“The colour left his face; his lips quivered, and he looked as if he would have killed me.
“ ‘What monstrous thing is this? What do you mean by your tomfooleries?’
“I did not speak.
“ ‘Speak!’ he roared. ‘What am I to understand by rectifying your mistake? By the living God, you shall not make me the laughingstock and gossip of the town! I’ll crush you first.’
“I was astonished to see such rage develop itself so suddenly in him, and yet afterwards, when I came to reflect, I saw there was no reason for surprise. Self, self was his god, and the thought of the damage which would be done to him and his reputation was what roused him. I was still silent, and he went on—
“ ‘I suppose you intend to leave me, and you think you’ll disgrace me. You’ll disgrace yourself. Everybody knows me here, and knows you’ve had every comfort and everything to make you happy. Everybody will say what everybody will have the right to say about you. Out with it and confess the truth, that one of your snivelling poets has fallen in love with you and you with him.’
“I still held my peace, but I rose and went into the best bedchamber, and sat there in the dark till bedtime. I heard James come upstairs at ten o’clock as usual, go to his own room, and lock himself in. I never hesitated a moment. I could not go home to become the centre of all the chatter of the little provincial town in which I was born. My old nurse, who took care of me as a child, had got a place in London as housekeeper in a large shop in the Strand. She was always very fond of me, and to her instantly I determined to go. I came down, wrote a brief note to James, stating that after his base and lying sneer he could not expect to find me in the morning still with him, and telling him I had left him forever. I put on my cloak, took some money which was my own out of my cashbox, and at half-past twelve heard the mail-coach approaching. I opened the front door softly—it shut with an oiled spring bolt; I went out, stopped the coach, and was presently rolling over the road to the great city.
“Oh, that night! I was the sole passenger inside, and for some hours I remained stunned, hardly knowing what had become of me. Soon the morning began to break, with such calm and such slow-changing splendour that it drew me out of myself to look at it, and it seemed to me a prophecy of the future. No words can tell the bound of my heart at emancipation. I did not know what was before me, but I knew from what I had escaped; I did not believe I should be pursued, and no sailor returning from shipwreck and years of absence ever entered the port where wife and children were with more rapture than I felt journeying through the rain into which the clouds of the sunrise dissolved, as we rode over the dim flats of Huntingdonshire southwards.
“There is no need for me to weary you any longer, nor to tell you what happened after I got to London, or how I came here. I had a little property of my own and no child. To avoid questions I resumed my maiden name. But one thing you must know, because it will directly tend to enforce what I am going to beseech of you. Years afterwards, I might have married a man who was devoted to me. But I told him I was married already, and not a word of love must he speak to me. He went abroad in despair, and I have never seen anything more of him.
“You can guess now what I am going to pray of you to do. Without hesitation, write to this girl and tell her the exact truth. Anything, any obloquy, anything friends or enemies may say of you must be faced even joyfully rather than what I had to endure. Better die the death of the Saviour on the cross than live such a life as mine.”
I said: “Miss Arbour, you are doubtless right, but think what it means. It means nothing less than infamy. It will be said, I broke the poor thing’s heart, and marred her prospects forever. What will become of me, as a minister, when all this is known?”
She caught my hand in hers, and cried with indescribable feeling—
“My good sir, you are parleying with the great Enemy of Souls. Oh! if you did but know, if you could but know, you would be as decisive in your recoil from him, as you would from hell suddenly opened at your feet. Never mind the future. The one thing you have to do is the thing that lies next to you, divinely ordained for you. What does the 119th Psalm say?—‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet.’ We have no light promised us to show us our road a hundred miles away, but we have a light for the next footstep, and if we take that, we shall have a light for the one which is to follow. The inspiration of the Almighty could not make clearer to me the message I deliver to you. Forgive me—you are a minister, I know, and perhaps I ought not to speak so to you, but I am an old woman. Never would you have heard my history from me, if I had not thought it would help to save you from something worse than death.”
At this moment there came a knock at the door, and Miss
