Chapter 17

HUSBAND AND WIFE.

Lady Hope stood in the middle of the room, breathless. The supreme joy of her husband's presence drove every other feeling from her heart. She forgot her brother, her step-child, everything, in the one thought that he was near her. But, was it certain that he would come? How many months, nay, years, had passed since he had entered that room, once so dear to him that no other apartment in that spacious mansion seemed pleasant? She had allowed nothing to be changed since those days. Year by year those silken hangings and crimson cushions had lost their brightness and grown threadbare; but he had pressed those cushions and been shaded by the curtains, and that gave them a brightness and glory to her which no stuffs of India or cloth of gold could replace.

She knew that he was offended, and doubted. But would he come? His step grew slow; he paused. Would he retreat at last, and leave her there, in an agony of disappointment?

No--after a moment's hesitation, the steps advanced. The very certainty of his approach suffocated her. She had not deemed herself so weak. All the strength left her frame.

She sank down upon a couch near the window. The moonlight fell over her like a veil of silver tissue, and through it she looked like the Rachael Closs of New York.

Lord Hope tore away the silvery veil with his presence, for the shadow of his tall person fell across it, throwing the woman back into darkness.

But the light which he took from her slanted across his face, and softened it back to youth. Rachael reached forth her arms.

"Oh, Norton! have you come back again?"

Her voice vibrated between passion and pathos. Her trembling limbs rustled the silken garments around her.

He stood looking at her, not sternly, but with grave sadness. It was nearly two months since they had met, but he did not advance, or even reach out his hand. Then she cried out, in a burst of bitter anguish:

"Oh, Norton, will you not speak to me?"

"Yes, Rachael," he said, very gently. "I came to speak with you."

Lord Hope advanced through the window. No lights were burning, for in her sadness Rachael had thought the moonbeams enough.

She moved upon the couch, looking in his face with pathetic entreaty.

He sat down after a moment's hesitation, and took her hand in his.

Awhile before that hand had been cold as ice, but now a glow of feverish joy warmed it, and her slender fingers clung around his with nervous force. She was afraid to loosen her clasp, lest he should leave her again.

"Ah, Norton! you have been away so long, so long!"

"Has that made you more unhappy, Rachael?"

"More unhappy? God help me! have I any happiness beyond your presence?"

"I sometimes think that we two might be less--"

Lord Hope paused. The hand in his seemed turning to marble.

"In mercy, do not say that, Norton! Surely you cannot return love like mine with hate so cruel!"

"We will not talk of hate, Rachael. It is an unseemly word."

"But you are angry with me?"

"No, the time has gone by when I can be angry with you, Rachael."

"Oh! have some mercy upon me, Norton, and tell me how I have lost your love--for you did love me."

"God only knows how well!" answered the man, with a throe of bitter passion breaking up the calm he had maintained.

"Tell me, then--tell me again! It is so long since I have had a happy thought! I will not be put off so! Now that you are here, in this room, with my hand in yours, I will not let you go! Tell me, Norton--oh, tell me why it is that you have changed so completely? This question haunts me. I dream of it in the night; I think of it all day long. Answer me. Though the truth cleave my heart, I would rather hear it! Why have you ceased to love me? Why is it that you can leave me so?"

"Rachael, I will answer you so far as this: I have not ceased to love you."

The woman uttered a cry, and fell down upon her knees at her husband's feet, in a storm of wild and happy tears. He raised her up, bent forward as if to kiss her, but drew back with a heavy sigh. She felt him recoil, and the shudder which chilled him reached her also.

"You love me, and yet shrink from my touch! Ah, me! what has dug this gulf between us?"

"It is the work of our own hands," he said, with strong emotion. "It is your curse and mine that we must love each other, Rachael--love each other, and yet be apart."

"Apart! Oh! will there be no end--no season--"

"Yes, Rachael, when we can both repent that we ever did love each other. Then, perhaps, a merciful God may forgive us the great sin which has been our happiness and our torment."

"But you love me? You _do_ love me?"

"A thousand times better than my own miserable life!"

"And you speak of torment! Who shall ever dare say that word again to Rachael Closs? When they do, I will answer, 'He loves me! he loves me!'"

The woman sprang up, exulting. Her hands were clasped, her face was radiant. It seemed impossible that unhappiness should ever visit her again.

