Vassall Morton Part 47

"Mr. Edwards, sir."

"Ask him to come up."

"A man whom I expected this morning on business," he said, in explanation to his wife, as the servant closed the door. "I wish he were any where but here. And so you are going away."--She was dressed to go out.--"He will be here only a moment; do not be gone long."

"No, I will be with you again in an hour."

"Do not forget," said Vinal, pressing her hand, "for when you leave the room, Edith, it is as if a sunbeam were shut out."

As Vinal, sick in body and mind, thus leaned in his distress on the victim of his villany, he cast into her face a look that was almost piteous. She, seeing nothing but his love for her, warmed towards him with compa.s.sion; the more so since, till that moment, she had known him as a calm, firm man, a model, to her eyes, of masculine self-government. A mind tortured with suspense, acting upon a weak and morbidly sensitive body, had betrayed him into this unwonted imbecility.

The step of the visitor sounded in the pa.s.sage; and returning the pressure of his hand, his wife went out at the door of a small adjoining room, opening upon the side pa.s.sage by which she commonly entered and left the hotel.

After a few minutes' interview, Edwards took his leave, and Vinal, left alone, fell into his former train of thought. In a moment, he was again interrupted by a knock at the door, quite unlike the hasty rap of the hotel servant.

"Come in," cried Vinal.

The door opened, and Va.s.sall Morton entered. He had learned from the retiring visitor that Vinal was alone.

"My dear fellow!" exclaimed Vinal, his face beaming with a transport of welcome. "My dear fellow!"

But Morton stood without taking his proffered hand. The smile remained frozen on Vinal's face, and cold drops of doubt and fear began to gather on his forehead.

"There is another friend of yours in the pa.s.sage," said Morton.--"Come in, Speyer."

Speyer entered, bowing with his usual composure. Vinal sank back in his chair, collapsing like a man withered with a palsy stroke.

"Vinal," said Morton, after a silence of some moments, "you have a cool way of receiving your acquaintances."

He made no answer, but still sat, or rather crouched, in the depths of his easy chair, where the thick bounding of his heart almost choked him. Morton stood for some time longer, looking at him. He had not reached such a point of Christian forgiveness as not to find pleasure in his enemy's tortures, and he saw that his silence tortured him more than words.

"Vinal," he said at length, "I used to know you in college for a liar and a coward; and since then you have grown well in both ways. You have hatched into a full-fledged villain; and now that I have found you out, you crouch like a whipped cur."

No answer was returned, and Morton's anger began to yield to a different feeling. If he could have seen the condition of Vinal's mind and body, he might, between pity and contempt, have spared him.

"I came to upbraid you with your knaveries; but I find you hardly worth the trouble. Do you see this letter? It is the same that you wrote to this man at Ma.r.s.eilles, instructing him to forge a story that I was dead, and that he had seen my gravestone, with my mother's family device upon it. Will you dare deny that you wrote it? You will not! I thought as much. I have unravelled you from first to last. Five years ago, you bribed Speyer, here, to compromise me with the Austrian police. Pretending to be my friend, you gave me letters which betrayed me into a prison, where you hoped that I would end my days; and, next, you contrived this trickery to prove me dead. Is there any name in the English tongue too vile to mark you?"

Vinal sat as if stricken dumb.

"I know your reputation," pursued Morton. "You are in high feather here. You pa.s.s for a man of virtue, integrity, and honor. You make speeches at public meetings; Fourth of July orations; Phi Beta orations; charity harangues--any thing that smacks of philanthropy and goodness; any thing that will varnish you in the public eye. Why am I not bound to lay bare this whitewashed lie? What withholds me from grinding you like a scorpion under my boot-heel, or flinging you on the pavement to be stared at like a scotched viper? A word from me, and you are ruined. You need not fear it. Stay, and enjoy your honors as you can; but my foot shall be on your neck. This letter of yours is the spell by which I will rule you, body and soul."

Here he paused again; but Vinal's tongue was powerless.

"I tell you again, for I would not have you desperate, that I do not mean to ruin you. Bear yourself wisely, and you are safe, at least from me. Have you lost your speech? Are you turned dumb?"

Vinal muttered inarticulately.

"There is another danger which I have done my best to ward off from you. This man, who had you at his mercy, has sworn to leave the country, and never to return; on which score you will please to pay him the money you offered him for the purchase of your letters."

Vinal seemed confused and stupefied, and Morton was forced to be more explicit in his demands. At length, the former signed a note for the amount, though not without stammering objections to his name appearing on it in connection with Speyer's. Morton, however, turned a deaf ear to these remonstrances.

"Here is your pay," he said to Speyer. "Any bank will discount this for you. Now, to what place do you mean to go?"

"To Venezuela. I have a friend there in the army. He will get a commission for me."

