Over on the Winslow side of the way, Isabel, having tarried in the
cottage to explain to her frightened mother how perfectly natural it was
that Arthur, after his tramp across the meadows, should have made a
circuit to the upper side of the old mill pool, went pensively home.
Presently, holding a lamp, she stood in the door between her room and
Arthur's, lifted the light above her head, and, shading her brows,
called his name. Hidden in the gloom, silent and motionless, he stared
for a moment on the beautiful apparition, and then moved without a sound
into the beams of the lamp, a picture of misery and desperation.
"Why in the dark?" amiably inquired the wife.
With widening eyes and spectral motions he drew near.
"In the dark?" he asked. "Why in the dark? The darkness is in me, and
all the lamps that light the world's ships into harbor could not dispel
it."
All at once he went to his knees. "Oh, my wife, my wife! save me, save
me! Hell is in my soul!"
She drew back, and with low vehemence urged him to his feet. "Up! up! My
husband shall not kneel to me!"
Laying her hand reverently upon his shoulder she pressed him into his
room, set the lamp aside, and let him clasp her wildly in his arms.
"Save me, Isabel," he moaned again. "Save me."
"From what, dear heart,--from what can I save you?" She drew him to a
seat and knelt beside him.
"From the green-eyed demon that has gnawed, gnawed, gnawed at my heart
till it is rent to shreds, and at my brain--my brain!--till it is almost
gone." His brow drooped to hers. "Almost gone, beloved; my brain is
almost gone."
"No, Arthur, dearest, no, no, no; your heart is torn, but your mind,
thank God, is whole. This is only a mood. Come, it will pass with one
night's sleep."
Still he held her brow beneath his. "Save me, Isabel; my soul is almost
gone. Oh, save me from the fiends that come before me and behind me, by
night and by day, eyes shut or eyes open."
"My husband! my love! how can I save you? How can I help you? Tell me
how."
"Hear me! hear me confess! That will save me, oh, so sweetly, so
sweetly! That will save me from the faces--the white, white faces that
float on that black pool down yonder, and move their accusing lips at
me: _his_ face--and mine--and thine. Oh, Isabel, until you stood
before me in the golden light of your lamp, transfigured into a
messenger from heaven, it was in my lost soul to do the deed this
night."
The wife laid her palms upon her husband's temples, and putting forth
her strength lifted them and looked tenderly into his eyes.
"Dear heart, you do not frighten me. You know how unaccountably fear
deserts me in fearful moments. But I know there's nothing for either of
us to fear now. This is all in your tortured imagination, and there,
though you had not seen me, it would have stayed; you never would have
come to the act. Arthur, your soul is not lost. You who have pointed the
way of escape and deliverance so clearly and savingly to so many, you
need not miss it now yourself."
"Idle words, Isabel,--idle, idle words. The very words of Christ are
idle to me until I give you up."
"Give me up, my husband? Dear love, you cannot! You shall not! I will
not be given up. You haven't the cause, and I haven't the cause."
"Oh, Isabel, I stole you! And the curse of God has gone with the theft,
and with every step of the thief, from the first day till now. From the
first day until now God has lifted that other man up and brought me
down. And yet, before God who said, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's
wife, he loves you this moment--now!--with the love of a man for a
woman."
"Arthur, no! If he did"--
"Isabel, if he did not--if he did not love you yet as before he lost
you--oh! if he did not love you infinitely more now than then--he would
not be Leonard Byington. That is all my evidence, all my argument, all
the ground of my hate; and I hate him with a hatred that has
finished--finished!--with my heart, and is devouring my brain."
"Oh, my poor husband, listen to"--
"Listen to me!" he broke in. "Listen before I lose the blessed impulse
to say there is but one cure. I must give you up to Leonard Byington.
Oh, let me speak! I took you from him by law; by law I will give you
back."
"Do you mean divorce, Arthur?"
"I do."
"On what ground?"
"On the ground of ill treatment. You shall bring suit; I will plead
guilty."
She rose, with his temples still in her hands. "Ah! whose words are idle
now?"
She bent over him with eyes of passionate kindness. "You did not take me
from him. You asked me to take you, and for better for worse, till death
us do part, I took you, Arthur, knowing as much of any other man's love
for me as I know at this hour. You could not steal me; the shame would
be mine, to have let you. You are no thief! I am no stolen thing! You
shall be happy with me; you shall not give me up!"
He leaped to his feet and snatched her into his arms. The babe cried
sleepily from its mother's room. She tenderly disengaged herself, left
him in the door, moved on to the child's crib, and in the dim light of
the bedside taper, facing him from beyond it, soothed the little one by
her silent touch.
To Arthur, wan and frail though she was, the sight was heavenly fair, a
vision of ineffable peace to which it seemed a sacrilege to draw nearer;
but she beckoned, and he stole to the spot. With the quieted babe in its
crib between them, the pair knit arms about each other's neck and
kissed.
"My own! my own at last!" murmured the husband. "I never had you until
now!"
"The cure has worked, dear heart," breathed the wife,--"worked without
surgery, has it not?"
"The cure has worked," he replied,--"worked without the sacrifice. Oh,
the sudden sweet ease of it!"
Whispering a fervent good-night in response to hers, he covered her head
and brows with caresses; then stole away with eyes still fastened on
her, and at the dividing threshold waved a last parting and closed the
door.