I HAD been asleep—this was a privilege which seemed to belong to my perfect health and vigor of frame—for even in the midst of my troubles I could sleep. I woke up suddenly in the grey and feeble daylight of the winter morning to remember, in a moment, everything that had occurred last night. My own great vexation and disappointment were far enough off now to bear a calmer contemplation, and I started up suddenly inspired with the growing purpose in my heart. I could not see how it was to be done, nor what my first step should be, but I felt, as if by an inspiration, that somehow, however hard it was, the wall of division between us must be broken down to-day.
I hastened my simple morning toilette, and went immediately down stairs. Breakfast was on the table—breakfast! how strange, in the midst of agitation and excitement like mine, seemed these common necessities of life. And there was the same chair standing in the same position as I had placed it for Edgar last night. Patience! but the recollection of the stranger in the house came over me like a cold shadow—what if he should come to interrupt us again?
I had Saville’s papers in my hand, and was putting them away in a drawer of the old carved cabinet which I had brought back to Cottiswoode from Cambridge, when I heard the door open and some one come in. Some one! I began to tremble so much that I scarcely could turn my head—but I knew it was my husband—that he was alone—and that the crisis had come. He came up to me at once, but with no apparent agitation to counterbalance mine. Scarcely knowing what I did, I took the letters again from the drawer, and stood waiting for him. Yes, he was a little excited—with curiosity at least, if nothing more—he looked keenly at me and at the papers which trembled in my hand—and I waited helplessly, unable to say a word, my heart fluttering to my lips. He could not help but see the extreme agitation which overpowered me.
“Hester,” he said slowly, his own voice faltering a little, “I heard you were seeking me yesterday in Cambridge.”
“Yes”—
“Yes?—had you anything to say?—I heard you were disturbed and anxious—I see you are troubled now—can I help you, Hester? It distressed me greatly to leave home-without letting you know—but when you hear the circumstances, I am sure you will pardon”—
“Edgar! never mind,” I cried, unable to bear his explanation, “don’t speak of that—don’t—oh, pray, don’t speak to me like this to-day!”
I put up my hand—I almost grasped his arm—but he—he only went to bring me a chair—to draw another for himself near me, and to take his place there with what seemed a painful but serious preparation for some renewal of our past contests. It was a significant action—we were to treat—to discuss—even to advise with each other, after a solemn and separate fashion; nothing violent or passionate was to come between us. But I, who had neither calmness nor moderation to bring to this interview, what was I to do? So many words came rushing to my lips that I could not find one reasonable enough and calm enough to say.
And glad to divert me from the personal subject, he took the initiative again. He looked at the papers in my hand—“Is it some business matter that troubles you, Hester—are these the cause of your distress?—will you show them to me?”
“By and bye,” I said, “after—afterwards—first I have something else to say. Edgar! I want to tell you that I have been wrong all this time since ever we were married. I want you to know that I feel I have been wrong—very, very, miserably wrong. I want you to know; I cannot tell how you feel now, nor what is to happen to us—but I have been wrong—I want you to know.”
A violent color came to his face, rising high to his very hair. He rose up from his seat and went away from me the whole length of the room, with hasty and agitated steps. As for me I rose also, and stood trembling and breathless, looking after him. I could say nothing more—my future was in his hands.
Then he came back trying to be calm and self-possessed. “Hester,” he said, “you told me the same when you came home, but I do not see any difference it has made. We are no better than we were.”
I was growing sick, sick to the very heart—but it was not in my nature to throw myself at his feet. “Yes,” I exclaimed, “but it is not my fault now—it is not my fault! Why do you leave everything to me?”
Once more he started, and made a desperate effort to be calm. He saw the crisis had come as well as I did, and like me had no moderation, no composure, to bring to it. He tried hard again to return to an indifferent subject, to put the passion and the earnestness away. “I will leave nothing to you, Hester, in which I can help you,” he said, with a voice which faltered in spite of himself; “Why do you agitate yourself and me with these vain discussions? you know very well that I shall thank you heartily for asking my assistance.”
“Yes,” I cried, “you thank me a great many times—you thank me always—you make everything bitter to me by your gratitude. Thanks, thanks! you should keep them for strangers. Why do you thank me?”
