CHAPTER I. HER STORY.
CHAPTER II. HIS STORY.
CHAPTER III. HER STORY.
CHAPTER IV. HIS STORY.
CHAPTER V. HER STORY.
CHAPTER VI. HIS STORY.
CHAPTER VII. HER STORY.
CHAPTER VIII. HIS STORY.
CHAPTER IX. HER STORY.
CHAPTER X. HIS STORY.
CHAPTER XI. HIS STORY.
CHAPTER XII. HER STORY.
Many, many weeks, months indeed have gone by since I opened this my journal. Can I bear the sight of it even now? Yes; I think I can.
I have been sitting ever so long at the open window, in my old attitude, elbow on the sill; only with a difference that seems to come natural now, when no one is by. It is such a comfort to sit with my lips on my ring. I asked him to give me a ring, and he did so. Oh! Max, Max, Max!
Great and miserable changes have befallen us, and now Max and I are not going to be married. Penelope’s marriage also has been temporarily postponed, for the same reason, though I implored her not to tell it to Francis, unless he should make very particular inquiries, or be exceedingly angry at the delay. He was not. Nor did we judge it well to inform Lisabel. Therefore, papa, Penelope, and I, keep our own secret.
Now that it is over, the agony of it smothered up, and all at Rockmount goes on as heretofore, I sometimes wonder, do strangers, or intimates, Mrs. Granton for instance, suspect anything? Or is ours, awful as it seems, no special and peculiar lot? Many another family may have its own lamentable secret, the burthen of which each member has to bear, and carry in society a cheerful countenance, even as this of mine.
Mrs. Granton said yesterday, mine was “a cheerful countenance.” If so, I am glad. Two things only could really have broken my heart—his ceasing to love me, and his changing so in himself, not in his circumstances, that I could no longer worthily love him. By “him,” I mean, of course Max. Max Urquhart, my betrothed husband, whom henceforward I can never regard in any other light.
How blue the hills are, how bright the moors! So they ought to be, for it is near midsummer. By this day fortnight—Penelope’s marriage-day—we shall have plenty of roses. All the better; I would not like it to be a dull wedding, though so quiet; only the Trehernes and Mrs. Granton as guests, and me for the solitary bridesmaid.
“Your last appearance I hope, Dora, in that capacity,” laughed the dear old lady. “‘Thrice a bridesmaid, ne’er a bride,’ which couldn’t be thought of, you know. No need to speak—I guess why your wedding isn’t talked about yet.—The old story, man’s pride, and woman’s patience. Never mind. Nobody knows anything but me, and I shall keep a quiet tongue in the matter. Least said is soonest mended. All will come right soon, when the Doctor is a little better off in the world.”
I let her suppose so. It is of little moment what she or anybody thinks, so that it is nothing ill of him.
“Thrice a bridesmaid, never a bride.” Even so. Yet, would I change lots with our bride Penelope, or any other bride? No.
Now that my mind has settled to its usual level; has had time to view things calmly, to satisfy itself that nothing could have been done different from what has been done; I may, at last, be able to detail these events. For both Max’s sake and my own, it seems best to do it, unless I could make up my mind to destroy my whole journal. An unfinished record is worse than none. During our lifetimes we shall both preserve our secret; but many a chance brings dark things to light; and I have my Max’s honour to guard, as well as my own.
This afternoon, papa being out driving, and Penelope gone to town to seek for a maid, whom the Governor’s lady will require to take out with her—they sail a month hence—I shall seize the opportunity to write down what has befallen Max and me.
My own poor Max! But my lips are on his ring; this hand is as safely kept for him as when he first held it in his breast.
Let me turn back a page, and see where it was I left off writing my journal.
I did so; and it was more than I could bear at the time. I have had to take another day for this relation, and even now it is bitter enough to recall the feelings with which I put my pen by, so long ago, waiting for Max to come in “at any minute.”
I waited ten days; not unhappily, though the last two were somewhat anxious, but it was simply lest anything might have gone wrong with him or his affairs. As for his neglecting or “treating me ill,” as Penelope suggested, such a thought never entered my head. How could he treat me ill?—he loved me.
