Fenton's Quest - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

a hundred ways. You have seen the traces of that slow torture in my face. In every way I had sinned from my weak desire to win my love and yet keep my friend; and God knows the burden of my sin has been heavy upon me. I will tell you some day--if ever I am strong enough for so many words, and if you will hear me out patiently--the whole story of my temptation; how I struggled against it, and only gave way at last when life seemed insupportable to me without the woman I loved."

After this he lay quiet again for some minutes, exhausted by having spoken so long. All the factitious strength, which had made him loud and violent in his delirium, was gone; he seemed as weak as a sick child.

"Where is she?" he asked at last; "why doesn't she come to me? You have not answered that question."

"I have told you that her place is not here," Gilbert replied evasively. "You have no right to expect her here, never having given her the right to come."

"No; it is my own fault. She is in Hampshire still, I suppose. Poor girl, I would give the world to see her dear face looking down at me. I must get well and go back to her. When shall I be strong enough to travel?--to-morrow, or if not to-morrow, the next day; surely the next day--eh, Gilbert?"

He raised himself in the bed in order to read the answer in Gilbert's face, but fell back upon the pillows instantly, exhausted by the effort. Memory had only returned to him in part. It was clear that he had forgotten the fact of Marian's disappearance,--a fact of which he had seemed half-conscious long ago in his delirium.

"How did you find out that Marian was my wife?" he asked presently, with perfect calmness. "Who betrayed my secret?"

"Your own lips, in your delirious talk of her, which has been incessant; and if collateral evidence were needed to confirm your words, this, which I found the other day marking a place in your Shakespeare."

Gilbert took a scrap of ribbon from his breast, a ribbon with a blue ground and a rosebud on it,--a ribbon which he had chosen himself for Marian, in the brief happy days of their engagement.

John Saltram contemplated the scrap of colour with a smile that was half sombre, half ironical.

"Yes, it was hers," he said; "she wore it round that slim swan's throat of hers; and one morning, when I was leaving her in a particularly weak frame of mind, I took it from her neck and brought it away in my bosom, for the sake of having something about me that she had worn; and then I put it in the book, you see, and forgot all about it. A fitting emblem of my love--full of passion and fervour to-day, at the point of death to-morrow. There have been times when I would have given the world to undo what I had done, when my life seemed blighted by this foolish marriage; and again, happier moments, when my wife was all the universe to me, and I had not a thought or a dream beyond her. God bless her! You will let me go to her, Gilbert, the instant I am able to travel, as soon as I can drag myself anyhow from this bed to the railway? You will not stand between me and my love?"

"No, John Saltram; God knows, I have never thought of that."

"And you knew I was a traitor--you knew it was my work that had destroyed your scheme of happiness--and yet have been beside me, watching me patiently through this wretched illness?"

"That was a small thing to do You did as much, and a great deal more, for me, when I was ill in Egypt. It was a mere act of duty."

"Not of friendship. It was Christian charity, eh, Gilbert? If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink; and so on. It was not the act of a friend?"

"No, John Saltram, between you and me there can never again be any such word as friendship. What little I have done for you I think I would have done for a stranger, had I found a stranger as helpless and unfriended as I found you. I am quite sure that to have done less would have been to neglect a sacred duty. There is no question of obligation. Till you are on your feet again, a strong man, I will stand by you; when that time comes, we part for ever."

John Saltram sank back upon his pillow with a heavy sigh, but uttered no protest against this sentence. And this was all that came of Gilbert's vengeful passion against the man who had wronged him; this was the end of a long-cherished anger. "A lame and impotent conclusion," perhaps, but surely the only end possible under the circumstances. He could not wage war against a feeble creature, whose hold on life was still an uncertainty; he could not forget his promise to Marian, that no harm should come to her husband through any act of his. So he sat quietly by the bedside of his prostrate foe, watched him silently as he fell into a brief restless slumber, and administered his medicine when he woke with a hand that was as gentle as a woman's.

Between four and five o'clock the nurse came in from the next room to take her place, refreshed by a sleep of several hours; and then Gilbert departed in the chill gloom of the winter's morning, still as dark as night,--departed with his mind lightened of a great load; for it had been very terrible to him to think that the man who had once been his friend might go down to the grave without an interval of reason.


