"If the letter brings me good news, I shall thank you warmly, Dr.
Englehart; if not, I shall try to believe you unconscious of its contents."
"Tanks from your lips would, indeed, seem priceless," he remarked, courteously, as with many bows and shrugs he laid it on the table before me, bringing his s.h.a.ggy head by such means much closer to my hand than I cared to know it should be, under any circ.u.mstances.
With a gesture of inexpressible disgust, regretted the next moment, as I reflected that, to bring me this letter, he might be overstepping common rules, I raised the envelope to the light and recognized, to my intense disappointment, the well-known characters of Bainrothe"s--small, rigid, neat, constrained.
My heart, which a moment before had beat audibly to my own ear, sank like a stone in my breast, and I sat for a time holding the letter mutely, uncertain how to proceed. Should I return it unread, and thus hurl the gauntlet in the traitor"s face, or be governed by expedience (word ever so despised by me of old), and trace the venom of the viper, by his trail, back to his native den?
After a brief conflict of feeling, I determined on the wiser course--that of self-humiliation as a measure of profound policy.
I broke the seal, the well-known "dove-and-vulture" effigy which he called in heraldry "The quarry" and claimed as his rightful crest. Very significantly, indeed, did it strike me now, though I had jested on the subject so merrily of old with Evelyn and George Gaston.
The letter was of very recent date, and ran as follows--I have the original still, and this is an exact copy:
"On September 1st, or as soon thereafter as feasible, I shall call to see you, Miriam, in your retirement, which I am glad to hear has so far been beneficial. Should I find you in a condition to _make_ conditions, I shall lay before you a very advantageous offer of marriage I had received for you before your shipwreck. Should you accept this offer, and attach your signature to a few papers that I shall bring with me (papers important to the respectability of your whole family as well as my own), I shall at once resign to you your father"s house and the guardianship of Mabel. The chimera that alarmed you to frenzy can have no further existence, either in fact or fancy. I am about to contract an advantageous marriage with a foreign lady of rank, wealth, and beauty, to whom I hope soon to introduce you. I need not mention her name, if you are wise. Be patient and cheerful; cultivate your talents, and take care of your good looks--no woman can afford to dispense with these, however gifted; and you will soon find yourself as free as that "chartered libertine" the air, for which last two words I am afraid you will be malicious enough to subst.i.tute the name you will not find appended, of your true friend and guardian, B.B."
Had Wentworth spoken, then? Did he know of my immurement? Was it his beloved presence, his dear hand, that were to be made the prize of my silence and submission? Was the bitter pill of humiliation I was now swallowing to be gilded thus? No, no--a thousand times, no! He was not the man with whom to make such conditions--the man I loved--nay worshiped almost. He was of the old heroic mould, that would have preferred any certainty to suspense, and death itself to an instant"s degradation.
He deemed me dead, and the obstacle that had risen between us needed no explanation now. The waves had swallowed all necessities like this. But, had he known me the inmate of a mad-house, no bolts or bars would have withheld him from my presence. His own eyes could alone have convinced him of such ruin as was alleged against me by these friends.
From this survey of my utter helplessness I turned suddenly to confront the deep, dark, salient eyes of the disciple of Hahnemann, real or pretended, fixed upon me with a glance that even his blue spectacles could not deprive of its subtle intensity.
Where had I seen before orbs of the same snake-like peculiarity of expression, or caught the outline of the profile which suddenly riveted my gaze as the light partially revealed it, then subsided into shadow again! I pondered this question for a moment while Dr. Englehart, silent, expectant perhaps, stood with his hand tightly grasping the back of a chair, on the seat of which he reposed one knee, in a position such as defiant school-boys often a.s.sume before a pedagogue.
