BESIDE HIM ONCE AGAIN

There are blind ways provided, the foredone
Heart-weary player in this pageant world
Drops out by, letting the main masque defile
By the conspicuous portal.

R. Browning.

What is this world? What asken men to have?
Now with his love now in his cold grave
Alone, withouten any companie!

Chaucer.

The tall old clock, which stood by the dining-room door, had struck two, and been silent many minutes, before Richard came to me. I had spent those dreadful hours in feverish restlessness: my room seemed suffocating to me. I had walked about, had put away my trinkets, I had changed my dress, and put on a white one which I had worn in the morning, and had tried to braid my hair.

The quieting of the house, it seemed, would never come. It was twelve o’clock before any one came up-stairs. I heard one door after another shut, and then sat waiting and wondering why Richard did not come, till the moments seemed to grow to centuries. At last I heard him at the door, and I went toward it trembling, and followed him into the hall. He carried a light, for up-stairs it was all dark, and when we reached the stairway, he took my hand to lead me. I was trembling very much; the hall below was dimly lit by a large lamp which had been turned low. Our steps on the bare staircase made so much noise, though we tried to move so silently. It was weird and awful. I clung to Richard’s hand in silence. He led me across the hall, and stopped before the library-door. He let go my hand, and taking a key from his pocket, put it in the lock, turned it slowly, then opened the door a little way, and motioned me to enter.

Like one in a trance, I obeyed him, and went in alone. He shut the door noiselessly, and left me with the dead.

That was the great, the immense hour of my life. No vicissitude, no calamity of this mortal state, no experience that may be to come, can ever have the force, the magnitude of this. All feelings, but a child’s feelings, were comparatively new to me, and here, at one moment, I had put into my hand the plummet that sounded hell; anguish, remorse, fear a woman’s heart in hopeless pain. For I will not believe that any child, that any woman, had ever loved more absolutely, more passionately, than I had loved the man who lay there dead before me. But I cannot talk about what I felt in those moments; all that concerns what I write is the external.

The coffin was in the middle of the room, where the table ordinarily stood where my chair had been that night, when he told me his story. Surely if I sinned, in thought, in word, that night, I paid its full atonement, this. Candles stood on a small table at the head of where he lay, and many flowers were about the room. The smell of verbena-leaves filled the air: a branch of them was in a vase that some one had put beside his coffin. The fresh, cool night-air came in from the large window, open at the top.

His face was, as Richard said, much as in life, only quieter. I do not know what length of time Richard left me there, but at last, I was recalled to the present, by his hand upon my shoulder, and his voice in a whisper, “Come with me now, Pauline.”

I rose to my feet, hardly understanding what he said, but resisted when I did understand him.

“Come with me,” he said, gently, “You shall come back again and say good-bye. Only come out into the hall and stay awhile with me; it is not good for you to be here so long.”

He took my hand and led me out, shutting the door noiselessly. He took me across the hall, and into the parlor, where there was no light, except what came in from the hall. There was a sofa opposite the door, and to that he led me, standing himself before me, with his perplexed and careworn face. I was very silent for some time: all that awful time in the library, I had never made a sound: but suddenly, some thought came that reached the source of my tears, and I burst into a passion of weeping. I am not sure what it was: I think, perhaps, the sight of the piano, and the recollection of that magnificent voice that would never be heard again, Whatever it was, I bless it, for I think it saved my brain. I threw myself down upon the sofa, and clung to Richard’s hand, and sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed.

Poor fellow! my tears seemed to shake him terribly. Once he turned away, and drew his hand across his brow, as if it were a little more than he could bear. But some men, like many women, are born to sacrifice.

He tried to comfort and soothe me with broken words. But what was there to say?

“Oh, Richard,” I cried, “What does it all mean? why am I so punished? was it so very wicked to have loved him after I knew all? Was all this allowed to come because I did that? Answer me, tell me; tell me what you think.”

“No, Pauline, I don’t think that was it. Don’t talk about it now. Try to be quiet. You are not fit to think about it now.”

“But, Richard, what else can it mean? I know, I know that it is the truth. God wouldn’t have sent such a punishment upon me if he hadn’t seen my sin.”

“It’s more likely He sent it to ” and then he paused.

I know now he meant, it was more likely He had sent it to save me from the sins of others; but he had the holy charity not to say it.

“Oh,” I cried, passionately, “When all the sin was mine, that he should have had to die: when he never came near me, never looked at me: when he would rather die than break his word to me. That night in the library, after he had told me all, he said, ’I will never look into your eyes again, I will never touch your hand;’ and though we were in the same room together after that, and in the same house all this time, and though he knew I loved him so he never looked at me, he never turned his eyes upon me; and I I was willing to sin for him to die for him. I would have followed him to the ends of the earth, not twelve hours ago.”

