Chapter XLIII: Midnight in Mrs. Forbes’ Library

Wilson Forbes was a studious man, and his wife found him in the library, bending over a book, quite forgetful that the clock had struck two. He looked up as the lady entered, and observed, with some interest, that her eyes were shining like diamonds, while the face they lighted so brilliantly was strangely colorless.

“What has happened? Are you ill?” he inquired, anxiously, laying down his book as she threw the ermine mantle from her white shoulders, sunk down at his feet, and laid her head upon his knee. “What is the matter, child?”

“Wilson, do you really love me?”

The husband smiled at this absurd question, put to him so earnestly, at the dead of night, and passed his hands over the shining braids of her hair, which a few great diamonds lighted up like stars.

“What a question, dear? Was I compelled to marry you?”

“No! no! Not that!”

“Or were you so abundantly wealthy that I was tempted into it?”

“Was I then so dear to you? Am I now?”

“Dear as my own life, Alice. Why should you doubt it?”

“Would it hurt you—would it kill you—if—if we parted?”

“Parted! You and I?” said the husband, looking into those bright eyes in fear that his wife was mad. “The very thought is sinful.”

“I know it is, Wilson. Nothing but sin could ever part us. But the past! Oh! if one could seize upon that, and tear months or years out of it!”

“That might well be the prayer of an old fellow like your husband, Alice, because he would gladly bury a great many things; but what has your bright youth to remedy or regret?”

“One thing—only one; but that is so bitter!”

“I can guess it, Alice. You cannot force yourself to love a grave old fellow, fifteen years your senior, as he loves you.”

She lifted her head in quick surprise, her lips apart, every feature of her beautiful face bright with eloquent protest.

“I have ceased to love everything on earth but you,” she said—“everything!”

Wilson Forbes was a tranquil man, fifteen years older than his wife; but his face lighted up with the joy and beauty of youth as the woman at his feet said this, and a pathos and earnestness that thrilled him from head to foot, certainly never felt before, took full possession of his soul then.

“My darling!” he said, bending over her, with tears in his eyes; “why did you never say this to me before?”

“I could not; there was something between us!”

“No, no, darling! you imagined it.”

The lady shook her head and bent her eyes on the floor, afraid to meet the tenderness in his, that her next words might drive away forever.

Forbes was a proud, sometimes stern man, truthful as Heaven, brave, as good men usually are. Could he forgive the cowardice of her silence? or bear to know that during the short married life, which seemed so pure, another man had controlled her actions and made her a very bond slave, because he had possessed her heart in the first flower of her life?

“Wilson!”

“Well, dear.”

The strong man bent down and kissed her neck, but his lips found it cold as marble, and left no red stain behind them. All the blood had centred around her heart.

“Wilson, would you want to kill me? or, what might be so much worse, put me away, if I told you—if you were made certain that I had loved another man?”

“When?”

His voice was low and hoarse. The knee against which she leaned shook ominously.

“Before I ever saw or heard of you.”

She spoke with such difficulty that, with his head bent, the man could hardly gather in her words. Even thus they unlocked the deathly contraction of his features, and brought the breath afresh to his lips.

“Who was the man?”

She tried to answer, but could not. It was her doom that she was called upon to utter.

“Give me his name.”

“Russell Waldon!”

“The man you have been intimate with since?”

“Yes; that man.”

He did not push her from the support she had so humbly taken; but she felt his whole frame grow still. It seemed to harden into stone.

“Go on!” he said, in a hoarse whisper.

“I was young and motherless. There was no human being to care much for me but my brother, and he was away. You have seen this man.”

“Curse him!”

In her whole married life, Alice had never heard a harsh word from her husband’s lips before. This curse struck through her heart like a sword.

“Well, go on!”

“He was different to any man I had seen. He singled me out, and seemed to worship me.”

“So, in return you worshipped him.”

The tortured man spoke bitterly, and that gave the woman at his feet a little courage.

“Call it worship, if you will. I was an ardent, romantic girl, with enough talent to look upon a man of genius as a god, and to mistake this wild homage of the brain for love—”

“Mistake it!”

“Then I thought it was little less than adoration—now I wonder at myself.”

“Still you loved him.”

“Oh, Wilson! Wilson! if I could only make you understand how different, how wild and puerile it was, compared to—to—”

“Compared to what?”

“To the calm, solemn, beautiful love that I—that a wife feels for her true, good husband.”

“Alice!”

She had left his support and was on her knees before him, her eyes lifted to the white agony of his face, her hands clasped in appeal.

“No, no! Heaven is my judge, it was not love that I felt for this man, but an insanity of the brain. Still I thought it love; I called it love. In every line and letter that passed between us, that sacred word was desecrated.”

The woman was getting fearfully excited. While condemning herself with those trembling lips, she pleaded with her eyes, and wildly searched her husband’s face for some sign of mercy.

Forbes took her clasped hands in his.

“You did not love this man, yet ever since our marriage have held him as a close friend.”

“I could not help it. I was the fashion—powerful in society—and an ambition to shine there seized upon him. He bade me open the way for him. I was in his power—”

“In his power! Woman, do you know what these words mean?”

“Yes, I was in his power. Oh, mercy! Do not shrink from me so! He had my letters—silly verses that I wrote—and would not give them up. If I rebelled, he threatened to publish them to the whole world; worst of all, he threatened to send them to you!”

“The infamous villain!”

“By this fear he held me. My whole nature revolted. I detested him. That which had seemed so beautiful, so god-like, was rank hypocrisy, which I loathed; but he had my letters—he had my letters!”

Forbes grasped her hands with iron force.

“One word. Look in my face, Alice. What was in those letters?”

“I do not know. Wild romance, rash expressions—such as a woman blushes for when she knows that all she has experienced was a fever, in which no feeling of true affection entered—promises for the future. Great Heavens! I cannot tell what was in the letters. He would not give them up, though I begged him on my knees. I only wanted to make them ashes, and breathe again, but he would not give them up.”

“You talk wildly, Alice, and do not answer.”

“Not answer! I do not understand!”

The man hesitated. Thoughts stung him which those manly lips refused to frame into speech. She saw the struggle with child-like bewilderment; then dawning comprehension of a doubt she had not dreamed of widened her black eyes, and a flood of burning red came with a sudden rush over her face, neck, and arms.

“Oh, Wilson! you did not think that?”

The reproach in those eyes, the sudden uplifting of her figure, the proud astonishment in her voice, might have convinced a less disturbed man that he was wronging an innocent woman; but the tempest raging in that usually calm nature blinded him, heart and brain. The pride of her accused womanhood seemed like audacity to him. As she held out her hands with a protest which had pathos in its very pride, he put her from him, and she fell, like one dead, at his feet. He bore her to the couch in her own room, and, when a struggle of returning life came back, left her there alone.