Kitabı oku: «One Of Them», sayfa 41

CHAPTER IX. WORDS OF GOOD CHEER

When the key-note of some long-sought mystery has sounded, there is a strange fascination in going over and over the theme, now wondering why we had not been more struck by this or that fact, how we could have overlooked the importance of this incident or that coincidence. Trivial events come up to memory as missing links in the chain of proof, and small circumstances and chance words are brought up to fill the measure of complete conviction.

It was thus that this party of four sat almost till daybreak talking over the past. Each had some era to speak of as especially his own. Winthrop could tell of Godfrey Hawke when he came a young man to the States, and married his niece, the belle and the heiress of her native city. He remembered all the praises bestowed upon the young Englishman’s manners and accomplishments, together with the graver forebodings of others, who had remarked his inordinate love of play and his indifference as to the company in which he indulged it. Next came the doctor, with his recollections of the man broken down by dissipation and excess, and at last dying of poison. There was but little, indeed, to recall the handsome Godfrey Hawke in the attenuated figure and distorted countenance of that miserable debauchee; but there were chance traits of manner that brought up the man to Winthrop’s mind. There were also on the scene his beautiful wife, at that time in the fulness of her beauty. What a charm of gentleness, too, did she possess! – how meekly and patiently did she bear herself under provocations that seemed too great for human endurance! The doctor had to own that she actually forfeited some of his sympathy by the impression she gave him of being one deficient in a nice sense of self-esteem, and wanting in that element of resistance without which there is no real dignity of nature. “She seemed to me,” said he, “too craven, too abject by half, – one of those who are born to be the subject of a tyranny, and who, in their very submission, appear to court the wanton cruelty of an ‘oppressor’. How rightly I read her!” cried he; “how truly I deciphered the inscription on her heart! and yet, I’ll be sworn, no man living could have detected under that mask of gentleness this woman of long-pondering craft, this deeply designing plotter!”

“Quackinboss and I saw her under another aspect,” said Alfred. “She was depressed and sad, but only so much so as gave an added charm to the grace of her captivations, and made her every effort to please appear somewhat of a sacrifice of herself for those around her.”

“Well, ain’t it strange, gentlemen,” said Quackinboss, “but it’s a fact, she never deceived me? I remember the day of our visit at Marlia; after that adventure with the dog she fainted, and I took her up in my arms and carried her to the house. I thought, by course, she was insensible. Not a bit of it; she rallied enough to open her eyes, and give me one of the most wonderful looks ever I see in my life. It was just like saying, ‘Shaver, are you quite certain that you have n’t got in your arms one of the loveliest creatures as ever was formed? Are you sure, Shaver Quackinboss, that you are ever to have such another piece of luck as this?’ And so certain was I that I heerd these very words in my ear, that I said aloud, ‘Darn me pale blue if I don’t wish the house was half a mile away!’ And the words wasn’t well out than she burst out a-laughin’, – such a hearty, joyous laugh, too, that I knew in my heart she had neither pain nor ache, and was only a-foxin’. Well, gentlemen, we always had a way of lookin’ at each other arter that was quite peculiar; it was sayin’, ‘Never fear, all’s on honor here.’ That was, at least, how I meant it, and I have a notion that she understood me as well. I have a strong notion that we understand these women critturs better than you Britishers!”

“You must leave me out of the category of the shrewd ones, however,” said Winthrop. “I saw her but once in my life, and yet I never came away from a visit with the same amount of favorable impression. She met me like an old friend, but at the same time there was a delicacy and reserve about her that seemed to say, ‘It is for you to ratify this compact if you like. When you sign the treaty, it is finished.’”

From the discussion of the past they proceeded to the future, upon which all felt that Winthrop could speak with most authority, since he was Clara’s kinsman and guardian.

“What do you mean to do by the gal, sir?” asked the Colonel.

“I intend to see her as soon as I can, give her the good news of her accession to fortune, and leave her to choose whether she will come back with me to the States, or would prefer that I should remain with her in Europe.”

“And ain’t there any other alternative possible in the case, sir?” asked Quackinboss. “Does n’t it strike you as just possible that she might say ‘No’ to each of these proposals, and fix another one for herself?”

