 | My third book |  |
Olive Winchester Wight.
That could not do me ill;
And yet I feared him all the more
For lying there so still.
HOOD.
And everlasting witness! whose unsinking
Blood darkens earth and heaven! what thou now art
I know not! but if thou see'st what I am,
I think thou wilt forgive him, whom his God
Can ne'er forgive, nor his own soul—farewell!
BYRON (Cain).
THE story began far away back among the dim
mists of my boyhood. I was not more than fourteen,
and my brother William was just sixteen when
Olive Winchester first came among us.
My father was dead, and had left his large property
to be pretty equally divided between myself and my
elder brother. William was to have, on coming of
age, the old ancestral home—La Plaisance; my mother,
who was a French woman, had named it, cherishing,
among the rocks and hills of New England, the memory
of her French birth-place. I was to receive for
my share, in bank stocks and other kindred investments,
a sum nearly equivalent. My mother's jointure
being sufficient for our present support, the estate
was, during our minority, steadily increasing in value.
My mother, who clung to us passionately in her
lonely widowhood, could not bear to send us from her,
and so we received our educations at home, reciting
daily to the rector of our village church. By these
lessons my brother William profited more than myself.
He was a studious youth, not sickly, but never
very strong. Nothing in the world had such charms
for him as books; while I, on the other hand, honestly
detested study, and found my pleasure, even in boyhood,
in athletic exercises—riding, climbing, and swimming.
No two brothers were ever more widely different in
personal appearance as well as in mental organization.
I had a full, yet firmly-knit figure, ruddy cheeks, sunburned
hair, and thoroughly masculine countenance.
William was slight and pale; his features were delicate
and regular; his eyes a clear gray, full of softness
and tenderness; his hair dark and wavy, and his hands
small and fair as a woman's. From my earliest recollection
I had exercised a sort of protecting care over
him. In all disputes with the village boys I had been
his champion, and he, in turn, had labored faithfully to
assist my duller comprehension in mastering the mysteries
of science. God knows that, in those days, we
loved each other, ay, and we should have always, had
not Olive Winchester come.
My mother was summoned, on the April in which
my fourteenth birthday fell, to the death-bed of the
most cherished friend of her youth, and she returned,
bringing with her that friend's orphan daughter. The
girl's father and mother were both dead, and, but for
us at La Plaisance, she was, at twelve years, utterly
alone in the world.
It was a sullen, stormy April day, the one on which
we saw her first. We had had no intimation of the
time of my mother's return, and I came back from a
long gallop over the hills, in the very teeth of the
storm, and found her quietly seated in the parlor, with
my brother beside her. At a window stood a tiny
figure dressed in the deepest mourning—a child she
seemed—looking out there, watching the wind and
the rain. She turned and came forward when my
mother, after her affectionate greeting to me, called
her by name.
“This, my son Roscoe, is Olive Winchester, whom
I have brought here to be your sister.”
The little thing laid her bit of a hand in mine, and
shyly lifted her eyes to my face with a look appealing
so pathetically for tenderness and sympathy that I was
only restrained by boyish bashfulness from clasping
her in my arms.
“I have no other friends,” she said, simply, in a
voice which, though clear, was very low and sorrowful.
“I have no other friends, and Mrs. Wight says
you will be kind to me.”
“And so we will, by Jupiter!” I cried, with rough,
boyish sincerity; and I wondered why the tears sprang
into her eyes at words which I meant to be so very
comforting.
She was a shy, pale little thing, with nothing very
remarkable in her face except her hazel eyes, sorrowful,
yet bright, but they were the twin magnets to
draw all my existence after them from that hour.
Of course, at fourteen, I had never thought of love.
I do not think the visions of possible love and marriage
ever come to boys as early as to the stiller and
more introverted natures of girls—certainly not to
boys who read and think so little, who are so full of
exuberant animal life as I was. And yet, looking
back, I can recall many a pang, which I know now
was of boyish jealousy, when she seemed to prefer my
brother's society to my own. These occasions were
not infrequent, for he was more of her kind than I.
She, like him, loved books and study, and he was in
great part her teacher. She looked up to him from
the first with real reverence.
As she grew older he could talk with her, but I had
sit together long summer days upon the grass, under
the great oak trees, and read old tales and tragedies,
whose theme turned always on woman's beauty and
man's devotion. Often they asked me to join them,
but I had no enjoyment in their pursuits, and I used
to take my solitary way to the woods, and lie for
hours on the bank of some forest stream, catching
glimpses of the blue sky as the wind lifted the boughs
above me, or watching the sunshine sifting down
through the leaves like fine gold poured into the very
heart of the still wood. I would lie there and wonder
why I was so wretched—I, with friends, youth, home,
while the birds sang and the winds blew, and every
thing was glad around me.
