if I were more your equal." It was enough, he drew near me and clasped me in his arms. "Child!" he said, passionately, "my love—my wife!" Then releasing me and gazing at me seriously: "You give yourself to me willingly, Mildred, but I will not bind you. Six months hence I will give you back your freedom if you are not happy, and you will find it hard to deceive a love like mine."

My father rose and grasped his hand in silence. "God bless you!" he said at length; "I would have borne much to secure such a protector for my child. Leave us, Mildred, to arrange some matters that cannot be delayed even till the morning." I was eager to obey and be alone to think, and I left the room without a backward glance.

That half hour had revolutionized my whole being. I was child no longer. I fastened my bedroom door to give way to all the tumultuous emotions of a woman. Sued for a wife! engaged! I looked at myself in the glass, and wondered that a man like Mr. Lacy could love such a young, unformed creature as I appeared. There was an incongruity in it that affected me painfully. Still there was a distinction in his regard that flattered me. I had a very high esteem for him. I was warding off a calamity from my father. I loved no one else; no doubt I should be very happy. I sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned my head upon my hand. Unaccustomed to dream, at that moment an involuntary dream rose before my imagination. Instead of this strange compact, the wooing of a youthful lover; instead of mere consent on my part, the delicious hopes, the rich fruition of a conscious, active passion. Might I not have been thus? "If beauty won love, I was fair enough; if freshness and strength of heart were needed, how mine throbbed under the ideal bliss! The sound of Mr. Lacy's voice recalled me to a sense of my duty to him; it was wrong to dream of such girlish possibilities now. He was going away, and my father had accompanied him to the head of the stairway. I supposed he had asked him if he would not wish to bid me good night, for I heard him answer: "No; she would not wish to be disturbed: I fear to weary her. God forgive me if I am acting a selfish part." I rose up resolutely; no more such weakness as that of the last hour; he was worthy of a woman's love and honor, and I will give it. The next two months passed in a state of tranquil happiness. If manly devotion, if the most delicate and minute attentions could win a heart, mine would have been won, and I thought it was, and reposed on the idea.

Mr. Lacy made no attempt to prevent my plunge into the gay world, postponed for a while by the late strange accidents. Now and then he would go with me to a ball or opera, but it was in the character of protector or inspector, not as participant, and I felt his presence a restraint. I was by no means a coquette; I strove to bear always in mind that I was his affianced wife; but I was only eighteen, ardent in temperament, with high animal spirits, very much courted and admired, and I did not enter with much zest into the pleasures of life. His grave smile, in the height of my enjoyment, used to fall like a weight on my heart.

He himself, holding an important and influential position in the world, was full of earnest schemes of practical benevolence, of professional reform. He seemed to think, labor, and write mainly with an eye to other men's interests, and those in their highest and widest bearings. He liked to talk to me of these things and excite my moral enthusiasm, and while I listened he carried heart and conviction with him, and I felt a call to such co-operation an honor in which sacrifice could have no part. Then his look of intense affection and happiness, as he kissed the cheek to which his words had brought so deep a glow, stirred my soul and left no doubt on my mind that I loved him.

At the end of two months Mr. Lacy left me to attend a summons to his father's death-bed. He felt no fears as to the result of this separation, though I perceived a deep secret anxiety. I shared it. I had a morbid dread of the effect of this absence.

"Don't leave me!" I cried, clinging weeping to his arm. "I am afraid of myself—afraid of becoming unworthy of you."

"How, Mildred?" was his answer.

"If you mean you will forget me, or discover you are mistaken in thinking you love me, it will save us both a life-long misery—me, at least, a life-long remorse."

For a week or two after he left me I hardly went into society; but my father and friends laughed at my playing the widow, as they called it, and I soon resumed my former gayeties, with, however, a certain restraint and moderation which I felt due to Mr. Lacy.