“I don’t quite understand you, Colonel,” said the other.

“I ain’t a-goin’ to talk riddles, sir. What I mean is, that the young woman may have other thoughts in her head than either of your plans; and now I ‘ll call upon my honor’ble friend, Mr. Alfred Layton, to address the House.”

Crimson with shame and confusion, young Layton turned an imploring look at Quackinboss; but the Colonel was indifferent to the appeal, and waved his hand as if bespeaking silence.

“It is rather for me to speak here,” said the doctor. “My son has to begin life with a large arrear of his father’s faults to redeem. He has to restore to our name, by conduct and honorable bearing, the fair repute that once attached to it. Honest industry is the safe and sure road to this, and there is no other. He has promised to try and bring back to me in his name the suffrages of that university which I forfeited in mine. If he succeed, he will have made me proud of him.”

“I like that,” broke in Quackinboss. “Square it all first with them critturs in the college, and then think of a wife. Go at it, sir, and work like a nigger; there ain’t nothing will give you such courage as the very fatigue of a hard day’s work. When you lie down at night so dead beat that you could n’t do more, you ‘ll feel that you ‘ve earned your rest, and you ‘ll not lie awake with misgivin’s and fancies, but you ‘ll sleep with a good conscience, and arise refreshed the next mornin’.”

“Alfred and I settled it all between us last night,” said the doctor. “There was but one point we could not arrange to our satisfaction. We are largely indebted to you – ”

“Stop her!” cried the Colonel, as though he were giving the word from the paddle-box of a steamer, – “stop her! I ain’t in a humor to be angry with any one. I feel as how, when the world goes so well as it has done lately with us all, that it would be main ungrateful to show a peevish or discontented spirit, and I don’t believe that there ‘s a way to rile me but one, – jest one, – and you ‘ve a-hit on ‘t. Yes, sir, you have!”

Quackinboss began his speech calmly enough, but before he finished it his voice assumed a hard and harsh tone very rare with him.

“Remember, my dear and true-hearted friend,” broke in Alfred, “that it’s only of one debt we are eager to acquit ourselves. Of all that we owe you in affection and in gratitude, we are satisfied to stand in your books as long as we live.”

“I ain’t a-goin’ to square accounts,” said the Colonel; “but if I was, I know well that I’d stand with a long balance ag’in’ me. Meat and drink, sir, is good things, but they ain’t as good for a man as liberal thoughts, kind feelin’s, and a generous trust in one’s neighbor. Well, I ‘ve picked up a little of all three from that young man there, and a smatterin’ of other things besides that I ‘d never have lamed when barking oak in the bush.”

Old Layton shook his head in dissent, and muttered, —

“You may cancel the bond, but we cannot forget the debt.”

“Let me arbitrate between you,” said Winthrop.

“Leave the question at rest till this day twelvemonth. Let each give his word not to approach it; and then time, that will have taught us many a thing in the mean while, will supply the best expedient.”

They gave their hands to each other in solemn pledge, and not a word was uttered, and the compact was ratified.

“We shall leave this for England to-night,” said the doctor.

“Not, surely, till you come as far as Milan first?” asked Winthrop.

“He’s right, – he ‘s quite right!” said Quackinboss. “If a man has a Polar voyage afore him, it ‘s no way to harden his constitution by passin’ a winter at Palermo. Ain’t I right, sir?”

It was not difficult to see that Alfred Layton did not yield a very willing assent to this arrangement; but he stole away from the room unperceived, and carried his sorrow with him to his chamber. He had scarcely closed his door, however, when he heard Quackinboss’s voice outside.

“I ain’t a-comin’ to disturb you,” said he, entering; “but I have a word or two to say, and, mayhap, can’t find another time to say it. You ‘ll be wantin’ a trifle or so to begin with before you can turn to earn something for yourself. You ‘ll find it there in that pocket-book, – look to it now, sir, I’ll have no opposition, – it’s the best investment ever I had. You ‘ll marry this girl; yes, there ain’t a doubt about that, and mayhap, one of these days I ‘ll be a-comin to you to ask favorable terms for my cousin Obadiah B. Quackinboss, that’s located down there in your own diggin’s, and you ‘ll say, ‘Well, Colonel, I ain’t forgotten old times; we was thick as thieves once on a time, and so fix it all your own way.’”

