Beyond the Black Waters

by A. L. O. E.

“You are as cross as a crustacean to-day,” said Thud, throwing the cushion away. “I don’t see the use of your church-going, if you come back in such a bad temper;” and so saying, he quitted the room.

“How foolish, how absurd, how wrong in me to think anything of such talk!” said Io to herself. “My dear husband is always courteous, to a widow he would be doubly so; as for what that silly fellow said about the picture, I would not credit it for a moment. Adelaide Mortimer!” Io revolved in her mind whether she had ever heard the name from Oscar’s lips; but no, she could not recall his having once mentioned to her this very particular friend.

It still wanted an hour to dinner time; that hour might be pleasantly and profitably spent in reading, especially if Io read with Oscar. The lady chose her book, and then went into the veranda to look for her husband. Oscar was not there, but he had left the small volume of Herbert’s poems on the chair on which he had been seated during his interview with the chaplain.

“A few of Herbert’s quaint verses will be refreshing,” thought Io. “I never possessed a copy of his works of my own. What dainty delicate binding!” and the lady took up the pretty volume.

Io opened at the title-page to see who had published the graceful edition. But it was not on title of work or publisher’s name that her eyes were riveted now; it was no thought of Herbert that made her cheek, so lately flushed, turn almost as white as the paper on which she looked. Above the printed title was written,in a delicate feminine hand: Oscar William Coldstream. With Adelaide Mortimer’s love.

Io uttered no exclamation, gave no start; she gazed for several minutes on the inscription, and then deliberately closed the volume and laid it down again in the place from which she had raised it. Io went back into the house, entered her own room, closed the door and bolted it, but almost like one who walks in a dream. Her soul was in a state of wild chaos; it was some time before she could sufficiently collect her thoughts to draw any inferences, form any conjectures.

Then, like machinery suddenly put into violent motion, Io’s mind began to work on the few facts from which she might draw some clue to the cause of the terrible change in Oscar when he returned to England. He had been happy when he had embarked, wretched when he landed. One idea, like wheel within wheel, linked itself with another, while Io’s brain seemed to turn round with the action of passionate thought.

Had Oscar loved Adelaide before he had even known of the existence of Io? Had Mrs. Mortimer’s marriage divided her from a former lover by an impassable gulf? After a bitter disappointment, had Oscar tried to find solace by winning the love and confidence of an unsuspecting heart, and asked in marriage a girl to whom he could but offer an empty casket, from which the jewel of affection had been stolen away? On arriving in Malta, had Oscar found the once impassable gulfbridged over; had the unexpected meeting with Adelaide, no longer as far removed from him as a star, revived old memories, kindled new hopes? And then had Oscar remembered with pain that he had bound himself in honour to marry one whom he never could love as he once had loved?

Io could not have put such ideas into words, but they were working, and tearing her heart as a machine rends and wrenches a human limb entangled amongst its whirling wheels. She could hardly reason, but she keenly suffered. Hard did Io strive so to collect her ideas as to find out whether her new discovery would account for that gloom in her husband which had seemed to her so mysterious. Oscar had received no letter from her at Malta, none by the Channel pilot: had her apparent neglect caused him pain, or perhaps a sense of relief? Had he caught at a hope that he might be free? What had prompted that strange question when they met, “Are you glad?” Had he wished her to turn away and say “No”? Oscar was evidently undergoing some terrible inward struggle, and was suffering still from its effects. Was it the struggle between inclination, love, passion, and a sense of honour, a feeling of duty? Io remembered, almost with horror, that during the first part of his illness Oscar could not endure to have her near him; that he only suffered her presence when the sight of the letter which Thud had detained had shown him the depth of the affectionwhich, as Io now thought in her anguish, he knew that he could never fully return. Oscar had not even asked that a wedding-day should be fixed, till he found that to break off his engagement would be to leave his betrothed to poverty as well as to distress. Oscar had generously sacrificed himself to save her, preferring honour to happiness, giving pity instead of love! Io literally writhed under such thoughts.

“Oh, why did Oscar not speak out frankly! why did he not tell me that he could not give me a heart which was no longer his own!” exclaimed Io in the bitterness of her anguish. “I would not have upbraided him; I would have set him free; I would have severed the bond between us, had my poor heart been broken too. Oscar should never have stood at the altar to give me that cold, corpse-like hand, or to take vows which are now an intolerable burden to a sensitive conscience like his.”