CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH.
A LONG HALF-HOUR.
I dared not dally another moment. I must take my plunge at once into the icy-cold waters.
"I have something of importance to say to you, dear cousin," I began.
"So have I," she said, gayly; "a thousand things, as I told you this morning, sir, though you are so late in coming to hear them. See, I have been making a list of a few commissions for you to do in London. They are such as I can trust to you; but for plate, and glass, and china, I think we had better wait till we return from Switzerland. We are sure to come home through London."
Her eyes ran over a paper she was holding in her hand; while I stood opposite to her, not knowing what to do with myself, and feeling the guiltiest wretch alive.
"Cannot you find a seat?" she asked, after a short silence.
I sat down on the broad window-sill instead of on the chair close to hers. She looked up at that, and fixed her eyes upon me keenly. I had often quailed before Julia's gaze as a boy, but never as I did now.
"Well! what is it?" she asked, curtly. The incisiveness of her tone brought life into me, as a probe sometimes brings a patient out of stupor.
"Julia," I said, "are you quite sure you love me enough to be happy with me as my wife?"
She opened her eyes very widely, and arched her eyebrows at the question, laughed a little, and then drooped her head over the work in her hands.
"Think of it well, Julia," I urged.
"I know you well enough to be as happy as the day is long with you," she replied, the color rushing to her face. "I have no vocation for a single life, such as so many of the girls here have to make up their minds to. I should hate to have nothing to do and nobody to care for. Every night and morning I thank God that he has ordained another life for me. He knows how I love you, Martin."
"What was I to say to this? How was I to set my foot down to crush this blooming happiness of hers?
"You do not often look as if you loved me," I said at last.
"That is only my way," she answered. "I can't be soft and purring like many women. I don't care to be always kissing and hanging about anybody. But if you are afraid I don't love you enough—well! I will ask you what you think in ten years' time."
"What would you say if I told you I had once loved a girl better than I do you?" I asked.
"That's not true," she said, sharply. "I've known you all your life, and you could not hide such a thing from your mother and me. You are only laughing at me, Martin."
"Heaven knows I'm not laughing," I answered, solemnly; "it's no laughing matter. Julia, there is a girl I love better than you, even now."
The color and the smile faded out of her face, leaving it ashy pale. Her lips parted once or twice, but her voice failed her. Then she broke out into a short, hysterical laugh.
"You are talking nonsense, dear Martin!" she gasped; "you ought not! I am not very strong. Get me a glass of water."
I fetched a glass of water from the kitchen; for the servant, who had been at work, had gone home, and we were quite alone in the house. When I returned, her face was still working with nervous twitchings.
"Martin, you ought not!" she repeated, after she had swallowed some water. "Tell me it is a joke directly."
"I cannot," I replied, painfully and sorrowfully; "it is the truth, though I would almost rather face death than own it. I love you dearly, Julia; but I love another woman better. God help us both!"
There was dead silence in the room after those words. I could not hear Julia breathe or move, and I could not look at her. My eyes were turned toward the window and the islands across the sea, purple and hazy in the distance.
"Leave me!" she said, after a very long stillness; "go away, Martin."
"I cannot leave you alone," I exclaimed; "no, I will not, Julia. Let me tell you more; let me explain it all. You ought to know every thing now."
"Go away!" she repeated, in a slow, mechanical tone.
I hesitated still, seeing her white and trembling, with her eyes glassy and fixed. But she motioned me from her toward the door, and her pale lips parted again to reiterate her command.
How I crossed that room I do not know; but the moment after I had closed the door I heard the key turn in the lock. I dared not quit the house and leave her alone in such a state; and I longed ardently to hear the clocks chime five, and the sound of Johanna's wheels on the roughly-paved street. She could not be here yet for a full half-hour, for she had to go up to our house in the Grange Road and come back again. What if Julia should have fainted, or be dead!
That was one of the longest half-hours in my life. I stood at the street-door watching and waiting, and nodding to people who passed by, and who simpered at me in the most inane fashion.
"The fools!" I called them to myself. At length Johanna turned the corner, and her pony-carriage came rattling cheerfully over the large round stones. I ran to meet her.
"For Heaven's sake, go to Julia!" I cried. "I have told her."
"And what does she say?" asked Johanna.
"Not a word, not a syllable," I replied, "except to bid me go away. She has locked herself into the drawing-room."
"Then you had better go away altogether," she said, "and leave me to deal with her. Don't come in, and then I can say you are not here."
A friend of mine lived in the opposite house, and, though I knew he was not at home, I knocked at his door and asked permission to sit for a while in his parlor.
The windows looked into the street, and there I sat watching the doors of our new house, for Johanna and Julia to come out. No man likes to be ordered out of sight, as if he were a vagabond or a criminal, and I felt myself aggrieved and miserable.
At length the door opposite opened, and Julia appeared, her face completely hidden behind a veil. Johanna helped her into the low carriage, as if she had been an invalid, and paid her those minute trivial attentions which one woman showers upon another when she is in great grief. Then they drove off, and were soon out of my sight.
By this time our dinner-hour was near, and I knew my mother would be looking out for us both. I was thankful to find at the table a visitor, who had dropped in unexpectedly: one of my father's patients—a widow, with a high color, a loud voice, and boisterous spirits, who kept up a rattle of conversation with Dr. Dobrée. My mother glanced anxiously at me very often, but she could say little.
"Where is Julia?" she had inquired, as we sat down to dinner without her.
"Julia?" I said, quite absently; "oh! she is gone to the Vale, with Johanna Carey."
"Will she come back to-night?" asked my mother.
"Not to-night," I said, aloud; but to myself I added, "nor for many nights to come; never, most probably, while I am under this roof. We have been building our house upon the sand, and the floods have come, and the winds have blown, and the house has fallen; but my mother knows nothing of the catastrophe yet."
If it were possible to keep her ignorant of it! But that could not be. She read trouble in my face, as clearly as one sees a thunder-cloud in the sky, and she could not rest till she had fathomed it. After she and our guest had left us, my father lingered only a few minutes. He was not a man that cared for drinking much wine, with no companion but me, and he soon pushed the decanters from him.
"You are as dull as a beetle to-night, Martin," he said. "I think I will go and see how your mother and Mrs. Murray get along together."
He went his way, and I went mine—up into my own room, where I should be alone to think over things. It was a pleasant room, and had been mine from my boyhood. There were some ugly old pictures still hanging against the walls, which I could not find in my heart to take down. The model of a ship I had carved with my penknife, the sails of which had been made by Julia, occupied the top shelf over my books. The first pistol I had ever possessed lay on the same shelf. It was my own den, my nest, my sanctuary, my home within the home. I could not think of myself being quite at home anywhere else.
Of late I had been awakened in the night two or three times, and found my mother standing at my bedside, with her thin, transparent fingers shading the light from my eyes. When I remonstrated with her she had kissed me, smoothed the clothes about me, and promised meekly to go back to bed. Did she visit me every night? and would there come a time when she could not visit me?