CHAPTER LIX.AT BELLEVUE HOSPITAL.
“Let me do this woman no injustice. She was not wantonly cruel, but a life of hard poverty had made her cautious. She did not turn me away absolutely friendless, but took me to this, my last shelter, Bellevue Hospital. Perhaps it was all that she could do. The poor are sometimes forced to be cruel, and she was very poor.
“Oh! my husband, God forbid that you should ever see the rooms and the people with whom I have spent this last miserable week—the last of my life, I am certain it will be the last of my life. They have given me a narrow straw bed and a wooden chair, on which I sit all the day long with my face to the wall, dreaming such leaden, gloomy dreams. Now and then an oath or a coarse laugh makes me shudder to think where I am.
“Sometimes when a strange step comes along the floor, my poor heart gives a struggle, and I think it is you come to look after your poor little wife. Then I fancy in a desperate way that my brother will come to the hospital in search of me; and I feel a dreary satisfaction that with this dress, this thin face, and great wild eyes, he would go away and never dream it was me. Besides, I have never used eitherhis name or yours; when you come to look for the register of my death, ‘Mary Barton is the name.’ Next to it you will find written the brand of infamy which I do not deserve: but my promise was given.
“I have told no one of our marriage; but the angels will know it, and you will know it. And now I wish to write of something else, but cannot. My eyes fill with tears, my cheek burns, and my pen wanders to and fro on the paper. I charge you, Louis De Marke—I charge you with my dying breath, sweep the disgrace I am willing to bear myself from the name of your child!...
“Oh, Louis! my heart is broken; the last gleam of hope has departed. I shall not have the power to die, for this anguish will put death aside. Now I understand the dreary doubt which has been forever haunting my life. It was an unconscious want which kept me restless from the first. Now I comprehend it all. You never loved me. I have forced myself to write the words—it seems like tearing a young tree up by the roots. All the strings and pulses of my heart quiver.
“Why not have told me this before it was too late? but no, it was a happy delusion; I cannot grudge myself the only sweet dream of my life. The truth would not have made me less desolate now.
“How did I learn this?—listen. In the next bed to mine is a young person, whose face struck me from the first, a fair, beautiful girl, with the most sorrowful eyes I ever saw. She came to the hospital shortly after I did, and like me, sat by her bed day after day, in mournful silence. Sometimes she would sew a little—sometimes read a tract or the Bible, which so few inmates of that place ever touch. It is hard to be utterly alone in the world, and I had been months without intercourse with a human being of my own class. One day, when she looked unusually sad, I spoke to her, and after that we fell into miserable companionship, forI knew by every look and word, that she never had belonged to the class of women about us.
“I think two more unhappy beings never lived than we were; still, there was some consolation in the mournful sympathy which we felt for each other. Some days, when the morning sunshine came through the window which separated her bed from mine, we would get up a gleam of cheerfulness, and strive to encourage each other, knowing all the time how futile it was. When I attempted to comfort her, she answered me kindly, but was too sorrowful for consolation. The gloom of coming anguish, and probable death, hung over us both. We had no heart for words.
“It is terrible here at night. I cannot sleep, with so many strange women breathing heavily around me. The hush of the city chills me through and through. It seems like lying in a graveyard, especially when the slow sob of the river comes up to me through the silence. This other poor girl is often awake in the night. When she does sleep, it is restlessly, and sometimes her moans break into words.
“This night, this very night—it seems long as eternity—she began to murmur in her dreams as I lay weary and wakeful. All at once I started up in bed and listened. She had uttered a name,—your name, De Marke, uttered it softly as a dove coos in its nest.
“That one word was a revelation to me. Quick as light my thoughts flew back to the past—a thousand proofs, trivial but convincing, crowded upon me. The vague uncertainty that had kept me always so restless, was a miserable conviction now. No, not yet, I would not believe the mutterings of a dream—there should be no uncertainty.
“I leaned from my cot and grasped the white arm of the sleeping girl, which had fallen downward over the side of her bed. She awoke with a start, and I saw her blue eyes fixed wildly on my face.
“‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘was it the son of George De Marke,a shipping-merchant lately dead, of whom you spoke but now?’ She lifted her white hands and clasped them wildly.
“‘Did I speak of him? when? how? Who tells me that I spoke of De Marke?’ she said.
“‘In your sleep, a moment since,’ I answered; ‘tell me about him, I must know!’ She looked at me wildly, but did not answer. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘do you love this man?’
“‘Better than my life!—better than my own soul!’ she answered, lifting her clasped hands to heaven.
“‘And he—did he love you?’
