Plucked from the Burning.

Otago Witness, Issue 1205, 2 January 1875, Page 18

Plucked from the Burning.

BY FLORENCE 3IA.RRYAT.

I am not dying ; Heaven has been merciful to me, and I shall live to be a blessing to him (or so he fondly tells me) whose curse I had so nearly proved. et, weak and prostrated as I am, I cannot rest until I have written down the details of niy sad story ; for whilst there is a chance of their recital deterring such as would tread the paths I wellnigh stumbled in, and that chance remains unheeded, I feel I have not made all the reparation which lies in my power.

I must begin with the beginning of my life. My father was an officer in the Bengal army, but he and my mother dying within a few months of each other, left me early to the care of guardians, who imagined that by keeping me at a respectable boarding-school from the time I could talk plainly until the age of eighteen, they amply fulfilled the trust they had. undertaken. From my childhood I knew that when my eighteenth birthday arrived I should be sent out again to India, not for the mere object of marriage, but because there is a shrewd condition attached to the enjoyment of the fund provided by the Bengal army for its female orphans, by which, if they are to continue to draw the allowance made for them, and which ceases upon marriage, they must take up a residence in the presidency upon attaining a marriageable age.

I had no provision to look to except that derived from the fund, and my guardians had neither the wish nor the ability to maintain me ; therefore, at the time appointed I sot sail for India, alone.

Having no near friends to leave behind me, I had looked forward to this change in my condition as an era in the life which had been spent in school-room monotcny ; but the reality did not fulfil my expectations. Arriving in Calcutta I found myself dependent upon the hospitality of friends, to whose care I had been confided, if not for actual support, at least for that protection without which a young woman cannot mix in the world.

I was proud in spirit, notwithstanding the h.unbleness of my position, and after a while the knowledge galled mo, and I felt that I could bear it no longer. Acting upon this impulse, and the advice of my friends, I made the fatal mistake, which so many of my sex have made before me, of accepting the first eligible offer which I received, and which chanced to be from Laurence Edwards, the rising partner in a large mercantile firm. I did not love him. Whatever my heart feels for him now, I must record that here. How could I have loved him, and yet have this story to relate of myself 1 He was a grave, business like man, some twelve years older than myself, and whose disapprobation of my levity was the occasion more than once of our engagement being nearly broken off. However, matters were made smooth again between us. I liked him as well or better than most of the butterflies who were hovering about me ; my acquaintances congratulated me on the excellence of my prospects, and I endorsed their opinions by becoming his wife. But very shortly after my marriage I had a dangerous illness ; so alarming a one indeed that the doctors recommended an immediate return home as the only means of restoring my health. My husband could not go with me ; he had but lately returned from his tour of pleasure, and the other partner of the house was away, so he was compelled to let me depart by myself He put me on board the homeward-bound steamer, was vigilant in providing all things necessary for my comfort during the passage, and full of cautions as to my behaviour on my arrival in England ; but he did not express much grief at our separation. That he felt it I now know well, but he was a man who could bow himself gracefully to the inevitable ; he feared to excite my alarm by appearing to think too much of my state of health, and I attributed his reticence to want of feeling. I returned to England then, as I left it, alone ; and, for the first time, thrown on my own discretion as a guide. Legally J was no longer a child, to be looked after and directed by guardians ; but in reality I was just as unfit to be my own mistress as when I left school. Having no family of my own, except the most distant connections, I first visited that of my husband, in Scotland ; but 1 did not stay there long. His countrified and staunchly Presbyterian relatives scared me with their rigid ways and doctrines, as doubtless I horrified them by the laxity of my manners. Having been brought up entirely at school, and being very foolish and heedless, as became my youth, I had no idea of accommodating myself to the habits of those prim Scotch people, and cried myself ill before I had lieuu a week under thuii* roof, which set them so much against me, thit it was a mutual pleasuro when the day for my departure was fixed. I had never lived out of London before, and every oihor place seemed strango to me ; therefore my husband consented to my taking a house in the suburbs, where, with my bjuhD establishment j of maidservauts, I expected, for some time, to hear that he waa on his way to rejoin me. But busi»i«f<B interfered with his plans, and ono thing after another combined to prevent Uid return, until wo had been three yearn separated from each other ; and although tiiy mvn health was then perfectly restored, I was enjoying myaolf too much $9 few* my vwh to wfatf Qdwtte*

