Dalhousie perceived that the labyrinth he was engaged in exploring had not been the labor of the former owner of Bellevue, and he was perplexed to understand why Jaspar had taken such apparent pains to disarrange them. But Jaspar did have a motive; he had produced the disorder in his careless search for any paper which might be evidence against him. So heedlessly, however, had he ransacked the drawers, that, if any such were there, they must have escaped his notice. He was too much excited to do the work with the attention his own safety demanded.
Dalhousie continued to examine the papers, and Jaspar still trembled lest something might turn up which would give the overseer a confirmation of the opinions he had expressed at Vicksburg. Still Jaspar had not the courage to undertake the task himself. He allowed the overseer to perform it, in the very face of the danger he wished to escape.
The overseer seemed to Jaspar"s troubled vision perfectly indifferent.
He could discover no anxiety in his features, to indicate that he had any other purpose than to do his employer"s bidding. A more close inspection would have developed a slight twinkle, as of antic.i.p.ation, in the marble face of Dalhousie.
As he turned paper after paper, his eye rested upon a packet enclosed in a blank envelope. His curiosity was aroused, and, glancing indifferently at Jaspar, he saw that his piercing eye regarded him with intense scrutiny. Continuing his labor without disturbing the mysterious packet, he waited until the sharp eye of his companion was removed from him.
On the table by the side of Jaspar was a bottle of brandy, at which, at short intervals, the miserable man paid his devoir. Dalhousie did not, therefore, have to wait long before the keen watcher left his chair, and, with his back to him, took a long draught of the exciting beverage.
The overseer, seizing the favorable opportunity, slipped the packet into his pocket. As indifferently as before, he completed the task, and Jaspar was relieved when he saw the papers again filed away.
Dalhousie sought his room, and, scarcely heeding the salutation of his wife, he seated himself, and drew forth the packet. Removing the blank envelope, he found it was a letter, directed to "Emily Dumont," with a request to Mr. Faxon that it might be delivered to her after the writer"s decease. This seemed to imply that the writer had intended the clergyman as the keeper of the letter; but with this surmise the overseer did not trouble himself. He turned the letter over and over, examined the seal of Colonel Dumont, which was upon it, and, at last, as though he had satisfied the warning voice of conscience, he snapped the wax, and opened it. The letter was quite a lengthy one, yet, without raising his eyes, he completed the reading of it. A faint smile of satisfaction played upon his lips, as he re-folded the paper, and returned it to the envelope.
"You have a letter, Francois?" said his wife, who had watched him in silence as he read, and who noticed the complacent smile its contents had produced.
"Yes, Delia, and our fortune is at last come," replied Dalhousie, rising, and bestowing a kiss upon the fair cheek of the lady.
"Is it from France?"
"No, dear; it is from the land of spirits!" answered Dalhousie, with a good-natured laugh.
"Indeed! I was not aware that you had a correspondent there."
"But I have; and I am exceedingly obliged to him for putting me in possession of such useful information as this letter contains."
"Pray, who is your ghostly correspondent?"
"Colonel Dumont,--a deceased brother of the worthy Jaspar, in whose employ we now are."
"Do not jest, Francois!" said the lady, as a feeling akin to superst.i.tion rose in her mind.
"Jest or not, the letter was written by him," continued her husband, still retaining his playful smile.
"To you?"
"Not exactly; but I presume he meant it for me, or it would not have slipped so easily through Mr. Dumont"s fingers into mine."
"To whom is it directed, Francois?"
"You grow inquisitive, Delia. I will tell you all about it in a few days. I must go now and see that the hands are all in their quarters;"
and Dalhousie, to avoid unpleasant interrogatories, left the room.
The overseer went the rounds of the quarters, more as a matter of form than of any interest he felt in his occupation. A gentleman by birth and education, these duties were extremely distasteful to him,--embraced because necessity compelled him. His mind seemed far away from his business, for a party of negroes pa.s.sed him on his return, upon whom he did not bestow the usual benediction the boys receive when found out after hours.