CHAPTER XXXVII.


A FULL CONFESSION.

Gilbert did not go to the Temple again till he had finished his day's work at St. Helen's, and had eaten his modest dinner at a tavern in Fleet-street. He found that Mr. Mew had already paid his second visit to the sick-room, and had pronounced himself much relieved and delighted by the favourable change.

"I have no fear now," he had said to the nurse. "It is now only a question of getting back the physical strength, which has certainly fallen to a very low ebb. Perfect repose and an entire freedom from care are what we have to look to."

This the nurse told Gilbert. "He has been very restless all day," she added, "though I've done what I could to keep him quiet. But he worries himself, now that his senses have come back, poor gentleman; and it isn't easy to soothe him any way. He keeps on wondering when he'll be well enough to move, and so on, over and over again. Once, when I left the room for a minute and went back again, I found him attempting to get out of bed--only to try his strength, he said. But he's no more strength than a new-born baby, poor soul, and it will be weeks before he's able to stir. If he worries and frets, he'll put himself back for a certainty; but I daresay you'll have more influence over him than I, sir, and that you may be able to keep him quiet."

"I doubt that," answered Gilbert; "but I'll do my best. Has he been delirious to-day?"

"No, sir, not once; and of course that's a great thing gained."

A feeble voice from the inner room called Gilbert by name presently, and he went in at its bidding.

"Is that you, Gilbert? Come in, for pity's sake. I was sure of the voice. So you have come on your errand of charity once more. I am very glad to see you, though you are not my friend. Sit down, ministering Christian, sit by my side; I have some questions to ask you."

"You must not talk much, John. The doctor insists upon perfect tranquillity."

"He might just as well insist upon my making myself Emperor of all the Russias; one demand would be about as reasonable as the other. How long have I been lying here like a log--a troublesome log, by the way; for I find from some hints the nurse dropped to-day as to the blessing of my recovery, that I have been somewhat given to violence;--how long have I been ill, Gilbert?"

"A very long time."

"Give me a categorical answer. How many weeks and days?"

"You were taken ill about the middle of December, and we are now in the first week of February."

"Nearly two months; and in all that time I have been idle--_ergo_, no remittances from publishers. How have I lived, Gilbert? How have the current expenses of my illness been paid? And the children of Israel--have they not been clamorous? There was a bill due in January, I know. I was working for that when I got pulled up. How is it that my vile carcass is not in their hands?"

"You need give yourself no trouble; the bill has been taken up."

"By you, of course? Yes; you do not deny it. And you have been spending your money day by day to keep me alive. But then you would have done as much for a stranger. Great heaven, what a mean hound I seem to myself, as I lie here and think what you have done for me, and how I have acted towards you!" He turned himself in his bed with a great effort, and lay with his face to the wall. "Let me hide my face from you," he said; "I am a shameful creature."

"Believe me, once more, there is not the faintest shadow of an obligation," Gilbert responded eagerly; "I can very well afford anything I have done; shall never feel myself the poorer for it by a sixpence. I cannot bear that these things should be spoken of between us. You know how often I have begged you to let me help you in the past, and how wounded I have been by your refusal."

"Yes, when we were friends, before I had ever wronged you. If I had taken your help then, I should hardly have felt the obligation. But, stay, I am not such a pauper as I seem. My wife will have money; at least you told me that the old man was rich."

"Yes, your wife will have money, plenty of money. You have no need to trouble yourself about financial matters. You have only to consider what the doctor has said. Your recovery depends almost entirely upon your tranquillity of mind. If you want to get well speedily, you must remember this."

"I do want to get well. I am in a fever to get well; I want to see my wife. But my recovery will be evidently a tedious affair. I cannot wait to see her till I am strong enough to travel. Why should she not come to me here? She can--she must come. Write to her, Gilbert; tell her how I languish for her presence; tell her how ill I have been."

"Yes; I will write by and by."

"By and by! Your tone tells me that you do not mean what you say. There is something you are keeping from me. O, my God, what was that happened before I was ill? My wife was missing. I was hunting for her without rest for nearly a week; and then they told me she