The Wife of his Youth | Page 8

know I love you, John, and why I do not say what you wish. You must give me a little more time to make up my mind before I can consent to burden you with a nameless wife, one who does not know who her mother was"----
"She was a good woman, and beautiful, if you are at all like her."
"Or her father"----
"He was a gentleman and a scholar, if you inherited from him your mind or your manners."
"It is good of you to say that, and I try to believe it. But it is a serious matter; it is a dreadful thing to have no name."
"You are known by a worthy one, which was freely given you, and is legally yours."
"I know--and I am grateful for it. After all, though, it is not my real name; and since I have learned that it was not, it seems like a garment--something external, accessory, and not a part of myself. It does not mean what one's own name would signify."
"Take mine, Clara, and make it yours; I lay it at your feet. Some honored men have borne it."
"Ah yes, and that is what makes my position the harder. Your great-grandfather was governor of Connecticut."
"I have heard my mother say so."
"And one of your ancestors came over in the Mayflower."
"In some capacity--I have never been quite clear whether as ship's cook or before the mast."
"Now you are insincere, John; but you cannot deceive me. You never spoke in that way about your ancestors until you learned that I had none. I know you are proud of them, and that the memory of the governor and the judge and the Harvard professor and the Mayflower pilgrim makes you strive to excel, in order to prove yourself worthy of them."
"It did until I met you, Clara. Now the one inspiration of my life is the hope to make you mine."
"And your profession?"
"It will furnish me the means to take you out of this; you are not fit for toil."
"And your book--your treatise that is to make you famous?"
"I have worked twice as hard on it and accomplished twice as much since I have hoped that you might share my success."
"Oh! if I but knew the truth!" she sighed, "or could find it out! I realize that I am absurd, that I ought to be happy. I love my parents--my foster-parents--dearly. I owe them everything. Mother--poor, dear mother!--could not have loved me better or cared for me more faithfully had I been her own child. Yet--I am ashamed to say it--I always felt that I was not like them, that there was a subtle difference between us. They were contented in prosperity, resigned in misfortune; I was ever restless, and filled with vague ambitions. They were good, but dull. They loved me, but they never said so. I feel that there is warmer, richer blood coursing in my veins than the placid stream that crept through theirs."
"There will never be any such people to me as they were," said her lover, "for they took you and brought you up for me."
"Sometimes," she went on dreamily, "I feel sure that I am of good family, and the blood of my ancestors seems to call to me in clear and certain tones. Then again when my mood changes, I am all at sea--I feel that even if I had but simply to turn my hand to learn who I am and whence I came, I should shrink from taking the step, for fear that what I might learn would leave me forever unhappy."
"Dearest," he said, taking her in his arms, while from the hall and down the corridor came the softened strains of music, "put aside these unwholesome fancies. Your past is shrouded in mystery. Take my name, as you have taken my love, and I 'll make your future so happy that you won't have time to think of the past. What are a lot of musty, mouldy old grandfathers, compared with life and love and happiness? It 's hardly good form to mention one's ancestors nowadays, and what 's the use of them at all if one can't boast of them?"
"It 's all very well of you to talk that way," she rejoined. "But suppose you should marry me, and when you become famous and rich, and patients flock to your office, and fashionable people to your home, and every one wants to know who you are and whence you came, you 'll be obliged to bring out the governor, and the judge, and the rest of them. If you should refrain, in order to forestall embarrassing inquiries about my ancestry, I should have deprived you of something you are entitled to, something which has a real social value. And when people found out all about