Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1897 — LIVING IT DOWN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LIVING IT DOWN

By "Rita"

CHAPTER XXVIII. The whole of that next year I spent in exploring South America. From time to time I still received letters. The lawyer, the nurse, and the governess, Mrs. Gray, were my correspondents. It was in the autumn of that second year that the accounts of Joan began to improve. She had grown much stronger—she began to notice places and persons—to ask questions —to interest herself onee more in things that were passing around her. One day I received a letter from Darby herself. The large, strangely formed words had an odd look. She said: “Dear Sir Ralph —This is the first letter I have ever written, and I write it to give you good news. Joan is so much better. Soon, I think, she will be quite well. I have a fancy, dear Sir Ralph, that one tiling weald make her that, and very soon. It in you. I talk to her about you often and often, and she says: ‘I know him. He was very good. I think he was the best man in the world.’ So, you see, she must remember you. We are at Nice again, and—is it not funny?— papa got the very same house for us that we had before, when you and Jo were married. I think she remembers it Every day she asks more questions, and seems thinking out things for herself. Oh, I wish you would come! You have been away such a long, long time, and I miss you very much. Papa is not a bit like you. He is always writing. Do please come. Your loving little “DARBY.” As I read those simple words the hard crust about my heart seemed to be broken up. I looked back on those two years with a sense of wonder. How lonely they had been! How devoid of anything like love, or comfort, or sympathy! Yet even now, if I obeyed this summons, and went back to my wife’s side, what would that life be like henceforward ? However well I might hide the fox, its teeth would gnaw at my heart beneath the cloak of indifference. I told no one I was coming. I resolved to take them by surprise. It was close on sunset when I arrived at Nice, and leaving my baggage at the station, I drove at once to the villa in its sheltered nook of the Bay of Villafrauca. Keeping behind the sheltering laurels and arbutus, I made my way slowly to the house. The door stood open. I met not a single soul; I passed in. On the right of the hall a door stood ajar. From the room within came the sound of voices. I listened. Only too well I knew them. The child’s sweet plaintive tones, and those of my wife. I crept up to the door and looked in. The room was half dusk. There was a couch drawn up by the fire, and lying on it a little shadowy figure—the child’s figure. Joan sat beside her on a low chair. “I am sure he will come,” Darby was saying. “You will be glad, dear, will you not?” “Very glad,” came the answer in quiet, even tones—the tones I remembered of yore. “Because he will take care of you, and be good to you,” the child went on. “Only, Joan, you must promise to tell him everything. He will not be angry. He is too kind and good for that.” “He" was always good,” said Joan softly. “And you! What should I have done without you all these years? You heM me back from sin and from despair. You gave me strength when I was weakest, and hope when I was hopeless, and patience when I was well-nigh desperate, and love when all other love failed. Oh, my child—my blessing! It is heaven’s mercy that gave you to me! I see that every day I live.” The next moment I entered the room.

CHAPTER XXIX. For a moment we looked at each other in silence. I had thought of her, prayed for her, pleaded for her a hundred times in hours of solitude and pain. I heard her low cry, and saw the warm blood flush her cheeks. I lost sight of all the sorrowful and torturing past, and for a moment remembered only that she was my wife. A sort of constraint came over me. The fond words that had longed for utterance were frozen on my lips. Darby came to the rescue with a torrent of questions and remarks, and a few moments afterwards Mr. Templeton entered. We all sat down then, and the conversation became general. They would not hear of my going to the hotel; so my luggage was sent for, and I did my best to return the cordiality of my welcome, and to seem at home and content once more. Joan was very quiet. Each time I looked at the slight figure in its soft gray dress, or the pretty head with its clustering curls, a strange feeling came over me. A woman, no doubt, would have found relief in tears. I—man-like—was only conscious of a pain that tugged at my heart-strings and sometimes choked the words in my throat. She looked so fair, and sweet, and fragile. There was such a delicate, tender womanliness about her that I seemed to lose sight of that awful time of doubt, and the torturing years that had followed. When she went away with Darby and Roger Templeton had left, I fell into deep thought. My eyes rested on the burning logs, but I don’t think they saw much of them, for my heart was heavy. A soft, rustling noise roused me at last. Joan had come in, and was standing close beside me. “I hope,” she said gently, “that you are not sorry you came back?” “Why should you think so?” I asked abruptly. For a moment she was silent. Then a sort of desperate appeal came into her face and voice. “Everything is changed,” she said, “since you were here before. I most changed of all. I think sometimes that when I was a girl—when you knew me years ago—that,tjiiere must have been some good in me, or you would not have loved me. Oh!” and she clasped her hands and looked at me with soft, wet eyes, “if I could only go back and be that girl again!” Her voice thrilled to my heart. I dared not look at her. “To go back,’ I said presently, “is impossible. That is the worst of it. With all its mistakes and follies, it pushes you on—on remorselessly. You cannot stayson cannot return—yon can only go for-

