Put Yourself in His Place Part 103

She thought of Jael Dance, and chose the latter.

Another burst or two of agony, and then her great aim and study appeared to be to forget herself altogether. She was full of attention for her father, and, whenever Mr. Coventry came, she labored to reward him with kind words, and even with smiles; but they were sad ones.

As for Coventry, he saw, with secret exultation, that she was now too languid and hopeless to resist the joint efforts of her father and himself, and, that some day or other, she must fall lifeless into his arms.

He said to himself, "It is only a question of time."

He was now oftener at the villa than at Hillsborough, and, with remarkable self-denial, adhered steadily to the line of soothing and un.o.btrusive devotion.

One morning at breakfast the post brought him a large envelope from Hillsborough. He examined it, and found a capital "L" in the corner of the envelope, which "L" was written by his man Lally, in compliance with secret instructions from his master.

Coventry instantly put the envelope into his pocket, and his hand began to shake so that he could hardly hold his cup to his lips. His agitation, however, was not noticed.

Directly after breakfast he strolled, with affected composure, into the garden, and sat down in a bower where he was safe from surprise, as the tangled leaves were not so thick but he could peep through them.

He undid his inclosure, and found three letters; two were of no importance; the third bore a foreign postmark, and was addressed to Miss Carden in a hand writing which he recognized at a glance as Henry Little's.

But as this was not the first letter from Henry to Grace which he had intercepted and read, perhaps I had better begin by saying a few words about the first.

Well, then, the letters with which Coventry swam the river on the night of the explosion were six, viz., to Mr. Bolt, to Doctor Amboyne, to Mr.

Baynes, to Jael Dence, to Mrs. Little, and to Grace Carden. The letter to Grace Carden was short but touching, full of devotion, hope, resolution, and grief at parting. He told her he had come to take leave that afternoon, but she had been out, luckily; for he felt he ought to go, and must go, but how could he look at her and then leave her? This was the general purport, and expressed with such anguish and fort.i.tude as might have melted a heart of marble.

The reader may have observed that, upon his rival's disappearance, Coventry was no happier. This letter was the secret cause. First it showed him his rival was alive, and he had wasted a crime; secondly, it struck him with remorse, yet not with penitence; and to be full of remorse, yet empty of that true penitence which confesses or undoes the wrong, this is to be miserable.

But, as time rolled on, bringing the various events I have related, but no news of Little, Coventry began to think that young man must really have come to some untimely end.

From this pleasant dream he was now awakened by the second intercepted letter. It ran thus:

"BOSTON, U. S., June 20th.

"MY OWN DEAR LOVE,--It is now nine weeks since I left England, and this will be a fortnight more getting to you; that is a long time for you to be without news from me, and I sadly fear I have caused you great anxiety. Dearest, it all happened thus: Our train was delayed by an accident, and I reached Liverpool just in time to see the steam-packet move down the Mersey. My first impulse, of course, was to go back to Hillsborough; but a seaman, who saw my vexation, told me a fast schooner was on the point of sailing for Boston, U.S. My heart told me if I went back to Hillsborough, I should never make the start again. I summoned all my manhood to do the right thing for us both; and I got into the schooner, heaven knows how; and, when I got there, I hid my face for ever so many hours, till, by the pitching and tossing, I knew that I was at sea. Then I began to cry and blubber. I couldn't hold it any longer.

"At such a time a kind word keeps the heart from breaking altogether; and I got some comfort from an old gentleman, a native of Boston: a grave old man he was, and pretty reserved with all the rest; but seeing me in the depths of misery, he talked to me like a father, and I told him all my own history, and a little about you too--at least, how I loved you, and why I had left England with a heavy heart.

"We had a very long pa.s.sage, not downright tempestuous, but contrary winds, and a stiff gale or two. Instead of twenty days, as they promised, we were six weeks at sea, and what with all the fighting and the threats--I had another letter signed with a coffin just before I left that beautiful town--and the irritation at losing so much time on the ocean, it all brought on a fever, and I have no recollection of leaving the boat. When I came to myself, I was in a house near Boston, belonging to the old gentleman I spoke of. He and his nieces nursed me, and now I am as well as ever, only rather weak.

"Mr. Ironside, that is his name, but it should be Mr. Goldheart, if I had the christening of him--he has been my good Samaritan. Dear Grace, please pray for him and his family every night. He tells me he comes of the pilgrim fathers, so he is bound to feel for pilgrims and wanderers from home. Well, he has been in patents a little, and, before I lost my little wits with the fever, he and I had many a talk. So now he is sketching out a plan of operation for me, and I shall have to travel many a hundred miles in this vast country. But they won't let me move till I am a little stronger, he and his nieces. If he is gold, they are pearls.

