CHAPTER XXI.THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE MARRIAGE.
Maddy never knew how she lived through those bright, autumnal days, when the gorgeous beauty of decaying nature seemed so cruelly to mock her anguish. As long as Guy was there, breathing the same air with herself, she kept up, vaguely conscious of a shadowy hope that something would happen without her instrumentality, something to ease the weight pressing so hard upon her. But when she heard that he had really gone, that a line had been received from him after he was on board the steamer, all hope died out of her heart, and had it been right she would have prayed that she might die, and forget how utterly miserable she was.
At last there came to her three letters, one from Lucy, one from the doctor, and one from Guy himself. She opened Lucy’s first, and read of the sweet girl’s great happiness in seeing Guy again, of her sorrow tofind him so thin, and pale, and changed, in all save his extreme kindness to her, his careful study of her wants, and evident anxiety to please her in every respect. On this Lucy dwelt, until Maddy’s heart seemed to leap up and almost turn over, so fiercely it throbbed and ached with anguish. She was out in the woods when she read the letter, and laying her face in the grass she sobbed as she never sobbed before.
The doctor’s letter was opened next, and Maddy read with blinding tears that which for a moment increased her pain and sent to her heart an added pang of disappointment, or a sense of wrong done to her, she could not tell which. Dr. Holbrook was to be married the same day with Guy, and to Lucy’s sister Margaret.
“Maggie, I call her,” he wrote, “because that name is so much like my first love, Maddy, the little girl who thought I was too old to be her husband, and so made me very wretched for a time, until I met and knew Margaret Atherstone. I have told her of you, Maddy; I would not marry her without, and she seems willing to take me as I am. We shall come home with Guy, who is the mere wreck of what he was when I last saw him. He has told me everything, and though I doubly respect you now, I cannotsay that I think you did quite right. Better that one should suffer than two, and Lucy’s is a nature which will forget far sooner than yours or Guy’s. I pity you all.”
This almost killed Maddy; she did not love the doctor, but the knowledge that he was to be married added to her misery, while what he said of her decision was the climax of the whole. Had her sacrifice been for nothing? Would it have been better if she had not sent Guy away? It was anguish unspeakable to believe so, and the leafless woods never echoed to so bitter a cry of pain as that with which she laid her head on the ground, and for a brief moment wished that she might die. God pitied his child then, and for the next half hour she hardly knew what she suffered.
There was Guy’s letter yet to read, and with a listless indifference she opened it at last and was glad that he made no direct reference to the past except when he spoke of Lucy, telling how happy she was, and how, if anything could reconcile him to his fate, it was the knowing how pure and good and loving was the wife he was getting. Then he wrote of the doctor and Margaret, whom he described as a dashing,brilliant girl, the veriest tease and mad-cap in the world, and the exact opposite of Maddy.
“It is strange to me why he chose her after loving you,” he wrote; “but as they seem fond of each other, their chances of happiness are not inconsiderable.”
This letter, so calm, so cheerful in its tone, had a quieting effect on Maddy, who read it twice, and then placing it in her bosom, started for the cottage, meeting on the way with Flora, who was seeking for her in great alarm. Uncle Joseph had had a fit, she said, and fallen upon the floor, cutting his forehead badly against the sharp point of the stove. Hurrying on Maddy found that what Flora had said was true, and sent immediately for the physician, who came at once, but shook his head doubtfully as he examined his patient. The wound was very serious, he said, and fever might ensue. Nothing in the form of trouble could particularly affect Maddy now, and perhaps it was wisely ordered that Uncle Joseph’s illness should take her thoughts from herself. From the very first he refused to take his medicines from any one save her or Jessie, who with her mother’s permission staid altogether at the cottage, and who, as Guy’s sister, was a great comfort to Maddy.
