Chapter XXXIX: Nina Forgives Talbot

“Oh, Aunt Drusilla, you must find my husband for me now. I cannot die without seeing him again. He loves me, and only think how he would feel if he came back again after long months and years had passed, and they told him what a terrible death I had died,” exclaimed Nina, passionately, the day after her sentence of death had been pronounced.

A very madness of despair had taken possession of the wretched young creature. She was drowned in bitter tears of woe and pain.

“Until I knew that Talbot loved me I could have borne to die,” she said. “But now, oh, now, it is too hard to bear. Oh, if my life could be spared to me, how happy I should be when my husband came home again! There would be no more sorrow, nor regrets, no cruel misunderstandings, but only heavenly peace and happiness. And then, perhaps, after awhile we might find out the real murderer of Sibyl St. Alban. I would give half my fortune to find out who murdered the poor lady that Talbot once loved. Perhaps it was some jealous lover, goaded to madness by her open flirtations,” she added, little dreaming how near her fancy had hit the truth.

The whole passionate plaint of her heart was to see her husband again before the awful sentence of the law was carried out against her. Something told her that Talbot would not let them kill her for a crime that she had never committed although the jury men had said that she had.

“I am innocent, and Talbot will not let them murder me in cold blood,” she said, passionately. “Oh, Aunt Drusilla, send some one to bring him to me before it is too late!”

“Oh, my darling, if I only knew where to send for him how gladly would I do so,” sighed the poor old lady, whose heart was nearly broken by this dreadful tragedy.

“I have heard that money will do almost anything. I will give all that I am worth to any one who will bring Talbot to me before that fatal 25th of July,” shuddered Nina.

It seemed as if neither love nor money could do anything in this case. Talbot Strangemore’s whereabouts were wrapped in the densest mystery. If the earth or the sea had opened and closed over him he could not have remained more silent to the appeals that went abroad for him. Everyone agreed that it was simply dreadful that Strangemore’s young wife should perish so miserably while he remained abroad in utter ignorance of her fate. Mr. Davenport advised that a detective be sent in search of him. Nina sprang eagerly at the suggestion and desired that two should go.

So they sent two men across the sea in search of the exile, but the slow days dawned and waned and no tidings came to hint at their success. Meanwhile hope began to fade in the hearts of those at home. The pale young prisoner grew frailer and whiter daily, until life seemed to hang upon a thread so slender that her friends doubted if she would survive until that fatal 25th of July. They brought her books and flowers to beguile the weary time. She only wept over the sweet blossoms that recalled to her the days when she was free and happy. Of the books she chose only the sweetest and saddest love-stories, and the most melancholy poems.

Minnie Fielding came to see her just as often as they would admit her. To this gentle woman, her old friend and teacher, Nina showed the sadness of her heart as she did to no one else.

“I have read all the books and the stories, but I cannot find among them all a single story as sad as mine,” she said, “I do not believe that any woman’s love ever had as sad an ending as mine. I loved my husband for five long years tenderly and truly, and all the while he was far away from me and hating the fetters that bound him to me, his heart given to another woman. At last when he came home and I learned the bitter truth, Fate played me one of her cruelest tricks. He learned to love me, and I missed the knowledge until all too late. If I die upon the scaffold it will not be because I am a sinner, for my hands are clear of Sibyl St. Alban’s blood. It will be because I loved so deeply, and because my jealous pain drove me momentarily mad.”

She opened one of her books of poems, and read aloud:

“Let him stand
In my thoughts untouched by blame,
Could he help it if my hand
He had claimed with hasty claim?
That was wrong, perhaps--but then
Such things be--and will again!
Women cannot judge for men.”

Mrs. Fielding kissed the poor, pale lips tenderly. “Poor darling! So you forgive him all the sorrow his weakness and folly brought upon you,” she said.

“Yes, because he loved me at the last,” Nina answered. “Oh, Mrs. Fielding, that lawyer was unjust to me, when he said that I had parted Talbot from his love. They were parted before he came home from college. I heard him tell Aunt Drusilla that she had thrown him over to marry a rich old man.”

“She was a bad woman, and Mr. Strangemore was weak indeed to fall a victim to her wiles again. You are very good to forgive him, dear,” said Mrs. Fielding. “Many women in your place would hate him.”

“I thought that I did at first,” Nina answered. “My pride, my resentment rose up in arms against him, and I said, I will never forgive him for his sin. But then I remembered that his dying mother had solemnly bound me to love him, and so I could not take my heart away from him even if I would. And, oh, Mrs. Fielding, I had loved him for five long years, and it was not easy to hate him then. Even if I had tried ever so hard I could not have done it. I think my love was deep enough to have pleased even a poet,” and she read again from her book:

“Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love as the angels may
With the breath of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behooving and unbehooving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past
Oh, never call it loving!”

“Oh, what a future of happiness Talbot Strangemore blighted by his folly,” Mrs. Fielding thought, gazing at the fair, young face and listening to the tender, musical voice. “One heart like Nina’s, so fresh, so pure, so true, is worth a hundred fickle coquettes like Sibyl St. Alban.”

And she could not help from despising Talbot Strangemore a little for his folly. But then she did not know how the beautiful coquette had lured him on and on, until she had fatally wrecked his happiness.

* * * * *

The flowers bloomed, the birds sang, the gay pageant of the summer moved on. Nina’s brief respite was almost over.

And every application for pardon, every prayer for a commutation of the sentence, every entreaty for a longer respite even, had been refused! They had no longer any hope.

It seemed that public opinion was terribly against the beautiful young prisoner. The governor was afraid to show her even the slightest favor, lest it should be said that he had been tempted by the glitter of her gold. He must let the law take its due course.

There was no longer any hope, no longer any time even, for the last day of her life was ended and at sun rise she must die--die an ignominious death upon the scaffold, she the young, the pure, the lovely, the last descendant of the proud old Selwyn race!

Only yesterday she had made her will. She had given ten thousand dollars to Miss Drusilla, ten thousand to her faithful maid, Kitty, ten thousand to her dear friends, the Fieldings, and she had gratefully remembered her lawyer, her minister, her servants, and given all the rest to Talbot. At night the silver-haired old minister who had baptized her when she was a baby, who had received her into his church, who had married her to Talbot Strangemore, and who had always watched tenderly over her orphan girlhood, had administered the sacrament to her and a few chosen friends, had blessed her, and gone away to return at daylight. All of earth was over now, and the dawn of the new day was rising fairly upon the closing scene in the tragedy of her brief life.