Frances Hodgson Burnett

“ I heard Lisbeth's voice often, calm and low and sweet. I heard Hugh's softened until it was like a woman's. I heard a voice I knew to be the doctor's. I heard other voices strange to me, but first of all and before all I heard my husband's. I did not hear it once or twice, or at stated intervals: day and night without an hour of absence. I felt Lisbeth's touch often: I felt Hugh's. I felt hands that were kindly and tender enough, but there was one hand that never touched me without drawing me farther from the grave and nearer to life, and this hand was my husband's. ”

“ What is it, Lisbeth?"
"It is nothing," she answered—"only that I heard you moving and thought I would come and sit with you. Hugh is out."
We both went back to the window, and she knelt down in a girlish fashion of hers, resting an arm upon the window-ledge and turning her fair face up to the night sky and the starlight.
"I hope you are wrapped up well, Gervase," she said after a while.
"I am quite warm enough, thank you."
"You must take care of yourself, you know," she said in her sweet, even voice, "for your husband's sake." ”

“ I knew he had searched me to the core, that he had seen every fruitless pang and bitter humiliation of the past two years. My letters to my husband had been regularly sent, but his answers had been few and far between, and my pride had forced a fresh sting upon me even while I was otherwise indifferent to the neglect. So I hesitated now, and the next moment Ralph Gwynne came to me as if drawn there by an uncontrollable impulse. A gleam of light shot over his dark face.
"You do not care to take it," he said. "The very sight of it is a new torture. Let me throw it into the sea, Gervase." ”

“ And the next moment he had touched my cheek lightly with his lips and was gone.
It was late when I reached Bamborough, and the tide was coming in under a red, fog-obscured sun. I looked out of the carriage window as I drove from the station through the narrow streets, and looking I saw little more than an immense expanse of sea, and a dry and wet brown beach where fishermen were lounging, fishermen's children shouting and playing, and fishermen's boats drawn up and fastened upon the sand with chains. ”

“ Even the little child that had scarcely drawn a breath could not soften our hearts towards each other. And, worse than this, out of my wretchedness had grown a shadow of sin and despair. I looked backwards sometimes to a fancy I had long left behind—to a fancy that I thought my husband had long blotted out, and looking backward so, I fell into a wonder at what now seemed my blindness. ”

“ The listless wretchedness that ruled me would have prevented that, even if there had not been a faint fascination in the miserable aggrandizement of feeling that at least one man had been true to me, and was true to me yet. I used sometimes to wonder that Lisbeth never guessed at the truth. She rarely spoke to me of my husband—never of Ralph Gwynne—and yet I was always conscious of a restraining influence in her simple presence. ”

“ At this moment I recognized the man's power for evil over me as I had never done before, and a curious sense of repugnance came upon me with my recollection of something I had sometimes seen sleeping in his quiet persistence. I could not understand the influence that stung me to anger and roused my pride, but I never failed to succumb to it, nevertheless, and it invariably roused me to some fresh rashness of speech or action. But though I said little to Lisbeth, the pang of remembrance softened my heart, and before she left me I had made up my mind to write a few words to my husband, at least ”

“ I gasped; "Ralph Gwynne was with me and he knew. One of the fishermen upon the beach told us the child's name and its mother's history."
"Listen," she said, and her voice rang out like a command, "listen to me. Some one has told you a lie. I can tell you the girl's history—no one knows it better than I, Gervase, as no one knows better that the truth should prove to you the wrong you have done your husband. ”

“ They give me no time to stagnate. They keep the hands at work and the heart at work too—loving, hoping, thinking for them—and I am sure the beating is more in time for the work the children bring. But they have not crowded you out, Gervase, you may be sure of that. There is all the more room because they have made it larger. The children have made me love you more than ever."
"Yes," I said to myself as I got up from my chair—"yes, I will go to Lisbeth. If I am going to die, better die with Lisbeth than here."
I did not love my husband—I had never loved him, I told myself. ”

