NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE.
They stood silent for a few moments;--moments which seemed hours to
Phebe. The stranger--for who could be so great a stranger as one who
had been many years dead?--had advanced only a step or two from the
threshold, and paused as if some invisible barrier was set up between
them. She had shrunk back, and stood leaning against the wall for the
support her trembling limbs needed. It was with a vehement effort that
at last she spoke.
"Roland Sefton!" she faltered.
"Yes!" he answered, "I am that most miserable man."
"But you died," she said with quivering lips, "fourteen years ago."
"No, Phebe, no," he replied; "would to God I had died then."
Once more an agony of mingled fear and joy overwhelmed her. This dear
voice, so lamentable and hopeless, so well remembered in all its tones,
told her that he was still living, whom she had mourned over so many
years. But what could this mystery mean? What had he passed through?
What was about to happen now? A tumult of thoughts thronged to her
brain. But clearest of all came the assurance that he was alive,
standing there, desolate, changed, and friendless. She ran to him and
clasped his hands in hers; stooping down and kissing them, those hard
worn hands, which he left unresistingly in her grasp. These loving, and
deferential caresses belonged to the time when she was a humble country
girl, and he the friend very far above her.
"Come closer to the fire, your hands are cold, Mr. Roland," she said,
speaking in the old long-disused accent of her early days, as she might
have spoken to him while she was yet a child. She threw a few logs on
the fire, and drew up Canon Pascal's chair to the hearth for him. She
felt spell-bound; and as if she had been suddenly thrust back upon those
old times.
"I am no longer Roland Sefton," he said, sinking down into the chair;
"he died, as you say, many a long year ago. Do not light the lamp,
Phebe; let us talk by the firelight."
The flicker of the flames creeping round the dry wood played upon his
face, and her eyes were fastened on it. Could this man really be Roland
Sefton, or was she being tricked by her fancy? Here was a scarred and
wrinkled face, blistered and burnt by the summer's sun, and cut and
frost-bitten by the winter's cold; the hair was gray and ragged, and the
eyes far sunk in the head met her gaze with a despairing and uneasy
glance, as if he shrank from her close scrutiny. His bowed shoulders and
hands roughened by toil, and worn-out mechanic's dress, were such a
change, that perhaps, she acknowledged it reluctantly to herself, if he
had not spoken as he did she might have passed him by undiscovered.
"I am Jean Merle," he said, "not Roland Sefton."
"Jean Merle?" she repeated in a low, bewildered tone, "not Roland
Sefton, but Jean Merle?"
But she could not be bewildered or in doubt much longer. This was Roland
indeed, the hero of her life, come back to her a broken-down, desolate,
and hopeless man. She knelt down on the hearth beside him, and laid her
hand compassionately on his.
"But you are Roland himself to me!" she cried. "Oh! be quick, and tell
me all about it. Why did we ever think you were dead?"
"It was best for them all," he answered. "God knows I believed it was
best. But it was a second sin, worse than the first, Phebe. I did the
man who died no wrong, for he told me as he lay dying that he had no
friends to grieve for him, and no property to leave. All he wanted was a
decent grave; and he has it, and my name with it. The grave at Engelberg
contains a stranger. And I, Jean Merle, have taken charge of it."
"Oh!" cried Phebe, with a pang of dread, "how will Felicita bear it?"
"Felicita has known it; she consented to it," said Jean Merle. "If she
had uttered one word against my desperate plan, I should have recoiled
from it. To be dead whilst you are yet in the body; to have eyes to see
and ears to hear with, and a thinking brain and a hungry heart, whilst
there is no sign, or sound, or memory, or love from your former life;
you cannot conceive what that is, Phebe. I was dead, yet I was too
keenly alive in Jean Merle, the poor wood-carver and miser. They thought
I was imbecile; and I was almost a madman. I could not tear myself away
from the grave where Roland Sefton was buried; but oh! what I have
suffered!"
He ended with a long shuddering sigh, which pierced Phebe to the heart.
The joy of seeing him again was vanishing in the sight of his suffering;
but the thought uppermost in her mind was of Felicita.
