HAUNTING MEMORIES.
Felicita was slowly recovering her strength at the sea-side. She had
never before felt so seriously shaken in health, as since she had known
of the attachment of Felix to Alice Pascal; an attachment which would
have been quite to her mind, if there was no loss of honor in allowing
it whilst she held a secret which, in all probability, would seem an
insuperable barrier in the eyes of Canon Pascal.
This secret she had kept resolutely in the background of her own memory,
conscious of its existence, but never turning her eyes towards it. The
fact that it was absolutely a secret, suspected by no one, made this
more possible; for there was no gleam of cognizance in any eye meeting
hers which could awaken even a momentary recollection of it. It seemed
so certain that her husband was dead to every one but herself, that she
came at last almost to believe that it was true.
And was it not most likely to be true? Through all these long years
there had come no hint to her in any way that he was living. She had
never seen or heard of any man lingering about her home where she and
her children lived, all whom Roland loved, and loved so passionately.
Certainly she had made no effort to discover whether he was yet alive;
but though it would be well for her if he was dead--a cause of rest
almost amounting to satisfaction--it was not likely that he would remain
content with unbroken and complete ignorance of how she and her children
were faring. If he had been living, surely he would have given her some
sign.
There was a terrible duty now lying in her path. Before she could give
her consent to Felix marrying Alice, she must ascertain positively if
her husband was dead. Should it be so, her secret was safe, and would
die with her. Nobody need ever know of this fraud, so successfully
carried out. But if not? Then she knew in herself that her lips could
never confess the sin in which she had shared; and nothing would remain
for her to do but to oppose with all the energy and persistence possible
the marriage either of her son or daughter. And she fully believed that
neither of them would marry against her will.
Her health had not permitted her hitherto to make the exertion necessary
for ascertaining this fact, on which her whole future depended--hers and
her children's. The physician whom she had consulted in London had urged
upon her the imperative necessity of avoiding all excitement and
fatigue, and had ordered her down to this dull little village of
Freshwater, where not even a brass band on the unfinished pier or the
arrival of an excursion steamer could disturb or agitate her. She had
nothing to do but to sit on the quiet downs, where no sound could
startle her, and no spectacle flutter her, until the sea-breezes had
brought back her usual tone of health.
How long this promised restoration was in coming! Phebe, who watched for
it anxiously, saw but little sign of it. Felicita was more silent than
ever, more withdrawn into herself, gazing for hours upon the changeful
surface of the sea with absent eyes, through which the brain was not
looking out. Neither sound nor sight reached the absorbed soul, that was
wandering through some intricate mazes to which Phebe had no clue. But
no color came to Felicita's pale face, and no light into her dim eyes.
There was a painful and weird feeling often in Phebe's heart that
Felicita herself was not there; only the fair, frail form, which was as
insensible as a corpse, until this spirit came back to it. At such times
Phebe was impelled to touch her, and speak to her, and call her back
again, though it might be to irritability and displeasure.
"Phebe," said Felicita, one day when they sat on the cliff, so near the
edge that nothing but the sea lay within the range of their sight, "how
should you feel if, instead of helping a fellow-creature to save himself
from drowning, you had thrust him back into the water, and left him,
sure that he would perish?"
"But I cannot tell you how I should feel," answered Phebe, "because I
could never do it. It makes me shudder to think of such a thing. No
human being could do it."
"But if you had thrust the one fellow-creature nearest to you, the one
who loved you the most," pursued Felicita, "into sin, down into a deeper
gulf than he could have fallen into but for you--"
"My dear, my dear!" cried Phebe, interrupting her in a tone of the
tenderest pity. "Oh! I know now what is preying upon you. Because Felix
loves Alice it has brought back all the sorrowful past to you, and you
are letting it kill you. Listen! Let me speak this once, and then I will
never speak again, if you wish it. Canon Pascal knows it all; I told
him. And Felix knows it, and he loves you more than ever; you are dearer
to him a hundred times than you were before. And he forgives his
father--fully. God has cast his sin as a stone into the depths of the
sea, to be remembered against him no more forever!"
A slight flush crept over Felicita's pale face. It was a relief to her
to learn that Canon Pascal and Felix knew so much of the truth. The
darker secret must be hidden still in the depths of her heart until she
found out whether she was altogether free from the chance of discovery.
"It was right they should know," she said in a low and dreamy tone; "and
Canon Pascal makes no difficulty of it?"
"Canon Pascal said to me," answered Phebe, "that your noble life and the
fame you had won atoned for the error of which Felix and Hilda's father
had been guilty. He said they were your children, brought up under your
training and example, not their father's. Why do you dwell so bitterly
upon the past? It is all forgotten now."
"Not by me," murmured Felicita, "nor by you, Phebe."
"No; I have never forgotten him," cried Phebe, with a passionate sorrow
in her voice. "How good he was to me, and to all about him! Yes, he was
guilty of a sin before God and against man; I know it. But oh! if he had
only suffered the penalty, and come back to us again, for us to comfort
him, and to help him to live down the shame! Possibly we could not have
done it in Riversborough; I do not know; but I would have gone with you,
as your servant, to the ends of the earth, and you would have lived
happy days again--happier than the former days. And he would have proved
himself a good man, in spite of his sin; a Christian man, whom Christ
would not have been ashamed to own."
"No, no," said Felicita; "that is impossible. I never loved Roland; can
you believe that, Phebe?"
"Yes," she answered in a whisper, and with downcast eyes.