Alfred could but squeeze the other’s hand as he turned away, his heart too full for him to speak.

“I like your father, sir,” resumed Quackinboss; “he’s a grand fellow, and if it war n’t for some of his prejudices about the States, I ‘d say I never met a finer man.”

Young Layton saw well how by this digression the American was adroitly endeavoring to draw the conversation into another direction, and one less pregnant with exciting emotions.

“Yes, sir, he ain’t fair to us,” resumed the Colonel. “He forgets that we ‘re a new people, and jest as hard at work to build up our new civilization as our new cities.”

“There’s one thing he never does, never can forget, – that the warmest, fastest friend his son ever met with in life came from your country.”

“Well, sir, if there be anything we Yankees are famed for, it is the beneficial employment of our spare capital. We don’t sit down content with three-and-a-half or four per cent interest, like you Britishers, we look upon that as a downright waste; and it’s jest the same with our feelin’s as our dollars, though you of the old country don’t think so. We can’t afford to wait thirty, or five-and-thirty years for a friendship. We want lively sales, sir, and quick returns. We want to know if a man mean kindly by us afore we ‘ve both of us got too old to care for it. That ‘s how I come to like you first, and I war n’t so far out in thinkin’ that I ‘d made a good investment.”

Alfred could only smile good-humoredly at the speech, and the other went on, —

“You Britishers begin by givin’ us Yankees certain national traits and habits, and you won’t let us be anything but what you have already fashioned us in your own minds. But, arter all, I’d have you to remember we are far more like your people of a century back than you yourselves are. We ain’t as mealy-mouthed and as p’lite and as smooth-tongued as the moderns. But if we ‘re plain of speech, we are simple of habit; and what you so often set down as rudeness in us ain’t anything more than our wish to declare that we ain’t in want of any one’s help or assistance, but we are able to shift for ourselves, and are independent.”

Quackinboss arose, as he said this, with the air of a man who had discharged his conscience of a load. He had often smarted under what he felt to be the unfair appreciation of the old doctor for America, and he thought that by instilling sounder principles into his son’s mind, the seed would one day or other produce good fruit.

From this he led Alfred to talk of his plans for the future. It was his father’s earnest desire that he should seek collegiate honors in the university which had once repudiated himself. The old man did not altogether arraign the justice of the act, but he longed to see his name once more in a place of honor, and that the traditions of his own triumphs should be renewed in his son’s.

“If I succeed,” said Alfred, “it will be time enough afterwards to say what next.”

“You’ll marry that gal, sir, and come out to the States. I see it all as if I read it in a book.”

Alfred shook his head doubtfully, and was silent.

“Well, I ‘m a-goin’ to Milan with Harvey Winthrop; and when I see the country, as we say, I ‘ll tell you about the clearin’.”

“You’ll write to me too?”

“That I will. It may be that she won’t have outright forgotten me, and if so, she ‘ll be more friendly with me than an uncle she has never seen nor known about. I ‘ll soon find out if her head’s turned by all this good luck, or if, as I hope, the fortune has fallen on one as deserved it. Mayhap she ‘ll be for goin’ over to America at once; mayhap she ‘ll have a turn for doing it grand here, in Europe. Harvey Winthrop says she ‘ll have money enough to buy up one of these little German States, and be a princess if she likes; at all events you shall hear, and then in about a month hence look out for me some fine evening, for I tell you, sir, I’ve got so used to it now, that I can’t get through the day without a talk with you; and though the doctor and I do have a bout now and then over the Yankees, I ‘d like to see the man who ‘d abuse America before him, and say one word against England in the face of Shaver Quackinboss.”

