Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/488

 15, 1864.] voice, and glided into the room, looking like an angel of peace between two evil spirits. She stopped short as she caught sight of Astley’s face all drawn and set with the effort to suppress his emotion, and then threw her arms round his neck with a cry of love and terror.

But he unwound her arms, and for the first time drew back from her embrace.

“Mary, my love,” Holt’s eyes flashed fire at the tender words and tones, “tell me, tell Mr. Holt, if you remember anything in your life before you awoke from your trance in this house?”

“I do not,” she said; “I remember nothing. I have said so many times.”

“Swear it,” cried Holt.

“I swear it,” she said, “by my husband, Richard Astley.”

Poor Holt! He threw himself at her feet, clasping her knees, and crying passionately:

“Oh, Edith! have you forgotten me, your husband, David Holt? Oh, my darling, you must remember me, and how happy we were for that short two years!”

But she broke from his grasp, and threw herself into Astley’s arms, crying out:

“Send him away! What does he mean? Send him away!” She was pale and trembling with terror.

“Let her go,” shouted Holt, “or by"

The oath was interrupted by Astley.

“Holt, God knows I will try to do what is right, and for her sake I ask you to be calm.”

He placed her in a chair, where she sat weeping for very fright, and went on.

“You shall say all you can to bring the past to her memory, and if she can remember you in the faintest degree I will give up my claim to yours. But if she does not—oh, Holt, I saved her life!” The struggle was an awful one, and shook him as the wind shakes a reed.

“You tell her,” said Holt, bitterly; “perhaps she will believe what you say. At any rate, she will listen to it.”

It was hard to begin the cruel task; yet for her sake he undertook it, his voice trembling, though he tried with all his will to steady it.

“Mary, love, listen. You know that you must have lived more than twenty years before you were brought here that night.”

“I do not know,” she said; “I cannot remember.”

“But it must have been so, for you were a woman then.”

“I cannot understand,” she repeated. “I have no recollection of anything before.”

Astley turned to Holt with a look of agony.

“You see how it is; let us end this torture.”

“Give me my wife,” said Holt, fiercely.

“You will not take her,” Astley cried, as the thought of his doing so against her will struck him for the first time.

“She is mine,” said Holt. “Go on; tell her the whole story. If she does not understand it, she will believe it when you tell it to her.” The sneer with which the words were spoken was a cruel one, but misery had made him cruel, and he scarcely knew what he said or did.

And Astley told her all in a few words. She looked bewildered.

“It must be true if you say so, but I cannot recollect; and oh, Astley, I love only you.”

“She must come with me,” shouted Holt, savagely. The demon had got the better of him, and the poor wretch, mad with jealous pain, spoke bitter and unjust words, that made the terrified woman cling more closely to Astley for protection.

The scene must be ended for her sake, and Astley besought Holt to leave them till the next day, when, if they could but decide upon what was right it should be done. For her sake, too, he condescended to plead with the frantic man; and seeing that Mary had fainted in his arms, he laid her down, and led Holt from the room, that the sight of her might no longer madden him. His rage died out from simple exhaustion, and throwing himself into a chair he wept like a child.

Astley roused him. “Holt, be a man. This is an awful tragedy: I wish to Heaven I had died rather than played my part in it. There are not upon the earth two men so broken-hearted as you and I. Let us accept what is inevitable, but let us spare what anguish we can to that unhappy woman. Leave me now, and to-morrow I will see you again. Perhaps by that time I shall have thought of something for her.”

Holt rose passively. “You are nobler than I,” he said, as he turned to go.

It seemed to Astley that his grief was but beginning when he tried to explain the whole thing clearly to Mary. The torture of putting it into words was so intense that all before was nothing compared with it. And when at length she comprehended, and asked him if he wished her to leave him, even that agony seemed slight contrasted with what he endured in telling her that he believed she ought to do so.

Loving as she was, she could not comprehend the sacrifice to duty which Astley was striving to make, and her thorough ignorance of the world rendered it impossible to make her understand what her position would be if she remained where she was. And yet this