|My Dear Max:--
I write this in the middle of the night; there has been no chance for me
during the day; nor, indeed, at all--until now. To-night, for the
first time, Penelope has fallen asleep. I have taken the opportunity of
stealing into the next room, to comfort--and you.
My dear Max! Oh, if you knew! oh, if I could but come to you for one
minute's rest, one minute's love!--There--I will not cry any more. It
is much to be able to write to you; and blessed, infinitely blessed to
know you are--what you are.
Max, I have been weak, wicked of late; afraid of absence, which tries me
sore, because I am not strong, and cannot stand up by myself as I used
to do; afraid of death, which might tear you from me, or me from you,
leaving the other to go mourning upon earth for ever. Now I feel that
absence is nothing--death itself nothing, compared to one loss--that
which has befallen my sister, Penelope.
You may have heard of it, even in these few days--ill news spreads fast.
Tell me what you hear; for we wish to save my sister as much as we can.
To our friends generally, I have merely written that, "from unforeseen
differences," the marriage is broken off. Mr. Charteris may give what
reasons he likes at Treherne Court. We will not try to injure him with
his uncle.
I have just crept in to look at Penelope; she is asleep still, and
has never stirred. She looks so old--like a woman of fifty, almost. No
wonder. Think--ten years--all her youth to be crushed out at once. I
wonder, will it kill her? It would me.
I wanted to ask you--do you think, medically, there is any present
danger in her state? She lies quiet enough; taking little notice of
me or anybody--with her eyes shut during the day-time, and open,
wide-staring, all night long. What ought I to do with her? There is only
me, you know. If you fear anything, send me a telegram at once. Do not
wait to write.
But, that you may the better judge her state, I ought just to give you
full particulars, beginning where my last letter ended.
That "little black dog on her shoulder," which I spoke of so
lightly!--God forgive me! also for leaving her the whole of that Sunday
afternoon with her door locked, and the room as still as death; yet
never once knocking to ask, "Penelope, how are you?" On Sunday night,
the curate came to supper, and papa sent me to summon her; she came
downstairs, took her place at table, and conversed. I did not notice
her much, except that she moved about in a stupid, stunned-like fashion,
which caused papa to remark more than once, "Penelope, I think you are
half asleep." She never answered.
Another night, and the half of another day, she must have spent in the
same manner. And I let her do it without enquiry! Shall I ever forgive
myself?
In the afternoon of Monday, I was sitting at work, busy finishing
her embroidered marriage handkerchief, alone in the sunshiny parlour,
thinking of my letter, which you would have received at last; also
thinking it was rather wicked of my happy sister to sulk for two whole
days, because of a small disappointment about a servant--if such
it were. I had almost determined to shake her out of her ridiculous
reserve, by asking boldly what was the matter, and giving her a thorough
scolding if I dared; when the door opened, and in walked Francis
Charteris.
Heartily glad to see him, in the hope his coming might set Penelope
right again, I jumped up and shook hands, cordially. Nor till afterwards
did I remember how much this seemed to surprise and relieve him.
"Oh, then, all is right!" said he. "I feared, from Penelope's letter,
that she wa a little annoyed with me. Nothing new that, you know."
"Something did annoy her, I suspect," and I was about to blurt out as
much as I knew or guessed of the foolish mystery about Sarah Enfield,
but some instinct stopped me. "You and Penelope had better settle your
own affairs," said I, laughing. "I'll go and fetch her."
"Thank you." He threw himself down on the velvet arm-chair--his
favourite lounge in our house for the last ten years. His handsome
profile turned up against the light, his fingers lazily tapping the
arm of the chair, a trick he had from his boyhood,--this is my last
impression of Francis--as _our_ Francis Charteris.
I had to call outside Penelope's door three times, "Francis is here."
"Francis is waiting."
"Francis wants to speak to you," before she answered or appeared; and
then, without taking the slightest notice of me, she walked slowly
downstairs, holding by the wall as she went.
So, I thought, it is Francis who has vexed her after all, and determined
to leave them to fight it out and make it up again--this, which would be
the last of their many lovers' quarrels. Ah! it was.
Half an hour afterwards, papa sent for me to the study, and there I saw
Francis Charteris standing, exactly where you once stood--you see, I am
not afraid of remembering 'it myself, or of reminding you. No, my Max!
Our griefs are nothing, nothing!
Penelope also was present, standing by my father, who said, looking
round at us with a troubled, bewildered air:--
"Dora, what is all this? Your sister comes here and tells me she will
not marry Francis. Francis rushes in after her, and says, I hardly can
make out what. Children, why do you vex me so? Why cannot you leave an
old man in peace?"
