"To my Husband—"We have parted, Arthur, forever, and I have not had the courage to embitter our farewell by confessing that I have deceived you—cruelly and basely deceived you. But a few minutes since, you were weeping by my bedside and speaking of our child. My wronged, my beloved husband, the little daughter of your heart is not yours, is not mine. She is a love-child, whom I have imposed on you for mine. Her father was a miner at Porthgenna; her mother is my maid, Sarah Leeson."
"To my Husband—
"We have parted, Arthur, forever, and I have not had the courage to embitter our farewell by confessing that I have deceived you—cruelly and basely deceived you. But a few minutes since, you were weeping by my bedside and speaking of our child. My wronged, my beloved husband, the little daughter of your heart is not yours, is not mine. She is a love-child, whom I have imposed on you for mine. Her father was a miner at Porthgenna; her mother is my maid, Sarah Leeson."
Rosamond paused, but never raised her head from the letter. She heard her husband lay his hand suddenly on the table; she heard him start to his feet; she heard him draw his breath heavily in one quick gasp; she heard him whisper to himself the instant after—"A love-child!" With a fearful, painful distinctness she heard those three words. The tone in which he whispered them turned her cold. But she never moved, for there was more to read; and while more remained, if her life had depended on it, she could not have looked up.
In a moment more she went on, and read these lines next:
"I have many heavy sins to answer for, but this one sin you must pardon, Arthur, for I committed it through fondness for you. That fondness told me a secret which you sought to hide from me. That fondness told me that your barren wife would never make your heart all her own until she had borne you a child; and your lips proved it true. Your first words, when you came back from sea, and when the infant was placed in your arms, were—'I have never loved you, Rosamond, as I love you now.' If you had not said that, I should never have kept my guilty secret."I can add no more, for death is very near me. How the fraud was committed, and what my other motives were, I must leave you to discover from the mother of the child, who writes this under my dictation, and who is charged to give it to you when I am no more. You will be merciful to the poor little creature who bears my name. Be merciful also to her unhappy parent: she is only guilty of too blindly obeying me. If there is any thing that mitigates the bitterness of my remorse, it is the remembrance that my act of deceit saved the most faithful and the most affectionate of women from shame that she had not deserved. Remember me forgivingly, Arthur—words may tell how I have sinned against you; no words can tell how I have loved you!"
"I have many heavy sins to answer for, but this one sin you must pardon, Arthur, for I committed it through fondness for you. That fondness told me a secret which you sought to hide from me. That fondness told me that your barren wife would never make your heart all her own until she had borne you a child; and your lips proved it true. Your first words, when you came back from sea, and when the infant was placed in your arms, were—'I have never loved you, Rosamond, as I love you now.' If you had not said that, I should never have kept my guilty secret.
"I can add no more, for death is very near me. How the fraud was committed, and what my other motives were, I must leave you to discover from the mother of the child, who writes this under my dictation, and who is charged to give it to you when I am no more. You will be merciful to the poor little creature who bears my name. Be merciful also to her unhappy parent: she is only guilty of too blindly obeying me. If there is any thing that mitigates the bitterness of my remorse, it is the remembrance that my act of deceit saved the most faithful and the most affectionate of women from shame that she had not deserved. Remember me forgivingly, Arthur—words may tell how I have sinned against you; no words can tell how I have loved you!"
She had struggled on thus far, and had reached the last line on the second page of the letter, when she paused again, and then tried to read the first of the two signatures—"Rosamond Treverton." She faintly repeated two syllables of that familiar Christian name—the name that was on her husband's lips every hour of the day!—and strove to articulate the third, but her voice failed her. All the sacred household memories which that ruthless letter had profaned forever seemed to tear themselves away from her heart at the same moment. With a low, moaning cry she dropped her arms on the table, and laid her head down on them, and hid her face.
She heard nothing, she was conscious of nothing, until she felt a touch on her shoulder—a light touch from a hand that trembled. Every pulse in her body bounded in answer to it, and she looked up.
Her husband had guided himself near to her by the table. The tears were glistening in his dim, sightless eyes. As she rose and touched him, his arms opened, and closed fast around her.
"My own Rosamond!" he said, "come to me and be comforted!"
The day and the night had passed, and the new morning had come, before the husband and wife could trust themselves to speak calmly of the Secret, and to face resignedly the duties and the sacrifices which the discovery of it imposed on them.
Leonard's first question referred to those lines in the letter which Rosamond had informed him were in a handwriting that she knew. Finding that he was at a loss to understand what means she could have of forming an opinion on this point, she explained that, after Captain Treverton's death, many letters had naturally fallen into her possession which had been written by Mrs. Treverton to her husband. They treated of ordinary domestic subjects, and she had read them often enough to become thoroughly acquainted with the peculiarities of Mrs. Treverton's handwriting. It was remarkably large, firm, and masculine in character; and the address, the line under it, and the uppermost of the two signatures in the letter which had been found in the Myrtle Room, exactly resembled it in every particular.
The next question related to the body of the letter. The writing of this, of the second signature ("Sarah Leeson"), and of the additional lines on the third page, also signed by Sarah Leeson, proclaimed itself in each case to be the production of the same person. While stating that fact to her husband, Rosamond did not forget to explain to him that, while reading the letter on the previous day, her strength and courage had failed her before she got to the end of it. She added that the postscript which she had thus omitted to read was of importance, because it mentioned the circumstances under which the Secret had been hidden; and begged that he would listen while she made him acquainted with its contents without any further delay.
Sitting as close to his side, now, as if they were enjoying their first honey-moon days over again, she read these last lines—the lines which her mother had written sixteen years before, on the morning when she fled from Porthgenna Tower:
"If this paper should ever be found (which I pray with my whole heart it never may be), I wish to say that I have come to the resolution of hiding it, because I dare not show the writing that it contains to my master, to whom it is addressed. In doing what I now propose to do, though I am acting against my mistress's last wishes, I am not breaking the solemn engagement which she obliged me to make before her on her death-bed. That engagement forbids me to destroy this letter, or to take it away with me if I leave the house. I shall do neither—my purpose is to conceal it in the place, of all others, where I think there is least chance of its ever being found again. Any hardship or misfortune which may follow as a consequence of this deceitful proceeding on my part, will fall on myself. Others, I believe, in my conscience, will be the happier for the hiding of the dreadful Secret which this letter contains."
"If this paper should ever be found (which I pray with my whole heart it never may be), I wish to say that I have come to the resolution of hiding it, because I dare not show the writing that it contains to my master, to whom it is addressed. In doing what I now propose to do, though I am acting against my mistress's last wishes, I am not breaking the solemn engagement which she obliged me to make before her on her death-bed. That engagement forbids me to destroy this letter, or to take it away with me if I leave the house. I shall do neither—my purpose is to conceal it in the place, of all others, where I think there is least chance of its ever being found again. Any hardship or misfortune which may follow as a consequence of this deceitful proceeding on my part, will fall on myself. Others, I believe, in my conscience, will be the happier for the hiding of the dreadful Secret which this letter contains."
"There can be no doubt, now," said Leonard, when his wife had read to the end; "Mrs. Jazeph, Sarah Leeson, and the servant who disappeared from Porthgenna Tower, are one and the same person."
