Part 130 (1/2)
Aye. He did remember it. He took the poor hand into his, and unconsciously played with its wasted fingers.
”Have you any reproach to cast to me?” he gently said, bending his head a little.
”Reproach to you! To you, who must be almost without reproach in the sight of Heaven! You, who were everlasting to me--ever anxious for my welfare! When I think of what you were, and are, and how I quitted you, I could sink into the earth with remorse and shame. My own sin, I have surely expiated; I cannot expiate the shame I entailed upon you, and upon our children.”
Never. He felt it as keenly now as he had felt it then.
”Think what it has been for me!” she resumed, and he was obliged to bend his ear to catch her gradually weakening tones. ”To live in this house with your wife--to see your love for her--to watch the envied caresses that once were mine! I never loved you so pa.s.sionately as I have done since I lost you. Think what it was to watch William's decaying strength; to be alone with him in his dying hour, and not to be able to say he is my child as well as yours! When he lay dead, and the news went forth to the household, it was her petty grief you soothed, not mine, his mother's. G.o.d alone knows how I have lived through it all; it has been to me as the bitterness of death.”
”Why did you come back?” was the response of Mr. Carlyle.
”I have told you. I could not live, wanting you and my children.”
”It was wrong; wrong in all ways.”
”Wickedly wrong. You cannot think worse of it than I have done. But the consequences and the punishment would be mine alone, as long as I guarded against discovery. I never thought to stop here to die; but death seems to have come on me with a leap, like it came to my mother.”
A pause of labored hard breathing. Mr. Carlyle did not interrupt it.
”All wrong, all wrong,” she resumed; ”this interview with you, among the rest. And yet--I hardly know; it cannot hurt the new ties you have formed, for I am as one dead now to this world, hovering on the brink of the next. But you were my husband, Archibald; and, the last few days, I have longed for your forgiveness with a fevered longing. Oh! that the past could be blotted out! That I could wake up and find it but a hideous dream; that I were here as in old days, in health and happiness, your ever loving wife. Do you wish it, that the dark past had never had place?”
She put the question in a sharp, eager tone, gazing up to him with an anxious gaze, as though the answer must be one of life or death.
”For your sake I wish it.” Calm enough were the words spoken; and her eyes fell again, and a deep sigh came forth.
”I am going to William. But Lucy and Archibald will be left. Oh, do you never be unkind to them! I pray you, visit not their mother's sin upon their heads! Do not in your love for your later children, lose your love for them!”
”Have you seen anything in my conduct that could give rise to fears of this?” he returned, reproach mingled in his sad tone. ”The children are dear to me, as you once were.”
”As I once was. Aye, and as I might have been now.”
”Indeed you might,” he answered, with emotion. ”The fault was not mine.”
”Archibald, I am on the very threshold of the next world. Will you not bless me--will you not say a word of love to me before I pa.s.s it! Let what I am, I say, be blotted for the moment from your memory; think of me, if you can, as the innocent, timid child whom you made your wife.
Only a word of love. My heart is breaking for it.”
He leaned over her, he pushed aside the hair from her brow with his gentle hand, his tears dropping on her face. ”You nearly broke mine, when you left me, Isabel,” he whispered.
”May G.o.d bless you, and take you to His rest in Heaven! May He so deal with me, as I now fully and freely forgive you.”
What was he about to do? Lower and lower bent his head, until his breath nearly mingled with hers. To kiss her? He best knew. But, suddenly, his face grew red with a scarlet flush, and he lifted it again. Did the form of one, then in a felon's cell at Lynneborough, thrust itself before him, or that of his absent and unconscious wife?
”To His rest in Heaven,” she murmured, in the hollow tones of the departing. ”Yes, yes I know that G.o.d has forgiven me. Oh, what a struggle it has been! Nothing but bad feelings, rebellion, and sorrow, and repining, for a long while after I came back here, but Jesus prayed for me, and helped me, and you know how merciful He is to the weary and heavy-laden. We shall meet again, Archibald, and live together forever and ever. But for that great hope I could hardly die. William said mamma would be on the banks of the river, looking out for him; but it is William who is looking for me.”
Mr. Carlyle released one of his hands; she had taken them both; and with his own white handkerchief, wiped the death-dew from her forehead.
”It is no sin to antic.i.p.ate it, Archibald, for there will be no marrying or giving in marriage in Heaven: Christ said so. Though we do not know how it will be, my sin will be remembered no more there, and we shall be together with our children forever and forever. Keep a little corner in your heart for your poor lost Isabel.”