Page:Once a Week NS Volume 7.djvu/18



“I would not have deceived you, Philip, in that; for I would have done your bidding even in wrong, but that I would not wrong another. I am sure that I have been right. I look back with calm satisfaction to that step in life. I felt a better and a wiser woman afterwards. I accepted, as you know, my fate. I was not one to struggle against the decrees of Providence. We loved each other too dearly. I loved you to the forgetfulness of all—even of God; and He smote me to remembrance with a bitter blow.”

Dr. Richards was so much of a savant that this talk to him was but a shibboleth, beyond his thorough comprehension. The religious state of mind was like any other strange prepossession: he accepted it, but he could not account for it. But the nursing Sister nodded her white cap, as much as to signify her acquiescence, and that it was borne out by her experience.

“ I know this nurse was true to me and false to you, by a secret knowledge that a mother has. My child remained with her, was brought up by her in his earlier years; and, alas! by that secret way of nature, of which we know so little, imbibed strange moral poison in his foster-mother’s milk. Alas, Philip! he is not what his father’s son should be, nor what his mother’s teachings would have made him.”

Then Winnifred was right. As she listened, a secret satisfaction was borne in upon her mind, and she thanked God that in her prejudice she had not been unjust.

The Earl was, however, tom with a deeper sorrow. Through his sin, he felt that both his sons were lost to him for ever; and the very satisfaction that he would have felt was embittered beyond endurance by the crime to which he felt the chain of circumstances which he had forged had dragged his son Philip.

“But let that pass—we’ll speak of it again,” continued the invalid, in her low, sweet voice and measured cadence, so full of harmony and rhythm that the words seemed now and then to fall into natural lines of blank verse, and to admit of scansion. “In that I did deceive you, for your good; but afterwards there came an accusation—based on some slight truth— which eager friends, your jealous fondness set to watch, brought foully against me. How could your faith be shaken? How could you misjudge the one you loved?

The fault began in you. A victim to your father’s will and pride, you did me wrong; and then added to that evil in believing that I could return the wrong to your own bosom.”

The Earl groaned and sighed—now, when it was too late, fully believing what the dying woman said.

“ It was in vain that I wrote to you after your cruel letter. You had shut out all chances of the error being retrieved. My letters were returned. Again I wrote; they were returned unopened. I bowed to fate.

I was too proud, too much wounded—and deep sorrow has its pride as well as joy—to urge you more. I succumbed, and comforted myself by the penance I had to undergo. Why should I clear my fame to you ?

I asked myself; especially when a proof of my innocence would bring back your fondness, and make you unjust to and unhappy with your English wife. It has been, Philip, a martyrdom of thirty years. Heaven knows how I passed it. It is ended now. You suspected me cruelly and most wrongfully. No cloistered nun could have been more pure in thought and deed than I. I wore this wrong suspicion, this most odious accusation, as one who does an unseen penance wears a chain of steel or shirt of hair. They lacerate the flesh: your penance ate into my soul.”

“ Forgive me! oh, forgive me, Eugenie!”

“ Forgiven, Philip, are you ere you ask— long loved, long cherished, long forgiven.

I found that the accusation was based upon the visits of my brother, whom I had educated, with the money you had so plentifully bestowed upon me, at St. Cyr; and who— poor, brave young fellow—had won his epaulettes. He is dead now, thank Heaven for it! He will meet me where our errors are more wisely looked at than by human eyes. He was happy when he died, in some sharp fray in Africa; happy—with the name of his sister, his widowed sister, on his lips—that he gave his life for France. France—dear, sweet France! I have been long away from her, in this cold land of my adoption. My dear, sweet mother country!

I did not love her well enough; but now her sunshine and blue skies come back to me so plainly, so vividly: there seems to rest once more a gleam of her bright sunshine on my bed.”

The doctor well knew the meaning of this, and gave the invalid some wine. It