Alone on a Wide Wide Sea, Vol. 3 (of 3)

by William Clark Russell

Oh, it was an exquisite pang of mortification to feel that there had been needed but a very little while—for what were three short years in the life of married love? nor was it even three short years, for, if General Ramsay spoke truly, my husband had been already married three or four months—I say it was exquisitely mortifying to my pride and to my love for my husband, to think how speedily and easily the memory of me had been turned out of his heart, leaving room for another to replace me, and that other my sister, whom I had loved so tenderly, that I would have laid down my life for her, even as I was sure she would have died for me.

But after a while, and when I was alone, other and higher and nobler thoughts prevailed. The words of Mrs. Lee began to weigh with me. I fell very silent, and for the rest of the day sat or moved here and there engrossed in thought. Mrs. Lee contrived to leave me alone. She could perceive in my face the conflict that was happening in my mind, and, having given me her opinion and her counsel, she acted wisely in letting me solve, as best I could, with the help of God, the awful and tremendous problem which my returning memory had brought with it.

When the night came I was still undecided. Mrs. Lee had written to the Bath papers during the afternoon, and nothing more had been done. Indeed, we had seen so little of each other throughout the day that, after our long discourse of the morning was ended, but a very little more had been said on the subject. She had counselled me; she had been perfectly conscious of the deep, and often the distracting, struggle in my mind, and now, I saw, she was resolved that, let the issue be what it might, it should be of my own contriving.

I bade her good-night at ten o’clock, our usual time of separating, and entering my bedroom, closed the door, and putting Alice Lee’s cross upon a chair, knelt before it and prayed for aid and enlightenment, for support and for strength; and I prayed that I might be taught to know what was best to be done. I arose with refreshed heart and calmed feelings, and, replacing the cross, I paced about the room, not with agitation, but because I was sleepless, and because the mere mechanical effort of walking seemed to help me to think.

But I had made up my mind. I had said to myself: my husband and my sister believe me dead, and I must remain dead to them, for if I return to my home and proclaim that I am alive, what is to become of my sister, who is now a wife, but who will not then be a wife? What is to become of her? A dreadful sacrifice is involved, and I must be the victim. Were Alice Lee to descend from heaven and speak to me, what would be her bidding? That my sister must remain a wife, yea, though my heart broke in securing her in that title.

I love my husband; I love my sister. The great sacrifice, I said to myself, that I feel is demanded of me will prove my love. But my children! I cannot possess them without discovering myself. I must surrender them to my sister, who I know loves them with the love of their mother ... but here I stopped dead in my pacing the room and wept, but without agitation, without passion, for my prayer was brooding dove-like over my spirit, and though I wept I was calm.

I could say no more to you, no, not if I were to write down every thought that had visited me throughout the day and in the silent watches of the night. They supposed me dead, they had wept for me—oh, well did my heart know how they had mourned for me! and a mother being wanted for my little ones, who, of all the countless women in this land, could so fitly take my place as my sister?

But my children.... But my children? and I pressed my hand to my heart....

In the morning when Mrs. Lee entered the parlour she found me standing at the window. She kissed me and then looked me in the face. She would know by my eyes that I had slept but little, she would also see that I had wept much, and she would gather from my face that I had formed a resolution. She listened in silence while I unfolded that resolution to her.

‘You must not dream of banishing yourself from your home for ever,’ said she.