Tongues of Conscience Part 30

She put her hand into his. He felt as if her soul lay in it. They walked on. Already the evening was dark around them.

Canon Alston was a little surprised, merely because he was a father, and fathers are always a little surprised when men love their children. But he liked Maurice heartily and gave his consent to the marriage. Miss Bigelow ordered a valuable wedding-present, and resolved to live until over the marriage day at least. And Brayfield gossiped and gloried in possessing a legitimate cause for excitement.

As for Lily, she was strangely happy with a happiness far different from that of the usual betrothed young girl. She loved Maurice deeply.

Nevertheless she did not blind herself to the fact that he was still unhappy, restless, self-engrossed and often terror-stricken, although he tried to appear more confident than of old, and to a.s.sume a gaiety suitable to his situation in the eyes of the world. She knew he could never be entirely free to love so long as the cry of the child rang in his ears. And he told her that, strangely enough, since their engagement it had become more importunate. Once he even tried to break their contract.

"I cannot link my life with another's," he said desperately. "Who knows--when you are one with me, you may be haunted as I am. That would be too horrible."

It was a flash of real and heartfelt unselfishness. Lily felt herself thrill with grat.i.tude. But she only said:

"I am not afraid."

On another occasion--this was about a month after they became engaged--Maurice said:

"Lily, when shall we be married?"

She glanced up at him, and saw that he was paler even than usual, and that his face looked drawn with fatigue.

"Whenever you wish," she answered.

"Let it be soon," he said. And then he broke out almost despairingly:

"I cannot bear this much longer. Lily, what can it mean? There is something too strange. Ever since you and I have been betrothed the curse that is laid upon me has been heavier, the cry of the child has been more incessantly with me. I hear it more plainly. It is nearer to me. It is close to me. In the night sometimes I start up thinking the child is even beside me on the pillow, complaining to me in the darkness. I stretch out my hand. I feel for its little body. But there is nothing--nothing but that cry of fear, of pain, of eternal reproach.

Why does the spirit persecute me now as it never persecuted me before?

Is it because it believes that you will make me happier? Is it because it wishes to deny me all earthly joy? Sometimes I think that, once we are actually husband and wife the cry will die away. Sometimes I think that then it will never leave me even for a moment. If that were so, Lily, I should die, or I should lose my reason."

He covered his face with his hands. He was trembling. Lily put her soft hand against his hands. A great light had come into her eyes as he spoke.

"Let us be married, Maurice," she said. "Perhaps the little child wants me."

He looked up at her and his dark eyes seemed to pierce her, hungry for help.

"Wants you?" he said. "How can that be? No, no. It cries against my thought of happiness, against my desire for peace."

"We must give it peace. We must lay it to rest."

"No one can do that. If I have not the power to redeem my deed of wickedness, how can you, how can any one living redeem it for me?"

Lily looked away from him. Her cheeks were burning with a blush. A tingling fire seemed to run through all her veins and her pulses beat.

"There is some way of redemption for every one," she said.

But he answered gloomily:

"Your religion teaches you to say that, Lily, perhaps to believe it. But there is no way. The dead cannot return to earth that we may give them tenderness instead of our former cruelty. No--no!"

"Maurice--trust me. Let us be married--soon."

That night, before she went to bed, Lily knelt down and prayed until the night was old. She asked what thousands of women have asked since the world was young. But surely never woman before had so strange a reason for her request. And when at length she rose from her knees she felt that time must bring the gift she had prayed for, unselfishly, and with her whole heart.

A month afterwards, on a bright spring morning, Maurice and Lily were married. It was a great occasion for Brayfield. The church was elaborately decorated by the many young ladies who had secretly longed to be the brides of the interesting doctor. Crowds a.s.sembled within and without the building. Miss Bigelow rose from her fourteenth death-bed in a purple satin gown and a bonnet prodigious with feathers and testified to the possibility of modern resurrection in a front pew. Flowers, rice, wedding marches filled the air. But people remarked that the bridegroom looked like a man who went in fear. Even when he was on the doorstep of the church in the throng of curious sightseers he moved almost as one whom a dream attends, who sees the pale figures, who hears the faint voices that inhabit and make musical a vision of the night. The bride too, had no radiant air of a young girl fulfilling her girlish destiny and giving herself up to a protector, to one stronger, more able to fight the world than a woman who loves and fears. Her face, too, was pale and grave, even--some thought--a little stern. As she pa.s.sed up the church she glanced at no one, smiled at no friend. Her eyes were set steadfastly towards the altar where Maurice waited. And when, after the ceremony, she came down the church to the sound of music her eyes were fixed on her husband. She took no heed of any one else, for her hand pressed upon his arm, felt that he was trembling. And her ears seemed to hear through all the jubilant music, through all the murmur of the gazing crowd, a cry, far away, yet more distinct than any sound of earth, thin, piercing, full of appeal to her--the spirit-cry of the child.

PART II.

THE LIVING CHILD.

PART II.

THE LIVING CHILD.

The honeymoon of Lily and Maurice was short, and many would have called it sad, could they have known how different it was from the marriage holiday of most young couples. Maurice had looked forward to the wedding as a desperate man looks forward to a new point of departure in his life. He had fixed all his hopes of possible peace upon it. He had dated new days of calm, if not of brightness, from it. He had sometimes vaguely, sometimes desperately, looked to it as to a miracle day, on which--how or why he knew not--the shadow would be lifted from his life.

The man who is doomed to death has a moment of acute expectation when some new doctor places him under a fresh mode of treatment. For a few days the increased vitality of his anxious mind sheds a dawn of apparent life through his body. But the mind collapses. The dawn fades. The darkness increases, death steals on. So it was with Maurice. Immediately after the wedding, Lily noticed that he fell into a strangely watchful condition of abstraction. He was full of tenderness to her, full of cares for her comfort, but even in his moments of obvious solicitude he seemed to be on the alert to catch the stir of some remote activity, or to be listening for the sound of some distant voice. His own fate engrossed him even in this first period of novel companions.h.i.+p with another soul. The monomania of the haunted man gripped him and would not release him. He thought of Lily, but he thought more, and with a deeper pa.s.sion, of himself.

The girl divined this, but she did not for an instant rebel. She had set up a beautiful unselfishness in her heart and had consecrated it.

Purpose does much for a woman, helps her sometimes to rise higher than perhaps man can ever rise, to the pale and vacant peaks of an inactive martyrdom. And Lily was full of a pa.s.sion of purpose known only to herself. She loved Maurice not merely as a girl loves a man, but also as the protective woman loves the being dependent upon her. His secret was hers, but hers was not his. She had her beautiful loneliness of silent hope, and that sustained her.

They went away together. In the train Maurice said to her suddenly, with a sort of blaze of hungry eagerness:

"Lily--Lily--to-day there is a silence for me. Oh, Lily, if you have brought me silence."

He seized her hand and his was hot like fire.

"Will it last--can it last?" he whispered.

And he glanced all round the carriage like one antic.i.p.ating an answer to his question from some unknown quarter, then he said:

"The noise of the train is so loud, perhaps--"

"Hus.h.!.+" Lily said. "Don't fight your own peace, Maurice."

"Fight it--no, but I can scarcely believe in it. Lately the--it has been so ceaseless, so poignant. Lily, I have had a fancy that you alone could be my saviour. If it is so! Ah, but how can that be?"

She gave him a strange answer.

"Maurice," she said, "it may be so, but do not despair if the cry comes again."

"What!" he exclaimed almost fiercely, "you--do you hear it then?"

"No, no, but it may come."

"It shall not. The silence is so beautiful."