HUSBAND AND WIFE
How long he knelt there, Mr. Chantrey did not know. He felt cramped and
stiff, for he did not stir from his first position; and he had uttered
no other word of prayer. But at last Sophy moved and turned her head;
and he lifted up his face at the sound. The moon was shining full into
the room, and they could see one another, but not distinctly, as in
daylight. She looked at him in dreamy silence for a few moments, and
then she timidly stretched out her hand, and whispered, "David!"
"My wife!" he answered, laying his own cold hand upon hers.
For some few minutes neither of them spoke again. They gazed at one
another as though some great gulf had opened between them, and neither
of them could cross it. In the dim light they could only see the pallid,
outline of each other's face, as though they had met in some strange,
sad world. But presently he leaned over her, and kissed her.
"Oh!" she cried, with a sudden loudness that rang through the quiet
room, "you know all! You know how wicked I am. But you don't know how
lonely and wretched I have been. I tried to break myself of it I did try
to keep from it; but it was always there on the table when I sat down to
my meals with Aunt Bolton; and I could always find comfort in it. Oh!
help me! Don't cast me off; don't hate me. Help me."
"I will help you," he answered, earnestly; but he could say no more. The
mere sound of the words she spoke unnerved him.
"And I have made you miserable just as you are coming home!" she went
on. "I never meant to do that. But I was so restless, looking forward to
to-morrow; and aunt's maid advised me to take a little, for fear I
should be quite ill when you came. I should have been all right
to-morrow; and I was so resolved never to touch it again, after you had
come home. You are come back quite strong, are you? There is no more
fear for you? Oh! I will conquer myself; I must conquer myself. If it
had not always been in my sight, and the doctors had not ordered it, I
should never have been so wicked. Do you forgive me? Do you think God
will forgive me?"
"Can you give it up?" he asked.
"Oh! I must, I will give it up," she sobbed; "but if I do, and if you
forgive me, it can never be the same again. You will not think the same
of me--and people have seen me--they all talk about it--and I shall
always be ashamed before them. I am a disgrace to you; Aunt Bolton has
said so again and again. Then there's Charlie; I'm not fit to be his
mother. That is quite true. However long I live, people in Upton will
remember it, and gossip about, it. If they had let me die it would have
been better for us all. You could have loved me then."
"But I love you still," he answered, in a voice of tenderness and pity;
"you are very dear to me. How can I ever cease to love you?"
Yet as he spoke a terrible thought flashed through his mind that his
wife might some day become to him an object of unutterable disgust. An
image of a besotted, drunken woman always in his house, and bearing his
name, stood out for a moment sharply and distinctly before his
imagination. He shuddered, and paused; but almost before she could
notice it, he went on in low and solemn tones.
"Your sin does not separate you from me; you are my wife. I must help
you and save you at whatever cost. Your soul is nearer to mine than any
other; and what one human being can do for the soul of another, it is my
lot to do. Do not be afraid of me, Sophy. You cannot estrange yourself
from me; and yon cannot wear out the patience of God. He is ever waiting
to receive back those who have wandered farthest from him. Can I refuse
love and pity, when He freely gives them in full measure to you? Will
Christ forsake you--He who saved Mary Magdalen? He will cast out this
demon that has possession of you."
He was replying to some of the questions which had troubled him, while
he was kneeling at her side, before she was awake. There was no
separation possible of their lives. If she broke away from him, or if he
sent her away from his home, they would still be bound together by ties
that could never be broken. Whatever depth she sank to, she was his
wife, and he must tread step by step with her the path that ran through
all the future. But if any one could help her, and lead her back out of
her present bondage, it was he; and he must not fail her in any
extremity for lack of pity and tenderness.
He was about to speak again, when a loud, rough noise broke in upon the
quiet of the house. It was nearly midnight; and Ann Holland's drunken
brother was stumbling and staggering through his shop into the peaceful
little kitchen, Sophy sat up and listened. They could hear his thick,
coarse voice shouting out snatches of vulgar songs, mingled with oaths
at his sister, who was doing her utmost to persuade him to go quietly to
bed. His shambling step, dragging across the floor, seemed about to
enter the darkened room where they were sitting; and Sophy caught her
husband's arm, clinging to it with fright. It was a more bitter moment
for Mr. Chantrey than even for her. The comparison thrust upon him was
too terrible. His delicate, tender, beloved wife, and this coarse,
brutal, degraded man! Was it possible that both were bound by the chains
of the same sin?