The tenth day, which was the end of the term he had named for his journey, I of course fully expected him.’ I knew if by any human power it could be managed, I should see him; he never would break his word. I rested on his love as surely as in waking from that long sick swoon I had rested on his breast. I knew he would be tender over me, and not let me suffer one more hour’s suspense or pain that he could possibly avoid.
It may here seem strange that I had never asked Max where he was going, nor anything of the business he was going upon. Well, that was his secret, the last secret that was ever to be between us; so I chose not to interfere with it, but to wait his time. Also, I did not fret much about it, whatever it was. He loved me. People who have been hungry for love, and never had it all their lives, can understand the utterly satisfied contentment of this one feeling—Max loved me.
At dusk, after staying in all day, I went out, partly because Penelope wished it, and partly for health’s sake. I never lost a chance of getting strong now. My sister and I walked along silently, each thinking of her own affairs, when, at a turn in the road which led, not from the camp, but from the moorlands, she cried out, “I do believe there is Doctor Urquhart.”
If he had not heard his name, I think he would have passed us without knowing us. And the face that met mine, when he looked up—I never shall forget it to my dying day.
It made me shrink back for a minute, and then I said:—
“Oh! Max, have you been ill?”
“I do not know. Yes—possibly.”
“When did you come back?”
“I forget—oh! four days ago.”
“Were you coming to Rockmount?”
“Rockmount?—oh! no.” He shuddered, and dropped my hand.
“Doctor Urquhart seems in a very uncertain frame of mind,” said Penelope, severely, from the other side the road. “We had better leave him. Come, Dora.”
She carried me off, almost forcibly. She was exceedingly displeased. Four days, and never to have come or written! She said it was slighting me and insulting the family.
“A man, too, of whose antecedents and connections we knew nothing. He may be a mere adventurer—a penniless Scotch adventurer; Francis always said he was.”
“Francis is—” But I could not stay to speak of him, or to reply to Penelope’s bitter words. All I thought was how to get back to Max, and entreat him to tell me what had happened. He would tell me. He loved me. So, without any feeling of “proper pride,” as Penelope called it, I writhed myself out of her grasp, ran hack to Doctor Urquhart, and took possession of his arm, my arm, which I had a right to.
“Is that you, Theodora?”
“Yes, it is I.” And then I said, I wanted him to go home with me, and tell me what had happened.
“Better not; better go home with your sister.”
“I had rather stay here. I mean to stay here.”
He stopped, took both my hands, and forced a smile:—“You are the determined little lady you always were; but you do not know what you are saying. You had better go and leave me.”
I was sure then some great misery was approaching us. I tried to read it in his face. “Do you—” did he still love me; I was about to ask, but there was no need. So my answer, too, was brief and plain.
“I never will leave you as long as I live.”
Then I ran back to Penelope, and told her I should walk home with Doctor Urquhart; he had something to say to me. She tried anger and authority. Both failed. If we had been summer lovers it might have been different, but now in his trouble I seemed to feel Max’s right to me and my love, as I had never done before. Penelope might have lectured for everlasting, and I should only have listened, and then gone back to Max’s side. As I did.
His arm pressed mine close; he did not say a second time, “Leave me.”
“Now, Max, I want to hear.”
No answer.
“You know there is something, and we shall never be quite happy till it is told. Say it outright; whatever it is, I shall not mind.”
No answer.
“Is it something very terrible?”
“Yes.”
“Something that might come between and part us?”
“Yes.”
I trembled, though not much, having so strong a belief in the impossibility of parting. Yet there must have been an expression I hardly intended in the cry “Oh, Max, tell me,” for he again stopped suddenly, and seemed to forget himself in looking at and thinking of me.
“Stay, Theodora,—you have something to tell me first. Are you better? Have you been growing stronger daily? You are sure?”
“Quite sure. Now—tell me.”
He tried to speak once or twice, vainly. At last he said:—
“I—I wrote you a letter.”
“I never got it.”