“Hush, Pauline,” said Richard huskily, “you don’t know what you’re saying you are a child.”

“No, I’m not a child after to-day, after to-night I am not a child and I know too well what I say too well too well. Richard, you don’t know what has been in my heart. That night, he held me in his arms and kissed me when he said good-bye. Then I was innocent, for I was dazed by grief and had not come to my senses, after what he told me. But to-day I said to-day to have his arms around me once again to have him kiss me once again as he kissed me then I would go away from all I ever had been taught of right and duty, and would be satisfied.”

“Then, thank God for what has come,” said Richard, hoarsely, wiping from his forehead the great drops that had broken out upon it.

“No!” I cried with a fresh burst of weeping. “No, I cannot thank God, for I want him back again. I want him. I had rather die than be separated from him. I cannot thank God for taking him away from me. Oh, Richard, what shall I do? I loved him, loved him so. Don’t look so stern; don’t turn away from me. You used to love me. Could you thank God for taking me away from you, out of your arms, warm, and strong, and living, and making me cold, and dumb, and stiff, like that?”

“Yes, Pauline, if it had been to save us both from sin.”

“You don’t know what love is, if you say that.”

“I know what sin is, better than you do, maybe. Listen, Pauline. I’ve loved you ever since I saw you; men don’t often love better than I have loved you; but I’d rather drag you, to-night, to that black river there, and hold you down with my own hands till the breath left your body, than see you turn into a sinful woman, and lead the life of shame you tell me you had it in your heart to lead, to-day.”

“Is it so very awful?” I whispered with a shiver, my own emotion stilled before his. “I only loved him!”

“Forget you ever did,” he said, rising, and pacing up and down the room.

I put my hands before my face, and felt as if I were alone in the world with sin. If this unspoken, passionate, sweet thought, that I had harbored, were so full of danger as to force God to blast me with such punishment, as to drive this tender, generous, loving man to wish me dead, what must be the blackness of the sin from which I had been saved, if I were saved? If there were, indeed, anything but shocks of woe and punishment, and deadly despair and darkness, in this strange world in which I found myself. There was a silence. I rose to my feet. I don’t know what I meant to do or where to go; my only impulse was to hide myself from the eyes of my companion, and to go away from him, as I had hidden myself from all others, since I was smitten with this chastisement.

“Forgive me, Pauline,” he said, coming to my side. “It is the second time I have been harsh with you this dreadful day. This is what comes of selfishness. I hope you will forget what I have said.”

I still turned to go away, feeling afraid of him and ashamed before him. He put out his hand to stop me.

“Pauline, remember, I have been sorely tried. I would do anything to comfort you. I haven’t another wish in my heart but to be of use to you.”

“Oh, Richard,” I cried, bursting into tears afresh, and hiding my eyes, “if you give me up and drive me away from you, I am all alone. There isn’t another human being that I love or that cares for me. Dear Richard, do be good to me; do be sorry for me.”

“I am sorry for you, Pauline; you know that.”

“And you will take care of me?” I cried, stretching out my arms toward him, with a sudden overwhelming sense of my loneliness and destitution.

“Yes, Pauline, to the end of my life or of yours; as if you were my sister or almost my child.”

“Dear Richard,” I whispered, as I buried my face on his arm, “if it were not for you I should not live through this dreadful time. I hope I shall die soon; as soon as I am better. But till I do die, I hope you will be good to me, and love me.” And I pressed his hand against my cheek and lips, like the poor, frantic, grief-bewildered child that I was.

At this moment there came a sound of movement in the stables: I heard one of the heavy doors thrown open, and a man leading a horse across the stable-floor. (The windows were open and the night was very still.) Richard started, and looked uneasily at his watch, stepping to the door to get the light.

“How late is it?” I faltered.

“Half-past three,” he said, turning his eyes away, as if he could not bear the sight of my face. I do not like to remember the dreadful moments that followed this: the misery that I put upon Richard by my passionate, ungoverned grief. I threw myself upon the floor, I clung to his knees, I prayed him to delay the hour of going another hour, another day. I said all the wild and frantic things that were in my heart, as he closed the library-door and led me to my room.

“Try to say your prayers, Pauline,” was all he could answer me.

I did try to say them, as I knelt by the window, and saw in the dull, gray dawn, those two carriages drive slowly from the door.

Richard went away alone. Kilian indeed came down-stairs just as he was starting.

Sophie had awakened, and called him into her room for a few moments.

Then he came down, and I saw him get into the carriage alone, and motion the man to drive on, after that other which stood waiting a few rods farther on.