Richard Vandermarck: A Novel

by Miriam Coles Harris

I sat down in it, sitting so I nearly faced him. The moon was shining in at the one wide window: I can remember exactly the pattern that the vine-leaves made as the moonlight fell through them on the carpet at our feet. I had a bunch of verbena-leaves fastened in my dress, and I never smell verbena-leaves at any time or place without seeing before me that moon-traced pattern and that wide-open window.

"Pauline," he said, in that low, thrilling voice, leaning a little toward me, "I have a great deal to say to you to-night. I have a great wrong to ask pardon for--a great sorrow to tell you of. I shall never call you Pauline again as I call you to-night. I shall never look into your eyes again, I shall never touch your hand. For we must part, Pauline; and this hour, which heaven has given me, is the last that we shall spend together on the earth."

I truly thought that his fever had produced delirium, and, trying to conceal my alarm, I said, with an attempt to quiet him, "Oh, do not say such things; we shall see each other a great, great many times, I hope, and have many more hours together."

"No, Pauline, you do not know so well as I of what I speak. This is no delirium; would to heaven, it were, and I might wake up from it. No, the parting must be said to-night, and I must be the one to speak it. We may spend days, perhaps, under the same roof--we may even sit at the same table once again; but, I repeat, from this day I may never look into your eyes again, I may never touch your hand. Pauline, can you forgive me? I know that you can love. Merciful Heaven! who so well as I, who have held your stainless heart in my stained hand these many dreamy weeks; and Justice has not struck me dead. Yes, Pauline, I know you've loved me; but remember this one thing, in all your bitter thoughts of me hereafter: remember this, you have not loved me as I have loved you. You have not given up earth and heaven both for me as I have done for you. For you? No, not for you, but for the shadow of you, for the thought of you, for these short weeks of you. And then, an eternity of absence, and of remorse, and of oblivion--ah, if it might be oblivion for you! If I could blot out of your life this short, blighting summer; if I could put you back to where you were that fresh, sweet morning that I walked with you beside the river! I loved you from that day, Pauline, and I drugged my conscience, and refused to heed that I was doing you a wrong in teaching you to love me. Pauline, I have to tell you a sad story: you will have to go back with me very far; you will have to hear of sins of which you never dreamed in your dear innocence. I would spare you if I could, but you must know, for you must forgive me. And when you have heard, you may cease to love, but I think you will forgive. Listen."

Why should I repeat that terrible disclosure? why harrow my soul with going back over that dark path? Let me try to forget that such sins, such wrongs, such revenges, ever stained a human life. I was so young, so innocent, so ignorant. It was a strange misfortune that I should have had to know that which aged and changed me so. But he was right in saying that I had to know it. My life was bound involuntarily to his by my love, and what concerned him was my fate. Alas! He was in no other way bound to me than by my love: nor ever could be.

I don't know whether I was prepared for it or not: I knew that something terrible and final was to come, and I felt the awe that attends the thoughts that words are final and time limited. But when I heard the fatal truth--that another woman lived to whom he was irrevocably bound--I heard it as in a dream, and did not move or speak. I think I felt for a moment as if I were dead, as if I had passed out of the ranks of the living into the abodes of the silent, and benumbed, and pulseless. There was such a horrible awe, and chill, and check through all my young and rapid blood. It was like death by freezing. It is not so pleasant as they say, believe me. But no pain: that came afterward, when I came to life, when I felt the touch of his hand on mine, and ceased to hear his cruel words.

I had shrunk back from him in my chair, and sat, I suppose, like a person in a trance, with my hands in my lap, and my eyes fixed on him with bewilderment. But when he ceased to speak--and, leaning forward on one knee, clasped my hands in his, and drew me toward him, then indeed I knew I was not dead. Oh, the agony of those few moments--I tried to rise, to go away from him. But he held me with such strength--all his weakness was gone now. He folded his arms around my waist and held me as in a vise. Then suddenly leaning his head down upon my arms, he kissed my hands, my arms, my dress, with a moan of bitter anguish.

"Not mine," he murmured. "Never mine but in my dreams. O wretched dreams, that drive me mad. Pauline, they will tell us that we must not dream--we must not weep, we must be stocks and stones. We must wear this weight of living death till that good Lord that makes such laws shall send us death in mercy. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years of suffering: that might almost satisfy Him, one would think. Pauline! you and I are to say good-bye to-night. Good-bye! People talk of it as a cruel word. Think of it: if it were but for a year, a year with hope at the end of it to keep our hearts alive, it would be terrible, and we should need be brave. The tears that lovers shed over a year apart; the days that have got to come and go, how weary. The nights--the nights that sleep flies off from, and that memory reigns over. Count them--over three hundred come in every year. One, you think while it is passing, is enough to kill you: one such night of restless torture, and how many shall we multiply our three hundred by? We are young, Pauline. You are a child, a very child. I am in the very flush and strength of manhood. There is half a century of suffering in me yet: this frame, this brain, will stand the wear of the hard years to come but too, too well. There is no hope of death. There is no hope in life. That star has set. Good God! And that makes hell--why should I wait for it--it cannot be worse there than here. Don't listen to me--it will not be as hard for you--you are so young--you have no sins to torture you--only a little love to conquer and forget. You will marry a man who lives for you, and who is patient and will wait till this is over. Ah, no: by Heaven! I can't quite stand it yet. Pauline, you never loved him, did you--never blushed for him--never listened for his coming with your lips apart and your heart fluttering, as I have seen you listen when you thought that I was coming? No, I know you never loved him: I know you have loved me alone--me--who ought to have forbidden you. Forgive--forgive--forgive me."

A passion of tears had come to my relief, and I shook from head to foot with sobs. I cannot feel ashamed when I remember that he held me for one moment in his arms. He had been to me till that shock, strength, truth, justice: the man I loved. How could I in one instant know him by his sin alone, and undo all my trust? I knew only this, that it was for the last time, and that my heart was broken.

I forgave him--that was an idle form; in my great love I never felt that there was anything to be forgiven, except the wrong that fate had done me, in making my love so hopeless. He told me to forget him; that seemed to me as idle; but all his words were precious, and all my soul was in his hand. When, at that moment, the sound of wheels upon the gravel came, and the sound of laughter and of voices, I sprang up; he caught me in his arms and held me closely. Another moment, the parting was over, and I was kneeling by my bed up-stairs, weeping, sobbing, hopeless.