"Both are real; I _was_ what you have hitherto seen me, years ago. I _am_ what you see now; but I can at will throw off the present and identify myself with the past. You see, Robert Otis, I give confidence when I ask it--a breath of what you have seen or heard to-day, repeated to Mr. Leicester, would send me from his service. But I do not fear to trust you!"
"There is no cause of fear--I never betrayed anything in my life--only convince me that you mean no evil to him."
"I only mean to prevent evil! and I will!"
"All this perplexes me," said Robert, raising one hand to his forehead--"I seem to have known you many years; my heart warms toward you as it never did to any one but my aunt."
"That is right; an honest heart seldom betrays itself. But hush! the young lady is coming; G.o.d help her, _she_ loves that man."
"It is worship--idolatry--not love; that seems but a feeble word; it gives one the heart-ache to witness its ravages on her sweet person."
"And does she feel so much?" said Jacob, with emotion.
Before Robert could answer, the light step of Florence was heard on the stairs; when she entered the room, Jacob stood near the window, holding his hat awkwardly between both hands, and with his eyes bent upon the floor.
"You will give this to Mr. Leicester," she said, still radiant and beautiful with happiness, placing a note in Jacob"s hand--"here is something for yourself, I only wish it could make you as happy as--as--that it may be of use, I mean." Blushing and hesitating thus in her speech, she placed a small gold coin upon the note. Poor girl, it was a pocket-piece given by her father, but in her wild grat.i.tude she would have cast thousands upon the man whose coming had brought so much happiness.
Jacob received the coin, looked at her earnestly for a moment, half extended his hand, and then thrust it into his pocket.
"Thank you, ma"am, a thousand times--I will do the errand right off!"
and putting on his hat, Jacob strode from the house, muttering, as he cast a hurried glance around the little garden, "It seems like shooting a robin on her nest--I must think it all over again."
Robert would have followed Jacob Strong, for his mind was in tumult, and he panted for some more perfect elucidation of the mystery that surrounded this singular man. But Florence laid her hand gently on his arm, and drew him into the window recess: her face was bright with smiles and bathed in blushes. "You were ready to go without wishing me joy," she said; "and yet you must have guessed what was in that precious, precious note!"
Robert felt a strange thrill creep through his frame. He turned his eyes from the soft orbs looking into his, for their brilliancy pained him.
"No," he said, almost bitterly, "I cannot guess--perhaps I do not care to guess!"
"Oh, Robert! you do not know what happiness is; no human being ever was so happy before. How cold--how calm you are! You could feel for me when I was miserable, but now--now it is wrong: he charged me to keep it secret, but my heart is so full, Robert; stoop and let me whisper it--tell n.o.body, he would be very angry--but this week we are to be married!"
"Now," said Robert, drawing a deep breath, and speaking in a voice so calm that it seemed like prophecy--"now I feel for you more than ever."
The little, eager hand fell from his arm, and in a voice that thrilled with disappointment, Florence said,
"Then you will not wish me joy!"
Robert took her hand, grasped it a moment in his, and flinging aside the cloud of lace that had fallen over them, left the room. Florence followed him with her eyes, and while he was in sight a shade of sadness hung upon her sweet face--but her happiness was too perfect even for this little shadow to visit it more than a moment. She sunk upon an ottoman in the recess, and, with her eyes fixed upon the autumn flowers without, subsided into a reverie, the sweetest, the brightest that ever fell upon a youthful heart.
CHAPTER XV.
THE MOTHER"S APPEAL.
Wrong to one"s self but wrongs the world; G.o.d linketh soul so close to soul, That germs of evil, once unfurled, Spread through the life and mock control.
Pen, ink, and paper lay upon the table. The curtains were flung back, admitting the broad sunshine that revealed more clearly than the usual soft twilight with which Leicester was in the habit of enveloping himself, the lines which time and pa.s.sion sometimes allowed to run wild, sometimes curbed with an iron will, had left on his handsome features.
Papers were on the table, not letters, but sc.r.a.ps that bore a business aspect, some half printed, others without signature, but still in legal form, as notes of hand or checks are given.
Leicester took one of these checks--a printed blank--and gazed on it some moments with a fixed and thoughtful scrutiny. He laid it gently down, took up a pen, and held the drop of ink on its point up to the light, as if even the color were an object of interest. He wrote a word or two, merely filling up the blank before him, but simple as the act seemed, that hand, usually firm as marble, quivered on the paper, imperceptibly, it is true, but enough to render the words unsteady. His face, too, was fiercely pale, if I may use the term, for there was something in the expression of those features that sent a sort of hard glow through their whiteness. It was the glow of a desperate will mastering fear.
