I dared not dally another moment. I must take my plunge at once into the
icy-cold waters.
"I have something of importance to say to you, dear cousin," I began.
"So have I," she said, gayly; "a thousand things, as I told you this
morning, sir, though you are so late in coming to hear them. See, I have
been making a list of a few commissions for you to do in London. They
are such as I can trust to you; but for plate, and glass, and china, I
think we had better wait till we return from Switzerland. We are sure to
come home through London."
Her eyes ran over a paper she was holding in her hand; while I stood
opposite to her, not knowing what to do with myself, and feeling the
guiltiest wretch alive.
"Cannot you find a seat?" she asked, after a short silence.
I sat down on the broad window-sill instead of on the chair close to
hers. She looked up at that, and fixed her eyes upon me keenly. I had
often quailed before Julia's gaze as a boy, but never as I did now.
"Well! what is it?" she asked, curtly. The incisiveness of her tone
brought life into me, as a probe sometimes brings a patient out of
stupor.
"Julia," I said, "are you quite sure you love me enough to be happy with
me as my wife?"
She opened her eyes very widely, and arched her eyebrows at the
question, laughed a little, and then drooped her head over the work in
her hands.
"Think of it well, Julia," I urged.
"I know you well enough to be as happy as the day is long with you," she
replied, the color rushing to her face. "I have no vocation for a single
life, such as so many of the girls here have to make up their minds to.
I should hate to have nothing to do and nobody to care for. Every night
and morning I thank God that he has ordained another life for me. He
knows how I love you, Martin."
"What was I to say to this? How was I to set my foot down to crush this
blooming happiness of hers?
"You do not often look as if you loved me," I said at last.
"That is only my way," she answered. "I can't be soft and purring like
many women. I don't care to be always kissing and hanging about anybody.
But if you are afraid I don't love you enough--well! I will ask you what
you think in ten years' time."
"What would you say if I told you I had once loved a girl better than I
do you?" I asked.
"That's not true," she said, sharply. "I've known you all your life, and
you could not hide such a thing from your mother and me. You are only
laughing at me, Martin."
"Heaven knows I'm not laughing," I answered, solemnly; "it's no laughing
matter. Julia, there is a girl I love better than you, even now."
The color and the smile faded out of her face, leaving it ashy pale. Her
lips parted once or twice, but her voice failed her. Then she broke out
into a short, hysterical laugh.
"You are talking nonsense, dear Martin!" she gasped; "you ought not! I
am not very strong. Get me a glass of water."
I fetched a glass of water from the kitchen; for the servant, who had
been at work, had gone home, and we were quite alone in the house. When
I returned, her face was still working with nervous twitchings.
"Martin, you ought not!" she repeated, after she had swallowed some
water. "Tell me it is a joke directly."
"I cannot," I replied, painfully and sorrowfully; "it is the truth,
though I would almost rather face death than own it. I love you dearly,
Julia; but I love another woman better. God help us both!"
There was dead silence in the room after those words. I could not hear
Julia breathe or move, and I could not look at her. My eyes were turned
toward the window and the islands across the sea, purple and hazy in the
distance.
"Leave me!" she said, after a very long stillness; "go away, Martin."
"I cannot leave you alone," I exclaimed; "no, I will not, Julia. Let me
tell you more; let me explain it all. You ought to know every thing
now."
"Go away!" she repeated, in a slow, mechanical tone.
I hesitated still, seeing her white and trembling, with her eyes glassy
and fixed. But she motioned me from her toward the door, and her pale
lips parted again to reiterate her command.
How I crossed that room I do not know; but the moment after I had closed
the door I heard the key turn in the lock. I dared not quit the house
and leave her alone in such a state; and I longed ardently to hear the
clocks chime five, and the sound of Johanna's wheels on the
roughly-paved street. She could not be here yet for a full half-hour,
for she had to go up to our house in the Grange Road and come back
again. What if Julia should have fainted, or be dead!
That was one of the longest half-hours in my life. I stood at the
street-door watching and waiting, and nodding to people who passed by,
and who simpered at me in the most inane fashion.
"The fools!" I called them to myself. At length Johanna turned the
corner, and her pony-carriage came rattling cheerfully over the large
round stones. I ran to meet her.
"For Heaven's sake, go to Julia!" I cried. "I have told her."
"And what does she say?" asked Johanna.
"Not a word, not a syllable," I replied, "except to bid me go away. She
has locked herself into the drawing-room."
"Then you had better go away altogether," she said, "and leave me to
deal with her. Don't come in, and then I can say you are not here."
A friend of mine lived in the opposite house, and, though I knew he was
not at home, I knocked at his door and asked permission to sit for a
while in his parlor.
The windows looked into the street, and there I sat watching the doors
of our new house, for Johanna and Julia to come out. No man likes to be
ordered out of sight, as if he were a vagabond or a criminal, and I felt
myself aggrieved and miserable.
At length the door opposite opened, and Julia appeared, her face
completely hidden behind a veil. Johanna helped her into the low
carriage, as if she had been an invalid, and paid her those minute
trivial attentions which one woman showers upon another when she is in
great grief. Then they drove off, and were soon out of my sight.
By this time our dinner-hour was near, and I knew my mother would be
looking out for us both. I was thankful to find at the table a visitor,
who had dropped in unexpectedly: one of my father's patients--a widow,
with a high color, a loud voice, and boisterous spirits, who kept up a
rattle of conversation with Dr. Dobrée. My mother glanced anxiously at
me very often, but she could say little.
"Where is Julia?" she had inquired, as we sat down to dinner without
her.
"Julia?" I said, quite absently; "oh! she is gone to the Vale, with
Johanna Carey."
"Will she come back to-night?" asked my mother.
"Not to-night," I said, aloud; but to myself I added, "nor for many
nights to come; never, most probably, while I am under this roof. We
have been building our house upon the sand, and the floods have come,
and the winds have blown, and the house has fallen; but my mother knows
nothing of the catastrophe yet."
If it were possible to keep her ignorant of it! But that could not be.
She read trouble in my face, as clearly as one sees a thunder-cloud in
the sky, and she could not rest till she had fathomed it. After she and
our guest had left us, my father lingered only a few minutes. He was not
a man that cared for drinking much wine, with no companion but me, and
he soon pushed the decanters from him.
"You are as dull as a beetle to-night, Martin," he said. "I think I will
go and see how your mother and Mrs. Murray get along together."
He went his way, and I went mine--up into my own room, where I should be
alone to think over things. It was a pleasant room, and had been mine
from my boyhood. There were some ugly old pictures still hanging against
the walls, which I could not find in my heart to take down. The model of
a ship I had carved with my penknife, the sails of which had been made
by Julia, occupied the top shelf over my books. The first pistol I had
ever possessed lay on the same shelf. It was my own den, my nest, my
sanctuary, my home within the home. I could not think of myself being
quite at home anywhere else.
Of late I had been awakened in the night two or three times, and found
my mother standing at my bedside, with her thin, transparent fingers
shading the light from my eyes. When I remonstrated with her she had
kissed me, smoothed the clothes about me, and promised meekly to go back
to bed. Did she visit me every night? and would there come a time when
she could not visit me?