I was eighteen before I had answered this question
even to my own heart. One day I was sitting with
my mother at the library window. My eyes followed
the direction of hers, and rested on my brother and
Olive, walking to and fro among the shrubbery, and
talking earnestly together.
“There they are, as usual,” my mother said, musingly.
“I shouldn't wonder if William were to love her
some day. I think I should like that. It would be
so much better for him to marry her than to bring a
stranger in, to break up the quiet of our home.”
I believe I, more than William, was my mother's
confidant. She was very proud of his acquirements,
and loved him dearly; but I was her youngest, and
had always remained her pet: to me she confided all
her hopes and speculations.
For once, however, I was not ready with my answer.
Her words had revealed to me my own heart—had
tenderness, which would be content to call her sister—
to see her my brother's wife, the mother of his children.
My mother had spoken as if all that would be necessary
would be for William to love her; as if her
affection for him was not at all a thing to be questioned.
I would not accept this verdict at once. I would
watch her narrowly. She was sixteen—old enough
to know her own heart—as old as my mother had been
when she became my father's wife.
I staid at home more now. I walked and sat with
them under the trees, and listened while William read
or Olive sang; and, at times, I was almost convinced
that they were made for each other. But sometimes
I doubted. She blushed now and then when I looked
at her, or sat down by her side, as she never blushed
at any of William's attentions; but then she was more
used to his presence than to mine. I brought her, one
day, a curious flower from the depths of the forest, and
she wore it on her bosom till it faded. Years afterward
I found it in a secret drawer of her writing-desk,
and then I knew how she had cherished it.
Well, I am making this episode of doubt and suspense
too long, because I am dreading to reach the
certainty that came after it. It lasted a year. During
all that time, looking back, I can see that I gave her
no reason to believe that I loved her, while William
was constant in his attentions. I was waiting. She
seemed to me so young that I ought not to trouble the
calm, maidenly current of her life; and then, besides,
I had so little hope.
At last she had completed her seventeenth year.
love. One day my mother asked me to walk with her.
She wore a happy face, and, as she seated herself beside
me on a rustic bench, she said,
“I have something pleasant to tell you, Roscoe.”
A sudden presentiment struck home to my heart,
but I mastered it, and asked, with outward calmness,
“What is it, mother?”
“My hopes are accomplished. Your brother loves
Olive. They were betrothed this morning.”
I felt the blood rush to my heart in a whelming tide.
My brain reeled. The cry of my soul would be heard.
I threw myself on the ground at her feet—my mother's,
who loved me as no other ever could—in whose
heart I was always sure of room.
“Mother,” I said, slowly, “do you think that I
could love?”
My tone startled her.
“Surely, my son. Why do you ask?”
“Do you think my love would be as deep as William's?”
I persisted.
“It should be deeper. Your nature is at the same
time more ardent and more steadfast than his.”
I sprang to my feet. I stood before her, and looked
straight into her eyes.
“Mother, you say well; I could love, and with all
the love of my lifetime I do love Olive Winchester.
Pity me, mother; for what you have told me this
hour has blighted every hope of my future.”
She understood me. My words, she said afterward,
sounded cold and quiet when she saw the passion of
anguish and despair which swept over my face. She
made me sit down beside her; she put her arms round
flushed and fevered.
“My son—my dearest son,” she said, over and over
again, in tender tones, and when I grew a little calmer
she tried to reason with me. She persuaded me that
Olive's love was never likely to have been mine. She
prophesied joys that would yet dawn on my life; but
my heart mocked at such vain hopes in sullen silence.
Only one thing she suggested which I accepted eagerly—the
relief which it would be to me to leave home
—not to be present at my brother's wedding. It was
something to escape the torture of seeing Olive given
to another. I clung desperately to the idea.
My mother managed all for me so that my real
motives were suspected by no one. In two weeks I
left for Europe—to be gone, as was generally understood,
three years—but to remain, as I promised my
own heart, until I had conquered my mad passion for
Olive Winchester.
My brother—I fear I have hardly done him justice
in this story—had a nature noble, though calm. He
loved me faithfully. Utterly unconscious of my feelings,
he tried to persuade me to remain at home until
after his marriage. His joy, he said, would not be
half complete unless I could share it. Of course I resisted
all his persuasions. Olive said nothing. I
thought, though I could imagine no reason, that she
rather preferred I should go.
