A LIFE FOR A LIFE
By Dinah Maria Craik
The Author Of “John Halifax, Gentleman,” “A Woman's Thoughts About Women,” &c., &c.
In Three Volumes. Vol. III.
London: Hurst And Blackett, Publishers,
1859
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. HER STORY.
Many, many weeks, months indeed have gone by since I opened this my journal. Can I bear the sight of it even now? Yes; I think I can.
I have been sitting ever so long at the open window, in my old attitude, elbow on the sill; only with a difference that seems to come natural now, when no one is by. It is such a comfort to sit with my lips on my ring. I asked him to give me a ring, and he did so. Oh! Max, Max, Max!
Great and miserable changes have befallen us, and now Max and I are not going to be married. Penelope's marriage also has been temporarily postponed, for the same reason, though I implored her not to tell it to Francis, unless he should make very particular inquiries, or be exceedingly angry at the delay. He was not. Nor did we judge it well to inform Lisabel. Therefore, papa, Penelope, and I, keep our own secret.
Now that it is over, the agony of it smothered up, and all at Rockmount goes on as heretofore, I sometimes wonder, do strangers, or intimates, Mrs. Granton for instance, suspect anything? Or is ours, awful as it seems, no special and peculiar lot? Many another family may have its own lamentable secret, the burthen of which each member has to bear, and carry in society a cheerful countenance, even as this of mine.
Mrs. Granton said yesterday, mine was “a cheerful countenance.” If so, I am glad. Two things only could really have broken my heart—his ceasing to love me, and his changing so in himself, not in his circumstances, that I could no longer worthily love him. By “him,” I mean, of course Max. Max Urquhart, my betrothed husband, whom henceforward I can never regard in any other light.
How blue the hills are, how bright the moors! So they ought to be, for it is near midsummer. By this day fortnight—Penelope's marriage-day—we shall have plenty of roses. All the better; I would not like it to be a dull wedding, though so quiet; only the Trehernes and Mrs. Granton as guests, and me for the solitary bridesmaid.
“Your last appearance I hope, Dora, in that capacity,” laughed the dear old lady. “'Thrice a bridesmaid, ne'er a bride,' which couldn't be thought of, you know. No need to speak—I guess why your wedding isn't talked about yet.—The old story, man's pride, and woman's patience. Never mind. Nobody knows anything but me, and I shall keep a quiet tongue in the matter. Least said is soonest mended. All will come right soon, when the Doctor is a little better off in the world.”
I let her suppose so. It is of little moment what she or anybody thinks, so that it is nothing ill of him.
“Thrice a bridesmaid, never a bride.” Even so. Yet, would I change lots with our bride Penelope, or any other bride? No.
Now that my mind has settled to its usual level; has had time to view things calmly, to satisfy itself that nothing could have been done different from what has been done; I may, at last, be able to detail these events. For both Max's sake and my own, it seems best to do it, unless I could make up my mind to destroy my whole journal. An unfinished record is worse than none. During our lifetimes we shall both preserve our secret; but many a chance brings dark things to light; and I have my Max's honour to guard, as well as my own.
This afternoon, papa being out driving, and Penelope gone to town to seek for a maid, whom the Governor's lady will require to take out with her—they sail a month hence—I shall seize the opportunity to write down what has befallen Max and me.
My own poor Max! But my lips are on his ring; this hand is as safely kept for him as when he first held it in his breast.
Let me turn back a page, and see where it was I left off writing my journal.
I did so; and it was more than I could bear at the time. I have had to take another day for this relation, and even now it is bitter enough to recall the feelings with which I put my pen by, so long ago, waiting for Max to come in “at any minute.”
I waited ten days; not unhappily, though the last two were somewhat anxious, but it was simply lest anything might have gone wrong with him or his affairs. As for his neglecting or “treating me ill,” as Penelope suggested, such a thought never entered my head. How could he treat me ill?—he loved me.
The tenth day, which was the end of the term he had named for his journey, I of course fully expected him.' I knew if by any human power it could be managed, I should see him; he never would break his word. I rested on his love as surely as in waking from that long sick swoon I had rested on his breast. I knew he would be tender over me, and not let me suffer one more hour's suspense or pain that he could possibly avoid.
It may here seem strange that I had never asked Max where he was going, nor anything of the business he was going upon. Well, that was his secret, the last secret that was ever to be between us; so I chose not to interfere with it, but to wait his time. Also, I did not fret much about it, whatever it was. He loved me. People who have been hungry for love, and never had it all their lives, can understand the utterly satisfied contentment of this one feeling—Max loved me.
At dusk, after staying in all day, I went out, partly because Penelope wished it, and partly for health's sake. I never lost a chance of getting strong now. My sister and I walked along silently, each thinking of her own affairs, when, at a turn in the road which led, not from the camp, but from the moorlands, she cried out, “I do believe there is Doctor Urquhart.”
If he had not heard his name, I think he would have passed us without knowing us. And the face that met mine, when he looked up—I never shall forget it to my dying day.
It made me shrink back for a minute, and then I said:—
“Oh! Max, have you been ill?”
“I do not know. Yes—possibly.”
“When did you come back?”
“I forget—oh! four days ago.”
“Were you coming to Rockmount?”
“Rockmount?—oh! no.” He shuddered, and dropped my hand.
“Doctor Urquhart seems in a very uncertain frame of mind,” said Penelope, severely, from the other side the road. “We had better leave him. Come, Dora.”
She carried me off, almost forcibly. She was exceedingly displeased. Four days, and never to have come or written! She said it was slighting me and insulting the family.
“A man, too, of whose antecedents and connections we knew nothing. He may be a mere adventurer—a penniless Scotch adventurer; Francis always said he was.”
“Francis is—” But I could not stay to speak of him, or to reply to Penelope's bitter words. All I thought was how to get back to Max, and entreat him to tell me what had happened. He would tell me. He loved me. So, without any feeling of “proper pride,” as Penelope called it, I writhed myself out of her grasp, ran hack to Doctor Urquhart, and took possession of his arm, my arm, which I had a right to.
“Is that you, Theodora?”
“Yes, it is I.” And then I said, I wanted him to go home with me, and tell me what had happened.
“Better not; better go home with your sister.”
“I had rather stay here. I mean to stay here.”
He stopped, took both my hands, and forced a smile:—“You are the determined little lady you always were; but you do not know what you are saying. You had better go and leave me.”
