Agatha Webb (32 page)

"YOU were lost to him! It was all I heard. YOU were lost to him!
Then, if I acknowledged the crime I should not only take up my own
burden of disgrace, but see him restored to his rights over the
only woman I had ever loved. The sacrifice was great and my virtue
was not equal to it. I gave him back the money, but I did not
offer to assume the responsibility of my own crime."

"And since?"

In what a hard tone she spoke!

"I have had to see Philemon gradually assume the rights James once
enjoyed."

"John," she asked,—she was under violent self-restraint,—"why do
you come now?"

I cast my eyes at Philemon. He was standing, as before, with his
eyes turned away. There was discouragement in his attitude,
mingled with a certain grand patience. Seeing that he was better
able to bear her loss than either you or myself, I said to her
very low, "I thought you ought to know the truth before you gave
your final word. I am late, but I would have been TOO LATE a week
from now."

Her hand fell from the door, but her eyes remained fixed on my
face. Never have I sustained such a look; never will I encounter
such another.

"It is too late NOW," she murmured. "The clergyman has just gone
who united me to Philemon."

The next minute her back was towards me; she had faced her father
and her new-made husband.

"Father, you knew this thing!" Keen, sharp, incisive, the words
rang out. "I saw it in your face when he began to speak."

Mr. Gilchrist drooped slightly; lie was a very sick man and the
scene had been a trying one.

"If I did," was his low response, "it was but lately. You were
engaged then to Philemon. Why break up this second match?"

She eyed him as if she found it difficult to credit her ears. Such
indifference to the claims of innocence was incredible to her. I
saw her grand profile quiver, then the slow ebbing from her cheek
of every drop of blood indignation had summoned there.

"And you, Philemon?" she suggested, with a somewhat softened
aspect. "You committed this wrong ignorantly. Never having heard
of this crime, you could not know on what false grounds I had been
separated from James."

I had started to escape, but stopped just beyond the threshold of
the door as she uttered these words. Philemon was not as ignorant
as she supposed. This was evident from his attitude and
expression.

"Agatha," he began, but at this first word, and before he could
clasp the hands held helplessly out before her, she gave a great
cry, and staggering back, eyed both her father and himself in a
frenzy of indignation that was all the more uncontrollable from
the superhuman effort which she had hitherto made to suppress it.

"You too!" she shrieked. "You too! and I have just sworn to love,
honour, and obey you! Love YOU! Honour YOU! the unconscionable
wretch who—"

But here Mr. Gilchrist rose. Weak, tottering, quivering with
something more than anger, he approached his daughter and laid his
finger on her lips.

"Be quiet!" he said. "Philemon is not to blame. A month ago he
came to me and prayed that as a relief to his mind I would tell
him why you had separated yourself from James. He had always
thought the match, had fallen through on account of some foolish
quarrel or incompatibility, but lately he had feared there was
something more than he suspected in this break, something that he
should know. So I told him why you had dismissed James; and
whether he knew James better than we did, or whether he had seen
something in his long acquaintance with these brothers which
influenced his judgment, he said at once: 'This cannot be true of
James. It is not in his nature to defraud any man; but John—I
might believe it of John. Isn't there some complication here?' I
had never thought of John, and did not see how John could be mixed
up with an affair I had supposed to be a secret between James and
myself, but when we came to locate the day, Philemon remembered
that on returning to his room that night, he had found John
awaiting him. As his room was not five doors from that occupied by
Mr. Orr, he was convinced that there was more to this matter than
I had suspected. But when he laid the matter before James, he did
not deny that John was guilty, but was peremptory in wishing you
not to be told before your marriage. He knew that you were engaged
to a good man, a man that your father approved, a man that could
and would make you happy. He did not want to be the means of a
second break, and besides, and this, I think, was at the bottom of
the stand he took, for James Zabel was always the proudest man I
ever knew,—he never could bear, he said, to give to one like
Agatha a name which he knew and she knew was not entirely free
from reproach. It would stand in the way of his happiness and
ultimately of hers; his brother's dishonour was his. So while he
still loved you, his only prayer was that after you were safely
married and Philemon was sure of your affection, he should tell
you that the man you once regarded so favourably was not unworthy
of that regard. To obey him, Philemon has kept silent, while I—
Agatha, what are you doing? Are you mad, my child?"

