"Let me see it," he continued.
And rather reluctantly Jerry handed him a bulky letter, the direction of which covered nearly the whole of one side of the envelope.
Very nervously Frank scanned the address, which might as well have been in the Fiji language for any idea it conveyed to him.
"To whom is it directed? I cannot read German," he said
"I don"t know," Jerry replied. "I have not looked at it, and would rather not."
"Why, what a little prude you are;" and Frank laughed uneasily. "What possible harm is there in reading an address? The postmaster has to do it, and any one who took it to the office would do it if he could."
This sounded reasonable enough, and standing beside him, while he held the letter a little way from her, Jerry read the address in German first, then, as he said to her: "I don"t understand that lingo, put it into English," she read again:
"To Marguerite Heinrich, if living, and if dead to any of her friends; or to the postmaster at Wiesbaden, Germany. If not delivered within two months, return to Arthur Tracy, Tracy Park, Shannondale, Ma.s.s., U.S.A."
"Marguerite--Marguerite Heinrich!" Frank repeated, "That is not Gretchen. The letter is not to her."
"I guess it is," Jerry replied. "He told me once that Gretchen was a pet name for Marguerite."
"Yes," Frank returned, with a sigh, as this little crumb of hope was swept away, while to himself he added: "At all events it is not Marguerite Tracy, and that makes me less a scoundrel than I should otherwise be. If he had written a little more it would have run over to the other side of the envelope. Any one would know he was crazy," he continued, with a sickly attempt at a smile, while Jerry stood waiting to take the letter from him.
He knew she was waiting, and said to her, as he put it in his pocket:
"Thank you for bringing this to me. It is probably some nonsense which ought not to go, even if the sending it would do no harm, as it certainly would."
Until then Jerry had not realised that he did not mean the letter to go at all. She had remembered her promise to take it to him, and forgotten that he had said it must not be sent lest it should do harm to Maude.
But it all came back to her now, and her tears fell like rain as she stood for a moment irresolute. But loyalty to Arthur conquered every other feeling. Surely he would not suffer any wrong to come to his own brother and niece. The letter was harmless, and must go.
"Give it to me, please. You do not mean to keep it?" she said, at last, in a tone and manner she might have borrowed from Arthur himself, it was so like him when on his dignity.
And Frank felt it, and knew that he had more than a child to deal with, and must use duplicity if he would succeed. So he said to her quietly and naturally:
"Why, how excited you are! Do you think I intend to keep the letter? It is as safe with me as with you. It is true that when I talked with you in the Tramp House I thought that it must not be sent, but I have changed my mind since then, and do not care. I am going to the office, and will take it myself. John is saddling my horse now, and if I hurry I shall be in time for the western mail. Good-bye, and do not look so worried. Do you take me for a villain?"
He was leaving the room as he talked, and before he had finished he was in the hall and near the outer door, leaving Jerry stupefied, and perplexed, and only half rea.s.sured.
"If I had not sold myself to Satan before, I have now, for sure; and still I did not actually tell her that I would post it, though it amounted to that," Frank thought, as he galloped through the park toward the highway which led to the town.
Once he took the letter from his pocket and examined it again, wishing so much that he knew its contents.
"If I could read German, I believe I am bad enough now to open it; but I can"t, and I dare not take it to any one who can," he said, as he put it again in his pocket, half resolving to post it and take the chances of its ever reaching Gretchen"s friends, or any one who had known her.
"I"ll see how I feel when I get inside," he thought, as he dismounted from his horse before the door of the post-office.
The mail was just in, and the little room was full of people waiting for it to be distributed; and Frank waited with them, leaning against the wall, with his head bent down, and beating his boot with his riding-whip.
"I must decide soon," he thought, when a voice not far from him caught his ear, and glancing from under his hat, he saw Peterkin coming in, portly and pompous, and with him a dapper little man, who, in the days of the "Liza Ann, had been a driver for the boat, but who now, like his former employer, was a millionaire, and wore a thousand-dollar diamond ring. To him Peterkin was saying:
"There, that"s him--that"s Frank Tracy, the biggest swell in town--lives in that handsome place I was telling you about."
Strange that words like these from a man like old Peterkin should have inflated Frank"s pride; but he was weak in many points; and though he detested Peterkin, it gratified him to be pointed out to strangers as a swell who lived in a fine house, and with the puff of vanity came the reflection that, as Frank Tracy of some other place than Tracy Park, with all its appliances of wealth, he would not be a swell whom strangers cared to see, and Jerry"s chance was lost again.