As I have said, his head and body were again in shadow, as was, indeed, most of the chamber, for the rays which struggled through the thick ground gla.s.s of my astral lamp were as mild as moonbeams, and as unsatisfactory. But the light fell strong and red beneath the shade, and the full glare of the astral lamp seemed centred on that pudgy hand, in its inevitable glove, that had fixed so firm a gripe on the back of the mahogany chair as to strain open one of the fingers of the tight, tawny kid-glove worn by Dr. Englehart. This had parted slightly just above the knuckle of the front-finger, and revealed the cotton stuffing within.
Nay, more, the ruby ring with its peculiar device was thus exposed, which graced the slender finger of the charlatan! I do not apply this term as concerned the profession he affected at all, but merely (as shall be seen later) as one appropriate to himself individually.
There must be beings of all kinds to const.i.tute a world, philosophers tell us, and he, no doubt, so long in ignorance of it, had stumbled suddenly on his proper vocation at last. The _role_ he was playing (so far successfully) had doubtless been the occasion of an exquisite delight to him, unknown to simpler mortals, who masquerade not without dread misgivings of detection. I for one, when affecting any costume not essentially belonging to me, or covering my face even with a paper-mask for holiday diversion, have had a feeling of unusual transparency and obviousness, so to speak, which precluded on my part every thing like a successful maintenance of the part I was attempting to play. It was as if some mocking voice was saying: "This is Miriam Monfort, the true Miriam; the person you have known before as such was only making believe--but the Simon-pure is before you, a volume of folly that all who run may read! Behold her--she was never half so evident before!"
But to digress thus in the very moment of detection, of recognition, seems irrelevant. The flash of conviction was as instantaneous in its action in my mind as that of the lightning when it strikes its object. I stood confounded, yet enlightened, all ablaze!--but the subject of this discovery did not seem in the least to apprehend it, or to believe it possible, in his mad, mole-like effrontery of self-sufficiency, that by his own track he could be betrayed.
"Vat ansair shall I bear to Mr. Bainrothe from his vard?" asked the Mercury of my Jove, clasping his costumed hands together, then dropping them meekly before him. "I vait de reply of Miss Monfort vid patience.
Dere is pen, and ink, and papair, I perceive, on dat table. Be good enough to write at once your reply to de vise conditions of your excellent guardian."
"You know them, then?" I said, quickly, glancing at him with a derisive scorn that did not escape his observation.
"I have dat honnair," was the hypocritical reply, accompanied by a profound bow.
"Disgrace, rather," I subst.i.tuted. "But you have your own stand-point of view, of course. The shield that to you is white, to me is black as Erebus. You remember the knights of fable?"
"Always the same--always indomitable!" I heard him murmur, so low that it was marvelous how the words reached my ear, tense as was every sense with disdainful excitement. Yet he simply said aloud, after his impulsive stage-whisper: "Excuse me! I understand not your allusions. I pretend not to de cla.s.sics; my leetle pills--" and he hesitated, or affected to do so.
"Enough--I waive all apologies; they only prolong an interview singularly distasteful to me for many reasons. You are behind the curtain, I cannot doubt, and understand not only the contents of that absurd letter, but its unprincipled references. To Basil Bainrothe I will never address one line; but you may say to him that I scorn him and his conditions. Yet, helpless as I am, and in his hands, tell him to bring his emanc.i.p.ation papers, and I will sign them, though they cost me all I possess of property. My sister I will not surrender any longer to his care, nor my right in her, which, with or without his consent, is perfect when I reach my majority. As to the suitor to whom he alluded, he had better be allowed to speak for himself when this transaction is over. I shall then decide very calmly on his merits, tarnished, as these might seem, from such recommendation."
"He is one who has loved you long, lady," said the man, sadly, speaking ever in that made and husky voice (wonderful actor that he was by nature!), which he sustained so well that, had I not unmistakably identified him, it might have imposed on my ear as real. "Hear what has been written on this subject: When others have forsaken you and left you to your fate, he has continued faithful to your memory. The revelation of your immurement was made simultaneously to two men who called themselves your lovers, and its sad necessity explained by your ever-watchful guardian. One of these lovers repudiated your claims upon him, and turned coldly from the idea of uniting his fate to that of one who had even for an hour been a suspected lunatic; the other declared himself willing to take her as she was to his arms, even though her own were loaded with the chains of a mad-house! Penniless and abandoned by all the world, and with a clouded name, he woos her as his wife--the woman he adores!"