"Poor creature!" said Rosamond, sighing as she put down the letter. "We know now why she warned me so anxiously not to go into the Myrtle Room. Who can say what she must have suffered when she came as a stranger to my bedside? Oh, what would I not give if I had been less hasty with her! It is dreadful to remember that I spoke to her as a servant whom I expected to obey me; it is worse still to feel that I can not, even now, think of her as a child should think of a mother. How can I ever tell her that I know the Secret? how—" She paused, with a heart-sick consciousness of the slur that was cast on her birth; she paused, shrinking as she thought of the name that her husband had given to her, and of her own parentage, which the laws of society disdained to recognize.
"Why do you stop?" asked Leonard.
"I was afraid—" she began, and paused again.
"Afraid," he said, finishing the sentence for her, "that words of pity for that unhappy woman might wound my sensitive pride by reminding me of the circumstances of your birth? Rosamond! I should be unworthy of your matchless truthfulness toward me, if I, on my side, did not acknowledge that this discoveryhaswounded me as only a proud man can be wounded. My pride has been born and bred in me. My pride, even while I am now speaking to you, takes advantage of my first moments of composure, and deludes me into doubting, in face of all probability, whether the words you have read to me can, after all, be words of truth. But, strong as that inborn and inbred feeling is—hard as it may be for me to discipline and master it as I ought, and must and will—there is another feeling in my heart that is stronger yet." He felt for her hand, and took it in his; then added—"From the hour when you first devoted your life to your blind husband—from the hour when you won all his gratitude, as you had already won all his love, you took a place in his heart, Rosamond, from which nothing, not even such a shock as has now assailed us, can move you! High as I have always held the worth of rank in my estimation, I have learned, even before the event of yesterday, to hold the worth of my wife, let her parentage be what it may, higher still."
"Oh, Lenny, Lenny, I can't hear you praise me, if you talk in the same breath as if I had made a sacrifice in marrying you! But for my blind husband I might never have deserved what you have just said of me. When I first read that fearful letter, I had one moment of vile, ungrateful doubt if your love for me would hold out against the discovery of the Secret. I had one moment of horrible temptation, that drew me away from you when I ought to have put the letter into your hand. It was the sight of you, waiting for me to speak again, so innocent of all knowledge of what happened close by you, that brought me back to my senses, and told me what I ought to do. It was the sight of my blind husband that made me conquer the temptation to destroy that letter in the first hour of discovering it. Oh, if I had been the hardest-hearted of women, could I have ever taken your hand again—could I kiss you, could I lie down by your side, and hear you fall asleep, night after night, feeling that I had abused your blind dependence on me to serve my own selfish interests? knowing that I had only succeeded in my deceit because your affliction made you incapable of suspecting deception? No, no; I can hardly believe that the basest of women could be guilty of such baseness as that; and I can claim nothing more for myself than the credit of having been true to my trust. You said yesterday, love, in the Myrtle Room, that the one faithful friend to you in your blindness, who never failed, was your wife. It is reward enough and consolation enough for me, now that the worst is over, to know that you can say so still."
"Yes, Rosamond, the worst is over; but we must not forget that there may be hard trials still to meet."
"Hard trials, love? To what trials do you refer?"
"Perhaps, Rosamond, I overrate the courage that the sacrifice demands; but, tomeat least, it will be a hard sacrifice of my own feelings to make strangers partakers in the knowledge that we now possess."
Rosamond looked at her husband in astonishment. "Why need we tell the Secret to any one?" she asked.
"Assuming that we can satisfy ourselves of the genuineness of that letter," he answered, "we shall have no choice but to tell it to strangers. You can not forget the circumstances under which your father—under which Captain Treverton—"
"Call him my father," said Rosamond, sadly. "Remember how he loved me, and how I loved him, and say 'my father' still."
"I am afraid I must say 'Captain Treverton' now," returned Leonard, "or I shall hardly be able to explain simply and plainly what it is very necessary that you should know. Captain Treverton died without leaving a will. His only property was the purchase-money of this house and estate; and you inherited it, as his next of kin—"
Rosamond started back in her chair and clasped her hands in dismay. "Oh, Lenny," she said simply, "I have thought so much of you, since I found the letter, that I never remembered this!"
"It is time to remember it, my love. If you are not Captain Treverton's daughter, you have no right to one farthing of the fortune that you possess; and it must be restored at once to the person whoisCaptain Treverton's next of kin—or, in other words, to his brother."
"To that man!" exclaimed Rosamond. "To that man who is a stranger to us, who holds our very name in contempt! Are we to be made poor that he may be made rich?—"
"We are to do what is honorable and just, at any sacrifice of our own interests and ourselves," said Leonard, firmly. "I believe, Rosamond, that my consent, as your husband, is necessary, according to the law, to effect this restitution. If Mr. Andrew Treverton was the bitterest enemy I had on earth, and if the restoring of this money utterly ruined us both in our worldly circumstances, I would give it back of my own accord to the last farthing—and so would you!"
The blood mantled in his cheeks as he spoke. Rosamond looked at him admiringly in silence. "Who would have him less proud," she thought, fondly, "when his pride speaks in such words as those!"
"You understand now," continued Leonard, "that we have duties to perform which will oblige us to seek help from others, and which will therefore render it impossible to keep the Secret to ourselves? If we search all England for her, Sarah Leeson must be found. Our future actions depend upon her answers to our inquiries, upon her testimony to the genuineness of that letter. Although I am resolved beforehand to shield myself behind no technical quibbles and delays—although I want nothing but evidence that is morally conclusive, however legally imperfect it may be—it is still impossible to proceed without seeking advice immediately. The lawyer who always managed Captain Treverton's affairs, and who now manages ours, is the proper person to direct us in instituting a search, and to assist us, if necessary, in making the restitution."
"How quietly and firmly you speak of it, Lenny! Will not the abandoning of my fortune be a dreadful loss to us?"
"We must think of it as a gain to our consciences, Rosamond, and must alter our way of life resignedly to suit our altered means. But we need speak no more of that until we are assured of the necessity of restoring the money. My immediate anxiety, and your immediate anxiety, must turn now on the discovery of Sarah Leeson—no! on the discovery of your mother; I must learn to call her by that name, or I shall not learn to pity and forgive her."
Rosamond nestled closer to her husband's side. "Every word you say, love, does my heart good," she whispered, laying her head on his shoulder. "You will help me and strengthen me, when the time comes, to meet my mother as I ought? Oh, how pale and worn and weary she was when she stood by my bedside, and looked at me and my child! Will it be long before we find her? Is she far away from us, I wonder? or nearer, much nearer than we think?"
Before Leonard could answer, he was interrupted by a knock at the door, and Rosamond was surprised by the appearance of the maid-servant. Betsey was flushed, excited, and out of breath; but she contrived to deliver intelligibly a brief message from Mr. Munder, the steward, requesting permission to speak to Mr. Frankland, or to Mrs. Frankland, on business of importance.
"What is it? What does he want?" asked Rosamond.
"I think, ma'am, he wants to know whether he had better send for the constable or not," answered Betsey.
"Send for the constable!" repeated Rosamond. "Are there thieves in the house in broad daylight?"
"Mr. Munder says he don't know but what it may be worse than thieves," replied Betsey. "It's the foreigner again, if you please, ma'am. He come up and rung at the door as bold as brass, and asked if he could see Mrs. Frankland."
"The foreigner!" exclaimed Rosamond, laying her hand eagerly on her husband's arm.
