CHAPTER XII—THE SPLENDOUR OF SHAMELESS LOVE

WHEN Gaston received her telegram in jail he was seated by a window looking out through the bars on Mt. Pisgah’s distant peak looming in grandeur amid a sea of smaller blue mountain waves. He read the message and his soul was filled with a great peace.

“At last! at last! These prison bars, they are good! I could kiss them. I can never be grateful enough to my enemies!”

He had taken his prison as a joke from the first, sneering at the judge who had committed him. He knew that every day he stayed in that jail he was becoming more and more the master of the people. If McLeod had tried he could not have played into his hands with more fatal certainty. Five hundred citizens of Independence had wired him their congratulations and offered him any assistance he desired, from unlimited money for defence to a delegation to tear the jail down.

He declined any assistance. He knew the storm would break over their heads soon enough, and they would be delighted to get rid of him. In the meantime he gave himself up to his thoughts about the woman he loved, and wondered what change had suddenly come over her to send him that message. He felt sure the great crisis in their life had come. What would it be? A sorrowful surrender on her part to her father’s iron will and a tearful good-bye forever, or the full surrender of her woman’s soul and body to the dominion of his love?

He was glad the hour had struck that should decide. He trembled at the import of her answer but he was ready to receive it.

A carriage rolled into the jail enclosure and two young ladies alighted. One of them stopped in the sitting room for visitors, and he heard the tramp of a man’s heavy feet on the stairs and after it the tread of a woman like a soft echo.

The key grated in the lock, the door opened. She looked into his eyes for just an instant of searching soul revelation, saw the yearning and the grateful tears, and with a glad cry sprang into his arms.

“You do love me!” she passionately cried.

“Love you? I drew you back across the sea with my love. I knew you would come. I willed it with a power you couldn’t resist.”

“I never got your letters, and I was hungry to see you,” she whispered.

“And I never got yours, and drew you back by the power of a great heart purpose.”

“Forgive me, for being away from you when you were in danger.”

“I was glad you were safe. Don’t let this jail alarm you. I ’ll be out too soon for my good I’m afraid.”

“No other woman has come into your heart to cheer it even with her friendship since I’ve been away, has she?”

“What a silly question. I’ve never looked at any other woman since the day I first saw you!”

“Tell me you love me again!”

“I—love—you, unto the uttermost, in life, in death, forever!” he whispered tenderly.

She sighed and smiled. “The sweetest music the ear of a woman ever heard!” she half laughed, half cried.

“Now, my dear, you are a full-grown woman in the beauty of a perfect womanhood. For five years and more, I have waited and suffered. My life is an open book before you. When are you going to end this suspense? You must decide now whether your father’s will shall rule your life or my love?”

“Must I decide to-day?” she asked tremblingly.

“Yes,” he answered. “It is not fair to torture me longer.”

“Then I give up!” she tearfully exclaimed. “God forgive me if I am doing wrong! I can not resist you longer. I do not desire to,—I will not! I am all yours, forever—soul, body, will, honour, life—all! I can not live without you. I love you. I love you!—Kiss me!—again—ah, your lips are sweeter than honey! Am I bold to say it? I do not care, I am yours. Your arms are the bonds of my slavery and they are sweet!”

Gaston was trembling with the joy that flooded his being with these the first words of perfect faith and submissive love that had come from her lips. And he winced at the memory now of those hours of dissipation when he had doubted her. He tried to confess it and receive her absolution.

“My dear, my joy is too great. It is pain, as well as joy. In the dark days of our first year of separation I thought once you had forgotten me. I went away into two weeks of debauchery. Your perfect love crushes me with its beauty and purity. I must confess this wrong to you. I must not deceive you in the smallest thing in this hour.”

She placed her hand over his lips, “I will not hear it. I ought to have been braver and fought for my rights and yours. I will not hear one word of humiliation from you. I love you. You are my king. I love you, good or bad. I would love you if you were a murderer on the gallows. I can not help it. I do not wish to help it. I will follow you to the bottomless pit or to the throne of God and say it without fear to devil or angel. Kiss me again!—There, do not cry—let me see your beautiful brown eyes. I ’ll kiss the tears away. Tears are for my eyes not yours!”

“Then you will fix the day, dear?” he softly urged.

“How soon would you like it?”

“The sooner the better.”

“Then I fix to-day,” she said impulsively.

“What, here, in this jail?”

“Yes, where you are is heaven to me. I haven’t noticed the jail,” she said soberly.

He looked at her a moment, strained her to his heart and brushed the tears of joy from his eyes.

“My beautiful queen! This hour is worth every pain and every throb of anguish I have suffered. Its memory will encompass life with a great light.”

“I ’ll go with Stella, see Dr. Durham who is here looking after your case, have him get the license, and we will be back in half an hour!”

The Preacher greeted her with delight. “Ah! Miss Sallie, if I had known a little thing like this would have brought you back, I would have hired a jail for him long ago, and put him in it.”

“Doctor, I want you to get the license and marry us now, will you do it?”

“Will I? Just watch me. I ’ll have the documents and be ready for the ceremony in fifteen minutes!” cried the preacher as he hurried to the office of the Register of Deeds.

