A REVERSAL
All this is to be sanctified,
This rupture with the past;
For thus we die before our deaths,
And so die well at last.
Faber.
Dinner-time came, and passed, and still Richard did not come. At eight o'clock Ann brought the tea, as usual, and it stood nearly an hour upon the table; and then I told her to take it away.
By this time I had begun to feel uneasy. Something must have happened. It would necessarily be something uncomfortable, perhaps something that would frighten me, and give me another shock. And I dreaded that so; I had had so many. But perhaps, dreadful though it might be, it would bring me a release. Perhaps Richard was only angry with me, and that might bring me a release.
At nine o'clock I heard a ring at the bell, and then his step in the hall. He was slower than usual in coming in; everything made me feel confused and apprehensive. When he opened the door and entered, I was trying to command myself, but I forgot all about myself when I saw him. His face was white, and he looked haggard and harassed, as if he had gone through a year of suffering since last night, when I left him with the lamp and cigar in the library.
I started up and put out my hand. "What is it, Richard? You are in some trouble."
He said no, and tried to speak in an ordinary tone, sitting down on the sofa by my chair.
I was confused and thrown back by this, and tried to talk as if nothing had been said.
"Will you have a cup of tea?" I asked; "Ann has just taken it away."
He said absently, yes, and I rang for Ann to bring the tea, and then went to the table to pour it out.
He sat with his face leaning on his hand on the arm of the sofa, and did not seem to notice me till I carried the cup to him, and offered it. Then he started, and looked up and took it, asking my pardon, and thanking me.
"Are you not going to have one yourself?" he said, half rising.
"No, I don't want any to-night. Tell me if yours is right."
"Yes, it is very nice," he said absently, drinking some. Then rising suddenly, he put the cup on the mantleshelf, and said to me, "Send Ann away, I want to talk to you."
I told Ann I would ring for her when I wanted her, and sat down by the lamp again, with many apprehensions.
"You asked me if anything had happened, Pauline, didn't you?" he said.
"No," I answered. "But I was sure that something had, from the way you looked when you came in."
"It is something that--that changes things very much for you, Pauline," he resumed, with an effort, "and makes all our arrangements unnecessary--that is, unless you choose."
I looked amazed and frightened, and he went on.
"I made a discovery last night in the library. The will is found, Pauline."
I started to my feet, with my hands pressed against my heart, waiting breathlessly for his next word.
"Everything is left to you--and I have come to tell you, you are free--if you desire to be."
"Oh, thank God! Thank God!" I cried; then covering my face with my hands, sank back into my seat, and burst into tears.
He turned from me and walked to the other end of the room; each of us lived much in that little time.
For myself, I had accepted my bondage so meekly, so dutifully, that I did not know the weight it had been upon me till it was suddenly taken off. I did not think of him--I could only think, there was no next Wednesday, and I could stay where I was. It was like the sudden cessation of dreadful and long-continued pain: it was Heaven. I was crying for joy. But at last the reaction came, and I had to think of him.
"Oh, Richard," I cried, going toward him, (he was sitting by the window, and his hand concealed his eyes.) "I don't know what you think of me, I hope you can forgive me."
He did not speak, and I felt a dreadful pang of self-reproach.
"Richard," I said, crying, and taking hold of his hand, "I am ashamed of myself for being glad. I will marry you yet, if you want me to. I know how good you have been to me. I know I am ungrateful and abominable."
Still he did not speak. His very lips were white, and his hand, when I touched it, did not meet mine or move.
"You are angry with me," I cried, bursting into a flood of tears. "Oh, how you ought to hate me. Oh, I wish we had never seen each other. I wish I had been dead before I brought you all this trouble. Richard, do look at me--do speak to me. Don't you believe that I am sorry? Don't you know I will do anything you want me to?"
He seemed to try to speak--moved a little, as a person in pain might do, but, bending his head a little lower on his hand, was silent still.
"Richard," I said, after several moments' silence, speaking thoughtfully--"it has all come to me at last. I begin to see what you have been to me always, and how badly I have treated you. But it must have been because I was very young, and did not think. I am sure my heart was not so bad, and I mean to be different now. You know I have not had any one to teach me. Will you let me try and make you happy?"
"No, Pauline," he said at last, speaking with effort. "It is all over now, and we will never talk of it again."
I was silent for many minutes--standing before him with irresolution. "If it was right for me to marry you before," I said at last, "Why is it not right now, if I mean to do my duty?"
"No, it is no longer right, if it ever was," he answered. "I will not take advantage of your sense of duty now, as I was going to take advantage of your necessity before. No, you are free, and it is all at an end."
"You are unjust to yourself. You were not taking advantage of my necessity. You were saving me, and I am ashamed of myself when I think of everything. Oh, Richard, where did you learn to be so good!"
A spasm of pain crossed his face, and he turned away from me.
"If you give me up," I said timidly, "who will take care of me?"
"There will be plenty now," he answered bitterly.
"There wasn't anybody yesterday."
"But there will be to-morrow. No, Pauline," he said, lifting his head and speaking in a firmer voice, "What I thought I was doing, till this showed me my heart, and how I had deceived myself, I will do now, even if it kills me. I thought I was acting for your good, and from a sense of duty: now that I know what is for your good, and what is my duty, I will go on in that, and nothing shall turn me from it, so help me Heaven."
"At least you will forgive me," I said, with tears, "for all the things that I have made you suffer."
"Yes," he said, with some emotion, "I shall forgive you sooner than I shall forgive myself. I cannot see that you have been to blame."
