Repentance.
Down on her knees, in self-abasement, the tears of contrition raining
from her eyes, her face scarlet in its agony of shame, cowered Lucy
Andinnian at her husband's feet. She would not let him raise her. It
seemed to her that a whole lifetime of repentance could never wash out
her sin.
The elucidation of the misunderstanding that had kept them apart for
months was taking place.
On the day after the funeral, Karl sought his wife in the
dressing-room to tell her of what had occurred. She had scarcely
spoken a word to him since her return, or allowed him to speak one to
her. Very briefly, in half a dozen words, he informed her his brother
was dead, and delivered the message Adam had left for her. For a few
minutes Lucy's bewilderment was utter; and, when she did at length
grasp somewhat of the truth, her confusion and distress were pitiable.
"Oh, Karl, Karl, do you think you will ever be able to forgive me?
What can I do?--what can I do to atone for it?"
"You must get up, Lucy, before I say whether I forgive you or not."
"I cannot get up. It seems to me that I ought never to get up again.
Your _brother_ at the Maze!--your brother's wife! Oh, what must you
have thought of my conduct? Oh, Karl, why do you not strike me as I
lie?"
Sir Karl put forth his arms and his strength, and raised her to the
sofa. She bent her face down on its pillow, to weep out her tears of
shame.
"Come, Lucy," he said, when he had waited a few minutes, sitting
beside her. "We shall not arrive at the end in this way. Is it
_possible_ that you did not know my brother was alive?"
"How could I know it, Karl?" she asked, amid her streaming tears. "How
was I likely to know it?"
"You told me you knew it. You said to me that you had discovered the
secret at the Maze. I thought you were resenting the fact of his being
alive. Or, rather, of my having married you, knowing that he was."
"Why should I resent it? How could you think, so? Was _that_ the
secret you spoke of in Paris the night before our wedding?--that Adam
was alive."
"That, and no other. But I did not know then that he was married--or
suspect that he ever would marry. I learnt that fact only during my
mother's last illness."
"Oh, Karl, this is dreadful," she sobbed. "What must you have thought
of me all this time? I almost wish I could die!"
"You still care for me, then; a little?"
With a burst of anguish she turned and hid her face upon his breast.
"I have only loved you the better all the while," she whispered.
"Lucy, my dear, I say we shall not get to the end in this way. Look
up. If you were in ignorance of my brother's existence, and of all the
complications for you and for me that it involved, what then was it
that you were resenting?"
"Don't ask me, Karl," she said, her face growing scarlet again. "I
could not tell you for the very shame."
He drew a little away, making a movement to put her from him. Never
had his countenance been so stern to her as it was now; never could he
be so little trifled with.
"If there is to be an explanation between us, Lucy, it must be full
and complete. I insist upon its being so. If you refuse to give it
now--why, I shall never ask you for it again. Do you not think you owe
me one?"
Again she bent her face upon him. "I owe you everything, Karl; I owe
you more reparation than I can ever pay. Never, as long as our lives
shall last, will I have a secret from you again, heaven helping me. If
I hesitate to tell you this, it is because I am ashamed for you to
know how foolish I could be, and the wicked thoughts I could have."
"Not more foolish or wicked, I dare say, than I was for making you my
wife. Speak out, Lucy. It must be so, you see, if there is to be a
renewal of peace between us."
Keeping her head where it was, her face hidden from him, Lucy
whispered her confession. Karl started from her in very astonishment.
"Lucy! You could think that! Of me!"
She put up her hands beseechingly. "Oh, forgive me, Karl; for the sake
of the pain, forgive me! It has been killing me all the while. See how
worn and thin I am."
He put his arm out and drew her to his side. "Go on, my dear. How did
you pick up the notion?"
"It was Theresa." And now that the ice was broken, anxious to tell all
and clear herself, Lucy described the past in full: the cruel anguish
she had battled with, and her poor, ever-to-be renewed efforts to
endure patiently, for his sake and for God's. Karl's arm involuntarily
tightened around her.
"Why did you not speak to me of this at once, Lucy?" he asked, after a
pause. "It would have cleared it up, you see."
"I did speak to you, Karl; and you seemed to understand me perfectly,
and to accept it all as truth. You must remember your agitation, and
how you begged me not to let it come to an exposure."
"But I thought you alluded to the trouble about my poor brother; that
it was the fact of his being alive you had discovered and were
resenting. _That_ was the exposure I dreaded. And no wonder: for, if
it had come, it would have sent him back to Portland Island."
Lucy wrung her hands. "What a miserable misapprehension it has
been!--and how base and selfish and cruel I must have appeared to you!