CHAPTER X. THE LETTER FROM ALFRED LAYTON

When Sir William Heathcote learned that Mrs. Morris had quitted his house, gone without one word of adieu, his mind reverted to all the bygone differences with his son, and to Charles did he at once ascribe the cause of her sudden flight. His health was in that state in which agitation becomes a serious complication, and for several days he was dangerously ill, violent paroxysms of passion alternating with long intervals of apathy and unconsciousness. The very sight of Charles in his room would immediately bring on one of his attacks of excitement, and even the presence of May Leslie herself brought him no alleviation of suffering. It was in vain that she assured him that Mrs. Morris left on reasons known only to herself; that even to May herself she had explained nothing, written nothing. The old man obstinately repeated his conviction that she had been made the victim of an intrigue, and that Charles was at the bottom of it. How poor May strove to combat this unjust and unworthy suspicion, how eagerly she defended him she loved, and how much the more she learned to love for the defending of him. Charles, too, in this painful emergency, displayed a moderation and self-control for which May had never given him credit. Not a hasty word or impatient expression escaped him, and he was unceasing in every attention to his father which he could render without the old man’s knowledge. It was a very sad household; on every side there was sickness and sorrow, but few of those consolations that alleviate pain or lighten suffering. Sir William desired to be left almost always alone; Charles walked moodily by himself in the garden; and May kept her room, and seldom left it. Lord Agincourt came daily to ask after them, but could see no one. Even Charles avoided meeting him, and merely sent him a verbal message, or a few hasty lines with a pencil.

Upwards of a week had passed in this manner, when, among the letters from the post, which Charles usually opened and only half read through, came a very long epistle from Alfred Layton. His name was on the corner of the envelope, and, seeing it, Charles tossed the letter carelessly across the table to May, saying, in a peevish irony, “You may care to see what your old admirer has to say; as for me, I have no such curiosity.”

She paid no attention to the rude speech, and went on with her breakfast.

“You don’t mean to say,” cried he, in the same pettish tone, “that you don’t care what there may be in that letter? It may have some great piece of good fortune to announce. He may have become a celebrity, a rich man, – Heaven knows what. This may contain the offer of his hand. Come, May, don’t despise destiny; break the seal and read your fate.”

She made no answer, but, rising from the table, left the room.

It was one of those days on which young Heathcote’s temper so completely mastered him that in anger with himself he would quarrel with his dearest friend. Fortunately, they were now very rare with him, but when they did come he was their slave. When on service and in the field, these were the intervals in which his intrepid bravery, stimulated to very madness, had won him fame and honor; and none, not even himself, knew that some of his most splendid successes were reckless indifference to life. His friends, however, learned to remark that Heathcote was no companion at such times, and they usually avoided him.

He sat on at the breakfast-table, not eating, or indeed well conscious where he was, when the door was hastily thrown open, and Agincourt entered. “Well, old fellow,” cried he, “I have unearthed you at last. Your servants have most nobly resisted all my attempts to force a passage or bribe my way to you, and it was only by a stratagem that I contrived to slip past the porter and pass in.”

“You have cost the fellow his place, then,” said Charles, rudely; “he shall be sent away to-day.”

“Nonsense, Charley; none of this moroseness with me.”

“And why not with you?” cried the other, violently. “Why not with you? You’ll not presume to say that the accident of your station gives you the privilege of intruding where others are denied? You ‘ll not pretend that?”

A deep flush covered the young man’s face, and his eyes flashed angrily; but just as quickly a softened expression came over his countenance, and in a voice of mingled kindness and bantering, he said, “I ‘ll tell you what I ‘ll pretend, Charley; I’ll pretend to say that you love me too sincerely to mean to offend me, even when a harsh speech has escaped you in a moment of haste or anger.”

“Offend you!” exclaimed Heathcote, with the air of a man utterly puzzled and confused, – “offend you! How could I dream of offending you? You were not used to be touchy, Agincourt; what, in the name of wonder, could make you fancy I meant offence?”

The look of his face, the very accent in which he spoke, were so unaffectedly honest and sincere that the youth saw at once how unconsciously his rude speech had escaped him, and that not a trace of it remained in his memory.

“I have been so anxious to see you, Charley,” said he, in his usual tone, “for some days back. I wanted to consult you about O’Shea. My uncle has given me an appointment for him, and I can’t find out where he is. Then there ‘s another thing; that strange Yankee, Quackinboss, – you remember him at Marlia, long ago. He found out, by some means, that I was at the hotel here, and he writes to beg I ‘ll engage I can’t say how many rooms for himself and some friends who are to arrive this evening. I don’t think you are listening to me, are you?”