"Not as I think of love," continued Felicita in a dreary voice. "I have
tried to love you all; but you seem so far away from me, as if I could
never touch you. Even Felix and Hilda, they are like phantom children,
who do not warm my heart, or gladden it, as other mothers are made happy
by their children. Sometimes I have dreamed of what life would have been
if I had given myself to some man for whom I would have forfeited the
world, and counted the loss as nothing. But that is past now, and I feel
old. There is nothing more before me; all is gray and flat and cold, a
desolate monotony of years, till death comes."
"You make me unhappy," said Phebe. "Ought we not to love God first, and
man for God's sake? There is no passion in that; but there is
inexhaustible faithfulness and tenderness."
"How far away from me you are!" answered Felicita with a faint smile.
She turned her sad face again towards the sea, and sat silent, watching
the flitting sails pass by, but holding Phebe's hand fast in her own, as
if she craved her companionship. Phebe, too, was silent, the tears
dimming her blue eyes and blotting out the scene before her. Her heart
was very heavy and troubled for Felicita.
"Will you go to Engelberg with me by-and-by?" asked Felicita suddenly,
but in a calm and tranquil tone.
"To Engelberg!" echoed Phebe.
"I must go there before Felix thinks of marrying," she answered in short
and broken sentences; "but it cannot be till spring. Yet I cannot write
again until I have been there; the thought of it haunts me intolerably.
Sometimes, nay, often, the word Engelberg has slipped from my pen
unawares when I have tried to write; so I shall do no more work till I
have fulfilled this duty; but I will rest another few months. When I
have been to Engelberg again, for the last time, I shall be not happy,
but less miserable."
"I will go with you wherever you wish," said Phebe.
It was so great a relief to have said this much to Phebe, to have broken
through so much of the icy reserve which froze her heart, that
Felicita's spirits at once grew more cheerful. The dreaded words had
been uttered, and the plan was settled; though its fulfilment was
postponed till spring; a reprieve to Felicita. She regained health and
strength rapidly, and returned to London so far recovered that her
physician gave her permission to return to work.
But she did not wish to take up her work again. It had long ago lost the
charm of novelty to her, and though circumstances had compelled her to
write, or to live upon her marriage settlement, which in her eyes was to
live upon the proceeds of a sin successfully carried out, her writing
itself had become tedious to her. "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!"
and there is much vexation of spirit, as well as weariness of the flesh,
in the making of many books. She had made enemies who were spiteful,
and friends who were exacting; she, who felt equally the irksomeness of
petty enmities and of small friendships, which, like gnats buzzing
monotonously about her, were now and then ready to sting. The sting
itself might be trivial, but it was irritating.
Felicita had soon found out how limited is the circle of fame for even a
successful writer. For one person who would read a book, there were
fifty who would go to hear a famous singer or actor, and a hundred who
would crowd to see a clever acrobat. As she read more she discovered
that what she had fondly imagined were ideas originated by her own
intellect, was, in reality, the echo only of thought long since given to
mankind by other minds, in other words, often better than her own. Her
own silent claim to genius was greatly modified; she was humbler than
she had been. But she knew painfully that her name was now a
hundred-fold better known than it had been while she was yet only the
wife of a Riversborough banker. All her work for the last fourteen years
had placed it more and more prominently before the public. Any scandal
attaching to it now would be blazoned farther and wider, in deeper and
more enduring characters, than if her life as an author had been a
failure.
The subtle hope, very real, vague as it was, that her husband was in
truth dead, gathered strength. The silence that had engulfed him had
been so profound that it seemed impossible he should still be treading
the same earth as herself, and wearing through its slow and commonplace
days, sleeping and waking, eating and drinking like other men. Felicita
was not superstitious, but there was in her that deep-rooted,
instinctive sense of mystery in this double life of ours, dividing our
time into sleeping and waking hours, which is often apt to make our
dreams themselves omens of importance. She had never dreamed of Roland
as she did of those belonging to her who had already passed into the
invisible world about us. His spirit was not free, perhaps, from its
earthly fetters so as to be able to visit her, and haunt her sleeping
fancies. But now she began to dream of him frequently, and often in the
daytime flashes of memory darted vividly across her brain, lighting up
the dark forgotten past, and recalling to her some word of his, or a
glance merely. It was an inward persecution from which she could not
escape, but it seemed to her to indicate that her persecutor was no more
a denizen of this world.
To get rid of these haunting memories as much as possible, she made such
a change in her mode of life as astonished all about her. She no longer
shut herself up in her library; as she had told Phebe, she resolved to
write no more, nor attempt to write, until she had been to Engelberg.
She seemed wishful to attract friends to her, and she renewed old
acquaintanceships with members of her own family which she had allowed
to drop during these many years. No sooner was it evident that Felicita
Sefton was willing to come out of the extremely quiet and solitary life
she had led hitherto, and take her place in society both as Lord
Riversdale's daughter and as the author of many popular books, than the
current of fashion set towards her. She was still a remarkably lovely
woman, possessing irresistible attractions in her refined face and soft
yet distant manners, as of one walking in a trance, and seeing and
hearing things invisible and inaudible to less favored mortals. Quite
unconsciously to herself she became the lion of the season, when the
next season opened. She had been so difficult to know, that as soon as
she was willing to be known invitations poured in upon her, and her
house was invaded by a throng of visitors, many of them more or less
distantly related to her.
To Hilda this new life was one of unexpected and exquisite delight.
Phebe, also, with her genuine interest in her fellow-creatures, and her
warm sympathy in all human joys and sorrows, enjoyed the change, though
it perplexed her, and caused her to watch Felicita with anxiety. Felix
saw less of it than any one, for he was down in Essex, leading the
tranquil and not very laborious life of a country curate, chafing a
little now and then at his inactivity, yet blissful beyond words in the
close daily intercourse with Alice. There was no talk of their marriage,
but they were young and together. Their happiness was untroubled.