"Yes, ma'am," said Betsey. "Him as come here to go over the house along with the lady—"
Rosamond, with characteristic impulsiveness, started to her feet. "Let me go down!" she began.
"Wait," interposed Leonard, catching her by the hand. "There is not the least need for you to go down stairs.—Show the foreigner up here," he continued, addressing himself to Betsey, "and tell Mr. Munder that we will take the management of this business into our own hands."
Rosamond sat down again by her husband's side. "This is a very strange accident," she said, in a low, serious tone. "It must be something more than mere chance that puts the clew into our hands, at the moment when we least expected to find it."
The door opened for the second time, and there appeared, modestly, on the threshold, a little old man, with rosy cheeks and long white hair. A small leather case was slung by a strap at his side, and the stem of a pipe peeped out of the breast pocket of his coat. He advanced one step into the room, stopped, raised both his hands, with his felt hat crumpled up in them, to his heart, and made five fantastic bows in quick succession—two to Mrs. Frankland, two to her husband, and one to Mrs. Frankland again, as an act of separate and special homage to the lady. Never had Rosamond seen a more complete embodiment in human form of perfect innocence and perfect harmlessness than the foreigner who was described in the housekeeper's letter as an audacious vagabond, and who was dreaded by Mr. Munder as something worse than a thief!
"Madam and good Sir," said the old man, advancing a little nearer at Mrs. Frankland's invitation, "I ask your pardon for intruding myself. My name is Joseph Buschmann. I live in the town of Truro, where I work in cabinets and tea-caddies, and other shining woods. I am also, if you please, the same little foreign man who was scolded by the big major-domo when I came to see the house. All that I ask of your kindness is, that you will let me say for my errand here and for myself, and for another person who is very near to my love—one little word. I will be but few minutes, Madam and good Sir, and then I will go my ways again, with my best wishes and my best thanks."
"Pray consider, Mr. Buschmann, that our time is your time," said Leonard. "We have no engagement whatever which need oblige you to shorten your visit. I must tell you beforehand, in order to prevent any embarrassment on either side, that I have the misfortune to be blind. I can promise you, however, my best attention as far as listening goes. Rosamond, is Mr. Buschmann seated?"
Mr. Buschmann was still standing near the door, and was expressing sympathy by bowing to Mr. Frankland again, and crumpling his felt hat once more over his heart.
"Pray come nearer, and sit down," said Rosamond. "And don't imagine for one moment that any opinion of the steward's has the least influence on us, or that we feel it at all necessary for you to apologize for what took place the last time you came to this house. We have an interest—a very great interest," she added, with her usual hearty frankness, "in hearing any thing that you have to tell us. You are the person of all others whom we are, just at this time—" She stopped, feeling her foot touched by her husband's, and rightly interpreting the action as a warning not to speak too unrestrainedly to the visitor before he had explained his object in coming to the house.
Looking very much pleased, and a little surprised also, when he heard Rosamond's last words, Uncle Joseph drew a chair near to the table by which Mr. and Mrs. Frankland were sitting, crumpled his felt hat up smaller than ever, and put it in one of his side pockets, drew from the other a little packet of letters, placed them on his knees as he sat down, patted them gently with both hands, and entered on his explanation in these terms:
"Madam and good Sir," he began, "before I can say comfortably my little word, I must, with your leave, travel backward to the last time when I came to this house in company with my niece."
"Your niece!" exclaimed Rosamond and Leonard, both speaking together.
"My niece, Sarah," said Uncle Joseph, "the only child of my sister Agatha. It is for the love of Sarah, if you please, that I am here now. She is the one last morsel of my flesh and blood that is left to me in the world. The rest, they are all gone! My wife, my little Joseph, my brother Max, my sister Agatha and the husband she married, the good and noble Englishman, Leeson—they are all, all gone!"
"Leeson," said Rosamond, pressing her husband's hand significantly under the table. "Your niece's name is Sarah Leeson?"
Uncle Joseph sighed and shook his head. "One day," he said, "of all the days in the year the evilmost for Sarah, she changed that name. Of the man she married—who is dead now, Madam—it is little or nothing that I know but this: His name was Jazeph, and he used her ill, for which I think him the First Scoundrel! Yes," exclaimed Uncle Joseph, with the nearest approach to anger and bitterness which his nature was capable of making, and with an idea that he was using one of the strongest superlatives in the language—"Yes! if he was to come to life again at this very moment of time, I would say it of him to his face—Englishman Jazeph, you are the First Scoundrel!"
Rosamond pressed her husband's hand for the second time. If their own convictions had not already identified Mrs. Jazeph with Sarah Leeson, the old man's last words must have amply sufficed to assure them that both names had been borne by the same person.
"Well, then, I shall now travel backward to the time when I was here with Sarah, my niece," resumed Uncle Joseph. "I must, if you please, speak the truth in this business, or, now that I am already backward where I want to be, I shall stick fast in my place, and get on no more for the rest of my life. Sir and good Madam, will you have the great kindness to forgive me and Sarah, my niece, if I confess that it was not to see the house that we came here and rang at the bell, and gave deal of trouble, and wasted much breath of the big major-domo's with the scolding that we got. It was only to do one curious little thing that we came together to this place—or, no, it was all about a secret of Sarah's, which is still as black and dark to me as the middle of the blackest and darkest night that ever was in the world—and as I nothing knew about it, except that there was no harm in it to any body or any thing, and that Sarah was determined to go, and that I could not let her go by herself; as also for the good reason that she told me she had the best right of any body to take the letter and to hide it again, seeing that she was afraid of its being found if longer in that room she left it, which was the room where she had hidden it before—why, so it happened that I—no, that she—no, no, that I—Ach Gott!" cried Uncle Joseph, striking his forehead in despair, and relieving himself by an invocation in his own language. "I am lost in my own muddlement; and whereabouts the right place is, and how I am to get myself back into it, as I am a living sinner, is more than I know!"
"There is not the least need to go back on our account," said Rosamond, forgetting all caution and self-restraint in her anxiety to restore the old man's confidence and composure. "Pray don't try to repeat your explanations. We know already—"
"We will suppose," said Leonard, interposing abruptly before his wife could add another word, "that we know already every thing you can desire to tell us in relation to your niece's secret, and to your motives for desiring to see the house."
"You will suppose that!" exclaimed Uncle Joseph, looking greatly relieved. "Ah! thank you, Sir, and you, good Madam, a thousand times for helping me out of my own muddlement with a 'Suppose.' I am all over confusion from my tops to my toes; but I can go on now, I think, and lose myself no more. So! Let us say it in this way: I and Sarah, my niece, areinthe house—that is the first 'Suppose.' I and Sarah, my niece, areoutof the house—that is the second 'Suppose.' Good! now we go on once more. On my way back to my own home at Truro, I am frightened for Sarah, because of the faint she fell into on your stairs here, and because of a look in her face that it makes me heavy at my heart to see. Also, I am sorry for her sake, because she has not done that one curious little thing which she came into the house to do. I fret about these same matters, but I console myself too; and my comfort is that Sarah will stop with me in my house at Truro, and that I shall make her happy and well again, as soon as we are settled in our life together. Judge, then, Sir, what a blow falls on me when I hear that she will not make her home where I make mine. Judge you, also, good Madam, what my surprise must be, when I ask for her reason, and she tells me she must leave Uncle Joseph, because she is afraid of being found out byyou." He stopped, and looking anxiously at Rosamond's face, saw it sadden and turn away from him after he had spoken his last words. "Are you sorry, Madam, for Sarah, my niece? do you pity her?" he asked, with a little hesitation and trembling in his voice.