Penelope answered:--"Father, you shall be left in peace, if you will
only confirm what I have said to that--that gentleman, and send him out
of my sight."
Francis laughed:--"To be called back again presently. You know you will
do it, as soon as you have come to your right senses, Penelope. You will
never disgrace us in the eyes of the world--set everybody gossipping
about our affairs, for such a trifle."
My sister made him no answer. There was less even of anger than
contempt--utter, measureless contempt-!--in the way she just lifted
up her eyes and looked at him--looked him over from head to heel, and
turned again to her father.
"Papa, make him understand--I cannot--that I wish all this ended; I wish
never to see his face again."
"Why?" said papa, in great perplexity.
"He knows why."
Papa and I both turned to Francis, whose careless manner changed a
little: he grew red and uncomfortable. "She may tell if she chooses;
I lay no embargo of silence upon her. I have made all the explanations
possible, and if she will not receive them, I cannot help it. The thing
is done, and cannot be undone. I have begged her pardon, and made all
sorts of promises for the future--no man can do more."
He said this sullenly, and yet as if he wished to make friends with her,
but Penelope seemed scarcely even to hear.
"Papa," she repeated, still in the same stony voice, "I wish you would
end this scene; it is killing me. Tell him, will you, that I have burnt
all his letters, every one. Insist on his returning mine. His presents
are all tied up in a parcel in my room, except this; will you give it
back to him?"
She took off her ring, a small common turquoise which Francis had
given her when he was young and poor, and laid it on the table. Francis
snatched it up, handled it a minute, and then threw it violently into
the fire.
"Bear witness, Mr. Johnston, and you too, Dora, that it is Penelope, not
I, who breaks our engagement. I would have fulfilled it honourably--I
would have married her."
"Would you?" cried Penelope, with flashing eyes, "no--not that last
degradation--no!"
"I would have married her," Francis continued, "and made her a good
husband too. Her reason for refusing me is puerile--perfectly puerile.
No woman of sense, who knows anything of the world, would urge it for a
moment. Nor man either, unless he was your favourite--who I believe is
at the bottom of this, who, for all you know, may be doing exactly as I
have done--Doctor Urquhart."
Papa started and said hastily, "Confine yourself to the subject on hand,
Francis. Of what is this that my daughter accuses you? Tell me, and let
me judge."
Francis hesitated, and then said, "Send away these girls, and you shall
hear."
Suddenly, it flashed upon me _what_ it was. How the intuition came,
how little things, before unnoticed, seemed to rise and put themselves
together, including Saturday's story--and the shudder that ran through
Penelope from head to foot, when on Sunday morning old Mrs. Cartwright
curtsied to her at the churchdoor--all this I cannot account for, but
I seemed to know as well as if I had been told everything. I need not
explain, for evidently you know it also, and it is so dreadful, so
unspeakably dreadful.
Oh, Max, for the first minute or so, I felt as if the whole world
were crumbling from under my feet--as I could trust nobody, believe
in nobody--until I remembered you. My dear Max, my own dear Max! Ah,
wretched Penelope!
I took her hand as she stood, but she twisted it out of mine again. I
listened mechanically to Francis, as he again began rapidly and eagerly
to exculpate himself to my father.
"She may tell you all, if she likes. I have done no worse than hundreds
do in my position, and under my unfortunate circumstances, and the world
forgives them, and women too. How could I help it? I was too poor to
marry. And before I married I meant to do everyone justice--I meant--"
Penelope covered her ears. Her face was so ghastly,-that papa himself
said, "I think Francis, explanations are idle. You had better defer them
and go."
"I will take you at your word," he replied haughtily. "If you or she
think better of it, or of me, I shall be at any time ready to fulfil my
engagement--honourably, as a gentleman should. Good-bye; will you not
shake hands with me, Penelope?"
He walked up to her, trying apparently to carry things off with a high
air, but he was not strong enough, or hardened enough. At sight of my
sister sitting there, for she had sank down at last, with a face like a
corpse, only it had not the peace of the dead, Francis trembled. .
"Forgive me, if I have done you any harm. It was all the result of
circumstances. Perhaps, if you had been a little less rigid--had scolded
me less and studied me more.--But you could not help your nature, nor I
mine. Good-bye, Penelope."
She sat, impassive; even when with a sort of involuntary tenderness,
he seized and kissed her hand; but the instant he was gone--fairly
gone--with the door shut upon him and his horse clattering down
the road--I heard it plainly--Penelope started up with a cry of
"Francis--Francis!"--O the anguish of it!--I can hear it now.