More than that, I had begun to regret, guilty creature that I was, that I had ever seen the place, or the man whom I called my husband. I had never known much of him, as may be supposed ; during our brief married life he had been occupied for the greater portion of each day, and the little I did know was fast fading from my memory. The heart forgets quickly from eighteen to twenty-one, and particularly when absence is added to a feeling which had never culminated beyond gratitude. And much happened during those three years to wipe the remembrance of him off my mind. I was exceedingly thoughtless and fond of gaiety, and my little house was soon crowded with visitors. I was pretty also — I need have no hesitation in transcribing the fact, since paper cannot reflect my blushes — and some amongst my new acquaintance were found bold enough to tell me so. Amongst these was a certain Alfred Knowles, a connection of my own, who had introduced himself to me on that account, claiming a distant cousinship, and taking advantage of that claim to establish an intimacy between us. He was a handsome young fellow, not mauy years older than niysulf, with lots of life and sparkle about him ; and when at last he ventured to tell mo that he loved me as he had never loved woman before, ho made me believe ho was very much in earnest ; and, to my misery, 1 went still further, and believed not only that I returned his love, but was very much in earnest also. Perhaps some may wonder that I can write so quietly on such a theme ; but 1 have an object in doing so. My purpose in telling this tale is to show the means by which I was rescued from the wrong I contemplated ; but I will not sully its pages by detailing how the sin was so nearly brought about. When it was that I first fancied I loved Alfred Knowles I cannot say ; but the idea grew by little and little, until I was strongly imbued with it, and when the crisis of my fate arrived I felt as though 1 were entangled in a web from which there was no possibility of escape. It was not many days after the completion of the third anniversary of my arrival in England, that he implored me to break through the shackles of a marriage which had been unhallowed by affection, and to link my lot with his, and I consented. Without taking time to weigh the consequences of the step I was about to take, without having seriously ascertained whether my lover was really worth the loss of position, and name, and honour to me, I had promised to give up everything for him ; persuaded, almost against my better judgment, by the professed ardour of his attachment and the fervour of his entreaties.

How well I remember the night upon which I had agreed to fly with him ; how well recall each trivial incident of that miserable time. It was a warm evening in July ; even at nine o'clock it was still light, and I thought the darkness would never fall to cover my disgrace, i sat in my drawing-room, striving to occupy myself and to make the hours pass as they did on ordinary occasions, but without effect ; my nerves were so painfully acute that the least sound made itself apparent, and distracted my attention. As the time advanced, I could hear the servants chattering to each other as they put up the shutters and bolted the doors, and shuddered as I thought how freely they would handle my name on the coming morrow. Ten o'clock ! How slowly the hours dragged themselves away ! Would they never go to bed '] As 1 anxiously awaited the moment when I should have the house to myself, and yet dared not hasten their movements by a word which might excite suspicion, all the events of my past life crowded into my mind ; and whilst I could have counted the loud pulsations of my heart, it seemed as though I lingered there for no other purpose but to gaze upon the panoramic pictures which memory presented to me. With my elbow leaning on the table, and my eyes staring into vacancy, I must have loqked more vanquished than triumphant ; more like a defaulter who hears the approaching step of the officer of justice than a woman whose poveted happiness is just within her grasp ! Why did the remembrance of my husband, of the man of whom 1 had thought so little, come to torment me in that hour of nervous expectation, and make me turn so hot each time I thought of him that there did not seem enough air in the room for me to breathe I I did not love him, neither did 1 fear him ; but 1 k^ew him for a man of unblemished honour, and I could not contemplate the blow I was about to inflict upon his name without acknowledging that he deserved something better at my hands. He had taken me, a dowerlesß orphan, for his wife ; he had loaded me since with every benefit that monoy could procure ; I could recall the affectionate gravity with which he would reproach my girlish levity ; the cheerful readiness with which ho acceded to every innocent wish that ] expressed. Why — why, in the name of God, did all tins, which t had so lon^ forgotten, come back to me n<>w \ Wlw.t would he say / What would he thin); I How would ho look when he heard the dreadful news that I had dishonoured him, and left my home with a stranger 'I I dared nod consider ; I covered my face tightly with my hands, and rocked myself backwards and forward? in my pain.