On the morning of my departure I found her alone
in the garden. I went to her side, and I could see
that she had been weeping. I struggled to command
myself.
“Olive,” I said, “dear Olive, I am going. I will
are all alone, how dear you have always been to me
—how fervently I shall pray, when I am far away,
that you may be as happy as you deserve—as you are
sure to be. I want you should think of me once even
on your wedding-day. Will you, Olive?”
She did not answer. She lifted those magnetic
hazel eyes, and flashed into my soul one look—a look
full of something I knew not what—which made my
heart beat with a wild, tumultuous thrill of hope.
But the next moment this vanished. I knew well
that she did not love me—she, my brother's betrothed.
I opened my arms.
“Come, and let me give you one kiss, Olive—my
sister that is to be—whose face I may, perchance, never
live to look upon again.”
She came close to me. She suffered me to fold her
in my arms. I had meant to kiss her calmly as a
brother should, but the passion which surged in my
heart found a language in spite of myself. I pressed
on her lips a kiss which said more than I had any
right to utter. With a sudden sense of guilt, trembling
at my own rashness, I released her. Her expression
was half-frightened, full of a sorrow which seemed
strange to me even then, but in it was no anger.
I left her there.
Three months later news came to me, in Italy, of
the marriage of my brother.
After that two years passed on calmly, and in them
my character, under the stern discipline of suffering,
had undergone a great change. It is a mistake to
suppose that sorrow comes to every one as an angel
of regeneration. To more it plays the part of a tempting
under it. I grew cold, worldly, ambitious. My intellect
was not naturally dull, and I now bestowed all
my energy on its cultivation. I said to myself that
it was only to divert my attention—to prevent my
mind from dwelling on my sorrow; but I believe I
was conscious all the time of a lurking motive, which
I was unwilling boldly to confront—an undercurrent
of thought. I longed, secretly, to rival my brother at
his own weapons—to show Olive that I was something
more than a fine animal—that I could do more than
ride, and hunt, and swim. I progressed rapidly, for
my will was firm, and my iron constitution, of itself,
gave me great advantages. I could have been eagerly
welcomed into society. My income was ample, and
I think I was just enough of a satirist and a cynic to
have been popular. But society had few charms for
me. I saw many brilliant women, but not one who
seemed to me worthy a moment's comparison with my
lost love.
I was in Paris, but just preparing for a trip into
Egypt, when a letter came to me from my brother,
summoning me home, and begging me to use all possible
dispatch if I would see my mother alive. It had
gone first to Rome, and from thence been sent after
me to Paris. It was doubtful if I could reach home
in season. For the time all passion was swallowed
up in the thought of my mother. I did not think of
Olive; or, if I remembered her at all, it was as a gentle
sister—the wife of that brother who was sharing with
me now one common sorrow. It was strange how the
old, boyhood affection revived in this season of trouble.
William, toward whom my heart had so long been
loved and loving brother Will of our boyish days,
whose battles I fought, and who learned my lessons.
My heart thrilled, my eyes moistened at these memories.
What was woman's love, I asked myself, as I
hurried to Havre on the night express, that it should
come between two who had so loved each other—who
had shared one home, one name, one mother's heart
and bosom. I felt strong to go home a man—to meet
my sister Olive with only a brother's calm affection
—to receive my mother's blessing. But there my
thought faltered. What if those lips should be beyond
the power to bless me? What if those tender
eyes were closed? What if I had looked my last on
that mother's gentle face?
The train seemed to fly over the level road, but it
did not keep pace with my thought. I felt like shouting
“Faster!” to its swiftest speed.
It was twilight when the wagon in which I had ridden
from the dépôt stopped before the gate of La Plaisance.
I sprang from the vehicle and hurried up the
walk. My brother met me at the door. He threw
his arms around me, and I felt his tears upon my face.
Then I knew all, as well as when his words came, slow
and choked with grief.
“You are too late, Roscoe. We buried her yesterday.
She struggled hard with death. She said she
could not die until she had seen you once more, but at
length her resistance gave way, and she lapsed into
sleep. We kept her a week, but at last, as we did not
know when you would come, we buried her.”
I did not weep; I think my sorrow was too deep
that my face looked as ghastly in the moonlight
as that other face on which, the day before, they
had closed down the coffin-lid.