"Here is your mail, Mr. Tracy," the postmistress said; and stepping forward, Frank took his letters from her, just as Peterkin slapped him on the shoulder, and, with a familiarity which made Frank want to knock him down, called out:
"Hallo, Tracy! Just the feller I wanted to see. Let me introduce you to Mr. Bijah Jones, from Pennsylvany; used to drive hosses for me in the days I ain"t ashamed of, by a long shot. He"s bought him a place out from Philadelphy, and wants to lay it out _a la--a la_--dumbed if I know the word, but like them old chaps" gardens in Europe, and I told him of Tracy Park, which beats everything holler in this part of the country. Will you let us go over it and take a survey?"
"Certainly; go where you like," Frank said, struggling to reach the door; but Peterkin b.u.t.ton-holed him and held him fast, while he continued:
"I say, Tracy, heard anything from them diamonds?"
"Nothing," was the reply.
"Didn"t hunt in the right quarter," Peterkin continued, "leastwise didn"t foller it up, or you"d a found "em without so much advertisin"."
"What do you mean?" Frank asked.
"Oh, nothin"," Peterkin replied; "only them diamonds never went off without hands, and them hands ain"t a thousand miles from the park."
"Perhaps not," Frank answered, mechanically, more intent upon getting away than upon what Peterkin was saying.
He longed to be in the open air, and as he mounted his horse, he said, as if speaking to some one near him:
"Well, old fellow, I"ve done it again, and sunk myself still lower. You are bound to get me now some day, unless I have a death-bed repentance and confess everything. The thief was forgiven at the last hour, why not I?"
The black shadow which Frank felt sure was beside him, did not answer, though he could have sworn that he heard a chuckle as he rode on, fast and far, until his horse was tired and he was tired, too. Then he began to retrace his steps, so slowly that it was dark when, he reached the village, and took the road which led by the gate through which the woman had pa.s.sed to her death on the night of the storm. It was the shortest route to the park, and he intended to take it.
As he drew near to the gate, it seemed to him that there was something on the wide post nearest the fence which had not been there in the afternoon when he rode by--something dark, and large, and peculiar in shape, and motionless as a stone. He was not by nature a coward, and once he had no belief in ghosts or supernatural appearances, but now he did not know what he believed, and this object, whose outline, seen against, the western sky, where a little dim light was lingering, seemed almost like that of a human form, made his heart beat faster than its wont, and he involuntarily checked his horse, just as a clear, shrill voice called out:
"Mr. Tracy, is that you? I have waited so long, and I"m so cold sitting here. Did you post the letter?"
It was Jerry who, after he had left her in his office, had been seized with an indefinable terror lest he might not post the letter after all.
It seemed wrong to doubt him, and she did not really think that she did doubt him; still she would feel happier if she knew, and after supper was over she started along the gra.s.sy road until she reached the gate.
Here she waited a long time, and then, as Mr. Tracy did not appear, she walked up and down the lane until the sun was down and the ground began to feel so damp and cold that she finally climbed up to the top of the gate-post, which was very broad, and where, on her way to town, she had frequently sat for a while. It was very cold and tiresome waiting there, and she was beginning to get impatient and to wonder if it could be possible that he had gone home by some other road, when she heard the sound of a horse"s hoofs and felt sure he was coming.
"Why, Jerry, how you frightened me!" Frank said, as he reined his horse close up to her. "Jump down and get up behind me. I will take you home."
She obeyed, and with the agility of a little cat, got down from the gate-post and on to the horse"s back, putting both arms around Frank"s waist to keep herself steady, for the big horse took long steps, and she felt a little afraid.
"Did you post the letter?" she asked again, as they left the gate behind them and struck into the lane.
To lie now was easy enough, and Frank answered without hesitation:
"Of course. Did you think I would forget it?"
"No," Jerry answered. "I knew you would not. I only wanted to be sure, because he trusted it to me, and not to have sent it would have been mean, and a sneak, and a lie, and a steal. Don"t you think so?"
She emphasized the "steal," and the "lie," and the "sneak," and the "mean," with a kick that made the horse jump a little and quicken his steps.
"Yes," Frank a.s.sented; it would be all she affirmed, and more too, and the man who could do such a thing was wholly unworthy the respect of any one, and ought to be punished to the full extent of the law.