The time passed, and now I was to prepare myself to receive my husband. My mind had been so wholly engrossed by my sister that I had given but little thought to the interview that was likely to happen that day, if it were true, as Mary had said, that my husband would come to Newcastle.
It was not my fault, but the fault of my having been born a woman—of my being human, in short—that, whilst I thought of my husband’s arrival, I should find myself looking into the glass and comparing my face with my sister’s. Never had I seen her so sweet, so lovely, indeed, as when I beheld her in the road when my little boy came running to me. How different was my face from hers! And yet, if he loved me, if his love for my memory was as deep as my sister had declared it in her letter, surely my face could not signify. Had I found him shorn of his youth, maimed, ravaged by disaster, it would not have mattered, I should but have loved him the more.
But then, I said to myself, whilst I looked in the glass, ‘What should it be to me if his love grows cold at the sight of my white hair and my altered countenance? Why should I care, though he came to me loving only Mary? for I swear’—and as I pronounced these words I knelt—‘I swear by my God that whilst Mary lives I will be no wife to John.’ And this I said on my knees, again and still again. Yet, when I arose, having been governed by a sudden bitter, powerful impulse to pronounce these words, my heart trembled within me, and I felt that I had sinned in directing myself by oath to a course, instead of trusting myself, child-like, to the guiding hand of Him whose loving eye had been, as I still hoped it was, upon me.
I was in my bedroom that evening; the time was a little before eight. The room, as you may remember, was at the back of the house, and no sound of traffic from the roadway reached me. On a sudden Mrs. Lee opened the door without knocking, and said, with something of alarm in the expression of her face, ‘Agnes, your husband awaits you in the dining-room.’
Had I not seen him when I secretly visited Bath, and had not Mary’s letter made me expect to see him at Jesmond almost immediately, I cannot tell what would have been the effect upon me of the announcement of his arrival. But I had had all day to think over it, and, as I have said, I had seen him when I went to Bath, though he did not know me; then, again, my capacity of emotion—or, in other words, my sensibility—was somewhat dulled by the manner in which my spirits had been strained since I had recovered my memory and received news of my family; for one reason or another, then, I merely started when Mrs. Lee announced my husband’s arrival, and, with a voice of composure, asked her to accompany me downstairs.
‘No,’ said she, ‘go alone, Agnes. It will be a meeting too sacred for me to witness. I have welcomed him to my house, and he awaits you. Go, then!’
I descended the stairs, but my heart beat very quickly. Sacred the meeting might be, but it could not possess the joy, the gladness, the happy tears, the pathos of the delight of reunion which must have made a golden and glorious memory of it whilst my life lasted had it chanced but four short months earlier. The dining-room door was ajar; I pushed it open and entered. A tall lamp stood upon the table; the globe was unshaded, and the light streamed full upon my husband, who stood at the table with his face turned towards the door. On seeing me, he cried, ‘Oh, Agnes! oh, my dearest wife!’ and in a moment he had embraced me, and once or twice he sobbed as he pressed his lips to my cheek. He held me to him for some moments, then released me, grasped my hands, and fell back a step to survey me.
‘That I should not have known you,’ he cried, ‘when I looked at you as you lay upon the sofa! That you should have come to Bath, as Mary told me, to see your children, walking until you fainted in your exhaustion, and not entering your own house because—because—ah, God!’ he cried, broke off, hid his face, and then, looking at me, exclaimed, ‘Speak to me, Agnes!’
‘Oh, John, I will speak to you! The love that I gave you when we were married is still yours. I will speak to you—but not as your wife. Look at these white hairs. Look at the deformity here and here. I have suffered much. For nearly three years have I been deprived of memory. I knew not my own name. I knew not,’ I added, in a low voice, ‘that I had a husband and children. My memory came back to me the other day, and then I heard that Mary was your wife. Would for her dear sake that I was dead, as you both believed me. Look in my face; you will see how I have suffered. But what have been my sufferings compared to Mary’s now? Oh! I have received a terrible letter from her.’
I put my hand in my pocket and extended the letter to him. He looked at it, and then at me, and then at it again, standing motionless, as though paralysed. Presently he exclaimed, in a voice a little above a whisper: