Meadow Brook

by Mary Jane Holmes

I had received no letter, and so I said; whereupon he proceeded to tell me its contents, a part of which the reader already knows. Utterly confounded and powerless to move, I sat motionless, while, with his arm around me, he went over with the past, recalling to my mind, with a vividness which made it seem real again, the time when first he had found me weeping in the sombre old schoolroom, away to the northward; the night when, with the soft moon-beams falling around us, we sat together beneath the tall oak tree, while I laid before him my childish griefs; and, lastly, the many pleasant hours we had whiled away together, listening to the sound of the running brook, which ran past the twining grape-vine, whose broad leaves had rustled above our heads.

“On these occasions, Rose,” said he, “did nothing ever tell you how much you were beloved?”

“Yes,” I answered bitterly, my woman’s nature rousing up as I remembered the times to which he referred. “Yes, and what did it avail me, even though I was beloved? Ambition proved the stronger attraction of the two, and you wedded another. You, who, now that other has gone, would talk again to me of love; but Rosa Lee is no longer a child to be deceived, and you mistake her strangely, if you fancy you can cast her off and take her up again at will.”

Here, overcome with emotion, I burst into tears. My words and manner misled him, for in them he saw only resentment for his former treatment; and this inspired him with hope that the feeling I once cherished for him could again be nourished into life. Very tenderly, then, he talked to me, and, as I listened, a numbness crept over my heart, for I knew he was in earnest now, and I felt that it was not the Dr. Clayton of old—the fickle, selfish man of the world—with whom I had to deal, but Dr. Clayton purified, and made better by the trials through which he had passed—a noble, true-hearted, and upright man—who now laid at my feet the love which I knew had always been mine. Very earnestly he implored forgiveness for the wrong he once had done me, saying that for it he had been terribly punished, inasmuch as he had suffered far more than I. And still he breathed no word of censure against his erring wife, who, he said, was perhaps more sinned against than sinning, and who, when the last great agony was upon her, had whispered in his ear, as her white, clammy hand rested on the flowing curls of little Rose, “Her mother, I know, will be she whose name she bears, and I am willing it should be so.”

“And was she not right?” he continued, drawing me closer to his side. “Will you not be the angel of my home, the mother of my child?”

And then again he told me how much I had been loved; how he had striven in vain to cast me from his heart, when it was madness and sin to keep me there; and how, when his horizon had been darkest with want and care, there was still in the distance a ray of sunlight, the remembrance of me, which had kept his soul from fainting. And now that it was right for him to speak to me of love, would I not listen and give him an opportunity to atone for the wrong he had once done me? He paused for my reply. There was silence in the room, and I counted each pulse of my beating heart as it throbbed with the intensity of my excitement.

“Will not my darling answer me?” he said, and I felt his breath upon my cheek, his lips upon my brow.

Not thus could I sit and tell him what duty bade me say. So I moved away, and standing up before him, I said, slowly, and distinctly, “Dr. Clayton, I loved you once, but the time has gone by, the love has died out, and I would not awaken it if I could.”

There was a firmness in my manner, a decision in the tones of my voice, which startled him more than what I said, and with a faint cry he too arose, and coming to my side, said, “God forgive you, Rose, for the cruel words you have uttered, but you cannot be in earnest.”

And then, with the firelight flickering over his pale face, he plead with me “to think again, to revoke what I had said, and not to send him away utterly hopeless and wretched. The love I had felt for him once, though chilled and dormant now, would bloom again, for he could bring it back to life, and I must be his; he could not live without me. I need not decide then, that night,” he said, “he would give me time,” and again he pressed for my answer, which was the same as before; for, much as I pitied him, there was between us a dark shadow, and the substance of that shadow bore the form and features of Richard Delafield!