I was sure then some great misery was approaching us. I tried to read it in his face. “Do you—” did he still love me; I was about to ask, but there was no need. So my answer, too, was brief and plain.
“I never will leave you as long as I live.”
Then I ran back to Penelope, and told her I should walk home with Doctor Urquhart; he had something to say to me. She tried anger and authority. Both failed. If we had been summer lovers it might have been different, but now in his trouble I seemed to feel Max's right to me and my love, as I had never done before. Penelope might have lectured for everlasting, and I should only have listened, and then gone back to Max's side. As I did.
His arm pressed mine close; he did not say a second time, “Leave me.”
“Now, Max, I want to hear.”
No answer.
“You know there is something, and we shall never be quite happy till it is told. Say it outright; whatever it is, I shall not mind.”
No answer.
“Is it something very terrible?”
“Yes.”
“Something that might come between and part us?”
“Yes.”
I trembled, though not much, having so strong a belief in the impossibility of parting. Yet there must have been an expression I hardly intended in the cry “Oh, Max, tell me,” for he again stopped suddenly, and seemed to forget himself in looking at and thinking of me.
“Stay, Theodora,—you have something to tell me first. Are you better? Have you been growing stronger daily? You are sure?”
“Quite sure. Now—tell me.”
He tried to speak once or twice, vainly. At last he said:—
“I—I wrote you a letter.”
“I never got it.”
“No; I did not mean you should until my death. But my mind has changed. You shall have it now. I have carried it about with me, on the chance of meeting you, these four days. I wanted to give it to you—and—to look at you. Oh, my child, my child.”
After a little while, he gave me the letter, begging me not to open it till I was alone at night.
“And if it should shock you—break your heart?”
“Nothing will break my heart.”
“You are right, it is too pure and good. God will not suffer it to be broken. Now, good-bye.”
For we had reached the gate of Bock-mount. It had never struck me before that I had to bid him adieu here, that he did not mean to go in with me to dinner; and when he refused, I felt it very much. His only answer was, for the second time, “that I did not know what I was saying.”
It was now nearly dark, and so misty that I could hardly breathe. Doctor Urquhart insisted on my going in immediately, tied my veil close under my chin, and then hastily untied it.
“Love, do you love me?”
He has told me afterwards, he forgot then for the time being, every circumstance that was likely to part us; everything in the whole world but me. And I trust I was not the only one who felt that it is those alone who? loving as we did, are everything to one another who have most strength to part.
When I came indoors, the first person I met was papa, looking quite bright and pleased; and his first question was:—
“Where is Doctor Urquhart? Penelope said Doctor Urquhart was coming here.”
I hardly know what was done during that evening, or whether they blamed Max or not.
All my care was how best to keep his secret, and literally to obey him concerning it.
Of course, I never named his letter, nor made any attempt to read it till I had bidden good night to them all, and smiled at Penelope's grumbling over my long candles and my large fire, “as if I meant to sit up all night.” Yes, I had taken all these precautions in a quiet, solemn kind of way, for I did not know what was before me, and I must not fall ill if I could help. I was Max's own personal property.
How cross she was that night, poor Penelope! It was the last time she has ever scolded me.
For some things, Penelope has felt this more than anyone could, except papa, for she is the only one of us who has a clear recollection of Harry.
Now, his name is written, and I can tell it—the awful secret I learned from Max's letter, which no one except me must ever read.
My Max killed Harry. Not intentionally—when he was out of himself and hardly accountable for what he did; in a passion of boyish fury, roused by great cruelty and wrong; but—he killed him. My brother's death, which we believed to be accidental, was by Max's hand.
I write this down calmly, now; but it was awful at the time. I think I must have read on mechanically, expecting something sad, and about Harry likewise; I soon guessed that bad man at Salisbury must have been poor Harry—but I never guessed anything near the truth till I came to the words “I murdered him.”
To suppose one feels a great blow acutely at the instant is a mistake—it stuns rather than wounds. Especially when it comes in a letter, read in quiet and alone, as I read Max's letter that night. And—as I remember afterwards seeing in some book, and thinking how true it was—it is strange how soon a great misery grows familiar. Waking up from the first few minutes of total bewilderment, I seemed to have been aware all these twenty years that my Max killed Harry.
O Harry, my brother, whom I never knew—no more than any stranger in the street, and the faint memory of whom was mixed with an indefinite something of wickedness, anguish, and disgrace to us all, if I felt not as I ought, then or afterwards, forgive me. If, though your sister, I thought less of you dead than of my living Max—my poor, poor Max, who had borne this awful burthen for twenty years—Harry, forgive me!
Well, I knew it—as an absolute fact and certainty—though as one often feels with great personal misfortunes, at first I could not realize it. Gradually I became fully conscious what an overwhelming horror it was, and what a fearful retributive justice had fallen upon papa and us all.
For there were some things I had not myself known till this spring, when Penelope, in the fullness of her heart at leaving us, talked to me a good deal of old childish days, and especially about Harry.
He was a spoiled child. His father never said him nay in anything—never, from the time when he sat at table, in his own ornamental chair, and drank champagne out of his own particular glass, lisping toasts that were the great amusement of everybody. He never knew what contradiction was, till, at nineteen, he fell in love, and wanted to get married, and would have succeeded, for they eloped, (as I believe papa and Harry's mother had done), but papa prevented them in time. The girl, some village lass, but she might have had a heart nevertheless, broke it, and died. Then Harry went all wrong.
Penelope remembers, how, at times, a shabby, dissipated man used to meet us children out walking, and kiss us and the nurserymaids all round, saying he was our brother Harry. Also, how he used to lie in wait for papa coming out of church, follow him into his library, where, after fearful scenes of quarrelling, Harry would go away jauntily, laughing to us, and bowing to mamma, who always showed him out and shut the door upon him with a face as white as a sheet.
My sister also remembers papa's being suddenly called away from home for a day or two, and, on his return, our being all put into mourning, and told that it was for brother Harry, whom we must never speak of any more. And once, when she was saying her geography lesson, and wanted to go and ask papa some questions about Stonehenge and Salisbury, mamma stopped her, saying she must take care never to mention these places to papa, for that poor Harry—she called him so now—had died miserably by an accident, and been buried at Salisbury.