As the fever which the doctor had predicted, increased,and Uncle Joseph grew more and more delirious, his cries for Sarah were heart-rending, making Jessie weep bitterly, as she said to Maddy:
“If I knew where this Sarah was I’d go miles on foot to find her and bring her to him.”
Something like this Jessie said to her mother when she went for a day to Aikenside, asking her in conclusion if she thought Sarah would go, supposing she could be found.
“Perhaps,” and Agnes brushed abstractedly her long flowing hair, winding it around her fingers, and then letting the soft curls fall across her snowy arms.
“Where do you suppose she is?” was Jessie’s next question, but if Agnes knew, she did not answer, except by reminding her little daughter that it was past her bed-time.
The next morning Agnes’s eyes were very red, as if she had been wakeful the entire night, while her white face fully warranted the headache she professed to have.
“Jessie,” she said, as they sat together at their breakfast, “I am going to Honedale to-day to see Maddy, and shall leave you here, as I do not care to have us both absent.”
Jessie demurred a little at first, but finally yielded,wondering what had prompted this visit to the cottage. Maddy wondered so, too, as from the window she saw Agnes instead of Jessie alighting from the carriage, and was conscious of a thrill of gratification that Agnes should have come to see her. But Agnes’s business was with the sick man, poor Uncle Joseph, who was sleeping when she came, and so did not hear her voice as in the tidy kitchen she talked to Maddy, appearing extremely agitated, and casting her eyes rapidly from one part of the room to another, resting now upon the tinware hanging on the wall, and now upon the gourd swimming in the water-pail which stood in the old-fashioned sink, with the wooden spout, directly over the pile of stones covering the drain. These things were familiar to the proud woman; she had seen them before, and the sight of them brought to her a most remorseful regret for the past, while her heart ached cruelly as she wished she had never crossed that threshold, or, crossing it, had never brought ruin to one of its inmates. Agnes was changed in various ways. All hope of the doctor had long since been given up, and as Jessie grew older the mother nature was stronger within her, subduing her selfishness, and making her far more gentle and considerate for others than she had been before. ToMaddy she was exceedingly kind, and never more so in manner than now, when they sat talking together in the humble kitchen at the cottage.
“You look tired and sick,” she said. “Your cares have been too much for you. Let me sit by your uncle till he wakes, and you go up to bed.”
Very gladly Maddy accepted the offered relief, and utterly worn out with her constant vigils, she was soon sleeping soundly in her own room, while Flora, in the little back room of the house, was busy with her ironing. Thus there was no one to see Agnes as she went slowly into the sick-room where Uncle Joseph lay, his thin face upturned to the light, and his lips occasionally moving as he muttered in his sleep. There was a strange contrast between that wasted imbecile and that proud, queenly woman, but she could remember a time when the superiority was all upon his side, a time when in her childish estimation he was the embodiment of every manly beauty, and the knowledge that he lovedher, his sister’s little hired girl, filled her with pride and vanity. A great change had come to them both, since those days, and Agnes, as she watched him and smothered the cry of pain which rose to her lips at sight of him, felt that for the fearful change in him she was answerable. Intellectual,talented, admired, and sought by all he had been once; he was a mere wreck now, and Agnes’s breath came in short, quick gasps as, glancing furtively round to see that no one was near, she laid her hand upon his forehead, and parting his thin hair, said, pityingly “Poor Joseph.”
The touch awoke him, and starting up he stared wildly at her, while some memory of the past seemed to be struggling through the misty clouds, obscuring his mental vision.
“Who are you, lady, with eyes and hair likehers?”
“I’m the ‘madam,’ from Aikenside,” Agnes said, quite loud, as Flora passed the door. Then when she was gone she added, softly, “I’m Sarah. Don’t you know me? Sarah Agnes Morris.”