He led me into the parlor. I had a momentary
glimpse of a figure dressed in the deepest black, standing
at the window and looking out in precisely the
same attitude in which little twelve-years-old Olive
Winchester had stood there years before. She heard
our footsteps, and came at once to meet me. At that
moment I did not perceive, what I saw afterward, how
ripe, and rare, and perfect in its beauty was the full
blossoming of that flower whose bud had been so sweet.
It soothed me to hear the low tones of her sympathizing
voice, and I sat until a late hour, with her on one
side and my brother Will on the other, listening to
every detail of my blessed mother's illness—to every
message, every word of parting tenderness which she
had left for me.
I had loved my mother with no common love, and
I mourned for her with no common sorrow. It was
months before any unhallowed thought could find entrance
into the heart so full of that sacred memory.
But after a time, I know not how, my old passion began
to rise up and assert itself—the old temptation
came back in its full force. I began to realize what a
beautiful woman Olive had become. I loved her as
an undeveloped girl, and, now that she had ripened
into womanly loveliness, is it strange that I worshiped
her? Do not think that ever, under any circumstances,
I could have revealed this to her. There was an atmosphere
of saintly purity about her which I would
have died sooner than taint with the faintest utterance
the intensity of my passion.
I felt all my renewed tenderness for my brother dying
out. He had come between me and the love which
might have been my life's crown. I am not sure that
I did not hate him. Outwardly I was very calm. I
strove to make myself agreeable. I surprised them
both by my acquirements and the change in my tastes.
I could see Olive's innocent pleasure in my society.
I felt that I ought to go away. Every morning my
good angel whispered to me to depart, and I rose resolved
to obey his monitions. Every evening found
me lingering still. It seemed impossible to wrench
away the seven-fold cable which bound me. There
was such a charm in Olive's very unconsciousness—
in watching all her movements—the lithe shape of
her slender figure, the graceful flow of her garments.
You smile. You were never in love; you do not understand
the rhapsodies of a lover's passion. I hated
myself for being subject to the dominion of mine, but
I could not wrestle with it. It had grown with my
growth unperceived, until it had become too mighty
for me.
I had been there all winter, and now it was spring.
I sat by my window with the fiend and the angel struggling
in my heart as usual, when my brother came in
and asked me to ride with him.
“I have had the horses saddled,” he said. “The
morning is fine, and we'll have a grand canter through
the woods. You don't know how much better I like
horseback exercise than I used. You've been getting
my old taste for books, and I yours for out-door sports.”
I felt disinclined at first to go, but I had no excuse,
hand for an ostensible occupation, and followed him
down stairs. The horses stood before the door, noble
fellows! pawing the earth in their impatience, with
arched necks and fiery eyes.
Olive had come out to see us off. Just as William
was going to mount, he went back, as if moved by a
sudden, irresistible impulse of tenderness, took his wife
in his arms, and kissed her. The sight of any caress
between them, which, however, was very infrequent in
my presence, always tortured me beyond endurance.
I sprang into the saddle, and, without waiting for Will,
galloped away. After a few moments I came to my
senses, slackened my speed, and he came up with me.
“Halloo, Roscoe, what do you mean? Here I've
been tearing after you like mad. I wanted to go the
other way through the forest. The woodmen have
cleared a path there to drag their logs home, and the
scenery is so beautiful and grand.”
“As you like,” I answered, turning my horse's head
indifferently. There was a keen, exhilarating sense
of life, however, to which I could not remain insensible,
as I dashed on over the forest road, with the trees
just bursting into leaf above our heads, the water babbling
from a thousand tiny springs, and the violets
and anemones blooming in every nook. We did not
talk much. I was busy with my own thoughts, and
William was content to enjoy the scene in silence.
I must hurry on. I am nearing the hour which has
made my life a curse. We came, suddenly emerging
from a dense thicket, to a turbulent stream—the “Mad
Rapids” it had been called ever since I could remember.
A rustic bridge had been thrown over it, and
led. As we approached we saw that the stream,
swollen by the spring rains, had swept away the
bridge, and some of its timbers were lodged among
the rocks which formed its bottom.
The question was whether to leap the stream or to
turn back. The waters were very deep and the banks
high, but it was narrow, not by any means a difficult
or a dangerous leap for a good horse. I proposed that
we should try it—not, God knows, with any worse
motive than the desire of a little excitement. Bad as
I was, Heaven bears me witness that it was with no
thought, no faintest foreshadowing of the terrible consequences.