“I asked the question faintly, my lips were cold, my heart in an agony of suspense. She turned her eyes upon me—those beautiful blue eyes—full of tears that glittered painfully before my sight.
“‘Love me? yes, I am sure he does—sure as I am of my life.’
“I tightened the grip of my hand upon her arm, for agony made me strong, and I was unconscious of the cruelty, till she shrunk away quivering from my touch.
“‘Then God help you, and forgive him!’ I said. She did not speak, but cowered down in her cot, with a low moan, as if my words had wounded her to death. At last she said to me timidly, for my wild anguish had frightened her.
“‘Why do you speak in this way? God is over all, and he knows there is nothing to forgive.’
“I remembered my promise then. No wrong that you could inflict, would absolve me from that. It was on my lips to say this man is my husband, but I drew the bitter truth back into my heart, where it shall lie buried forever.
“I answered her question vaguely, saying that I did not think any good man would have permitted her to come there.
“Then she began to cry bitterly, and amid her tears beggedme not to think so. Her coming there was no fault of the person we were speaking of. He was far away across the ocean, and could know nothing of it.
“I have risen from my cot, and seated on the floor, I scrawl this, by the dim night-lamp upon the wall. She may be asleep; I dare not speak to her again; I have nothing more to learn, nothing to hope for.
“It is morning, I have folded my letter, and send it after you, black with shadows. If my fate is life, you and I shall never meet again on this earth. I am a poor, weak woman, but not poor enough, even in this place, to wait for a man who married me out of compassion for the great love I bore him.
“Oh! how I did love you, my husband, how I do love you this miserable minute—forgive me! forgive me! I shall never say this to you again; but every pulse beats with love for you—but you! It was only pity. At sunset last night I was ill, and afraid to die. The day has broken, and I am praying God in mercy to let me die. You never loved me! miserable thought. If God grants my prayer, look for the record! It will be Mary Barton, died so and so. The name will pass unnoticed by every one else. You will understand that it is your poor wife who died here all alone. Then you will pity her, and perhaps love her memory a little. Let me sign your name? It will be the first and last time.
Louisa De Marke.”
Louisa De Marke.”
Louisa De Marke.”
Louisa De Marke.”
When George De Marke finished reading this letter, Louis dropped the hand from over his forehead, and parted his lips as if to speak; but the pallid agony of his brother’s face checked him; and they, who had met so eagerly, sat together minute after minute in dumb silence. At length Louis spoke.
“It was a terrible mistake, but one which no human foresight could have prevented,” he said. “Poor girl! if she is ever found—but this seems almost hopeless. I have omitted nothing in my search for her.”
George made a strong effort to throw off the pain this glimpse of his wife’s death-bed had brought upon him, and strove to enter into his brother’s anxiety.
“Have you no trace of her?” he questioned.
“None; an old man who walked about the grounds saw her on the day of her discharge, sitting on a wharf, close by the walls of the hospital.”
“With her child?”
“She took no child with her, he said, but sat in that one spot till night. From that time I have lost all trace of her.”
“Have you ever questioned Mrs. Judson?”
“I did; telling her all the facts, and claiming my wife at her hands.”
“Well?”
“At first, she refused to answer me; but when I told her of our marriage, she admitted everything, but persisted in stating that Louisa died in the hospital and was buried from her house, the servants believing that she had been brought home from a Catholic school. She was very anxious that I should keep my marriage and the manner of my wife’s death a secret; and up to this time I have done so.”
“May not this possibly be true?” inquired George De Marke, with sudden animation.
“No; I have searched the wards and traced all the facts. It is useless to guess what Mrs. Judson’s motives for concealment are; but it was Catharine Lacy who was taken from the hospital after her death, by an undertaker, and carried in the night to Mrs. Judson’s house, from which there was a pompous funeral the next day. The undertaker showed me his certificate for burial, but said that he had never seen the lady, as all the bills were paid by one of the nurses at the hospital.”
“Did you find this nurse?”
“No; she left the hospital about that time, and I could get no intelligence regarding her.”
“Did you question Mrs. Judson about her niece, my wife?” inquired George, still disturbed by a vague hope.
“Yes; but she denied all knowledge of her whatever.”
“It is a sad mystery,” sighed George, falling into deeper dejection from that one gleam of hope. “The fate of my poor wife seems to be certain, and it is impossible that yours could have been living without leaving some sure trace of her existence. She probably never came away from the wharf where that old man saw the darkness gathering around her. Deep water is a terrible temptation to persons driven to despair, as she was.”
Louis De Marke arose and began to walk the room. George took his hat and went into the street. Neither of the young men had the heart for any further conversation that day.