"Strike while the iron is hot," muttered he, as he entered the house, and gave his lantern to a servant. "If I don"t do it to-night, it may be too late another time. The letter is in safe hands; and, as to the other traps, I must get them if I can. At any rate, I will try."
Approaching the door of the library, he knocked, and was requested to enter. Under pretence of receiving directions for his next day"s operations upon the plantation, he entered, and opened a conversation with Jaspar. Walking carelessly up and down the room while his employer issued his commands, he occasionally cast a furtive glance at the secretary. Then, narrowing down his walk, he approached nearer and nearer to it, until his swinging arm could touch it as he pa.s.sed.
Finally he stopped, and leaned against the secretary, with his hands behind him. He appeared very thoughtful and attentive, while Jaspar, glad to find a theme he could converse upon, expatiated upon his favorite methods of managing stock and crops. The overseer listened patiently to all he said, occasionally interrupting with a word of approbation. The enthusiastic planter, suspecting nothing of the overseer, labored diligently in his argument, and did not notice that, when the attentive listener carelessly put his hands into his pockets, he conveyed with them the key of one of the drawers.
Dalhousie, having effected the object which brought him to the library, soon grew tired of the planter"s arguments, and edged towards the door, through which he rather rudely made his exit.
Jaspar again relapsed into the moody melancholy from which the presence of the overseer had roused him. Sinking back into his chair, he again was a prey to the armed fears that continually goaded him. Occasionally he roused from his stupor, and, driven by the startling apparition of future retribution, paced the room in the most intense nervous excitement. Frequent were the stops he made at the brandy-bottle on the table; but, for a time, even the brandy-fiend refused to comfort him,--refused to excite his brain, or pour a healing balm upon his consuming misery. Again he sunk into his chair, overcome by the torture of his emotions, and again the gnawing worm forced him to the bottle, until, at last, nearly stupefied by the liquor, he slumbered uneasily in his chair. But the terrible apparition, which seldom left him when awake, was constant in his dreams; and, just as he was about to plunge into the awful abyss that always yawned before him, he awoke, and staggered to the bottle again. A gleam of consciousness now visited his inebriated mind, and he bethought himself of retiring. With a dim sense of his usual precaution, he reeled to the secretary, and attempted to lock the drawers. He discovered that one key was missing; but, too much intoxicated to reason upon the circ.u.mstance, he took another draught of brandy, and ambled towards his sleeping-room. He was too far gone to effect a landing at the head of the stairs, and fell full-length upon the floor when he released his hold of the banister.
Dalhousie was still up, and his knowledge of Jaspar"s habits enabled him to judge the occasion of the noise he heard, and he immediately hastened to the rescue. "Lucky!" muttered he, as he lifted the fallen man. "He must have been intoxicated when he examined those papers, or he would have seen that letter."
Jaspar, who had not entirely lost his senses, muttered something about an accident, and clung closely to his companion, who soon deposited him on his bed.
The overseer, instead of returning to his room, descended to the library, where the light was still burning. Locking the door, he seated himself in the large stuffed chair, and drew from his pocket the letter he had purloined from the secretary. Opening it, he proceeded to a re-perusal of it. The letter was as follows:
"MY DEAR CHILD:--When you read this letter, your father will be no more. The last act of affection will have been performed, and the ground closed over your only earthly protector. I am aware that you will be exposed to many trials and temptations. The latter you are, I trust, prepared to resist; the former must come to all. I feel that I have done my duty to you, not only in bestowing an abundance of this world"s goods, but that I have not entirely failed to implant in your mind the treasure "which neither moth nor rust can corrupt." I have done all that I could do, and in a short time I must lay my body in the grave, and leave you an orphan. But you are in the hands, and under the protection, of a Father who is infinitely more able to take care of you than I have been. Into His hands, with my ransomed spirit, I undoubtingly commit you.