But it was not this Francis she called after--I was sure of that--I saw
it in her eyes. It was the Francis of ten years ago--the Francis she had
loved--now as utterly dead and buried, as if she had seen the stone laid
over him, and his body left to sleep in the grave.
Dead and buried--dead and buried. Do you know, I sometimes wish it were
so; that she had been left, peacefully widowed--knowing his soul was
safe with God. I thought, when papa and I--papa who that night kissed
me, for the first time since one night you know--sat by Penelope's bed,
watching her--"If Francis had only died!"
After she was quiet, and I had persuaded papa to go to rest, he sent for
me and desired me to read a psalm, as I used to do when he was ill--you
remember? When it was ended, he asked me, had I any idea what Francis
had done that Penelope could not pardon?
I told him, difficult and painful as it was to do it, all I
suspected--indeed, felt sure of. For was it not the truth?--the only
answer I could give. For the same reason I write of these terrible
things to you without any false delicacy--they are the truth, and they
must be told.
Papa lay for some time, thinking deeply. At last he said:--
"My dear, you are no longer a child, and I may speak to you plainly. I
am an old man, and your mother is dead. I wish she were with us now, she
might help us: for she was a good woman, Dora. Do you think--take time
to consider the question--that your sister is acting right?"
I said, "quite right."
"Yet, I thought you held that doctrine, 'the greater the sinner the
greater the saint;' and believed every crime a man can commit may be
repented, atoned, and pardoned?"
"Yes, father; but Francis has never either repented or atoned."
No; and therefore I feel certain my sister is right. Ay, even putting
aside the other fact, that the discovery of his long years of deception
must have so withered up her love,--scorched it at the root, as with a
stroke of lightning--that even if she pitied him, she must also despise.
Fancy, despising one's _husband!_ Besides, she is not the only one
wronged. Sometimes, even sitting by my sister's bedside, I see the
vision of that pretty young creature--she was so pretty and innocent
when she first came to live at Rockmount,--with her boy in her arms; and
my heart feels like to burst with indignation and shame, and a kind of
shuddering horror at the wickedness of the world--yet with a strange
feeling of unutterable pity lying at the depth of all.
Max, tell me what you think--you who are so much the wiser of us two;
but I think that even if she wished it still, my sister _ought not_ to
marry Francis Charteris.
Ah me! papa said truly I was no longer a child. I feel hardly even a
girl, but quite an old woman--familiar with all sorts of sad and wicked
things, as if the freshness and innocence had gone out of life, and were
nowhere to be found. Except when I turn to-you, and lean my poor sick
heart against you--as I do now. Max, comfort me!
You will, I know, write immediately you receive this. If you could have
come---but that is impossible.
Augustus you will probably see, if you have not done so already--for he
already looks upon you as the friend of the family, though in no other
light as yet; which is best. Papa wrote to Sir William, I believe; he
said he considered some explanation a duty, on his daughter's account;
further than this, he wishes the matter kept quiet. Not to disgrace
Francis, I thought; but papa told me one-half the world would hardly
consider it any disgrace at all. Can this be so? Is it indeed such a
wicked, wicked world?
--Here my letter was stopped by hearing a sort of cry in Penelope's
room. I ran in, and found her sitting up in her bed, her eyes starting,
and every limb convulsed. Seeing me, she cried out:--
"Bring a light;--I was dreaming. But it's not true. Where is Francis?"
I made no reply, and she slowly sank down in her bed again. Recollection
had come.
"I should not have gone to sleep. Why did you let me? Or why cannot you
put me to sleep for ever and ever, and ever and ever," repeating the
word many times. "Dora!" and my sister fixed her piteous eyes on my
face, "I should be so glad to die. Why won't you kill me?"
I burst into tears.
Max, you will understand the total helplessness one feels in the
presence of an irremediable grief like this: how consolation seems
cruel, and reasoning vain. "Miserable comforters are ye all," said
Job to his three friends; and a miserable comforter I felt to this
my sister, whom it had pleased the Almighty to smite so sore, until I
remembered that He who smites can heal.
I lay down outside the bed, put my arm over her, and remained thus for
a long time, not saying a single word--that is, not with my lips.
And since our weakness is often our best strength, and when we wholly
relinquish a thing, it is given back to us many a time in double
measure, so, possibly, those helpless tears of mine did Penelope more
good than the wisest of words.
She lay watching me--saying more than once:--
"I did not know you cared so much for me, Dora."