I had meant to humble myself—to the very dust if that was needful—and now in bitterness, feeling my repentance rejected, I was only falling into an angry despair instead,—but the two things were not so different after all. He was roused at least,—at last—out of all further possibility of self-control. He paced about the room, keeping himself down, keeping back the words from his lips. Then he paused for an instant before me. “I thank you because you are kind,” he said abruptly; “because—do you think I am so blind that I cannot see all the pains you take for me? I know very well the efforts you make—am I wrong to thank you for that?”
“Kind!” what a word! I echoed it sharply, with a positive cry of pain and injury. I was kind to him! It was come to that.
He turned upon me sharply, too; he also exclaimed with impatience. “What can I say?—what would you have me to say? Other standing-ground seems lost between us—how am I to speak to you? What do you want?”
I felt the air darkening round me as if I was about to faint; but, with a great effort, recovered myself. “I want to speak to you,” I said low and quick, with a feeling that it was not I that spoke, but only my voice. “I have not rested since you left home. I have been waiting for you, longing for you, ever since you went away. I have something to say to you, Edgar! No—Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry!” I cried, carried on far before my thoughts by a passion not to be repressed, “it is not a stranger I have come to. I want to consult my husband. I want you, Harry,—you whom I have lost so long!”
I know he did not come to me at once, for the darkness gathered close, and I threw out my arms to support myself in that terrible, blind, falling faintness. I do not know what he did, nor what he said, nor how long a time it was before I came to myself. When I came to myself I was seated in his chair, trembling and shaken as if by some great convulsion, with Harry at my side, chafing my hands and kneeling down to look into my face. Was it all a dream? had we never been married? never been parted? I could not tell. There was a ringing in my ears, and my eyes were dim—I saw nothing but him, close by me, and not even him distinctly, and what this new thing was, which had happened to us, I could not tell.
At this time I do not think I even knew that his heart was melted as well as mine; and whether our terrible life of separation was to end or to continue, I did not ask and could not tell. For myself, I sat quite still, trembling, exhausted, yet at ease, like one who has just passed the crisis of a fever; and even when he spoke, I scarcely knew what words he said.
I came to understand them at last—he was praising me in the quick revulsion of his generous heart—he had been hard to win, hard to move—he had shut himself up as obstinately as I did at first—and now that it was all over, he was giving me the praise.
The praise! but I was humbled to the depths of my heart—I did not even feel it a mockery—I went back to my old, natural humbleness, and gave him all the merit for seeing any good in me. I bent my head before him like a forgiven child. “Harry,” I said, “Harry! is it all over?” When he caught my look, wistful and beseeching as I know it was, Harry’s composure failed him as mine had done. He was as weak as I! as glad as I! as little able to receive it quietly—for it was all over!—all over! vanished like a dream.
“But you are right, Hester—I should not have left it to you—you have punished me nobly!” cried Harry, “had I done what you have done now, it might have been all over when you came home.”
“This is best,” I said, under my breath. I knew myself better than he did—I was glad of it all now—glad of everything—glad that I had been driven desperate, and compelled to put myself right at last. I kissed my husband’s hand humbly and thanked God. I had been very wrong—I had nearly cast away my own life—nearly ruined his—nearly thrown aside the best and holiest influences from my boy; but God had saved me again and again on the very edge of the stream, and now I was delivered for ever. Yes, I might fall into other follies, other sins; but at once and for ever I was delivered from the power of this.
But as I withdrew my hand from Harry’s I remembered Saville’s papers which were crushed together in my grasp; I started with an exclamation of pain when I saw them. Personal misfortune falling on her lover may do very well to awake into action the shy affections of a girl—but I could not bear to be supposed generous to my husband—I trembled lest he should think so; a violent heat and color came to my face—I shut my hand again with an instinct of concealment. Another time! another time would surely do—I dared not disturb our new-found happiness so soon.
But Harry saw my sudden confusion, pain, and embarrassment. He took my hand again half anxiously, half playfully. “What are these?—what were you going to consult me about—must I not be your adviser now, Hester?” he said with a smile. I put them away out of my hand upon the table with momentary terror. “Not now,” I said eagerly, “not now; I got them from your enemy, Saville, that man—do not look at them now.”