But Ann Holland succeeded before long in getting her brother out of the
way, and releasing them from their painful imprisonment. The streets of
Upton were hushed in utter solitude and silence as they walked through
them, speechless and heavy-hearted; those streets which, on the morrow,
were to have been crowded with groups of his people, eager to welcome
him home. They passed the church, lit up with the moonlight, clear
enough to make every grave visible; a lovely light, in which all the
dead seemed to be sleeping restfully. He sighed heavily as he passed by.
Sophy was clinging to him, sobbing now and then; for her agitation had
subsided into a weak dejection, which found no relief but in tears.
Every step they trod along the too familiar road brought a fresh pang to
him. For thousands of memories of happy days haunted him; and a thousand
vague fears dogged him. He dared not open his heart either to the
memories or the fears. Nothing was possible to him, except a silent,
continuous cry to God for help.
"It is a melancholy coming home," Sophy murmured, as they stood together
on the threshold of their aunt's house. He had not time to answer, for
the door was opened quickly, and Mrs. Bolton hurried forward to welcome
him. She had been expecting him for some time, for Ann Holland had sent
word that both he and Mrs. Chantrey were at her house. One glance at his
anxious and sorrowful face revealed to her the anguish of the last few
hours. Sophy crept away guiltily up stairs; and she put her arm through
his, and led him into the dining-room, where a luxurious supper was
spread for him.
"You know all about it, then?" said Mrs. Bolton, as he threw himself
into a chair by the fireside, looking utterly bowed down and wretched.
"Yes," he answered. "Oh! aunt, could you do nothing for her? Could you
not prevent it? It is a miserable thing for a man to come back to."
"I have done all I could," she replied, hesitatingly. "I have been quite
wretched about it myself; but what could I do? I told your friend Mr.
Warden there was nothing in reason I would refuse to do; but his ideas
were so impracticable they could not be carried out."
"What were they?" he asked.
"Positively that I should abstain altogether myself," she said; "and not
only that, but I must refuse it to my guests, and have nothing of the
kind in my house; not even those choice wines your uncle bought, Neither
wine for myself nor ale for my servants! It was quite out of the
question, you know. Mr. Warden was meddlesome to the very verge of
impertinence about it, until I was compelled to give up inviting him to
my house. He went so far as to doubt my being a Christian! And it was of
no use telling him I followed our Lord's example more strictly by
drinking wine than he did by abstaining from it. He used his influence
with Sophy to persuade her to suggest the same thing, that I would keep
it altogether out of her sight at all times; but she soon saw how
impossible it was for a person of my station and responsibility to do
such a thing. I told her it was putting total abstinence above
religion."
"Did Sophy think that would save her?" asked Mr. Chantrey.
"She had a fancy it would," answered Mrs. Bolton, "but only because Mr.
Warden put it into her head. She was quite reasonable about it, poor
girl! I proved to her that our Lord did not do it, nor some of the best
Christians that ever lived; and she was quite convinced. Even Ann
Holland was troublesome about it, begging me to do all kinds of
extraordinary things--to have Charlie here was one of them, as if that
could cure her--but I soon made her understand her position and mine. I
am sure nobody can be more anxious than I am to do what is right. I am
afraid it is the development of an hereditary taste in your wife, David,
and nothing will cure it; for I have made many inquiries about her
family, and I hear several of her relations were given to excess; so you
may depend upon it, it is hereditary and incurable."
There was little comfort for him in this speech, which was delivered in
a satisfied and judicial tone. Sophy's sin had been present to Mrs.
Bolton for so many months, and she had grown so accustomed to analyze
it, and argue about it, that she could not enter into the sudden and
direful shock the discovery had been to her nephew. An antagonism had
risen in her mind about it, not only against Mr. Warden, but against
some faint, suppressed reproaches of conscience, which made her secretly
cleave to the idea that this vice was hereditary, and consequently
incurable. She was afraid also of David reproaching her. But he did not.
He was too crushed to reason yet about his wife's fall, or what measures
might have been taken to prevent it. Long after his aunt had left him,
and not a sound was to be heard in the house, he sat alone, scarcely
thinking, but with one deep, poignant, bitter sense of anguish weighing
upon his soul. Now and then he cried to God inarticulately; that dumb,
incoherent cry of the stricken spirit to the only Saviour.