His strong eyes were full of a rare tenderness, as he said, “But, Mrs. Joyce, you surely know that death is not the end of all existence. I am not what would be called a religious man, but every fibre of my inward being tells me that death does not end all.”
He saw a shiver pass over her, as she hoarsely replied, “I, too, realize that this morning, Mr. Hammond. But last night the madness of an overwhelming despair was upon me. My life had been a literal hell for years, until yesterday I could bear it no longer. I was famished with hunger, sick with despair, and——”
She sighed wearily. “Perhaps,” she went on, “if you knew all I have borne, you would not wonder at my rash, mad act.”
“Tell me your story, Mrs. Joyce,” he said, gently. “It may relieve your overcharged heart, and, anyhow, I will be your friend, as far as I can.”
She sighed again. This time there was a note of relief, rather than weariness, in the sigh.
“My father was a well-to-do farmer,” she began, “in North Hants. I was the only child, and I fear I was spoiled. I received the best education possible, and loved my studies for their own sake, for culture, in all its forms, had a strong attraction for me. I had been engaged to a young yeoman farmer for nearly a year. I had known him all my life, and we had been sweethearts even as children. Then there came suddenly into my life that man Joyce, for whom I sacrificed everything. God only knows how he contrived to exercise such an awful fascination over me as to make me leave everyone, everything, and marry him.”
For a moment she paused, and shuddered. Her voice, when she spoke, again, was hollow, and full of tears.
“I killed my father by eloping on the very eve of my arranged marriage with Ronald Ferris. Ronald left the country as soon as he could wind up his affairs. And I—well, here in this mighty Babylon, I have ever since been reaping some of the sorrow I had sown. Not a penny of my father’s money ever reached me, and that brute Joyce only married me for what he expected to get with me. He has done his best to make earth a hell for me, and I, in my mad blindness, last night, almost exchanged earth’s fleeting hell for God’s eternal hell.”
A look of shame filled her eyes as she lifted them to Hammond.
“What you reminded me of just now, Mr. Hammond, I, deep down in my soul, know only too well—that death does not end all. My father was a true Christian, and a lay preacher. I have travelled with him hundreds of times to his preaching appointments, playing the harmonium and singing solos for him in his services. More than once the sense of God’s claim upon me was so great as almost to compel my yielding my heart and life. Would to God I had! But my pride, my ambitions, strangled my good desires, and, as I said just now, I broke my father’s heart. I killed him, and ruined all my own life, though I have no pity for myself. Then London life, my husband’s brutality, my own misery, all helped to drive even the memory of God from my mind.”