Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/191

11, 1860.] “My letter?”

“No—a letter from you which said the engagement must cease.”

He let her fall from his grasp. The calm of his soul was gone. “My God! to die now, and for Clara never to know the truth.”

Terror at the approaching danger overcame all her other feelings. Fascinated, she crawled up to the window of the hovel, and gazed out. She saw, even at the distance, the expression on that countenance which had caused her such horror the night before. In a minute or two more their refuge would be discovered.

“I dare not ask your forgiveness, Markham, but grant me one prayer. Life to me is more frightful than death. When they come”—she pointed significantly to the revolver. “I never fired a pistol in my life; my own hand might fail me at the last.”

He was silent.

“As you hope for salvation hereafter.”

“What, take vengeance with my own hand?”

“No, Markham, the act would be the token of your forgiveness. Swear!” she cried, in an agony of supplication, “and then I can pray in peace.”

“I swear!” said Markham.

It was a terrible effort, but he conquered in the end, and he spoke the full truth and purpose of his heart, when he uttered in a low firm tone, “Pauline, I forgive you.”

She raised her head for a moment, and pressed his hand to her lips. “Then God will forgive me, I am absolved from my guilt. I can die in peace.” She bent her head again in prayer.

Markham had become quite calm again. He carefully examined the loaded barrel: with a firm hand he raised the hammer and gently lowered it, so as to press the cap more securely on the nipple.

And they waited the end in peace.

“ have forgiven me, Markham!”

The coast of England was in sight. From the time they left that hovel, rescued by a body of irregular cavalry, through their slow and dangerous journey down to Ualcutta—through all the dull monotony of the long sea voyage—he had never referred to her confession. It was this silence which oppressed her; it would have been so much more endurable to have talked upon the subject. She often tried to lead the conversation up to the point, but he invariably turned it off, and until the present moment she had not found courage to approach it directly.

Yet she knew full well what he felt.

In long watchings beside his bed, through that dangerous fever which he had at Calcutta—she had often heard him, in the intensity of the delirium, cry her sister’s name, till the word smote her like a sharp sword. One evening, as she stood before him, he had started up in his bed, and gazing wildly in her face, and clasping her hands with his burning grasp, he had uttered in incoherent words his joy that Clara had come back to him at last.

This was the violent upheaving of nature pouring forth the deep feelings of the heart like molten lava; but with returning strength came proud endurance, beneath which those feelings were hidden away.

She would sit for hours and watch him in his fitful sleep. She knew he must always hate her, yet she liked to feel that he rested in her power as a helpless child. The vital energy was wasted from his face; the strong arm she had clung to in that terrible flight was very weak and purposeless; the hands were nerveless which had freed her from the ruffian’s grasp;—and yet he looked so noble in his weakness.

What was this feeling at her heart?

Was it conscience prompting her to make the fullest reparation for the past?

She felt that was not the true reply; and then she would start in terror from his bedside. The thought was so fearful. What if Love should be his own avenger?

The principle her needy parents had taught her in her youth—that love was a fiction, marriage a result of worldly calculation—was growing into an utter falsehood. It had all seemed very true when she made the excellent match which had been so cleverly devised for her, and she had lived quite contentedly in the enjoyment of her wealth and worldly position.

Yet surely there remained to her the sorrowful recollection of that brave husband, who died a noble death, which might deliver her from this fatal fascination. She strove to love him dead as she had never dreamt of loving him when living.

Then she forgot his soldier’s habit of sternness; forgot that no real sympathy had ever existed between them, and dwelt only on his kind indulgence, which had been bestowed upon her as upon a child, magnifying it to the utmost. Yet, after all, they twain were only parties to a contract, beauty for wealth. She had acted her part faithfully as a wife, but her heart had never been asked, and never been given. There was no deliverance for her in all this. The feeling which wrestled with her was love,—first love,—with all its intensity, first love, to be met with shuddering and endured with sorrow. It was her sister’s name which stole from his unconscious lips as she smoothed his pillow with trembling hands, and drew aside the ruffled hair from his burning brow.

But she had saved his life! there was comfort in that. The doctors all said that her careful nursing had availed more than their skill; in truth, they marvelled at the way she had, as it were, instinctively felt the slightest changes in his condition. At last they said, the sea voyage, at all hazard, was the only hope of saving him. It lightened her heart for the moment, to lavish every comfort that money could procure in the fitting up of his cabin. He was carried on board on a couch, too weak to know of the arrangements that had been made.

There was a change for the better from the first day of his being at sea; yet his progress towards recovery was very slow. In the depth of her heart she was glad at this; for the more service she could render, the more the load on her soul was eased; it likewise prolonged her privilege to be near him, for she felt, when he was fully recovered, that the past must be an everlasting