And yet how coukl T disappoint Alfrod, or give him up who loyed mo so I " Oh ! why," I inwardly moaned, '• why did my husband send me home to England, or why did he not also come to protect me from hanu ' I have lived alone, without ft Mm& to wtf« m « dmy 4<w? e *V *»4

now it is too late — it is too late ! " So in my extremity I sighed, and so I thought. The servants now appearing to ask if I required anything further at their hands, I dismissed them impatiently, and listened wearily for the moment when silence should reign over the little household, and its mistress be free to forsake it. When it arrived I went up to my bedroom. There stood the boxes, addressed and corded, to account for the presence of which I had been compelled to fabricate the falsehood of my being about to j>ay a visit in the country the following day, trusting that when the servants found I was gone they would forward them to their destination.

In the meanwhile, I had only a small travelling bag to carry in my hand, and the few articles which I required wore soon placed in it. I stripped off the jewellery which I wore, and locked it in my jewel case, putting the key in a place of safety ; I emptied the contents of my purse upon the dressing-table, for I had no intention of taking a. iy thing with me that I could possibly do without. Then 1 robed myself in my walking apparel, and 1 was ready — ready for what ?

Eleven o'clock, the hour for meeting, was close at hand, yet 1 lingered ; loth, I am glad to think, to break through the ties which bound me yet a little longer to the society of the good and the pure. But I had made up my mind ; I had given my promise. What was there to to detain me 1 I was leaving the room, when J caught sight of a print which adorned ita walls— the representation of an infant, with clasped hands, kneeling upon its little bed. The sight stung me ; the remembrance of my orphaned childhood, my neglected youth, my unloved maturity, rushed into my heart, and for a moment I wept bitterly. " Ah ! " I exclaimed, amidst my tears, " had I had a child of my own this had never been ; or had I had a mother to teach me how to pray, Heaven might mercifully have guarded me this night against myself." But I felt that I had gone too far, and that the time for thinking thus had passed over my head. Drying my eyes, 1 quietly unfastened the bedroom door, and with a lighted candle in my hand crept stealthily down the staircase, fearful lest the servants should be attracted by the sound of my footsteps and fancy that I needed their assistance.

But when I reached the hall I found the task before me, of obtaining a quiet egress, more difficult than I had anticipated. The ponderous bolts and bars and chains were rusty ; some I could scarcely move, and of others I did not understand the mechanism. As I was fingering them with trepidation, lest I should be overheard, the footstep of a man sounded upon the pavement outsido, and fancying it must be that of the one I was about to join, I applied myself with fresh energy to the task, and had just accomplished it, when a thundering double knock upon the door itself, and close against my head, nearly threw me off my balance with alarm. Who could it be I Not Alfred surely — with a noise that reverberated through the little tenement. In my surprise and confusion I suddenly threw open the un fastened door, and &aw before me the figure of him whom I had imagined to be thousands of miles away —of my husband, Laurence Edti'ai'ds !

The shock was so great and unexpected that I staggered backwards and leaned against the wall. The candle which I had brought down with me was still flaring in its candlestick upon the halltable, and its feeble uncertain light threw a sickly glare upon my husband's face, as doubtless it did upon my own. He, apparently as astonished as myself to have the hall-door opened to him at eleven o'clock at nis;ht by his wife clad in walking attire, regarded me for a fe^v seconds in total silence. I was the lirst to recover myself. " Good heavens, Laurence ! " I exclaimed, "how you frightened me! I never dreamed of seeing you. Why did you not apprise me of yqur intended return 1 "

" Because ] had a fancy for taking you by surprise," he replied, gcavely, "and I seem to have succeeded perftctly. Where were you going ? '' " Going ! " I faltered. " Going ! where should I be going at this time of night ? " " No, to be sure. You have just come in, of course. Well, get out of this draught, Marion, whilst I settle my business with the cabman."