"I pity her with my whole heart," said Rosamond, warmly.
"And with my whole heart, for that pity I thank you!" rejoined Uncle Joseph. "Ah, Madam, your kindness gives me the courage to go on, and to tell you that we parted from each other on the day of our getting back to Truro! When she came to see me this time, it was years and years, long and lonely and very many, since we two had met. I was afraid that many more would pass again, and I tried to make her stop with me to the very last. But she had still the same fear to drive her away—the fear of being found and put to the question by you. So, with the tears in her eyes (and in mine), and the grief at her heart (and at mine), she went away to hide herself in the empty bigness of the great city, London, which swallows up all people and all things that pour into it, and which has now swallowed up Sarah, my niece, with the rest. 'My child, you will write sometimes to Uncle Joseph,' I said, and she answered me,'I will write often.' It is three weeks now since that time, and here, on my knee, are four letters she has written to me. I shall ask your leave to put them down open before you, because they will help me to get on further yet with what I must say, and because I see in your face, Madam, that you are indeed sorry for Sarah, my niece, from your heart."
He untied the packet of letters, opened them, kissed them one by one, and put them down in a row on the table, smoothing them out carefully with his hand, and taking great pains to arrange them all in a perfectly straight line. A glance at the first of the little series showed Rosamond that the handwriting in it was the same as the handwriting in the body of the letter which had been found in the Myrtle Room.
"There is not much to read," said Uncle Joseph. "But if you will look through them first, Madam, I can tell you after all the reason for showing them that I have."
The old man was right. There was very little to read in the letters, and they grew progressively shorter as they became more recent in date. All four were written in the formal, conventionally correct style of a person taking up the pen with a fear of making mistakes in spelling and grammar, and were equally destitute of any personal particulars relative to the writer; all four anxiously entreated that Uncle Joseph would not be uneasy, inquired after his health, and expressed gratitude and love for him as warmly as their timid restraints of style would permit; all four contained these two questions relating to Rosamond—First, had Mrs. Frankland arrived yet at Porthgenna Tower? Second, if she had arrived, what had Uncle Joseph heard about her? And, finally, all four gave the same instructions for addressing an answer—"Please direct to me, 'S. J., Post-office, Smith Street, London'"—followed by the same apology, "Excuse my not giving my address, in case of accidents; for even in London I am still afraid of being followed and found out. I send every morning for letters; so I am sure to get your answer."
"I told you, Madam," said the old man, when Rosamond raised her head from the letters, "that I was frightened and sorry for Sarah when she left me. Now see, if you please, why I got more frightened and more sorry yet, when I have all the four letters that she writes to me. They begin here, with the first, at my left hand; and they grow shorter, and shorter, and shorter, as they get nearer to my right, till the last is but eight little lines. Again, see, if you please. The writing of the first letter, here, at my left hand, is very fine—I mean it is very fine to me, because I love Sarah, and because I write very badly myself; but it is not so good in the second letter—it shakes a little, it blots a little, it crooks itself a little in the last lines. In the third it is worse—more shake, more blot, more crook. In the fourth, where there is least to do, there is still more shake, still more blot, still more crook, than in all the other three put together. I see this; I remember that she was weak and worn and weary when she left me, and I say to myself, 'She is ill, though she will not tell it, for the writing betrays her!'"
Rosamond looked down again at the letters, and followed the significant changes for the worse in the handwriting, line by line, as the old man pointed them out.
"I say to myself that," he continued; "I wait, and think a little; and I hear my own heart whisper to me, 'Go you, Uncle Joseph, to London, and, while there is yet time, bring her back to be cured and comforted and made happy in your own home!' After that I wait, and think a little again—not about leaving my business; I would leave it forever sooner than Sarah should come to harm—but about what I am to do to get her to come back. That thought makes me look at the letters again; the letters show me always the same questions about Mistress Frankland; I see it plainly as my own hand before me that I shall never get Sarah, my niece, back, unless I can make easy her mind about those questions of Mistress Frankland's that she dreads as if there was death to her in every one of them. I see it! it makes my pipe go out; it drives me up from my chair; it puts my hat on my head; it brings me here, where I have once intruded myself already, and where I have no right, I know, to intrude myself again; it makes me beg and pray now, of your compassion for my niece and of your goodness for me, that you will not deny me the means of bringing Sarah back. If I may only say to her, I have seen Mistress Frankland, and she has told me with her own lips that she will ask none of those questions that you fear so much—if I may only say that, Sarah will come back with me, and I shall thank you every day of my life for making me a happy man!"
The simple eloquence of his words, the innocent earnestness of his manner, touched Rosamond to the heart. "I will do any thing, I will promise any thing," she answered eagerly, "to help you to bring her back! If she will only let me see her, I promise not to say one word that she would not wish me to say; I promise not to ask one question—no, not one—that it will pain her to answer. Oh, what comforting message can I send besides? what can I say—?" She stopped confusedly, feeling her husband's foot touching hers again.
"Ah, say no more! say no more!" cried Uncle Joseph, tying up his little packet of letters, with his eyes sparkling and his ruddy face all in a glow. "Enough said to bring Sarah back! enough said to make me grateful for all my life! Oh, I am so happy, so happy, so happy—my skin is too small to hold me!" He tossed up the packet of letters into the air, caught it, kissed it, and put it back again in his pocket, all in an instant.
"You are not going?" said Rosamond. "Surely you are not going yet?"
"It is my loss to go away from here, which I must put up with, because it is also my gain to get sooner to Sarah," replied Uncle Joseph. "For that reason only, I shall ask your pardon if I take my leave with my heart full of thanks, and go my ways home again."
"When do you propose to start for London, Mr. Buschmann?" inquired Leonard.
"To-morrow, in the morning early, Sir," replied Uncle Joseph. "I shall finish the work that I must do to-night, and shall leave the rest to Samuel (who is my very good friend, and my shopman too), and shall then go to Sarah by the first coach."
"May I ask for your niece's address in London, in case we wish to write to you?"
"She gives me no address, Sir, but the post-office; for even at the great distance of London, the same fear that she had all the way from this house still sticks to her. But here is the place where I shall get my own bed," continued the old man, producing a small shop card. "It is the house of a countryman of my own, a fine baker of buns, Sir, and a very good man indeed."
"Have you thought of any plan for finding out your niece's address?" inquired Rosamond, copying the direction on the card while she spoke.
"Ah, yes—for I am always quick at making my plans," said Uncle Joseph. "I shall present myself to the master of the post, and to him I shall say just this and no more—'Good-morning, Sir. I am the man who writes the letters to S. J. She is my niece, if you please; and all that I want to know is—Where does she live?' There is something like a plan, I think? Aha!" He spread out both his hands interrogatively, and looked at Mrs. Frankland with a self-satisfied smile.
"I am afraid," said Rosamond, partly amused, partly touched by his simplicity, "that the people at the post-office are not at all likely to be trusted with the address. I think you would do better to take a letter with you, directed to 'S. J.;' to deliver it in the morning when letters are received from the country; to wait near the door, and then to follow the person who is sent by your niece (as she tells you herself) to ask for letters for S. J."