She died the same year, and soon afterwards we came to Rockmount, living handsomely upon grandfather's money, and proud that we had already begun to call ourselves Johnston. Oh, me, what wicked falsehoods poor Harry told about his “family.” Him we never again named; not one of our neighbours here ever knew that we had a brother.
The first shock over, hour after hour of that long night I sat, trying by any means to recall him to mind, my father's son, my own flesh and blood—at least by the half-blood—to pity him, to feel as I ought concerning his death, and the one who caused it. But do as I would, my thoughts went back to Max—as they might have done, even had he not been my own Max—out of deep compassion for one who, not being a premeditated and hardened criminal, had suffered for twenty years the penalty of this single crime.
It was such, I knew. I did not attempt to palliate it, or justify him. Though poor Harry was worthless, and Max is—what he is—that did not alter the question. I believe, even then, I did not disguise from myself the truth—that my Max had committed, not a fault, but an actual crime. But I called him my Max still. It was the only word that saved me, or I might, as he feared, have “broken my heart.”
The whole history of that dreadful night, there is no need I should tell to any human being; even Max himself will never know it. God knows it, and that is enough. By my own strength, I never should have kept my life or reason till the morning.
But it was necessary, and it was better far that I should have gone through this anguish alone, guided by no outer influence, and sustained only by that Strength which always comes in seasons like these.
I seem, while stretched on the rack of those long night hours, to have been led by some supernatural instinct into the utmost depths of human and divine justice, human and divine love, in search of the right. At last I saw it, clung to it, and have found it my rock of hope ever since.
When the house below began to stir, I put out my candle, and stood watching the dawn creep over the grey moorlands, just as on the morning when we had sat up all night with my father—Max and I. How fond my father was of him—my poor, poor father!
The horrible conflict and confusion of mind came back. I felt as if right and wrong were inextricably mixed together, laying me under a sort of moral paralysis, out of which the only escape was madness. Then out of the deeps I cried unto Thee: O Thou whose infinite justice includes also infinite forgiveness; and Thou heardest me.
“When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive?”
I remembered these words: and unto Thee I trusted my Max's soul.
It was daylight now, and the little birds began waking up, one by one, until they broke into a perfect chorus of chirping and singing. I thought, was ever grief like this of mine? Yes—one grief would have been worse—if, this sunny summer morning, I knew he had ceased to love me, and I to believe in him—if I had lost him—never either in this world or the next, to find him more.
After a little, I thought if I could only go to sleep, though but for half an hour—it would be well. So I undressed and laid myself down, with Max's letter tight hidden in my hands.
Sleep came; but it ended in dreadful dreams, out of which I awoke, screaming, to see Penelope standing by my bedside, with my breakfast.
Now, I had already laid my plans—to tell my father all. For he must be told. No other alternative presented itself to me as possible—nor, I knew, would it to Max. When two people are thoroughly one, each guesses instinctively the other's mind; in most things always in all great things, for one faith and love includes also one sense of right. I was as sure as I was of my existence that Max meant my father to be told. Not even to make me happy would he have deceived me—and not even that we might be married, would he consent that we should deceive my father.
Thus, that my father must be told, and that I must tell him, was a matter settled and clear—but I never considered about how far must be explained to anyone else, till I saw Penelope stand there with her familiar household face, half cross, half alarmed.
“Why, child, what on earth is the matter? Here are you, staring as if you were out of your senses—and there is Doctor Urquhart, who has been haunting the place like a ghost ever since daylight. I declare, I'll send for him and give him a piece of my mind.”
“Don't, don't,” I gasped, and all the horror returned—vivid as daylight makes any new anguish. Penelope soothed me—with the motherliness that had come over since I was ill, and the gentleness that had grown up in her since she had been happy, and Francis loving. My miserable heart yearned to her, a woman like myself—a good woman, too, though I did not appreciate her once, when I was young and foolish, and had never known care, as she had. How it came out I cannot tell—I have never regretted it—nor did Max, for I think it saved my heart from breaking—but I then and there told my sister Penelope our dreadful story.
I see her still, sitting on the bed, listening with blanched face, gazing, not at me, but at the opposite wall. She made no outcry of grief, or horror against Max. She took all in a subdued, quiet way, which I had not expected would have been Penelope's passion of bearing a great grief. She hardly said anything, till I cried with a bitter cry:—
“Now I want Max. Let me rise and go down, for I must see Max.”
Then we two women looked at one another pitifully, and my sister, my happy sister who was to be married in a fortnight, took me in her arms, sobbing,
“Oh, Dora, my poor, poor child.”
All this seems years upon years ago, and I can relate it calmly enough, till I call to mind that sob of Penelope's.
Well, what happened next? I remember, Penelope came in when I was dressing, and told me, in her ordinary manner, that papa wished her to drive with him to the Cedars this morning. “Shall I go, Dora?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you will see him in our absence.”
“I intend so.”
She turned, then came back and kissed me. I suppose she thought this meeting between Max and me would be an eternal farewell. The carriage had scarcely driven off, when I received a message that Doctor Urquhart was in the parlour.
Harry—Harry, twenty years dead—my own brother killed by my husband! Let me acknowledge. Had I known this before he was my betrothed husband, chosen open-eyed, with all my judgment, my conscience, and my soul, loved, not merely because he loved me, but because I loved him, honoured him, and trusted him, so that even marriage could scarcely make us more entirely one than we were already—had I been aware of this before, I might not, indeed I think I never should have loved him. Nature would have instinctively prevented me. But now it was too late. I loved him, and I could not unlove him: Nature herself forbade the sacrifice. It would have been like tearing my heart out of my bosom; he was half myself—and maimed of him, I should never have been my right self afterwards. Nor would he. Two living lives to be blasted for one that was taken unwittingly twenty years ago! Could it—ought it so to be?
The rest of the world are free to be their own judges in the matter; but God and my conscience are mine.
I went downstairs steadfastly, with my mind all clear. Even to the last minute, with my hand on the parlor-door, my heart—where all throbs of happy love seemed to have been long, long forgotten—my still heart prayed.
Max was standing by the fire—he turned round. He, and the whole sunshiny room swam before my eyes for an instant,—then I called up my strength and touched him. He was trembling all over.
“Max, sit down.” He sat down.
