"Not in vain, my darling. Even the sight of you for a few minutes has been like a glimpse of Elysium."
"And I must return," she said, "as I came--with my love thrown back, my prayers unanswered, my sorrow redoubled."
She hid her face in her hands and wept aloud. Presently she bent forward.
"Norman," she said, in a low whisper, "my darling, I appeal to you for my own sake. I love you so dearly that I cannot live away from you--it is a living death. You cannot realize it. There are few moments, night or day, in which your face is not before me--few moments in which I do not hear your voice. Last night I dreamed that you stood before me with outstretched arms and called me. I went to you, and you clasped me in your arms. You said, "My darling wife, it has all been a mistake--a terrible mistake--and I am come to ask your pardon and to take you home." In my dream, Norman, you kissed my face, my lips, my hands, and called me by every loving name you could invent. You were so kind to me, and I was so happy. And the dream was so vivid, Norman, that even after I awoke I believed it to be reality. Then I heard the sobbing of the waves on the beach, and I cried out, "Norman, Norman!" thinking you were still near me; but there was no reply. It was only the silence that roused me to a full sense that my happiness was a dream. There was no husband with kind words and tender kisses. I thought my heart would have broken. And then I said to myself that I could live no longer without making an effort once more to change your decision. Oh, Norman, for my sake, do not send me back to utter desolation and despair! Do not send me back to coldness and darkness, to sorrow and tears. Let me be near you! You have a thousand interests in life--I have but one. You can live without love, I cannot. Oh, Norman, for my sake, for my love"s sake, for my happiness" sake, take me back, dear--take me back!"
The golden head dropped forward and fell on his breast, her hands clung to him with almost despairing pain.
"I will be so humble, darling. I can keep away from all observation. It is only to be with you that I wish--only to be near you. You cannot be hard--you cannot send me away; you will not, for I love you!"
Her hands clung more closely to him.
"Many men have forgiven their wives even great crimes, and have taken them back after the basest desertion. Overlook my father"s crime and pardon me, for Heaven"s dear sake!"
"My dearest Madaline, if you would but understand! I have nothing to pardon. You are sweetest, dearest, loveliest, best. You are one of the purest and n.o.blest of women. I have nothing to pardon; it is only that I cannot take disgrace into my family. I cannot give to my children an inheritance of crime."
"But, Norman," said the girl, gently, "because my father was a felon, that does not make me one--because he was led into wrong, it does not follow that I must do wrong. Insanity may be hereditary, but surely crime is not; besides, I have heard my father say that his father was an honest, simple, kindly northern farmer. My father had much to excuse him. He was a handsome man, who had been flattered and made much of."
"My darling I could not take your hands into mine and kiss them so, if I fancied that they were ever so slightly tainted with sin."
"Then why not take me home. Norman?"
"I cannot," he replied, in a tone of determination. "You must not torture me, Madaline, with further pleading. I cannot--that is sufficient."
He rose and walked with rapid steps down the sh.o.r.e. How bard it was, how terrible--bitter almost as the anguish of death!
She was by his side again, walking in silence. He would bare given the whole world if he could have taken her into his arms and have kissed back the color into her sad young face.
"Norman," said a low voice, full of bitterest pain, "I am come to say good-by. I am sorry I have done harm--not good. I am sorry--forgive me, and say good-by."
"It has made our lot a thousand times harder, Madaline," he returned, hoa.r.s.ely.
"Never mind the hardship; you will soon recover from that," she said. "I am sorry that I have acted against your wishes, and broken the long silence. I will never do it again, Norman."
"Never, unless you are ill and need me," he supplemented. "Then you have promised to send for me."
"I will do so" she said. "You will remember, dear husband, that my last words to you were "Good-by, and Heaven bless you.""
The words died away on her lips. He turned aside lest she should see the trembling of his face; he never complained to her. He knew now that she thought him hard, cold, unfeeling, indifferent--that she thought his pride greater than his love; but even that was better than that she should know he suffered more than she did--she must never know that.
When he turned back from the tossing waves and the summer sun she was gone. He looked across the beach--there was no sign of her. She was gone; and he avowed to himself that it would be wonderful if ever in this world he saw her again. She did not remain at Tintagel; to do so would be useless, hopeless. She saw it now. She had hoped against hope: she had said to herself that in a year and a half he would surely have altered his mind--he would have found now how hard it was to live alone, to live without love--he would have found that there was something dearer in the world than family pride--he would have discovered that love outweighed everything else. Then she saw that her antic.i.p.ations were all wrong--he preferred his dead ancestors to his living wife.