At length the temptation beset me of which I seemed to have a vague pre-sentiment from the first evening of Mr. Lacy's offer, and it beset me under its most insidious form. My father's sister and nephew came to pay us a long-talked-of visit; and even before they arrived I had begun to torture myself with doubts as to the issue of this intercourse. As children, Frank Ingram and I had spent half our time together; and as children had pledged ourselves to each other. Five years had passed since we had met, for he had been studying medicine abroad, but an unbroken, though scanty, correspondence had been always kept up between the two families. Frank had been my ideal as a child. If I found him still so—if I were free to love him!—if, when he came he brought with him that future about which I had dreamed—brought it in vain! There was something morbid in this state of mind, but the idea had fastened upon me, and I could not shake it off. My very self-mistrust was a snare.

My aunt and cousin duly arrived and of Frank I must speak the truth, even if I am accused of a wish to justify myself. Every charm a young man could have I think he possessed. I say nothing of his personal beauty or his ingenuous graces of manner. I could have withstood these, though I had a very keen appreciation of them. But he was as full of disinterested ardor as his profession as Mr. Lacy in his; had the same deep desire to be of use in his generation; only he unfolded them with such a winning self-mistrust, as if he doubted his worthiness for the high vocation of benevolence until he warmed into enthusiasm, and then the passion of his speech, the very extravagance of his youthful hopes, thrilled me with a power far beyond the reasoned wisdom of Mr. Lacy's enterprises. Oh! I longed to join hands with him in his life journey and lend my aid to the working out of his Utopia with a spontaneous fervor of desire never known before.

Lesser things lent their aid. He was a fine musician and an enthusiast in the art. We practised constantly together. He taught me how to play and sing the German compositions he had introduced to me. I do not wish to dwell on details, but who does not know how subtle a medium of love a kindred pursuit and enjoyment of music is?—and Mr. Lacy had never cared for music. Then again he was my perpetual companion. At breakfast his clear eyes and welcoming voice opened the day, and after its long hours of delightful intercourse his hand was the last I clasped at night. No attempt was made to put any restraint upon this dangerous companionship. My father looked upon us as brother and sister. Besides, the fact of my engagement was known, and he had the most implicit confidence in his nephew's honor. He never considered my danger, yet it was the greater. He might be strong, but I was weak. In short, I loved Frank.

A letter announcing the probable day of Mr. Lacy's return roused me to the conviction of the truth. I carried it up to my room, locked the door, and fell on my knees. What should I do? Should I keep my secret and sin against my own soul by marrying one I did not love? Surely that were the worst crime of the two. What was left me, then, but to wound a noble heart, belie my promise, inculpate my father. It seemed a dreadful alternative. After many hours of agonized casuistry I could not decide, but determined to leave the issue to chance. Did Frank love me? Strange that I took that fact for granted, torturing myself with the idea of what he would suffer—he, with his young, strong capacity for sorrow! This is not to be a long story, so I must not stay to analyze the state of my mind during the interval that elapsed before Mr. Lacy's return. A criminal awaiting a sure condemnation, and that, approved by his own aching conscience, would understand my feeling.

The evening came on which we expected him. Never before had our drawing room worn a more happy, home-like character. My father read the newspaper at ease in his ample chair, my handsome, lively aunt perpetually interrupting him with irrelevant remarks. I sat near the tea-table, for a certain hour had been fixed, and we waited for our guest before we began our favorite meal. I held a book to hide the changes of my countenance. Had I doubted my cousin's love before, I should have doubted it no longer; how earnestly and searchingly he looked at me—how grave and sad he appeared.

The rap came. It was natural I should start: but it was hard to smile naturally at my aunt's pleasant raillery. Mr. Lacy came in; he was one of those whose self-governed, serene manner, precludes flutter or embarrassment in others. The gentle friendliness of his greeting reassured me for the moment; under it I could imagine the strong, passionate current to exist that sometimes broke its bounds.

The evening passed smoothly and pleasantly to all externals. Mr. Lacy was very grave, but then it was to be expected of a son who had just left his father's deathbed; and my aunt's animated tongue filled up the intervals when conversation would have flagged. Frank and I sang at my father's request for I feared to seem unwilling; besides, it precluded the necessity of my exerting myself to talk. Frank was very serious, and, I thought, averse to sing with me, but at the same time had never sung to more advantage.