I knelt by him. I clasped his hands close, but still he sat as if he had been a stone. At last he muttered:—
“I wanted to see you, just once more, to know how you bore it—to be sure I had not killed you also—oh, it is horrible, horrible!”
I said it was horrible—but that we would be able to bear it.
“We?”
“Yes—we.”
“You cannot mean that?”
“I do. I have thought it all over, and I do.” Holding me at arm's length, his eyes questioned my inmost soul.
“Tell me the truth. It is not pity—not merely pity, Theodora?”
“Ah, no, no!”
Without another word—the first crisis was past—everything which made our misery a divided misery.—He opened his arms and took me once more into my own place—where alone I ever really rested, or wish to rest until I die.
Max had been very ill, he told me, for days, and now seemed both in body and mind as feeble as a child. For me, my childishness or girlishness, with its ignorance and weakness, was gone for evermore.
I have thought since, that in all women's deepest loves, be they ever so full of reverence, there enters sometimes much of the motherly element, even as on this day I felt as if I were somehow or other in charge of Max, and a great deal older than he. I fetched a glass of water, and made him drink it—bathed his poor temples and wiped them with my handkerchief—persuaded him to lean back quietly and not speak another word for ever so long. But more than once, and while his head lay on my shoulder, I thought of his mother, my mother who might have been—and how, though she had left him so many years, she must, if she knew of all he had suffered, be glad to know there was at last one woman found who would, did Heaven permit, watch over him through life, with the double love of both wife and mother, and who, in any case, would be faithful to him till death.
Faithful till death. Yes,—I here renewed that vow, and had Harry himself come and stood before me, I should have done the same. Look you, any one who after my death may read this;—there are two kinds of love, one, eager only to get its desire, careless of all risks and costs, in defiance almost of Heaven and earth; the other, which in its most desperate longing has strength to say, “If it be right and for our good—if it be according to the will of God.” This only, I think, is the true and consecrated love, which therefore is able to be faithful till death.
Max and I never once spoke about whether or not we should be married—we left all that in Higher hands. We only felt we should always be true to one another—and that, being what we were, and loving as we did, God himself could not will that any human will or human justice should put us asunder.
This being clear, we set ourselves to meet what was before us. I told him poor Harry's history, so far as I knew it myself; afterwards we began to consider how best the truth could be broken to my father.
And here let me confess something, which Max has long forgiven, but which I can yet hardly forgive myself. Max said, “And when your father is told, he shall decide what next is to be.”
“How do you mean?” I cried.
“If he requires atonement, he must have it, even at the hands of the law.”
Then, for the first time, it struck me that, though Max was safe so long as he made no confession, for the peculiar circumstances of Harry's death left no other evidence against him, still, this confession once public (and it was, for had I not told Penelope?) his reputation, liberty, life itself, were in the hands of my sister and my father. A horror as of death fell upon me. I clung to him who was my all in this world, dearer to me than father, mother, brother, or sister; and I urged that we should both, then and there, fly—escape together anywhere, to the very ends of the earth, out of reach of justice and my father.
I must have been almost beside myself before I thought of such a thing. I hardly knew all it implied, until Max gravely put me from him.
“It cannot be you who says this. Not Theodora.”
And suddenly, as unconnected and even incongruous things will flash across one in times like these, I called to mind the scene in my favourite play, when, the alternative being life or honour, the woman says to her lover, “No, die!” Little I dreamed of ever having to say to my Max almost the same words.
I said them, kneeling by him, and imploring his pardon for having wished him to do such a thing even for his safety and my happiness.
“We could not have been happy, child,” he said, smoothing my hair, with a sad, fond smile. “You do not know what it is to have a secret weighing like lead upon your soul. Mine feels lighter now than it has done for years. Let us decide: what hour to-night shall I come here and tell your father?” Saying this, Max turned white to the very lips, but still he comforted me.
“Do not be afraid, my child. I am not afraid. Nothing can be worse than what has been—to me. I was a coward once, but then I was only a boy, hardly able to distinguish right from wrong. Now I see that it would have been better to have told the whole truth at once, and taken all the punishment. It might not have been death, or if it were, I could but have died.”
“Max, Max!”
“Hush!” and he closed my lips so that they could not moan. “The truth is better than life, better even than a good name. When your father knows the truth, all else will be clear. I shall abide by his decision, whatever it be; he has a right to it. Theodora,” his voice faltered, “make him understand, some day, that if I had married you, he never should have wanted a son,—your poor father.”
These were almost the last words Max said on this, the last hour that we were together by ourselves. For minutes and minutes he held me in his arms, silently; and I shut my eyes, and felt, as if in a dream, the sunshine and the flower-scents, and the loud singing of the two canaries in Penelope's greenhouse. Then,-with one kiss, he put me down softly from my place, and left me alone.
I have been alone ever since; God only, knows how alone.
The rest I cannot tell to-day.
CHAPTER II. HIS STORY.
This is the last, probably, of those “letters never sent,” which may reach you one day; when or how, we know not. All that is, is best.
You say you think it advisable that there should be an accurate written record of all that passed between your family and myself on the final day of parting, in order that no further conduct of mine may be misconstrued or misjudged. Be it so. My good name is worth preserving; for it must never be any disgrace to you that Max Urquhart loved you.
Since this record is to be minute and literal, perhaps it will be better I should give it impersonally, as a statement rather than a letter.
On February 9th, 1857, I went to Rockmount, to see Theodora Johnston, for the first time after she was aware that I had, long ago, taken the life of her half-brother, Henry Johnston, not intentionally, but in a fit of drunken rage. I came, simply to look at her dear face once more, and to ask her in what way her father would best bear the shock of this confession of mine, before I took the second step of surrendering myself to justice, or of making atonement in any other way that Mr. Johnston might choose. To him and his family my life was owed, and I left them to dispose of it or of me in any manner they thought best.
With these intentions, I went to Theodora. I knew her well. I felt sure she would pity me, that she would not refuse me her forgiveness, before our eternal separation; that though the blood upon my hands was half her own, she would not judge me the less justly, or mercifully, or Christianly. As to a Christian woman, I came to her—as I had come once before, in a question of conscience; also, as to the woman who had been my friend, with all the rights and honours of that name, before she became to me anything more and dearer. And I was thankful that the lesser tie had been included in the greater, so that both need not be entirely swept away and disannulled.