She went back to Winiston House and took up the dreary round of life again. She might have made her lot more endurable and happier, she might have traveled, have sought society and amus.e.m.e.nt; but she had no heart for any of these things. She had spent the year and a half of her lonely married life in profound study, thinking to herself that if he should claim her he would be pleased to find her yet more accomplished and educated. She was indefatigable, and it was all for him.
Now that she was going back, she was without this mainspring of hope--her old studies and pursuits wearied her. To what end and for what purpose had been all her study, all her hard work? He would never know of her proficiency; and she would not care to study for any other object than to please him.
"What am I to do with my life," she moaned. "Mariana in the moated grange was not more to be pitied than I."
How often the words occurred to her:
"The day is dreary, "He cometh not," she said: She said, "I am aweary, aweary, would that I were dead.""
It was one of the strangest, dullest, saddest lives that human being ever led. That she wearied of it was no wonder. She was tired of the sorrow, the suffering, the despair--so tired that after a time she fell ill; and then she lay longing for death.
Chapter x.x.xII.
It was a glorious September, and the Scottish moors looked as they had not looked for years; the heather grew in rich profusion, the grouse were plentiful. The prospects for sportsmen were excellent.
Not knowing what else to do, Lord Arleigh resolved to go to Scotland for the shooting; there was a sort of savage satisfaction in the idea of living so many weeks alone, without on-lookers, where he could be dull if he liked without comment--where he could lie for hours together on the heather looking up at the blue skies, and puzzling over the problem of his life--where, when the fit of despair seized him, he could indulge in it, and no one wonder at him. He hired a shooting-lodge called Glaburn. In his present state of mind it seemed to him to be a relief to live where he could not even see a woman"s face. Glaburn was kept in order by two men, who mismanaged it after the fashion of men, but Lord Arleigh was happier there than he had been since his fatal marriage-day, simply because he was quite alone. If he spent more time in lying on the heather and thinking of Madaline than he did in shooting, that was his own concern--there was no one to interfere.
One day, when he was in one of his most despairing moods, he went out quite early in the morning, determined to wander the day through, to exhaust himself pitilessly with fatigue, and then see if he could not rest without dreaming of Madaline. But as he wandered east and west, knowing little and caring less, whither he went, a violent storm, such as breaks at times over the Scottish moors, overtook him. The sky grew dark as night, the rain fell in a torrent--blinding, thick, heavy--he could hardly see his hand before him. He wandered on for hours, wet through, weary, cold, yet rather rejoicing than otherwise in his fatigue. Presently hunger was added to fatigue; and then the matter became more serious--he had no hope of being able to find his way home, for he had no idea in what direction he had strayed.
At last he grew alarmed; life did not hold much for him, it was true, but he had no desire to die on those lonely wilds, without a human being near him. Then it became painful for him to walk; his fatigue was so great that his limbs ached at every step. He began to think his life was drawing near its close. Once or twice he had cried "Madaline" aloud and the name seemed to die away on the sobbing wind.
He grew exhausted at last; for some hours he had struggled on in the face of the tempest.
"I shall have to lie down like a dog by the road-side and die," he thought to himself.
No other fate seemed to be before him but that, and he told himself that after all he had sold his life cheaply. "Found dead on the Scotch moors," would be the verdict about him.
What would the world say? What would his golden-haired darling say when she heard that he was dead?
As the hot tears blinded his eyes--tears for Madaline, not for himself--a light suddenly flashed into them, and he found himself quite close to the window of a house. With a deep-drawn, bitter sob, he whispered to himself that he was saved. He had just strength enough to knock at the door; and when it was opened he fell across the threshold, too faint and exhausted to speak, a sudden darkness before his eyes.
When he had recovered a little, he found that several gentlemen were gathered around him, and that one of them was holding a flask of whisky to his lips.
"That was a narrow escape," said a cheery, musical voice. "How long have you been on foot?"
"Since eight this morning," he replied.
"And now it is nearly eight at night! Well, you may thank Heaven for preserving your life."
Lord Arleigh turned away with a sigh. How little could any one guess what life meant for him--life spent without love--love--without Madaline!
"I have known several lose their lives in this way," continued the same voice. "Only last year poor Charley Hartigan was caught in a similar storm, and he lay for four days dead before he was found. This gentleman has been fortunate."
Lord Arleigh roused himself and looked around. He found himself the center of observation. The room in which he was lying was large and well furnished, and from the odor of tobacco it was plainly used as a smoking-room.
Over him leaned a tall, handsome man, whose hair was slightly tinged with gray.
"I think," he said, "you are my neighbor, Lord Arleigh? I have often seen you on the moors."