Salted With Fire | Page 9

when Isobel asked him in sorrowful mood
some indifferent question, the uneasy knowledge that he was about to
increase her sadness made him answer her roughly--a form not
unnatural to incipient compunction: white as a ghost she stood a
moment silently staring at him, then sank on the floor senseless.
Seized with an overmastering repentance that brought back with a rush
all his tenderness, James sprang to her, lifted her in his arms, laid her
on the sofa, and lavished caresses upon her, until at length she
recovered sufficiently to know where she lay--in the false paradise of
his arms, with him kneeling over her in a passion of regret, the first
passion he had ever felt or manifested toward her, pouring into her ear
words of incoherent dismay--which, taking shape as she revived, soon
became promises and vows. Thereupon the knowledge that he had
committed himself, and the conviction that he was henceforth bound to
one course in regard to her, wherein he seemed to himself incapable of
falsehood, unhappily freed him from the self-restraint then most
imperative upon him, and his trust in his own honour became the last
loop of the snare about to entangle his and her very life. At the moment
when a genuine love would have hastened to surround the woman with
bulwarks of safety, he ceased to regard himself as his sister's keeper.
Even thus did Cain cease to be his brother's keeper, and so slew him.
But the vengeance on his unpremeditated treachery, for treachery,
although unpremeditated, it was none the less, came close upon its
heels. The moment that Isy left the room, weeping and pallid,
conscious that a miserable shame but waited the entrance of a reflection
even now importunate, he threw himself on the floor, writhing as in the
claws of a hundred demons. The next day but one he was to preach his
first sermon before his class, in the presence of his professor of divinity!
His immediate impulse was to rush from the house, and home hot-foot
to his mother; and it would have been well for him to have done so

indeed, confessed all, and turned his back on the church and his paltry
ambition together! But he had never been open with his mother, and he
feared his father, not knowing the tender righteousness of that father's
heart, or the springs of love which would at once have burst open to
meet the sorrowful tale of his wretched son; and instead of fleeing at
once to his one city of refuge, he fell but to pacing the room in hopeless
bewilderment; and before long he was searching every corner of his
reviving consciousness, not indeed as yet for any justification, but for
what palliation of his "fault" might there be found; for it was the first
necessity of this self-lover to think well, or at least endurably, of
himself. Nor was it long before a multitude of sneaking arguments,
imps of Satan, began to assemble at the agonized cry of his
self-dissatisfaction--for it was nothing more.
For, in that agony of his, there was no detestation of himself because of
his humiliation of the trusting Isobel; he did not loathe his abuse of her
confidence, or his having wrapt her in the foul fire-damp of his
miserable weakness: the hour of a true and good repentance was for
him not yet come; shame only as yet possessed him, because of the
failure of his own fancied strength. If it should ever come to be known,
what contempt would not clothe him, instead of the garments of praise
of which he had dreamed all these years! The pulpit, that goal of his
ambition, that field of his imagined triumphs--the very thought of it
now for a time made him feel sick. Still, there at least lay yet a
possibility of recovery--not indeed by repentance, of which he did not
seek to lay hold, but in the chance that no one might hear a word of
what had happened! Sure he felt, that Isy would never reveal it, and
least of all to her aunt! His promise to marry Isy he would of course
keep! Neither would that be any great hardship, if only it had no
consequences. As an immediate thing, however, it was not to be
thought of! there could be at the moment no necessity for such an
extreme measure! He would wait and see! he would be guided by
events! As to the sin of the thing--how many had not fallen like him,
and no one the wiser! Never would he so offend again! and in the
meantime he would let it go, and try to forget it--in the hope that
providence now, and at length time, would bury it from all men's sight!