In his first relief from the repetition of her demand which he expected Alice would make, Martin Gurwood did not pay much attention to the commencement of her little story, but as it progressed his interest became excited, and at this point he left his chair and stood by her at the window.
'Who was she?' he asked. 'Where did she come from?'
'We never knew,' said Alice, shaking her head. 'She never spoke from the time they found her until her death, two days after; but she had never been married; there was no wedding-ring on her finger, and when they told me that, I turned to John and spoke to him.'
'Do you recollect what you said?' asked Martin, half with a desire to satisfy his own curiosity, half wishing to lead her on.
'Recollect?' said Alice. 'I remember the very words. "O John," I said, "my dear old John, isn't it an awful thing to think how this poor creature has been deceived; you may depend upon it, John," I said, "that the man who has brought her to this shame made her a promise of marriage, or deceived her in some cruel and heartless manner."'
'Did you say that?' asked Martin, in a low voice.
'I did, and more. "Her death will lie at his door, John," I said, "as surely as if he had killed her with his hand. He did kill her, first her soul and then her body, and he will be held responsible for the murder of each!" I recollect then that John threw his arms around me and implored me to stop. His face was quite white, and the tears were streaming down his cheeks, for he had the tenderest heart. And then when the poor girl died, he proposed that we should take the baby and adopt it for our own; and we did so. Strange it was, I recollect, that for weeks after that, whenever John was at home, and in one of his silent moods, which came upon him first about that time, I would see him of an evening, when he thought I was not looking at him, with his eyes fixed upon me, and with the tears stealing down his cheeks.'
Was it strange, knowing what he did? Martin thought not; but he did not speak.
'He was thinking of that poor girl, I suppose,' murmured Alice, half to herself; 'thinking of all the troubles and sufferings she had come through; thinking, I shouldn't wonder, that they might have been mine, if I had not been mercifully placed in a different position, and out of the reach of temptation; for he had the tenderest heart, and he loved me so dearly--O so dearly! that the mere thought of anything happening to me to cause me pain or suffering, was enough to make him utterly wretched.' Then the sense of her situation dawning again upon her, she cried out: 'And now he is lost to me for ever! There is no one now to think of or take care of me! We were all in all to each other, and now I am left alone in the world; what shall I do, O, what shall I do!'
It had been Martin Gurwood 's lot, in the discharge of his clerical duties, to listen a hundred times in his life to this despairing wail from women just robbed of their husbands by death: a hundred times had he cheered the darkened and dispirited soul with recapitulations of the Almighty goodness, with the hope that the parting from the loved and lost one was but temporary and not of long duration, and that in the future the two reunited might enjoy an eternity of bliss such as they had never known before. What could he say to the woman now writhing before him in misery and despair? What word of encouragement, what scrap of hope could he whisper into her dulled ear? How could he, with the fearful knowledge which he had acquired, speak to her of the future of this man, whose memory she so blindly worshipped, ignorant of the manner in which he had basely betrayed her? How could he even speak kindly of the dead man's past, and echo the terms of affection in which she mentioned him, knowing as he did the full measure of the deceit and iniquity practised upon her by the man whom she imagined to have been her husband?