“No; I did not mean you should until my death. But my mind has changed. You shall have it now. I have carried it about with me, on the chance of meeting you, these four days. I wanted to give it to you—and—to look at you. Oh, my child, my child.”
After a little while, he gave me the letter, begging me not to open it till I was alone at night.
“And if it should shock you—break your heart?”
“Nothing will break my heart.”
“You are right, it is too pure and good. God will not suffer it to be broken. Now, good-bye.”
For we had reached the gate of Bock-mount. It had never struck me before that I had to bid him adieu here, that he did not mean to go in with me to dinner; and when he refused, I felt it very much. His only answer was, for the second time, “that I did not know what I was saying.”
It was now nearly dark, and so misty that I could hardly breathe. Doctor Urquhart insisted on my going in immediately, tied my veil close under my chin, and then hastily untied it.
“Love, do you love me?”
He has told me afterwards, he forgot then for the time being, every circumstance that was likely to part us; everything in the whole world but me. And I trust I was not the only one who felt that it is those alone who? loving as we did, are everything to one another who have most strength to part.
When I came indoors, the first person I met was papa, looking quite bright and pleased; and his first question was:—
“Where is Doctor Urquhart? Penelope said Doctor Urquhart was coming here.”
I hardly know what was done during that evening, or whether they blamed Max or not.
All my care was how best to keep his secret, and literally to obey him concerning it.
Of course, I never named his letter, nor made any attempt to read it till I had bidden good night to them all, and smiled at Penelope’s grumbling over my long candles and my large fire, “as if I meant to sit up all night.” Yes, I had taken all these precautions in a quiet, solemn kind of way, for I did not know what was before me, and I must not fall ill if I could help. I was Max’s own personal property.
How cross she was that night, poor Penelope! It was the last time she has ever scolded me.
For some things, Penelope has felt this more than anyone could, except papa, for she is the only one of us who has a clear recollection of Harry.
Now, his name is written, and I can tell it—the awful secret I learned from Max’s letter, which no one except me must ever read.
My Max killed Harry. Not intentionally—when he was out of himself and hardly accountable for what he did; in a passion of boyish fury, roused by great cruelty and wrong; but—he killed him. My brother’s death, which we believed to be accidental, was by Max’s hand.
I write this down calmly, now; but it was awful at the time. I think I must have read on mechanically, expecting something sad, and about Harry likewise; I soon guessed that bad man at Salisbury must have been poor Harry—but I never guessed anything near the truth till I came to the words “I murdered him.”
To suppose one feels a great blow acutely at the instant is a mistake—it stuns rather than wounds. Especially when it comes in a letter, read in quiet and alone, as I read Max’s letter that night. And—as I remember afterwards seeing in some book, and thinking how true it was—it is strange how soon a great misery grows familiar. Waking up from the first few minutes of total bewilderment, I seemed to have been aware all these twenty years that my Max killed Harry.
O Harry, my brother, whom I never knew—no more than any stranger in the street, and the faint memory of whom was mixed with an indefinite something of wickedness, anguish, and disgrace to us all, if I felt not as I ought, then or afterwards, forgive me. If, though your sister, I thought less of you dead than of my living Max—my poor, poor Max, who had borne this awful burthen for twenty years—Harry, forgive me!
Well, I knew it—as an absolute fact and certainty—though as one often feels with great personal misfortunes, at first I could not realize it. Gradually I became fully conscious what an overwhelming horror it was, and what a fearful retributive justice had fallen upon papa and us all.
For there were some things I had not myself known till this spring, when Penelope, in the fullness of her heart at leaving us, talked to me a good deal of old childish days, and especially about Harry.
He was a spoiled child. His father never said him nay in anything—never, from the time when he sat at table, in his own ornamental chair, and drank champagne out of his own particular glass, lisping toasts that were the great amusement of everybody. He never knew what contradiction was, till, at nineteen, he fell in love, and wanted to get married, and would have succeeded, for they eloped, (as I believe papa and Harry’s mother had done), but papa prevented them in time. The girl, some village lass, but she might have had a heart nevertheless, broke it, and died. Then Harry went all wrong.