The ordeal was over at last. Mr. Lacy took his leave without anything in his manner to make me fear or perhaps hope that my secret was discovered. A week passed; he was constantly with us, showing me the same tenderness as ever, somewhat graver, but as certainly more gentle. He seemed, too, to make a point of seeking Frank's society, and spoke of him in high terms to my father. Oh! what a heavy heart I carried during that period. Looking in my glass I thought with wonder of the change six months can work in mind and body. At the end of those seven days I came to a resolution that nerved me with something like strength. I thought I would have a direct interview with Mr. Lacy, tell him the whole truth, and throw myself on his generosity. Let him but release me from an engagement that became every hour more intolerable to contemplate, and I would consent to enter on no other. Let him but free me, and I would live unmarried forever; yes, though I must take labor and poverty as companions.

It was the very evening of the day I had come to this decision that I chanced to meet Mr. Lacy on the stairs at the hour of his usual arrival. Here was the desired opportunity, but I trembled to avail myself of it. He forestalled me.

"Give me a quarter of an hour alone Mildred, in the library," he said; "I have wished to have a few words with you for days."

We went in; he placed me a chair near the fire and closed the door, then came up to me, standing before me as he said:

"This day, six months ago, Mildred, I made a promise I am going to redeem. If you are not happy, I said, I will free you from your engagement you made with me. You are not happy. I suspected the truth from your letters—those painful letters—and I saw it confirmed the first night of my arrival. The expression of your face, the tone of your voice when you spoke to your cousin, would have set the strongest doubts at rest, crushed the most pertinacious hope." He paused a moment, then went on as calmly as before: "I acquit you of all blame, Mildred; it was I that acted the unworthy part, taking unmanly advantage of my power to help your father and your untried child's heart. If I were not now the only sufferer, I could scarcely bear the retrospect; but I am, thank God! As for your father, our fears magnified his danger; the little help I was able to give has re-established his position as firmly as before. He will repay me; you owe me nothing. I have had a wild dream, but I am awake at last—awake enough to see I was a fool ever to think one like me could win a young girl's heart."

He was calm no longer; but he turned abruptly away to hide his emotion.

"Mr. Lacy," I cried, striving to stifle the conflict of my love, "I would fain do right. I have a deep esteem for you—I" I broke off. "Give me a little time," I added, passionately renewing the effort; "I shall conquer this love of mine; I will become worthy of you after all!"

"Conquer the purest feelings of a woman's heart! Offer yourself a sacrifice to my selfishness! No, no, Mildred, yours in the season of blessedness; mine is already passed. Presently I will come back to you in my old character, and be able to say with less difficulty than I do now, 'God bless you both.' I will kiss you for the last time."

He clasped me in his arms and kissed me, seemingly with more earnestness than passion, but it was the very depth of passion. As the door closed upon him a strange impulse seized me. I longed to call him back. Was it true I did not love him?

I saw none of my family that evening, for I went at once to my room. What a night of misery and conflict I passed!

The next morning Frank came to my private sitting-room and knocked for admittance. He held a letter in his hand: his fine eyes were suffused with happiness.

"Sympathize with me, Mildred," he said, "I feel too much to bear it alone. I have never talked to you about her, for I could not trust myself with the subject while a doubt remained. Now I will tell you about my darling; she is as worthy of a true man's heart as—as Mr. Lacy is of yours. By-the-way, Mildred, I was very anxious about you that night he came home, for your manner was not—not what, were I in his place, would have satisfied me; but that is the form a woman's caprice takes with you, I have concluded." As for not loving him at bottom. I don't dare so to impugn my noble cousin's heart and understanding.

I ran once more to the solitude of my chamber. I felt abandoned—prostrate I flung myself on the bed in a transport of despair. Why, I had lost all! Had I been so criminal that my punishment was so heavy? "Ah, Frank!" I cried "how I have loved you—what life might have been!" Then I reflected, if Mr. Lacy loved me as I loved my cousin, what a fine spirit and nature he had shown; what a rare gift such a heart was! Miserable as I was, it was deeper misery to think I was the cause of his. I was very ill after these events, and fears for my health quite absorbed any anger my father might have felt at the disappointment of a cherished desire, or perhaps Mr. Lacy, by his representations, had shielded me against it. When I recovered, people said I was very much altered; and so I was. The flush of youth was passed; I was not 20, but nothing of the childishness of a few months back was left. Frank was married; and Mr. Lacy we never saw—at least I never saw him. Disappointment had made life an earnest thing to me; and taught its discipline the character of my former love rose in dignity in my eyes.

