Not Like Other Girls

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

“This is why you want my help. Ah! I see now! Oh, it is all right—all that you can wish! It is she who is tormenting herself, who has no rest day or night! When the thunder came that evening—you remember—we sat beside the children’s empty beds, and she told me some of her thoughts. When the lighting flashed, her nerves gave way, and she cried out, in her pain, ‘Did he forgive?’ That was her one thought. Her husband,—who was up in heaven with the children,—did he think mercifully of her, and know how she loved him? It was your name that was on her lips when that good woman, Miss Mewlstone, hushed her in her arms like a child. Oh, be comforted!” faltered Phillis, “for she loves you, and mourns for you as though she were the most desolate creature living!” But here she paused, for something that sounded like a sob came to her ear, and looking round, she saw the bowed figure of her companion shaking with uncontrollable emotion,—those hard tearless sobs that are only wrung from a man’s strong agony.

“Oh, hush!” cried the girl, tenderly. “Be comforted: there is no room for doubt. There! I will leave you; you will be better by and by.” And then instinctively she turned away her face from a grief too sacred for a stranger to touch, and walked down to the water, where the children had ceased playing, and listened to the baby waves that lapped about her feet.

And by and by he joined her; and on his pale face there was a rapt, serious look, as of one who has despaired and has just listened to an angel’s tidings.

“Did I not say that you, and only you, could help me? This is what I have wanted to know: had Magdalene forgiven me? Now I need wait no longer. My wife and home are mine, and I must take possession of my treasures.”

He stopped, as though overcome by the prospect of such happiness; but Phillis timidly interposed:

“But, Mr. Cheyne, think a moment. How is it to be managed? If you are in too great a hurry, will not the shock be too much for her? She is nervous,—excitable. It would hardly be safe.”

“That is what troubles me,” he returned, anxiously. “It is too much for any woman to bear; and Magdalene—she was always excitable. Tell me, you have such good sense; and, though you are so young, one can always rely on a woman; you understand her so well—I see you do—and she is fond of you,—how shall we act that my poor darling, who has undergone so much, may not be harmed by me any more?”

“Wait one moment,” returned Phillis, earnestly. “I must consider.” And she set herself to revolve all manner of possibilities, and then rejected them one by one. “There seems no 252 other way,” she observed, at last, fixing her serious glance on Mr. Cheyne. “I must seek for an opportunity to speak to Miss Mewlstone. It must be broken carefully to your poor wife; I am sure of that. Miss Mewlstone will help us. She will tell us what to do, and how to do it. Oh, she is so kind, so thoughtful and tender, just as though Mrs. Cheyne were a poor wayward child, who must be guided and helped and shielded. I like her so much: we must go to her for counsel.”

“You must indeed, and at once!” he returned, rather peremptorily; and Phillis had a notion now what manner of man he had been before misfortunes had tamed and subdued him. His eyes flashed with eagerness; he grew young, alert, full of life in a moment. “Forgive me if I am too impetuous; but I have waited so long, and now my patience seems exhausted all at once during the last hour. I have been at fever-point ever since you have proved to me that my wife—my Magdalene—has been true to me. Fool that I was! why have I doubted so long? Miss Challoner, you will not desert me?—you will be my good angel a little longer? You will go to Miss Mewlstone now,—this very moment,—and ask her to prepare my wife?”

“It is time for me to be going home: mother and Nan will think I am lost,” returned Phillis, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. “Come Mr. Cheyne, we can talk as we go along.” For he was so wan and agitated that she felt uneasy for his sake. She took his arm gently, and guided him as though he were a child; and he obeyed her like one.