ward, bearing the pain and the regret aa best you may." “We,” she said, humbly, “have had to bear both, I fear.” Then she rose and stood before me. Her face was white and anxious, her hands were clasped tight, and hung before her; the folds of the soft gray dress caught light and shadow from the flames. “There was something,” she said, and her eyes looked at me piteously, like a child's. “It was about—about myself. I have tried to remember, but I cannot I can remembe.' the girl you met here. I know every walk we took. I know the very tracks of the sea. I —do not think I was bad then,” and her voice grew anxioux. “I did not mean to be, I know. 1 was happy, too, in a way, and I had faith and hope, and life did not seem so hard and sad a thing. Now,” and she put hty hand to her brow and pushed the loose curls back, while her eyes grew clouded —“now it is all so different. Yet I cannot tell why—l only feel as if my life had all gone wrong —as if, somewhere on its road, I had missed happiness; and, when I long for it there is a gulf between—a gulf I can never pass.” The words, and the young, sorrowful voice, smote me to the heart. “My poor child,” I said, brokenly, “I would it were in my power to give it back to you!” “Why should you care?” she said, and half turned away, "I was not good to you. I have thought of that Very often. And I never cared about your feelings—my own seemed to fill up everything, and when I did—” Again the cloud came over her face, her eyes drooped, her little hand moved with restless touch among those soft white curls. “When I did,” she said, “it was too late.” I was silent I seemed to have too many words to speak, yet something kept me from speaking even one. “In all my thoughts and dreams of you,” she went on, “I always knew how good you were. I —l hope you believe that. There are things I have told you that I felt you did not believe. Sometimes it is so hard for a woman to speak, and when we feel we are misunderstood it makes it harder. I—l have often tried to tell you of my feelings, but you chilled me. You did not mean it, I know; but always I felt, as I told you just now, that you were so good, and so true, and so strong. Oh, always—always I felt that! And if I could have come to you and told you everything, I know I should have been happier.” “Perhaps,” I said, huskily, “you can tell me now.” “I cannot,” she cried, piteously; “I cannot! It has all gone from me. Often and often I have tried to remember, but it is all dark.”

“The light may come yet,” I said, eagerly, for I knew well enough that, until perfect confidence drew her heart to mine, my dreams of happiness would never be more than dreams, nor she, my wife, be more than the shadow she had been for those two years of suffering. Her hands dropped. She looked at me again. “You are my husband," she said. “I remember you and I remember what you told me about love and trust. I—l lost both, did I not?” I was silent. For a few seconds the room was still as death. “Yes,” she said, as I did not speak. “I know it. But why have you come back?” “I have come back,” I said, and my voice was unsteady as her own, “because, after all, you are my wife; your sorrows are mine; your troubles, too. I have left them too long unshared. I have been selfish ” “You!” she interrupted, and looked at me with eloquent eyes; “you selfish! Ah, no, no! you never were that!” “Yes,” I said, “I was; and I have much to reproach myself with; but there is still a future for us, and we must make it as happy as we can.” “One can’t call back trust," she said sorrowfully. “If it goes, it goes forever. And even if you loved me ” “I do love you,” I said earnestly, touched to the heart by the piteous sorrow in her eyes. She looked at me for a moment as if in doubt. “Until you love and trust me, too,” she said very low, “we shall never be happy. Between us, like a cold ghost, there is always that something——” I turned aside, sick at heart, but recognizing only too plainly the truth of her words.

I went to my room, but I was too restless for sleep. I was racked with doubts and fears, and all the sorrowful events that had freshly come to my knowledge. For long hours I sat there buried in deep thought, when a slight noise aroused me. The door opened softly, and on the threshold stood a little white figure, with something clasped to her breast. She looked so unearthly in that dim light, that for a moment my heart stood still with fear. Then suddenly she glided forward, and went straight up to my bed, and laid on it the book she held. The action gave me speech and courage again. I sprang to my feet. “Darby!” I cried. She turned her startled face to mine. “Do not be angry,” she said beseechingly. “I thought you would be asleep, and I wanted—oh, so much!—to bring you this.” “What is it?” I said, coming forward, and taking up the volume from the bed. “It is to makg you happy again,” she said, “you and Joan. She is very sad, and you do not understand even how she loves you, but I do! And this," pointing to the book, “this will tell you. I used to make her read it to me sometimes, and I thought often, oh, if you only knew!” “But what is it?” I asked in growing bewilderment. “It is Joan's journal,” she said, and vanished. “Heaven forgive me,” I said, “if I have misjudged her!” I took up with trembling hands the journal that the child had brought to me. The record of those years of anguish lay there, yet I feared to read it. It seemed to me dishonorable to pry into the secrets of a woman’s heart—to take advantage of her helplessness, and tear ruthlessly the veil from fier simple confidences, meant as they were but for her own eyes. I had respected Yorke’s—how much the more, then, should I respect those of my wife—my other self? The girl who had held my heart, am! shared my life, whom still I lovde and fain would have believed. As I thought of these things I resolutely put the book away. I knew very little of women; but I thought that no woman would respect the man who wrung from her ignorance and helplessness the secrets of her past, whether the past were innocent or guilty. “She told me she has always trusted me,” I said; “I will not fail her now. If confidence is to unite us again it shall be a voluntary gift from her heart to mine —not a rifled treasure, stolen in the dark, as if my hands were those of a thief.” cTo be