Chapter 32. A Woman Woos--In Vain

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_ CHAPTER THIRTY TWO. A WOMAN WOOS--IN VAIN

"No, no, don't come with me," whispered Guest as he sprang toward Stratton's room, but Edie paid no heed to his words, and was close behind him as he passed through first one and then the other door, drawing back, though, the next moment to close them both.

A few minutes before when Myra had performed the same action she had stood gazing before her at the figure seated at the table; and the attitude of dejection, the abject misery and despair it conveyed to her mind, swept away all compunction. Every thought of her visit being unmaidenly, and opposed to her duty toward herself and those who loved her, was forgotten. Her hands were involuntarily raised toward him, and she stood there with her lips apart, her head thrown back, and her eyes half-closed and swimming with tenderness as her very being seemed to breathe out the one word--"Come!"

But Stratton might have been dead for all the change that took place by that dimly lit table. He did not stir; and at last, seeing that he must be suffering terribly, and, taking the thought closely to her breast that it was for her sake, she moved forward slowly, almost gliding to the back of his chair, to stand there looking down yearningly upon him till her bosom heaved with a long, deep sigh, and raising her hands toward him once more she laid them tenderly upon his head.

"Malcolm!"

The effect of that touch was electric. With one bound Stratton leapt from his chair toward the fireplace, and there stood at bay, as it were, before the door of the closet, gazing at her wildly for a few moments, as if at some unreal thing. Then his hands went to his brow, and the intensity of his gaze increased till, as she took one step toward him with extended arms, the wild look in his haggard face changed to one of intense joy.

"Myra!" he cried, and the next moment he had clasped her in his arms.

For the moment it was a different man from the wretched being who had crept back to his rooms heartsick and despairing, while, after shrinking from him with the reserve begotten of the doubt and misery which had been her portion for so long past, the warm clasp of his arms, the tender, passionate words he uttered, and the loving caresses of his hands as he drew her face closer and closer to his swept away all memories of his lapse, and of the world and its ways. He had held her to his throbbing breast--he, the man to whom her heart had first expanded two years before--and she knew no more, thought no more of anything but the supreme joy that he loved her dearly still.

Brief pleasure. She saw his eyes gazing passionately into hers, full of the newly found delight, and then they contracted, his brow grew rugged, and, with a hoarse sigh, he shrank from her embrace, looked wildly round, and then, with a shudder, whispered:

"You here--here! Here? It is you?--it is no dream; but why--why have you come? It is too horrible."

"Malcolm!" she cried piteously.

"Don't--don't speak to me--don't look at me with those appealing eyes. I cannot bear it. Pray--pray go."

"Go?" she said, raising her hand to his arm, "when I have at all costs come to you like this!"

"Yes, yes, go--at once," he cried, and he shrank from her as if in horror.

"Malcolm--dearest!" she moaned; "you shrink from me. What have I done?"

He was silent in the terrible struggle going on within his breast.

"You do not speak," she whispered, as if in dread that her words should reach the ears of those without. "You cannot be so cruel as to cast me off for the past. I did not know then, dear--I was a mere girl--I accepted him heart-whole. It was my father's and his wish; do not blame me for that."

He turned from her as if to avoid her eyes, and her voice grew more piteous as she crept close to him and stood with her hand raised to lay it upon his arm, but dreading to touch him again after his cold rebuff.

"I tell you, dear, I did not know then--I believed you cared for Edie."

"I? Never!" he cried, turning to her for the moment. "Why do you revive all that?"

"Because you are so cruel to me--so cold, Malcolm, I must speak now. You have made me reckless--ready to brave the whole world's contempt, my father's anger, for the sake of him who first taught me what it was to love. I tell you I must speak now, and I come to you humble and suppliant--the woman you would have made your wife. It was too cruel, but I forgive you, dear. Let all that be as if it had never happened."

He groaned, and covered his face with his hands.

"Speak to me, dearest," she murmured; and, emboldened by his sorrowful manner, she clasped one of his arms with both her hands, and laid her cheek against it as she spoke. "Speak to me and tell me, too, that you forgive me all that sad time of my life. I tell you again I never loved him. Our marriage was the merest form, and I came back from the church wishing that my last hour had come. I know now; you need not tell me, dear--you shrank from me at the last; but you did not know my heart, Malcolm--you could not see how its every pulsation was for you. I lay it bare before you now, Malcolm--husband. I claim you, dear. I cannot live on like this, my own, my own."

She had crept closer and closer as she spoke, her hands had risen to his shoulder, and, after trembling there for a few moments, they clasped his neck, and she buried her face in his breast, sobbing as if her heart would break.

Then her tears seemed to freeze in their source, and she shrank away horrified and chilled by his manner; for he thrust her from him with an angry gesture, and his face was convulsed as he made as if to rush from the room.

But he turned back to her, and she sank upon her knees before him.

"Malcolm," she said gently, "am I so loathsome in your sight?"

"No, no," he groaned, and he tore at his throat as if something choked him. "For Heaven's sake, go. Myra, I am not master of my actions. If you stay I shall forget all but that you are here."

She started to her feet in horror and alarm at his words, and his looks seemed to endorse their truth, but a calm smile came upon her lips, and she went to him again.

"I know," she said tenderly. "They have told me all that. You have been ill and delirious. Well, who should be your nurse and comforter? Malcolm--come to me again. My father will listen to my prayers, and all the past shall be forgotten. Take me with you away somewhere till you are well again. Only tell me now that you have forgiven me--that I am to be your wife, Malcolm--my own."

A spasm of horror convulsed his face again, and he shrank from her when she would have once more laid her head upon his breast.