He re-opened the door as he spoke, and I perceived that a cab Avith his portmanteau stood outside, and guessed that he must have been looking for the number of the house for some minutes before he startled me with his knqek.

I obeyed him, and walked mechanically into the sitting-rooni, where the servants, roused by this time, had appeared with lights. My hpad was so contused that T could hardly think, but above the knowledge that all my plans had been upset by my husband's re-nppearancc, and the fear as to how much he might qr misfit not guess concerning them, rose the idea of a great deliverance. I felt us though I had been standing on the brink of a precipice, and some one had sudden y drawn me backwards ; as if I had been bent upon suicide, and the angol of God had stood in the patty with a naming sword and forced me to turn another way. In another minute Laurence joined me. I had hastily removed my bonnet and shawl and thrown then} in a corner. He came up to my side and tenderly embraced mo. (i lfa w\p wite glad to hi^e m home

again?" he said kindly; "or is she sorry ? " " Glad," I replied in a low voice, and I did not lie. I was glad that ho had come to save me. Now that the least check had been given to my impulse, I felt how unworthy it had been of me, and how 1 had magnified its attractions. I did not feel any the better for this conviction ; on the contrary, I knew that it withdrew the only excuse I could have claimed for my intended treachery, and, as it struck me, my head sank lower and lower, until I felt abased to the very earth. My husband did not appear to notice my sense of humiliation ; he conversed cheerfully with me, during the meal which I caused to be prepared for him, on the reason of his sudden return to England ; told me that he had often delayed it until the business should be better able to spare him, but finding that each year increased instead of diminishing its demands, had determined to put it oft' no longer. He questioned me on my own plans, and trusted that his advent would make no difference to them, whilst T sat before him like a culprit, each kind word he uttered sinking like a knife into my heart. Ah !if he only knew, if he only could have read my thoughts, how would he have felt towards me I When I had somewhat accustomed myself to his presence, I took courage to raise my consciencestricken head and examine his appearance. I do not suppose he was much altered from what he had been when we parted, but I had thought of him so little that he looked almost like a stranger to me. I saw before me a tall dark man, rendered still darker from being exceedingly ' sunburnt, whose blue eyes contrasted strangely with his black hair and beard. 1 was fair and small, myself. He struck me as being very manly and good-looking, and I wondered that I had never perceived it before. As he caught me in the midst of my scrutiny he smiled, but sadly. "I suppose you have nearly forgotten what lam like, Marion 1 Well, you have had time enough to do so. Ido not- see much alteration in you, my dear ; you seem quite unchanged to me. I trust your heart is as much so as your face '2 " I felt myself blush as he addressed me, but I gave him no other answer.. " Come, is the house locked up again ? " he said in another moment. "If so, I think we had better go to bed, for if you are not very tired, I am." "This was the moment which I had been dreading ever since his arrival, when he must see my corded boxes, and require some explanation of their being there. With all my wickedness I had no,t been in the habit of telling falsehoods, and the idea was dreadful to me ; yet 1 was desperate, and I knew that I must lie or be discovered. "Holloa!" he exclaimed, as his eye fell upon them. What are these '? Your boxes, Marion ! Were you going away anywhere ) " " Yes," I replied, I hardly knew how. " I was going away for a little while, but it is of no consequence." "Dover," said my husband, reading the address. "You wanted a breath of sea air, did you I Well, I don't wonder at it this stifling weather. We can go together, my dear, can we not ? It will do us both good." " Oh, no ! Pray do not think of it. I would rather stay here now that you are come— l have no wish for a change," fell rapidly from my mouth, as I dreaded his insisting upon putting his proposal into execution/ I could not have gone there with him. I would have died sooner. I should have feared that the very stones would have cried out and revealed my base intentions to him— those intentions from the thought of which I had already commenced to shrink with horror.

