Entering the neat little bedroom, to his surprise Amos found his brother-in-law painfully agitated. “You have got a visitor,” he said, in a voice scarcely audible. “I heard a carriage drive up to the door, and since then I have heard a voice. Oh, can it be? Yes; I see it in your eyes.”
“Calm yourself, my poor brother,” said Amos; “it is even as you suppose. Julia has come, and I am truly thankful for it.”
The humbled man tried to conceal his tears with his one uninjured hand, and said at last, “I think I can bear it now; let her come in.”
On her brother’s invitation Julia entered. The eyes of the two met,—the eyes of the oppressor and the oppressed; but how changed in position now! The once down-trodden wife now radiant with health and beauty, a beauty heightened by its passing cloud of tender sadness. The once overbearing, heartless husband now a stranded wreck. How haggard he looked! and how those hollow sunken eyes swam with a tearful look that craved a pity which they seemed at the same time to despair of! And could she give that pity? Had he not forsaken her and her children, and left them to grinding poverty? Had he not raised his hand against her and cruelly smitten her? Had he not laughed her to scorn? Had he not used her as a mere plaything, and then flung her aside, as the child does the toy which it has covered for a time with its caresses? He had done all this, and more; and now she was there before him, but out of his clutches, and able, without fear of harm to herself, to charge him with his past neglect and cruelty. Yes; the outraged wife could have done this, but the woman’s heart that throbbed in her bosom forbade it. She was the loving woman still, though the fountain of her love had been sealed for a time. Stealing gently up to his chair, lest any sudden movement should agitate him too much, and yet quivering all the while in every limb from suppressed excitement, she bowed herself over him, and gathered his head softly to her bosom, whispering, “Poor, dear Orlando, you are glad, are you not, to see me?” Then, as the huge rapid drops of the thunder-cloud, which has hung overhead for a time in the midst of oppressive stillness, patter at first on the leaves one by one, and then break into a sweeping deluge, so did a storm of weeping pour from the eyes and heart of that crushed and spirit-broken sinner. Hardly daring to place a hand with its pressure of answering love on the neck which that same hand had not long since disfigured with bruises and blood, he yet ventured at last to draw his wife closer to him, whispering, “It is too much.” Sweetly soothing him, Julia helped him to dry his tears, and then sat down by his side, taking the hand of his uninjured arm in her own.
No one spoke again for a while. At last Mr Vivian roused himself to an effort, and, disengaging his hand, looked his wife steadily and sorrowfully in the face. “Tell me, Julia,” he said, “tell me the truth,—tell me, can you really and from your heart forgive me?—nay, do not speak till you have heard me out,”—for she was about to give an eager reply. “Consider well. You know what I have been to you,—the brute, the tyrant, the traitor. Can you, then, in view of all the past, forgive me from your heart?”
“I can, I do, dear Orlando, from my very heart,” she cried; “and surely I too have much to be forgiven.”
“Not by me,” he said earnestly. “And now,” he added, “as you have assured me of your forgiveness, and as my days in this world can be but few,—nay, I know it, I know it,—I have two dying requests to make of you, and only two. Will you grant me them?”
“Oh yes, yes, dear husband, if they are in my power.”
“They are perfectly within your power. The first is, that you would try and pay back part of my deep debt of gratitude to your noblest of brothers, who is standing there—to Amos Huntingdon, whom I dare not call brother; and I will tell you how the payment is to be made—not in gold or silver, for he would not take such payment, but in giving yourself up to the service of that Saviour whom he has truly and courageously followed. That, I know, would be the only payment he would care to accept, and that will rejoice his heart. Will you promise?”
“Oh, that I will!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands passionately together. “I have misunderstood, I have thwarted dear Amos shamefully, but now I can truly say, ‘His people shall be my people, and his God my God.’”