I wonder, Karl, you did not put me away from you for ever!"
"Will you go now?"
She knew it was asked in jest: she probably knew that neither would
have parted from the other for the wealth of the world. And she
nestled the least bit closer to him.
"Karl!"
"Well?"
"Why did you not tell me about your brother when you found I knew
nothing, and was resenting it. If I had but known the real truth, we
never should have been at issue for a day."
"Remember, Lucy, that I thought it was what you knew, and spoke of. I
thought you knew he was alive and was at the Maze with his wife. When
I would have given you the whole history from the first, you stopped
me and refused to hear. I wished to give it; that you might see I was
less to blame than you seemed to be supposing. It has been a wretched
play at cross-purposes on both sides: and neither of us, that I see,
is to blame for it."
"Poor Sir Adam!" she cried, the tears again falling. "Living in that
dreadful fear day after day! And what must his poor wife have
suffered! And her baby dying, and now her husband! And I, instead of
giving sympathy, have thought everything that was ill of her, and
hated her and despised her. And Karl--why, Karl--_she_ must have been
the real Lady Andinnian."
He nodded. "Until Adam's death, I was not Sir Karl, you see. The day
you came with her from Basham, and they told her the fly waiting at
the station was for Lady Andinnian, she was stricken with terror,
believing they meant herself."
"Oh, if I had known all this time!" bewailed Lucy. "Stuck up here in
my false pride and folly, instead of helping you to shield them and to
lighten their burthen! I cannot hope that you will ever quite forgive
me in your heart, Karl."
"Had it been as I supposed it was, I am not quite sure that I should.
Not quite, Lucy, even to our old age. You took it up so harshly and
selfishly, looking at it from my point of view, and resented it in so
extraordinary a fashion, so bitter a spirit----"
"Oh don't, don't!" she pleaded, slipping down to his feet again in the
depth of her remorse, the old sense of shame on her burning cheeks.
"Won't you be merciful to me? I have suffered much."
"Why, my darling, you are mistaking me again," he cried tenderly, as
he once more raised her. "I said, 'Looking at it from my point of
view.' Looking at it from yours, Lucy, I am amazed at your gentle
forbearance. Few young wives would have been as good and patient as
you."
"Then do you really forgive me?" she asked, raising her eyes and her
wet cheeks.
"Before I answer that, I think I must ask whether you forgive my
having married you--now that you know all."
"Oh, Karl!"
She fell upon his shoulder, her arms round his neck. Karl caught her
face to his. He might take what kisses he chose from it again.
"Karl, would you please let me go to see her?" she whispered.
"See whom?" asked Karl, in rather a hard tone, his mind pretty full
just then of Miss Blake.
"Poor Lady Andinnian."
"Yes, if you will," he softly said. "I think she would like it. But,
my dear, you must call her 'Mrs. Grey' remember. Not only for safety,
but that she would prefer it."
They went over in the afternoon. Miss Blake, quite accidentally this
time, for she was returning home quietly from confession at St.
Jerome's--and a wholesale catalogue of peccadilloes she must have been
disclosing, one would say, by the length of the hearing--saw them
enter. It puzzled her not a little. Sir Karl taking his wife _there!_
What fresh ruse, what further deceit was he going to try? Oh but it
was sinful! Worse than anything ever taken for Mr. Cattacomb's
absolution at St. Jerome's.
Lucy behaved badly: without the slightest dignity whatever. The first
thing she did was to burst out crying, and kiss Mrs. Grey's hand: as
if--it really seemed so to Mrs. Grey--she did not dare to offer to
kiss her cheek. Very sad and pretty she looked in her widow's
mourning.
It was a sad interview: though in some respects a soothing and
satisfactory one. Lucy explained, without entering into any details
whatever, that she had not known who it was residing at the Maze, or
she should have been over before, Karl and Sir Adam permitting her.
Rose supposed that for safety's sake Karl had deemed it well to keep
the secret intact. And there the matter ended.
"You will come and stay with me at the Court before you leave,"
pleaded Lucy.
Rose shook her head. "It is very kind of you to wish it, Lady
Andinnian; very kind indeed under the circumstances; but it could not
be. I shall not pass through these gates until I pass through them
with Ann Hopley for good. That will be very soon."
"At least, you will come and stay with us sometime in the future."
"I think not. Unless I should get a fever upon me to see the spot once
more that contains my husband and child. In that case, I might
trespass on you for a day or two if you would have me. Thank you very
much, Lady Andinnian."
"You will let me come over again before you leave?"
