“He doesn’t seem to wish to get better,” he said to Marion. “I can’t understand it. I have tried every argument to rouse him, but he only says he is perfectly comfortable, and begs to be left undisturbed. I have told him if he goes on like this he will never get well, but he doesn’t seem to care. He smiles and thanks me with that sweet voice of his till I feel ready to shake him.”
And Marion at last began to lose heart.
One evening—it was growing late, Geoffrey was already settled for the night—she sat alone in the little parlour, very weary and very sad, when her glance fell on her husband’s old Bible, lying on the side table. It was the one they had always used at family prayers, in the days when they were the centre of a household, and it had accompanied them to Millington, but during the last few weeks, spent principally in Geoffrey’s bedroom, it had not been opened. Half mechanically now Marion drew it towards her, and opened it at one of her favourite chapters, some few verses of which, sweet words of comfort and support, she read with silent, but not the less fervent appreciation. As she lifted the book to replace it, a letter fell out. She started and shivered as the superscription met her eyes. “To be read by my widow when all is over with me.” And in the corner the initials, “G. B.,” and the date, “June 14th,” the eve of the day on which Geoffrey had been taken ill.
After a moment’s consideration she deliberately broke the seal, drew forth and read the paper it contained.
It was letter, addressed to herself, and ran as follows:—
“MY DEAREST WIFE,
“I feel that I am going to be very ill, and I have a strong belief that I shall not recover from the illness which is coming upon me. I have felt it coming on for some time, but I had hoped to keep up a little longer till I had been able to make better arrangements for your comfort. What I could, I have done. Within the last day or two I have received the two thousand pounds due to you as creditor, by the old bank. I have made it over to the care of Mr. Framley Vere. He will, I trust, prove a better trustee than I did, my poor child. Some other matters I have also explained to him—as to the guardianship of our little daughter, &c. I have also for some time past had a promise from Veronica, that so long as you require it, the shelter of her home shall be open to you. I think you will be happy with her for a time. She wishes to have you and the baby with her very much. But it is not so much about these matters I wish to write to you. It is about yourself, my own darling! You have been the dearest and best of wives to me. You pained me once, terribly, how terribly I trust you may never know, but it was not your fault. I had brought it on myself by my own selfishness, my headstrong, presumptuous determination to have you for my own at all costs. But that pain is past. Your devotion to me of late has more than effaced what indeed I never blamed you for. I think God that I am not to be a life-long burden to you, generous, unselfish woman that you are. For, my dearest, you must not from any mistaken regard to my memory, any morbid wish to atone for the pain you could not help once causing me, refrain from accepting the happiness which, sooner or later, will, I feel sure, be yours to take or refuse. His name I do not know. I know indeed nothing but what you yourself told me. I have never sought to know more. But long ago you told me he was good and noble, otherwise, indeed, how could one so pure and sweet as you have given him your heart? I gathered, too, that he was rich, and of good position, socially; so there will be no outward difficulties in the way. I have, too, an instinctive belief that he has been constant to you. Once, indeed, you said as much yourself to me. Quite lately some words of yours dropped half unconsciously—I think it was the day we dined at the Baxters’; you were sitting by the fire late that evening on our return, and you did not know I was in the room—gave me to understand that he had not married any one else. (I am getting so tired, I can hardly hold my pen.) I had meant to say a great deal more. But I can sum it up in a few words. Show that you forgive me, dearest, for the cloud I have brought over your life, by being happy in the future, as but for me you would have been long before this. For your goodness to me, your great and tender pity, the devotion all the more wonderful because of its utter unselfishness—for all you have given me, all you have been to me, for so much affection as you could give me, I would thank you if I had words to do so. I cannot express half I feel, my own love, my darling! I am not sorry to die young, for, my dearest, there was one thing you could not give me, and without it I own to you the thought of life—long years of fruitless longing on my side, of almost superhuman effort on yours to make up for what could not be made up for is less attractive to me than that of death. You will always, I know, think tenderly of me. When all is over with me, no bitterness will mingle with your remembrance of me.
“Yours most devotedly,
“GEOFFREY.”
She read every word of it without moving. When she had finished it, she folded it reverentially and replaced it in the envelope. Then she sank on the ground beside the chair on which she had been sitting, and hiding her face in her hands, knelt there in perfect silence for a long time.