And, as he read, or seemed to read, these words, with scarce an accent to mar their impetuous flow, Dr. Englehart drew in his breath with the hissing sound of pa.s.sion, and folded his arms tightly across his padded breast, as if they enfolded the bride he was suing for in another"s name.
"And who, let me ask, is this Paladin of chivalry?" I inquired, derisively. "Give me his name, that I may consider the subject well and thoroughly before we meet at last."
"Excuse me if I refuse to give the name of eider of dese gentlemen at dis onhappy season," he rejoined. "Wen de brain is all right again"--tapping his own forehead--"your guardian will conduct the faithful knight to kneel at de feet of her he loves so well."
"And the other--where is he?" fell involuntarily from my lips--my heaving heart--an inquiry that I regretted as soon as it was uttered; for, affecting sorrowful mystery, the man inclined himself toward me and whispered in my ear confidentially:
"Plighted to another, and gone where no eyes of yours shall rest on him again."
"Pander--liar--spy!" burst from my pa.s.sionate lips as in all the fury of desperation I turned from the creature who had so wantonly wounded my self-respect, and waved to him to begone. Another name quivered on my lips, but I checked it on their threshold after that first burst of indignation instantly subdued.
I was not brave enough nor strong enough to hazard a shaft like that which might have been returned to me so deathfully. I would let the barrier stand which he had erected between us, and which to demolish would be to lay myself open, perhaps, to insult of the darkest description.
Let the ostrich with his head in the sand still imagine himself unseen; the masquerader still conceive himself secure beneath his paper travesty; the serpent still coil apparently unrecognized beside the bare, gray stone that reveals him to the eye--I was too cowardly, too feeble, to cope with strategy and double-dyed duplicity like this!
So the man went his way with his silly secret undiscovered, as he deemed, and that it might remain so to the end, as far as he could know, I devoutly prayed. For I knew of old the unscrupulous lengths to which, when nerved by hate or disappointment or pa.s.sions of any kind, he could go, without a particle of mercy for his victims or remorse for his ill-doing.
When Dr. Englehart was gone--for so I still choose to call him for some reasons, although I give my reader credit for still more astuteness than I possessed myself, and believe that he has long ago recognized, through this cloud of mystery and travesty thrown about him, an old acquaintance--the child Ernie rose from the bed on which he had lain tremulous and observant, with his small hands clinched, his eyes on fire. "Ernie kill bad man!" he exclaimed, ferociously, "for trouble missy. Give Ernie letter--he carry it away and hide it; bad letter--make poor Mirry cry."
"No, Ernie, I will keep it," I said, as I laid it carefully aside. "It shall stand as a sign and testimony of treachery to the end. Go to sleep, little child; but first say your prayers, so that the good angels may sit by you all night. Don"t you hear Mrs. Clayton groaning? Poor Clayton! I most go and comfort her and soothe her pains, as Dinah cannot do. And, now that the bad doctor is gone home, and we are all locked up again securely, we shall rest peacefully, I trust; and so, good-night!"
CHAPTER VII.
From being the most silent of children, a perfect creep-mouse in every way, Ernie had become fearfully loquacious under my care, and was now as talkative as he had ever been observant.
The action that most children develop through exercise of limb had been reserved for his untiring tongue. He had literally learned to talk from hearing me read aloud, which I did daily, much to Mrs. Clayton"s delight and edification, for the benefit of my own lungs, which suffered from such confirmed silence, as I had at first indulged in. His exquisite ear--his prodigious memory--aided him in the acquirement of words, and even long and difficult sentences, of which he delivered himself oracularly when engaged with his blocks and dominoes.