William agreed to my proposal. He touched his
horse, and the noble creature sprang forward, but he
had taken the leap at the wrong place. When his
feet touched the other side the earth gave way under
them, and horse and rider both fell into the rapids.
Quicker than thought William had loosened his feet
from the stirrups, and I saw that he had fallen, not
underneath, but on one side of the horse. The animal
fell directly upon a sharp rock, and, I believe, died
instantly; but I saw my brother's ghastly, imploring
face looking up at me from the rushing waters.
I sprang from my horse. I knew I could save him,
but— O God! did the struggle last an hour, or can
one moment contain such fierce, terrible thoughts?
On one hand, I saw his face, the brother whom my
good angel was beckoning me to save; I knew that
he could not swim—that he was utterly helpless; on
the other, I saw Olive. The fiend in my heart tempted
me with the memory of her maddening beauty—
my arms. I saw her as I had seen her that morning
—ripe, dewy lips, slender, delicate figure, eyes full of
love and truth—only thus could I win her. And then
the good angel whispered again,
“Would you go forth with the brand of Cain upon
your forehead? Would you be your brother's murderer?”
and I saw yet another face pleading with me;
my mother's face, so white and still under the turf
springing with blossoms.
I dashed wildly into the water. I drew my brother
up. With a desperate struggle I landed him upon the
bank. It was too late! The tempter had triumphed
—I had waited the one moment too long. He was
dead! I felt myself his murderer. Murderer! a ghastly
word, but one which must underlie forever all the
voices of my life.
With frantic energy, I tried every means to restore
him; but he grew colder and colder. He was dead
utterly; only it seemed to me that those glassy eyes,
which would not close, were turned on me with an
eternal reproach. Oh, I could never shut that out.
They are looking at me still.
When I had convinced myself that he was gone beyond
the reach of human aid, I left him lying there,
and hurried on to a clearing nearly half a mile away,
where a few woodmen were chopping. I told them
my story—that my brother, in attempting to leap the
stream, had fallen into the water—that I had jumped
in after him, but before I could get him out he was
dead. I asked their assistance to carry his body home.
With a few planks they constructed a hasty bridge, a
little farther down the stream, and then those stalwart
fatal waters and back along the forest road.
My faithful horse, in the mean while, had been waiting
me patiently. I mounted him, and rode onward
to break the news to Olive.
In that moment I would have given, so I thought,
all the hopes of my future, even Olive herself, but to
have seen the light come back into those glassy, haunting
eyes; to hear my brother's voice; to have the
blight and curse of a murderer's doom uplifted from
my soul.
I had been riding swiftly, but I slackened my rein
as I drew near the house. How could I go in and tell
Olive that she was a widow—I, whom the haunting
voice accused as her husband's murderer? “I did
not kill him,” I cried, wildly; “I did not kill him.
I only did not save his life.” It was in vain. The
inexorable voice would not be silenced. “Murderer!”
it cried out still; “your brother's murderer.” But I
saw the necessity for self-control. I dismounted at
the gate, and went slowly up the walk and into the
house. Olive sat there by a table. A few flowers she
had gathered were in a vase before her; her canary
had come out of its cage and perched on her shoulder;
a smile hovered about her lips. Oh, how innocent,
and youthful, and lovely she looked, this young woman,
scarcely yet twenty. In that moment I had no
space for repentance. I was willing to accept my
doom.
“Olive,” I said.
She turned and looked at me. I suppose the wildness
of my expression startled her. The color retreated
from her face. I could see her tremble.
“Roscoe,” she cried, “brother Roscoe, tell me what
is the matter. Why are you here alone? Where is
William?”
I had meant to spare her a sudden shock, to prepare
her gradually for my evil tidings; but I lost all control
over myself.
“They are bringing him home,” I said. “William
is dead. He tried to leap the Mad Rapids, his horse
fell, and he was drowned. I plunged in after him,
but when I drew him out he was dead.”
I had looked at her steadily while I spoke. Perhaps
I had some undefined hope that his death would
be a relief to her as to myself. But no; her anguish
was unmistakable.
“My husband—my good, kind husband!” she gasped,
in a strange, faint voice, and then she sank upon
the floor, not insensible, but prostrated as one felled
to the ground by a heavy blow. I sprang forward.
I was about to raise her up, to try to console her, but
she repulsed me with a sort of terror which I understood
better afterward.
“Go away!” she cried; “I can have no help, no
comfort. I want none.” Then she seemed to repent.
A change passed over her face, and she said, gently
and humbly as a little child,
“Forgive me, Roscoe; I do not mean to wound you.