“Yes, I hear you, – go on.”

“I mean to clear out of the diggin’s if these Yankees come, and you must tell me where to go. I don’t dislike the ‘Kernal,’ but his following would be awful, eh?”

“Yes, quite so.”

“What do you mean by ‘Yes’? Is it that you agree with me, or that you haven’t paid the slightest attention to one word I’ve said?”

“Look here, Agincourt,” said Charley, passing his arm inside the other’s, and leading him up and down the room. “I wish I had not changed my mind; I wish I had gone to India. I have utterly failed in all that I hoped to have done here, and I have made my poor father more unhappy than ever.”

“Is he so determined to marry this widow, then?”

“She is gone. She left us more than a week ago, without saying why or for whither. I have not the slightest clew to her conduct, nor can I guess where she is.”

“When was it she left this?”

“On Wednesday week last.”

“The very day O’Shea started.”

They each looked steadfastly at the other; and at last Agincourt said, —

“Would n’t that be a strange solution of the riddle, Charley? On the last night we dined together you may remember I promised to try what I could make of the negotiation; and so I praised the widow, extolled her beauty, and hinted that she was exactly the clever sort of woman that helps a man on to fortune.”

“How I wish I had gone to India!” muttered Charles, and so immersed in his own cares as not to hear one word the other was saying.

“If I were to talk in that way, Charley, you ‘d be the very first to call out, What selfishness! what an utter indifference to all feelings but your own! You are merely dealing with certain points that affect yourself, and you forget a girl that loves you.”

“Am I so sure of that? Am I quite certain that an old attachment – she owned to me herself that she liked him, that tutor fellow of yours – has not a stronger hold on her heart than I have? There ‘s a letter from him. I have n’t opened it I have a sort of half suspicion that when I do read it I ‘ll have a violent desire to shoot him. It is just as if I knew that, inside that packet there, was an insult awaiting me, and yet I ‘d like to spare myself the anger it will cause me when I break the seal; and so I walk round the table and look at the letter, and turn it over, and at last – ” With the word he tore open the envelope, and unfolded the note. “Has he not given me enough of it? One, two, three, ay, four pages! When a man writes at such length, he is certain to be either very tiresome or very disagreeable, not to say that I never cared much for your friend Mr. Layton; he gave himself airs with us poor unlettered folk – ”

“Come, come, Charley; if you were not in an ill mood, you ‘d never say anything so ungenerous.”

It was possible that he felt the rebuke to be just, for he did not reply, but, seating himself in the window, began to read the letter. More than once did Agincourt make some remark, or ask some question. Of even his movements of impatience Heathcote took no note, as, deeply immersed in the contents of the letter, he continued to read on.

“Well, I’ll leave you for a while, Charley,” said he, at last; “perhaps I may drop in to see you this evening.”

“Wait; stay where you are!” said Heathcote, abruptly, and yet not lifting his eyes from the lines before him. “What a story! – what a terrible story!” muttered he to himself. Then beckoning to Agincourt to come near, he caught him by the arm, and in a low whisper said, “Who do you think she turns out to be? The widow of Godfrey Hawke!”

“I never so much as heard of Godfrey Hawke.”

“Oh, I forgot; you were an infant at the time. But surely you must have heard or read of that murder at Jersey? – a well-known gambler, named Hawke, poisoned by his associates, while on a visit at his house.”

“And who is she?”

“Mrs. Penthony Morris. Here’s the whole story. But begin at the beginning.”

Seated side by side, they now proceeded to read the letter over together, nor did either speak a word till it was finished.

“And to be so jolly with all that on her mind!” exclaimed Agincourt. “Why, she most have the courage of half a dozen men.”

“I now begin to read the meaning of many things I never could make out her love of retirement, – she, a woman essentially of the world and society, estranging herself from every one; her strange relations with Clara, a thing which used to puzzle me beyond measure; and lastly, her remarkable injunction to me when we parted, her prayer to be forgotten, or, at least, never mentioned.”

“You did not tell me of that.”

“Nor was it my intention to have done so now; it escaped me involuntarily.”

“And what is to become of Clara?”