"It shall be just as you please, Marion," was his quiet answer. "My only object in coming home is to give you pleasure." It will be readily conjectured that I did not sleep much that night-. What my lover would think of my defection, and how 1 should communicate my further wishes to him -what my husband would say if he ever guessed the truth, or part of the tiuth, and' how I could live so as best to conceal it from him — troubled me too much to permit me to sleep. How I longed that night to die before the morning. What a debased and guilty creature I seemed to myself. How incapable of making the happiness of either of the men with whom I had to do. And yet I had time to wonder at the fact that my intiigue with Alfred Knowles appeared already to have become a thing of the past ; that whatever became of me, that would never happen now ; t|iat the merciful hindrance I had received had been sufficient to open my eyea, and to cause me to see myself and my design in their true colours.

The next day I felt that I owed it fo him to send him immediate intelligence of what had occurred and how I intended to act for the future. I scarcely know what I wrote. I believe I said simply that my husband had returned, and that I considered it an especial interposition of Providence to save us from a crime for which we should never have forgiyen ourBclves or each other, and that if he love,d mo as he said ho did, I prayed him to leave me to myself and that performance of duty lay which alone I hoped to deaden the stings of conscience which assailed me.

But he would not do as I desired him ; he was seltish and profligate ; and instead of considering that wo had experienced a greaf; escape, he looked, upon me &s on

one who had cheated him and forsworn herself. He did worse. He sent me letters so openly that I lived'in a state of continual dread lest my husband should ask to see their^contents or from whom they came ; and, disregarding the privacy of my home, he presented himself there to upbraid and revile me for my cowardice, even threatening me with exposure if I did not keep my word. But I was firm. Thank God, I was firm. Better still, the change in Alfred Knowles's behaviour to me made the flimsy thing which I had called my love for him, and which had had no surer foundation than a flattered vanity, melt away into thin air and leave me nothing but thankfulness for my release. All this time my husband did not relax in any of his attentions to me. He was uniformly kind and tender ; he almost anticipated my wishes ; and what touched me more than anything, lie appeared s fully to trust me — I, who had proved myself so utterly unworthy of his confidence. Throughout the period of Alfred Knowles's bitter reproaches to me and entreaties that I would change my purpose, my husband never seemed, suspicious of either my cousin or myself ; on the contrary, he often left us together to fight out our battles, and was only (or the contrast made me think so) the more tender afterwards than before. I thought that I had never known Laurence as I knew him then ; I often said to myself that had I only known him, I must have loved him too much to contemplate his dishonour. But the idea would make me shrink from his caresses, feeling myself so unworthy of them, till he was pained to' \ imagine what could have so distressed me./ One evening we were at the theatre together — for he was careful to take me tc every place of amusement — when I observed Alfred Knowles in a box opposite to the one we occupied. He was accompanied by several other gentlemen, and a very beautiful but careworn woman, handsomely dressed, was leaning over the front of the box. "Do not notice your cousin to-night, dear Marion," said my husband in a whisper. "I will give you my reason presently." I obeyed him, as indeed T had no wish to do otherwise ; but I stole several furtive glances opposite in the course of the evening. I observed that, beautiful as the woman was, none of the men appeared to pay her much attention ; that they talked to each other without intermission, although she put up her hand several times, as though to entreat their silence ; that at the close of the play they left her to cloak herself, and that she followed them out of the box, without being offered the arm of any one. I guessed who she might be, but I left my husband to tell me when he thought fit As we were driving home he said, "I wonder Knowles likes to show himself in public with a person of that oharacter.' Of course, Marion, you do not know who she is 1 " I acknowledged my ignorance. "Poor creature," he replied, "what she is is best not told ; but she ivas the wife of one of the peers of the realm, and the woman most to be envied, perhaps, in England. She made one false step, and for the sake of a man who forsook her a month afterwards — and there she is, very beautiful still, as you see, but devoid ot all claim to our respect or courtesy. It's a dreadful thought, isn't it, little woman T A dreadful thought— ah ! was it not 1 He would have clasped me to him, but I shrank back into the further end of the carriage seat, and trembled to think that in will, if not in deed, I had be^n as lost as the woman he spoke of. Had been — yes ! Thank Heaven, I need not alterj that sentence ; the will had now as com-\ pletely vanished as the probability of the * deed. My health now began to fail so considerably that my husband toqk me a\yay to the seaside. Laurence thought it was the clos,e Ijondon air : the doctor recommended tonics and a change. I knew the real reason well, and thought the only change which could heal me was death. J was % n beginning to love my husband ; the more I was convinced of this the more wretched I felt. I could not live under the burden of deceit which my whole life was to me, but neither had 1 the courage to confess to Laurence that I had so wronged his trust. What, then, was left for me, but to die 1 I was so strongly impressed with this conviction, that 1 actually brought myself down to the doors of death. Laurence took me away to a quiet little watering-place, and had the best advice, but it was of no avail — I grew weaker and weaker. His tenderness to me npver failecl ; often would l^e entreat me to tell him if I had anything on my mmd — to be assured of his full forgiveness before J spoke — to believe that he w_ould not fai} to love me through everything.' But still I could not speak. It; was q\} ve.ry well for him, ignorant of the true cause of my melancholy, to entreat me i^o reveal it, but were I to take him at his wp,rd, I was convinced that the eflec^ would be far different to what he opposed. He coukl not love me with that knowledge on liis mind ; ho wo.uld cas,t me out from the light of his presence for e\e,r. And so, I lay, and looked at him, and k>nged to diaburthen my soul, and yet dared not do so, until weeks had resolved themselves into months, and I really thought that I was dying. One evening, when I felt weaker than usual, and he had been more than usually kind to me, I burst into a flood of teara and hid my fa«e in the sofe cushions,.