She looked so for the moment. Tearing off the ring which she had
worn but an hour, she flung it on the floor. Then she threw her
arms high up over her head and burst out in an awful voice:

"Curses on the father, curses on the husband, who have combined to
make me rue the day I was born! The father I cannot disown, but
the husband—"

"Hush!"

It was Mr. Gilchrist who dared her fury. Philemon said nothing.

"Hush! he may be the father of your children. Don't curse—"

But she only towered the higher and her beauty, from being simply
majestic, became appalling.

"Children!" she cried. "If ever I bear children to this man, may
the blight of Heaven strike them as it has struck me this day. May
they die as my hopes have died, or, if they live, may they bruise
his heart as mine is bruised, and curse their father as—"

Here I fled the house. I was shaking as if this awful denunciation
had fallen on my own head. But before the door closed behind me, a
different cry called me back. Mr. Gilchrist was lying lifeless on
the floor, and Philemon, the patient, tender Philemon, had taken
Agatha to his breast and was soothing her there as if the words
she had showered upon him had been blessings instead of the most
fearful curses which had ever left the lips of mortal woman.

The next letter was in Agatha's handwriting. It was dated some
months later and was stained and crumpled more than any other in
the whole packet. Could Philemon once have told why? Were these
blotted lines the result of his tears falling fast upon them,
tears of forty years ago, when he and she were young and love had
been, doubtful? Was the sheet so yellowed and so seamed because it
had been worn on his breast and folded and unfolded so often?
Philemon, thou art in thy grave, sleeping sweetly at last by thy
deeply idolised one, but these marks of feeling still remain
indissolubly connected with the words that gave them birth.

DEAR PHILEMON:

You are gone for a day and a night only, but it seems a lengthened
absence to me, meriting a little letter. You have been so good to
me, Philemon, ever since that dreadful hour following our
marriage, that sometimes—I hardly dare yet to say always—I feel
that I am beginning to love you and that God did not deal with me
so harshly when He cast me into your arms. Yesterday I tried to
tell you this when you almost kissed me at parting. But I was
afraid it was a momentary sentimentality and so kept still. But
to-day such a warm well-spring of joy rises in my heart when I
think that to-morrow the house will be bright again, and that in
place of the empty wall opposite me at table I shall see your
kindly and forbearing face, I know that the heart I had thought
impregnable has begun to yield, and that daily gentleness, and a
boundless consideration from one who had excuse for bitter
thoughts and recrimination, are doing what all of us thought
impossible a few short months ago.

Oh, I am so happy, Philemon, so happy to love where it is now my
duty to love; and if it were not for that dreadful memory of a
father dying with harsh words in his ears, and the knowledge that
you, my husband, yet not my husband, are bearing ever about with
you echoes of words that in another nature would have turned
tenderness into gall, I could be merry also and sing as I go about
the house making it pleasant and comfortable against your speedy
return. As it is I can but lay my hand softly on my heart as its
beatings grow too impetuous and say, "God bless my absent Philemon
and help him to forgive me! I forgive him and love him as I never
thought I could."

That you may see that these are not the weak outpourings of a
lonely woman, I will here write that I heard to-day that John and
James Zabel have gone into partnership in the ship-building
business, John's uncle having left him a legacy of several
thousand dollars. I hope they will do well. James, they say, is
full of business and is, to all appearance, perfectly cheerful.
This relieves me from too much worry in his regard. God certainly
knew what kind of a husband I needed. May you find yourself
equally blessed in your wife.

