Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/353

Rh "Olivia," said Yorke, although he could hardly speak for the fulness of his heart, "you want rest and quiet, my poor friend, and by-and-by, please God, all will come right. Let us turn back."

"Come right!" she cried, "how can it come right? See here," she continued, laying a hand on his arm, and pointing with the other towards the ruined house. "I was at the window there, praying for my children, when he came up the ladder, and I thought God had answered my prayers and sent his spirit to save us. But it was not his spirit, it was himself. Yes, Major Yorke, it was my husband; he was a hunted prisoner, wounded and sick, wandering in the desert, and I was bearing children to another man. And now he is dead; he died to save me, and a polluted wretch like me still walks the earth."

Then with a cry she turned away from the house, and began walking hurriedly along the bank up the river.

The evening was growing dark, the swollen river ran level with the footway, and Yorke striding along by her side could hardly distinguish between land and water.

A short distance they walked thus in silence along the narrow path, which gave barely room for the two between the hedge and the river, Yorke striving to think how best to calm her agitated mind. At last he said, "Olivia, you will tire yourself out if you hurry in this way; the children are waiting for you; will you not go back to them, poor little things? "

"Poor little things indeed," she said, "to have so vile a mother!" She stopped short and turned half round as if about to go back, and then saying, "There is no help!" and throwing up her arms, made a step forward, whether seeing the water or not her companion could not tell, and sank into the stream.

Yorke plunged in and caught her as she rose to the surface.

The poor creature struggled violently, holding out her arms, whether to get free or clinging to him to be saved he could not tell, but he caught her in his grasp and held her firmly, and after a few moments her efforts ceased, although she still clutched him tightly round the neck with one arm. And at first as they floated down the stream the danger of the situation did not strike him. Often when in his younger days he had played with his brother subalterns at saving a drowning man in an Indian swimming-bath, it had seemed as if impossible to sink. But the weight of his heavy clothes and the icy coldness of the water began at once to tell; and cramped as was the movement of his arms by her grasp, it was as much as he could do to keep her head above water, as he pushed out with his feet towards the shore. The plunge had not been far, but it was made at a point where the bank projected into the river, into the middle of which they had been swept by the strong current. Good swimmer as he deemed himself, he found himself powerless to struggle with the stream, and soon the thought came over him that the fate which had so long bound up their lives together would now follow them to the end. Were they to die locked in each other's arms? And in an instant the picture of past days came up before him, the days when he worshipped the gentle, the gracious, the noble Olivia; the days when he lived on in the bitterness of his heart at losing her, the poor wreck he now held in his arms for the first time, and who, seemingly unconscious of her state, looked up at the sky with a dull, stony stare. He could make out in the dim light that her eyes were open, but more he could not tell, and as he pushed convulsively along in the darkness to where he thought the bank must be, it came over him to wonder if people when they found their bodies would guess the truth, or would they think that the unhappy woman in her madness had dragged him to destruction? — when he saw the dim bank looming just above him, and with his free hand caught hold of some weeds growing against its side.

They were saved; but exhausted and benumbed as he was, and encumbered with his charge, and unable to find any footing, it was only by a desperate effort that he still clutched the weeds. So short a time, and yet all his strength was gone. How easy to be drowned after all! and, too tired to call for help, he must soon let go, when he sees a figure kneeling on the bank above, and an arm stretched out has seized his in its grasp. It is Lucy, who, learning in a few short words from Mrs. Polwheedle enough to guess at Olivia's state, had followed them up the bank, reaching the spot in time to save him. With the help of Lucy, throwing herself down on the wet grass to lend her weight to his efforts, he at last drags himself out, still grasping his burden; and while he stands exhausted looking at the figure lying inanimate at their feet, Lucy raises the shrill cry which soon brings succour — the landlord, the gallant Joe, the Peevors' footman, Mrs. Polwheedle, and