I found not only my friend, upon whom, above all others, I could depend, but my own, my love, the woman above all women who was mine; who, loving me before this blow fell, clung to me still, and believing that God Himself had joined us together suffered nothing to put us asunder.
How she made me comprehend this I shall not relate, as it concerns ourselves alone. When at last I knelt by her and kissed her blessed hands—my saint! and yet all woman, and all my own—I felt that my sin was covered, that the All-merciful had had mercy upon me. That while, all these years, I had followed miserably my own method of atonement, denying myself all life's joys, and cloaking myself with every possible ray of righteousness I could find, He had suddenly led me by another way, sending this child's love, first to comfort and then, to smite me, that, being utterly bruised, broken, and humbled, I might be made whole.
Now, for the first time, I felt like a man to whom there is a possibility of being made whole. Her father might hunt me to death, the law might lay hold on me, the fair reputation under which I had shielded myself might be torn and scattered to the winds; but for all that I was safe, I was myself, the true Max Urquhart, a grievous sinner; yet no longer unforgiven or hopeless.
“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
That line struck home. Oh, that I could strike it home to every miserable heart as it went to mine. Oh! that I could carry into the utmost corners of the earth the message, the gospel which Dallas believed in, the only one which has power enough for the redemption of this sorrowful world—the gospel of the forgiveness and remission of sins.
While she talked to me—this my saint, Theodora—Dallas himself might have spoken, apostle-like, through her lips. She said, when I listened in wonder to the clearness of some of her arguments, that she hardly knew how they had come into her mind, they seemed to come of themselves; but they were there, and she was sure they were true. She was sure, she added, reverently, that if the Christ of Nazareth were to pass by Rockmount door this day, the only word He would say unto me, after all I had done, would be:—“Thy sins are forgiven thee—rise up and walk.”
And I did so. I went out of the house an altered man. My burthen of years had been lifted off me for ever and ever. I understood something of what is meant by being “born again.” I could dimly guess at what they must have felt-who sat at the Divine feet, clothed and in their right mind, or who, across the sunny plains of Galilee, leaped, and walked, and ran, praising God.
I crossed the moorland, walking erect, with eyes fixed on the blue sky, my heart tender and young as a child's. I even stopped, child-like, to pluck a stray primrose under a tree in a lane, which had peeped out, as if it wished to investigate how soon spring would come. It seemed to me so pretty—I might never have seen a primrose since I was a boy.
Let me relate the entire truth—she wishes it. Strange as it may appear, though hour by hour brought nearer the time when I had fixed to be at Rockmount, to confess unto a father that I had been the slayer of his only son—still that day was not an unhappy day. I spent it chiefly out of doors on the moorlands, near a way-side public-house, where I had lodged some nights, drinking in large draughts of the beauty of this external world, and feeling even outer life sweet, though nothing to that renewed life which I now should never lose again. Never—even if I had to go next day to prison and trial, and stand before the world a convicted homicide. Nay, I believe I could have mounted the scaffold amidst those gaping thousands that were once my terror, and die peacefully in spite of them, feeling no longer either guilty or afraid.
So much for myself, which will explain a good deal that followed in the interview which I have now to relate.
Theodora had wished to save me by herself, explaining all to her father; but I would not allow this, and at length she yielded. However, things fell out differently from both our intentions: he learned it first from his daughter Penelope. The moment I entered his study I was certain Mr. Johnston knew.
Let no sinner, however healed, deceive himself that his wound will never smart again. He is not instantly made a new man of, whole and sound: he must grow gradually, even through many a returning pang, into health and cure. If anyone thinks I could stand in the presence of that old man without an anguish sharp as death, which made me for the moment wish I had never been born, he is mistaken.
But alleviations came. The first was to see the old man sitting there alive and well, though evidently fully aware of the truth, and having been so for some time, for his countenance was composed, his tea was placed beside him on the table, and there was an open Bible before him, in which he had been reading. His voice, too, had nothing unnatural or alarming in it, as, without looking at me, he bade the maid-servant “give Doctor Urquhart a chair and say, if anyone interrupted, that we were particularly engaged.” So the door was shut upon us, leaving us face to face.
But it was not long before he raised his eyes to him. It is enough, once in a lifetime, to have borne such a look.
“Mr. Johnston,”—but he shut his ears.
“Do not speak,” he said; “what you have come to tell me I know already. My daughter told me this morning. And I have been trying ever since to find out what my church says to the shedder of blood; what she would teach a father to say to the murderer of his child. My Harry, my only son! And you murdered him!”
Let the words which followed be sacred. If in some degree they were unjust, and overstepped the truth, let me not dare to murmur. I believe the curses he heaped upon me in his own words and those of the Holy Book, will not come, for its other and diviner words, which his daughter taught me, stand as a shield between me and him. I repeated them to myself in my silence, and so I was able to endure.
When he paused and commanded me to speak, I answered only a few words, namely, that I was here to offer my life for his son's life; that he might do with me what he would.
“Which means, that I should give you up to justice, have you tried, condemned, executed. You, Doctor Urquhart, whom the world thinks so well of. I might live to see you hanged.”
His eyes glared, his whole frame was convulsed. I entreated him to calm himself, for his own health's sake, and the sake of his children.
“Yes, I will. Old as I am, this shall not kill me. I will live to exact retribution. My boy, my poor murdered Harry—murdered—murdered.”
He kept repeating and dwelling on the word, till at length I said:—
“If you know the whole truth, you must be aware that I had no intention to murder him.”
“What, you extenuate? You wish to escape? But you shall not. I will have you arrested now, in this very house.”
“Be it so, then.”
And I sat down.
So, the end had come. Life, and all its hopes, all its work, were over for me. I saw, as in a second of time, everything that was coming—the trial, the conviction, the newspaper clatter over my name, my ill deeds exaggerated, my good deeds pointed at with the finger of scorn, which perhaps was the keenest agony of all—save one.
“Theodora!”
Whether I uttered her name, or only thought it, I cannot tell. However, it brought her. I felt she was in the room, though she stood by her sister's side, and did not approach me.
Again, I repeat, let no man say that sin does not bring its wages, which must be paid. Whosoever doubts it, I would he could sit as I sat, watching the faces of father and daughters, and thinking of the dead face which lay against my knee, that midnight, on Salisbury plain.
