CHAPTER IV.

"I HAVE brought home Gower to spend the evening," Harold said, one day, soon after our return home. "I thought you would like it. He is fond of music and poetry, and all that sort of thing; so I thought you would get on well together."

I thought Harold showed a bitter remembrance of those words of mine-I had never forgotten them-in this speech.

"I do not want-"I began; but Mr. Gower was now in the room; it was necessary to receive him civilly.

66

Yet

I observed how, first, the waters on one side
gathered themselves together and came rol-
ling on, swift, and fell as fate, only to be met,
scattered and broken, by the great army of
waters tumbling on from the other side.
What a pigmy I felt standing there!
I would not, for much, have missed the ex-
perience of the hour I spent there. The sky
was almost as wild as the sea, only along the
horizon there was a line of gleamy, watery
light, and between sky and sea I was shut
in!"

Some fascination made me raise my eyes from my work to Mr. Gower's kindled face; but I dropped them immediately, and did not speak.

"Do not want any interruption to your tête-a-tête evenings, Mrs. Warden? But you must be generous. Remember how long it is "Did you get home safe?" Harold asked. since I have had the pleasure of seeing you," From the Devil's Tongue; people someor my friend, Harold. Since the evening times-" when you surprised us all so brilliantly, you "Pass into Hell's Throat. Excuse my interhave been invisible. I hope," he continued, ruption, I was afraid you might mar by more you will give me credit for having been sin- genteelly expressing the idea of the nature cerely sorry to hear of your subsequent ill- of the transition. That boiling, surging world ness. I trust sea-air has quite restored of waters gave birth to the idea in my mind. you." Yet, I got home safe, but not without a little further experience; when I turned and descended from my slight elevation, I saw water before me still; the tide had come up and covered the narrow and lower neck of land along which I had approached the end. I tried it cautiously, and was nearly washed away. I had no desire unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd, and with all my imperfections on my head, to lose sight of known life to try some unknown, perchance greater ill, so I gave up the attempt to traverse that wave-washed strip of land."

"I am very well now, thank you," I replied. Of course, Mr. Gower could not know the pain his words gave me.

rold said.

"We have been staying at Seawash," Ha"Do you know it at all, Gower? It is very pleasant there. My wife fell quite in love with it, so we shall often go down there, again, I think."

"It has a very broken coast, has it not? the sea running up into many small bays, and lashing itself furiously against rocky points? I know it well. One autumn some years ago, I was there alone. You know the Devil's Tongue, as they call the longest, sharpest point, I dare say, Mrs. Warden?"

Yes, I do."

"I was returning from a long ramble late one wild evening, and saw the sea-it was very rough,-breaking magnificently on the rock at the end. I went down, although it was growing dusk, and mounted to the top of the little peak. I was not much above the water, I could see no land; it was awfully beautiful to see from that wild point of view the heaving and breaking, meeting and dashing of the great, foamy, angry waves. I am a man of tolerable nerve and courage, but I felt an icy thrill pass through me; it was some time before my heart returned to its regular, quiet beating. Each wave shat came whelming the rock at my feet, seemed as if it might swell up and wash me from my little pinnacle, and as if it hungered to do so. One reads of angry, foamy, troubled seas, but no words that I know can express the fearful excitement roused within one, standing in the midst of such wild commotion. There was an order in the wild going of the waves, too.

"What did you do?" Harold asked.

"Do, man! Just nothing. I went back to my former station, wrapped myself up tight in my cloak, and waited. Waiting is a famous cure for the ills of this life, Mrs. Warden."

"Did you know that you were safe there on the point?"

"When it was full moon ane the sea roughened by a sou'-wester, that point was sometimes washed over, an old boatman had told me, as we rowed past it the day before. I don't pretend to say but that I waited and watched the waters in great anxiety. Sometimes a slight lull in the storm came, and every wave reached less high than the former had done. Then, with a howl and a scream, the wind rushed across the water, and huge billows would leap, and well, and gurgle up, sometimes over my feet, always drenching me with spray!"

"Well! chacun à son gout! You call that. experience which you would not have missed for the world? I cannot understand that. Can you imagine the feeling, Annie?"

I worked away diligently with a quivering

hand, and answered absently, without looking rather a bungling fashion, I am afraid, but I up, "I do not know." think my melodies suit their meaning."