I forgot; you are his brother, and you will mourn for
him with me. And you risked your life to save his.
God bless you!”
No curse could have seemed to me half so fearful
as that blessing. And then to listen to her praises for
trying to save his life—I, who had stood by and let
him perish, when I might so easily, with no danger to
and turned away my eyes, which dared not meet her
own. As I did so I glanced from the window, and
saw them approaching with the litter on which the
dead man lay. I regained, with a strong effort, my
self-command.
“Olive,” I said, “they are bringing him into the
yard. I will go and meet them.”
She rose from the floor.
“I will go too—I, his wife. When did he ever
come home that I did not welcome him? He used to
put his hands on my head and call me his little Olive
—his darling. But he'll not speak now!”
There was a wild pathos in her tone. I fancied her
reason was departing, and looked at her searchingly.
“No,” she said, “I am not mad, though madness
might be merciful. See, I am quite myself.”
I drew near her, and she leaned heavily on my
arm, and we went forth together to meet the husband
coming home.
I do not think Olive perceived any thing supernatural
in that dead face; but I could see, turn which
way I would, that those eyes haunted me, followed
me, sought me out, upbraided me with their everlasting
reproach. Well, the world, complain of it as we
all do, is almost always more charitable to us than we
deserve; and if there was any thing strange or unnatural
in my manner, the lookers-on imputed it to my
excessive grief at my brother's sudden and terrible
end.
Olive was calm. She gave all the directions in a
steady voice. A few neighbors were hurriedly assembled,
and William was laid out on his own bed in
been done, with a sad sweetness that moved some of
those strong men to tears, she thanked them for their
kindness in this her hour of mortal sorrow, and then
she begged that she might be left alone with the dead.
I dared not intrude upon her. Indeed, I would not
willingly go into the presence of those eyes, which
still, wherever I went, pierced through the distance
and haunted me. At first I remained outside the
closed door to listen for the sounds from within; but
I could hear nothing. Her grief was as silent as I
knew it was deep.
We kept him four days before we buried him. But
I will not linger on those days when that shrouded
terror, still, though terrible, lay in our midst. It is
needless torture. When I followed him to the grave,
with that wife, so young to be a widow, leaning upon
my arm—when I saw the earth heaped over his coffin,
I almost expected a voice would cry out from the
depths of the tomb and denounce me. But the dead
man told no tales. There was no sound save the sullen
fall of the earth, the low words of the clergyman,
and the stifled sobs of the bystanders.
I took Olive home. As she entered the house, she
turned to me and laid her hand in mine just as she
had done years before, a little child. How well I remembered
it!
“Roscoe,” she said, “God has taken all my other
friends from me. My parents are gone, your mother
is gone, and now He has taken my husband—my tender,
good husband, who loved me so. I have only
you left. Be kind to me, Roscoe.”
I would have given worlds to take her to my heart
but I restrained myself. Not yet, not yet; I must
bide my time.
It was a whole year before I said to her one word
which any brother might not have uttered. That
year was one long fever, made up of alternate paroxysms
of remorse and joy. Sometimes, in her presence,
I would forget the past, with its sin, its despair,
and live a tranced life, beholding bewildering visions
of future happiness. I would believe that she would
yet be mine—that she lived for me. I liked to watch
her—to note every change of her moods—to see how
the first utter desolation of her grief passed slowly
away, and she began to find interest in her favorite
pursuits, a charm in life. Then I strove to make myself
necessary to her. I shared her readings, her
walks, her drives. I invented new pleasures for her.
Hardest of all, I listened, with gentle sympathy, to all
her reminiscences of her dead husband—the thousand
ways in which he had petted and indulged her, and
the fond names which he had called her.
Out of her sight I passed hours of misery—hours
when the accusing voices drowned out every harmony
of life; when those pursuing eyes, which coffin and
turf could not cover, or grave-stone seal together, looked
into mine, till I longed to take refuge from them in
the still land of shadows and silence. But the months
wore away at last; and, a little more than a year after
my brother's death, I revealed my love to Olive. I
did not commence boldly. I told her a story, which I
did not represent as my own, of two brothers who both
loved one woman. The elder brother won her, and
the younger fled from her presence. At length the
than ever, yet dared not confess it, lest there should
be no pity for him in her eyes—lest her heart was in
the grave.
Before I was half through I saw that she understood
me, but she listened in silence. I think my words
touched a chord in her heart, whose vibrations she
could not at once still.
