“I was not thinking of my husband, Captain Bennydeck, when I said that. If I have injured any person, the person is myself.”
She was thinking of that fatal concession to the advice of her mother, and to the interests of her child, which placed her in a false position toward the honest man who loved her and trusted her. If he had been less innocent in the ways of the world, and not so devotedly fond of her, he might, little by little, have persuaded Catherine to run the risk of shocking him by a confession of the truth. As it was, his confidence in her raised him high above the reach of suspicions which might have occurred to other men. He saw her turn pale; he saw distress in her face, which he interpreted as a silent reproach to him for the questions he had asked.
“I hope you will forgive me?” he said simply.
She was astonished. “What have I to forgive?”
“My want of delicacy.”
“Oh, Captain Bennydeck, you speak of one of your great merits as if it were a fault! Over and over again I have noticed your delicacy, and admired it.”
He was too deeply in earnest to abandon his doubts of himself.
“I have ignorantly led you to think of your sorrows,” he said; “sorrows that I cannot console. I don’t deserve to be forgiven. May I make the one excuse in my power? May I speak of myself?”
She told him by a gesture that he had made a needless request.
“The life I have led,” he resumed, “accounts, perhaps, in some degree, for what is deficient in me. At school, I was not a popular boy; I only made one friend, and he has long since been numbered with the dead. Of my life at college, and afterward in London, I dare not speak to you; I look back at it with horror. My school-friend decided my choice of a profession; he went into the navy. After a while, not knowing what else to do, I followed his example. I liked the life—I may say the sea saved me. For years, I was never on shore for more than a few weeks at a time. I saw nothing of society; I was hardly ever in the company of ladies. The next change in my life associated me with an Arctic expedition. God forbid I should tell you of what men go through who are lost in the regions of eternal ice! Let me only say I was preserved—miraculously preserved—to profit by that dreadful experience. It made a new man of me; it altered me ( I hope for the better) into what I am now. Oh, I feel that I ought to have kept my secret yesterday—I mean my daring to love you. I should have waited till you knew more of me; till my conduct pleased you perhaps, and spoke for me. You won’t laugh, I am sure, if I confess (at my age!) that I am inexperienced. Never till I met you have I known what true love is—and this at forty years old. How some people would laugh! I own it seems melancholy to me.”