A Woman Martyr

by Alice M. Diehl

"Understand!" she hoarsely said. "If you cannot take me on trust, we had better part, we had better separate now, this very hour, and go our different ways----"

"How dare you!" he cried; and almost fiercely, in his anguish to hear such a suggestion from her lips, he placed his hands on her shoulders, ruthlessly ignoring the bridal finery, and gazed into her strained eyes. "You are my wife! It is an insult to me, what you say! I am your husband."

He took her peremptorily in his arms, and kissed her with mingled adoration and despair. The despair was involuntary--born of a huge misgiving that something was seriously wrong with his new-made wife, and that he had yet to learn what that something was.

"And now, here we are at your home!" he tenderly said. "You must try and pretend to be the happy bride I hoped you were!"

As he helped her to alight, and acting the part of the delighted, joyous bridegroom, led her through the little crowd of servants standing about the hall, acknowledging their murmur of congratulation, those melancholy words of his--so untrue in regard to her love for him--to her rejoicing in the midst of her misery that she was his wife--touched her to the quick.

"My poor love!" she gasped, as soon as they were alone in the flower-bedecked drawing-room, throwing herself upon his breast, and gazing adoringly into his face. "I--I had not the courage to tell you before, but I must--now! I told you my unhappy friend was free, but I did not tell you how! Her husband was that man that died--that Victor Mercier! Perhaps she had something to do with his death! That is what has been eating my heart out--that I had had a hand in killing a fellow-creature--killing--depriving some one of life--oh, it is awful! Sometimes I feel that if that man were alive again, I would willingly die myself--give up all our happiness--leave you for ever! Now perhaps you can imagine what I have been suffering, and what I suffered at the theatre listening to that Mr. Hunt talking of the woman with the brandy-bottle, dreading lest he might be speaking of her--my poor miserable friend!"

"My darling!" There was a world of compunction, tenderness, sympathy in his voice as he drew her down by him on a sofa, and lovingly clasped her cold, trembling hands in his. "But you ought to have told me before! I quite--see--all--now--and now I am to bear your troubles for you--troubles indeed, absurd cobwebs--trifles light as air! Your real trouble, my dearest, is being in possession of an over-sensitive conscience! Come--there is the first carriage--how quickly they have followed us up--try and look a little more as a bride ought to look. Your being pale doesn't matter--brides seem to be given that way--but unhappy? For my sake, darling, try to look a little less as if you had just been condemned to death instead of to living your life with me!"

He kissed some colour into her white cheeks and lips; and then the wedding party began to flock in. Carriage after carriage drove up, and the bridesmaids and young men, the older relatives and friends, crowded the drawing-room, and there were embracings and congratulations--not half over when luncheon was announced. It was a gay, or a seemingly gay wedding breakfast. Joan went through it all with a curious feeling of unreality. She heard herself and her loved husband toasted, she heard his eloquent yet well-balanced little speech. She smiled upon those who spoke to her with the almost reverential solicitude with which a bride is addressed on her marriage day, and she muttered some reply, although she did not seem to gather the meaning of their speeches. She cut the cake, she rose and adjourned upstairs when the rest went to the drawing-room. Happily, she had to hurry her "going away" toilette, which was presided over by her aunt, in the seventh heaven of delight at her only niece's splendid marriage, and by her aunt's maid--Julie having already started with Lord Vansittart's valet and the luggage, to be on board the yacht with everything ready when the bride and bridegroom arrived. Happily there was not a spare moment to be wasted if they meant to "catch the train" they had planned to start by. Before she was quite ready, Vansittart's voice was heard outside the door, hurrying them. They were obliged to hasten their farewells, and drive rapidly to the station--the terminus they were starting from no one knew but Sir Thomas, who was bound to secresy.

But even when the express was rattling across the sunlit country seawards, Joan feverishly told herself that she was not yet safe. Since that posy was offered her at the church door, since she had read those awful words written on the label, and had looked into those menacing blue eyes, a renewed, augmented fear had seemed to half paralyze her, body and soul; more than fear, worse than dread--a horrible conviction of coming doom.

It asserted itself even when she lay on her husband's breast in their reserved compartment, listening to the passionate utterances of intense and devoted love with which he hoped to dispel her nervous terrors--terrors which, although he began to understand that she had unfortunately been drawn into being one of the actors in an undesirable life drama, he regarded as mere vapours which could be dispelled by an equable, peaceful life shared by him and ruled by common sense. Those clear, threatening blue eyes seemed still gazing into hers, penetrating to the secrets hidden in her soul. All through Vansittart's endearing words, the bright pictures he verbally drew of their coming happiness, those words repeated themselves in her ears--"Vengeance is Mine! I will repay, saith the Lord!"