When I paused she rose. I thought there was a
shy tenderness in her eyes, but she spoke resolutely.
“I know what you mean; but you must not say
such things to me. It is very wrong. I am William's
wife. I have no right to listen to them.”
She went from the room. I was not at all discouraged.
My words had been received precisely as I had
expected. I knew that the very thought of a second
marriage would startle her, at first, as a phantom of
evil. But I had her constantly with me. There was
no danger of a rival. I was cautious and prudent. I
could afford to wait.
It was not a month before I had won from her a
confession which even transcended my hopes. Her
first love had been mine. She did not dream, as indeed
I had never given her any reason, that I loved
her; but, unsought, she had given to me the wealth
of her innocent young heart. When my brother proposed
to her, she had felt so deeply her obligations to
our family, that she had no courage to refuse to yield
to his pleadings and the evident wishes of my mother.
With maidenly modesty she had concealed her love
for me, but she had told William that her regard for
him was only a sister's calm, dispassionate tenderness.
“That is enough, until you shall be my wife,” he had
herself to be persuaded.
She had never had the faintest suspicion of my regard
until the morning on which I bade her farewell
before leaving home, and even then she had felt no
certainty of it. Besides, it was, or she thought it, too
late to recede. After her marriage she had striven to
conquer and stifle even the memory of her girlish
dream, and had so far succeeded that she had faithfully
believed my brother was dearer to her than any one
else ever was or could have been. When the news of
his death had come to her, she had at first repulsed
me in the midst of her grief, because the memory of
her former love for me came back to her conscience in
that hour as a sin against the departed. Poor child!
if she sinned in loving me, I believe it was the only
sin of her lifetime.
That autumn my entreaties and her own secret
wishes triumphed. She became my wife. Dear as
William had been to her heart, I knew well that I only
had ever entered into its inner temple—that the keys
which responded to my touch had never been struck
by other fingers.
I neither knew nor cared whether any condemned
our marriage. I was satisfied. She was mine, whom
I had sold heaven to win. It was something more
than joy to share with her every moment of my life;
to wake at night and find her beloved head lying on
my bosom; her sweet breath coming and going in
slumber peaceful as a child's, within the shelter of my
arms. Oh, how I used to gloat over my treasure, when
not even her eyes could witness my raptures.
I suppose the fallen angels, sitting in chains, remember
of heaven. They had their space of joy—joy as intense
as their fall was terrible. Well, for months I
had mine. The haunting eyes could not find me—
the accusing voice could not waken me from my long
trance of love. But, after a time, this mood passed.
I worshiped her as madly as ever. Sometimes still I
forgot all things else and was happy, but oftener my
remorse was terrible—the remorse that I could not
share even with her—that human love, be it ever so
faithful, could not lighten. I began to be pursued by
a fear, as terrible as it was vague, that in some form
the retribution for my sin would fall on her, because
so would the blow come most heavily to me. Sometimes,
when I was with her, every fond word, every
innocent caress would pierce through me like a sword.
I could not shut out the thought that if she knew me
as I was her love would be changed to loathing—that
she would fly from me, hereafter, in the land of spirits,
where the mysteries of all hearts and all lives shall
be revealed. A thousand times I was on the very
point of unburdening to her my load of sin, and then
I would choke back the words; I could not summon
resolution enough to utter what I thought must shut
me out from her heart forever.
At length our boy was born. How I had looked
forward to his birth! I had thought that his first cry
—the voice of my first-born—would exorcise the phantoms
from my life—that his baby lips would smile
down care and trouble.
Oh God! no sooner had I taken him in my arms
than I saw the fatal likeness. My brother's face had
been sent again on earth to haunt me. It did not look
features; his dark, wavy hair; his clear gray eyes, full,
even in this infant, of soft, subdued tenderness. I put
him from me with a shudder.
His mother noticed the likeness and wondered at it,
but with all the fullness of her true woman's heart she
loved and cherished her child. I think even mothers
seldom love as she loved; her nature was so intense,
and so few objects had been given her on which to
lavish its wealth of passionate devotion.
Every week, as the child grew, this fateful likeness
was stronger and more undeniable. He seemed to me
more William's child than mine, and I consented, with
an involuntary thrill of dread, when his mother expressed
a wish to call him by William's name. And
yet, sometimes, a father's yearnings rose up in my heart
and overflowed, till I was fain to snatch him to my
bosom. At such times I thought—it might have been
fancy, or but the natural effect of my violence—but I
thought he shrank from me, and I recognized in this
turning away from me of my own flesh and blood
Heaven's righteous retribution.
