A DISCOVERY.
I started to my feet and was going to meet him, but he raised his hand,
as I fancied to warn me that some one was coming. So I stopped short,
and he approached.
"I shall be very busy for two or three days, dear Ethel; and," what he
added was spoken very slowly, and dropped word by word, "you are such a
rogue!"
I was very much astonished. Neither his voice nor look was playful. His
face at the moment wore about the most disagreeable expression which
human face can wear. That of a smile, not a genuine but a pretended
smile, which, at the same time, the person who smiles affects to try to
suppress. To me it looks cruel, cynical, mean. I was so amazed, as he
looked into my eyes with this cunning, shabby smile, that I could not
say a word, and stood stock-still looking in return, in stupid wonder,
in his face.
At length I broke out, very pale, for I was shocked, "I can't
understand! What is it? Oh, Richard, what can you mean?"
"Now don't be a little fool. I really believe you are going to cry. You
are a great deal too clever, you lovely little rogue, to fancy that a
girl's tears ever yet did any good. Listen to me; come!"
He walked away, still smiling that insulting smile, and he took my hand
in his, and shook his finger at me, with the same cynical affectation of
the playful. "What did I mean?"
"Yes, what can you mean?" I stamped the emphasis on the floor, with
tears in my eyes. "It is cruel, it is horrible, after our long
separation."
"Well, I'll tell you what I mean," he said, and for a moment the smile
almost degenerated to a sneer. "Look here; come to the window."
I faltered; I accompanied him to it, looking in his face in an agony of
alarm and surprise. It seemed to me like the situation of a horrid
dream.
"Do you know how I amused myself during the last twenty miles of my
railway journey?" he said. "Well, I'll tell you: I was reading all that
time a curious criminal trial, in which a most respectable old
gentleman, aged sixty-seven, has just been convicted of having poisoned
a poor girl forty years ago, and is to be hanged for it before three
weeks!"
"Well?" said I, with an effort--I should not have known my own voice,
and I felt a great ball in my throat.
"Well?" he repeated; "don't you see?"
He paused with the same horrid smile; this time, in the silence, he
laughed a little; it was no use trying to hide from myself the fact that
I dimly suspected what he was driving at. I should have liked to die
that moment, before he had time to complete another sentence.
"Now, you see, the misfortune of that sort of thing is that time neither
heals nor hides the offence. There is a principle of law which says that
no lapse of time bars the Crown. But I see this kind of conversation
bores you."
I was near saying something very wild and foolish, but I did not.
"I won't keep you a moment," said he--"just come a little nearer the
window; I want you to look at something that may interest you."
I did go a little nearer. I was moving as he commanded, as if I had been
mesmerised.
"You lost," he continued, "shortly before your illness, the only
photograph you possessed of your sister Helen? But why are you so put
out by it? Why should you tremble so violently? It is only I, you know;
you need not mind. You dropped that on the floor of a jeweller's shop
one night, when I and Droqville happened to be there together, and I
picked it up; it represents you both together. I want to restore it;
here it is."
I extended my hand to take it. I don't know whether I spoke, but the
portrait faded suddenly from my sight, and darkness covered everything.
I heard his voice, like that of a person talking in excitement, a long
way off, at the other side of a wall in another room--it was no more
than a hum, and even that was growing fainter. I forgot everything, in
utter unconsciousness, for some seconds. When I opened my eyes, water
was trickling down my face and forehead, and the window was open. I
sighed deeply. I saw him looking over me with a countenance of gloom and
anxiety. In happy forgetfulness of all that had passed, I smiled and
said:
"Oh, Richard! Thank God!" and stretched my arms to him.
"That's right--quite right," he said; "you may have every confidence in
me."
The dreadful recollection began to return.
"Don't get up yet," he said, earnestly, and even tenderly; "you're not
equal to it. Don't think of leaving me--you must have confidence in me.
Why didn't you trust me long ago?--trust me altogether? Fear nothing
while I am near you."
So he continued speaking, until my recollection had quite returned.
"Why, darling, will you not trust me? Can you be surprised at my being
wounded by your reserve? How have I deserved it? Forget the pain of this
discovery, and remember only that against all the world, to the last
hour of my life, with my last thought, the last drop of my blood, I am
your defender."
He kissed my hands passionately; he drew me towards him, and kissed my
lips. He murmured caresses and vows of unalterable love--nothing could
be more tender and impassioned. I was relieved by a passionate burst of
tears.
"It's over now," he said--"it's all over; you'll forgive me, won't you?
I have more to forgive, darling, than you--the hardest of all things to
forgive in one whom we idolise--a want of confidence in us. You ought
to have told me all this before."
I told him, as well as I could between my sobs, that there was no need
to tell any one of a madness which had nothing to do with waking
thoughts or wishes, and was simply the extravagance of delirium--that I
was then actually in fever, had been at the point of death, and that Mr.
Carmel knew everything about it.
"Well, darling," he said, "you must trouble your mind no more. Of course
you are not accountable for it. If people in brain fever were not
carefully watched and restrained, a day would not pass without some
tragedy. But what care I, Ethel, if it had been a real crime of passion?
Nothing. Do you fancy it would or could, for an instant, have shaken my
desperate love for you? Don't you remember Moore's lines:
'I ask not, I care not, if guilt's in thy heart;
I but know that thou lov'st me, whatever thou art.'
"That is my feeling, fixed as adamant; never suspect me. I can't I never
can, tell you how I felt your suspicion of my love; how cruel I thought
it. What had I done to deserve it? There, darling, take this--it is
yours." He kissed the little photograph, he placed it in my hand, he
kissed me again fervently. "Look here, Ethel, I came all this way, ever
so much out of my way, to see you. I made an excuse of paying the vicar
a visit on business--my real business was to see you. I must be this
evening at Wrexham, but I shall be here again to-morrow, as early as
possible. I am a mere slave at present, and business hurries me from
point to point; but cost what it may, I shall be with you some time in
the afternoon to-morrow."
"To stay?" I asked.
He smiled, and shook his head.
"I can't say that, darling," he said; he was going towards the door.
"But you'll be here early to-morrow; do you think before two?"
"No, not before two, I am afraid. I may be delayed, and it is a long
way; but you may look out for me early in the evening."
Then came a leave-taking. He would not let me come with him to the
hall-door--there were servants there, and I looked so ill. I stood at
the window and saw him drive away. You may suppose I did feel miserable.
I think I was near fainting again when he was gone.
In a little time I was sufficiently recovered to get up to my room, and
then I rang for Rebecca Torkill.
I don't know how that long evening went by. The night came, and a
miserable nervous night I passed, starting in frightful dreams from the
short dozes I was able to snatch.