Harland_At_Last.txt topic ['13', '324', '378', '393']
the pertinacity with which he returned to the question one
could discern his actual anxiety to have it settled.
understood that the only salve of possible application to his
outraged pride and love was the discovery that had been really
a widow when he wedded her. divorce and subsequent deception
were sins of heinous dye against his ideas of respectability and
unspotted honor, but he would never forgive the woman who had had
two living husbands, freed from the former though she was by a legal
fiction.
one saw this more clearly than did she whose fate trembled upon
the next words she should utter. all her hardihood, she
hesitated to reply. , wealth, and station were on one side;
degradation and poverty on the other. solitary hope of
reinstatement in the affection, if not the esteem, of him she loved
truly as it was in her to love anything beside herself, was arrayed
against the certainty of alienation and the tearful odds of
ignominious banishment.
answer, under the presure of the warring emotions, was a
semitone lower, and less distinctly enunciated than those that had
gone before it.
" denouement you propose for your romance is impracticable.
died before the date of the second marriage."
drew himself to a sitting posture by clutching the back of
the lounge. red eyes and tumbled hair made him look more like a
mad than a sick man.
" the name of ," he demanded hoarsely, "have we not had
enough lies, every one of which has been a blunder, and a fatal one?
told you, years ago, that the scene of this evening was a mere
question of time; that, without a miracle, an edifice founded upon
iniquity and cemented by falsehood must crush you before you could
lay the top-stone. would not be warned--you held on your way
without hesitation or compunction, and now you would add to sin
fatuity. you suppose that after what your husband has learned of
your untruthfulness he will accept your assertion on any subject
without inquiry? , how many in your own family and out of
it--although these may not know you by the name you now bear--are
cognizant of the fact that was alive for almost
fifteen months after you became . ?"
's arm was about his neck, her hand upon his mouth.
" more! no more! if you love me!" she whispered in an agony.
" he guess all, he would murder her!"
" are prepared to certify that he is dead , are you, .
?" queried , suspicious of this by-play.
" am!" sulkily.
" is a pity!" was the ambiguous rejoinder.
clicked upon the hearth. was the fragments of the toy
stiletto, broken by an uncontrollable twitch of the small fingers
that held it.
. arose, pale as a ghost, but unquailing in eye or
mien.
" know your lordship's pleasure respecting your cast-off
minion?"
" the morning, yes!" glancing up disdainfully. ", let me
wish you 'good-night' and happy dreams."
.
.
", no! my dear!" said . , earnestly. " am shocked and
astonished that you should ever have labored under such a delusion.
told me the story, and a dreadful one it was, the day old
. was buried. 't it wonderful that he never knew
whom had married until he saw her leaning upon his arm in
the graveyard? recognized . in the house, but supposed
him to be a visitor at and a relative of . ,
having heard that her maiden name was . to his being your
husband, it did not at first occur to him, so bewildered was he by
your meeting and the thoughts awakened by it. at sight of
the truth rushed over him, nearly depriving him of his wits. soon
got out of me all that knew, and by putting this and that
together, we made out the mystery. was so grieved and indignant
and horrified that was for sending him forthwith to , that
he might clear himself of the shocking charges they had preferred
against him, by exposing the motives of his accusers. he was
stubborn and independent. ' can do no good now,' he said. '
years ago this discovery would have been my temporal salvation.
is 's husband. cannot touch him without wounding
her.' could not reconcile this mode of reasoning with my
conscience. wrong had been done, it ought to be righted. did
not sleep a wink all night. wept over my noble, generous,
slandered boy, and over you, my darling! but my chief thought was
anger at the shameless depravity, the cold-blooded cruelty of the
brazen-faced adventuress who sat in your angel mother's place.
aught or knew, her real husband was still alive. had
never heard of the divorce, you see, and the circumstance of her
marrying under her maiden name looked black.
"! pondered upon the horrible affair until could hold my
peace no longer. and went home with
next morning, and knowing that must pass the upper gate on
his way to court, put on my bonnet soon after breakfast, and
strolled in that direction. and by he rode up, stopped his horse,
and began to talk so sociably that before quite knew what was
doing, was in the middle of my story. wonder now how did it,
but was excited, and he listened so patiently, questioned so
quietly, that did not realize, for several hours afterward, what a
blaze must have kindled in his heart and home, whether he believed
me or not. next thing heard was not, as expected, that he
and his wife had quarrelled, or that he was going to challenge
for having belied him, but that poor was very ill
with some affection of the brain. was not until a year
later--just after his death--that people began to talk about the
strange carryings-on at ; how . and . occupied
separate apartments, and never sat, or walked, or rode together, or
spoke to one another, even at table, unless there were visitors
present. could imagine what caused the estrangement, and for
the sake of the family honor guarded my tongue. must be a
wretched woman, if all of this be true. is breaking fast under
it, in spite of her pride and skill in concealment. ought not to
pity her when remember how wicked she has been; but there is a
look in her eye when she is not laughing or talking that gives me
the heart-ache."
