CLAUDE HAMILTON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12269, 13 May 1903, Page 3 (Supplement)

CLAUDE HAMILTON.

Claude Hamilton, sat by the bedside of his wife. She was lying in a fever, and he was the only watcher.- The light of the lamp flickered over her forehead, and her lips were muttering strange things. Two years had passed since their marriage. They had been happy years; yet in Claude's own, heart, though he knew it not, there lay a poison that might blight the happiest life. Ho was one of those who import troubles into their own lives totally superfluous procedure, for troubles are sure to come unsought, and it is quite enough to suffer from them when they do come. The days of his courtship had been a time of bitter anxiety. From first to last he had worried lest his betrothed should be unfaithful to him; ho had anticipated being jilted so keenly that ho had almost deserved it. Such distrust was really offensive to the girl, and many would have dealt less leniently with Claude's morbid and jealous self-absorption. But Annie had laughed at him gaily—had declined to take his foolishness seriously. She had succeeded so far that he probably trusted her more than he had over trusted mortal' before. To say that, with such a suspicious character as his, may not have been saying a great deal. But now Claude shuddered as he heard his wife's delirious ravings, and thanked God that none else was near to listen.

The power of disease sometimes stirs up all that is ■ evil in the human heart, and brings it to the surface. At the bottom of every soul lie some things that one would not willingly expose. Even the most innocent have their darksome recesses, which perhaps they themselves never scrutinise. There are queer things in unconscious corners. We are masters of our deeds, our purposes, our ideals ; we are never quite masters of our dreams. There is in each a lower self which is only partially vanquished by the best. In the> heart of the purest woman, all is not absolute whiteness • the saintliest man is sometimes troubled with thoughts that seem like positive suggestions of the devil. Human virtu£ does not consist in being without theso things, but in resisting them. When the hand of disease comes to fetter the reason and to looson the tongue, strango utterances sometimes come out. The Kodliest men, in delirium, have been known to pour forth blasphemies and vile oaths. It matters little, in delirium, whether the conscience really labours under the memory of evil deeds or merely of evil thoughts. The effect upon the soul's inner consciousness has been the same. Our life of dreams scorns to be controlled by our life of reality. Therefore the disclosures of a bod of fever should never be taken literally; they should never be taken seriously at all. A man may dream that he murders or robs without becoming either a murderer or a robber. If a' tribunal were to sit and judge our dreams, who would escape?

It would have been well if Claude Hamilton bad remembered this. It might have spared him much, and others also. When his wife, murmured mad falsities he believed them truths. Ho had loved this woman with the deepest devotion of which his heart was possible yet he believed her poor, delirious lips when they muttered that she was not a true wife.

With his head bowed on his hand, the man sat without stirring. The dim light fell on the figure of his wife, still beautiful; her hands grasping each other, or tossing restlessly. And this was the end of his love? She had been false to —false in the first early years of their marriage, when their child was only a few months old. It was the name of her cousin, Frank Moxey, that had mingled with her babblings. Claud© had often disliked the manifestation of her affection for this young man, forgetting that she had known him as a brother from the days of early childhood. In a short time, the nurse, who had been snatching an hour's rest, stole again into the room, to relieve him from big vigil. *' The crisis is over," she whispered gladly, as she glanced at the sick woman, who had now fallen into a quiet sleep. There was no answering gladness in the reply of the husband and the nurse looked at him curiously. " Go in and rest yourself, Mr. Hamilton," she said in a low tone; "we do not want to have you ill as well." He obeyed without a word.

The crisis over! In the husband's heart it seemed to be only just beginning. And then ho bethought himself that what had been revealed to him might also have been revealed to others. The thought pierced him with a new agony. Who can stay the voice of delirium? This nurse, quiet and passive as she seemed, always cool and ready in moments of emergency, might have listened to the same disclosures, the same dark secrets. In truth, the nurse had really heard much the same babble, and, being a woman of sanity, had taken it for what is was worth. It was a pity sho did not know that in truth the husband was mentally sickthat lie needed wise tending and care more now than the already convalescent wife. In such sad condition, Claude finished his sleepless night alone. If she had died then, he thought, what an awful death. Yet for his sake and hers, ho almost wished that she had. Poor stricken man, what was her madness compared to his? Life, with its possibilties of explanation, could be his only chance of future peace. Yefc to his mind life seemed the possibility of future miserable disclosures.