He came to me at onee — my husband, whom I had learnt to love so much — and took my head and laid it on his breast, and tenderly reproached me for my weakness. " No, no ! not there ! " I exclaimed, tearing myself, in the pain of self-con-viction, from the position he had caused me to assume ; " not there, Laurence. I am not worthy." "Not worthy, my dear wife 1" he said, gravely. "If you are not, who is 1 " Then his apparent perfect trust in my goodness broke down the barriers of shame which had prevented me hitherto from telling him the truth, and I thought that, sooner than live any longer and end-are the bitter reproach of his unsuspecting praises, I would be thrust forth by his hand from the roof which I had so nearly deserted. .." Stop, stop!" I exclaimed, wildly. ""Laurence, hear me speak." Then I told my wretched story, rapidly, and mingled with tears, but with my face still buried in the sofa cushions. I told him all — from the first to the last. I did not rest until I had made a clean breast of it. When I had finished (the miserable recital did not take long) I lay still, scarcely breathing, till I should hear his exclamations of horror and surprise. I lay still, determined to accept with patience anything his outraged feelings might choose to inflict on me. But all that issued from his lips was — "Well, dear wife?" I looked up timidly, and met his blue eyes gazing at me with the utmost tenderness, though there was sadness nVjngled with their love. "Laurence," I gasped, "strike me! kill me ! but don't look at me like that. I have told you all, as there is a God in Heaven. And now you know why lam not worthy of your love." "And what if I knew it before, Marion ? " he asked gently. I raised myself in amazement, and stared at him. Yes, it was truth. I read it in his candid eyes ; he had known it, and — he had loved me through it all. I had no words wherewith to thank him, no courage to make protestations for the future ! I could only kneel there sobbing, and trust to my generoushearted Laurence to accept my tears and the clasping pressure of my hands for all that they meant. " I knew it before I left India, dearest wife ; it was the knowledge of your danger which brought me home so unexpectedly. By accident you enclosed one of your letters to Alfred Knowles in the envelope you sent to me. Once alive to the fear of losing you, I resolved at any coat to re-assume the office of protector to you, which I should never have relinquished." "It was not your fault, dearest," I murmured ; "the fault has been all mine. Would the misery had been so also." " I deserved my share of it," he an swered. "I had many doubts about letting you, so young and inexperienced, return to England alone ; but tne hope of speedily amassing a fortune, which you should enjoy with me, proved too strong a temptation, and for it I risked my domestic happiness. Ta nk God I have only risked it ! " My heart echoed his thanksgiving. " And now, Marion, now that it is nil over, you are sure that you are mine only ! " he continued wistfully. I Jooked straight into his eyes — those dear eyes which through all my deception and doubt and indifference, had never altered their kind protecting gaze ; and, ' though mine were almost too dim with tears to see, we understood each other, ' and were satisfied.