"You think that is better?" said Uncle Joseph, secretly convinced that his own idea was unquestionably the most ingenious of the two. "Good! The least little word that you say to me, Madam, is a command that I follow with all my heart." He took the crumpled felt hat out of his pocket, and advanced to say farewell, when Mr. Frankland spoke to him again.
"If you find your niece well, and willing to travel," said Leonard, "you will bring her back to Truro at once? And you will let us know when you are both at home again?"
"At once, Sir," said Uncle Joseph. "To both these questions, I say, At once."
"If a week from this time passes," continued Leonard, "and we hear nothing from you, we must conclude, then, either that some unforeseen obstacle stands in the way of your return, or that your fears on your niece's account have been but too well-founded, and that she is not able to travel?"
"Yes, Sir; so let it be. But I hope you will hear from me before the week is out."
"Oh, so do I! most earnestly, most anxiously!" said Rosamond. "You remember my message?"
"I have got it here, every word of it," said Uncle Joseph, touching his heart. He raised the hand which Rosamond held out to him to his lips. "I shall try to thank you better when I have come back," he said. "For all your kindness to me and to my niece, God bless you both, and keep you happy, till we meet again." With these words, he hastened to the door, waved his hand gayly, with the old crumpled hat in it, and went out.
"Dear, simple, warm-hearted old man!" said Rosamond, as the door closed. "I wanted to tell him every thing, Lenny. Why did you stop me?"
"My love, it is that very simplicity which you admire, and which I admire, too, that makes me cautious. At the first sound of his voice I felt as warmly toward him as you do; but the more I heard him talk the more convinced I became that it would be rash to trust him, at first, for fear of his disclosing too abruptly to your mother that we know her secret. Our chance of winning her confidence and obtaining an interview with her depends, I can see, upon our own tact in dealing with her exaggerated suspicions and her nervous fears. That good old man, with the best and kindest intentions in the world, might ruin every thing. He will have done all that we can hope for, and all that we can wish, if he only succeeds in bringing her back to Truro."
"But if he fails?—if any thing happens?—if she is really ill?"
"Let us wait till the week is over, Rosamond. It will be time enough then to decide what we shall do next."
The week of expectation passed, and no tidings from Uncle Joseph reached Porthgenna Tower.
On the eighth day Mr. Frankland sent a messenger to Truro, with orders to find out the cabinet-maker's shop kept by Mr. Buschmann, and to inquire of the person left in charge there whether he had received any news from his master. The messenger returned in the afternoon, and brought word that Mr. Buschmann had written one short note to his shopman since his departure, announcing that he had arrived safely toward nightfall in London; that he had met with a hospitable welcome from his countryman, the German baker; and that he had discovered his niece's address, but had been prevented from seeing her by an obstacle which he hoped would be removed at his next visit. Since the delivery of that note, no further communication had been received from him, and nothing therefore was known of the period at which he might be expected to return.
The one fragment of intelligence thus obtained was not of a nature to relieve the depression of spirits which the doubt and suspense of the past week had produced in Mrs. Frankland. Her husband endeavored to combat the oppression of mind from which she was suffering, by reminding her that the ominous silence of Uncle Joseph might be just as probably occasioned by his niece's unwillingness as by her inability to return with him to Truro. Remembering the obstacle at which the old man's letter hinted, and taking also into consideration her excessive sensitiveness and her unreasoning timidity, he declared it to be quite possible that Mrs. Frankland's message, instead of re-assuring her, might only inspire her with fresh apprehensions, and might consequently strengthen her resolution to keep herself out of reach of all communications from Porthgenna Tower.
Rosamond listened patiently while this view of the case was placed before her, and acknowledged that the reasonableness of it was beyond dispute; but her readiness in admitting that her husband might be right and that she might be wrong was accompanied by no change for the better in the condition of her spirits. The interpretation which, the old man had placed upon the alteration for the worse in Mrs. Jazeph's handwriting had produced a vivid impression on her mind, which had been strengthened by her own recollection of her mother's pale, worn face when they met as strangers at West Winston. Reason, therefore, as convincingly as he might, Mr. Frankland was unable to shake his wife's conviction that the obstacle mentioned in Uncle Joseph's letter, and the silence which he had maintained since, were referable alike to the illness of his niece.
The return of the messenger from Truro suggested, besides this topic of discussion, another question of much greater importance. After having waited one day beyond the week that had been appointed, what was the proper course of action for Mr. and Mrs. Frankland now to adopt, in the absence of any information from London or from Truro to decide their future proceedings?
Leonard's first idea was to write immediately to Uncle Joseph, at the address which he had given on the occasion of his visit to Porthgenna Tower. When this project was communicated to Rosamond, she opposed it, on the ground that the necessary delay before the answer to the letter could arrive would involve a serious waste of time, when it might, for aught they knew to the contrary, be of the last importance to them not to risk the loss of a single day. If illness prevented Mrs. Jazeph from traveling, it would be necessary to see her at once, because that illness might increase. If she were only suspicious of their motives, it was equally important to open personal communications with her before she could find an opportunity of raising some fresh obstacle, and of concealing herself again in some place of refuge which Uncle Joseph himself might not be able to trace.
The truth of these conclusions was obvious, but Leonard hesitated to adopt them, because they involved the necessity of a journey to London. If he went there without his wife, his blindness placed him at the mercy of strangers and servants, in conducting investigations of the most delicate and most private nature. If Rosamond accompanied him, it would be necessary to risk all kinds of delays and inconveniences by taking the child with them on a long and wearisome journey of more than two hundred and fifty miles.
Rosamond met both these difficulties with her usual directness and decision. The idea of her husband traveling any where, under any circumstances, in his helpless, dependent state, without having her to attend on him, she dismissed at once as too preposterous for consideration. The second objection, of subjecting the child to the chances and fatigues of a long journey, she met by proposing that they should travel to Exeter at their own time and in their own conveyance, and that they should afterward insure plenty of comfort and plenty of room by taking a carriage to themselves when they reached the railroad at Exeter. After thus smoothing away the difficulties which seemed to set themselves in opposition to the journey, she again reverted to the absolute necessity of undertaking it. She reminded Leonard of the serious interest that they both had in immediately obtaining Mrs. Jazeph's testimony to the genuineness of the letter which had been found in the Myrtle Room, as well as in ascertaining all the details of the extraordinary fraud which had been practiced by Mrs. Treverton on her husband. She pleaded also her own natural anxiety to make all the atonement in her power for the pain she must have unconsciously inflicted, in the bedroom at West Winston, on the person of all others whose failings and sorrows she was most bound to respect; and having thus stated the motives which urged her husband and herself to lose no time in communicating personally with Mrs. Jazeph, she again drew the inevitable conclusion that there was no alternative, in the position in which they were now placed, but to start forthwith on the journey to London.
A little further consideration satisfied Leonard that the emergency was of such a nature as to render all attempts to meet it by half-measures impossible. He felt that his own convictions agreed with his wife's; and he resolved accordingly to act at once, without further indecision or further delay. Before the evening was over, the servants at Porthgenna were amazed by receiving directions to pack the trunks for traveling, and to order horses at the post-town for an early hour the next morning.
On the first day of the journey, the travelers started as soon as the carriage was ready, rested on the road toward noon, and remained for the night at Liskeard. On the second day they arrived at Exeter, and slept there. On the third day they reached London by the railway, between six and seven o'clock in the evening.
