Beulah - Page 275/348

She pressed her face against his shoulder and clasped her arms

firmly round his neck.

"I am not your guardian, Beulah. You refused to make me such. You

are a proud, ambitious woman, solicitous only to secure eminence as

an authoress. I asked your heart; you have now none to give; but

perhaps some day you will love me as devotedly, nay, as madly, as I

have long loved you; for love like mine would wake affection even in

a marble image; but then rolling oceans and trackless deserts will

divide us. And now, good-by. Make yourself a name; bind your aching

brow with the chaplet of fame, and see if ambition can fill your

heart. Good-by, dear child."

Gently he drew her arms from his neck, and took her face in his soft

palms. He looked at her a moment, sadly and earnestly, as if

striving to fix her features in the frame of memory; then bent his

head and pressed a long kiss on her lips. She put out her hands, but

he had gone, and, sinking down on the step, she hid her face in her

arms. A pall seemed suddenly thrown over the future, and the

orphaned heart shrank back from the lonely path where only specters

were visible. Never before had she realized how dear he was to her,

how large a share of her love he possessed, and now the prospect of

a long, perhaps final separation, filled her with a shivering,

horrible dread. We have seen that self-reliance was a powerful

element in her character, and she had learned, from painful

necessity, to depend as little as possible upon the sympathies of

others; but in this hour of anguish a sense of joyless isolation

conquered; her proud soul bowed down beneath the weight of

intolerable grief, and acknowledged itself not wholly independent of

the love and presence of her guardian.

Beulah went back to her desk, and, with tearless eyes, began the

allotted task of writing. The article was due, and must be finished;

was there not a long, dark future in which to mourn? The sketch was

designed to prove that woman's happiness was not necessarily

dependent on marriage. That a single life might be more useful, more

tranquil, more unselfish. Beulah had painted her heroine in glowing

tints, and triumphantly proved her theory correct, while to female

influence she awarded a sphere (exclusive of rostrums and all

political arenas) wide as the universe and high as heaven. Weary

work it all seemed to her now; but she wrote on and on, and finally

the last page was copied and the last punctuation mark affixed. She

wrapped up the manuscript, directed it to the editor, and then the

pen fell from her nerveless fingers and her head went down, with a

wailing cry, on her desk. There the morning sun flashed upon a white

face, tear-stained and full of keen anguish. How her readers would

have marveled at the sight! Ah, "Verily the heart knoweth its own

bitterness."