Admit that it was his impulse to tell her; what did that impulse really mean? Primarily, that it would be a great relief to him; the idea of having any reserves was most repugnant to him. For the moment the instinct was again strong to tell her. But, frowning, he went on with his argument: A relief to him; but what to her? A pain and a shame; a memory that might outlast another twenty-three years, perhaps. But she might want to know it? Well, that was no reason. If she wanted poison, should he give it to her? And this was poison. Did he not know that? Good God!
But she had a right to know it? Here he was perfectly clear; certainly not. It in no wise bore upon his relation to her. Furthermore, the question of prudence was not involved; there was no chance that some day, somehow, it might come to her ears. She could never hear it, except from him. If this were not the case, of course he would tell her.
But was he deceiving her? Was he, as she put it, “taking her love on false pretenses”? William West got up and walked the length of his library; then he stopped by the open window, and looked out on the silent street; a policeman on his beat glanced up and saw him, and touched his helmet with two fingers.
“Good-evening, sir; don’t know but what I’d better say good-morning!”
“What! Is it as late as all that, Reilly?” the minister said; and added a friendly inquiry about the man’s hand, which seemed to be hurt. Amy’s stern sense of the retributive justice of the accident came into his mind, and he smiled involuntarily. The policeman looked sheepish, as the clergyman meant he should, and turned the conversation by remarking that he would “be lookin’ after the rectory special when Mr. West was away on his weddin’ tower.”
“Thank you, Reilly!” the other answered heartily.
The policeman’s steps went echoing off into the night; a street lamp flickered, and a puff of soft wind wandered into the window.
Deceiving her: taking her love under false pretenses.
Was he anything but the man Amy supposed him to be? Very humbly, very truly, he said to himself that, by the grace of God, he was an honest, pure, God-fearing man. That sin of twenty-three years ago was not his sin. He, William West, forty-two years old, whose honorable record in the community was spread through all these years of service, was not that base, mean, wicked boy. The sin was not his. It was a sin of youth; a sin almost of childhood. It meant nothing to him now.
“It is nothing now,” he insisted, passionately. Accustomed to weigh other people’s actions and motives, he knew that he was discriminating with almost judicial impartiality when he thus looked himself in the face. “A repentant man has no more to do with his sin, for which he has repented and made reparation, than a well man has to do with the disease of which he has been cured.” He remembered that he had used this illustration once to some one else; he must apply it now to himself. No; he was not deceiving Amy. He was only sparing her—sparing her, to be sure, from a pain she might wish to bear, but that had nothing to do with the question. If she knew, she would suffer; not from a fact, but from an illusion; for he would be confessing a sin which was not his sin. Honor? The word seemed artificial as he thus put the situation before him.
No; it would be cowardly to tell her, and it would be untrue. There was nothing for him to do but face the fact that, to spare her, he must bear, for the rest of his life, the wretched burden of realizing that he had a secret from her.
Sanely, truly, this good man believed that his impulse to tell the woman he loved was selfish and cowardly; it was an impulse to make her share a burden which he deserved to bear alone. Furthermore, it was the effect, not of reason, not of religion, not of love; it was the effect, first, of the selfish desire to seek relief by sharing a cruel knowledge; secondly, of a traditional sentimentality, the weak and driveling outcome of that sense of justice which is expressed in the willingness to bear consequences.
Well, the boy who had sinned had borne the consequences; he had suffered.
For the man to suffer now, twenty-three years after, was unreasonable, but inevitable.
For a woman, who had no part or lot in that young past, to suffer now, twenty-three years afterwards, was foolish and useless.
If the man permitted it, he was a coward and a fool.
This, at least, was what William West told himself.
IV
The conclusion to which the Rev. Mr. West came was that, if his love for Amy was deep enough and unselfish enough, he would hold his tongue. He believed that confession, apart from reparation, was the refuge of the weak mind.
Having thus decided to bear alone the burden of his secret, he went, early in the morning, and told the woman he loved.
Of course, there is no explanation of this vacillation and indifference to his own judgment, except the mere statement that he was in love.
“Amy is trying on her dress,” Mrs. Paul said, when he was ushered into the library, “so, if you want to see her, you can go home at once. But perhaps you may condescend to talk to me a little while?”
“I must see Amy, please,” he said. He had a way of putting people aside so gently and peremptorily that Mrs. Paul, who was not a yielding person, never dreamed of protesting.
“I’ll tell her. But she really can’t come down for ten minutes. Do you mind waiting?”
“Very much,” he said smiling. “Tell her to come down just as she is, and let me see her frock.”
“Indeed, she shan’t do anything of the sort,” said Mrs. Paul, with indignation; but relented to the extent of letting him have the library to himself, and going upstairs to send the girl to him.
Amy came floating in with a snowy gleam and rustle, and stood before him, bidding him not to dare to touch her; though, indeed, being a mere man, he was far too uncomfortably awed to think of taking this glorious white creature into his poor human arms.
“You are magnificent, but you are not Amy,” he said; “do get on some common clothes. I’m afraid of you.”
“That is as it should be, sir!” she told him. “I shall dress like this every day if it keeps you obedient. If I had had on my wedding-dress last night, you would not have dared not to stay to dinner when I—wanted you.”
Her look, through the mist of tulle, of soft reproach and challenge, was too much for fear, and he boldly kissed her; which made her protest, and fly from further risk of crushing the bravery of her wedding-day. When she came back again, in a blue cotton gown, trig and pretty, with a bunch of pansies in her belt, there was, fortunately, nothing to be hurt by being crushed.
There was a moment of tender and passionate silence. His errand faded from William West’s mind; the reality of life was here! his past was no more to him than the eggshell is to the eagle. So when, later, leaning forward in his chair, holding her hand in his, looking into her pure eyes, he began to speak, it was almost casually. Before the great fact of human love, the question of telling her or not telling her of that old dead and buried sin was suddenly unimportant—they loved each other!
“Dear,” he said, “I’ve come to tell you something. What you said last night about having no reserves put it into my head. I had forgotten it.”
It was characteristic of the man that there was no preamble; his words were simple, and he was perfectly matter-of-fact and unanxious; so much so that Amy laughed.
“Were you a year-old criminal? Well, tell me at once! I may reconsider, you know.”
There