“Children,” I heard Mr. Johnston saying, “I have sent for you to be my witnesses in what I am about to do. Not out of personal revenge—which were unbecoming a clergyman—but because God and man exact retribution for blood. There is the man who murdered Harry. Though he were the best friend I ever had, though I esteemed him ever so much, which I did,—still, discovering this, I must have retribution.
“How, father?” Not her voice, but her sister's. .
Let me do full justice to Penelope Johnston. Though it was she who told my secret to her father, she did it out of no malice. As I afterwards learnt, chance led their conversation into such a channel, that she could only escape betraying the truth by a direct lie. And with all her harshnesses, the prominent feature of her character is its truthfulness, or rather its abhorrence of falsehood. Nay, her fierce scorn of any kind of duplicity is such, that she confounds the crime with the criminal, and, once deceived, never can forgive,—as in the matter of Lydia Cartwright, my acquaintance with which gave me this insight into Miss Johnston's peculiarity.
Thus, though it fell to her lot to betray my confession, I doubt not she did so with most literal accuracy; acting towards me neither as a friend nor foe, but simply as a relater of facts. Nor was there any personal enmity towards me in her question to her father.
It startled him a little.
“How did you say? By the law, I conclude. There is no other way.”
“And if so, what will be the result? I mean what will be done to him?”
“I cannot tell—how should I?”
“Perhaps I can; for I have thought over and studied the question all day,” answered Miss Johnston, still in the same cold, clear, impartial voice. “He will be tried, of course. I find from your 'Taylor on Evidence,' father, that a man can be tried and convicted, solely on his own confession. But in this case, there being no corroborating proof, and all having happened so long ago, it will scarcely prove a capital crime. I believe no jury would give a stronger verdict than manslaughter. He will be imprisoned, or transported beyond seas; where, with his good character, he will soon work his liberty, and start afresh in another country, in spite of us. This, I think, is the common-sense view of the matter.”
Astonished as Mr. Johnston looked, he made no reply.
His daughter continued:—
“And for this, you and we shall have the credit of having had arrested in our own house, a man who threw himself on our mercy, who, though he concealed, never denied his guilt; who never deceived us in any way. The moment he discovered the whole truth, dreadful as it was, he never shirked it, nor hid it from us; but told us outright, risking all the consequences. A man, too, against whom, in his whole life, we can prove but this one crime.”
“What, do you take his part?”
“No,” she said; “I wish he had died before he set foot in this house—for I remember Harry. But I see also that after all this lapse of years Harry is not the only person whom we ought to remember.”
“I remember nothing but the words of this Book,” cried the old man, letting his hand drop heavily upon it. “'Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' What have you to say for yourself, murderer?”
All this time, faithful to her promise to me, she had not interfered—she, my love, who loved me; but when she heard him call me that, she shivered all over, and looked towards me. A pitiful, entreating look, but, thank God, there was no doubt in it—not the shadow of change. It nerved me to reply, what I will here record, by her desire and for her sake.
“Mr. Johnston, I have this to say. It is written,—'Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer,' and in that sense, I am one,—for I did hate him at the time; but I never meant to kill him—and the moment afterwards I would have given my life for his. If now, my death could restore him to you, alive again, how willingly I would die.”
“Die, and face your Maker? an unpardoned man-slayer, a lost soul?”
“Whether I live or die,” said I, humbly, “I trust my soul is not lost. I have been very guilty; but I believe in One who brought to every sinner on earth the gospel of repentance and remission of sins.”
At this, burst out the anathema—not merely of the father, but the clergyman,—who mingled the Jewish doctrine of retributive vengeance during this life with the Christian belief of rewards and punishments after death, and confounded the Mosaic gehenna with the Calvinistic hell. I will not record all this—it was very terrible; but he only spoke as he believed, and as many earnest Christians do believe. I think, in all humility, that the Master Himself preached a different gospel.
I saw it, shining out of her eyes—my angel of peace and pardon. O Thou, from whom all love comes, was it impious if the love of this Thy creature towards one so wretched, should come to me like an assurance of Thine?
At length her father ceased speaking—took up a pen and began hastily writing. Miss Johnston went and looked over his shoulder.
“Papa, if that is a warrant you are making-out, better think twice about it; for, as a magistrate, you cannot retract. Should you send Dr. Urquhart to trial, you must be prepared for the whole truth to come out. He must tell it; or, if he calls Dora and me as witnesses—she having already his written confession in full—we must.”
“You must tell—what?”
“The provocation Doctor Urquhart received—how Harry enticed him, a lad of nineteen, to drink—made him mad, and taunted him. Everything will be made public—how Harry was so degraded that from the hour of his death we were thankful to forget that he had ever existed—how he died as he had lived—a boaster, a coward, spunging upon any one from whom he could get money, using his talents only to his shame, devoid of one spark of honesty, honour, and generosity. It is shocking to have to say this of one's own brother; but, father, you know it is the truth—and, as such, it must be told.”
Amazed—I listened to her—this eldest sister, who I knew disliked me.
Her father seemed equally surprised,—until, at length, her arguments apparently struck him with uneasiness.
“Have you any motive in arguing thus?” said he, hurriedly and not without agitation; “why do you do it, Penelope!”
“A little, on my own account, though the great scandal and publicity will not much affect Francis and me—we shall soon be out of England. But for the family's sake,—for Harry's sake,—when all his wickednesses and our miseries have been safely covered up these twenty years—consider, father!”
She stung him deeper than she knew. I had guessed it before, when I was almost a stranger to him—but now the whole history of that old man's life was betrayed in one groan, which burst from the very depth of the father's soul.
“Eli—the priest of the Lord—his sons made themselves vile and he restrained them not. Therefore they died in one day, both of them. It was the will of the Lord.”
The respectful silence which ensued, no one dared to break.
He broke it himself at last, pointing to the door. “Go! murderer, or man-slayer, or whatever you are, you must go free. Moreover, I must have your promise—no, your oath—that the secret you have kept so long, you will now keep for ever.”
“Sir,” I said; but he stopped me fiercely.
“No hesitations—no explanations—I will have none and give none. As you said, your life is mine—to do with it as I choose. Better you should go unpunished, than that I and mine should be disgraced. Obey me. Promise.”
I did.
Thus, in another and still stranger way, my resolutions were broken, my fate was decided for me, and I have to keep this secret unconfessed to the end.
“Now, go. Put half the earth between us if you can—only go.”