"No; you do not know; you cannot know," he whispered hoarsely. "Myra, there is a gulf between us that can never more be crossed. Go, dearest, for Heaven's sake, and try and forget that I ever said words of love."

She looked at him in wonder more than dread, but the prime object of her mission came now to mind.

"No," she said; "your mind is disordered with grief. I cannot leave you like this. Tell me, I beg, Malcolm: you do repel me because of my past?"

"No--no!" he said wildly. "For that? Great Heavens, no!"

"Then you must--you shall tell me."

"Tell you?" he cried.

"Yes: what you have kept back from your firmest friend. It must be some terrible trouble--some great agony of spirit--that should induce you to raise your hand against your own life."

"They told you that!" he said bitterly.

"Yes: they were obliged. But the reason, dear? Did you not tell me I should share your very being--that I should be your other self? Malcolm, tell me. I claim it as my right. Why are you like this?"

He caught her hands fiercely, and held her at arm's length.

"Tell you?" he said; "that you may loathe as well as hate. Myra, in the horror of the long black nights since I saw you last I have clung to the hope that, some time in the future, repentance, sorrow for what was thrust upon me, might be sufficient penance for the past; but it is all one black cloud of despair before me. There is no hope. You and I must never meet again. Go, while I can speak to you the words of a sane man, before that which they have thought of me becomes true. For Heaven's sake, go. God have mercy; my punishment is greater than I can bear."

He reeled, and would have fallen heavily, but Myra held on to the hands which clutched hers so fiercely; and, as a wild appeal for help escaped her lips, she saved him from striking his head violently as he sank insensible to the floor.

"What is it?" cried Guest excitedly.

She told him in a few words, and he ran into the other room for water, but Stratton was already coming to, and after drinking with avidity from the glass Guest held to his lips, he rose shuddering and pale.

"Take her home," he said in a husky whisper as he rose. "Quick. It is too horrible. Weak and faint, I cannot bear it."

He motioned toward the door, and Guest turned a look full of perplexity toward Myra.

"No," she said firmly. "Edie, dear, stay with me. Mr Guest, go to my father at once and tell him I am here with him who is to be my dear husband, who is sick almost unto death. Tell him to come at once with a doctor and a nurse."

As she spoke a look of joy shot across Stratton's face, and he took a step toward her with outstretched hands, where she stood between him and the door beside the fireplace. Then, all at once, his face changed, and they thought him mad.

"No," he cried fiercely; "it is impossible."

He ran across, and flung open both inner and outer doors.

"Take them," he whispered fiercely--"take them back, man, or it will be too late. You will make me what you think."

Myra would have stayed even then, in spite of Edie's hands trying to drag her away; but, as she turned yearningly to Stratton, he shrank away with such a despairing look of horror that she yielded herself to Guest's strong arm, and suffered him to lead her back, half insensible, to the carriage, into a corner of which she sank with a low moan, while all the way home the beat of the horses feet and the rattle of the wheels upon the pavement seemed to form themselves with terrible iteration into the words she had heard fall from Stratton's lips, and she shuddered as now, for the first time, she gave them with a terrible significance:

"My punishment is greater than I can bear."

She grew more and more prostrate as they neared home, and was so weak that she could hardly walk up the steps into the hall, but she recovered a little, and, holding tightly by Guest's and Edie's arms, ascended slowly to the drawing room, to find that the butler had hurried up before them, and that Sir Mark had returned, and was coming to meet them on the landing, startled by the man's words:

"Miss Myra has come home, sir, very ill."

The admiral would have sent off for medical help, but Myra insisted that she was better; and as she began to recover herself the old man asked eagerly:

"Where was it--at a theatre?"

A dead silence fell upon the group, and Guest gave Edie a look of agony as the thought occurred to him: "He will forbid me his house now."

"Well," cried Sir Mark testily, for he had reached home early consequent upon a few monitory twinges, which he dare not slight, "are you all deaf?"

"I will tell you, dear," said Myra, taking her father's hand and pressing it beneath her cheek. "Don't be angry with anybody but me, and try and remember that I am no longer a girl, but a suffering woman, full of grief and pain."

"My poor darling!" he whispered, bending down to kiss her. "But tell me--were you taken ill at the theatre? Why, what does it mean?"

"I could bear it no longer, father," said Myra slowly. "I have been to see Malcolm Stratton."

"What?"

"To ask him to explain."

"You--you have been to see that scoundrel--that--"

"Hush, dear! He was to have been my husband."

"And you--you actually went to see him--at his rooms?"

"Yes."

Sir Mark wiped his forehead, and looked fiercely from one to the other, as if hardly believing his child's avowal to be true.

"I could not go on like this. It was killing me, dear."

"And--and you asked him to explain his cursed conduct?"

"I asked him to explain."

"And--and--what--what?" panted the old man furiously.

"No; he did not explain, dear," said Myra, drawing her father's arm about her neck, and raising herself a little from the couch so as to nestle on his breast. "It is fate, dear. I am never to leave you now. Keep me, dear, and protect me. It is not his fault. Something terrible has happened to him--something he could not own to, even to me--who was to have been his wife."

"Edie--Guest--help!" panted the admiral. "Myra, my darling! She's dying!"

"No, no, dear," she said, with a low moan, as she clung to him more tightly, "a little faint--that's all. Ah! hold me to you, dear," she sighed almost in a whisper. "Safe--with you."

And then to herself:

"He said his punishment was greater than he could bear. Malcolm, my own--my own!" _

Read next: Chapter 33. A Horrible Suggestion

Read previous: Chapter 31. From Hope To Fear

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