With a quick and scornful quiver of the lip, he tore the half-filled check in twain, and cast the fragments into the fire. "Am I growing old?" he said aloud, "or is this pure cowardice? Fear!--what have I to fear?" he continued, hushing his voice. "It _cannot_ be brought back to me. A chain that has grown, link by link, for years, will not break with any common wrench. Still, if it could be avoided, the boy loves me!--well, and have not others loved me? Of what use is affection, if it adds nothing to one"s enjoyments? If the old planter had left my pretty Florence the property at once, why then--but till she is of age--that is almost two years--till she is of age we must live."
Half in thought, half in words, these ideas pa.s.sed through the brain and upon the lip of William Leicester. When his mind was once made up to the performance of an act, it seldom paused even to excuse a sin to his own soul, but this was not exactly a question of right and wrong: that had been too often decided with his conscience to admit of the least hesitation. There was peril in the act he meditated--peril to himself--this made his brow pale and his hand unsteady. During a whole life of fraud and evil-doing, he had never once placed himself within the grasp of the law. His instruments, less guilty, and far less treacherous than himself, had often suffered for crimes that his keen intellect had suggested. For years he had luxuriated upon the fruit of iniquities prompted by himself, but with which his personal connection could never be proved. But for once his subtle forethought in selecting and training an agent who should bear the responsibility of crime while he reaped the benefit, had failed. The time had arrived when Robert Otis was, if ever, to become useful to his teacher. But evil fruit in that warm, generous nature had been slow in ripening. With all his subtle craft, Leicester dared not propose the fraud which was to supply him with means for two years" residence in Europe.
There was something in the boy too clear-sighted and prompt even for his wily influence, and now, after years of training worthy of Lucifer himself, Leicester, for the first time, was afraid to trust his chosen instrument. Robert might be deluded into wrong--might innocently become his victim, but Leicester despaired of making him, with his bright intellect and honorable impulses, the princ.i.p.al or accomplice of an act such as he meditated.
A decanter of brandy stood upon the table--Leicester filled a goblet and half drained it. This in no way disturbed the pallor of his countenance, but his hand grew firm, and he filled up several of the printed checks with a rapidity that betrayed the misgivings that still beset him.
He examined the papers attentively after they were written, and, selecting one, laid it in an embroidered letter-case which he took from his bosom; the others he placed in an old copy-book that had been lying open before him all the time; it was the same book that Robert Otis had taken from his aunt"s stand-drawer on Thanksgiving night.
When these arrangements were finished, Leicester drew out his watch, and seemed to be waiting for some one that he expected.
Again he opened the copy-book and compared the checks with other papers it contained. The scrutiny seemed to satisfy him, for a smile gleamed in his eyes as he closed the book.
Just then, Robert Otis came in. His step had become quiet, and the rosy buoyancy of look and manner that had been so interesting a few months before, was entirely gone. There was restraint--nay, something amounting almost to dislike in his air as he drew a seat to the table.
"You are looking pale, Robert; has anything gone amiss at the counting-house?" said Leicester, regarding his visitor with interest.
"Nothing!"
"Are you ill then?"
"No, I am well--quite well!"
"But something distresses you; those shadows under the eye, the rigid lines about the mouth--there is trouble beneath them. Tell me what it is--am I not your friend?"
Robert smiled a meaning, bitter smile, that seemed strangely unnatural on those fresh lips. Leicester read the meaning of that silent reproach, and it warned him to be careful.
"Surely," he said, "you have not been at F---- street, without your friend?--you have not indulged in high play, and no prudent person to guide you?"
"No!" said Robert, with bitter energy--"that night I did play--how, why, it is impossible for me to remember. Those few hours of wild sin were enough--they have stained my soul--they have plunged me into debt--they have made me ashamed to look a good man in the face."
"But I warned, I cautioned you!"
Robert did not answer, but by the gleam of his eyes and the quiver of his lips, you could see that words of fire were smothered in his heart.
"You would have plunged into the game deeper and deeper, but for me."
"Perhaps I should--it was a wild dream--I was mad--the very memory almost makes me insane. I, so young, so cherished, in debt--and how--to what amount?"
"Enough--I am afraid," said Leicester, gently--"enough to cover that pretty farm, and all the bank stock your nice old aunt has sc.r.a.ped together. But what of that?--she is in no way responsible, and gambling debts are only debts of honor--no law reaches them?"
"I will not make sin the shelter of meanness," answered the youth, with a wild flash of feeling; "these men may be villains, but they did not force themselves upon me. I sought them of my own free choice; no--I cannot say that either, for heaven knows I never wished to enter that den!"
"It was I that invited, nay, urged you!"