THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE MARRIAGE.
Maddy never knew how she lived through those bright, autumnal days,
when the gorgeous beauty of decaying nature seemed so cruelly to mock
her anguish. As long as Guy was there, breathing the same air with
herself, she kept up, vaguely conscious of a shadowy hope that
something would happen without her instrumentality, something to ease
the weight pressing so hard upon her. But when she heard that he had
really gone, that a line had been received from him after he was on
board the steamer, all hope died out of her heart, and had it been
right she would have prayed that she might die and forget how utterly
miserable she was.
At last there came to her three letters, one from Lucy, one from the
doctor, and one from Guy himself. Lucy’s she opened first, reading of
the sweet girl’s great happiness in seeing her darling boy again, of
her sorrow to find him so thin, and pale, and changed, in all save his
extreme kindness to her, his careful study of her wants, and evident
anxiety to please her in every respect. On this Lucy dwelt, until
Maddy’s heart seemed to leap up and almost turn over in its casing, so
fiercely it throbbed and ached with anguish. She was out in the beechen
woods when she read the letter, and laying her face in the grass she
sobbed as she had never sobbed before.
The doctor’s next was opened, and Maddy read with blinding tears that
which for a moment increased her pain and sent to her bleeding heart an
added pang of disappointment, or a sense of wrong done to her, she
could not tell which. Dr. Holbrook was to be married the same day with
Lucy, and to Lucy’s sister, Margaret.
“Maggie, I call her,” he wrote, “because that name is so much like my
first love, Maddy, the little girl who though I was too old to be her
husband, and so made me very wretched for a time, until I met and knew
Margaret Atherstone. I have told her of you, Maddy; I would not marry
her without, and she seems willing to take me as I am. We shall come
home with Guy, who is the mere wreck of what he was when I last saw
him. He has told me, Maddy, all about it, and though I doubly respect
you now, I cannot say that I think you did quite right. Better that one
should suffer than two, and Lucy’s is a nature which will forget far
sooner than yours or Guy’s. I pity you all.”
This almost killed Maddy; she did not love the doctor, but the
knowledge that he was to marry another added to her misery, while what
he said of her decision was the climax of the whole. Had her sacrifice
been for nothing? Would it have been better if she had not sent Guy
away? It was anguish unspeakable to believe so, and the shadowy woods
never echoed to so bitter a cry of pain as that with which she laid her
head on the ground, and for a brief moment wished that she might die.
God pitied His child then, and for the next half hour she hardly knew
what she suffered.
There was Guy’s letter yet to read, and with a listless indifference
she opened it, starting as there dropped into her lap a small _carte de
viste_, a perfect likeness of Guy, who sent it, he said, because he
wished her to have so much of himself. It would make him happier to
know she could sometimes look at him just as he should gaze upon her
dear picture after it was a sin to love the original. And this was all
the direct reference he made to the past except where he spoke of Lucy,
telling how happy she was, and how if anything could reconcile him to
his fate, it was the knowing how pure and good and loving was the wife
he was getting. Then he wrote of the doctor and Margaret, whom he
described as a dashing, brilliant girl, the veriest tease and madcap in
the world, and the exact opposite of Maddy.
“It is strange to me why he chose her after loving you,” he wrote; “but
as they seem fond of each other, their chances of happiness are not
inconsiderable.”
This letter, so calm, so cheerful in its tone, had a quieting effect on
Maddy, who read it twice, and then placing it in her bosom, started for
the cottage, meeting on the way with Flora who was seeking for her in
great alarm. Uncle Joseph had had a fit, she said, and fallen upon the
floor, cutting his forehead badly against the sharp point of the stove.
Hurrying on Maddy found that what Flora had said was true, and sent
immediately for the physician, who came at once, but shook his head
doubtfully as he examined his patient. There were all the symptoms of a
fever, he said, bidding Maddy prepare for the worst. Nothing in the
form of trouble could particularly affect Maddy now, and perhaps it was
wisely ordered that Uncle Joseph’s illness should take her thoughts
from herself. From the very first he refused to take his medicines from
any one save her or Jessie, who with her mother’s permission stayed
altogether at the cottage, and who, as Guy’s sister, was a great
comfort to Maddy.
