Wife in Name Only, Charlotte Mary Brame [carter reed txt] 📗

plot now plainly. I can only say---- Oh, Norman, you and I were both blind! We ought to have seen through her scheme. Why should she have brought us together if she had not meant that we should love each other? What have we in common--I, the daughter of a felon; you, a nobleman, proud of your ancestry, proud of your name? Oh, Norman, if I could but die here at your feet, and save you from myself!"

Even as she spoke she sank sobbing, no longer on to his breast, no longer with her arms clasped round his neck, but at his feet.

He raised her in his arms--for he loved her with passionate love.

"Madaline," he said, in a low voice, "do not make my task harder for me. That which I have to do is indeed bitter to me--do not make it harder."

His appeal touched her. For his sake she must try to be strong.

Slowly he looked up at the long line of noblemen and women whose faces shone down upon him; slowly he looked at her graceful figure and bowed head of his wife, the daughter of a felon--the first woman who had ever entered those walls with even the semblance of a stain upon her name. As he looked at her the thought came to him that, if his housekeeper had told him that she had inadvertently placed such a person--the daughter of a felon--in his kitchen, he would never have rested until she had been sent away.

He must part from her--this lovely girl-wife whom he loved with such passionate love. The daughter of a criminal could not reign at Beechgrove. If the parting cost his life and hers it must take place. It was cruel. The strong man trembled with agitation; his lips quivered, his face was pale as death. He bent over his weeping wife.

"Madaline," he said, gently, "I do not understand the ways of destiny. Why you and I have to suffer this torture I cannot say. I can see nothing in our lives that deserves such punishment. Heaven knows best. Why we have met and loved, only to undergo such anguish, is a puzzle I cannot solve. There is only one thing plain to me, and that is that we must part."

He never forgot how she sprang away from him, her colorless face raised to his.

"Part, Norman!" she cried. "We cannot part now; I am your wife!"

"I know it; but we must part."

"Part!" repeated the girl. "We cannot; the tie that binds us cannot be sundered so easily."

"My poor Madaline, it must be."

She caught his hand in hers.

"You are jesting, Norman. We cannot be separated--we are one. Do you forget the words--'for better for worse,' 'till death us do part?'--You frighten me!" And she shrank from him with a terrible shudder.

"It must be as I have said," declared the unhappy man. "I have been deceived--so have you. We have to suffer for another's sin."

"We may suffer," she said, dully, "but we cannot part. You cannot send me away from you."

"I must," he persisted. "Darling, I speak with deepest love and pity, yet with unwavering firmness. You cannot think that, with that terrible stain resting on you, you can take your place here."

"But I am your wife!" she cried, in wild terror.

"You are my wife," he returned, with quivering lips; "but you must remain so in name only." He paused abruptly, for it seemed to him that the words burned his lips as they passed them. "My wife," he muttered, "in name only."

With a deep sob she stretched out her arms. "But I love you, Norman--you must not send me away! I love you--I shall die if I have to leave you!"

The words seemed to linger on her lips.

"My darling," he said, gently, "it is even harder for me than for you."

"No, no," she cried, "for I love you so dearly, Norman--better than my life! Darling, my whole heart went out to you long ago--you cannot give it back to me."

"If it kills you and myself too," he declared, hoarsely, "I must send you away."

"Send me away? Oh, no, Norman, not away! Let me stay with you, husband, darling. We were married only this morning My place is here by your side--I cannot go."

Looking away from her, with those passionate accents still ringing in his ears, his only answer was:

"Family honor demands it."

"Norman," she implored, "listen to me, dear! Do not send me away from you. I will be so good, so devoted. I will fulfill my duties so well, I will bear myself so worthily that no one shall remember anything against me; they shall forget my unhappy birth, and think only that you have chosen well. Oh, Norman, be merciful to me! Leaving you would be a living death!"

"You cannot suffer more than I do," he said--"and I would give my life to save you pain; but, my darling, I cannot be so false to the traditions of my race, so false to the honor of my house, so untrue to my ancestors and to myself, as to ask you to stay here. There has never been a blot on our name. The annals of our family are pure and stainless. I could not ask you to remain here and treat you as my wife, even to save my life!"

"I have done no wrong, Norman; why should you punish me so cruelly?"

"No, my darling, you have done no wrong--and the punishment is more mine than yours. I lose the wife whom I love most dearly--I lose my all."

