Moods
cheerfully, believing that he had found the secret sorrow.
"Thank heaven, nothing is past mending, and we will yet be happy. An
entire change shall be made; you shall no longer devote yourself to me,
but I to you. Will you go abroad, and forget this dismal home until its
rest grows inviting, Sylvia?"
"No, Geoffrey, not yet. I will learn to make the home pleasant, I will
work harder, and leave no time for ennui and discontent. I promised to
make your happiness, and I can do it better here than anywhere. Let me
try again."
"No, Sylvia, you work too hard already; you do everything with such
vehemence you wear out your body before your will is weary, and that
brings melancholy. I am very credulous, but when I see that acts belie
words I cease to believe. These months assure me that you are not happy;
have I found the secret thorn that frets you?"
She did not answer, for truth she could not, and falsehood she would
not, give him. He rose, went walking to and fro, searching memory,
heart, and conscience for any other cause, but found none, and saw only
one way out of his bewilderment. He drew a chair before her, sat down,
and looking at her with the masterful expression dominant in his face,
asked briefly--
"Sylvia, have I been tyrannical, unjust, unkind, since you came to me?"
"Oh, Geoffrey, too generous, too just, too tender!"
"Have I claimed any rights but those you gave me, entreated or demanded
any sacrifices knowingly and wilfully?"
"Never."
"Now I do claim my right to know your heart; I do entreat and demand one
thing, your confidence."
Then she felt that the hour had come, and tried to prepare to meet it as
she should by remembering that she had endeavored prayerfully,
desperately, despairingly, to do her duty, and had failed. Warwick was
right, she could not forget him. There was such vitality in the man and
in the sentiment he inspired, that it endowed his memory with a power
more potent than the visible presence of her husband. The knowledge of
his love now undid the work that ignorance had helped patience and
pride to achieve before. The more she struggled to forget, the deeper,
dearer, grew the yearning that must be denied, till months of fruitless
effort convinced her that it was impossible to outlive a passion more
indomitable than will, or penitence, or perseverance. Now she saw the
wisdom of Adam's warning, and felt that he knew both his friend's heart
and her own better than herself. Now she bitterly regretted that she had
not spoken out when he was there to help her, and before the least
deceit had taken the dignity from sorrow. Nevertheless, though she
trembled she resolved; and while Moor spoke on, she made ready to atone
for past silence by a perfect loyalty to truth.
"My wife, concealment is not generosity, for the heaviest trouble shared
together could not so take the sweetness from my life, the charm from
home, or make me more miserable than this want of confidence. It is a
double wrong, because you not only mar my peace but destroy your own by
wasting health and happiness in vain endeavors to bear some grief alone.
Your eye seldom meets mine now, your words are measured, your actions
cautious, your innocent gayety all gone. You hide your heart from me,
you hide your face; I seem to have lost the frank girl whom I loved, and
found a melancholy woman, who suffers silently till her honest nature
rebels, and brings her to confession in her sleep. There is no page of
my life which I have not freely shown you; do I do not deserve an equal
candor? Shall I not receive it?"
"Yes."
"Sylvia, what stands between us?"
"Adam Warwick."
Earnest as a prayer, brief as a command had been the question,
instantaneous was the reply, as Sylvia knelt down before him, put back
the veil that should never hide her from him any more, looked up into
her husband's face without one shadow in her own, and steadily told all.
The revelation was too utterly unexpected, too difficult of belief to be
at once accepted or understood. Moor started at the name, then leaned
forward, breathless and intent, as if to seize the words before they
left her lips; words that recalled incidents and acts dark and unmeaning
till the spark of intelligence fired a long train of memories and
enlightened him with terrible rapidity. Blinded by his own devotion, the
knowledge of Adam's love and loss seemed gages of his fidelity; the
thought that he loved Sylvia never had occurred to him, and seemed
incredible even when her own lips told it. She had been right in fearing
the effect this knowledge would have upon him. It stung his pride,
wounded his heart, and forever marred his faith in love and friendship.
As the truth broke over him, cold and bitter as a billow of the sea, she
saw gathering in his face the still white grief and indignation of an
outraged spirit, suffering with all a woman's pain, with all a man's
intensity of passion. His eye grew fiery and stern, the veins rose dark
upon his forehead, the lines about the mouth showed hard and grim, the
whole face altered terribly. As she looked, Sylvia thanked heaven that
Warwick was not there to feel the sudden atonement for an innocent
offence which his friend might have exacted before this natural but
unworthy temptation had passed by.
"Now I have given all my confidence though I may have broken both our
hearts in doing it. I do not hope for pardon yet, but I am sure of pity,
and I leave my fate in your hands. Geoffrey, what shall I do?"
"Wait for me," and putting her away, Moor left the room.