His face darkened, his brow knit—once more, once more! it was such a look as women love to see upon the faces of their husbands, but it made him for the moment like my father as I had once fancied him before. “So!” he said, “he has fulfilled his threat—the miserable rascal! he thought to involve my wife in it. Hester, is it because of these papers that you have come to me to-day?”
“Oh, no, no—do not think it!” I cried, anxiously. “I am not escaped long enough from my own delusions to have no fear of them; do not fancy it was any secondary motive—do not, Harry! I could not bear the life we were living; and whenever I really had to speak to you, all that was lying in my heart burst forth. It was so, indeed;—do not take up my sin where I leave it, Harry; do not suspect me—oh, we have had enough of that!”
The tears were shining in his kind eyes I could see—he looked as he used to look in the brief charmed days before our marriage;—no, better than that—for through sorrow, and bitterness, and estrangement—strange lessons!—I knew him now, as then I had no chance to know him. “Do not fear, Hester,” he said; “I am not afraid of your generosity. I told you long ago I could bear to be pitied—the only thing I could not bear was justice;—and so long as what you give me is not barely my ‘rights,’ I will permit you to be as generous as even your nature can be. Now, Hester, at last may I speak of that long ago—that day when I came to Cottiswoode? and of the brave girl who brought me here, and her bit of briony? Not yet?—do you say not yet?”
“Harry, there are graver matters first,” I said; “there is a plot against you—they want to say—he wants to say—that—that—you are only Brian Southcote’s heir—you are not his son. I suppose he thought it would give me pleasure;—he told me—it is horrible! that Cottiswoode would be mine. Harry! think, if this should be true, what a frightful punishment to me! I should never have believed it for a moment, had it not looked so just a penalty for all my sins against you. Tell me, Harry—say it is impossible that such a fatal mistake should be.”
The color rose upon my husband’s face, and he raised his head with an involuntary gesture of pride and defiance. It was a Southcote face! I could not be mistaken—all around were the portraits of our race, and I read them with a quick inspection as my anxious eye glanced from him for a moment. He was not like Edgar the Scholar now—my Harry could never have planned a demon’s revenge upon unborn children—he was not like any one of them perhaps—but in his face I saw, as in a glass, reflections, momentary glances, of all the pictured faces round us. And when I turned to gaze upon himself again, once more I was overwhelmed with that shadow of my father in his resolute expression. Oh, monstrous invention!—how could any one have found all these shadowy likenesses in the face of a stranger?
“Hester,” he said gravely, “when Saville came to me last winter with some vague threats of his power to prove me an impostor, I almost wished at first that I could have yielded to him, and so restored to you the rights you were born to. But a man must be very wretched and debased indeed, when he can make up his mind to deprive himself of his name. Do you remember that you forbade me telling you what he had come to say? I carefully went over then, both by myself and with my lawyer, the proofs which were thought conclusive at a former time. I found no reason to doubt them, Hester—there was neither break nor weakness in the chain. You look at me doubtfully, wistfully—what do you wish me to say?”
“That you are quite sure—quite sure,” I said, “I am speaking folly, I know—but that you remember your father—that you are sure you are my uncle Brian’s son.”
“That is easily done—I am quite sure,” he said with perfect calmness; “but now, Hester, let me know what the fiction is. What does the fellow call me? I do not think his imagination is very brilliant—let me see.”
He took the papers—smoothed them out, and read them—at first with interest, then, as I thought, with surprise and amazement. “What does it mean?” he exclaimed, at last, turning to me; “I suppose you have the interpretation, Hester. What is all this about my poor little brother?—what does it mean?”
I made no answer, but only looked closely at him. As he caught my eye, the color flushed to his face and he started up. “Do you mean to say that he tries to identify me with my mother’s eldest son?” he cried, with considerable excitement; “is this the story?—and her own letters—how are they pressed into the service?—is this what you have heard, Hester? Why do you not speak?—this is what you have heard!”
“Yes,” I said, under my breath, feeling something like a culprit under his eye.
