"I've set my heart on you, Polly, and I never can stand it not to get what I've set my heart on.If I lost you, I'd go straight to ruin."She might have been a great deal older and wiser and still not have seen in this a confirmation of her father's judgment of her lover.And her parents had unconsciously driven her into a mental state in which, if he had committed a crime, it would have seemed to her their fault rather than his.The next day she opened the subject with her mother--the subject that was never out of their minds.
"I can't forget him, mother.I CAN'T give him up." With the splendid confidence of youth, "I can save him--he'll do anything for my sake." With the touching ignorance of youth, "He's done nothing so very dreadful, I'm sure--I'd believe him against the whole world."And in the evening her mother approached her father.She was in sympathy with Pauline, though her loyalty to her husband made her careful not to show it.She had small confidence in a man's judgments of men on their woman-side, great confidence in the power of women to change and uplift men.
"Father," said she, when they were alone on the side porch after supper, "have you noticed how hard Polly is taking IT?"His eyes and the sudden deepening of the lines in his face answered her.
"Don't you think maybe we've been a little--too--severe?""I've tried to think so, but--" He shook his head."Maggie, he's hopeless, hopeless.""I don't know much about those things." This was a mere form of speech.She thought she knew all there was to be known; and as she was an intelligent woman who had lived a long time and had a normal human curiosity she did know a great deal.But, after the fashion of many of the women of the older generation, she had left undisturbed his delusion that her goodness was the result not of intelligence but of ignorance."But I can't help fearing it isn't right to condemn a young man forever because he was led away as a boy.""I can't discuss it with you, Maggie--it's a degradation even to speak of him before a good woman.You must rely upon my judgment.Polly must put him out of her head.""But what am I to tell her? You can't make a woman like our Pauline put a man out of her life when she loves him unless you give her a reason that satisfies her.And if you don't give ME a reason that satisfies me how can I give HER a reason that will satisfy her?""I'll talk to her," said the colonel, after a long pause.
"She must--she shall give him up, mother.""I've tried to persuade her to go to visit Olivia," continued Mrs.Gardiner."But she won't.And she doesn't want me to ask Olivia here.""I'll ask Olivia before I speak to her."
Mrs.Gardiner went up to her daughter's room--it had been her play-room, then her study, and was now graduated into her sitting-room.She was dreaming over a book--Tennyson's poems.
She looked up, eyes full of hope.
"He has some good reason, dear," began her mother.
"What is it?" demanded Pauline.
"I can't tell you any more than I've told you already," replied her mother, trying not to show her feelings in her face.
"Why does he treat me--treat you--like two naughty little children?" said Pauline, impatiently tossing the book on the table.
"Pauline!" Her mother's voice was sharp in reproof."How can you place any one before your father!"Pauline was silent--she had dropped the veil over herself.
"I--I--where did you place father--when--when--" Her eyes were laughing again.
"You know he'd never oppose your happiness, Polly." Mrs.
Gardiner was smoothing her daughter's turbulent red-brown hair.
"You'll only have to wait under a little more trying circumstances.And if he's right, the truth will come out.And if he's mistaken and John's all you think him, then that will come out."Pauline knew her father was not opposing her through tyranny or pride of opinion or sheer prejudice; but she felt that this was another case of age's lack of sympathy with youth, felt it with all the intensity of infatuated seventeen made doubly determined by opposition and concealment.The next evening he and she were walking together in the garden.He suddenly put his arm round her and drew her close to him and kissed her.
"You know I shouldn't if I didn't think it the only course--don't you, Pauline?" he said in a broken voice that went straight to her heart.
"Yes, father." Then, after a silence: "But--we--we've been sweethearts since we were children.And--I--father, I MUST stand by him.""Won't you trust me, child? Won't you believe ME rather than him?"Pauline's only answer was a sigh.They loved each the other; he adored her, she reverenced him.But between them, thick and high, rose the barrier of custom and training.Comradeship, confidence were impossible.
