The Span o' Life: A Tale of Louisbourg & Quebec. William McLennan
ungenerous colour and shape of her stuff gown that hid the dainty figure I had known, and only some different manner of dressing her hair that prevented the old trick of the little curls that would come out about her ears and forehead.
While she was away I thought it all out, and my heart melted with pity for the poor soul, forced to these years of loneliness, to this daily struggle for the support of herself and her child—our child—and, more than all else, to the torturing thought that the love which had been the sum of her existence was false. What should I do? Could I be in doubt for a moment? I would make up to her, by the devotion of a heart rich in feeling, all the sorrows of the past.
Here she entered again, but now collected and herself as at first. I rose and advanced to meet her, but she waved me off, and took up her sewing again in her former position.
“Lucy,” I said, standing over her, “does not the voice of our child—for I cannot doubt it is our child—plead for me? Listen a moment. When I returned from that ill-starred Russian voyage, I flew at once to join you. You had been in my heart during all my absence, and my return home was to be crowned with your love. But, to my consternation, I found strangers occupying the old rooms, and the woman told me with every circumstance of harrowing detail the story of your death by typhus, and that your mother followed you to the grave scarce a day later. Heartbroken as I was, I never sought for further confirmation than the nameless graves she pointed out to me by your parish church. She told me, too, your effects were burned by order of the overseers, and I took it for granted she had stolen anything of value that might have been left. When I found at my banker's that a lieutenancy in Berwick's was awaiting my application, I only too eagerly seized the opportunity of escaping from a country where I should be constantly reminded of my ruined past, and since that day I have never set foot in London till the present. Oh, Lucy! Lucy! I see it all now. The birth of our child was approaching. You, poor soul, were an unacknowledged wife; I was wandering, a shipwrecked stranger beyond all means of communication, and you fled from the finger of shame that cruel hands would hare pointed at you. Why that hag should have gone to such lengths to deceive me I cannot even guess. But now, my dear love, my dearest wife, it is at an end! I have a position—at least I am a captain, with fair chance of promotion—I no longer have a family to consider, and once I get out of this present trap I will acknowledge you before the whole world, and we will wipe out the cruel past as if it had never existed.”
“I have no past,” she said, quietly.
“Then, Lucy darling, as truly as I am your husband I will make you a future.”
“I have no husband,” she answered, in the same quiet tone: “my husband died the day my boy was born.”
“But, Lucy, my wife, you have love?”
“Not such love as you mean. My love, such as it is here, is for my boy. All else is for something beyond.”
“But, Lucy, have you nothing left for me? Surely you do not doubt my word?”
“No,” she answered, slowly. “You have never deceived me that I know of. Until to-night I believed you had left me, but I know now, it is I who have left you. There never can be anything between us.”
“Why, Lucy? Tell me why! Do not sit there holding yourself as if you were apart from me and mine.”
“You have just said the very words which explain it all,” she answered. “I am indeed 'apart from you and yours.' Your explanation now makes clear why you did not seek me out on your return, and I accept it fully. But think you for a moment that this wipes out all I have suffered through these years? Can you explain away, by any other statement, save that I was 'apart from you and yours.' the cruel wrong you did when you left me, a helpless girl without experience, in a position where I was utterly defenceless against evil tongues in the hour of my trial; so that what should have been my glory was turned into a load of disgrace which crushed me and killed my mother? To say you intended to return is no answer, no defence. You knew all about a world of which I was ignorant, and you should have shielded me by your knowledge.
“Do not think I am unhuman, I am simply unfeeling on the side to which you would appeal. I have lived too long alone, I have suffered too much alone, to look to any human creature for such help or such comfort as you would bring. I know you were honest, I know you were loving and tender, but that has all passed for me. You do not come into my life at any point; I can look on you without a throb of my heart either in love or in hate—”
“But, Lucy, I am not changed. I am the same Hugh Maxwell you knew.”
“You are Hugh Maxwell—but there is no question of likeness, of being the same, for there is no Lucy. She is as really dead to you to-day as you thought when you mourned her six years ago. The 'Mistress Routh' who speaks now is a widow, by God's grace a member of the Society of Methodists, and you need never seek through her to find any trace of the girl you knew. She is dead, dead, dead, and may the Lord have mercy on her soul!”
It was like standing before a closed grave.
Against this all my prayers, my tears, my entreaties, availed nothing, until at last I ceased in very despair at the firmness of this unmovable woman, whom I had left a pretty, wilful, changeable girl a few years before.
The candle had long since burned itself out, and the gray of the morning was beginning to struggle in at every opening when I gave up the contest.
“Mistress Routh,” said I, smiling at the odd address, “I have been overlong in coming to my business. I am a proscribed rebel with a price set on my head, and I seek a new lodging, my old one being unsafe. I was directed here almost by chance. Can you give me such room as you can spare? There is but little or no danger in harbouring me, for I am reported to be in Scotland with the Prince, 'the Young Pretender,' if you like it so. I will be as circumspect in my movements as possible. Above all, I will never shew by word or sign that I knew you before, even when we are alone, nor will I betray your secret to our boy. You are free to refuse me, and should you do so, I will seek shelter elsewhere; but whether I go or stay, I give you my word of honour as a gentleman that your secret rests where it lies in my heart until such time as you see fit to proclaim it yourself. Will you, then, consent to let me have a room under your roof until such time as I can get over to France?”
After a little she said: “Yes; I can take your word. But remember, from this night you are a stranger to me. You will pay as a stranger, and come and go as a stranger.”
And so this unnatural treaty was ratified. My hostess made such preparation for my comfort as I would allow, and when alone I sate on my couch trying to put my thoughts in order.
It was only then that Margaret came back to me. During my long struggle with my poor wife no thought of another had entered my mind, my whole endeavour being directed towards making such amends for the cruelties of an undeserved fate as were possible; but now, when alone, the realisation of what it meant in my relation towards Margaret overwhelmed me. All unwittingly I had been playing the part of a low scoundrel towards the fairest, purest soul in the whole world; I had been living in a Fool's Paradise, drinking the sweetest draught that ever intoxicated a human soul, and now, without an instant's warning, the cup was dashed from my lips.
Poor Margaret! Poor Lucy! Poor Hugh! My heart was aching for them all.
CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH I MAKE ACQUAINTANCE WITH ONE NEAR TO ME
I stretched myself out at length, with my cloak over me, and dozed uneasily until awakened by a soft knocking at the door, which was slowly pushed open, and a brown head made its appearance in the room.
“Come in!” I cried, and there entered to me as handsome a boy of six as ever delighted a man's eyes.
I would have given the world to take him to my heart, but I was on parole. So we stared at each other, and I can only hope he was as well satisfied with his inspection