And Harry began to stride about the room, in considerable excitement, muttering words which I am afraid were not very commendatory to Saville. “The rascal!—the villain!—and only to deceive her—only to make my wife a party against me?” he exclaimed, as he paced through the apartment—then gradually subduing himself he came back and resumed his place by my side.
“If it were not that the results of his scheming have blessed me beyond my hopes, I am afraid I should lack power to restrain myself,” he said, “and all the more because this invention could only have been to deceive you, Hester, for it could not stand a moment’s examination. I see what his abominable purpose was—to show to the world husband and wife contending with each other over this disputed inheritance. He must have trusted to your ignorance of the world—to your own truthful and open nature, which was beyond suspicion—and, good Heavens, Hester, think of it! to your hatred of me.”
To the very depths of my heart I was humiliated; it was a palpable fraud then, a trick, which could only have been tried upon a credulous fool, a woman, or a child. My last eminence sank beneath my feet; I had no longer even discrimination enough to judge between the false and the true.
“Harry,” I said faltering, “it may be only that I cannot bear you to think me so foolish: but I think indeed it might have deceived even a wiser person than I. I was prepared to think it a lie, but it looked very like truth, Harry; indeed it is difficult to consent to it that I have been so very easily deceived.”
“Ah, Hester, it all comes of our past circumstances,” said my husband, “you were deceived because you did not know my story; shall I tell it to you now?”
I said “yes,” eagerly—then my eye caught the forsaken breakfast table, the poor kettle subsided into noiseless quietness, all its cheerful boiling over. “But you have had no breakfast!” I exclaimed. How Harry laughed, how his face shone, and the tears came to his eyes! Strange that it was always some simplest word that moved him most. He threw the papers down, and caught me in his kind arms, and rejoiced over me. These common things put him in mind of what had happened to us, of the life that lay before us now, the union that began to-day.
And when I began to arrange the breakfast once more, to put the kettle on the fire, and ring for hot coffee, and arrange his neglected meal for him, he sat looking at me, not caring to do anything else, I thought—and it was strange what a pleasure I found in these housewifely matters. I believe when one comes to the very truth, when youth and its first romances are over, that there is no such pleasure for a woman as in these little domestic services, which are natural to her. How gladly and lightly I went about them! and my heart was full. I could not be content without the third little member of our family; I ran up-stairs and brought down in my arms our beautiful boy. I think we were happy enough at that moment to make up for a whole year’s trouble; and when Amy came into the room for baby, some time after, I saw her joyous, astonished glance from one to another, for Harry was dancing his son in his arms, and I was standing close by looking on, talking and clapping my hands to him. Amy did not like to be inquisitive or “unmannerly,” but in the simplicity of her heart she gave me such a wistful, questioning, delighted look when I put baby into her arms. Poor Amy! involuntarily I patted her stout shoulder with my hand as she went away, and I knew very well she went immediately to tell her tale of a new era to Alice—I saw it in her face.
And then Harry gathered up these scattered papers and drew my arm within his, and led me to the library. How strangely this room was connected with the principal events in my life! We went to the pretty recessed corner where my hours of girlish study used to be spent, and there my husband told me, for the first time, the story of his young life.
“I remember that I could once recollect my father, Hester,” he said; “but I think that is all. My mother I remember well enough; and I have the most perfect recollection of the stone in memory of Brian Southcote, to which she used to lead me; and the little grave close by, where I have seen her prostrate herself in passionate sorrow, and where my little brother, Harry Southern, lay. This little brother fills up a great part of my earliest memory. He was a blight and shadow upon my life, though I was full of vague, childish sympathy and admiration for him. He had died just before my mother’s second marriage, and when I was born I was named after him, and my mother’s greatest desire seemed to be to make me a sort of shadow of her best-beloved child. I recollect quite well her frequent exclamation: ‘Your father calls you Edgar, but you are Harry to me—always Harry to me—not my lost Harry, but, at least, his name—oh! I cannot give up his name.’ I suppose I was precocious, as lonely children are so often; and I do not think I was quite satisfied even then to be only the reflection of another. However, that time was followed by a dismal one of friendlessness and solitude. And then a sailor brother of the Savilles came by chance with his ship to Jamaica. My poor mother had been in regular correspondence with her cousin, Miss Saville, and the brother was commissioned to find me out. I came home to England with him. All that my father had left in Jamaica had got into very uncertain hands by that time; and, though the amount sounded well, it was, I am afraid, only a fabulous inheritance; and I was a very poor child, indeed, when our good Rector here, then a poor curate, took me in and gave me shelter. I owed everything to their kindness, Hester. They were humble people, and I had ‘no claim upon them,’ as people say; but they were angels of charity to me.
