The Minister's Wife

by Mrs. Oliphant

‘No; oh no,’ she cried, with a little instinctive shudder, drawing back; ‘there was more—far more, than that.’

‘What more?’ He was pale with the suspense and with eagerness. He stretched out his hand again to claim hers, which she had withdrawn. ‘Yes, there was more,’ he continued, looking fixedly in her face; ‘would to God I could forget the rest!’

A flush of shame rushed over Isabel’s cheeks. At that moment, when he professed for her a constant love which had known no interruption, what could she say of her own marriage; how could she even think of it? Was it not treachery, almost vice? The colour came up like flame over her face. She felt their positions changed at once, and she herself put to the bar.

‘I was alone in the world,’ she said, ‘and I had not heard of you—not a word, for a whole year.’

Now, indeed, he got her hand into his, and triumphed over all her pretence at indifference. She had begun to excuse herself, almost to beg his pardon. ‘We will speak of it no more,’ he said; ‘now my Isabel is mine again we’ll think of it no more.’

‘Oh! hush, hush, I never said that,’ she cried, evading his caress. But he was close by her as in the old days; his voice, so much softened, in her ears—that voice which had first woke echoes in her girl’s heart; his hand holding hers, and her heart melting, yearning to her first love. How could she resist not him only, but herself? She had no heart to say him nay. After this sudden renewal what would become of her if life settled down again in its grey colours, and he disappeared out of it once more for ever? A month ago that subdued life, with her child in it for sunshine, had been very sweet—but now?

And yet, in the very happiness that thus stole over her, there was a grasp and constriction in her throat, as of guilt and pain. She was doing something for which she could never have anything but blame from herself or from others—for which she could not defend herself. Her reason seemed to stand by disapproving, regretful, while the poor heart of her made the plunge. The one was no help to the other. Her unity of being was all torn asunder and made an end of. She did not think this in so many words, but was vaguely, dimly conscious of it, as the happiness stole flooding through her, penetrating every nook and corner. ‘Oh, Horace! do you not feel as if it should not be?’ she said, with one last effort to resist.

‘I feel that it ought to be,’ he said, drawing her close to him. ‘If you wish me to have a hope in the world,—if you would not see me perish; not for your sake, Isabel, that are innocent, but for my sake——’

‘Are you not innocent?’ she said, gazing at him with wonder and alarm in her great, tear-dilated eyes.

He put his head down upon her arm, upon the sleeve of her black dress, and kissed that. He had her hand in his, but it was not her hand which he touched with his trembling lips. And she felt that he trembled. For the first time his heart was so touched that the very frame felt the vibration. It was so different from his composure of old, that it moved Isabel beyond expression. When he answered her with an almost groan, his voice half stifled by his attitude, she leaned over him to catch what he said, as if it had been the most precious utterance. ‘Not innocent like you,’ he said sighing, almost moaning as from a heavy heart. And she melted and yearned over him like a mother over a child.