A World Apart Read Online Free

lovemaking was some compensation to Charlotte. She came to expect that their trysts would be infrequent because he was so fearful of discovery. However, now that she was a widow, she believed she might expect his visits more often. The joyous reality of the child in her womb should bond the two of them with an even deeper love than they had already shared. As the days passed without word from him, doubts began to prickle at the edge of her happiness.
    She wiped those doubts from her mind. Had Martin not told her, as they lay fulfilled in each other’s arms, that he had never in his life been ravaged by such desire? Had he not confessed the first time they made love that he had nursed a passion for her since the morning he first saw her walking through the village, basket on arm? She received his letter a long fortnight after their last evening together.
    The Vicarage
    July 14, 1805
    My Dearest Charlotte,
    Since our last meeting, I have given much prayerful thought to our conversation. A thousand times I have thought of our child growing in your womb. A thousand times I have wanted to take you in my arms and tell you what I have to say in the warmth of your love. But it is not to be.
    Above and beyond all my fleshly weaknesses, I am a man of God. I am the shepherd charged by Him to watch over my flock, and I will go to Him to be judged according to the dedication with which I put aside my own fleshly gratifications and tend my sheep.
    Although I have prayed long and earnestly, God in His wisdom has chosen not to lead me on an easy path through this wilderness. He has shown me that if I take you to wife, I cannot serve Him in the ways He requires of me. He has set me apart from the village folk so that I may be to them as a shepherd unto his sheep — a loving but separate being, formed from different clay, the better to show them the way to His mercy. If I were to partake in a union with you, it would be against God’s purpose.
    I expect that when your child is born, the village folk will think it is Silas’s. And I trust that you will not disabuse them. It will be so much the better for your reputation, and for the child’s welfare, if it is so.
    My thoughts and prayers are with you for eternity. May God’s blessings rain upon you for ever.
    Martin
    PS. Please take pains to destroy this letter so that not another eye on God’s earth ever sees it.
    Charlotte received the letter on a dull, chill afternoon which threatened rain. That morning she had decided to give the cottage a good cleaning. Now she found she lacked the will. She picked up her needlework, intending to sew a dress for the child she carried. She pictured the little dress as a love token to her child, sure that it would be a girl.
    Before she broke the letter’s seal, she divined its message. As she read the first words, she felt struck like a beast led through a slaughterhouse killing gate. She sagged onto the bed they had made hot with their passion, and let a river of tears flow, hour upon hour, until she seemed fit to drain herself of life. As she lay wretched, looking up at the broken ceiling of her mean cottage, she knew she did not want to live. She gave thought to ways she might end her life — quickly, tidily. As she took this thought and teased it into small threads with the intention of examining each one to its end, she came to a conclusion. She look the letter and put it behind the loose stone above the lintel where she hid spare coins from Silas, and the silver cross her father had given her before he died.
    When Charlotte’s belly began to show, Mother Turlington, the widow who knew the business of everyone in the village, smiled and spoke to her one morning as she walked through the high street to deliver some dressmaking.
    â€˜Oh Charlotte. T’is God’s blessing indeed that Silas has left you with a new life to replace his own, so sadly broken off. I’m sure it will be a boy. Perhaps you will