Capital fish you get at that same place," Harold went on. "It is not like most fishingplaces, where you can't get fish. Dinner ready? Very well. Gower, give my wife your arm; I must follow disconsolately for

once."

Mr. Gower's narrative, the voice in which it was told, and the gestures accompanying it, had excited me painfully. The hand laid on his arm still trembled, but I stilled it by a great effort, yet not soon enough. He glanced at me significantly and said, "I think you did know, Mrs. Warden."

"We must have some music after you have given us a cup of coffee, Annie," Harold said, when he and Mr. Gower returned to the drawing-room after dinner.

I did not answer. I had secretly determined I would not play. I had not touched my piano since that dreadful evening. The thought of perhaps having to do so to-night had already given me a nervous headache, of which I thought I would, if need were, avail myself, as an excuse.

"Don't praise yourself, Gower, but let us hear and judge."

"Read the words, then, first," Mr. Gower said, putting the book into my husband's hand.

"Yes, that is pretty enough," Harold said, returning it, suppressing a slight yawn. "Could it not have been said more straightforwardly and comprehensibly in plain prose, though? Don't transfix me with your indignant glances, but let us hear your music."

Harold stretched his great length on the sofa, composing himself to listen. The coffee apparatus was cleared away, and the lamp brought; and I sat down with my idle work to listen too.

Mr. Gower amused himself at the piano some time-coquetting with his memory. Then he began.

He had a fine voice, powerful, and under great control. The first song was set to wild and passionate music. When he filled the room with the greatest possible power of his voice, I cowered back into the depths of my Mr. Gower was wandering about the draw-easy-chair, dropping my work, turning my ing-room_abstractedly, opening and turning over my books.

head away from the musician. I looked at Harold. "Noise enough!" he muttered rather drowsily, in answer to my look, and

"Oh! you have this true Poet's book," he suddenly exclaimed. He came up to me, closed his eyes. book in hand. "Is it not splendid? I am sure you like it, though I know very few ladies who do. I know the writer. I can introduce him to you, if you have any care to see the external features of the poet. Have you?"

I had just turned to observe Mr. Gower. I was curious to know if his own music woke any emotion in him. Yes; his voice died away trembling; yet he turned abruptly round to look at me.

He sang song after song, and Harold went "I think not," I answered. to sleep. Harold had had one or two very "Ah! Right, right! It is a very vulgar hard days' work lately, and had kept late curiosity that, concerning lions; and often its hours. "No wonder he is tired, poor fellow!" gratification-which proves no gratification-I said to myself; and I tried to subdue the shivers a thousand beautiful imaginings to great troublous heart-swellings that the

atoms. Does it not?"

"I don't know. I have had no experi

ence."

strong, passionate singing produced in me. Mr. Gower went on singing or playing. It was a pleasure to touch such a magnificent instrument, he said, and since I would not play-for I had refused-he must.

"But you do know and have read this book. Ah! here's a leaf of fern put in at one of the most beautiful passages. That is your At last I stole to my husband's side, and mark?" woke him softly. I thought Mr. Gower did "Is it the book you read to me on that luck-not know he had been asleep; but poor Haless morning?" asked Harold, laughingly. rold gave such yawns that he quite betrayed

I blushed deeply as I said "Yes." I do not himself. know exactly why. Mr. Gower looked inqui- "I shall weary you as well as your husband sitive. "Little as you care for poetry, I am if I go on longer," Mr. Gower said at last, rissure you admired this so read, Warden; did ing from the piano, and coming towards us. you not?" I am afraid I have done so, already, Mr. "So much, that, soothed by the soft sweet Warden," he continued, "you look a-weary, voice of the reader, I went to sleep," laughed a-weary!" Harold.

"To sleep!" Mr. Gower gave an expressive shrug. "I have set one or two of these songs to music," he continued to me, "after

་་

66

It is rather late," I said. "I have a headache. We have kept bad hours since we returned from the sea-side. Harold has been hard-worked, and, of course, I sit up for

"So you must forgive our having been rather bad company," Harold said. "I have not learnt to do without sleep, as you seem to have done."