"Very well. See that you stay there; or, at all events, do not come back to the United States. If you do, you will perjure yourself. Now, go; I have done with you. Vinal, I will leave you to your reflections; and when you can sleep in peace, free from Speyer's persecutions, remember to whom you owe it."

Vinal sat like a withered plant, his head sinking between his shoulders, while his hand, still unconsciously holding the pen, rested on the arm of his chair. There was something in his appearance at once so abject and so piteous, that a changed feeling came over Morton as he looked on him. By a sudden impulse, akin to pity, he stepped towards him, and took his wrist. The pen dropped from his pale fingers, which quivered like an aspen bough; and as Morton stood gazing on him, Vinal's upturned eyes met his, as if riveted there by a helpless fascination.

"You unhappy wretch! You are burning already with the pains of the d.a.m.ned. Flint and iron could not see you without softening. I have saved you,--not out of mercy, nor forgiveness,--not for _your_ sake;--but I have saved you. I have pushed away the sword that hung over you by a hair. You are free now to be happy."

But as he spoke this last word, so fierce a pang shot into his heart, remembering what he had lost, and what Vinal had won, that his pity was scattered like mist before a thunder squall. He flung back the pa.s.sive hand against the breast of its terrified owner, turned abruptly, and left the room.

No sooner had the door closed behind him, than the door of the anteroom opposite was flung open, and Edith Leslie, rus.h.i.+ng in, stood before Vinal with the wild look of one who gasps for breath. She attempted to speak, but broken words and inarticulate sounds were all her lips would utter. Strength failed her in the effort, and pressing her hands to her forehead, she sank fainting to the floor.

CHAPTER LX.

I will not go with thee; I will instruct my sorrows to be proud.--_King John_.

On the next morning, Vinal learned that his wife was ill, and confined to her room in her father's house. On the day following, he was told that she was no better; but on the third morning, a letter, in her handwriting, was given him. He opened it, and read as follows:--

I heard all. I have learned, at last, to know you. These were your bad dreams! This was the cloud that overshadowed you! No wonder that your eye was anxious, your forehead wrinkled, and your cheek pale. To have led that brave and loyal heart through months and years of anguis.h.!.+--to have buried him from the light of day!--to have buried him in darkness and despair, if despair could ever touch a soul like his! And there he would have been lost forever, if you had had your will,--if a higher hand had not been outstretched to save him. One whom you dared not meet face to face; one as far above your sphere as the eagle is above the serpent to which he likened you! You have taught me how sin can cringe and cower under the anger of a true and deeply outraged man. That I should have lived to hear my husband called a villain!--and still live to tell him that the word was just!

My husband! You are _not_ my husband. It was not a criminal, a traitorous wretch, whom I pledged myself to love and honor. You have insnared me; you have me, for a time, safely entangled in your meshes.

The same cause which led me to this yoke must withhold me from casting it off. I cannot imbitter my father's dying moments. I cannot bring distress and horror to his tranquil death bed. For his sake, I will play the hypocrite, and stoop to pa.s.s in the world's eye as your wife.

For the few weeks he has to live, I will lodge, if I must, under your roof; I will sit, if I must, at your table; but when my father is gone, let the world impute to me what blame it will, I will leave you forever. You need not fear that I shall expose your crimes. If _he_ could spare you, it does not become me to speak. Live on, and make what atonement you may; but meanwhile there is a gulf between us wider than death.

EDITH LESLIE.

An accident, arising out of her very devotion to Vinal, had made known his secret to her. In the anteroom which led from the side pa.s.sage of the hotel to his apartment, and through which, on the morning of his interview with Morton, she had intended to pa.s.s on her way out, was a table, covered with books and engravings, with which the invalid had been amusing his leisure. The sight of them reminded her that she had promised to get for him a series of German etchings, which he had expressed a wish to see. She seated herself, to write a request to the friend who had them, that he would send them to the hotel. Her hand was on the bell, to call the servant, when the peculiarly emphatic and earnest manner with which Vinal greeted some new visitor caught her attention. The door had sprung ajar on the lock; the speakers were very near it, and Morton's tone was none of the softest. She remained as if charmed to her seat; and every word fell on her ear as clearly as if she had stood in the same room.

CHAPTER LXI.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.--_Merchant of Venice_.

The past is past. I see the future stretch All dark and barren as a rainy sea.--_Alexander Smith_.

Morton took possession again of his house in the country, which still remained in the keeping of one of his humble relatives, into whose charge he had given it. He turned the key of his long-deserted library. A loving influence had presided here in his absence, and, even when he was given up for lost, every thing had been scrupulously kept as he had left it.

Here he immured himself; avoided all society but that of a few personal friends; and by plunging into the studies which had formerly engrossed him, tried to escape the persecution of his own thoughts. It was a forced and painful task. The marks in his books, the pencil notes on their margins, his voluminous piles of memoranda, were all so many sharp memorials of the past, to remind him that he was resuming in darkness and despondency the work that he had left in suns.h.i.+ne.