> Mrs. Hamilton recovered slowly from her sickness, while her husband secretly sickened under his. The cloud lay black upon his heart, and she knew it not. To make his position more difficult he had to simulate gladness— rejoice in her recovery, and to receive suitably the congratulations of friends. He was compelled" to bo continually acting a part, and his acting was far from successful. But the friends charitably conceived that his wife's illness had played havoc with his nerves, and they thought that time would restore him to himself. His wife, as she grew well enough to notice, thought the same. She was accustomed to her husband's moods, and fancied that she understood them. It was a pity, in this case, that she was not more alarmed. Explanation was still possible. A few words might have exorcised the demon from his heart; but those few words were not to be yet spoken. It happened one day that Claude returned early from the city. His wife was now sitting downstairs, and the nurse had gone. As he ascended the stairs he heard a man's voice, and stood still to listen. It was Frank Moxey's. Claude turned! pale and trembled violently; then he mastered himself, thrust, the door open, and walked in. A surprised and, as he imagined, a guilty look came over the faces of the pair as he entered. Ho noticed his wife give a rapid sign enjoining silence. There was a moment's awkwardness, which unhappily carried conviction to the husband's mind, and he left the room like a man staggering under sentence of death.

In reality the wife had been commissioning her cousin to procure something for her in the city. She wished to make a present to Claude; his birthday was approaching, and as she was not yet allowed out of the house she had to get a deputy to make her purchase. This fully accounted for the awkwardness of the moment when Claude made his unexpected entry, and the look which ho had interpreted as guilt was simply the passing embarrassment of being nearly detected in something which Mrs. Hamilton wished to keep secret.

To Claude it was the one thing needed to carry conviction. Till this moment lie had hesitated before a fear of possible mistake. Thoro no longer seemed room for uncertainty. Some mon would have thirsted for revengc. They would have raved against; the man whom they imagined to have done the wrong. Murders have been committed under such terrible illusions. But Claude was not a man of this nature. With all his egotism he was a man of real humility, and part of his jealousy had been grounded on a doubt as to his power to win and retain affection. There are some persons utterlydevoid of jealous thoughts simply because their faith in themselves is so strong. The very idea that others may be preferred to themselves would seem absurd to them. But Claude's nature waa always hesitant and uncertain. He could never have pursued a course "which knows no doubt, which feels no fear;" ho had none of that will, that energy, which Matthew Arnold tells us—

" Though rare. Are yet far, far less rare than love."

Ho had the lovo, but, like the fairy's gift, it had been poisoned by its accompaniments. He was one of those natures which, in the main, bestow more affection than they receive; one of the givers, not the receivers. His very humility had prevented him from ever feeling certain of his wife's love. Ho doubted that which had been most sincerely given him. Going to his room, he wrote a few hurried lines, and placed them where his wife would see them. He then, without saying a word to a soul, loft the house, and hastened toward the railway station. Though life seemed darkness before him, he did no %in tend suicide; but he did' intend to have done with this miserable acting a part, this terrible farce of living with a. wife who was false.

An hour later, when her cousin had left, Annie Hamilton began to wonder where her husband could be. That he had loft them alone had not surprised her; she knew that, try as he might, Claude never liked Moxey, and was even foolishly jealous of him- But this more tragic jealousy she never suspected. It was fated to flash upon her suddenly.

She wont into her room, and there on the mantel-shelf she noticed a piece of paper. It was addressed to herself, and in Claude s writing. Perhaps he had been summoned to town suddenly, and had chosen this method of telling her. Yet it seemed strange. Stranger still did it seem when she read as follows: — " Dear Annie,— cannot bear this any longer. I know all. We must part. I will not cast you out, but go myself. I shall go to my mother's at Liverpool. Do not seek me, but believe- that, as well as I can, I forgive you. How could I fancy I had won your love? For a last time let me sign myself— loving husband." The paper fluttered from Annie's hand, and she leaned back against the bedstead stupefied. What could it mean? Had Claude suddenly lost his reason? Then it rushed upon her mind how he had found her with Frank. She had known him to be jealous, and had regretted it, chiefly for his own sake; but this was utter madness. She must follow him, and bring him back. In a moment her lethargy vanished. She sprang to the wardrobe, hurriedly snatching hat and cloak. The servant, who was laying tea, was almost stunned by seeing her dash downstairs and out at the front door. It was the first time she had been out since her illness; but in the excitement she quite forgot her weakness. Walking, almost running, towards the railway station, she found it difficult to realise what had called her out. She seemed in a. dream. It was like a return of the delirium. She found herself at the station, taking a ticket for Liverpool; then she was standing on the thronged platform. Her mind being all confused, she did not think that perhaps her husband was among this very crowd, waiting for the same train; she imagined that he had already gone, and she did not look for him. The train steamed in, doors were slammed, last words were shouted. She struggled 1 into a carriage, sinking back with exhaustion on its seat; and in a few minutes the train was gliding rapidly away out into the suburbs and green fields. Thus half an hour affcer reading that strange letter from her husband, Mrs. Hamilton found herself in full flight towards Liverpool, unconscious of the fact that Claude was sitting in the same train, thinking her false.

