Alas for Guy! he could not believe he heard aright when, turning her head away for a moment while she prayed for strength, Maddy’s answer came, “I cannot, Guy, I cannot. I acknowledge the love which has stolen upon me, I know not how, but I cannot do this wrong to Lucy. Away from me you will love her again. You must. Read this, Guy, then say if you can desert her.”
She placed Lucy’s letter in his hand, and Guy read it with a heart which ached to its very core. It was cruel to deceive that gentle, trusting girl writing so lovingly of him, but to lose Maddy was to his undisciplined nature more dreadful still, and casting the letter aside he pleaded again, this time with the energy of despair, for he read his fate in Maddy’s face, and when her lips a second time confirmed her first reply, while she appealed to his sense of honor, of justice, of right, and told him he could and must forget her, he knew there was no hope, and, man though he was, bowed his head upon Maddy’s hands and wept stormily, with mighty, choking sobs, which shook his frame, and seemed to break up the very fountains of his life. Then to Maddy there came a terrible temptation. Was it right for two who loved as they did to live their lives apart?—right in her to force on Guy the fulfillment of vows he could not literally keep? As mental struggles are always the more severe, so Maddy’s took all her strength away, and for many minutes she was so white and still that Guy roused himself to care for her, thinking of nothing then except to make her better.
It was a long time ere that interview ended, but when it did there was on Maddy’s face a peaceful expression, which only the sense of having done right at the cost of a fearful sacrifice could give, while Guy’s bore traces of a great and crushing sorrow, as he went out from Maddy’s presence and felt that to him she was lost forever. He had promised her he would do right; had said he would marry Lucy, and be to her what a husband should be; and he had listened while she talked of another world, where they neither marry or are given in marriage, and where it would not be sinful for them to love each other, and as she talked her face had shone like the face of an angel. He had hold one of her hands at parting, bending low his head, while she laid the other on it as she blessed him, letting her fingers thread his soft brown hair for a moment and linger caressingly among his curly locks. But that was over now. They had parted forever. She was lying where he left her, cold and white, and faint with dizzy pain. He was riding swiftly toward Aikenside, his heart-beats keeping time to the swift tread of his horse’s feet, and his mind a confused medley of distracted thoughts, amid which two facts stood out prominent and clear—he had lost Maddy Clyde, and had promised her to marry Lucy Atherstone.
For many days after that Guy kept his room, saying he was sick, and refusing to see any one save Jessie and Mrs. Noah, the latter of whom guessed in part what had happened, and imputing to him far more credit than he deserved, petted and pitied and cared for him until he grew weary of it, and said to her, savagely:
“You needn’t think me so good, for I am not. I wanted Maddy Clyde, and told her so, but she refused me and made me promise to marry Lucy; so I’m going to do that very thing. I am going to England in a few weeks, or as soon as Maddy is better, and before the sun of this year sets I shall be a married man.”
After this all Mrs. Noah’s influence was in favor of Maddy, and the good lady made more than one pilgrimage to Honedale, where she expended all her arguments trying to make Maddy revoke her decision; but Maddy was firm in what she deemed right, and as her health began slowly to improve, and there was no longer an excuse for Guy to tarry, he started for England the latter part of October, as unhappy and unwilling a bridegroom, it may be, as ever went after a bride.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE MARRIAGE.
Maddy never knew how she lived through those bright, autumnal days, when the gorgeous beauty of decaying nature seemed so cruelly to mock her anguish. As long as Guy was there, breathing the same air with herself, she kept up, vaguely conscious of a shadowy hope that something would happen without her instrumentality, something to ease the weight pressing so hard upon her. But when she heard that he had really gone, that a line had been received from him after he was on board the steamer, all hope died out of her heart, and had it been right she would have prayed that she might die, and forget how utterly miserable she was.
At last there came to her three letters, one from Lucy, one from the doctor, and one from Guy himself. She opened Lucy’s first, and read of the sweet girl’s great happiness in seeing Guy again, of her sorrow to find him so thin, and pale, and changed, in all save his extreme kindness to her, his careful study of her wants, and evident anxiety to please her in every respect. On this Lucy dwelt, until Maddy’s heart seemed to leap up and almost turn over, so fiercely it throbbed and ached with anguish. She was out in the woods when she read the letter, and laying her face in the grass she sobbed as she never sobbed before.