Suffering too much in mind to remember that she had a body, Sylvia
remained where she was, and leaning her head upon her hands tried to
recall what had passed, to nerve herself for what was to come. Her first
sensation was one of unutterable relief. The long struggle was over; the
haunting care was gone; there was nothing now to conceal; she might be
herself again, and her spirit rose with something of its old elasticity
as the heavy burden was removed. A moment she enjoyed this hard-won
freedom, then the memory that the burden was not lost but laid on other
shoulders, filled her with an anguish too sharp to find vent in tears,
too deep to leave any hope of cure except in action. But how act? She
had performed the duty so long, so vainly delayed, and when the first
glow of satisfaction passed, found redoubled anxiety, regret, and pain
before her. Clear and hard the truth stood there, and no power of hers
could recall the words that showed it to her husband, could give them
back the early blindness, or the later vicissitudes of hope and fear. In
the long silence that filled the room she had time to calm her
perturbation and comfort her remorse by the vague but helpful belief
which seldom deserts sanguine spirits, that something, as yet unseen and
unsuspected, would appear to heal the breach, to show what was to be
done, and to make all happy in the end.
Where Moor went or how long he stayed Sylvia never knew, but when at
length he came, her first glance showed her that pride is as much to be
dreaded as passion. No gold is without alloy, and now she saw the shadow
of a nature which had seemed all sunshine. She knew he was very proud,
but never thought to be the cause of its saddest manifestation; one
which showed her that its presence could make the silent sorrow of a
just and gentle man a harder trial to sustain than the hottest anger,
the bitterest reproach. Scarcely paler than when he went, there was no
sign of violent emotion in his countenance. His eye shone keen and dark,
an anxious fold crossed his forehead, and a melancholy gravity replaced
the cheerful serenity his face once wore. Wherein the alteration lay
Sylvia could not tell, but over the whole man some subtle change had
passed. The sudden frost which had blighted the tenderest affection of
his life seemed to have left its chill behind, robbing his manner of its
cordial charm, his voice of its heartsome ring, and giving him the look
of one who sternly said--"I must suffer, but it shall be alone."
Cold and quiet, he stood regarding her with a strange expression, as if
endeavoring to realize the truth, and see in her not his wife but
Warwick's lover. Oppressed by the old fear, now augmented by a
measureless regret, she could only look up at him feeling that her
husband had become her judge. Yet as she looked she was conscious of a
momentary wonder at the seeming transposition of character in the two so
near and dear to her. Strong-hearted Warwick wept like any child, but
accepted his disappointment without complaint and bore it manfully.
Moor, from whom she would sooner have expected such demonstration, grew
stormy first, then stern, as she once believed his friend would have
done. She forgot that Moor's pain was the sharper, his wound the deeper,
for the patient hope cherished so long; the knowledge that he never had
been, never could be loved as he loved; the sense of wrong that could
not but burn even in the meekest heart at such a late discovery, such an
entire loss.
Sylvia spoke first, not audibly, but with a little gesture of
supplication, a glance of sorrowful submission. He answered both, not by
lamentation or reproach, but by just enough of his accustomed tenderness
in touch and tone to make her tears break forth, as he placed her in the
ancient chair so often occupied together, took the one opposite, and
sweeping a clear space on the table between them, looked across it with
the air of a man bent on seeing his way and following it at any cost.
"Now Sylvia, I can listen as I should."
"Oh, Geoffrey, what can I say?"
"Repeat all you have already told me. I only gathered one fact then, now
I want the circumstances, for I find this confession difficult of
belief."
Perhaps no sterner expiation could have been required of her than to sit
there, face to face, eye to eye, and tell again that little history of
thwarted love and fruitless endeavor. Excitement had given her courage
for the first confession, now it was torture to carefully repeat what
had poured freely from her lips before. But she did it, glad to prove
her penitence by any test he might apply. Tears often blinded her,
uncontrollable emotion often arrested her; and more than once she turned
on him a beseeching look, which asked as plainly as words, "Must I go
on?"
Intent on learning all, Moor was unconscious of the trial he imposed,
unaware that the change in himself was the keenest reproach he could
have made, and still with a persistency as gentle as inflexible, he
pursued his purpose to the end. When great drops rolled down her cheeks
he dried them silently; when she paused, he waited till she calmed
herself; and when she spoke he listened with few interruptions but a
question now and then. Occasionally a sudden flush of passionate pain
swept across his face, as some phrase, implying rather than expressing
Warwick's love or Sylvia's longing, escaped the narrator's lips, and
when she described their parting on that very spot, his eye went from
her to the hearth her words seemed to make desolate, with a glance she
never could forget. But when the last question was answered, the last
appeal for pardon brokenly uttered, nothing but the pale pride remained;
and his voice was cold and quiet as his mien.
"Yes, it is this which has baffled and kept me groping in the dark so
long, for I wholly trusted what I wholly loved."
"Alas, it was that very confidence that made my task seem so necessary
and so hard. How often I longed to go to you with my great trouble as I
used to do with lesser ones. But here you would suffer more than I; and
having done the wrong, it was for me to pay the penalty. So like many
another weak yet willing soul, I tried to keep you happy at all costs."