When they were comfortably settled for the night at their hotel, and when an hour's rest and quiet had enabled them to recover a little after the fatigues of the journey, Rosamond wrote two notes under her husband's direction. The first was addressed to Mr. Buschmann: it simply informed him of their arrival, and of their earnest desire to see him at the hotel as early as possible the next morning, and it concluded by cautioning him to wait until he had seen them before he announced their presence in London to his niece.
The second note was addressed to the family solicitor, Mr. Nixon—the same gentleman who, more than a year since, had written, at Mrs. Frankland's request, the letter which informed Andrew Treverton of his brother's decease, and of the circumstances under which the captain had died. All that Rosamond now wrote, in her husband's name and her own, to ask of Mr. Nixon, was that he would endeavor to call at their hotel on his way to business the next morning, to give his opinion on a private matter of great importance, which had obliged them to undertake the journey from Porthgenna to London. This note, and the note to Uncle Joseph, were sent to their respective addresses by a messenger on the evening when they were written.
The first visitor who arrived the next morning was the solicitor—a clear-headed, fluent, polite old gentleman, who had known Captain Treverton and his father before him. He came to the hotel fully expecting to be consulted on some difficulties connected with the Porthgenna estate, which the local agent was perhaps unable to settle, and which might be of too confused and intricate a nature to be easily expressed in writing. When he heard what the emergency really was, and when the letter that had been found in the Myrtle Room was placed in his hands, it is not too much to say that, for the first time in the course of a long life and a varied practice among all sorts and conditions of clients, sheer astonishment utterly paralyzed Mr. Nixon's faculties, and bereft him for some moments of the power of uttering a single word.
When, however, Mr. Frankland proceeded from making the disclosure to announcing his resolution to give up the purchase-money of Porthgenna Tower, if the genuineness of the letter could be proved to his own satisfaction, the old lawyer recovered the use of his tongue immediately, and protested against his client's intention with the sincere warmth of a man who thoroughly understood the advantage of being rich, and who knew what it was to gain and to lose a fortune of forty thousand pounds.
Leonard listened with patient attention while Mr. Nixon argued from his professional point of view against regarding the letter, taken by itself, as a genuine document, and against accepting Mrs. Jazeph's evidence, taken with it, as decisive on the subject of Mrs. Frankland's real parentage. He expatiated on the improbability of Mrs. Treverton's alleged fraud upon her husband having been committed without other persons besides her maid and herself being in the secret. He declared it to be in accordance with all received experience of human nature that one or more of those other persons must have spoken of the secret either from malice or from want of caution, and that the consequent exposure of the truth must, in the course of so long a period as twenty-two years, have come to the knowledge of some among the many people in the West of England, as well as in London, who knew the Treverton family personally or by reputation. From this objection he passed to another, which admitted the possible genuineness of the letter as a written document; but which pleaded the probability of its having been produced under the influence of some mental delusion on Mrs. Treverton's part, which her maid might have had an interest in humoring at the time, though she might have hesitated, after her mistress's death, at risking the possible consequences of attempting to profit by the imposture. Having stated this theory, as one which not only explained the writing of the letter, but the hiding of it also, Mr. Nixon further observed, in reference to Mrs. Jazeph, that any evidence she might give was of little or no value in a legal point of view, from the difficulty—or, he might say, the impossibility—of satisfactorily identifying the infant mentioned in the letter with the lady whom he had now the honor of addressing as Mrs. Frankland, and whom no unsubstantiated document in existence should induce him to believe to be any other than the daughter of his old friend and client, Captain Treverton.
Having heard the lawyer's objections to the end, Leonard admitted their ingenuity, but acknowledged at the same time that they had produced no alteration in his impression on the subject of the letter, or in his convictions as to the course of duty which he felt bound to follow. He would wait, he said, for Mrs. Jazeph's testimony before he acted decisively; but if that testimony were of such a nature, and were given in such a manner, as to satisfy him that his wife had no moral right to the fortune that she possessed, he would restore it at once to the person who had—Mr. Andrew Treverton.
Finding that no fresh arguments or suggestions could shake Mr. Frankland's resolution, and that no separate appeal to Rosamond had the slightest effect in stimulating her to use her influence for the purpose of inducing her husband to alter his determination; and feeling convinced, moreover, from all that he heard, that Mr. Frankland would, if he was opposed by many more objections, either employ another professional adviser, or risk committing some fatal legal error by acting for himself in the matter of restoring the money, Mr. Nixon at last consented, under protest, to give his client what help he needed in case it became necessary to hold communication with Andrew Treverton. He listened with polite resignation to Leonard's brief statement of the questions that he intended to put to Mrs. Jazeph; and said, with the slightest possible dash of sarcasm, when it came to his turn to speak, that they were excellent questions in a moral point of view, and would doubtless produce answers which would be full of interest of the most romantic kind. "But," he added, "as you have one child already, Mr. Frankland, and as you may, perhaps, if I may venture on suggesting such a thing, have more in the course of years; and as those children, when they grow up, may hear of the loss of their mother's fortune, and may wish to know why it was sacrificed, I should recommend—resting the matter on family grounds alone, and not going further to make a legal point of it also—that you procure from Mrs. Jazeph, besides the vivâ voce evidence you propose to extract (against the admissibility of which, in this case, I again protest), a written declaration, which you may leave behind you at your death, and which may justify you in the eyes of your children, in case the necessity for such justification should arise at some future period."
This advice was too plainly valuable to be neglected. At Leonard's request, Mr. Nixon drew out at once a form of declaration, affirming the genuineness of the letter addressed by the late Mrs. Treverton on her death-bed to her husband, since also deceased, and bearing witness to the truth of the statements therein contained, both as regarded the fraud practiced on Captain Treverton and the asserted parentage of the child. Telling Mr. Frankland that he would do well to have Mrs. Jazeph's signature to this document attested by the names of two competent witnesses, Mr. Nixon handed the declaration to Rosamond to read aloud to her husband, and, finding that no objection was made to any part of it, and that he could be of no further use in the present early stage of the proceedings, rose to take his leave. Leonard engaged to communicate with him again in the course of the day, if necessary; and he retired, reiterating his protest to the last, and declaring that he had never met with such an extraordinary case and such a self-willed client before in the whole course of his practice.
Nearly an hour elapsed after the departure of the lawyer before any second visitor was announced. At the expiration of that time, the welcome sound of footsteps was heard approaching the door, and Uncle Joseph entered the room.
Rosamond's observation, stimulated by anxiety, detected a change in his look and manner the moment he appeared. His face was harassed and fatigued, and his gait, as he advanced into the room, had lost the briskness and activity which so quaintly distinguished it when she saw him, for the first time, at Porthgenna Tower. He tried to add to his first words of greeting an apology for being late; but Rosamond interrupted him, in her eagerness to ask the first important question.
"We know that you have discovered her address," she said, anxiously, "but we know nothing more. Is she as you feared to find her? Is she ill?"
The old man shook his head sadly. "When I showed you her letter," he said, "what did I tell you? She is so ill, Madam, that not even the message your kindness gave to me will do her any good."
Those few simple words struck Rosamond's heart with a strange fear, which silenced her against her own will when she tried to speak again. Uncle Joseph understood the anxious look she fixed on him, and the quick sign she made toward the chair standing nearest to the sofa on which she and her husband were sitting. There he took his place, and there he confided to them all that he had to tell.