"And she has known all along that you were not dead?" she said, in a
tone of awe.
"Yes, Felicita knew," he answered.
"And has she never seen you, never written to you?" she asked.
"She knows nothing of me," he replied. "I was to be dead to her, and to
every one else. We parted forever in Engelberg fourteen years ago this
very month. Perhaps she believes me to be dead in reality. But I could
live no longer without knowing something of you all, of Felix and Hilda;
and I came over to England in August. I have seen all of you, except
Felicita."
"Oh! it was wicked! it was cruel!" sobbed Phebe, shivering. "Your mother
died, believing she was going to rejoin you; and I, oh! how I have
mourned for you!"
"Have you, Phebe?" he said sorrowfully; "but Felicita has been saved
from shame, and has been successful. She is too famous now for me to
retrace my steps, and get back into truthfulness. I can find no place
for repentance, let me seek it ever so carefully and with tears."
"But you have repented?" she whispered.
"Before God? yes!" he answered, "and I believe He has forgiven me. But
there is no way by which I can retrieve the past. I have forfeited
everything, and I am now shut out even from the duties of life. What
ought I to have done, Phebe? There was this way to save my mother, and
my children, and Felicita; and I took it. It has prospered for all of
them; they hold a different position in the world this day than they
could have done if I had lived."
"In this world, yes!" answered Phebe, with a touch of scorn in her
voice; "but cannot you see what you have done for Felicita? Oh! it would
have been better for her to have endured the shame of your first sin,
than bear such a burden of guilt. And you might have outlived the
disgrace. There are Christian people in the world who can forgive sin,
even as Christ forgives it. Even my poor father forgave it; and Mr.
Clifford, he is repenting now that he did not forgive you; it weighs him
down in his old age. It would have been better for you and Felicita if
you had borne the penalty of your crime."
"And our children, Phebe?" he said.
"Could not God have made it up to them?" she asked. "Did He make it
necessary for you to sin again on their account? Oh! if you had only
trusted Him! If you had only waited to see how Christ could turn even
the sins of the father into blessings for his children! They have missed
you; it may be, I cannot see clearly, they must miss you now all their
lives. It would break their hearts to learn all this. Whether they must
know it, I cannot tell."
"To what end should they know it?" he said. "Don't you see, Phebe, that
the distinction Felicita has won binds us to keep this secret? It cannot
be disclosed either to her or to them. I came to tell it to the man who
brought me here under a seal of secrecy."
"To Canon Pascal?" she exclaimed.
"Pascal?" he repeated, "ay? I remember him now. It would have been
terrible to have told it to him."
"Let me think about it," said Phebe, "it has come too suddenly upon me.
There must be something we ought to do, but I cannot see it yet. I must
have time to recollect it all. And yet I am afraid to let you go, lest
you should disappear again, and all this should seem like a dreadful
dream."
"You care for me still, Phebe?" he answered mournfully. "No, I shall not
disappear from you; I shall hold fast by you, now you have seen me
again. If that poor wretch in hell who lifted up his eyes, being in
torments, had caught sight of some pitying angel, who would now and then
dip the tip of her finger in water and cool his tongue, would he have
disappeared from her vision? Wouldn't he rather have had a horrible
dread lest she should disappear? But you will not forsake me, Phebe?"
"Never!" replied Phebe, with an intense and mournful earnestness.
"Then I will go," he said, rising reluctantly to his feet. The deep
tones of the Abbey clock were striking for the second time since he had
entered Canon Pascal's study, and they had been left in uninterrupted
conversation. It was time for him to go; yet it seemed to him as if he
had still so much to pour into Phebe's ear, that many hours would not
give him time enough. Unconstrained speech had proved a source of
ineffable solace and strength to him. He had been dying of thirst, and
he had found a spring of living waters. To Phebe, and to her alone, he
was still a living man, unless sometimes Felicita thought of him.
"If you are still my friend, knowing all," he said, "I shall no longer
despair. When will you see me again?"
"I will come to morning service in the Abbey to-morrow," she answered.