Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/535



OY was at the dépôt Wednesday afternoon to meet his wife.

"You are not well, I am afraid?" she said, when they were in the carriage that was to convey them home.

"I am not sick, but I have bad much to think of and to do, lately, and I may look somewhat jaded," he answered. "You left Eunice well, did you not?"

"Quite well, thank you!"

"And you, are you very much fatigued?"

"No, but my head aches a little," turning her face to the window.

She was disappointed in her reception. The parting from Eunice had been a grievous trial; the journey filled with mournful thoughts of the past that now lay so very far behind her. Her chief solace was the hope and resolve that she would do her duty bravely and well in the sphere for which her marriage-vow had set her apart. Lonely and tired, the sight of Roy's face in the crowd of strangers upon the platform had cheered her heart like a cordial. She forgot that he was her husband; remembered him only as a noble and faithful friend, in whose presence she would be no longer solitary and sad. He had not kissed her when they met—she supposed because there were so many looking on; but after taking his place beside her in the carriage, he might surely tell her that her coming gave him joy. His face was very pale, his eyes abstracted, his voice constrained. It was not surprising that a qualm of home-sickness weakened her heroic resolutions, put to flight her dreams of forgetting her unhappiness in the sustained effort to be and to do all he wished.

Roy saw her struggle and guessed at its cause; but what could he say to assuage or encourage? The caresses and tender words with which he had sought to console her in the earlier days of her desolation must, he now saw in the lurid light cast upon his honeymoon by that terrible letter, have aggravated her sufferings. Professing to be her protector, he had played the part of a brutal ravisher; had torn her—shrinking and crying out against the loathed union, from her free, careless girl-life, and bound her, soul and body, in fetters more hateful and enduring than manacles of steel. After the first shock of horror and of grief, he forgot the wrong he had sustained, in his overmastering compassion for her. And he could not free her! Loving her better than he did his own happiness and life, he was powerless to ensure her peace of mind by restoring her to liberty. Had he been other than the true Christian and true man he was, the distracting anguish of that conviction would have driven him to madness and to suicide, as a sequel to the fearful vigil that followed the discovery of his real position.