It then came into my mind, that as wrecked people cling to the smallest
spar, if, instead of her conviction that in losing Francis she had lost
her all, I could by any means make Penelope feel that there were others
to cling to, others who loved her dearly, and whom she ought to try and
live for still--it might save her. So, acting on the impulse, I told my
sister how good I thought her, and how wicked I myself had been for
not long since discovering her goodness. How, when at last I learned
to appreciate her, and to understand what a sorely-tried life hers had
been, there came not only respect, but love. Thorough sisterly love;
such as people do not necessarily feel even for their own flesh
and blood, but never, I doubt, except to them. (Save, that in some
inexplicable way, fondly reflevted, I have something of the same sort of
love for your brother Dallas.)
Afterwards, she lying still and listening, I tried to make my sister
understand what I had myself felt when she came to my bedside and
comforted me that morning, months ago, when I was so wretched; how no
wretchedness of loss can be altogether unendurable, so long as it does
not strike at the household peace, but leaves the sufferer a little love
to rest upon at home.
And at length I persuaded her to promise that, since it made both papa
and me so very miserable to see her thus,--and papa was an old man too.
we must not have him with us many years--she would, for our sakes,
try to rouse herself, and see if life were not tolerable for a little
longer.
"Yes," she answered, closing her heavy eyes, and folding her hands in a
pitiful kind of patience, very strange in our quick, irritable Penelope.
"Yes--just a little longer. Still, I think I shall soon die. I believe
it will kill me."
I did not contradict her, but I called to mind your words, that,
Penelope, being a good woman, all would happen to her for good. Also,
it is usually not the good people who are killed by grief: while others
take it as God's vengeance, or as the work of blind chance, they receive
it humbly as God's chastisement, live on, and endure. I do not think my
sister will die--whatever she may think or-desire just now. Besides, we
have only to deal with the present, for how can we look forward a single
day? How little we expected all this only a week ago?
It seems strange that Francis could have deceived us for so long; years,
it must have been; but we have lived so retired, and were such a simple
family for many things. How far Penelope thinks we know--papa and I--I
cannot guess: she is totally silent on the subject of Francis. Except
in that one outcry, when she was still only half awake, she has never
mentioned his name.
There was one thing more I wanted to tell you, Max; you know I tell you
everything.
Just as I was leaving my sister, she, noticing I was not undressed,
asked me if I had been sitting up all night, and reproached me for doing
so.
I said, "I was not weary; that I had been quietly occupying myself in
the next room."
"Reading?"
"No"
"What were you doing?" with sharp suspicion.
I answered without disguise:--
"I was writing to Max."
"Max who?--Oh, I had forgotten his name."
She turned from me, and lay with her face to the wall, then said:--
"Do you believe in him?"
"Yes, I do."
"You had better not. You will live to repent it. Child, mark my words.
There may be good women--one or two, perhaps--but there is not a single
good man in the whole world."
My heart rose to my lips; but deeds speak louder than words. I did not
attempt to defend you. Besides, no wonder she should think thus.
Again she said, "Dora, tell Doctor Urquhart he was innocent
comparatively; and that I say so. He only killed Harry's body, but those
who deceive us are the death of one's soul. Nay," and by her expression
I felt sure it was not herself and her own wrongs my sister was thinking
of--"there are those who destroy both body and soul."
I made no answer; I only covered her up, kissed her and left her;
knowing that in one sense I did not leave her either forsaken or alone.
And now, I must leave you too, Max; being very weary in body, though my
mind is comforted and refreshed; ay, ever since I began this letter. So
many of your good words have come back to me while I wrote--words
which you have let fall at odd times, long ago, even when we were mere
acquaintances. You did not think I should remember them? I do, every
one.
This is a great blow, no doubt. The hand of Providence has been heavy
upon us and our house, lately. But I think we shall be able to bear it.
One always has courage to bear a sorrow which shows its naked face, free
from suspense or concealment; stands visibly in the midst of the home,
and has to be met and lived down patiently, by every member therein.
You once said that we often live to see the reason of affliction; how
all the events of life hang so wonderfully together, that afterwards we
can frequently trace the chain of events, and see in humble faith
and awe, that out of each one has been evolved the other, and that
everything, bad and good, must necessarily have happened exactly as it
did. Thus, I begin to see--you will not be hurt, Max?--how well it
was, on some accounts, that we were not married, that I should still be
living at home with my sister; and that, after all she knows, and
she only, of what has happened to me this year, she cannot reject any
comfort I may be able to offer her on the ground that I myself know
nothing of sorrow.
As for me personally, do not fear; I have _you_. You once feared that
a great anguish would break my heart: but it did not. Nothing in this
world will ever do that--while I have _you_.
Max, kiss me--in thought, I mean--as friends kiss friends who are
starting on a long and painful journey, of which they see no end, yet
are not afraid. Nor am I. Goodbye, my Max.
Yours, only and always,
Theodora Johnston.