"Dearest, it has taken me two days to write this: but I am very happy and hopeful, and do not regret coming. I am sure it was the right thing for us both.

"Please say something kind for me to the good doctor, and tell him I have got over this one trouble already.

"Dearest, I agreed to take so much a year from Bolt, and he must fight the trades alone. Such a life is not worth having. Bayne won't wrong me of a s.h.i.+lling. Whatever he makes, over his salary and the men's wages, there it will be for me when I come home; so I write to no one at Hillsborough but you. Indeed, you are my all in this world. I travel, and fight, and work, and breathe, and live for you, my own beloved; and if any harm came to you, I wouldn't care to live another moment."

At this point in the letter the reader stopped, and something cold seemed to pa.s.s all through his frame. It struck him that all good men would pity the writer of this letter, and abhor him who kept it from that pale, heart-broken girl inside the cottage.

He sat freezing, with the letter in his hand, and began to doubt whether he could wade any deeper in crime.

After a minute or two he raised his head, and was about to finish reading the letter.

But, in the meantime, Grace Carden had resumed her accustomed place in the veranda. She lay upon the couch, and her pale face, and hollow, but still beautiful eyes, were turned seaward. Out of those great sad eyes the sad soul looked across the waste of waters--gazed, and searched, and pined in vain. Oh, it was a look to make angels weep, and hover close over her head with restless, loving pinions, longing to shadow, caress, and heal her!

Coventry, with Henry Little's letter in his hand, peered through the leaves, and saw the woman he loved fix this look of despair upon the sea--despair of which he was the sole cause, and could dispel it with a gesture.

"And this brings me back to what is my only great trouble now. I told you, in the letter I left behind me, you would hear from me in a month at furthest. It will be not a month, but eleven weeks. Good heavens!

when I think what anxiety you may have suffered on my account! You know I am a pupil of the good doctor, and so I put myself in your place, and I say to myself, 'If my Grace had promised to write in a month, and eleven weeks had pa.s.sed without a word, what would my feelings be?' Why, I think I should go mad; I should make sure you were ill; I should fear you were dead; I should fancy every terrible thing on earth, except that you were false to your poor Henry. That I should never fear: I judge you by myself. Fly, steamboat, with this letter to my love, and set her mind at ease. Fly back with a precious word from her dear hand, and with that in my bosom, nothing will ever daunt me.

"G.o.d bless you! angel of my life, darling of my heart, star on which all my hopes are fixed! Oh, what miserable bad tools words are! When I look at them, and compare them with how I love you, I seem to be writing that I love you no more than other people love. What I feel is so much greater than words.

"Must I say farewell? Even on paper, it is like tearing myself away from heaven again. But that was to be: and now this is to be. Good-by, my own beloved.

"Yours till death, HENRY."

Coventry read this sentence by sentence, still looking up, nearly every sentence, at her to whom it was addressed.

The letter pleaded on his knee, the pale face pleaded a few yards off; he sat between the two bleeding lovers, their sole barrier and bane.

His heart began to fail him. The mountain of crime looked high. Now remorse stung him deeper than ever; jealousy spurred him harder than ever; a storm arose within his breast, a tempest of conflicting pa.s.sion, as grand and wild as ever distracted the heart; as grand and wild as any poet has ever tried to describe, and, half succeeding, won immortal fame.

"See what I can do?" whispered conscience. "With one bound I can give her the letter, and bring the color back to that cheek and joy to that heart. She will adore me for it, she will be my true and tender friend till death. She will weep upon my neck and bless me."

"Ay," whispered jealousy, "and then she will marry Henry Little."

"And am I sure to succeed if I persist in crime? Deserve her hatred and contempt, and is it certain they will not both fall on me?"

"The fault began with them. He supplanted me--she jilted me. I hate him--I love her. I can't give her up now; I have gone too far. What is intercepting a letter? I have been too near murder to stop at that."

"But her pale face! her pale face!"

"Once married, supplant him as he has supplanted you. Away to Italy with her. Fresh scenes--constant love--the joys of wedlock! What will this Henry Little be to her then?--a dream."

"Eternal punishment; if it is not a fable, who has ever earned it better than I am earning it if I go on?"

"It IS a fable; it must be. Philosophers always said so, and now even divines have given it up."

"Her pale face! her pale face! Never mind HIM, look at her. What sort of love is this that shows no pity? Oh, my poor girl, don't look so sad--so pale! What shall I do? Would to G.o.d I had never been born, to torture myself and her!"

His good angel fought hard for him that day; fought and struggled and hoped, until the miserable man, torn this way and that, ended the struggle with a blasphemous yell by tearing the letter to atoms.

That fatal act turned the scale.

The next moment he wished he had not done it.

But it was too late. He could not go to her with the fragments. She would see he had intercepted it purposely.