How was it that what I had thought would be a life-long regret—my love for my cousin—seemed a transient emotion, of which the traces grew daily feebler? Had I sacrificed my happiness to a passing fancy? Or was it that at my age one cannot long cling to the impossible! Little signified the contrariety of my heart; for the fact remained—if I had never loved Mr. Lacy before, I loved him now, I thought perpetually of the incidents of our brief engagement every word of endearment, every embrace had its hold on my memory. I recalled his opinions, framing my own stringently by them, and followed his public career so far as I was able, aided by my deep knowledge of the high principles and motives that actuated it.

My chance came at last. At a large dinner party I unexpectedly met Mr. Lacy. He came to me at once, spoke kindly and gently, as in long past time; but there was nothing to lead to the idea that he still loved me—no hesitation in the well-known voice, no latent tenderness in the searching eyes. I could not bear it, and wished he would leave me to myself and not torture me with that cruel friendship. At my first opportunity I turned from him and engaged myself in conversation with a gentleman who was well known to be one of my suitors. It appeared like coquetry, but it was the eagerness of self-instinct. That evening seemed very long and insupportably painful. I had not known how tenaciously I had clung to hope until it failed me. When Mr. Lacy came forward to help me to my carriage I felt I could hardly receive the ordinary civility from him without betraying myself.

I was surprised when he begged me to turn into an empty room we passed on our way to the hall. "Mildred," he said, "I was going to ask you, when we first met to-night, whether I might resume my old relations in your family. Nearly two years have passed since we last met, and I thought I could bring you back the calm heart of a friend. But you have so studiously shunned me, that to ask permission now seems superfluous. What am I to think? Have you not forgiven me yet for the misery I cost you?"

I was silent. If I could have fallen at his feet and sobbed out the truth, I might have been blessed for life, but that would have been too great a sacrifice for even love to exact from a woman's pride.

"If the deepest sympathy in your disappointment could entitle me to the character of a friend"—Mr. Lacy paused "you would give me your hand willingly. Pardon me, Mildred, for what may seem an unmanly allusion, but it is the best to make it—if there is any chance of future friendship between us. It was hard work to give you up; harder still to think the sacrifice had been in vain. Had you been happily married, I could have returned to you sooner; but suffering, and to feel I had no power to soothe

This generosity was too much for me. I rose up hastily from the seat I had taken. "I cannot bear it," I said rashly: "the past has been cruel enough, but this is worse than all. Oh, I am miserable! Friends we can never be—let me go home!" I spoke with the fretfulness of a child; he looked amazed.

"Am I again deceived?" he asked. "I was told that the gentleman I saw with you this evening, Mr. Branson was your accepted lover. I know him well: he deserves you Mildred. I rejoiced to see you bright and animated, as you used to be, in his society—to think there was no blight on the future for you at least. What can you mean? You will not risk, surely, the happiness of both? Pardon me," he added, coloring, "I forgot, I have not even a friend's right to warn."

On the brink of one's fate, to deliberate is to lose all.

"Mr. Branson is nothing to me," I said, white and trembling, "and will never be more; the past will not let itself be so forgotten." My tone seemed to excite him.

"Mildred!" he exclaimed passionately "did you, then, love him so much? Ah! had mine been the power!" He drew a long breath and fixed for a moment a gaze on my face that solved my last doubt, broke down the last barrier.

"Frank has long been forgotten," I said, and instinctively I held out my hand. "That was a child's love. What I want of the future is to be what the past once promised, Mr. Lacy."

I had stood erect and spoken audibly up to this point; but here my head drooped, my cheeks burned, yet from no ignoble shame. One quick glance of searching astonishment, one rapturous exclamation, and I was folded in his arms.

"Mildred, forgive my doubt. You have regretted me—you love me?"

"Beyond what you have asked," I stammered, hiding my face on his shoulder. "beyond friendship, I feel I have found my ark of refuge."