“A year or two after I came to England, the attorney brother came down from London to visit them. He was not then what he is now: he was unscrupulous, and not very respectable, perhaps, but he had a good deal of acuteness, and was prudent enough to restrain his evil appetites. In mere idleness, at first, he began investigating who I belonged to, as he called it. There had been a rumor in the family that my poor mother had made a great match; and Saville soon discovered what his simple relatives never could have discovered—who Brian Southcote was, and what his heir was entitled to. My father had been a man of foolish benevolence. He had taken no precautions for me; done nothing that he could help; so that it required no small research, and perseverance, and industry, to get proofs of my identity together. I always disliked the man, but I was indebted to him; and during the whole time of my minority he restricted my means greatly. Then, when I came of age, I pensioned him; but he has not been satisfied with this: he has gradually fallen in character and habits into the miserable reprobate, who is nothing but disgrace to his kind kindred who will not disown him. I have been obliged to resist his exactions again and again; and after he threatened me, of course my honor was concerned, and I could not permit myself to be bullied into further concessions. These letters, you see, are addressed to Miss Saville. Are you able to go to the Rectory with me, Hester, and hear her account of her cousin’s children? and we will see this man together. The facts are very simple, plausible as this fiction is; but Harry Southern was five or six years old before my father’s marriage: did not that occur to you, my timid wife?”
“Yes—yes,” I said eagerly; “a great many things occurred to me. I felt almost sure that the first of these letters referred to an older child than the others; but I had no clue—nothing to guide me; and the thought that it might be true was enough to make me miserable. I am quite able: I promised to let him know what I would do. Come, come; let us go at once, Harry.”
He smiled at my eagerness now; but went first to his desk, unlocked it, and a concealed drawer in it, and drew from thence a little bundle of papers. One was a certificate of his parents’ marriage, the other of the birth of Harry Edgar Southcote; and the others corroborative documents. I returned them to him hastily. I was almost offended. “Why do you offer me these?” I said, impatiently; “is your word not enough for me?” “You must consider what is enough for law and the world, Hester,” said my husband; “enough to secure to our boy an unblemished name—he is the principal person to be considered in this argument; though there is no fear of his inheritance between us, we must take care to establish his perfect right to be called Southcote. My family pride is all of your teaching—but I have caught it fully now. Shall you get ready, then? Ah, Hester, is all this nightmare that is past only a dream?”
“Only a dream, Harry, only a dream!” I cried, as we stood together hand in hand; so much a dream that I scarcely could suppose now how it had been with us yesterday—and when at last I left him to get my bonnet, I ran upstairs almost with a lighter foot than Flora’s; the cloud was gone—gone—absolutely gone; and instead of being sceptical of my own happiness, it was the misery now that I was sceptical of—I could scarcely believe it, scarcely understand how I could have defied and rejected all these blessings of Providence so long.
When I went into my room, Alice was there, looking excited, heated, full of anxiety and trouble. How hastily she tied the ribbons of baby’s cloak, and sent Amy away with him! How impatient she looked while I bent over him, and kissed the sweet face which brightened every day into more beautiful intelligence! Then she waited to know what I wanted, and when I told her what it was, she came behind me, arranging my cloak upon my shoulders with tremulous hands—and I caught a glimpse of her wistful agitated face looking at me in the glass, trying to read in my eyes what had happened to me. As she did this, I turned round upon her suddenly, and looked full in her face; she faltered, retired a little, and I saw was almost crying with extreme agitation and anxiety. I took both her hands and drew her very close to me.
“Alice, can you believe it?” said I; “God has cured me by great blessings, and not by great calamities, as you once feared He would. It is all over—it is all over, there will never be any more misery in this house. Have you been praying for it, Alice? Is it through you?”
