Part 13

"You do not know me, Mr. Noel. I thought you understood a little, but you are wrong if you think there is anything you could tell me for which I should care so much. I do not suppose I could make you understand it, but my heart is dead and buried in my baby's grave, and nothing could make me feel as you expect me to feel. The two or three people that I--know" (Noel knew by the pause she made that she had wanted to say love, but couldn't, in honesty, use the word) "are all well. I have just come from them--even Dr. Belford I have seen to-day--but if you were going to tell me they were all dead I could not care a great deal--at least not in the way you expect me to care--for what you have to tell me. It may be wicked to have so hard a heart, but I cannot help it. There is absolutely nothing in all the world that could make me feel in the way you think I ought to feel at what you have to tell me."

"I did not say ought," said Noel, "there is no ought about it. It is a thing inevitable. Oh, Christine, there is no way to lead up to it. I must just tell you and beg you, for my sake at least, to try to bear it."

"You had better tell me," she said. "You will see how I can bear it."

The calm security of her tones, the passionless wonder of her quiet face were almost maddening. They made him fear the more the effect of the shock when it should come.

"Christine," he said quietly, though his heart was leaping, "it is something about your--about the man you married."

A faint flush came up in her face, and she averted her eyes an instant. Then she looked at him and said calmly:

"I thought you knew that long ago that became one of the subjects upon which I had ceased to feel deeply. If you think it is wrong of me to say this I cannot help it. He hated his little child. He never thought it anything but a trouble and a burden, and he was not sorry when it died. He is glad the trouble of it is over. He had long ceased to feel any love for me--if he ever had it--but if he had cared a little for the poor little baby I could have forgotten that; but he was cruel toward it in thought and feeling, and if I had not watched the treasure of my heart and guarded it unceasingly he would have been cruel to it in deed, too. I know it and Eliza knows it. Oh, why did you make me speak of it? I ought not to say such things. It is wrong."

"Why wrong, Christine? Why do you feel it to be wrong? Tell me."

"Because he is my husband," she said sternly, "and I took solemn vows to love, to serve and to obey him. I said 'for better or for worse.' I said 'till death us do part.' The God who will judge me knows whether I have kept them. The love one cannot control; but one can force one's self to serve and obey, and that I have tried to do."

"And you have done it. I have felt that I could kneel and worship you for it--but, Christine, the truth is too evident to be avoided. He is unworthy of you. Suppose you could be free from him?"

"Divorce?" she said with a sort of horror. "Never! I scarcely know what it is--but marriage seems to me a thing indissoluble and inviolate. I cannot forget that he is the father of my child. I could never wish, on that account, to be free from him."

"Christine, there is another way. Oh, my poor, poor child, you have never even thought of it, and it breaks my heart to tell you. But there is a way you might be free from him without divorce--a sad and dreadful way, my poor little sister, but remember, I implore you, that there is light beyond the darkness. Oh, cannot you think what I mean?"

She shook her head.

"I know he is not dead," she said; "there is no other way that I know."

"Suppose--my poor girl, try to be brave now, for you will have to know it--suppose your marriage to him was not legal--was no marriage at all?"

Her face got scarlet.

"That is not possible," she said, "and if it were, it would make no difference. If he did it without knowing--"

"Christine, Christine, he did not! He knew it, my child. Prepare yourself for the very worst. He deceived you wilfully. Oh, Christine, when he was married to you there was an impossible barrier between you. It was such a thing as you could not dream of. Give me your hands and try to feel that your brother bears this sorrow with you." He caught her other hand also and pressed them both between his own.

"Christine, he was married already. When he married you, he had already a wife and child."

She wrenched her hands away and sprang to her feet. A low cry broke from her. Noel felt that it was he who had applied the torture, and he saw her racked with agony and utterly heedless of the comfort he had offered, and had fondly hoped to give her.

"Have you proof for what you say?" she cried, her wild look of confusion and terror making her so unlike her usual self that he seemed not to know her. "I will never believe it without the strongest proof. It is too horrible, too awful, too deadly, deadly shameful to be true. Be quick about it. If there is proof, let me have it."

"Christine, there is proof. I have it here on the spot, but spare yourself, my poor, poor girl. Wait a little--"

"Don't talk to me of waiting. Let me see what you have got. Oh, can't you see that I can bear anything better than not to know? Show me what you have and if what you say is true--"

But she turned away as if his eyes upon her hurt her, and raised her arm before her face. In an instant she lowered it and said entreatingly:

"Oh, show me what you have. Have pity on me."

Noel took the envelope containing the picture from his pocket.

"This has been sent me by a lawyer," he said. "The woman is his client. She says he gave her this picture soon after they were married. Oh, Christine, don't look at it--"

But she walked toward him steadily and took the envelope from his hand. He could not bear to see her when her eyes rested on it, so he turned away and walked off a few paces, standing with his back toward her.