As the fever increased, and Uncle Joseph grew more and more delirious
his cries for Sarah were heartrending, making Jessie weep bitterly as
she said to Maddy:
“If I knew where this Sarah was I’d go miles on foot to find her and
bring her to him.”
Something like this Jessie said to her mother when she went for a day
to Aikenside, asking her in conclusion if she thought Sarah would go.
“Perhaps,” and Agnes brushed abstractedly her long, flowing hair,
winding it around her jeweled fingers, and then letting the soft curls
fall across her snowy arms.
“Where do you suppose she is?” was Jessie’s next question, but if Agnes
knew, she did not answer, except by reminding her little daughter that
it was past her bedtime.
The next morning Agnes’ eyes were very red, as if she had been wakeful
the entire night, while her white face fully warranted the headache she
professed to have.
“Jessie,” she said, as they sat together at their breakfast, “I am
going to Honedale to-day, going to see Maddy, and shall leave you here,
as I do not care to have us both absent.”
Jessie demurred a little at first, but finally yielded, wondering what
had prompted this visit to the cottage. Maddy wondered so, too, as from
the window she saw Agnes instead of Jessie alighting from the carriage,
and was conscious of a thrill of gratification that Agnes would have
come to see her. But Agnes’ business concerned the sick man, poor Uncle
Joseph, who was sleeping when she came, and so did not hear her voice
as in the tidy kitchen she talked to Maddy, appearing extremely
agitated, and flashing her eyes rapidly from one part of the room to
another, resting now upon the tinware hung upon the wall and now upon
the gourd swimming in the water pail standing in the old-fashioned
sink, with the wooden spout, directly over the pile of stones covering
the drain. These things were familiar to the proud woman; she had seen
them before, and the sight of them now brought to her a most remorseful
regret for the past, while her heart ached cruelly as she wished she
had never crossed that threshold, or crossing it had never brought ruin
to one of its inmates. Agnes was not the same woman whom we first knew.
All hope of the doctor had long since been given up, and as Jessie grew
older the mother nature was stronger within her, subduing her
selfishness, and making her far more gentle and considerate for others
than she had been before. To Maddy she was exceedingly kind, and never
more so in manner than now, when they sat talking together in the
humble kitchen at the cottage.
“You look tired and sick,” she said. “Your cares have been too much for
one not yet strong. Let me sit by him till he wakes, and you go up to
bed.”
Very gladly Maddy accepted the offered relief, and utterly worn out
with her constant vigils, she was soon sleeping soundly in her own
room, while Flora, in the little shed, or back room of the house, was
busy with her ironing. Thus there was none to follow Agnes as she went
slowly into the sick-room where Uncle Joseph lay, his thin face
upturned to the light, and his lips occasionally moving as he muttered
in his sleep. There was a strange contrast between that wasted imbecile
and that proud, queenly woman, but she could remember a time when the
superiority was all upon his side, a time when in her childish
estimation he was the embodiment of every manly beauty, and the
knowledge that he loved her, his sister’s little hired girl, filled her
with pride and vanity. A great change had come to them both since those
days, and Agnes, watching him and smothering back the cry of pain which
arose to her lips at sight of him, felt that for the fearful change in
him she was answerable. Intellectual, talented, admired and sought by
all he had been once; he was a mere wreck now, and Agnes’ breath came
in short, quick gasps, as glancing furtively around to see that no one
was near, she laid her hand upon his forehead, and parting his thin
hair, said, pityingly: “Poor Joseph.”
The touch awoke him, and starting up he stared wildly at her, while
some memory of the past seemed to be struggling through the misty
clouds, obscuring his mental vision.
“Who are you, lady? Who, with eyes and hair like hers?”
“I’m the `madam’ from Aikenside,” Agnes said, quite loudly, as Flora
passed the door. Then when she was gone she added, softly: “I’m Sarah.
Don’t you know me? Sarah Agnes Morris.”
