Before he quite came
to himself the news had well-nigh driven him mad. There stood his
mother, dashing her cold hailstorm of contemptuous wrath on the
girl he loved, whom he had gone to bed believing the sweetest
creature in creation, and loving himself more than she dared
show! He had been dreaming of her with the utmost tenderness,
when his mother woke him with the news that she had gone in the
night with Tom Helmer, the poorest creature in the neighborhood.
"For God's sake, mother," he cried, "go away, and let me get up!"
"What can you do, Godfrey? What is there to be done? Let the jade
go to her ruin!" cried Mrs. Wardour, alarmed in the midst of her
wrath. "You _can_ do nothing now. As she has made her bed,
so she must lie."
Her words were torture to him. He sprang from his bed, and
proceeded to pull on his clothes. Terrified at the wildness of
his looks, his mother fled from the room, but only to watch at
the door.
Scarcely could Godfrey dress himself for agitation; brain and
heart seemed to mingle in chaotic confusion. Anger strove with
unbelief, and indignation at his mother with the sense of bitter
wrong from Letty. It was all incredible and shameful, yet not the
less utterly miserable. The girl whose Idea lay in the innermost
chamber of his heart like the sleeping beauty in her palace!
while he loved and ministered to her outward dream-shape which
flitted before the eyes of his sense, in the hope that at last
the Idea would awake, and come forth and inform it!--he dared not
follow the thought! it was madness and suicide! He had been
silently worshiping an angel with wings not yet matured to the
spreading of themselves to the winds of truth; those wings were a
little maimed, and he had been tending them with precious balms,
and odors, and ointments: all at once she had turned into a bat,
a skin-winged creature that flies by night, and had disappeared
in the darkness! Of all possible mockeries, for _her_ to
steal out at night to the embraces of a fool! a wretched, weak-
headed, idle fellow, whom every clown called by his Christian
name! an ass that did nothing but ride the country on a horse too
good for him, and quarrel with his mother from Sunday to
Saturday! For such a man she had left him, Godfrey Wardour! a man
who would have lifted her to the height of her nature! whereas
the fool Helmer would sink her to the depth of his own merest
nothingness! The thing was inconceivable! yet it was! He knew it;
they were all the same! Never woman worthy of true man! The
poorest show would take them captive, would draw them from
reason!
He knew _now_ that he loved the girl.
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