"Five hours is enough for any man, when he is once used to it," Mr. Gower said. "To exist, but not thrive upon," said Harold, glancing at Mr. Gower's very thin, worn form and face.

again, on the threshold of consciousness
knowledge that I was not happy.

the

Now that we are settled at home again, things soon went back into the old miserable way. What was there to prevent their doing so? I had no new power of ruling myself, no new hope for which to live, no new light by which to walk. I loved my husband. Yes! but I know, now, that one poor weak human love will avail nothing when it stands alone, based on nothing, looking up to nothing.

"Other things than want of sleep have made the ravages you see," Mr. Gower answered laughingly, and yet with a latent Harold, seeing me look ill and unhappy, melancholy in the smile that died away very urged me to cultivate the acquaintance of some slowly from his face. "It is very well for of the many people with whom we had exyou, Warden, and for prosperous, easy-going changed visits, to try and make friends, but fellows like you, whom fortune favors, and when I told him I wanted only him and no whose life-paths are smooth and plain, to other friend that he was enough for me enjoy your eight or nine hours' sleep. But he smiled and looked pleased, and said no sleep is too expensive a luxury for us poor more.

fellows, who struggle and strive with the So I fought on alone, my soul never satisfied, world, and follow an exacting mistress, ever my heart never at rest, and every now and ready to avail herself of the slightest excuse for deserting us."

"Yet you would not change with me. Give up your glorious uncertainties-hopes of fame and dreams of ambition-for my common-place and inglorious certainties? Now would you?"

"No!" Mr. Gower answered slowly, sending his eyes out on some far journey, and bringing them back radiant with a strange light. "No!" he answered, more assuredly, "I would not change. I would rather fight and battle on till death, than know the respectable composure, the dignified composure, of a man good friends with the world. For me there would be no rest in your life. I fancy I have not known what rest is, since I was a child. But Mrs. Warden's tired pale face reminds me to say good-night — so good-night."

Harold went down-stairs with him. "Harold, do not ask Mr. Gower here again please," I said, when he returned.

Why, dear? I thought I had given you a pleasant evening."

"I do not think Mr. Gower is a good man. I do not think we shall either of us be the happier for having him here. No wife ought to find pleasure in the society of a man who shows no respect for her husband. I don't mind his coming when other people are here, but please don't ask him again when we are

alone."

Yes, but it shall be well to-morrow," I said resolutely.

then some outburst of long-controlled bitterness or pain betraying me and making my husband miserable. He was very patient, very gentle and forbearing, but at last even he grew weary. His home came to be a place that he entered timidly, not knowing in what miserable mood he might find his wife; soon he entered it less willingly and hurried from it earlier, seeking in his business, in the pursuit of worldly good, distraction from its miseries and cares.

We grew rich; my husband more worldly; even this blame is mine-I, isolating myself from all human interests and cares, preying on my own heart grew constantly more morbid, sensitive, irritable, and miserable. The distance between us widened daily. We stood afar-off from each other, but God mercifully sent little hands that should have drawn our hearts together.

CHAPTER V.

I HAD been three years a wife before I became a mother. My first baby came to me with the early summer flowers. I date best by them, because afterwards many things over laid such blessed anniversaries, and made it difficult for me to endeavor, and hard for me to dare, to remember when, in what hour, at what season, this or that happened. And yet I can even now bring present to my senses the delicious fragrance and delicate loveliness of the flowers my husband brought to me so often at that time.

After the birth of my darling, there was a long interval during which I thought I was at peace: physical weakness made quiet and stillness grateful, and the new great joy seemed to fill and satisfy my soul.

I struggled, yes, I did struggle bravely, but, O! so blindly! I struggled against knowledge, Again I smiled to myself as I had smiledand pushed it back from me with violent how long ago it seemed!-looking out on the hands, only to have it come and stand there lovely summer beauty of the land round Ilton.

I lay still, with meek-folded hands, and smiled | struck by the opening door; he fell, and cut into the face of my fair-pictured future, my his forehead against the sharp corner of a table. beautiful new life, through this, my own child. The blood flowed, and I was terribly frightened. I fancied that all the struggle and pain and I caught him in my arms; he had turned sick perplexity of existence were past; I looked and quiet with the pain; but when I took back upon all past misery as one waking to him, he called out: "Papa! papa! papa, take some blissful reality looks back upon an ugly me!" I could not pacify him, so laid him in dream of the black night. I had found some- my husband's arms.

thing so sweet, so pure, so delightfully depend- I ran for water, sponges, and cloths; when ent to live for, that I thought I now grasped I returned, my boy was sitting on his father's Peace, had detained her with my poor weak knee, leaning his little head back against his hands till she had touched with her holy heal-shoulder, and smiling faintly at some funny ing my brow and breast.