Penelope remembers, how, at times, a shabby, dissipated man used to meet us children out walking, and kiss us and the nurserymaids all round, saying he was our brother Harry. Also, how he used to lie in wait for papa coming out of church, follow him into his library, where, after fearful scenes of quarrelling, Harry would go away jauntily, laughing to us, and bowing to mamma, who always showed him out and shut the door upon him with a face as white as a sheet.
My sister also remembers papa’s being suddenly called away from home for a day or two, and, on his return, our being all put into mourning, and told that it was for brother Harry, whom we must never speak of any more. And once, when she was saying her geography lesson, and wanted to go and ask papa some questions about Stonehenge and Salisbury, mamma stopped her, saying she must take care never to mention these places to papa, for that poor Harry—she called him so now—had died miserably by an accident, and been buried at Salisbury.
She died the same year, and soon afterwards we came to Rockmount, living handsomely upon grandfather’s money, and proud that we had already begun to call ourselves Johnston. Oh, me, what wicked falsehoods poor Harry told about his “family.” Him we never again named; not one of our neighbours here ever knew that we had a brother.
The first shock over, hour after hour of that long night I sat, trying by any means to recall him to mind, my father’s son, my own flesh and blood—at least by the half-blood—to pity him, to feel as I ought concerning his death, and the one who caused it. But do as I would, my thoughts went back to Max—as they might have done, even had he not been my own Max—out of deep compassion for one who, not being a premeditated and hardened criminal, had suffered for twenty years the penalty of this single crime.
It was such, I knew. I did not attempt to palliate it, or justify him. Though poor Harry was worthless, and Max is—what he is—that did not alter the question. I believe, even then, I did not disguise from myself the truth—that my Max had committed, not a fault, but an actual crime. But I called him my Max still. It was the only word that saved me, or I might, as he feared, have “broken my heart.”
The whole history of that dreadful night, there is no need I should tell to any human being; even Max himself will never know it. God knows it, and that is enough. By my own strength, I never should have kept my life or reason till the morning.
But it was necessary, and it was better far that I should have gone through this anguish alone, guided by no outer influence, and sustained only by that Strength which always comes in seasons like these.
I seem, while stretched on the rack of those long night hours, to have been led by some supernatural instinct into the utmost depths of human and divine justice, human and divine love, in search of the right. At last I saw it, clung to it, and have found it my rock of hope ever since.
When the house below began to stir, I put out my candle, and stood watching the dawn creep over the grey moorlands, just as on the morning when we had sat up all night with my father—Max and I. How fond my father was of him—my poor, poor father!
The horrible conflict and confusion of mind came back. I felt as if right and wrong were inextricably mixed together, laying me under a sort of moral paralysis, out of which the only escape was madness. Then out of the deeps I cried unto Thee: O Thou whose infinite justice includes also infinite forgiveness; and Thou heardest me.
“When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive?”
I remembered these words: and unto Thee I trusted my Max’s soul.
It was daylight now, and the little birds began waking up, one by one, until they broke into a perfect chorus of chirping and singing. I thought, was ever grief like this of mine? Yes—one grief would have been worse—if, this sunny summer morning, I knew he had ceased to love me, and I to believe in him—if I had lost him—never either in this world or the next, to find him more.
After a little, I thought if I could only go to sleep, though but for half an hour—it would be well. So I undressed and laid myself down, with Max’s letter tight hidden in my hands.
Sleep came; but it ended in dreadful dreams, out of which I awoke, screaming, to see Penelope standing by my bedside, with my breakfast.
Now, I had already laid my plans—to tell my father all. For he must be told. No other alternative presented itself to me as possible—nor, I knew, would it to Max. When two people are thoroughly one, each guesses instinctively the other’s mind; in most things always in all great things, for one faith and love includes also one sense of right. I was as sure as I was of my existence that Max meant my father to be told. Not even to make me happy would he have deceived me—and not even that we might be married, would he consent that we should deceive my father.