“Don’t you see that she has found an uncle, – this Mr. Winthrop, – with whom, and our friend Quackinboss, she is to arrive at Rome to-night or to-morrow?”

“Oh, these are the friends for whom I was to bespeak an apartment; so, then, I ‘ll not leave my hotel. I ‘m delighted to have such neighbors.”

“May ought to go and meet her; she ought to bring her here, and of course she will do so. But, first of all, to show her this letter; or shall I merely tell her certain parts of it?”

“I ‘d let her read every line of it, and I ‘d give it to Sir William also.”

Charles started at the counsel; but after a moment he said, “I believe you are right. The sooner we clear away these mysteries, the sooner we shall deal frankly together.”

“I have come to beg your pardon, May,” said Charles, as he stood on the sill of her door. “I could scarcely hope you ‘d grant it save from very pity for me, for I have gone through much this last day or two. But, besides your pardon, I want your advice. When you have read over that letter, – read it twice, – I ‘ll come back again.”

May made him no answer, but, taking the letter, turned away. He closed the door noiselessly, and left her. Whatever may be the shock a man experiences on learning that the individual with whom for a space of time he has been associating on terms of easy intimacy should turn out to be one notorious in crime or infamous in character, to a woman the revulsion of feeling under like circumstances is tenfold more painful. It is not alone that such casualties are so much more rare, but in the confidences between women there is so much more interchange of thought and feeling that the shock is proportionately greater. That a man should be arraigned before a tribunal is a stain, but to a woman it is a brand burned upon her forever.

There had been a time when May and Mrs. Morris lived together as sisters. May had felt all the influence of a character more formed than her own, and of one who, gifted and accomplished as she was, knew how to extend that influence with consummate craft. In those long-ago days May had confided to her every secret of her heart, – her early discontents with Charles Heathcote; her pettish misgivings about the easy confidence of his security; her half flirtation with young Layton, daily inclining towards something more serious still. She recalled to mind, too, how Mrs. Morris had encouraged her irritation against Charles, magnifying all his failings into faults, and exaggerating the natural indolence of his nature into the studied indifference of one “sure of his bond.” And last of all she thought of her in her relations with Clara, – poor Clara, whose heart, overflowing with affection, had been repelled and schooled into a mere mockery of sentiment.

That her own fortune had been wasted and dissipated by this woman she well knew. Without hesitation or inquiry, May had signed everything that was put before her, and now she really could not tell what remained to her of all that wealth of which she used to hear so much and care so little.

These thoughts tracked her along every line of the letter, and through all the terrible details she was reading; the woman herself, in her craft and subtlety, absorbed her entire attention. Even when she had read to the end, and learned the tidings of Clara’s fortune, her mind would involuntarily turn back to Mrs. Penthony Morris and her wiles. It was in an actual terror at the picture her mind had drawn of this deep designing woman that Charles found her sitting with the letter before her, and her eyes staring wildly and on vacancy.

“I see, May,” said he, gently taking her hand, and seating himself at her side, “this dreadful letter has shocked you, as it has shocked me; but remember, dearest, we are only looking back at a peril we have all escaped. She has not separated us; she has not involved us in the disgrace of relationship to her; she is not one of us; she is not anything even to poor Clara; and though we may feel how narrowly we have avoided all our dangers, let us be grateful for that safety for which we really contributed nothing ourselves. Is it not so, dearest May? We have gained the harbor, and never knew that we had crossed a quicksand.”

“And, after all, Charles, painful as all this is now, and must be when remembered hereafter, it is not without its good side. We will all draw closer to each other, and love more fondly where we can trust implicitly.”

“And you forgive me, May?”

“Certainly not – if you assume forgiveness in that fashion!”

Now, though this true history records that May Leslie arose with a deep flush upon her cheek, and her massy roll of glossy hair somewhat dishevelled, there is no mention of what the precise fashion was in which Charles Heathcote sued out his pardon; nor, indeed, with our own narrow experiences of such incidents, do we care to hazard a conjecture.

“And now as to my father, May. How much of this letter shall we tell him?”

“All; every word of it. It will pain him, as it has pained us, or even more; but, that pain once over, he will come back, without one reserved thought, to all his old affection for us, and we shall be happy as we used to be.”