Again I turned to obey. Blind obedience seemed the only duty left me. I might even have quitted the house, with a feeling of total irresponsibility and indifference to all things, had it not been for a low cry which I heard, as in a dream.
So did her father. “Dora—I had forgotten. There was some sort of fancy between you and Dora. Daughter, bid him farewell, and let him go.”
Then she said—my love said, in her own soft, distinct voice: “No, papa, I never mean to bid him farewell—that is, finally—never as long as I live.”
Her father and sister were both so astounded, that at first they did not interrupt her, but let her speak on.
“I belonged to Max before all this happened. If it had happened a year hence, when I was his wife, it would not have broken our marriage. It ought not now. When any two people are to one another what we are, they are as good as married; and they have no right to part, no more than man and wife have, unless either grows wicked, or both change. I never mean to part from Max Urquhart.”
She spoke meekly, standing with hands folded and head drooping; but as still and steadfast as a rock. My darling—my darling!
Steadfast! She had need to he. What she bore during the next few minutes she would not wish me to repeat, I feel sure.
She knows it, and so do I. She knows also that every stab with which I then saw her wounded for my sake, is counted in my heart, as a debt to be paid one day, if between those who love there can be any debts at all. She says not. Yet, if ever she is my wife.—People talk of dying for a woman's sake—but to live—live for her with the whole of one's being—to work for her, to sustain and cheer her—to fill her daily existence with tenderness and care—if ever she is my wife, she will find out what I mean.
After saying all he well could say, Mr. Johnston asked her how she dared think of me—me, laden with her brother's blood and her father's curse.
She turned deadly pale, but never faltered: “The curse causeless shall not come,” she said, “For the blood upon his hand, whether it were Harry's or a stranger's, makes no difference; it is washed out. He has repented long ago. If God has forgiven him, and helped him to be what he is, and lead the life he has led all these years, why should I not forgive him? And if I forgive, why not love him?—and if I love him, why break my promise, and refuse to marry him?”
“Do you mean, then, to marry him?” said her sister.
“Some day—if he wishes it—yes!”
From this time, I myself hardly remember what passed; I can only see her standing there, her sweet face white as death, making no moan, and answering nothing to any accusations that were heaped upon her, except when she was commanded to give me up, entirely and for ever and ever.
“I cannot, father. I have no right to do it. I belong to him; he is my husband.”
At last, Miss Johnston said to me—rather gently than not, for her: “I think, Doctor Urquhart, you had better go.”
My love looked towards me, and afterwards at her poor father; she too said, “Yes, Max, go.” And then they wanted her to promise she would never see me, nor write to me; but she refused.
“Father, I will not marry him for ever so long, if you choose—but I cannot forsake him. I must write to him. I am his very own, and he has only me. Oh, papa, think of yourself and my mother.” And she sobbed at his knees.
He must have thought of Harry's mother, not hers, for this exclamation only hardened him.
Then Theodora rose, and gave me her little hand.—“It can hold firm, you will find. You have my promise. But whether or no, it would have been all the same. No love is worth having that could not, with or without a promise, keep true till death. You may trust me. Now, goodbye. Good-bye, my Max.”
With that one clasp of the hand, that one look into her fond, faithful eyes, we parted. I have never seen her since.
This statement, which is as accurate as I can make it, except in the case of those voluntary omissions which I believe you yourself would have desired, I here seal up, to be delivered to you with those other letters in case I should die while you are still Theodora Johnston.
I have also made my will, leaving you all my effects, and appointing you my sole executrix; putting you, in short, in exactly the same position as if you had been my wife. This is best, in order that by no chance should the secret ooze out through any guesses of any person not connected with your family; also because I think it is what you would wish yourself. You said truly, I have only you.
Another word, which I do not name in my ordinary letters, lest I might grieve you by what may prove to be only a fancy of mine.
Sometimes, in the hard work of this my life here, I begin to feel that I am no longer a young man, and that the reaction after the great strain, mental and bodily, of the last few months, has left me not so strong as I used to be. Not that I think I am about to die, far from it. I have a good constitution, which has worn well yet, and may wear on for some time, though not for ever, and I am nearly fifteen years older than you.
It is very possible that before any change can come, I may leave you, never a wife, and yet a widow. Possible, among the numerous fatalities of life, that we may never be married—never even see one another again.
Sometimes, when I see two young people married and happy, taking it all as a matter of course, scarcely even recognising it as happiness—-just like Mr. and Mrs. Treherne, who hunted me out lately, and insisted on my visiting them—I think of you and me, and it seems very bitter, and I look on the future with less faith than fear. It might not be so if I could see you now and then—but oftentimes this absence feels like death.
Theodora, if I should die before we are married, without any chance of writing down my last words, take them here.
No, they will not come. I can but crush my lips upon this paper—only thy name, not thee, and call thee “my love, my love!” Remember, I loved thee—all my soul was full of the love of thee. It made life happy, earth beautiful, and Heaven nearer. It was with me day and night, in work or rest—as much a part of me as the hand I write with, or the breath I draw. I never thought of myself, but of “us.” I never prayed but I prayed for two. Love, my love, so many miles away—O my God, why not grant me a little happiness before I die!
Yet, as once I wrote before, and as she says always in all things, Thy will be done.
CHAPTER III. HER STORY.
Friday night.
My Dear Max,
You have had your Dominical letter, as you call it, so regularly, that you must know all our doings at Rockmount almost as well as ourselves. If I write foolishly, and tell you all sorts of trivial things, perhaps some of them twice over, it is just because there is nothing else to tell. But, trivial or not, I have a feeling that you like to hear it—you care for everything that concerns me.
So, first, in obedience to orders, I am quite well, even though my hand-writing is “not so pretty as it used to be.” Do not fancy the hand shakes, or is nervous or uncertain. Not a bit of it. I am never nervous, nor weak either—now. Sometimes, perhaps, being only a woman after all, I feel things a little more keenly than I ought to feel; and then, not being good at concealment, at least not with you, this fact peeps out in my letters. For the home-life has its cares, and I feel very weary sometimes—and then, I have not you to rest upon—visibly, that is—though in my heart I do always. But I am quite well, Max, and quite content. Do not doubt it. He who has led us through this furnace of affliction, will lead us safely to the end.
You will be glad to hear that papa is every day less and less cold to me—poor papa! Last Sunday, he even walked home from church with me, talking about general subjects, like his old self, almost. Penelope has been always good and kind.