Thus, that my father must be told, and that I must tell him, was a matter settled and clear—but I never considered about how far must be explained to anyone else, till I saw Penelope stand there with her familiar household face, half cross, half alarmed.
“Why, child, what on earth is the matter? Here are you, staring as if you were out of your senses—and there is Doctor Urquhart, who has been haunting the place like a ghost ever since daylight. I declare, I’ll send for him and give him a piece of my mind.”
“Don’t, don’t,” I gasped, and all the horror returned—vivid as daylight makes any new anguish. Penelope soothed me—with the motherliness that had come over since I was ill, and the gentleness that had grown up in her since she had been happy, and Francis loving. My miserable heart yearned to her, a woman like myself—a good woman, too, though I did not appreciate her once, when I was young and foolish, and had never known care, as she had. How it came out I cannot tell—I have never regretted it—nor did Max, for I think it saved my heart from breaking—but I then and there told my sister Penelope our dreadful story.
I see her still, sitting on the bed, listening with blanched face, gazing, not at me, but at the opposite wall. She made no outcry of grief, or horror against Max. She took all in a subdued, quiet way, which I had not expected would have been Penelope’s passion of bearing a great grief. She hardly said anything, till I cried with a bitter cry:—
“Now I want Max. Let me rise and go down, for I must see Max.”
Then we two women looked at one another pitifully, and my sister, my happy sister who was to be married in a fortnight, took me in her arms, sobbing,
“Oh, Dora, my poor, poor child.”
All this seems years upon years ago, and I can relate it calmly enough, till I call to mind that sob of Penelope’s.
Well, what happened next? I remember, Penelope came in when I was dressing, and told me, in her ordinary manner, that papa wished her to drive with him to the Cedars this morning. “Shall I go, Dora?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you will see him in our absence.”
“I intend so.”
She turned, then came back and kissed me. I suppose she thought this meeting between Max and me would be an eternal farewell. The carriage had scarcely driven off, when I received a message that Doctor Urquhart was in the parlour.
Harry—Harry, twenty years dead—my own brother killed by my husband! Let me acknowledge. Had I known this before he was my betrothed husband, chosen open-eyed, with all my judgment, my conscience, and my soul, loved, not merely because he loved me, but because I loved him, honoured him, and trusted him, so that even marriage could scarcely make us more entirely one than we were already—had I been aware of this before, I might not, indeed I think I never should have loved him. Nature would have instinctively prevented me. But now it was too late. I loved him, and I could not unlove him: Nature herself forbade the sacrifice. It would have been like tearing my heart out of my bosom; he was half myself—and maimed of him, I should never have been my right self afterwards. Nor would he. Two living lives to be blasted for one that was taken unwittingly twenty years ago! Could it—ought it so to be?
The rest of the world are free to be their own judges in the matter; but God and my conscience are mine.
I went downstairs steadfastly, with my mind all clear. Even to the last minute, with my hand on the parlor-door, my heart—where all throbs of happy love seemed to have been long, long forgotten—my still heart prayed.
Max was standing by the fire—he turned round. He, and the whole sunshiny room swam before my eyes for an instant,—then I called up my strength and touched him. He was trembling all over.
“Max, sit down.” He sat down.
I knelt by him. I clasped his hands close, but still he sat as if he had been a stone. At last he muttered:—
“I wanted to see you, just once more, to know how you bore it—to be sure I had not killed you also—oh, it is horrible, horrible!”
I said it was horrible—but that we would be able to bear it.
“We?”
“Yes—we.”
“You cannot mean that?”
“I do. I have thought it all over, and I do.” Holding me at arm’s length, his eyes questioned my inmost soul.
“Tell me the truth. It is not pity—not merely pity, Theodora?”
“Ah, no, no!”
Without another word—the first crisis was past—everything which made our misery a divided misery.—He opened his arms and took me once more into my own place—where alone I ever really rested, or wish to rest until I die.
Max had been very ill, he told me, for days, and now seemed both in body and mind as feeble as a child. For me, my childishness or girlishness, with its ignorance and weakness, was gone for evermore.