"Poor woman! Poor, unhappy woman!"

Hope took her hand in his, and drew her down to his side. She was shaking like a leaf in the wind. For the moment, her joy seemed complete.

"I cannot believe it! Say again, 'Rachael, I love you.'"

"Have I not said that it is your curse and mine?"

"Oh, Norton! how cruel, with that sweet word sinking into my heart, after pining and waiting for it so long! Do not withhold it from me, or think of it as a curse."

"Hush, Rachael! You are only exulting over Dead Sea fruit. It is all ashes, ashes. Words that, up to this time, I had forbidden to my lips, have been said, because of a terrible danger that threatens us. Rachael, did you know of the letter Hepworth sent me?"

Rachael was a brave woman, even in her faults, and would not deny anything.

"Yes, he wrote the letter here," she said.

"And you sanctioned his pursuit of my daughter?"

"Yes, Norton. I loved him; he was my only relative. That he might live near me was the last forlorn hope of my life. Before you condemn me, remember how few people exist in this world for me to love. I have no friends. I was so cold, so dreary! There was nothing left to me but your child and this one brother. How could I part with either of them? That was to be utterly alone!"

Lord Hope checked this pathetic plea. It shook his resolution, and that with a vigor she could not understand. He looked her steadily in the face.

"Rachael Closs, could you have given up my child to that man?"

Rachael fixed her wild eyes on the face turned upon her so sternly.

"Why, why?"

"Had you no thought of the ruin it would bring upon her?"

"Ruin? Did you say ruin?"

"Could you see that innocent girl's hand in his without thrills of painful recollection?"

"Why, he loves her; she loves him."

"So much the more painful."

"What do you mean?"

Her lips were white now, and the teeth gleamed and chattered between them.

"Have you no dread that he will bring that one event perpetually before us?"

Rachael shook her head.

"Does nothing tell you that he was mixed up in that tragedy?"

"What should tell me of that? It was the crime of a miserable old woman."

"Still you understand nothing of that which is a continual pain to me."

A burst of hysterical laughter answered him. The nerves of that woman were undoubtedly giving way.

"You are mocking me. It is only fiends who torment their victims. You are my husband, and should know better!"

"Rachael Closs, control yourself!"

"I am not Rachael Closs!" cried the woman, fiercely. "You would not have treated her so. It is Lady Hope you are putting to torture. Oh, Norton! what have I done to you? What have I done to you that you should mock me so?"

"I wish to save my child--to save myself."

"Well, is that all? She shall never speak to Hepworth again. Yes, what is my brother, or anybody in the world, compared to one smile from my husband?"

"And you will help me to reconcile Clara to that which must be?"

"I will do anything, everything that you wish, only do not leave me again."

"But I must sometimes go out."

"And I cannot go with you. Rachael Closs is not good enough for your high-born friends. Lady Carset has put her ban on your wife, and the nobility of England accept it. But for this I might have been the companion of your visits, the helpmate of your greatness--for I have the power. I could have done so much, so much in this great world of yours, but that old woman would not let me. It is cruel! it is cruel! You would have loved me now as you did at first, but for her."

Lord Hope took Rachael's hand in his.

"Ah, Rachael!" he said, "if you could but understand the love which can neither be cherished nor cast away, which pervades a whole life, only to disturb it! Between you and me must ever come the shadow of a woman we cannot talk of, but who stands eternally between us two. Even in the first days of our passionate delirium I felt this viperous truth creeping under the roses with which we madly hoped to smother it. The thought grew and grew, like a parasite upon the heart. It clung to mine, bound it down, made it powerless. Oh, would to God the memory of that one night could be lifted from my soul! The presence of your brother here has brought it back upon me with terrible force. But, thank God, he is gone!"

"Gone! What, my brother? Am I never to see him again?"

"Not unless you wish to drive your husband from his own house. I will not be reminded, by any one connected with that night, that it was the mad passion of our love which drove that most unhappy woman from her home, her country, and, at last, into her grave!"

Rachael sat with her glittering eyes fastened on his face. She longed to ask a question; but it seemed to freeze upon her lips. But, at last, she spoke:

"Do you repent that love, then?"

"No! no! Would to God I had the power to repent! but I cannot, Rachael, with you by me!"