Olivia's answer struck me like an electric shock. For some moments I was
simply stunned, and knew neither what she had said, nor where we were.
I suppose half a minute had elapsed before I fairly received the meaning
of her words into my bewildered brain. It seemed as if they were
thundering in my ears, though she had uttered them in a low, frightened
voice. I scarcely understood them when I looked up and saw her leaning
against the rock, with her hands covering her face.
"Olivia!" I cried, stretching out my arms toward her, as though she
would flutter back to them and lay her head again where it had been
resting upon my shoulder, with her face against my neck.
But she did not see my gesture, and the next moment I knew that she
could never let me hold her in my arms again. I dared not even take one
step nearer to her.
"Olivia," I said again, after another minute or two of troubled silence,
with no sound but the thunders of the sea reverberating through the
perilous strait where we had almost confronted death together--"Olivia,
is it true?"
She bowed her head still lower upon her hands, in speechless
confirmation. A stricken, helpless, cowering child she seemed to me,
standing there in her drenched clothing. An unutterable tenderness,
altogether different from the feverish passion of a few minutes ago,
filled my heart as I looked at her.
"Come," I said, as calmly as I could speak, "I am at any rate your
doctor, and I am bound to take care of you. You must not stay here wet
and cold. Let us make haste back to Tardif's, Olivia."
I drew her hand down from her face and through my arm, for we had still
to re-enter the outer cave, and to return through a higher gallery,
before we could reach the cliffs above. I did not glance at her. The
road was very rough, strewed with huge bowlders, and she was compelled
to receive my help. But we did not speak again till we were on the
cliffs, in the eye of day, with our faces and our steps turned toward
Tardif's farm.
"Oh!" she cried, suddenly, in a tone that made my heart ache the keener,
"how sorry I am!"
"Sorry that I love you?" I asked, feeling that my love was growing every
moment in spite of myself. The sun shone on her face, which was just
below my eyes. There was an expression of sad perplexity and questioning
upon it, which kept away every other sign of emotion. She lifted her
eyes to me frankly, and no flush of color came over her pale cheeks.
"Yes," she answered; "it is such a miserable, unfortunate thing for you.
But how could I have helped it?"
"You could not help it," I said.
"I did not mean to deceive you," she continued--"neither you nor any
one. When I fled away from him I had no plan of any kind. I was just
like a leaf driven about by the wind, and it tossed me here. I did not
think I ought to tell any one I was married. I wish I could have
foreseen this. Why did God let me have that accident in the spring? Why
did he let you come over to see me?"
"Are you surprised that I love you?" I asked.
Now I saw a subtle flush steal across her face, and her eyes fell to the
ground.
"I never thought of it till this afternoon," she murmured. "I knew you
were going to marry your cousin Julia, and I knew I was married, and
that there could be no release from that. All my life is ruined, but you
and Tardif made it more bearable. I did not think you loved me till I
saw your face this afternoon."
"I shall always love you," I cried, passionately, looking down on the
shining, drooping head beside me, and the sad face and listless arms
hanging down in an attitude of dejection. She seemed so forlorn a
creature that I wished I could take her to my heart again; but that was
impossible now.
"No," she answered in her calm, sorrowful voice. "When you see clearly
that it is an evil thing, you will conquer it. There will be no hope
whatever in your love for me, and it will pass away. Not soon, perhaps;
I can scarcely wish you to forget me soon. Yet it would be wrong for you
to love me now. Why was I driven to marry him so long ago?"
A sharp, bitter tone rang through her quiet voice, and for a moment she
hid her face in her hands.
"Olivia," I said, "it is harder upon me than you can think, or I can
tell."
She had not the faintest notion of how hard this trial was. I had
sacrificed every plan and purpose of my life in the hope of winning her.
I had cast away, almost as a worthless thing, the substantial prosperity
which had been within my grasp, and now that I stretched out my hand for
the prize, I found it nothing but an empty shadow. Deeper even than this
lay the thought of my mother's bitter disappointment.
"Your husband must have treated you very badly, before you would take
such a desperate step as this," I said again, after a long silence,
scarcely knowing what I said.
