I believe still, it was less from malice premeditated, than from a mere propensity for talking, and that looseness and inaccuracy of speech which he always had—that he, when idling away his time in the debtor's ward of this gaol, repeated, probably with extempore additions, what your sister Penelope once mentioned to him concerning me—namely, that I was once about to be married, when the lady's father discovered a crime I had committed in my youth—whether dishonesty, duelling, seduction, or what, he could not say—but it was something absolutely unpardonable by an honourable man, and the marriage was forbidden. On this, all the reports against me had been grounded.
After hearing this story, which one of the turnkeys whose children were down with fever, told me while watching by their bedside, begging my pardon for doing it, honest man! I went and took a long walk down the Waterloo shore, to calm myself, and consider my position. For I knew it was in vain to struggle any more. I was ruined.
An innocent man might have fought on; how any one, with a clear conscience, is ever conquered by slander, or afraid of it, I cannot understand. With a clean heart, and truth on his tongue, a man ought to be as bold as a lion. I should have been; but—My love, you know.
This Waterloo shore has always been a favourite haunt of mine. You once said, you should like to live by the sea; and I have never heard the ripple of the tide without thinking of you—never seen the little children playing about and digging on the sands without thinking—God help me! if one keeps silence, it is not because one does not feel the knife.
“Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?”
Let me stop. I will not pain you, my love, more than I can help. Besides, as I told you, the worst of my suffering is ended.
I believe I must have sat till night-fall among the sand-hills by the shore. For years to come, if I live so long, I shall see as clear and also as unreal as a painting—that level sea-line, along which moved the small white silent ships, and the steamers, with their humming paddle-wheels and their trailing thread of smoke, dropping one after the other into what some one of your favourite poets, my child, calls “the under world.” There seemed a great weight on my head—a weariness all over me. I did not feel anything much, after the first half-hour; except a longing to see your little face once again, and then, if it were God's will, to lie down and die, somewhere near you, quietly, giving no trouble to you or to any one any more. You will remember, I was not in my usual health, and had had extra hard work, for some little time.
Well, my dear one, this is enough about myself, that day. I went home and fell into harness as usual; there was nothing to be done but to wait till the storm burst, and I wished for many reasons to retain my situation at the gaol as long as possible.
But it was a difficult time; rising to each day's duty, with total uncertainty of what might happen before night: and, duty done, struggling against a depression such as I have not known for these many years. In the midst of it came your dear letters—cheerful, loving, contented—unwontedly contented they seemed to me. I could not answer them, for to have written in a false strain was impossible, and to tell you everything seemed equally so. I said to myself, “No, poor child! she will learn all soon enough. Let her be happy while she can.”
I was wrong; I was unjust to you and to myself. From the hour you gave me your love, I owed it to us both to give you my full confidence, as much as if you were my wife. I had no right to wound your dear heart by keeping back from it any sorrows of mine. Forgive me, and forgive something else, which, I now see, was crueller still.