Beatrix Randolph

Copyright bt Amekicax Pükss Associatios, Hamilton Jocelyn had observed with anxiety the progresa of the acquaintance between Beüingham and the prima donna and was casting about in his mind how to put a stop to it. when Bellingham suddenly diiappeared. He would have inferred that lie must have proposed to mademoiselle and been refused had not the latter's aspect plainly showed that she was suffering quite as mueh as Bollingham could be supposed to be. Jccelyn's aeuteness was not of a fine enough order to enable him to hit npon the real explanation. But the episode also admonished him that it was full time he himself took a leading and a winning hand in the game. I Accordingly Jocelyn insensibly began to draw nearer to the object of his I tentions. He talked to her a great deal ' about her profession, about the prerogatives of genius, and the peculiar ■ leges permitted to the artistic and ! pecially to the música] temperament. He launched into philosophical speculations about the constitution of society, and demonstrated what a gigantic tyranay the niarriage covenant was as at present administered. The time would come, he declared, when we should look back upon such a state of things with wonder mingled with disgust. Consider the immense mimber of divorces and scacdals that were coming to iight in all degrees cf the social scale; ■what were they but the blind and inarticulate protest of the individual against the selfish injustice of the majority? What was the remedy for these abuses? Did it not lie in the hands of the superior persons in the world - of those who could see through tlie show of things, who were clear headed, and posêessed the courage of their convictions? Let them lead the way. Doubtless they would be pursued by the sneers and slanders of fools and bigots; but fools and bigots had ever been the foes of progress and enlightenment. We who take the broader aiid profounder views can afford to disregard their clamor. We (said Jocelyn, taking the prima donna's hand in his, and stroking it gently) , can set them the example of courage and independence, which will sooner or later be followed. It is not merely our j privilege, but our dnty, and it would be base for us to shrink from it. The prima donna withdrew her hand as unobtrusively as she could, and aaked ter mentor what objection there was to ; marriage if people loved each other? [ He replied that i f they loved each j Other what was the use of , marriage She rejoined that for two persons to love each other was for them tofeel that they must belong to each other forever, . and that mr.rriage wassimply their open declaration before God and man of the xistence of this feeling in their hearts. To make such a declaration was, she conceived, a natural and inevitable impulse, and it was natura! and expedient ! that it should bo made accordiiíg to tain forms, the gradual outeome of tradition and custoin. Therefore she l thought marriage was not so wuch an ■ injustice of society to thé individual, as i ademand made by th,e individual that ' society be the witness and a voucher of his covenant. '; But Jocelyn hereupon pointed out that a covenant always impliej a binding promise, invólving penalties; if it were iiroken; that this again implied distrust in the. power of pure love to hold its own, and that any qutside brought to bear upon a passion essentially so free as love must tend to promote the very reaction and revolt wljich it professed to guard against. She made answer that the covenant of marriage was not a' bondage, and had not that effect uponthe parties to it, but that to make one's happiness known to others endowed it with a reality and substance which were else wanting to it. That every person one met tacitly or explicitly confirmed it, reechoed it and assured it, and that the wedded state would . consequently lose half its delight and security if it existed, for example, between two persons onadesert island, debarred from ever communicating the f act of their mutual relation to others. Joclyn here changed his ground, the better to convey his meaning, and put it to his interlocutor whether a large percentage of marriages were not notori-ously unhappy, and this being admitted, ■whether it were not thereby demonstrated that a great many marriages were a mistake? She answered that even if all marriages which had ever occurred were mistakes, that would not prove that marriage itself was a mistake, but only that the wedded partners had been mistaken in each other. Upon his maintaining that every institntion must be judged by its practical application, she rejoined that if there were no such thing as love, there was an end to all argument about it. He said that love did unquestionably exist, and that it was the strongest and most enduring passion of the human heart, but that it by no means followed that we could always love the same person with equal fervor. Life was growth, and love, which was the essence of life, must therefore be subject to growth likewise. As we developed, as our minds and capacities expanded, we put aside the things of our less mature time, and embraced the interests and the loves corresponding to our larger spliere. There was one love for childhood, another for youth, another for the prime of life. The greater a person's inherent scope and etiergy, the finer his organization, the more often would he find it necessary to change the object of his aff ections. To do so was not in opposition to true morality, but in obedience to it; but society, consulting solely its own selfish convenience, had artificially and arbitrarily made such acts criminal, and had thereby bewildered and mortally injured myriaiis of innocent human beings. To this The prima donna replied that love could grow illimitably without (langer of ever outgrowing its objectv The need %vas not of inore to love, but to love more. God, who was love itself, loved the meanest of his creatures, and what God loved that, surely, is not unworthy the alïection