The Minister's Wife

by Mrs. Oliphant

Isabel had made no preparation of what she was to say. She did not know what words would come to her lips. She felt herself passive, not so much an actor as the spectator of this scene. The only thing she had done was to bring down with her, wrapped in her handkerchief, the little secret drawer of his desk containing the awful token she had found. When he looked across at her, demanding with contemptuous defiance her apology or explanation, she gazed back at him for a moment without a word to say. Words would not come to her aid. She took up her enclosure and unfolded it with trembling hands. She began to tremble over all her frame, even to her lips, which refused to move articulately. He sat looking on unsuspicious, surprised, and scornful, while she fumbled with the handkerchief. Then she rose up and held it out to him. Her face was as pale as death; her eyes dilated; her hands, in both of which she held it, shaking wildly. ‘Look what I found!’ she cried, with her eyes fixed upon him. They were the only things steady about her. Her voice was inarticulate; her arms powerless. All her life had retreated into her eyes.

He sprang up to his feet at the same moment, and swore a great oath, bending over the table to see what it was. Then he fell back in his chair again, as pale as she was, trembling as she did. He was taken by surprise. ‘Good God, Isabel!’ he said, ‘Good God, Isabel!’ stumbling at the words almost as she did, ‘what do you mean?’

‘Look, and see!’ cried Isabel, with her lips suddenly opened, ‘look and see! oh, man! was there no other woman in the world that you should make me vile and make me miserable? Was there no other spot in the world, that you should come to shed blood here? You had eaten his bread and drunk his cup. You had taken my heart’s love and the flower of my youth. Could you not have been content? We were thinking you no harm, doing you no harm—and ye came and killed my man, my blessed man! And even that was enough. What harm was I doing you, a lone creature with my bairn, that you should come again and pollute me, and put his blood on me? Oh, look and see! Ye took me to your arms with that horror in your mind. How dared you do it, Horace Stapylton? How dared you put yourself with that blood upon you, between the dead and me?’

He had recoiled and shrunk away from her, pushing back his chair. He had been so taken by surprise that his very wits failed him. ‘For God’s sake, don’t scream at me,’ he cried, with a thrill of terror. ‘Do you know they are listening? For God’s sake, woman, speak low, whatever you have to say.’

Then she gave a sudden low cry, and sank back into her seat. She had not said it to herself. She had never permitted herself to think it; and yet at the bottom of her heart there had been a hope that he would deny, that somehow he might be able to disprove even what that silent witness said. But he had not attempted to deny it—it was all true, true! And she lived and he lived, with that between them. She could not stand, her limbs failed her; but she kept her hand upon that terrible evidence of his guilt, and kept looking at him with her dilated eyes.

‘Well,’ he said, getting up after a terrible pause, ‘so this is your story—this is what you have made up. You think you can ruin me with it—perhaps you think you can kill me. But it is all a mistake. Throw it into the fire—that is the wisest thing that can be done both for you and me.’

‘Not yet,’ said Isabel, under her breath.

‘Not yet! Do it of your own will, that will be wisest. Don’t drive me to compel you to do it,’ he said, pacing up and down; and then he came to a sudden pause before her. ‘One word, Isabel, before things go too far. You know what accusation you are bringing against me? You can’t prove it. That is no proof. Do you understand what I say? And more, it is not true.’

‘Oh!’ she said, clasping her hands, ‘say it is not true! Say you found it—or bought it—or—Horace, say it was not you!’

He paused a moment, gazing at her with an evident struggle going on in his mind whether to seek his own safety or to gratify his feelings. ‘I neither bought it nor found it,’ he said at last, under his breath, with a glance of fury in his eyes; and then he added with a sudden shudder, ‘but what killed him was the fall from his horse.’