in which my suit has been urged for years, as a proof of my innocence of this charge that you have brought against me. But I disdain to plead my cause with so unwomanly a heart,—that measures the baseness of others by what it knows of its own."
He went, and for a time I was left in doubt whether my victory had been really achieved. Then I thought it all over, and was reassured. He could not simulate those looks and tones,—no, nor that tumult of feeling which had made his heart throb so wildly beneath my hand. He loved me,—that was certain; and no matter how great his anger or his indignation, my refusal must have cut him to the soul. And the charge I had made would rankle, too. These thoughts were my comfort when John told me, with grief and surprise, that his brother had joined the Arctic expedition under Dr. Kane. I knew it was for no light cause he would forsake the career just opening so brightly before him.
John and I were married in December, as had been our intention. We led a quiet, but to him a happy, life. He often wondered at my content with home and its seclusion, and owned what fears he had felt, before our marriage, lest I, accustomed to gayety and excitement, should weary of him, the thoughtful, book-loving man. It seemed he had made up his mind to all manner of self-sacrifice in the way of accompanying me to parties, and having guests at our own house. I did not exact much from him; I cared little for the gay world in which William no longer moved. I read with John his favorite books; I interested myself in the sciences which he pursued with such enthusiasm. It was no part of my plan to inflict unnecessary misery on any one, and I strove with all my power to make happy the man whom I had chosen. I succeeded fully; and when we sat on the piazza in the moonlight, my head resting on his shoulder, my hand clasped in his, he would tell me how infinitely dearer the wife had grown to be than even the lover's fancy had portrayed her.
And my thoughts were far away from the bland airs and brightening moon amid the frozen solitudes of the North. Where was William? what was he doing? did he think of me? and how? What if he should perish there, and we should never meet again? Life grew blank at the thought; I put it resolutely away.
I had drunk of the cup of vengeance; it was sweet, but did not satisfy. I longed for a fuller draught; but might it not be denied to my fevered lips? Perhaps, amid the noble and disinterested toils of the expedition, his heart would outgrow all love for me, and when we met again I should see my power was gone. I pondered much on this; I believed at last that the solitude, the isolation, would be not unpropitious to me. From the little world of the ice-locked vessel his thoughts would turn to the greater world he had left, and I should be remembered. When he returned we should be much together. His mother was dead; our house was the only place he could call his home. Not even for me, I felt assured, would he cast off the love of his only brother. I had not done with him yet. So quietly and composedly I awaited his return.
He came at last, and his manner when we met smote me with a strange uneasiness. It was not the estrangement of a friend whom I had injured, but the distant politeness of a stranger. Was my influence gone? I determined to know, once for all. When we chanced to be alone a moment I went to his side. "William," I asked, laying my hand on his arm, and speaking in a tender, reproachful tone, "why do you treat me so?"
With a quick, decided motion, he removed my hand,—then looked down on me with a smile. "'You are strangely obtuse,'" he said, quoting my own words of two years before. "What can Mrs. Haughton desire from a base fortune-hunter with whom she is unhappily connected by marriage, but a humility that does not presume on the relationship?"
I saw a bold stroke was needed, and that I must stoop to conquer. "Oh, William," I said, sorrowfully, "you called me vindictive once, but it is you who are really so. I was unhappy, harassed, distracted between"–
"Between what?"
"I do not know—I mean I cannot tell you," I stammered, with well-feigned confusion. "Can you not forgive me, William? Often and often, since you left me that day, I have wished to see you, and to tell you how I repented my hasty and ungenerous words. Will you not pardon me? Shall we not be friends again?"
"I am not vindictive," he said, more kindly,—"least of all toward you. But I cannot see how you should desire the friendship of one whom you regard as a mercenary hypocrite. When you can truthfully assure me that you disbelieve that charge, then, and not till then, will I forgive you and be your friend."
"Let it be now, then," I said, joyfully, holding out my hand. He did not reject it;—we were reconciled.
William had come home ill; the hardships of the expedition and the fearful cold of the Arctic Zone had been too much for him. The very night of his return I noticed in his countenance a frequent flush succeeded by a deadly pallor; my quick ear had caught, too, the sound of a cough,—not frequent or prolonged, but deep and hollow. And now, for the first time in my long and dreary toil, I saw the path clear and the end in view.
Every one knows with what enthusiasm the returned travellers were hailed. Amid the felicitations, the praises, the banquets, the varied excitements of the time, William forgot his ill-health. When these were over, he reopened his office, and prepared to enter once more on the active duties of his profession. But he was unfit for it; John and I both saw this, and urged him to abandon the attempt for the present,—to stay with us, to enjoy rest, books, society, and not till his health was fully reestablished undertake the prosecution of business.
"You forget, my good sister," he laughingly said to me one day,—(he could jest on the subject now,)—"that I have not the fortune of our John,—I did not marry an heiress, and I have my own way to make. I had got up a few rounds of the ladder when an adverse fate dragged me down. Being a free man once more, I must struggle up again as quickly as may be."
"Oh, for that matter," I returned, in the same tone, "I had some part, perhaps, in the adverse fate you speak of; so it is but fair that I should make you what recompense I can. I am an admirable nurse; and you will gain time, if you will deliver yourself up to my care, and not go back to Coke and Chitty till I give you leave. Seriously, William, I fear you do not know how ill you are, and how unsafe it is for you to go on with business."
He yielded without much persuasion, and came home to us. Those were happy days. William and I were constantly together. I read to him, I sung to him, and played chess with him; on mild days I drove him out in my own little pony-carriage. Did he love me all this time? I could not tell. Never by look or tone did he intimate that the old affection yet lived in his heart. I fancied he felt as I with him,—perfect content in my companionship, without a thought or wish beyond. We were made for each other; our tastes, our habits of mind and feeling, fully harmonized; had we been born brother and sister, we should have preferred each other to all the world, and, remaining single for each other's sakes, have passed our lives together.
So the time wore on, sweetly and placidly, and only I seemed to notice the failure in our invalid; but I watched for it too keenly, too closely, to be blinded. The occasional rallies of strength that gave John such hope, and cheered William himself so greatly, did not deceive me; I knew they were but the fluctuations of his malady. Changes in the weather, or a damp east wind, did not account to me for his relapses; I knew he was in the grasp of a fell, a fatal disease; it might let him go awhile, give him a little respite, as a cat does the mouse she has caught,—but he never could escape,—his doom was fixed.
But you may be sure I gave him no hint of it, and he never seemed to suspect it for himself. One could not believe such blindness possible, did we not see it verified in so many instances, year after year.
Often, now, I thought of a passage in an old book I used to read with many a heart-quake in my girlish days. It ran thus:—"Perhaps we may see you flattering yourself, through a long, lingering illness, that you shall still recover, and putting off any serious reflection and conversation for fear it should overset your spirits. And the cruel kindness of friends and physicians, as if they were in league with Satan to make the destruction of your soul as sure as possible, may, perhaps, abet this fatal deceit." We