He was never a strong child, but he lived to be more
than a year old. He learned to call his mother by
her name, to mouth a few other pretty, childish words,
and Olive loved him more and more, and rejoiced over
him with an intensity which I trembled to see. More
and more, haunted by this child's face, the likeness of
my brother's, was I possessed by an almost irresistible
impulse to pour into my wife's faithful bosom all the
madness, the despair of my life; but still I mastered
it, and was silent.
At last the child sickened suddenly and died. In
mother's arms, searching her face with those weird, unchildlike,
yet loving eyes. At noon he was violently
sick, and at night she held him as she held him in the
morning, but he was cold and dead, though the eyes
she had vainly tried to close were open still. Those
eyes—William's own had never haunted me more remorselessly—and
yet I kept silence. I said nothing
until after we had laid him in a little grave by William's
side. Then, when we came back from the funeral,
and my wife turned to me for comfort, my terrible
secret burst forth.
“Olive,” I cried, “curse me as your child's murderer!
I can keep it from you no longer. You stretch
out to me your empty arms, where your baby used to
lie, and I tell you that his death was the just punishment
for my sin. He was sent on earth to haunt me
with his strange likeness to the dead, and now he has
been taken to smite me by piercing through your
heart!”
She looked at me in blank terror—in utter wonder.
I sank at her feet; I hid my face on her knees; she
did not shrink from me even then. I poured out there,
not daring to meet her eyes, my guilt—my long and
terrible remorse. I told her in full the story of William's
death. Then I paused, waiting her judgment.
I expected she would banish me from her presence forever,
but she raised my face in her gentle hands. She
looked at me with an angel's pity and a woman's love.
Then she spoke; oh, no angel, only a loving woman,
could have uttered such words! She thanked me for
sharing with her my secret. She told me that she had
long suspected, from words uttered in my restless sleep
joy to despair—that some fearful memory was preying
upon my life, though she had never conjectured its nature.
She thanked God that it was no worse. She
told me it was wrong for me to call myself a murderer
—that I had not been responsible for being tempted,
and reminded me that I had overcome the temptation
and plunged into the water at last. She believed that
William must have died before any efforts of mine
could have saved him—that the fall which had killed
his horse could not have spared him. She told me,
moreover, that, whatever I had done, it was the most
fatal sin of all to despair of the almighty mercy of God.
Her reasoning did not convince me. Not even she
had power to lift the burden from my soul. But oh!
you can never conceive the inexpressible relief it was
to have shared this secret with her—to feel that she
knew me as I was.
Never, until then, had I fully understood the height
and depth, the heroic strength of that woman's love.
She put aside at once her sorrow for her dead child,
whom no mourning could bring back, and devoted
herself to soothe the despair of her living husband.
And then, just as I began, through her, to believe
in the possibility of future hope and forgiveness, as if
there was to be no rest for my troubled soul this side
of the Infinite, God took her also. Never strong, and
weaker than ever since her baby's birth, the shock of
his death, followed by my terrible disclosure, had been
too severe for her. After that she never saw another
hour of health. Slowly, but steadily, she faded away.
Tenderest care could not wrestle with the Destroyer.
To the last I do not think she ever thought of me
believed that the knowledge of my guilt killed her—
that, though she never confessed it to me, the shadow
which she strove to lift from my life settled upon her
own. But she died blessing me, and pointing me to a
future of peace and union in heaven, where, she bade
me believe, the All-Father would forgive me and receive
me. Oh, can Heaven be as merciful as she was?
When she died the sun of my life set forever. For
me there could be no morning after the night. I buried
her—my life's one treasure—beside her child, and
on her tombstone is graven the name of her wifehood—
Olive Winchester Wight.
Aged xxiii.
I never go to that grave; they tell me the weeds
have grown over it. The Olive of my love is not
there. I know that before this she has seen the Father's
face. My heart tells me that she is praying in
that heavenly country for him whose love for her, despite
all his other sins, was faithful unto death. But
can even her prayers be answered?
I am left alone with two memories—one of blessing,
the other of bane. I am groping onward to the country
of the shadows; and when my soul goes forth
alone to cross the surging waters which lie between
us and the beyond, I can not tell whether the pale
hands of my beloved will be stretched out to help me
to climb the banks of eternal flowers, or my brother's
soul, seeking there, there, the revenge denied on earth,
will plunge me, struggling vainly, downward, ever
downward, into the depths heaven's highest archangel
could never fathom.
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