"As I write this letter, I feel the hand of death upon me. In a few short days, it may be only hours, I must go. I am the less ready to bid you the everlasting adieu when I think of the dangers that may surround you. In my last hours I am doomed to the torments of suspicion. I pray G.o.d they may be groundless. Perhaps they are only idle fancies, the dotings of an over-anxious father. I feel, as the sands of life are fast ebbing out, that some great calamity is lowering over you. I know not that a remark I accidentally overheard should thus haunt me; but it has roused my suspicions, and the presage of calamity will not depart from me. I cannot, with the warning voice ever ringing in my mind, help taking steps to guard you against the worst that may befall you.
"My dear child, if I should disclose my suspicions, and they should prove unreasonable, I shall have done a grievous wrong to him I suspect. Although you cannot save me from the misery of doubting in my last hour, you can save me from injuring another in your good opinion. If I have wronged him, let the injury die with me. If my suspicions are not groundless, I offer you the means of saving yourself from the calamity that impends.
"Should any event occur after my death which deprives you of any of your inheritance, follow the directions I now give you.
"In the back of the lower drawer of the secretary you will find a secret aperture. The back of the drawer is a thick board, upon which is screwed, on the lower side, a thin slat. Take out the screws and remove the piece they secure, and the aperture will be seen. It contains a sealed packet, the contents of which require no explanation.
"If nothing happens after my decease, and you peaceably obtain all your rights, burn the packet without opening it. My unjust suspicions, then, cannot influence you, or injure the person to whom they refer.
"This letter you will receive from Mr. Faxon, to whom I recommend you for counsel and consolation in every trial.
"And now, my child, I must bid you farewell. I feel my end approaching. May G.o.d forever bless and preserve you!
"Your dying father,
"EDGAR DUMONT."
Dalhousie perused and re-perused this letter, until its contents were fixed in his mind. He had many doubts and scruples, both prudential and conscientious, in regard to the step he was about to take: but the chimera of fortune prompted him to risk all in the great project he had matured. Taking from his pocket a small screw-driver, with which he had prepared himself, he opened the drawer designated in the letter, the key of which he had secured. Emptying the drawer of its contents, he turned it over, and, to his great delight, perceived the slat as described in the letter. Removing the screws, he soon had the satisfaction of holding in his hand the packet which, he doubted not, would restore the heiress of Bellevue to her home and her estates, if she were still alive; or which would give him a hold upon Jaspar, by means of which he could make his fortune.
Dalhousie was not a natural-born villain. It was the pressure of necessity, the almost unconscious yielding of a weak resolution, which had led him thus far in his present illegal and dishonorable course. Of the heiress he knew nothing; and the thought of restoring her had never entered his head, much more his heart. The great purpose of his life was to make his fortune, and it was this idea alone which influenced him in the present instance. He had entered upon his duties at Bellevue only the day before; but so impatient was he to realize the hope which had brought him there, that every hour seemed burdened with the weight of weeks.
Carefully depositing its contents as he had found them, he locked the drawer, and put the key upon the floor.
CHAPTER XIX.
"The accursed plot he overheard, Its every point portrayed; Yet ere the villain"s words were cold.
The counter-plot was made."
Hatchie was chagrined at the loss of his prisoner. His diligent search was of no avail. The Chalmetta"s boat, which lay at the wood-yard in the morning, was gone; so he had no doubt Maxwell had made his escape in it.
Having no further motive in remaining at the wood-yard, he procured a small canoe, with the intention of joining his mistress at Cottage Island.
Seated in the stern of the canoe, Hatchie propelled it with only sufficient force to avoid the eddies which would have whirled his frail bark in every direction. His thoughts wandered over the events of the past few days. He moralized upon the conduct of the attorney and the uncle, and nursed his indignation over them. Hatchie was a moralist in his own way, but not a moralist only. The great virtue of his philosophy, unlike much of a more scholastic origin, was its practical utility. From the past, with its conquered trials, he turned to the future, to inquire for its dangers, to ask what snares it had spread to entangle the fair being whom he worshipped with all a lover"s fondness, without the lover"s sentiment.