“ You are clinging to a mad hope if you think to win me even in the course of time. I tell you I shall never love you. I will leave England with you, not because I love you, but because I love my husband and cannot bear to see his face again. ”

“ The weak tears began to roll down my cheeks, and I could not stop their flow, and I saw that Lisbeth's tears were falling too.
"You will not die," she said; "you will live to retrieve the past. He knows all—he read your letter. Roger, speak to her." ”

“ Her calm, radiant face struck me to the heart's core. Often during the last year I had told myself that I was only one of the many, that my mistake was only the mistake all women suffer from—the mistake of hoping for a happiness the world cannot hold. But Lisbeth broke down my theory. ”

“ He did not care. I might live if I cared for life—die if I chose.
"I have a friend in Bamborough," I said after a while, "I will go there."
Dr. Branaird rose and took his hat.
"Do," he advised—"Bamborough is just the place I should have chosen for you, had I not thought it best to let you choose for yourself. There is plenty of strong sea-breeze on the Cornish coast, and your friend will improve the tone of your nervous system if she is anything of a woman."
So he left me, and so I turned to the street again and stared blankly at the dead leaves and the patch of gray November sky. ”

“ Leith's service," he said, "and I think you are right, Lisbeth; she needs more air." I got up and walked to the window, so that my back was turned to both of them, but Ralph Gwynne followed me and looked out over my shoulder.
Bamborough looked better than usual this morning. An adventurous ghost of sunshine was casting a clear bright light over the brown sands and gray waves, and over the huts and boats and sturdy brown-legged children. It gave to Bamborough in November a pretense of fresh animation that three times as much sunshine could not have been able to give to London. ”

“ As Doctor Branaird had prophesied, Lisbeth had strengthened my nerves. Her perfect health and spirits roused me as nothing else would have done, and I found myself growing stronger from their force of example. It might be, too, that since I was relieved from my husband's presence a pressure was removed that had been too heavy for me. m But, though I was so much better, I was creeping towards the goal of health very slowly, and it seemed that a breath of renewed pain would undo all.
"You do not gain color fast enough," Lisbeth said to me one morning. "You do not get enough of the sea breeze. ”

“ And now that all my preparations were made, I was waiting at my opened window for the signal that was to come to me from the beach below. I had thrown myself adrift on the broad ocean of chance, and the waves might fling me upon what shore they would, for the momentary passion of misery had settled into passive despair.
"When women lose all, as I am doing," I had said to Ralph Gwynne that night, "they generally have something at stake, some love or hope, but I have none ”

“ It's Janey—Janey an 'th child, little Roger."
I moved impatiently, though I scarcely knew why. The boat was almost upon the beach, and the next minute the man who was in it jumped out and waded up, dragging it in by its chain with a great splash of the sea water, and then the woman turned her head, and as she got up I saw her distinctly. She was a handsome young creature, tall and straight and shapely, and very unlike the rest of the Bamborough women, with her long violet eyes, and thick curling red brown hair.
"Look at her, Gervase," Ralph Gwynne whispered, "and look at the child." ”

“ As soon as she was gone Ralph Gwynne turned again to the old fisherman, and spoke to him just as he had spoken before.
"She's a handsome creature," he said, "and the child is handsome too. Who is her husband?"
The old fellow glanced up at me.
"Savin' the lady's presence," he said in a low voice, "she haint got none—Janey haint. We're all sorry for her here. There haint one of us but is sorry for Janey. She never was a bad 'un, but she was handsome an' unfortnit, and she's seen a sight o' trouble. ”

“ I knew that she was searching me even when she spoke of other things, and I knew that she was searching me when, after she had called her children into the room, she stood near me in her royal mother pride, with her little one in her fair, strong arms.
"This is Hugh's boy," she said, touching the crumpled brown curls of her eldest. "Look up, Lawrence. ”