REMORSE.
Sidney was unaware of Margaret's intention, and was only awaiting some
message from her to see her again, and try once more what persuasion,
backed by authority, could do to break down her resolution. The
morning train came in and steamed away again, carrying Margaret and
Philip in it, before he returned from a miserable stroll through the
well remembered pine forests. Dorothy met him on her return from the
station, with traces of tears on her face, and was the first to tell
him that Margaret was gone.
"She need not have done that," he said to himself bitterly.
But when he entered the room where he had seen her the night before, a
great dread seized him. He felt as he would have done if she had been
dead. There was the chair she sat in only last night; that was the
book she had laid down; those flowers she had gathered and arranged for
herself; and now she was gone! There was something of the desolation
of death about the vacant place.
A letter lay upon the table, and he seized it eagerly. Margaret was
not one who used many words of endearment, or many caresses. She
thought that love, like religion, should show itself in deeds, not
speeches. Hitherto she had never begun her letters to him in any other
way than the almost formal one of "My dear Sidney." This was different.
"My beloved husband," it ran, "it is because you are dearer to me than
any other human being, dearer than my own life a hundredfold, dearer
even than my own soul, that I cannot just now bear your presence. How
I love you I cannot find words to tell; my love for you is myself, my
life. There is no bitterness in my heart toward you; only an immense
grief--an abyss of gloom and heaviness, which nothing but God's love
can fill. All my life, since I first saw you, you have seemed to me
one of Christ's true followers; in the world but not of it; a real
disciple, a faithful soldier of the cross. I never saw in you the
shadow of a lie. You were to me truth and faithfulness personified.
"And now it would be difficult, almost impossible, to see clearly what
you have been, as long as I am near to you. My brain is confused; and
it is necessary for me to get away, lest my feebleness should enfeeble
you in doing what is right. There can be only one right way; and I
hope to stand beside you in the sorrowful years that are coming. I
promise to do this--to come back and hold your hand, and walk by your
side, sharing the burden with you. But do not think to avoid this
burden, and these sad years. The harvest of a seed sown long ago is
come, and we must reap it, whether we do it humbly or defiantly. But I
must go away now from you, my dearest one--from whom I never thought to
separate till death should part us.--MARGARET."
Sidney read these lines through again and again; at first in such a
paroxysm of anger as he had never felt since he had deserted Sophy,
when he was in his early manhood. Was there not a kind of fanaticism
in his wife's religion--that blindness which is said to prevent
devotees from seeing a thing in its own light? She demanded of him to
encounter the gossip and wonder of the vast circle of his acquaintances
in the City and in society, to bring a slur on his fair fame, and,
worse than all, to place his low born son in the position which her own
boy had hitherto occupied as his heir. She asked him to doom Philip to
the life of a comparatively poor and obscure man. And for what? That
an old man and woman, who for thirty years had lived in suspense about
their child's fate, should at last hear that all this time she had been
lying in her grave. If he could bring Sophy back to life, it would be
different. It must make Andrew and Rachel Goldsmith more miserable to
learn the truth since the truth was what it was.
Margaret did not think of the dishonor this discovery would bring upon
religion. For he was distinguished in the City, and in Parliament,
both as a philanthropist and a religious man. He had been both since
he had known her, and this sin, committed in his boyish indifference to
all religious matters, must fling the shadow of a total eclipse upon
his career. Why should he make his fellow-Christians ashamed? No
scandal has so much charm as a scandal against a prominent Christian.
And how easy it was to avoid it if Margaret would but consent! No one
would be any the worse, for he would keep his promise of making his
eldest son a rich man in the station now belonging to him. Nothing but
misery could come of any other course.
Yet as he read again Margaret's letter, with its strong and mournful
expressions of her love, his anger subsided, and the idea of denying
the legality of his first marriage grew slowly more and more repugnant
to him. He saw, too, quite clearly, that he must lose Margaret if he
pursued this plan. What measures she would adopt, if he carried out
such a purpose, he could not tell. But in any case he would lose her;
she would never live with him again if he denied his marriage with
Sophy Goldsmith. Still he would not decide definitely what he would do
till he had seen Sophy's son.
There was still time to reach Cortina that day, and after a hasty meal
he set out, taking Dorothy and Phyllis with him. He should see this
eldest son of his in time to telegraph to Margaret, before Rachel
Goldsmith could join her at Berne; and she would not refuse his
entreaty to keep silence, at least for a few days. He was pondering
over this new step, as they drove through the wonderful valley, where
the clouds resting upon the crests of the mountains caught, in
many-colored hues, the rays of the evening sun. It was twilight when
they reached the hotel; but the twilight is long there, for the sun
sets early behind the rocky walls which hem in the valley. The village
lay tranquilly in a soft, gray light. How well he remembered it! He
shrank from entering the hotel, for it seemed almost certain that Sophy
herself was awaiting his arrival there.
Yonder lay the broad pathway through the fields, leading to the half
ruined fortress where he had last parted with her. He turned down the
familiar track as if urged by some irresistible impulse. It was about
the same season of the year; the same flowers and weeds were in bloom,
and the crops were at nearly the same stage of growth. It might have
been the same evening. Was the past blotted out, then? Would that he
could take up his life again as it was thirty years ago, and sow the
seed of the future--oh, how differently!
But even now he turned with aversion from the idea of a life spent with
Sophy Goldsmith. He fancied he could see her sitting on the flight of
steps which led up to the church door, and that he could hear her
shrill voice bidding him go away, and never return. Yet if he had been
a true man, as Philip was, he could not have forsaken her. If Philip
had found himself caught in such a mistake, a mistake so fatal to all
happiness, he would have accepted the consequences, and done what he
could to make the best of the future. But he had built all his life on
a blunder and a lie. "I have pierced myself through with many
sorrows," he said to himself.
He was standing still, pondering over this long forgotten and very
dreary past, and now as he uttered these words he lifted up his head
and saw that he had paused under a wooden crucifix, one which he
remembered distinctly. The image of the Lord hanging upon it was worn
and weather-beaten, the wood was bleached and pallid as if it had stood
there long centuries; yet still the bowed head, with its crown of
thorns, possessed a pathetic sadness, as if this man also, Christ Jesus
the Lord, had been pierced through with many sorrows--yes, with one
vast sorrow unlike any other sorrow. He felt, as he had never felt
before, that this grief beyond compare, this crucifixion of the soul as
well as of the body, was his own doing. They were his sins which the
Lord had borne in his own body on the tree; and what he planned to do
would crucify the Son of God afresh.
"God be merciful to me, a sinner!" he cried.
It was late before he returned to the hotel; but his mind was fully
made up now. If he had never been a Christian before, he would be so
from this hour, and whatever it might cost him, there should be no more
hypocrisy, no more playing of a part, in his life. A bitter harvest
was before him, but he would reap it unflinchingly to its last grain.
The sting of his sin was that he could not save others from reaping it
with him. And how large was the number of reapers! Directly or
indirectly how many persons must suffer from this early sin of his!