He had followed, he said, the advice which Rosamond had given to him at Porthgenna, by taking a letter addressed to "S. J." to the post-office the morning after his arrival in London. The messenger—a maid-servant—had called to inquire, as was anticipated, and had left the post-office with his letter in her hand. He had followed her to a lodging-house in a street near, had seen her let herself in at the door, and had then knocked and inquired for Mrs. Jazeph. The door was answered by an old woman, who looked like the landlady; and the reply was that no one of that name lived there. He had then explained that he wished to see the person for whom letters were sent to the neighboring post-office, addressed to "S. J.;" but the old woman had answered, in the surliest way, that they had nothing to do with anonymous people or their friends in that house, and had closed the door in his face. Upon this he had gone back to his friend, the German baker, to get advice; and had been recommended to return, after allowing some little time to elapse, to ask if he could see the servant who waited on the lodgers, to describe his niece's appearance, and to put half a crown into the girl's hand to help her to understand what he wanted. He had followed these directions, and had discovered that his niece was lying ill in the house, under the assumed name of "Mrs. James." A little persuasion (after the present of the half-crown) had induced the girl to go up stairs and announce his name. After that there were no more obstacles to be overcome, and he was conducted immediately to the room occupied by his niece.
He was inexpressibly shocked and startled when he saw her by the violent nervous agitation which she manifested as he approached her bedside. But he did not lose heart and hope until he had communicated Mrs. Frankland's message, and had found that it failed altogether in producing the re-assuring effect on her spirits which he had trusted and believed that it would exercise. Instead of soothing, it seemed to excite and alarm her afresh. Among a host of minute inquiries about Mrs. Frankland's looks, about her manner toward him, about the exact words she had spoken, all of which he was able to answer more or less to her satisfaction, she had addressed two questions to him, to which he was utterly unable to reply. The first of the questions was, Whether Mrs. Frankland had said any thing about the Secret? The second was, Whether she had spoken any chance word to lead to the suspicion that she had found out the situation of the Myrtle Room?
The doctor in attendance had come in, the old man added, while he was still sitting by his niece's bedside, and still trying ineffectually to induce her to accept the friendly and re-assuring language of Mrs. Frankland's message. After making some inquiries and talking a little while on indifferent matters, the doctor had privately taken him aside; had informed him that the pain over the region of the heart and the difficulty in breathing, which were the symptoms of which his niece complained, were more serious in their nature than persons uninstructed in medical matters might be disposed to think; and had begged him to give her no more messages from any one, unless he felt perfectly sure beforehand that they would have the effect of clearing her mind, at once and forever, from the secret anxieties that now harassed it—anxieties which he might rest assured were aggravating her malady day by day, and rendering all the medical help that could be given of little or no avail.
Upon this, after sitting longer with his niece, and after holding counsel with himself, he had resolved to write privately to Mrs. Frankland that evening, after getting back to his friend's house. The letter had taken him longer to compose than any one accustomed to writing would believe. At last, after delays in making a fair copy from many rough drafts, and delays in leaving his task to attend to his niece, he had completed a letter narrating what had happened since his arrival in London, in language which he hoped might be understood. Judging by comparison of dates, this letter must have crossed Mr. and Mrs. Frankland on the road. It contained nothing more than he had just been relating with his own lips—except that it also communicated, as a proof that distance had not diminished the fear which tormented his niece's mind, the explanation she had given to him of her concealment of her name, and of her choice of an abode among strangers, when she had friends in London to whom she might have gone. That explanation it was perhaps needless to have lengthened the letter by repeating, for it only involved his saying over again, in substance, what he had already said in speaking of the motive which had forced Sarah to part from him at Truro.
With last words such as those, the sad and simple story of the old man came to an end. After waiting a little to recover her self-possession and to steady her voice, Rosamond touched her husband to draw his attention to herself, and whispered to him—
"I may say all, now, that I wished to say at Porthgenna?"
"All," he answered. "If you can trust yourself, Rosamond, it is fittest that he should hear it from your lips."
After the first natural burst of astonishment was over, the effect of the disclosure of the Secret on Uncle Joseph exhibited the most striking contrast that can be imagined to the effect of it on Mr. Nixon. No shadow of doubt darkened the old man's face, not a word of objection dropped from his lips. The one emotion excited in him was simple, unreflecting, unalloyed delight. He sprang to his feet with all his natural activity, his eyes sparkled again with all their natural brightness; one moment he clapped his hands like a child; the next he caught up his hat, and entreated Rosamond to let him lead her at once to his niece's bedside. "If you will only tell Sarah what you have just told me," he cried, hurrying across the room to open the door, "you will give her back her courage, you will raise her up from her bed, you will cure her before the day is out!"
A warning word from Mr. Frankland stopped him on a sudden, and brought him back, silent and attentive, to the chair that he had left the moment before.
"Think a little of what the doctor told you," said Leonard. "The sudden surprise which has made you so happy might do fatal mischief to your niece. Before we take the responsibility of speaking to her on a subject which is sure to agitate her violently, however careful we may be in introducing it, we ought first, I think, for safety's sake, to apply to the doctor for advice."
Rosamond warmly seconded her husband's suggestion, and, with her characteristic impatience of delay, proposed that they should find out the medical man immediately. Uncle Joseph announced—a little unwillingly, as it seemed—in answer to her inquiries, that he knew the place of the doctor's residence, and that he was generally to be found at home before one o'clock in the afternoon. It was then just half-past twelve; and Rosamond, with her husband's approval, rang the bell at once to send for a cab.
She was about to leave the room to put on her bonnet, after giving the necessary order, when the old man stopped her by asking, with some appearance of hesitation and confusion, if it was considered necessary that he should go to the doctor with Mr. and Mrs. Frankland; adding, before the question could be answered, that he would greatly prefer, if there was no objection to it on their parts, being left to wait at the hotel to receive any instructions they might wish to give him on their return. Leonard immediately complied with his request, without inquiring into his reasons for making it; but Rosamond's curiosity was aroused, and she asked why he preferred remaining by himself at the hotel to going with them to the doctor.
"I like him not," said the old man. "When he speaks about Sarah, he looks and talks as if he thought she would never get up from her bed again." Answering in those brief words, he walked away uneasily to the window, as if he desired to say no more.
The residence of the doctor was at some little distance, but Mr. and Mrs. Frankland arrived there before one o'clock, and found him at home. He was a young man, with a mild, grave face, and a quiet, subdued manner. Daily contact with suffering and sorrow had perhaps prematurely steadied and saddened his character. Merely introducing her husband and herself to him, as persons who were deeply interested in his patient at the lodging-house, Rosamond left it to Leonard to ask the first questions relating to the condition of her mother's health.