"He treated me so ill," said Olivia, with the same hard tone in her
voice, "that when I had a chance of escape it seemed as if God Himself
opened the door for me. He treated me so ill that, if I thought there
was any fear of him finding me out here, I would rather a thousand times
you had left me to die in the caves."
That brought to my mind what I had almost forgotten--the woman whom my
imprudent curiosity had brought into pursuit; of her. I felt ready to
curse my folly aloud, as I did in my heart, for having gone to Messrs.
Scott and Brown.
"Olivia," I said, "there is a woman in Guernsey who has some clew to
you--"
But I could say no more, for I thought she would have fallen to the
ground in her terror. I drew her hand through my arm, and hastened to
reassure her.
"No harm can come to you," I continued, "while Tardif and I are here to
protect you. Do not frighten yourself; we will defend you from every
danger."
"Martin," she whispered--and the pleasant familiarity of my name spoken
by her gave me a sharp pang, almost of gladness--"no one can help me or
defend me. The law would compel me to go back to him. A woman's heart
may be broken without the law being broken. I could prove nothing that
would give me a right to be free--nothing. So I took it into my own
hands. I tell you I would rather have been drowned this afternoon. Why
did you save me?"
I did not answer, except by pressing her hand against my side. I hurried
her on silently toward the cottage. She was shivering in her cold, wet
dress, and trembling with fear. It was plain to me that even her fine
health should not be trifled with, and I loved her too tenderly, her
poor, shivering, trembling frame, to let her suffer if I could help it.
When we reached the fold-yard gate, I stopped her for a moment to speak
only a few words.
"Go in." I said, "and change, every one of your wet clothes. I will see
you again, once again, when we can talk with one another calmly. God
bless and take care of you, my darling!"
She smiled faintly, and laid her hand in mine.
"You forgive me?" she said.
"Forgive you!" I repeated, kissing the small brown hand lingeringly; "I
have nothing to forgive."
She went on across the little fold and into the house, without looking
back toward me. I could see her pass through the kitchen into her own
room, where I had watched her through the struggle between life and
death, which had first made her dear to me. Then I made my way, blind
and deaf, to the edge of the cliff, seeing nothing, hearing-nothing. I
flung myself down on the turf with my face to the ground, to hide my
eyes from the staring light of the summer sun.
Already it seemed a long time since I had known that Olivia was married.
The knowledge had lost its freshness and novelty, and the sting of it
had become a rooted sorrow. There was no mystery about her now. I almost
laughed, with a resentful bitterness, at the poor guesses I had made.
This was the solution, and it placed her forever out of my reach. As
with Tardif, so she could be nothing for me now, but as the blue sky,
and the white clouds, and the stars shining in the night. My poor
Olivia! whom I loved a hundredfold more than I had done even this
morning. This morning I had been full of my own triumph and gladness.
Now I had nothing in my heart but a vast pity and reverential tenderness
for her.
Married? That was what she had said. It shut out all hope for the
future. She must have been a mere child four years ago; she looked very
young and girlish still. And her husband treated her ill--my Olivia, for
whom I had given up all I had to give. She said the law would compel her
to return to him, and I could do nothing. I could not interfere even to
save her from a life which was worse to her than death.
My heart was caught in a vice, and there was no escape from the torture
of its relentless grip. Whichever way I looked there was sorrow and
despair. I wished, with a faint-heartedness I had never felt before,
that Olivia and I had indeed perished together down in the caves where
the tide was now sweeping below me.
"Martin!" said a clear, low, tender tone in my ear, which could never be
deaf to that voice. I looked up at Olivia without moving. My head was at
her feet, and I laid my hand upon the hem of her dress.
"Martin," she said again, "see, I have brought you Tardifs coat in place
of your own. You must not lie here in this way. Captain Carey's yacht is
waiting for you below."
I staggered giddily when I stood on my feet, and only Olivia's look of
pain steadied me. She had been weeping bitterly. I could not trust
myself to look in her face again. At any rate my next duty was to go
away without adding to her distress, if that were possible. Tardif was
standing behind her, regarding us both with great concern.
"Doctor," he said, "when I came in from my lobster-pots, the captain
sent a message by me to say the sun would be gone down before you reach
Guernsey. He has come round to the Havre Gosselin. I'll walk down the
cliff with you."