of the most richly endowed of mankind. As Jocelyn did not iminediately confute this argument the prima donna arose and gently intimated tbat it was necessary for her to be alone in order to prepare for the evening's performance. Jocelyn ought to have known the futility of argument with a woman about a subject in which the emotions are rnainly involved. Even if he had demonstrated his proposition and obtained her assent to it, he would not have been a bit nearer his goal. A woman overpowered by passiou will act in direct opposition to the most elementary dictates of reason; and the same woman will not swerve a hair's breadth from the path of rectitude if the most unanswerable logical demonstration do not tally with her emotional prepossession. The fatal flaw in Jocelyn's syllogism was Jocelyn himeelf. Man may sometimes be led by the intellect, but woman only by the heart - and by curiosity. Af ter the above discussion it became vagnely apparent to Jocelyn that the prima donna was drifting away from him. She parried his attempts at familiar intercourse gently but effectively. He had in fact done her a service against his own interests. He had assisted her to formúlate her instinctive recoil from the view which he sought to incúlcate. It was incunibent upon him, therefore, to take soine practical step. The close of the season was at hand. While he was racking his brains as to what he should do, accident caine opportunely to his aid. As he was walking about one evening behind the scènes, while the opera was in progress. a carpcnter, who was tinkering a defective joint in the scenery up somewhere in the wings, let fall a chisel, which struck 'Jocelyn on thehead. inflicting a superficial bul alarming looking wound along the right side of his forehead. He stag[;ered and feil, and blood streamed down his face. A surgeon was sent for, and meanwbile Jocelyn was removed into the prima donna's dressing room. Just then the prima' donna, warm and palpitating from' her scène, came in with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes, the thunder of appïause still sounding in her ears. . Jocelyn's ghastly aspect filled her with compassion and tenderness. She knelt down beside him where he lay upon the sofa, dipped her handkerchief in water, and with soft murmurs of sympathy and rath wasbed the blood away from his wound. He recógnized his good luck and lay still for a time, apparently in the dead faint that precedes dissolution. Hut watching his opportunity when they vereleft alone for a few minutes he faítered' out an entreaty to be lif ted to a sitting position, and when she clasped hvr strong young arrns about him to accomplish his desire she found herself unawares entangled in his embrace, and before she could extricate herself she feit his lips on. her cheek. :She placed hun in the attitude he wished, .and then got slowly and wearily tohèr feet, hèr face pale and her eyes dark. . "So,"' nhesaid, with a' perceptible in-tonarion of contempt, "I was not mistaken.!" ' . "Forgive me, Beatrix," he sighed out, still affecting to be overeóme by weakness. "I could not help it. Darling girl, I love you so! I can fight against it no longer." "I might have known that you were like the others - or worse," said she, "but ! I could not believe it till now. I shall j never be mistaken again." "Oh, Beatrix! have you no pity - no consideration for - for my condition? Heaven knows how I have struggled! Take off this bandage," he continued querulously, snatchin iiway the handkerchief from his forehead. "Let me bleed to death- I will not live without you!" "It will take you a long time to bleed j to death, Mr. Jocelyn," returned she i quietiy. "I shall not be able to wait for you. Perhaps Madame Bemax will. Shall I cali lier?" "You shall not speak to me in that tone!" exclaimed Jocelyn, rttblng himsclf on his couch in real or feigned passion. "I have not deserved it! Have I not done everything for you? Havo you foniotten what you owe me?" "You cannot have forgotten that I long since told you I could never rnarry you, so how could you expect that I would pay you what I owe witn inyself?" "I am not a man to make cold blooded calculations!" said he, getting impulsively on his legs. "If you had any heart you would understand, BeatrLx," he went on, suddenly changing his tone and attempting to seize her hands; "1 do not ask an irrevocable compact - I do not hope that you can love me always. You will go on, I know, and leave me behind. But, ohl my dearestone, would you regret in the future that is before you, and which my poor aid will have helped you to enjoy - will you regret, then, having made a man who loves you insauely- having made him, for a little while only, the happiest of human beings? You may be loved by younger men than I, and handsomer and richer, but never" "Mr. Jocelyn," she interposed, with a manner that indicated a lamentable hardening of her once sweet and gracious nature, "if you would look at yourself in the glass you would understand why 1 appear so unsympathetic. Even a prima donna, who holds herself at the beek and cali of every good looking fellow who happens to take a fancy to her - even I cannot listen to you until you have washed your face. Perhaps you had better not use my washstand - people are so censorious, and your sensibilities are so delicate; but if you will go to your own place and get yourself in presentable condition then you may come to-morrow and we will talk over your proposal as quietly as your passion will admit. I will ask my father and Gen. Inigo to be present as witnesses and to offer suggestions; for you are so young and impnlsive that perhaps I inight otherwise get the better of you. I think I hear some one coming," she added, laying her hand upon the door latch; "perhaps it would be pleasanter for you to go out of your own accord, instead of waiting to be - assisted!" Jocelyn departed, feeling sore outside and in. But he fancied he knew a way to make the prima donna regret his dismissal.