Sallie ran up to Mrs. Durham’s room, told her, and asked her to be one of the witnesses.

“Of course, I will, Sallie. You are the one girl in the world I have always wanted Charlie to marry.”

Sallie slipped her arm around Mrs. Durham. “You don’t think I am doing wrong to disobey my parents thus, do you?” she faltered. “I feel just for a moment, now that I have decided, bruised and homesick,—I want my mother. Let me feel your arms about my neck just once. You are a woman. You love me as well as Charlie, tell me, am I doing wrong?”

Mrs. Durham kissed her. “I do love you child. It is a solemn hour for your soul. You alone can decide such a question. Any intrusion of advice in such a trial would be a sacrilege. Under ordinary conditions it would be a dangerous thing for a girl thus to leave her father’s roof and take this step that will decide forever her destiny. Marriage is something that swallows up life, the past, the present, the future. We seem to have never known anything else. I can only say, if I were in your place, knowing all I would do as you are doing.”

Sallie impulsively kissed her, bit her lips to keep back a tear, and held her hand.

“I know your father well,” she continued. “He is a man I greatly admire. But he is unreasonable with any one who dares to cross his will. You could never get his consent now that his pride is aroused except by forcing it. When it is over, he will forgive you, and when he knows your lover as I know him, he will be as proud of his son-in-law as a peacock of his plumage.”

“Oh, it is so sweet to hear just the advice one wishes in such an hour,” cried Sallie. “I shall always love you for these words.”

“Yes, I congratulate you on the end of your long hesitation. I know you will be happy. Any woman would be happy with the love of such a man, and he was made for you.”

“Then you don’t believe with Papa,” she said with a smile, “that his mouth is cruel, and that he will try to whip me in five years, do you?”

Mrs. Durham laughed. “Yes, he will whip you, but they will be love licks and you will cry for more. Your lover is a rare and brilliant man. He is strong, rugged, resistless in will, fierce in his passions from the blood of sunny France in his veins, and masterful in life from the iron heritage of the hardier races. You have seen these traits. Wait until you know him as I do in his daily life, and you will find a wealth of patience and a depth of tenderness that will startle. I envy you.”

“Thank you,” Sallie interrupted. “You don’t know how glad your words are to my heart. I’ve not seen much of that trait yet. I’ve been half afraid of him sometimes. Let me kiss you again.”

The keeper of the jail treated Gaston with every consideration and arranged for the marriage to take place in the little sitting room where he allowed him to come on parole.

The bride wore a plain travelling dress in which she had come from New York. She had driven from the depot past Stella Holt’s home, and with her straight to the jail.

Gaston thought her the fairest vision that ever greeted the eye of man as he stood by her side; for he had seen that day the soul of a radiantly beautiful woman in the splendour of shameless love. His own soul was drunk with the joy of it all and his eyes now devoured her with their intense light.

Standing there before the Preacher whom he loved as his father, and the foster mother who had wrapped his little shivering body in the warmth of a great heart that night the light of life went out in his own mother’s room, with Stella Holt’s sympathetic face reflecting her friend’s happiness, the marriage ceremony was performed. He took Sallie’s trembling hand in his and promised to love, honour and cherish her as long as life endured. And under his breath he added, “Here and hereafter—forever.” And then she looked into his smiling face with her blue eyes full of unspeakable love, and in a voice low and soft as the note of a flute, gave to him her life.

And the Preacher said, “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder!”

She stayed there with him until the gathering twilight.

“Now, I must hurry back to my father and win him. I will not come to you a beggar. My father shall not disinherit me. I am going to bring you my fortune, too.”

“Oh! curse that fortune, dear! I’ve feared it was that keeping us apart so long.”

“Don’t curse it. I like it, and I am going to win it for you. You are a man of genius. Your success is as sure as if it were already won. I will not come to you a helpless pauper. I have never been taught to do anything. I should like to cook for you if I knew how, and I am going to learn how. I am going to make you the most beautiful home that the heart of a woman can dream I’d rob the world for treasure for it. I am going to rob my dear old father. He has sworn to disinherit me if I marry without his consent. He shall not do it.”

“Then, don’t be long about it. You are my treasure. I can build you a snug little nest at Hambright.”

“I will only ask four weeks. Now do what I tell you. Sit down and write Papa a letter telling him I am your affianced bride and ask his consent to the celebration of our marriage within three weeks. That will produce an earthquake, and something will surely happen within four weeks.”

He wrote the letter, and she looked over his shoulder. “You see, dear,” she said as she kissed him good-bye, “I love Papa so tenderly. You can’t understand how close the tie is between us, perhaps some day in our own home of which I’m dreaming you may understand as you can not now,” she added softly.

“Then for your sake, dearest, I hope you can win him. But I’m afraid of this plan of yours.”

“Leave it with me for a month, do just as I tell you, and then I ’ll obey you all the rest of our lives,—if your orders suit me,” she playfully added.

She returned to Stella Holt’s, and Gaston went back to his jail room and dreamed that night he was sleeping in the Governor’s Palace.