It is easy to miss a friend upon a crowded platform; yet the merest accident might have brought them together. But it had boon written in the hook of fate that these two should travel together, though apart, and their future lives were to be influenced by the same contingency. Very different, though almost equally troubled, were the thoughts of both. In taking this sudden flight, ho imagined that he was doing a kindness to a guilty loosening a bond that could only bo painful to her. He had little idea how agonised his departure had made her; how his jealousy had really developed into a mad, unreasoning mania, only to bo routed from him by the most bitter experience. With the poor wife, all was perplexity and' enigma. It was not her weakness, it was not the fear of relapse that troubled her; it was her unselfish and terribly outraged affection. "What greater extremity of wrong can love commit than i.his? She gazed drearily from tho carriage window into the night, A ;svild unrest fretted her. How slowly the train seemed to move. And yet the telegraph posts were racing past with the speed of wind, and tho trees through which the train dashed were nothing but roaring masses of shadow. The night was gusty and dark. An hour or two passed. They were Hearing the great northern city. Tho wife had sunk into a kind of doze, a result of her weakness and the mental strain.

Suddenly she was aroused by a severe shock, that jarred violently from carriage to carriage. The passengers in her compartment sprang to their feet, the ladies screaming. The carriage seemed about to turn over, but righted itself. Outside was a tumult of _ shouts and shrieks, crashing wood, and hissing steam. Before she realised what had happened, she was pushed and' dragged from tho carriage by strangers, and found herself standing- unhurt upon the embankment outside. The fresh air revived her. There had been an accident. A portion of the train was lying upon its side ; the remainder, in which part fortunately Annie had been, was standing comparatively uninjured. From the injured portion came cries of agony that were heart-rending. Many passengers were entangled among the debris, and a number of these were seriously hurt. A few never stirred again. Tho scene, as well as it could be described in the darkness and' confusion, was one of horror. The lights of a station flickered a little way beyond, and from this came hoarse cries of railway men, hastening to render assistance. i

In this moment of terror Annie suddenly realised that Claude - imght have been in, this train. Still imagining that he had caught an earlier express, she thanked God for his deliverance, and then for her own. With the true instincts of a woman, she then tried to help those who wore lying near bruised or mutilated.

Close to Annie lay a man who appeared to have been crushed under part of an overturned carriage. She knel,t beside him, but could not distinguish his face. At that moment a guard passed with a lantern, and the light fell on the man's features. It was Claude.

His eyes were closed, and ho seemed to be unconscious. Annie, on her knees beside him, called him distractedly by name, and kissed his lips madly. At the sound of her voice, his eyes slowly opened; he recognis ed her. Tho shadow of death seemed to bo upon him, but behind it lay that other and even deeper sorrow. No flash of gladness came into his eyes as he saw her, though they filled with a look of unutterable love. It was no time for bandying idle words. Whatever might be the fate of his body, she must relieve the mind from this hateful and causeless incubus of doubt.

"Claude," she whispered, "why did you leave me like this? You have made some terrible mistake. Did you fancy that I had wronged you?" The "yes" that came from the man's lips was so fa"int she could scarcely hear it. "Shame on you," she cried, "for imagining such a lie. O, Claude, I cannot blame you now. Why should I follow you thus, if I am not true?"

Something like the dawn of a great joy was coming- into the husband's eyes. "Claude," she continued, "by all that is holy and true, I have loved you, and you only. Will you not believe me?" A beautiful smile stole over the pale face. Claude- uttered no word, but with an effort he raised his poor bruised arms and got them round her neck. Tears streamed from his eyes, but they were the tears of a groat gladness.

What need is there to take 'the reader further into the history of these two lives? That an almost miraculous Providence saved Annie from the natural consequences of premature effort and "shock— she nursed Claude through long weeks of suffering, and at length brought him, though maimed for life, into a condition «Sf mental and physical health— this might bo related in full, and yet might seem but an anticlimax. For the one supreme moment of both their lives was that when Claude realised his wife's noble and faithful love, and his own blind, mad doltislmess.