"Because I could not undeceive him without telling him I hopelessly loved his sister. You are proud, Miss Culpepper," he said, with the first tinge of bitterness in his even voice. "Can you not understand that others may be proud too?""No," she said bluntly; "it is not pride but weakness. You could have told him what you knew to be true: that there could be nothing in common between her folk and such savages as we; that there was a gulf as wide as that Marsh and as black between our natures, our training and theirs, and even if they came to us across it, now and then, to suit their pleasure, light and easy as that tide--it was still there to some day ground and swamp them! And if he doubted it, you had only to tell him your own story. You had only to tell him what you have just told me--that you yourself, an officer and a gentleman, thought you loved me, a vulgar, uneducated, savage girl, and that I, kinder to you than you to me or him, made you take it back across that tide, because I couldn't let you link your life with me, and drag you in the mire.""You need not have said that, Miss Culpepper, returned Calvert with the same gentle smile, "to prove that I am your inferior in all but one thing.""And that?" she said quickly.
"Is my love."
His gentle face was as set now as her own as he moved back slowly towards the door. There he paused.
"You tell me to speak of Jim, and Jim only. Then hear me. Ibelieve that Miss Preston cares for him as far as lies in her young and giddy nature. I could not, therefore, have crushed HIS hope without deceiving him, for there are as cruel deceits prompted by what we call reason as by our love. If you think that a knowledge of this plain truth would help to save him, I beg you to be kinder to him than you have been to me,--or even, let me dare to hope, to YOURSELF."He slowly crossed the threshold, still holding his cap lightly in his hand.
"When I tell you that I am going away to-morrow on a leave of absence, and that in all probability we may not meet again, you will not misunderstand why I add my prayer to the message your friends in Logport charged me with. They beg that you will give up your idea of returning here, and come back to them. Believe me, you have made yourself loved and respected there, in spite--I beg pardon--perhaps I should say BECAUSE of your pride. Good-night and good-bye."For a single instant she turned her set face to the window with a sudden convulsive movement, as if she would have called him back, but at the same moment the opposite door creaked and her brother slipped into the room. Whether a quick memory of the deserter's entrance at that door a year ago had crossed her mind, whether there was some strange suggestion in his mud-stained garments and weak deprecating smile, or whether it was the outcome of some desperate struggle within her, there was that in her face that changed his smile into a frightened cry for pardon, as he ran and fell on his knees at her feet. But even as he did so her stern look vanished, and with her arm around him she bent over him and mingled her tears with his.
"I heard it all, Mag dearest! All! Forgive me! I have been crazy!--wild!--I will reform!--I will be better! I will never disgrace you again, Mag! Never, never! I swear it!"She reached down and kissed him. After a pause, a weak boyish smile struggled into his face.
"You heard what he said of HER, Mag. Do you think it might be true?"She lifted the damp curls from his forehead with a sad half-maternal smile, but did not reply.
"And Mag, dear, don't you think YOU were a little--just a little--hard on HIM? No! Don't look at me that way, for God's sake!
There, I didn't mean anything. Of course you knew best. There, Maggie dear, look up. Hark there! Listen, Mag, do!"They lifted their eyes to the dim distance seen through the open door. Borne on the fading light, and seeming to fall and die with it over marsh and river, came the last notes of the bugle from the Fort.
"There! Don't you remember what you used to say, Mag?"The look that had frightened him had quite left her face now.
"Yes," she smiled, laying her cold cheek beside his softly. "Oh yes! It was something that came and went, 'Like a song'--'Like a song.'"