I have thought since, that in all women’s deepest loves, be they ever so full of reverence, there enters sometimes much of the motherly element, even as on this day I felt as if I were somehow or other in charge of Max, and a great deal older than he. I fetched a glass of water, and made him drink it—bathed his poor temples and wiped them with my handkerchief—persuaded him to lean back quietly and not speak another word for ever so long. But more than once, and while his head lay on my shoulder, I thought of his mother, my mother who might have been—and how, though she had left him so many years, she must, if she knew of all he had suffered, be glad to know there was at last one woman found who would, did Heaven permit, watch over him through life, with the double love of both wife and mother, and who, in any case, would be faithful to him till death.
Faithful till death. Yes,—I here renewed that vow, and had Harry himself come and stood before me, I should have done the same. Look you, any one who after my death may read this;—there are two kinds of love, one, eager only to get its desire, careless of all risks and costs, in defiance almost of Heaven and earth; the other, which in its most desperate longing has strength to say, “If it be right and for our good—if it be according to the will of God.” This only, I think, is the true and consecrated love, which therefore is able to be faithful till death.
Max and I never once spoke about whether or not we should be married—we left all that in Higher hands. We only felt we should always be true to one another—and that, being what we were, and loving as we did, God himself could not will that any human will or human justice should put us asunder.
This being clear, we set ourselves to meet what was before us. I told him poor Harry’s history, so far as I knew it myself; afterwards we began to consider how best the truth could be broken to my father.
And here let me confess something, which Max has long forgiven, but which I can yet hardly forgive myself. Max said, “And when your father is told, he shall decide what next is to be.”
“How do you mean?” I cried.
“If he requires atonement, he must have it, even at the hands of the law.”
Then, for the first time, it struck me that, though Max was safe so long as he made no confession, for the peculiar circumstances of Harry’s death left no other evidence against him, still, this confession once public (and it was, for had I not told Penelope?) his reputation, liberty, life itself, were in the hands of my sister and my father. A horror as of death fell upon me. I clung to him who was my all in this world, dearer to me than father, mother, brother, or sister; and I urged that we should both, then and there, fly—escape together anywhere, to the very ends of the earth, out of reach of justice and my father.
I must have been almost beside myself before I thought of such a thing. I hardly knew all it implied, until Max gravely put me from him.
“It cannot be you who says this. Not Theodora.”
And suddenly, as unconnected and even incongruous things will flash across one in times like these, I called to mind the scene in my favourite play, when, the alternative being life or honour, the woman says to her lover, “No, die!” Little I dreamed of ever having to say to my Max almost the same words.
I said them, kneeling by him, and imploring his pardon for having wished him to do such a thing even for his safety and my happiness.
“We could not have been happy, child,” he said, smoothing my hair, with a sad, fond smile. “You do not know what it is to have a secret weighing like lead upon your soul. Mine feels lighter now than it has done for years. Let us decide: what hour to-night shall I come here and tell your father?” Saying this, Max turned white to the very lips, but still he comforted me.
“Do not be afraid, my child. I am not afraid. Nothing can be worse than what has been—to me. I was a coward once, but then I was only a boy, hardly able to distinguish right from wrong. Now I see that it would have been better to have told the whole truth at once, and taken all the punishment. It might not have been death, or if it were, I could but have died.”
“Max, Max!”
“Hush!” and he closed my lips so that they could not moan. “The truth is better than life, better even than a good name. When your father knows the truth, all else will be clear. I shall abide by his decision, whatever it be; he has a right to it. Theodora,” his voice faltered, “make him understand, some day, that if I had married you, he never should have wanted a son,—your poor father.”
These were almost the last words Max said on this, the last hour that we were together by ourselves. For minutes and minutes he held me in his arms, silently; and I shut my eyes, and felt, as if in a dream, the sunshine and the flower-scents, and the loud singing of the two canaries in Penelope’s greenhouse. Then,-with one kiss, he put me down softly from my place, and left me alone.
I have been alone ever since; God only, knows how alone.
The rest I cannot tell to-day.
This is the last, probably, of those “letters never sent,” which may reach you one day; when or how, we know not. All that is, is best.