He told himself wonderful stories in which the "buful faiwry" and "hollible" giant of the story-books figured largely. I am almost ashamed to acknowledge that I would hold my breath and strain my ear at times to listen to these murmured stories, self-addressed, as I have never done to receive the finest ebullitions of eloquence or the veriest marvels of the _raconteur_. There was something so sweet, so wondrous to me in this little, ever-babbling baby-brain fountain, content with its own music, having no thought of auditors or effect, no care for appreciation, totally self-addressed and self-absorbed, that I was never weary of giving it my ear and interest. Had the child known of or perceived this, the effect would have been destroyed, and a fatal self-consciousness have been inst.i.tuted instead of this lotus-eating infantile _abandon_--the very existence of which mood indicated genius. What poor Ernie"s father might nave been I could only surmise from his own qualities, which, after all, may have flowed from a far-off source; but that his mother had been gentle, simple, and inefficient, I knew full well, from my slight acquaintance with her, and observation of her non-resisting organization. Ernie, on the contrary, grappled with obstacles uncomplainingly, and was only outspoken in his moments of gratification. His was the temperament that is the n.o.blest and the most magnanimous in its very moulding. Whining children are selfish, as a rule, and petty-minded, and most often incapable of enjoyment--which last is a gift of itself that goes not always with possession.
Among other accomplishments self-acquired, Ernie had the power of mimicry to a singular degree. Mrs. Clayton had a slight hitch in her gait of late from rheumatic suffering, which he simulated solemnly, notwithstanding every effort on my part to restrain him.
Without a smile or any effort of mirth, he would limp behind as she walked across the floor, unconscious of his close attendance, and when she would turn suddenly and detect him, and shake her clinched fist at him, half in jest, he would retaliate by a similar gesture, and scowl, and stamp of the foot, that so nearly resembled her own proceedings as to cause me much internal merriment. But of course for his own advantage, as well as from regard for her feelings, it was necessary for me on such occasions to a.s.sume a gravity of deportment bordering on displeasure.
It may be supposed, then, that when, on the morning after Dr.
Englehart"s visit, before my chamber had been swept and garnished, and while Mrs. Clayton was busy in her own, Ernie brought me a letter and laid it on the table before me, as Dr. Englehart had done the night before in his presence, I was infinitely amused.
What, then, was my surprise in stooping over it to find this letter addressed to myself in the unfamiliar yet never-to-be-forgotten character of Wardour Wentworth!
After the first moment of bewilderment I opened the already-fastened letter--closed, as was the fashion of the day, without envelope, and sealed originally with wax, of which a few fragments still remained alone.
The date, the subject, the earnest contents, convinced me that I now held the clew of that mystery which had baffled me so long, and that the missing letter said to have been lost at Le Noir"s Landing was at last in my possession. It needed not this additional proof of treachery to convince me that my suspicions had been correct, and that, next to the arch-fiend Bainrothe, I owed the greatest misery of my life to him who, in his ill-adjusted disguise, had dropped this letter from his pocket on the preceding evening--my evil genius, Dr. Englehart--_alias_ Luke Gregory.
It was a gracious thing in G.o.d to permit me to owe the great happiness of this discovery to the little crippled child he had cast upon my care so mysteriously, and I failed not to render to him with other grateful acknowledgments "most humble and hearty thanks" for this crowning grace.
Henceforth Hope should lend her torch to light my dearth--her wings to bear me up--her anchor wherewith to moor my bark of life wherever cast, and to the poor waif I cherished I owed this immeasurable good. Had Mrs.
Clayton antic.i.p.ated him with her infallible besom--that housewifely detective, that drags more secrets to light than ever did paid policeman--I should never have grasped this talisman of love and hope, never have waked up as I did wake up from that hour to the endurance which immortalizes endeavor, and renders patience almost pleasurable.
On the back of this well-worn letter was a pencil-scrawl, which, although I read it last, I present first to my reader, that he may trace link by link the chain of villainy that bound together my two oppressors.