It seemed for a moment to burst upon him in its full reality, and to
her dying day Agnes would never forget the look upon his face, the
smile of perfect happiness breaking through the rain of tears, the
love, the tenderness mingled with distrust, which that look betokened
as he continued gazing at her, but said to her not a word. Again her
hand rested on his forehead, and taking it now in his he held it to the
light, laughing insanely at its soft whiteness; then touching the
costly diamonds which flashed upon him the rainbow hues, he said:
“Where’s that little bit of a ring I bought for you?”
She had anticipated this, and took from her pocket a plain gold ring,
kept until that day where no one could find it, and holding it up to
him, said: “Here it is. Do you remember it?”
“Yes, yes,” and his lips began to quiver with a grieved, injured
expression. “He could give you diamonds, and I couldn’t. That’s why you
left me, wasn’t it, Sarah—why you wrote that letter which made my head
into two? It’s ached so ever since, and I’ve missed you so much, Sarah!
They put me in a cell where crazy people were—oh! so many—and they said
that I was mad, when I was only wanting you. I’m not mad now, am I,
darling?”
His arm was around her neck, and he drew her down until his lips
touched hers. And Agnes suffered it. She could not return the kiss, but
she did not turn away from his, and she let him caress her hair, and
wind it around his fingers, whispering: “This is like Sarah’s, and you
are Sarah, are you not?”
“Yes, I am Sarah,” she would answer, while the smile so painful to see
would again break over his face as he told how much he had missed her,
and asked if she had not come to stay till he died.
“There’s something wrong,” he said; “somebody dead, and seems as if
somebody else wanted to die—as if Maddy died ever since the Lord
Governor went away. Do you know Governor Guy?”
“I am his stepmother,” Agnes replied, whereupon Uncle Joseph laughed so
long and loud that Maddy awoke, and, alarmed by the noise, came down to
see what was the matter.
Agnes did not hear her, and as she reached the doorway, she started at
the strange position of the parties—Uncle Joseph still smoothing the
curls which drooped over him, and Agnes saying to him: “You heard his
name was Remington, did you not—James Remington?”
Like a sudden revelation it came upon Maddy, and she turned to leave,
when Agnes, lifting her head, called her to come in. She did so, and
standing upon the opposite side of the bed, she said, questioningly:
“You are Sarah Morris?”
For a moment the eyelids quivered, then the neck arched proudly, as if
it were a thing of which she was not ashamed, and Agnes answered: “Yes,
I was Sarah Agnes Morris; once for three months your grandmother’s
hired girl, and afterward adopted by a lady who gave me what education
I possess, together with that taste for high life which prompted me to
jilt your Uncle Joseph when a richer man than he offered himself to
me.”
That was all she said—all that Maddy ever knew of her history, as it
was never referred to again, except that evening, when Agnes said to
her, pleadingly: “Neither Guy nor Jessie, nor any one, need know what I
have told you.”
“They shall not,” was Maddy’s reply; and from that moment the past, so
far as Agnes was concerned, was a sealed page to both. With this bond
of confidence between them, Agnes felt herself strangely drawn toward
Maddy, while, if it were possible, something of her olden love was
renewed for the helpless man who clung to her now instead of Maddy,
refusing to let her go; neither had Agnes any disposition to leave him.
She should stay to the last, so she said; and she did, taking Maddy’s
place, and by her faithfulness and care winning golden laurels in the
opinion of the neighbors, who marveled at first to see so gay a lady at
Uncle Joseph’s bedside, attributing it all to her friendship for Maddy,
just as they attributed his calling her Sarah to a crazy freak. She did
resemble Sarah Morris a very little, they said; and in Maddy’s presence
they sometimes wondered where Sarah was, repeating strange things which
they had heard of her; but Maddy kept the secret from every one, so
that even Jessie never suspected why her mother stayed day after day at
the cottage; watching and waiting until the last day of Joseph’s life.
She was alone with him then, so that Maddy never knew what passed
between them. She had left them together for an hour, while she did
some errands; and when she returned, Agnes met her at the door, and
with a blanched cheek whispered: “He is dead; he died in my arms,
blessing you and me; do you hear, blessing me! Surely; my sin is now
forgiven?”