"Oh, I should be pleased--if Sir Karl has no objection. Thank you,
Karl," she added, holding out her hands to him, "thank you for all.
You have been to us ever the most faithful friend and brother."
The church bell at Foxwood was ringing for the late afternoon service
as they quitted the Maze--for Mr. Sumnor, in spite of his
discouragement and nonattendance, kept on the daily service. The
ting-tang was sounding from St. Jerome's, and several damsels, who had
come round by the Court to call for Miss Blake, were trooping past.
Lucy bowed; Karl lifted his hat: he had ceased to care who saw him
going in and out of the Maze gate now.
"Karl," said Lucy, "I should like to go to prayers this evening. I
shall take no harm: it is scarcely dusk yet."
He turned to take her. Mr. Sumnor and the clerk were in the church;
hardly anybody else--just as it had been that other evening when Lucy
had crept in. Even Miss Diana was off to St. Jerome's, in the wake of
her flighty nieces. Lucy went on to her own pew this time.
Oh, what a contrast it was!--this evening and that. Now she was
utterly still in her rapt thankfulness; then she had lain on the
floor, her heart crying aloud to God in its agony. What could she do
to show her gratitude to Him, who had turned the darkness into this
radiant light? She could do nothing. Nothing, save strive to let her
whole life be spent as a thank-offering. Karl noted her excessive
stillness, her blinding tears; and he probably guessed her thoughts.
While he was talking with Mr. Sumnor after the service, Lucy went in
to the vicarage. Margaret, lying in the dusk, for the room was only
lighted by its bit of fire, could not see who had entered.
"Is it you, Martha?" she said, thinking it was her sister. "You are
back early."
"It is I--Lucy," said Lady Andinnian. "Oh, Margaret, I was obliged to
come to you just for a minute. Karl is outside, and we have been to
church. I have something to tell."
Margaret Sumnor put out both her hands in token of welcome. Instead of
taking them, Lucy knelt by the reclining board, and brought her face
close to her friend's, and spoke in a hushed whisper.
"Margaret, I want to thank you, and I don't know how. I have been
thinking how impossible it will be for me ever to thank God: and it
seems to be nearly as impossible ever to thank you. Do you remember
what you once said to me, Margaret, about bearing and waiting? Well,
but for you, I don't think I _could_ have borne or waited, even in the
poor way I have; and--and--"
She broke down: sobs of emotion checked her utterance.
"Be calm, my dear," said Margaret. "You have come to tell me that the
trouble is over."
"Yes: God has ended it. And, Margaret, I never need have had a shade
of it: I was on a wrong track all the while. I--I was led to think ill
of my husband; I treated him worse than any one will ever know or
would believe: while he was good and loyal to the core in all ways,
and in the most bitter trouble the world can inflict. Oh, Margaret,
had I been vindictive instead of patient--I might have caused the most
dire injury and tribulation, and what would have been my condition
now, my dreadful remorse through life? When the thought comes over me,
I shiver as I did in that old ague fever."
A fit of shivering took her actually. Miss Sumnor saw how the matter
had laid hold upon her.
"Lucy, my dear, it seems to me that you may put away these thoughts
now. God has been merciful and cleared it to you, you say; and you
ought to be happy."
"Oh, so merciful!" she sobbed. "So happy! But it might have been
otherwise, and I cannot forget, or forgive myself."
"Do you remember, Lucy, what I said? That some day when the cloud was
removed your heart would go up with a bound of joyous thankfulness?"
"Yes. Because I did--and have done--as Margaret told me; and endured."
The affair had indeed laid no slight hold of Lucy. She could not
forget what might have been the result, and quite an exaggerated
remorse set in.
A few nights afterwards Karl was startled out of his sleep by her. She
had awakened, it appeared, in a state of terror, and had turned to him
with a nervous grasp as of one who is drowning. Shaking, sobbing,
moaning, she frightened her husband. He would have risen for a light,
but she clung to him too tightly.
"But what has alarmed you, Lucy--what is it?" he reiterated.
"A dream, Karl; a dream," she sobbed, in her bitter distress. "I am
always thinking of it by day, but this time I dreamt it; and I awoke
believing it was true."
"Dreamt what?" he asked.
"I thought that cruel time was back again. I thought that I had not
been quiet and patient, as Margaret enjoined, leaving vengeance to
God, but had taken it into my own hands, and so had caused the Maze's
secret to be discovered. You and Adam had both died through it; and I
was left all alone to my dreadful repentance, on some barren place
surrounded by turbid water."
"Lucy, you will assuredly make yourself ill."
"But, oh Karl, if it had been true! If God had not saved me from it!"