Yes! peace has come to me," I whispered softly to myself, raising the tiny baby-hand to my lips, while happy tears filled my eyes.

story Harold was telling him, while he held his handkerchief to the wound. The child let me wash and bathe and plaster up the cut; but all the while he clung to his father's arm, My husband was infinitely glad, and kind and persisted in saying that mamma had hurt and tender. He showed to such advantage in him. He would not come to me, nor kiss me, my sick-room! I raised up my happy eyes but soon fell asleep in my husband's arms. proudly to him, it was so beautiful to see him Harold carried him up to the nursery, and subduing his strength to our weakness-my waited to see him quietly sleeping in bed. baby's and mine-or exerting it only for us; I should have done that, should I not? Was I bending his handsome head down so low, yet not his mother? This was not the first time then almost fearing to kiss the tiny baby-cheek; my heart had been so wounded. When my looking so concerned if the child uttered a cry, husband left the room with our boy, I threw so amused and happy if he woke a doubtful myself on the floor, and gave way to a wild smile in its queer little face! I thought this passion of grief: I wailed, and lamented peace would last. I loved my baby so intensely. almost raved. Even my child, my own child, He loved it dearly, and me anew through it. did not love me; it engrossed my husband's I thought my deep love all that was needful to tenderness, and rendered me no love in remake me a good mother. I gave up everything turn. My passion, indulged, grew uncontrollato my child, and Harold thought me a paragon, ble. Jealousy gained sole possession of me. a perfect example of self-denying love. And Was I to be nothing now? nothing to father for a long time we lived, O, so quietly and hap- or child?

self, and our child.

py together! we three my husband, my- By the time Harold came down, I had lost all command over myself. He took me up and Our child was a boy; he grew into a dark-laid me on the sofa; he knelt beside me, beghaired, blue-eyed, noble little fellow -a tiny ging and praying that I would be calm - would Harold. I turned God's free-given blessing in- at least tell him what was the matter. Iturned to a bane. How should I, undisciplined, unable my face away, and, burying it in the pillows, to rule myself, be able rightly to educate another life? My husband, with his clear, simple, I practical notions, and his decided judgment between right and wrong, was a far more judicious and wise parent than I. The child felt it. I worshipped, idolized him; and he would turn from my wild love to meet his father's calm tenderness. The older he grew, the more plainly he showed this preference.

"You hurt me, mamma, let me go; papa is coming," the boy exclaimed one day. I had been showing him pictures, telling him stories, lying on the ground beside him; he had been listening with tranced attention, his great blue eyes fixed full on mine; he heard his father's step in the hall, and directly he struggled to get free from my arms.

which I clenched between my aimless fingers, shook the couch with the strength of my ago ny. Poor Harold! what could he do? pained and perplexed as he was. He sent for our medical man, but he was long coming. When he arrived, my passion had raved itself out: I was weak as a child, and suffering from extreme exhaustion. But my state revealed to Dr. Ryton the violence of the paroxysm just past; I believe it was after seeing me that day, that he began first to entertain the opinion that sometimes I was insane. . .

It is no use. I cannot write calmly and slowly. I must hurry over all that is to come. . . . When I again became the mother of a living child, baby was once more for a little while an angel of peace in the house. I thought that this child, at least, a girl- with my brow and eyes, they said should be wholly mine. My husNo," the boy answered boldly; he strug- band might engross the affection of our noble gled himself free, pushed me away, and tramp- boy, if only this little fragile white blossom, this fed over me with his little eager feet. I ran lily of mine, might rest solely and always on after him, but could not catch him in time; my bosom. I did not like to have my husband Harold came in, and my child's head was kiss, I hardly liked that he should see, this

"Papa will come; stay with poor mamma, darling! Do you not love mamnia ?"