"Ah," I cried, hiding my face with shame, when I thought of all my selfishness and indifference, and the return I had made him for his devoted love. "I know how I have been to blame; and I am going to pay you for your goodness and care by breaking your heart for you--by upsetting all your plans. Oh, Richard! You had better let it all go on! Think how everybody knows about it!"
He shook his head. "I don't care a straw for that," he said. And I am sure he did not.
"No," he said firmly, getting up, and walking up and down the room; "it is all over, and we must make the best of it. I shall still have everything to do for you under the will; and while you mustn't expect me to see you often, just for the present time, at least, you know I shall do everything as faithfully as if nothing had occurred. You must write to me whenever you think my judgment or advice would do you any good. And I shall be always looking after things that you don't understand, and taking care of your interests, whether you hear from me or not. You'll always be sure of that, whatever may occur."
"Oh," I faltered, with a sudden frightened feeling of loneliness and loss, in the midst of my new freedom, "I can't feel as if it were all over."
"I don't know how this terrible mistake about the will occurred," he went on, without noticing what I said: "it was only a--mercy that I found it when I did. It was between the leaves of a book, an old volume of Tacitus; I took it down to look at the title for the inventory, and it fell out."
"That was the book he had in his hand when I saw him last, that night before he died."
"Yes? Then after you went up-stairs I suppose he was thinking of you, and he took out the will to read it over, and maybe left it out, meaning to lock it up again in the morning."
"And in the morning he was not well," I said, "and perhaps went away leaving it lying on the book; I remember, Ann said there were several papers lying on the table, when she arranged the room."
"No doubt," said Richard, "she shut it up in the book it laid on, and put it on the shelf. But it is all one how it came about. The will is all correct and duly executed. One of the witnesses was a clerk, who returned yesterday from South America, where he had been gone for several months. The other is lying ill at his home in Westchester, but I have sent to-day and had his deposition taken. It is all in order, and there can be no dispute."
I think at that moment I should have been glad if it had been found invalid. There was something so inevitable and final in Richard's plain and practical words.
Evidently a great change had come in my life, and I could not help it if I would. I could not but feel the separation from the person upon whom I had leaned so long, and who had done everything for me, and I knew this separation was to be a final one; Richard's words left no doubt of that.
"What you'd better do," he said, leaning by the mantelpiece, "is to tell the servants about this--this--change in your plans, to-morrow; unpack, and settle the house to stay here for the present. In the course of a couple of months it will be time enough to make up your mind about where you will live. I think, till the will is admitted and all that, you had better keep things as they are, and make no change."
He had been so used to thinking for* me, that he could not give it up at once. "I will tell Sophie to-morrow," he went on. "It will not be necessary for you to see her if she should come before she hears of it from me." (Sophie had an engagement with me to go out on the following morning. He seemed to to have forgotten nothing.)
"What will Sophie think of me?" I said, with my eyes on the floor. "Richard, it looks very bad for me; when I was poor, I was going to marry you, and now that I have money left me, I am going to break it off."
"What difference does it make how it looks," he said, "when you know you have done right? I will tell Sophie the truth, that it was my doing both times, and that you only yielded to my judgment in the matter. Besides, if she judges you harshly, it need not make much matter to you. You will never again be thrown intimately with her, I suppose."
"No, I suppose not," I said faintly. I was being turned out of my world very fast, and it was not very clear what I was going to get in exchange for it (except freedom).
"I will send you up money to-morrow morning," he went on, "to pay the servants, and all that. The clerk I shall send it by, is the one that I shall put in charge of your matters. You can always draw on him for money, or ask him any questions, or call on him for any service, in case I should be away, or ill, or anything."
"You are going away?" I said interrogatively.
"It is possible, for a while--I don't know. I haven't made up my mind definitely about what I am going to do. But in case I should be away, I mean, you are to call on him."
"I understand."
"Anything he tells you, about signing papers, and such things, you may be sure is all right."
"Yes."
"But don't do anything, without consulting me, for anybody else, remember."
"I'll remember," I said absently and humbly. It was no wonder Richard felt I needed somebody to take care of me!
"I believe there's nothing else I wanted to say to you," he said at last, moving from the mantelpiece where he had been standing; "at least, nothing that I can't write about, when it occurs to me."
"Oh, Richard!" I said, beginning to cry again, as I knew that the moment of parting had come, "I don't understand you at all. I think you take it very calm."
"Isn't that the way to take it?" he said, in a voice that was, certainly, very calm indeed.
I looked up in his face: he was ten years older. I really was frightened at the change in him.
"Oh!" I exclaimed, putting my face down in my hands, "I wasn't worth all I've made you suffer."
"Maybe you weren't," he said simply, "But it wasn't either your fault or mine--and you couldn't help it--that I wanted you."
He made a quick movement as he passed the table, and my work-basket fell at his feet, and a little jewel-box rolled across the floor. It was a ring he had brought me, only three days before.
He stooped to pick it up, and I saw his features contract as if in pain, as he laid it back upon the table. And his voice was unsteady, as he said, not looking at me while he spoke, "I hope you won't send any of these things back. If there's anything you're willing to keep, because I gave it to you, I'd like it very much. The rest send to your church, or somewhere. I don't want to have to look at them again."
By this time I was sobbing, and, sitting down by the table, had buried my face on my arms.
"I'm sorry that it makes you feel so," he said, "but it can't be helped. Don't cry, I can't bear to see you cry. Good-bye, Pauline; God bless you."
And he was gone. I did not realize it, and did not lift my head, till I heard the heavy sound of the outer door closing after him.
Then I knew it was all over, and that things were changed for me indeed.
"I cannot cry and get over it as you can," he had said.
And if tears would have got me over it, I should have been cured that night.