“No, Joan—” very sadly; and then a pause. “But—”
Joan’s white face grew whiter, and the ground seeming falling from under her feet. “I must go to him,” she strove to say; and then all power to move or speak died away. Leonard Ackroyd lifted her like a child in his strong arms, and bore her elsewhere.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
MARIAN’S FEAR.
“YES; Mr. Rutherford belongs to my young days,” slowly repeated Marian Brooke, as she sat in the little smoking parlor of the old farm-house, alone with her brother, Jervis Cairns. “I can remember him first as a big boy, when his father was alive—always so sunny looking, with his auburn hair. It wasn’t often I saw him, but when I did he always had a pleasant word for me. ‘Well, Polly, how are the lessons going on?’ he used to say; and I liked him to ask, though I was shy about answering him. And then he came of age, and his father died—I forget which of the two happened first. And when I was seventeen our troubles began, with William going wrong. It was a sad time. You can’t remember that, Jervis—such a mite of a child you were, only six or seven years old.”
“I can remember how mother used to cry,” said Jervis.
“Poor mother! Yes, that half broke her heart, and my going later broke it quite. I always feel I am rightly paid for that by my years of sorrow. I think we do get punished often by being paid back in the same coin we’ve paid to others. I broke her heart, and now I am nothing to my own child. Yes, I know that’s my own doing—my own folly, but still—still it is my punishment, Jervis. You don’t think it’s presumption in me, do you, to hope for God’s forgiveness? We have his word of promise, and it can’t be wrong to take him at his word. I’ve grieved and mourned for years, but something of light has come lately. I think I needn’t hold myself back from him now. If I had but known in those days how little I was to gain by my wilfulness! But I oughtn’t to have needed that to keep me back from wrong-doing.”
“If only you had told mother all about Mr. Brooke!” said Jervis.
“Hubert wouldn’t let me. There’s where it all hinged. If I had insisted on telling mother, I should have lost Hubert, and I couldn’t make up my mind to it. He was very good to me; I can say so much, though he did lead me into wrong-doing. While he lived I didn’t seem to feel how ill I had acted; that all came later. And what I went through—”
“Don’t you often wish for your child again, Polly?”