The doctor's answer was ominously prefaced by a few polite words, which were evidently intended to prepare his hearers for a less hopeful report than they might have come there expecting to receive. Carefully divesting the subject of all professional technicalities, he told them that his patient was undoubtedly affected with serious disease of the heart. The exact nature of this disease he candidly acknowledged to be a matter of doubt, which various medical men might decide in various ways. According to the opinion which he had himself formed from the symptoms, he believed that the patient's malady was connected with the artery which conveys blood directly from the heart through the system. Having found her singularly unwilling to answer questions relating to the nature of her past life, he could only guess that the disease was of long standing; that it was originally produced by some great mental shock, followed by long-wearing anxiety (of which her face showed palpable traces); and that it had been seriously aggravated by the fatigue of a journey to London, which she acknowledged she had undertaken at a time when great nervous exhaustion rendered her totally unfit to travel. Speaking according to this view of the case, it was his painful duty to tell her friends that any violent emotion would unquestionably put her life in danger. At the same time, if the mental uneasiness from which she was now suffering could be removed, and if she could be placed in a quiet, comfortable country home, among people who would be unremittingly careful in keeping her composed, and in suffering her to want for nothing, there was reason to hope that the progress of the disease might be arrested, and that her life might be spared for some years to come.
Rosamond's heart bounded at the picture of the future which her fancy drew from the suggestions that lay hidden in the doctor's last words. "She can command every advantage you have mentioned, and more, if more is required!" she interposed eagerly, before her husband could speak again. "Oh, Sir, if rest among kind friends is all that her poor weary heart wants, thank God we can give it!"
"We can give it," said Leonard, continuing the sentence for his wife, "if the doctor will sanction our making a communication to his patient, which is of a nature to relieve her of all anxiety, but which, it is necessary to add, she is at present quite unprepared to receive."
"May I ask," said the doctor, "who is to be intrusted with the responsibility of making the communication you mention?"
"There are two persons who could be intrusted with it," answered Leonard. "One is the old man whom you have seen by your patient's bedside. The other is my wife."
"In that case," rejoined the doctor, looking at Rosamond, "there can be no doubt that this lady is the fittest person to undertake the duty." He paused, and reflected for a moment; then added—"May I inquire, however, before I venture on guiding your decision one way or the other, whether the lady is as familiarly known to my patient, and is on the same intimate terms with her, as the old man?"
"I am afraid I must answer No to both those questions," replied Leonard. "And I ought, perhaps, to tell you, at the same time, that your patient believes my wife to be now in Cornwall. Her first appearance in the sick-room would, I fear, cause great surprise to the sufferer, and possibly some little alarm as well."
"Under those circumstances," said the doctor, "the risk of trusting the old man, simple as he is, seems to be infinitely the least risk of the two—for the plain reason that his presence can cause her no surprise. However unskillfully he may break the news, he will have the great advantage over this lady of not appearing unexpectedly at the bedside. If the hazardous experiment must be tried—and I assume that it must, from what you have said—you have no choice, I think, but to trust it, with proper cautions and instructions, to the old man to carry out."
After arriving at that conclusion, there was no more to be said on either side. The interview terminated, and Rosamond and her husband hastened back to give Uncle Joseph his instructions at the hotel.
As they approached the door of their sitting-room they were surprised by hearing the sound of music inside. On entering, they found the old man crouched upon a stool, listening to a shabby little musical box which was placed on a table close by him, and which was playing an air that Rosamond recognized immediately as the "Batti, Batti" of Mozart.
"I hope you will pardon me for making music to keep myself company while you were away," said Uncle Joseph, starting up in some little confusion, and touching the stop of the box. "This is, if you please, of all my friends and companions, the oldest that is left. The divine Mozart, the king of all the composers that ever lived, gave it with his own hand, Madam, to my brother, when Max was a boy in the music school at Vienna. Since my niece left me in Cornwall, I have not had the heart to make Mozart sing to me out of this little bit of box until to-day. Now that you have made me happy about Sarah again, my ears ache once more for the tinyting-tingthat has always the same friendly sound to my heart, travel where I may. But enough so!" said the old man, placing the box in the leather case by his side, which Rosamond had noticed there when she first saw him at Porthgenna. "I shall put back my singing-bird into his cage, and shall ask, when that is done, if you will be pleased to tell me what it is that the doctor has said?"
Rosamond answered his request by relating the substance of the conversation which had passed between her husband and the doctor. She then, with many preparatory cautions, proceeded to instruct the old man how to disclose the discovery of the Secret to his niece. She told him that the circumstances in connection with it must be first stated, not as events that had really happened, but as events that might be supposed to have happened. She put the words that he would have to speak into his mouth, choosing the fewest and the plainest that would answer the purpose; she showed him how he might glide almost imperceptibly from referring to the discovery as a thing that might be supposed, to referring to it as a thing that had really happened; and she impressed upon him, as most important of all, to keep perpetually before his niece's mind the fact that the discovery of the Secret had not awakened one bitter feeling or one resentful thought toward her, in the minds of either of the persons who had been so deeply interested in finding it out.
Uncle Joseph listened with unwavering attention until Rosamond had done; then rose from his seat, fixed his eyes intently on her face, and detected an expression of anxiety and doubt in it which he rightly interpreted as referring to himself.
"May I make you sure, before I go away, that I shall forget nothing?" he asked, very earnestly. "I have no head to invent, it is true; but I have something in me that can remember, and the more especially when it is for Sarah's sake. If you please, listen now, and hear if I can say to you over again all that you have said to me?"
Standing before Rosamond, with something in his look and manner strangely and touchingly suggestive of the long-past days of his childhood, and of the time when he had said his earliest lessons at his mother's knee, he now repeated, from first to last, the instructions that had been given to him, with a verbal exactness, with an easy readiness of memory, which, in a man of his age, was nothing less than astonishing. "Have I kept it all as I should?" he asked, simply, when he had come to an end. "And may I go my ways now, and take my good news to Sarah's bedside?"
It was still necessary to detain him, while Rosamond and her husband consulted together on the best and safest means of following up the avowal that the Secret was discovered by the announcement of their own presence in London.
After some consideration, Leonard asked his wife to produce the document which the lawyer had drawn out that morning, and to write a few lines, from his dictation, on the blank side of the paper, requesting Mrs. Jazeph to read the form of declaration, and to affix her signature to it, if she felt that it required her, in every particular, to affirm nothing that was not the exact truth. When this had been done, and when the leaf on which Mrs. Frankland had written had been folded outward, so that it might be the first page to catch the eye, Leonard directed that the paper should be given to the old man, and explained to him what he was to do with it, in these words:
"When you have broken the news about the Secret to your niece," he said, "and when you have allowed her full time to compose herself, if she asks questions about my wife and myself (as I believe she will), hand that paper to her for answer, and beg her to read it. Whether she is willing to sign it or not, she is sure to inquire how you came by it. Tell her in return that you have received it from Mrs. Frankland—using the word 'received,' so that she may believe at first that it was sent to you from Porthgenna by post. If you find that she signs the declaration, and that she is not much agitated after doing so, then tell her in the same gradual way in which you tell the truth about the discovery of the Secret, that my wife gave the paper to you with her own hands, and that she is now in London—"
"Waiting and longing to see her," added Rosamond. "You, who forget nothing, will not, I am sure, forget to say that."
The little compliment to his powers of memory made Uncle Joseph color with pleasure, as if he was a boy again. Promising to prove worthy of the trust reposed in him, and engaging to come back and relieve Mrs. Frankland of all suspense before the day was out, he took his leave, and went forth hopefully on his momentous errand.
Rosamond watched him from the window, threading his way in and out among the throng of passengers on the pavement, until he was lost to view. How nimbly the light little figure sped away out of sight! How gayly the unclouded sunlight poured down on the cheerful bustle in the street! The whole being of the great city basked in the summer glory of the day; all its mighty pulses beat high, and all its myriad voices whispered of hope!