Not Like Other Girls

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

Now he could fall upon his knees beside her, and crave that forgiveness for words and acts that had seared his conscience all these years like red-hot iron. But at the first word she stopped him, and drew his head to her breast:

“Oh, Herbert, hush! What! ask forgiveness of me, when I have sinned against you doubly,—trebly,—when I was no true wife, as you know? Oh, do not let us ask it of each other, but of God, whom we have so deeply offended! He has punished us; but He has been merciful too. He has taken our children because we did not deserve them. Oh, Herbert! what will you do without them?—for you loved Janie so!” And then for a little while the childless parents could only hold each other’s hands and weep, for to Herbert Cheyne the grief was new, and at the sight of her husband’s sorrow Magdalene’s old wounds seemed to open and bleed afresh; only now—now she did not weep alone.

When Miss Mewlstone entered the room, shortly afterwards, she found Magdalene lying spent and weary, holding her husband’s hand.

Joy had indeed returned to the White House, but for a long time it was joy that was strangely tempered with sorrow. Upstairs no sound greeted Herbert from the empty nurseries; there were no little feet pattering to meet the returned wanderer, no little voices to cry a joyous “Father!” And for years the desolate mother had borne this sorrow alone.

As the days passed on, Magdalene regained her strength slowly, but neither wife nor husband could hide from each other the fact that their health was broken by all they had gone through. Herbert’s constitution was sadly impaired for the remainder of his life: he knew well that he must carry with him the consequences of those years of suffering. Often he had to endure intense neuralgic agony in his limbs and head; an unhealed wound for a long time troubled him sorely. Magdalene strove hard to regain strength, that she might devote herself to nurse him, but, though her constitution was superb, she had much to bear from her disordered nerves. At times the old irritability was hard to vanquish; there were still dark moods of restlessness when her companionship was trying; but it was now that Herbert proved the nobleness and reality of his repentance.

For he was ever gentle with her, however much she might 264 try him. Some talk he had had with her doctor had convinced him that she was not to blame for these morbid moods; that the nerves had become disorganized by those years of solitary misery. “We must bear all our troubles together,” as he often told her; and so he bore this, as he did the trial of his children’s loss, with grave fortitude, and a patience that surprised all who knew him.

And he was not without his reward, for, the dark fit over, Magdalene’s smile would greet him like sunshine after a storm, and she would thank him with tears and caresses for his forbearance.

“I can’t think what makes me still so horrid, when I am so happy,” she said once to him, when the first year of their reunion had passed. “I do my best to fight against these moods, but they seem stronger than myself and overcome me. Do not be so good to me next time, Herbert; scold me and be angry with me, as you used in the old days.”

“I cannot,” he answered, smiling. “I never loved you in the old days as I do now. I would not change my wife, in spite of all the trouble she gives me, for any other woman upon earth. You believe this, love, do you not?” looking at her beautiful face anxiously, for it had clouded a little at his last words.

“Yes, but I do not like to trouble you: it is that that frets me. I wanted to be a comfort to you, and never to give you a moment’s uneasiness; but I cannot help myself, somehow. I love you, I don’t believe you know yet how I love you, Herbert; but it seems as if I must grieve you sometimes.”