Part 46 (2/2)
His plea was like the cry of a despairing soul, who realized, all too late, the fatal depths of the pit into which he had voluntarily plunged.
Isabel Stewart saw this, and pitied him, as she would have pitied any other human being who had become so lost to all honor and virtue; but his suggestion, his appeal that she would go back to him, live with him, a.s.sociate with him from day to day, was so repulsive to her that she could not quite repress her aversion, and a slight s.h.i.+ver ran over her frame, so chilling that all her color faded, even from her lips; and Gerald G.o.ddard, seeing it, realized the hopelessness of his desire even before she could command herself sufficiently to answer him.
”That would not be possible, Gerald,” she finally replied. ”Truth compels me to tell you plainly that whatever affection I may once have entertained for you has become an emotion of the past; it was killed outright when I believed myself a deserted outcast in Rome. I should do sinful violence to my own heart and nature if I should heed your request, and also become but a galling reproach to you, rather than a help.”
”Then you repudiate me utterly, in spite of the fact that the law yet binds us to each other? I am no more to you than any other human being?” groaned the humbled man.
”Only in the sense that through you I have keenly suffered,” she gravely returned.
”Then there is no hope for me,” he whispered, hoa.r.s.ely, as his head sank heavily upon his breast.
”You are mistaken, Gerald,” his companion responded, with sweet solemnity; ”there is every hope for you--the same hope and promise that our Master held out to the woman whom the Pharisees were about to stone to death when he interfered to save her. I presume to cast no revengeful 'stone' at you. I do not arrogantly condemn you. I simply say as he said, 'Go and sin no more.'”
”Oh, Isabel, have mercy! With you to aid me, I could climb to almost any height,” cried the broken-spirited man, throwing out his hands in despairing appeal.
”I am more merciful in my rejection of your proposal than I could possibly be in acceding to it,” she answered. ”You broke every moral tie and obligation that bound me to you when you left me and my child to amuse yourself with another. Legally, I suppose, I am still your wife, but I can never recognize the bond; henceforth, I can be nothing but a stranger to you, though I wish you no ill, and would not lift my hand against you in any way--”
”Do you mean by that that you would not even bring mortification or scandal upon me by seeking to publicly prove the legality of our marriage?” Mr. G.o.ddard interposed, in a tone of surprise.
”Yes, I mean just that. Since the certificate is in my possession, and I have the power to vindicate myself, in case any question regarding the matter arises in the future, I am content.”
”But I thought--I supposed--Will you not even use it to obtain a divorce from me?” stammered the man, who suddenly remembered a certain rumor regarding a distinguished gentleman's devotion to the beautiful Mrs. Stewart.
”No; death alone can break the tie that binds me to you,” she returned, her lovely lips contracting slightly with pain.
”What! Have you no wish to be free?” he questioned, regarding her with astonishment.
”Yes, I would be very glad to feel that no fetters bound me,” she answered, with clouded eyes; ”but I vowed to be true as long as life should last, and I will never break my word.”
”True!” repeated her companion, bitterly.
A flush of indignation mounted to the beautiful woman's brow at the reproach implied in his word and tone.
But she controlled the impulse to make an equally scathing retort, and remarked, with a quiet irony that was tenfold more effective.
”Well, if that word offends you, I will qualify it so far as to say that, at least, I have never dishonored my marriage vows; I never will dishonor them.”
Gerald G.o.ddard threw out his hands with a gesture of torture, and for a moment he became deathly white, showing how keenly his companion's arrow had pierced his conscience.
There was a painful silence of several moments, and then he inquired, in constrained tones:
”What, then, is my duty? What relations must I henceforth sustain toward--Anna?”
”I cannot be conscience for you, Gerald,” said Isabel Stewart, coldly; ”at least, I could offer no suggestion regarding such a matter as that. I can only live out my own life as my heart and judgment of what is right and wrong approve; but if you have no scruples on that score--if you desire to inst.i.tute proceedings for a divorce, in order to repair, as far as may be, the wrong you have also done Anna Correlli--I shall lay no obstacle in your way.”
She arose as she ceased speaking, thus intimating that she desired the interview to terminate.
”And that is all you have to say to me? Oh, Isabel!” Gerald G.o.ddard gasped, and realizing how regally beautiful she had become, how infinitely superior, physically and morally, spiritually and intellectually, she was to the woman for whose sake he had trampled her in the dust. And the fact was forced upon him that she was one to be wors.h.i.+ped for her sweet graciousness and purity of character--to be reverenced for her innate n.o.bility and stanch adherence to principle, and to be exultantly proud of, could he have had the right to be--as a queen among women.
”That is all,” she replied, with slow thoughtfulness, ”unless, as a woman who is deeply interested in the moral advancement of humanity in general, I urge you once more to make your future better than your past has been, that thus the world may be benefited, in ever so slight a measure, because you have lived. As for you and me, our ways part here, never to cross again, I trust; for, while I have ceased to grieve over the blighted hopes of my youth, it would be painful to be reminded of my early mistakes.”
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