" is very unhappy!" replied , sighing. " so, doubt not,
is , although he will not own it, and affects to ignore the
fact of her failing health and spirits. is one of these miserably
delicate family complications with which the nearest of kin cannot
meddle. are very kind to me, and think my visits have been a
comfort to . solitude of the great house is a terrible
trial to one so fond of company. days together sometimes she
does not exchange a word with anybody except the servants. is a
dreary, wretched evening of an ambitious life. ventured to tell
, last week, that this wonld probably be my last visit to
, since was to be married next month.
" . , suppose?" he said.
answered, "!"
" must be almost forty," he next remarked. " have worn
passably well, but you are no longer young."
" am thirty-seven!" said .
"!" he answered. " are certainly old enough to know your own
business best."
" was all that passed. was glad to remember, as looked
at his whitening hair and bowed shoulder, that had not--as
was foolish enough to suppose for a while--told him the story that
had blighted his life. that could have blamed him had he done
this. had endured so much obloquy, suffered so keenly and so
long, that almost any retaliatory measure would have been
pardonable."
's widow was, as had been said, on a farewell visit
to her native , and after spending a week at was
concluding a pleasanter sojourn of the same length at
's. another month her home in was to be the
refuge of her aunt's declining years--a prospect that delighted her
as much as it afflicted those among whom this most benevolent and
lovable of match-makers had dwelt during 's first marriage.
marriage it was now her constant purpose to forget--not a
difficult task in the happiness that diffused an summer glow
over her maturity of years and heart. 's death she had
continued to reside in , devoting herself--so soon as she
recovered from the fatigue of mind and body consequent upon her
severe and protracted duties as nurse--to the scarcely less painful
work of attending his mother, who had contracted the seeds of
consumption in the bleak sea-air of . for an abode in
the house of one who performed a daughter's part to her when her own
children were content to commit her to the care of hirelings, the
old lady lingered six months, and died, blessing her benefactress
and engaging, in singleness of belief in the affection his wife had
borne him, "to tell how good she had been to his mother."
of the could wag a tongue against their
sister-in-law, when, at the expiration of her year of widowhood, she
wrote to them, to announce her "re-engagement" to .
had been a faithful wife to their brother in sickness and
imbecility; a ministering angel to their parent, and there was now
no tie to bind her to their interest. had a way of taking care
of themselves, and it was not surprising if she had learned it.
behaved charmingly--this pair of elderly lovers--said the young
when . arrived to escort his affianced back to
on the day succeeding the conversation from which have
taken the foregoing extracts, while 's deaf old face was
one beam of gratification.
" my matches turn out well in the long run!" she boasted, with
modest exultation. " don't undertake the management of them, unless
am very sure that they are already projected in . when
they are, my loves, a legion of evil spirits or, what is just as
bad, of wicked men and women, cannot hinder everything from coming
right at last."
she was relating, in the same sanguinely pious spirit, the
tales that most entrance young girls, and at which their seniors
smile in cynicism, or in tender recollection, as their own lives
have contradicted or verified her theory of love's teachings and
love's omnipotence, and , forgetting time and care,
separation and sorrow, in the calm delight of reunion, were
strolling upon the piazza in the starlight of a perfect
evening.
stopped talking by tacit consent, by and by, to listen to
, a girl of eighteen, the vocalist of the flock, who was
testing her voice and proficiency in reading music at sight by
trying one after another of a volume of old songs which belonged to
her mother.
was the verse that enchained the promenaders' attention:
" still thy name, thy blessed name,
lonely bosom fills;
an echo that hath lost itself
the distant hills.
still, with melancholy note,
faintly lingering on,
the joyous sound that woke it first
gone--forever gone!"
" is seventeen years since we heard it together, dearest!" said
, bending to kiss the tear-laden eyes. " can say to you
now, what did not, while poor lived, own to myself--that, try
to hush it though did, in all that time the lost echo was never
still."
answer was prompt, and the sweeter for the blent sigh and smile
which were her tribute to the , and greeting to the :
" echo no longer, but a continuous strain of of heart music!"