The truth seemed for a moment to burst upon him in its full reality, and to her dying day Agnes would never forget the look upon his face, the smile of perfect happiness breaking through the rain of tears, the love, the tenderness mingled with distrust, which that look betokened as he continued gazing at her without a word. Again her hand rested on his forehead, and taking it now in his he held it to the light, laughing insanely at its soft whiteness; then touching thecostly diamonds which flashed upon him the rainbow hues, he said:
“Where’s that little bit of a ringIbought for you?”
She had anticipated this, and took from her pocket a plain gold ring, kept until that day where no one could find it, and holding it up, she said:
“Here it is. Do you remember it?”
“Yes, yes;” and his lips began to quiver with a grieved, injured expression. “He could give you diamonds, and I couldn’t. That’s why you left me, wasn’t it, Sarah—why you wrote that letter which made my head into two? It’s ached so ever since, and I’ve missed you so much. They put me in a cell where crazy people were—oh! so many—and they said that I was mad, when I was only wanting you. I’m not mad now, am I, darling?”
His arm was round her neck, and he drew her down until his lips touched hers. And Agnes suffered it. She could not return the kiss, but she did not turn away from him, and she let him caress her hair, and wind it around his fingers, whispering:
“This is like Sarah’s, and you are Sarah, are you not?”
“Yes, I am Sarah,” she answered, while the smileso painful to see again broke over his face as he told how much he had missed her, and asked, “if she had not come to stay till he died.”
“There’s something wrong,” he said; “somebody is dead, and it seems as if somebody else wanted to die—as if Maddy died ever since the Lord Governor went away. Do you know Governor Guy?”
“I am his step-mother,” Agnes replied, whereupon Uncle Joseph laughed so long and loud that Maddy woke, and, alarmed by the noise, came down to see what was the matter.
Agnes did not hear her, and as she reached the doorway, she started at the strange position of the parties—Uncle Joseph still smoothing the curls which drooped over him, and Agnes saying to him:
“You heard his name was Remington, did you not?—James Remington?”
Like a sudden revelation it came upon Maddy, and she turned to leave, when Agnes, lifting her head, called her to come in. She did so, and standing upon the opposite side, said, questioningly:
“You are Sarah Morris?”
For a moment the eyelids quivered, then the neck arched proudly, as if it were a thing of which she was not ashamed, and Agnes answered:
“Yes, IwasSarah Agnes Morris; once, when a mere child, I was for three months your grandmother’s hired girl, and afterwards adopted by a lady who gave me what education I possess, together with that taste for high life which prompted me to jilt your Uncle Joseph when a richer man than he offered himself to me.”
That was all she said—all that Maddy ever knew of her history, as it was never referred to again, except that evening, when Agnes said to her, pleadingly:
“Neither Guy nor Jessie, nor any one, need know what I have told you.”
“They shall not,” was Maddy’s reply; and from that moment the past, so far as Agnes was concerned, was a sealed page to both. With this bond of confidence between them, Agnes felt herself strangely drawn towards Maddy, while, if it were possible, something of her olden love was revived for the helpless man who clung to her now instead of Maddy, refusing to let her go; neither had Agnes any disposition to leave him. She should stay to the last, she said; and she did, taking Maddy’s place, and by her faithfulness and care winning golden laurels in the opinion of the neighbors, who marveled at first to seeso gay a lady at Uncle Joseph’s bedside, attributing it all to her friendship for Maddy, just as they attributed his calling for Sarah to a crazy freak. She did resemble Sarah Morris a very little, they said; and in Maddy’s presence they sometimes wondered where Sarah was, and if she was happy with the old man whom she married, and who they had heard was not so rich after all, as most of the money belonged to the son, who inherited it from his mother; but Maddy kept the secret from every one, so that even Jessie never suspected why her mother staid day after day at the cottage; watching and waiting until the last day of Joseph’s life.
She was alone with him when he died, and Maddy never knew what passed between them. She had left them together for an hour, while she did some errands; and when she returned, Agnes met her at the door, and with a blanched cheek whispered:
“He is dead; he died in my arms, blessing you and me. Surely my sin is now forgiven.”