In his student days he had loved music,but he had little more than trifled with it;now,strangely enough,his love,even his understanding,seemed to have grown;and when the violins thrilled all the vast space into life,he was shaken with a passion newly born.All the evening he sat riveted.A rush of memories came upon him-memories of his student life,with its dreams and ideals of culture and scholarship,which rose from his past again like phantoms.In the elevation of the moment the trivial pleasures that had been tempting him became mean and unworthy.With a pang of bitter regret he saw himself as he might have been,as he yet might be.
A few days later his father came home,and his distress of mind was complete.Clayton need stay in the mountains but little longer,he said;he was fast making up his losses,and he had hoped after his trip to England to have Clayton at once in New York;but now he had best wait perhaps another year.Then had come a struggle that racked heart and brain.All he had ever had was before him again.
Could it be his duty to shut himself from this life-his natural heritage-to stifle the highest demands of his nature?Was he seriously in love with that mountain girl?Had he indeed ever been sure of himself?
If,then,he did not love her beyond all question,would he not wrong himself,wrong her,by marrying her?Ah,but might he not wrong her,wrong himself -even more?
He was bound to her by every tie that his sensitive honor recognized among the duties of one human being to another.
He had sought her;he had lifted her above her own life.If one human being had ever put its happiness in the hands of another,that had been done.If he had not deliberately taught her to love him,he had not tried to prevent it.He could not excuse himself;the thought of gaining her affection had occurred to him,and he had put it aside.There was no excuse;for when she gave her love,he had accepted it,and,as far as she knew,had given his own unreservedly.Ah,that fatal moment of weakness,that night on the mountam-side!Could he tell her,could he tell Raines,the truth,and ask to be released?What could Easter with her devotion,and Raines with his singleness of heart,know of this substitute for love which civilization had taught him?Or,granting that they could understand,he might return home;but Easter-what was left for her?
It was useless to try to persuade himself that her love would fade away,perhaps quickly,and leave no scar;that Raines would in time win her for himself,his first idea of their union be realized,and,in the end,all happen for the best.That might easily be possible with a different nature under different conditions-a nature less passionate,in contact with the world and responsive to varied interests;but not with Easter -alone with a love that had shamed him,with mountain,earth,and sky unchanged,and the vacant days marked only by a dreary round of wearisome tasks.He remembered Raines s last words-"Air ye goin'to leave the po'gal to die sorrowin'fer ye ?"What happiness would be possible for him with that lonely mountain-top and the white,drawn face forever haunting him?
That very night a letter came,with a rude superion-the first from Easter.Within it was a poor tintype,from which Easter's eyes looked shyly at him.Before he left he had tried in vain to get her to the tent of an itinerant photographer.During his absence,she had evidently gone of her own accord.The face was very beautiful,and in it was an expression of questioning,modest pride.
"Aren't you surprised?"it seemed to say-"and pleased?Only the face,with its delicate lines,and the throat and the shoulders were visible.
She looked almost refined.And the note-it was badly spelled and written with great difficulty,but it touched him.She was lonely,she said,and she wanted him to come back.Lonely-that cry was in each line.
His response to this was an instant resolution to go back at once,and,sensitive and pliant as his nature was,there was no hesitation for him when his duty was clear and a decision once made.With great care and perfect frankness he had traced the history of his infatuation in a letter to his father,to be communicated when the latter chose to his mother and sister.Now he was nearing the mountains again.
