The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales

by Bret Harte

my brother believe you were his rival with CicelyPreston?" she asked impatiently.

  "Because I could not undeceive him without telling him I hopelesslyloved his sister. You are proud, Miss Culpepper," he said, with thefirst tinge of bitterness in his even voice. "Can you not understandthat others may be proud too?"

  "No," she said bluntly; "it is not pride but weakness. You could havetold him what you knew to be true: that there could be nothing incommon between her folk and such savages as we; that there was a gulfas wide as that Marsh and as black between our natures, our trainingand theirs, and even if they came to us across it, now and then, tosuit their pleasure, light and easy as that tide--it was still there tosome day ground and swamp them! And if he doubted it, you had only totell him your own story. You had only to tell him what you have justtold me--that you yourself, an officer and a gentleman, thought youloved me, a vulgar, uneducated, savage girl, and that I, kinder to youthan you to me or him, made you take it back across that tide, becauseI 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 withthe same gentle smile, "to prove that I am your inferior in all but onething."

  "And that?" she said quickly.

  "Is my love."

  His gentle face was as set now as her own as he moved back slowlytowards the door. There he paused.

  "You tell me to speak of Jim, and Jim only. Then hear me. I believethat Miss Preston cares for him as far as lies in her young and giddynature. I could not, therefore, have crushed HIS hope withoutdeceiving him, for there are as cruel deceits prompted by what we callreason as by our love. If you think that a knowledge of this plaintruth would help to save him, I beg you to be kinder to him than youhave been to me,--or even, let me dare to hope, to YOURSELF."

  He slowly crossed the threshold, still holding his cap lightly in hishand.

  "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 notmisunderstand why I add my prayer to the message your friends inLogport charged me with. They beg that you will give up your idea ofreturning here, and come back to them. Believe me, you have madeyourself loved and respected there, in spite--I beg pardon--perhaps Ishould say BECAUSE of your pride. Good-night and good-bye."

  For a single instant she turned her set face to the window with asudden convulsive movement, as if she would have called him back, butat the same moment the opposite door creaked and her brother slippedinto the room. Whether a quick memory of the deserter's entrance atthat door a year ago had crossed her mind, whether there was somestrange suggestion in his mud-stained garments and weak deprecatingsmile, or whether it was the outcome of some desperate struggle withinher, there was that in her face that changed his smile into afrightened 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 aroundhim she bent over him and mingled her tears with his.

  "I heard it all, Mag dearest! All! Forgive me! I have beencrazy!--wild!--I will reform!--I will be better! I will never disgraceyou again, Mag! Never, never! I swear it!"

  She reached down and kissed him. After a pause, a weak boyish smilestruggled 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-maternalsmile, but did not reply.

  "And Mag, dear, don't you think YOU were a little--just a little--hardon HIM? No! Don't look at me that way, for God's sake! There, Ididn'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 overmarsh 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.'"