"And what do I lose?" she moaned.

"Not so much as I do, because you are the fairest and sweetest of women. You shall live in all honor, Madaline. You shall never suffer social degradation, darling--the whole world shall know that I hold you blameless; but you can be my wife in name only."

She was silent for a few minutes, and then she held out her arms to him again.

"Oh, my love, relent!" she cried. "Do not be so hard on me--indeed, I have done no wrong. Be merciful! I am your wife; your name is so mighty, so noble, it will overshadow me. Who notices the weed that grows under the shadow of the kingly oak? Oh, my husband, let me stay! I love you so dearly--let me stay!"

The trial was so hard and cruel that great drops fell from his brow and his lips trembled.

"My darling, it is utterly impossible. We have been deceived. The consequences of that deceit must be met. I owe duties to the dead as well as to the living. I cannot transgress the rules of my race. Within these time-honored walls no woman can remain who is not of stainless lineage and stainless repute. Do not urge me further."

"Norman," she said, in a trembling voice, "you are doing wrong in sending me away. You cannot outrage Heaven's laws with impunity. It is Heaven's law that husband and wife should cleave together. You cannot break it."

"I have no wish to break it. I say simply that I shall love you until I die, but that you must be my wife in name only."

"It is bitterly hard," she observed; and then she looked up at him suddenly. "Norman," she said, "let me make one last appeal to you. I know the stigma is terrible--I know that the love-story must be hateful to you--I know that the vague sense of disgrace which clings to you even now is almost more than you can bear; but, my darling, since you say you love me so dearly, can you not bear this trial for my sake, if in everything else I please you--if I prove myself a loving, trustful, truthful wife, if I fulfill all my duties so as to reflect honor on you; if I prove a worthy mistress of your household?"

"I cannot," he replied, hoarsely; but there must have been something in his face from which she gathered hope, for she went on, with a ring of passionate love in her voice.

"If, after we had been married, I had found out that you had concealed something from me, do you think that I should have loved you less?"

"I do not think you would, Madaline; but the present case is different--entirely different; it is not for my own sake, but for the honor of my race. Better a thousand times that my name should die out than that upon it there should be the stain of crime!"

"But, Norman--this is a weak argument, I know--a woman's argument--still, listen to it, love--who would know my secret if it were well kept?"

"None; but I should know it," he replied, "and that would be more than sufficient. Better for all the world to know than for me. I would not keep such a secret. I could not. It would hang over my head like a drawn sword, and some day the sword would fall. My children, should Heaven send any to me, might grow up, and then, in the height of some social or political struggle, when man often repeats against his fellow man all that he knows of the vilest and the worst, there might be thrown into their faces the fact that they were descended from a felon. It must not be; a broken heart is hard to bear--injured honor is perhaps harder."

She drew up her slender figure to its full height, her lovely face glowed with a light he did not understand.

"You may be quite right," she said. "I cannot dispute what you say. Your honor may be a sufficient reason for throwing aside the wife of less than twelve hours, but I cannot see it. I cannot refute what you have said, but my heart tells me you are wrong."

"Would to Heaven that I thought the same!" he rejoined, quickly. "But I understand the difficulties of the case, my poor Madaline, and you do not."

She turned away with a low, dreary sigh, and the light died from her face.

"Madaline," said Lord Arleigh, quietly, "do not think, my darling, that you suffer most--indeed, it is not so. Think how I love you--think how precious you are to me--and then ask yourself if it is no pain to give you up."

"I know it is painful," she continued, sadly, "but, Norman, if the decision and choice rested with me as they do with you, I should act differently."

"I would, Heaven knows, if I could," he said, slowly.

"Such conduct is not just to me," she continued, her face flushing with the eagerness of her words. "I have done no wrong, no harm, yet I am to be driven from your house and home--I am to be sent away from you, divorced in all but name. I say it is not fair, Norman--not just. All my womanhood rises in rebellion against such a decree. What will the world say of me? That I was weighed in the balance and found wanting--that I was found to be false or light, due doubtless to my being lowly born. Do you think I have no sense of honor--no wish to keep my name and fame stainless? Could you do me a greater wrong, do you think, than to put me away, not twelve hours after our marriage, like one utterly unworthy?"

He made no answer. She went on in her low, passionate, musical voice.