The Curse of Carne's Hold: A Tale of Adventure

by G. A. Henty

"He did love me, Ruth, and I loved him. I don't think I made any secret of it. Somehow it seemed to me that he had a right to me, and I was surprised when the time went on and he didn't ask me. When the last day came before he was to march away to fight again, I think that if he had not spoken I should have done so. Do not think me unmaidenly, Ruth, but he was only a sergeant and I was a rich girl, for my father is a great deal better off than he seems to be, and I thought that perhaps some foolish sort of pride held him back, for I was quite sure that he loved me. But he spoke first. He told me that he loved me, but could never ask me to be his wife; that he could never marry, but he must go through the world alone to the end of his life."

"Oh, Mary, how terrible!" Ruth said, pitifully, "how terrible! Was he married before, then?"

"No, Ruth, it was worse than that; there was a great shadow over his life; he had been tried for murder, and though he had been acquitted, the stigma was still upon him. Go where he would he might be recognised and pointed out as a murderer; therefore, unless the truth was some day known and his name cleared, no woman could ever be his wife."

Ruth had given a little gasp as Mary Armstrong began, then she sat rigid and immovable.

"It was Captain Mervyn," she said, at last, in a low whisper.

"Yes, Ruth. Sergeant Blunt was Captain Mervyn; he had changed his name, and gone out there to hide himself, but even there he had already been recognised; and, as he said—for I pleaded hard, Ruth, to be allowed to share his exile—go where he would, bury himself in what out-of-the-way corner he might, sooner or later some one would know him, and this story would rise up against him, and, much as he loved me—all the more, perhaps, because he loved me so much—he would never suffer me to be pointed at as the wife of a murderer."

"You shall not be," Ruth said, more firmly than she had before spoken. "You shall not be, Mary. I can clear him, and I will."

It was Mary Armstrong's turn to break down now. The goal had been reached, Ronald Mervyn would be cleared; and she threw her arms round Ruth and burst into a passion of tears. It was some time before the girls were sufficiently composed to renew the conversation.

"First of all, I must tell you, Mary," Ruth began, "that you may not think me more wicked than I am, that I would never have let Captain Mervyn suffer the penalty of another's crime. Against the wish, almost in the face of the orders of the doctor, I remained in court all through the trial, holding in my hand the proof of Captain Mervyn's innocence, and had the verdict been 'guilty' I was ready to rush forward and prove that he was innocent. I do not think that all that you suffered when you were in the hands of the Kaffirs was worse than I suffered then. I saw before me the uproar in court: the eyes that would be all fixed upon me; the way that the judge and the counsel would blame me for having so long kept silence; the reproach that I should meet with when I returned home; the shame of my dear old father; the way in which every soul in the village would turn against me; but I would have dared it all rather than that one man should suffer for the sin of another. And now, having told you this first, so that you should not think too hardly of me, I will tell you all."

Then Ruth told her of her girlish love for George Forester; how she had clung to him through evil report, and in spite of the wishes of her father and mother, but how at last the incident of the affray with the gamekeepers had opened her eyes to the fact that he was altogether reckless and wild, and that she could never trust her happiness to him. She told how Margaret Carne had spoken to her about it, and how she had promised she would give him up; then she told of that meeting on the road on the way to church; his passionate anger against herself; the threats he had uttered against Miss Carne for her interference, and the way in which he had assaulted her.