He could hear her now, aye, and see her too! There—down on the beach, on a warm October night with the after-glow, still a fire in the west, casting rosy reflections over the sea, and the harvest moon rising red behind the hill.
Why had he been so eager to get her that he had never noticed how listless she was—how gently anxious to withdraw from his kiss? He called it all to mind now.... If Ben had not been away at sea—even then ... but he would have hated him a little sooner, that is all, and he would not have had those five years.
It was no use hating him now, he was dead. And Milly was dead and could never tell the truth....
Never tell the truth? Why, she had told it! In a flash there rose up before him the scene of her death-bed—the moment that he had thought till then was the bitterest that life could bring to him.
“Ye won’t ’ate ’er, Tom! Ye won’t never visit it on ’er, come what may! Oh, do promise me that!” she had cried. “’Tain’t ’er fault, no ways, Tom!”
And he had promised, not knowing what he promised. She had been weak, delirious, he had thought, and he had supposed she had meant that he was not to hate the child for being the cause of the wife’s death.
He remembered to have said in his haste that he should so hate the little one, little guessing how it might ... how it might come true!
Yes, he remembered that he had said: “I couldn’t never forgive ’er, Milly, if ye was to die and leave me ’cos of ’er.”
And then she had said what she had said.
But of course he knew now what she had meant by her passionate prayer! And he had promised that which he could not perform!