Another letter to Philemon, a year later:

DEAR PHILEMON:

Hasten home, Philemon; I do not like these absences. I am just now
too weak and fearful. Since we knew the great hope before us, I
have looked often in your face for a sign that you remembered what
this hope cannot but recall to my shuddering memory. Philemon,
Philemon, was I mad? When I think what I said in my rage, and then
feel the little life stirring about my heart, I wonder that God
did not strike me dead rather than bestow upon me the greatest
blessing that can come to woman. Philemon, Philemon, if anything
should happen to the child! I think of it by day, I think of it by
night. I know you think of it too, though you show me such a
cheerful countenance and make such great plans for the future.
"Will God remember my words, or will He forget? It seems as if my
reason hung upon this question."

A note this time in answer to one from John Zabel:

DEAR JOHN:

Thank you for words which could have come from nobody else. My
child is dead. Could I expect anything different? If I did, God
has rebuked me.

Philemon thinks only of me. We understand each other so perfectly
now that our greatest suffering comes in seeing each other's pain.
My load I can bear, but HIS—Come and see me, John; and tell James
our house is open to him. We have all done wrong, and are caught
in one net of misfortune. Let it make us friends again.

Below this in Philemon's hand:

My wife is superstitious. Strong and capable as she is, she has
regarded this sudden taking off of our first-born as a sign that
certain words uttered by her on her marriage day, unhappily known
to you and, as I take it, to James also, have been remembered by
the righteous God above us. This is a weakness which I cannot
combat. Can you, who alone of all the world beside know both it
and its cause, help me by a renewed friendship, whose cheerful and
natural character may gradually make her forget? If so, come like
old neighbours, and dine with us on our wedding day. If God sees
that we have buried the past and are ready to forgive each other
the faults of our youth, perhaps He will further spare this good
woman. I think she will be able to bear it. She has great strength
except where a little child is concerned. That alone can
henceforth stir the deepest recesses of her heart.

After this, a gap of years. One, two, three, four, five children
were laid away to rest in Portchester churchyard, then Philemon
and she came to Sutherlandtown; but not till after a certain event
had occurred, best made known by this last letter to Philemon:

DEAREST HUSBAND:

Our babe is born, our sixth and our dearest, and the reproach of
its first look had to be met by me alone. Oh, why did I leave you
and come to this great Boston where I have no friend but Mrs.
Sutherland? Did I think I could break the spell of fate or
providence by giving birth to my last darling among strangers? I
shall have to do something more than that if I would save this
child to our old age. It is borne in upon me like fate that never
will a child prosper at my breast or survive the clasp of my arms.
If it is to live it must be reared by others. Some woman who has
not brought down the curse of Heaven upon her by her own
blasphemies must nourish the tender frame and receive the blessing
of its growing love. Neither I nor you can hope to see recognition
in our babe's eye. Before it can turn upon us with love, it will
close in its last sleep and we will be left desolate. What shall
we do, then, with this little son? To whose guardianship can we
entrust it? Do you know a man good enough or a woman sufficiently
tender? I do not, but if God wills that our little Frederick
should live, He will raise up someone. By the pang of possible
separation already tearing my heart, I believe that He WILL raise
up someone. Meanwhile I do not dare to kiss the child, lest I
should blight it. He is so sturdy, Philemon, so different from all
the other five.

I open this to add that Mrs. Sutherland has just been in—with her
five-weeks-old infant. His father is away, too, and has not yet
seen his boy; and this is their first after ten years of marriage.
Oh, that my future opened before me as brightly as hers!

The next letter opens with a cry:

Philemon! Come to me, Philemon! I have done what I threatened. I
have made the sacrifice. Our child is no longer ours, and now,
perhaps, he may live. But oh, my breaking heart! my empty arms!
Help me to bear my desolation, for it is for life. We will never
have another child.

And where is it? Ah, that is the wonder of it. Near you, Philemon,
yet not too near. Mrs. Sutherland has it, and you may have seen
its little face through the car window if you were in the station
last night when the express passed through to Sutherlandtown. Ah!
but she has her burden to bear too. An awful, secret burden like
my own, only she will have the child—for, Philemon, she has taken
it in lieu of her own, which died last night in my sight; and Mr.
Sutherland does not know what she has done, and never will, if you
keep the secret as I shall, for the sake of the life our little
innocent has thus won.