“Oh, my darling, my precious child!” cried Alice, suddenly clasping me in her arms as if I had been a child indeed; “it’s through His mercy! I’d be glad to die now!”
“Hush, hush, hush! there would be little joy then,” said I, when I was able to draw myself from her arms, “we are all to be very happy now, Alice, like a fairy tale.”
“Like them that love God,” said Alice solemnly.
I bowed my head; these words overpowered me. Was it He who had guided me through all those dark and wilful ways? He who had filled me with the fruit of my own doings; given me my own will, till I knew what a miserable inheritance that was? He who had saved my baby; at whose feet I had prostrated myself, vowing to sacrifice the sin which I regarded in my heart? I bent my head into my hands and wept. I think every tear was a thanksgiving, for they relieved my heart.
That rectory lane! how dull it used to be—how full of beautiful life it was to-day. We did not look much as if we were going about a serious piece of business—we were so occupied and absorbed with ourselves—and it never once occurred to me what should be said to Saville till we were entering at the rectory gate. On the road my husband told me—a very strange coincidence too—that the stranger who accompanied him last night, and for whom he had left a message, had sought him out about the lost West Indian property, which still might be recovered. When we came at last to the rectory, I asked, “What will you say to Saville, Harry?” But there was no time to answer my question. Miss Saville met us in the hall—she looked disturbed, alarmed, anxious—she knew our visit must have some reference to my yesterday’s conference with her brother, and she was very anxious for him. I ran to her eagerly, took her hand, and kissed her. I was very little given to this species of affectionateness, and she was completely taken by surprise. “Mrs. Southcote, my dear, what is it?” she said, sinking down upon one of the stiff hall chairs, and doing what she could to keep herself from crying. “Hester never knew before how much I owed to you,” said Harry, coming to my help, for indeed I was nothing loth to cry too! “Come, dear friend, we want your kind assistance. Where is the Rector—and Richard—but, Miss Saville, let us first speak to you.”
She led the way into a little housekeeping parlor, which was her own special sanctuary, and there sat down trembling to hear what we had to say. Then Harry told her the entire story; she was grievously distressed. She could not bear to blame her brother, yet the way in which he had taken advantage of her, wounded her to the heart. “My letters!” she said faintly. “Dear boy, dear Harry, you don’t think I ever meant to do harm to you? He made me give him poor Maria’s letters to amuse him, he said—he’s got them all—can they do you any harm? can they? Tell me!—for he’s got them all.”
“They can do me no harm—they have done me the greatest good,” said Harry, “they have restored to me my wife; but I must see him in your presence, and have this matter set at rest. He must be mad to think of injuring me by such an expedient as this.”
“Hush! I sometimes think,” said Miss Saville, under her breath, “that it is telling on his mind—I do, indeed. He raves of nights; and whatever William and I can say, he won’t give up that dreadful drinking; he’ll kill himself, Harry dear—that’s what he’ll do—and such a man as he was once—oh! such a man as he might have been!”
And tears of love and anguish—love, most undeserved, most long-suffering—fell slowly and bitterly from this good woman’s eyes. I had scorned her once, but I felt very poor and mean beside her now.
When she had sufficiently composed herself, she took us into another room, and left us to bring her brothers. The Rector came immediately, the other refused. Miss Saville returned in great distress to say, that he would not come—that he refused to see us—that I had broken faith with him.
“We must go to him, then,” said my husband, steadily; “the Rector will give you his arm, Hester. Do not be nervous, Miss Saville—this must be settled—but he shall be spared, be sure. Come, lean upon me—my kind, old friend, can you not trust me?”
“Oh, yes, yes!” she said, but her distress was so great and evident, that I scarcely could bear it. We went in this solemn order—the Rector, in great perturbation, giving me his arm, but looking afraid of me, to the study. Saville was sitting smoking by the fire; he started up, and dashed his cigar to the ground as we entered: he turned fiercely round upon us like a wild beast at bay, and asked, with an oath, what was the meaning of this?—was he never to be left alone?
“Yes, in half-an-hour,” said my husba