You ask if they ever name you? No.
Life at Rockmount moves slowly, even in the midst of marriage preparations. Penelope is getting a large store of wedding presents. Mrs. Granton brought a beautiful one last night from her son Colin.
I was glad you had that long friendly letter from Colin Granton—glad also that, his mother having let out the secret about you and me, he was generous enough to tell you himself that other secret, which I never told. Well, your guess was right; it was so. But I could not help it; I did not know it.—For me—how could any girl, feeling as I then did towards you, feel anything towards any other man but the merest kindliness?—That is all: we will never say another word about it; except that I wish you always to be specially kind to Colin, and to do him good whenever you can—he was very good to me.
Life at Rockmount, as I said, is dull. I rise sometimes, go through the day, and go to bed at night, wondering what I have been doing during all these hours. And I do not always sleep soundly, though so tired. Perhaps it is partly the idea of Penelope's going away so soon; far away, across the sea, with no one to love her and take care of her, save Francis.
Understand, this is not with any pitying of my sister for what is a natural and even a happy lot, which no woman need complain of; but simply because Francis is Francis—accustomed to think only of himself, and for himself. It may be different when he is married.
He was staying with us here a week; during which I noticed him more closely than in his former fly-away visits. When one lives in the house with a person—a dull house too, like ours, how wonderfully odds and ends of character “crop out,” as the geologists say. Do you remember the weeks when you were almost continually in our house? Francis had what we used then to call 'the Doctor's room.' He was pleasant and agreeable enough, when it pleased him to be-so; but, for all that, I used to say to myself, twenty times a-day, “My dear Max!”
This merely implies that by a happy dispensation of Providence, I, Theodora Johnston, have not the least desire to appropriate my sister's husband, or, indeed, either of my sisters' husbands.
By-the-by—in a letter from Augustus to papa, which reached me through Penelope, he names his visit to you; I am glad—glad he should show you such honour and affection, and that they all should see it. Do not give up the Trehernes; go there sometimes—for my sake. There is no reason why you should not. Papa knows it; he also knows I write to you—but he never says a word, one way or other. We must wait—wait and hope—or rather, trust. As you say, the difference between young and older people is, the one hopes, the other trusts.
I seem, from your description, to have a clear idea of the gaol, and the long, barren breezy flat amidst which it lies, with the sea in the distance. I often sit and think of the view outside, and of the dreary inside, where you spend so many hours; the corridors, the exercise-yards, and the cells; also your own two rooms, which you say are almost as silent and solitary, except when you come in and find my letter waiting you. I wish it was me!—pardon grammar—but I wish it was me—this living me. Would you be glad to see me? Ah, I know!
Look! I am not going to write about ourselves—it is not good for us. We know it all; we know our hearts are nigh breaking sometimes—mine is. But it shall not. We will live and wait.
What was I telling you about?—oh, Francis. Well, Francis spent a whole week at Rockmount, by papa's special desire, that they might discuss business arrangements, and that he might see a little more of his intended son-in-law than he has done of late years. Business was soon dispatched—papa gives none of us any money during his life-time; what will come to us afterwards we have never thought of inquiring. Francis did, though—which somewhat hurt Penelope—but he accounted for it by his being so “poor.” A relative phrase; why, I should think 500L. a-year, certain, a mine of riches—and all to be spent upon himself. But as he says, a single man has so many inevitable expenses, especially when he lives in society, and is the nephew of Sir William Treherne, of Treherne Court. All “circumstances'!” Poor Francis; whatever goes wrong he is sure to put between himself and blame the shield of “circumstances.” Now, if I were a man, I would fight the world bare-fronted, any how. One would but be killed at last.
Is it wrong of me to write to you so freely about Francis? I hope not. All mine are yours, and yours mine; you know their faults and virtues as well as I do, and will judge them equally, as we ought to judge those, who, whatever they are, are permanently our own. I have tried hard, this time, to make a real brother of Francis Charteris; and he is, for many things, exceedingly likeable—nay loveable. I see, sometimes, clearly enough, the strange charm which has made Penelope so fond of him all these years. Whether, besides loving him, she can trust him—can look on his face and feel that he would not deceive her for the world—can believe every line he writes, and every word he utters, and know that whatever he does, he will do simply from his sense of right, no meaner motive interfering—oh, Max, I would give much to be certain Penelope had this sort of love for her future husband!
Well, they have chosen their lot, and must make the best of one another. Everybody must, you know.
Heigho! what a homily I am giving you, instead of this week's history, as usual—from Saturday to Saturday.
The first few days there really was nothing to tell. Francis and Penelope took walks together, paid visits, or sat in the parlour talking—not banishing me, however, as they used to do when they were young. On Wednesday, Francis went up to London for the day, and brought back that important article, the wedding-ring. He tried it on at supper-time, with a diamond keeper, which he said would be just the thing for “the governor's lady.”
“Say wife at once,” grumbled I, and complained of the modern fashion of slurring over that word, the dearest and sacredest in the language.
“Wife, then,” whispered Francis, holding the ring on my sister's finger, and kissing it.
Tears started to Penelope's eyes; in her agitation she looked almost like a girl again, I thought; so infinitely happy. But Francis, never happy, muttered bitterly some regret for the past, some wish that they had been married years ago. Why were they not? It was partly his fault, I am sure.
The day after this he left, not to return till he comes to take her away finally. In the meanwhile, he will have enough to do, paying his adieux to his grand friends, and his bills to his tradespeople, prior to closing his bachelor establishment for ever and aye—how glad he must be.
He seemed glad, as if with a sense of relief that all was settled, and no room left for hesitation. It costs Francis such a world of trouble to make up his own mind—which trouble Penelope will save him for the future. He took leave of her with great tenderness, calling her “his good, faithful girl,” and vowing—which one would think was quite unnecessary under the circumstances—to be faithful to her all the days of his life.
That night, when she came into my room, Penelope sat a long time on my bed talking; chiefly of old days, when she and Francis were boy and girl together—how handsome he was, and how clever—till she seemed almost to forget the long interval between. Well, they are both of an age—time runs equally with each; she is at least no more altered than he.
Here, I ought to tell you something, referring to that which, as we agreed, we are best not speaking of, even between ourselves. It is all over and done—cover it over, and let it heal.