-I had

baby; I never let him take it in his arms. ed at me with a severely scrutinizing expresThe first time it smiled brightly at him, and sion in his gray eyes, as he sat down close. with its little hands clutched at the dark hair by, fronting me. He waited for a moment, of his bent head, acute pain shot through my as if he expected I should say more, then anheart. Do what I could, I was not able to pre-swered:vent the child from knowing and loving its fa- "You have taught us to think you so) ther. Soon, very soon, I had the agonizing, almost said to wish to think you so. Madness though self-induced, torture to bear, of seeing was a very gentle name to give your malait turn from my fierce love, to hold out its tiny dy; it was conferred in all kindness, in all hands-appealingly, it seemed to me- to my charity." husband. It lisped Papa before ever it had once said Mamma.

Harold's manner to his children reminded me of what it had been to me in the days of our courtship. There was the same protecting, beautifully sweet, yet manly tenderness. Sometimes I longed to be a child, to share the caresses my boy and girl received. My husband had left off almost all demonstrations of affection for me, but only because I had often manifestly shrunk from them; why, I cannot tell. I loved him, I never ceased loving him.

"Poor mamma is ill," Harold said sometimes, when I closed my eyes, and my brow contracted with the pain that so often throbbed there now. "Go, little one, and kiss her very quietly." "Must I, papa!" the little girl would ask. "I don't want to get down."

A few words in a loud voice, and then a little soft mouth would be pressed up to my face. Sometimes I pretended to have fallen asleep, and not to feel the touch that thrilled my whole being through; then the play would cease, and my husband would draw the children into another room.

My husband was much at home during that miserable time. I thought it was to keep watch over his children, and I resented this bitterly. Could he not trust them with me, their mother? Of what was he afraid?

66

'Kindness" I echoed. "You have taught my husband so to mistrust me that he fears to leave my own children in my charge; and you talk of kindness!"

"Mrs. Warden, reflect! Do you remember when I was last sent for to attend you? Do you mean to confess that that humiliating wildness of passion was voluntarily indulged?" I felt the blood rush across my face, but I answered as steadily as he asked: "Certainly. At the beginning I could have checked and controlled myself. To do so would have given me terrible pain. It was not worth while; it is a miserable relief to me to give way. After the storm comes a calm. In the weakness that follows after my violence, my head is cooler and clearer, and my heart quieter. Life is fainter, its pain more endurable."

"You speak calmly enough now," Dr. Ryton said. "Can you not see the selfishness and wickedness of all this? Can you not see that, if indeed you are a responsible person-and in that light you wish me to consider you-you are sinning most heinously: destroying the peace of a home: wrecking the happiness of your nobly good husband; alienating your children's affections from you; ruining your own soul! By Heaven! madam, you had better wish yourself the maddest poor soul in Bedlam than the voluntary abusSometimes the indulgent, pitying, curious er and destroyer you wish me to pronounce tenderness with which my husband began you!" I paused and thought; he sitting there, again to treat me, soothed me, and I could lie stooping forward, bent his cold eyes on me for hours in child-like quiet, with my head steadily. A book lay on the sofa by me. I resting on his bosom. But this was not the took it in my hand, longing to throw it in my love and sympathy for which I thirsted, and enemy's face, that at least for a moment he often my spirit rose up in arms, repelling this might start and his gaze waver. But I thought condescending affection, which mocked the it very important then to restrain myself. 1 love I craved. It was through the carelessness only played awhile with the leaves, and then or maliciousness of a servant that I first heard put the book down. Doing so, 1 looked up, how my husband was pitied as the poor gen- and saw a kind of smile gleaming on the gray tleman who had a mad wife. face opposite to me.

"Mad! they think me mad!" I repeated to myself.

I sent for Dr. Ryton. I cared nothing for what he might think of me. The idea of madness seemed to my proud, wrong-judging spirit, to be attended with a humiliation I would not bear. They might think me anything but mad.

"You think me mad, and have taught my husband to believe me so," I said, in a cold, calm voice, when Dr. Ryton came. He look

"I see you can control yourself, Mrs. Warden, and I also see the violent nature that is in you," Dr. Ryton said.

"Nature! yes, you are right there," I replied.

"A nature, madam, which you have sinfully neglected to control, all the faults of which you have cherished: You are a proud woman; you shrink from the humiliation of being thought mad, but you are blind to the far worse humiliation of allowing the devil within you to