Vinal sat alone, propped and cushioned in an arm chair, when a clerk from his office came to bring him his morning letters. He looked over the superscriptions till he saw one in a foreign hand. Vinal compressed his pale lips. When the clerk had left the room, he glanced about him nervously, tore open the letter, and read it in haste.
"The bloodsucker! Money; more money! He soaks it up like a sponge; or, rather, I am the sponge, and he means to wring me dry. In jail! Well, he has found his place, for once. Six hundred dollars! That, I suppose, is to pay his fine; to uncage the wild beast, and set him loose. I wish he were sentenced for ten years; then he might lie there, and rot. I must send him something—enough to keep him in play. No, I will send him nothing. He is in trouble; and I may turn it to account. I will write to him that, if he will return me my letters, I will give him a thousand dollars now, and an annuity of five hundred for six years to come. I shall do well if I can draw the viper's teeth at that price. Then I can breathe again; unless Morton should have suspected the trick I played him, or—what if he should meet with Speyer! But that is not likely, for he never knew him, nor saw him, and Speyer will shun him as he would the plague. I wish they had shot him in the prison, as I am told they meant to do. There would have been one stumbling block away; one lion out of my path. But now the sword hangs over me by a hair; I am racked and torn like a toad under a harrow; no rest, no peace! What if Speyer should do as he threatens, print my letters, and placard them about the streets! I will buy them out of his hands if it cost all I have. And even then I shall not be safe, as long as this ruffian is above ground. With him and Morton to haunt me, my life is a slow death, a purgatory, a hell."
He tore Speyer's letter into small fragments, rolled and crushed them together, and scattered them under the grate.
When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they will.—Much Ado about Nothing.
Morton reached New York, and found the person to whom he had been referred by Richards. He proved to be a German, of respectable appearance enough; but Morton could learn nothing from him. He admitted that he had once known Speyer; but stubbornly denied all present knowledge concerning him; and after various inquiry elsewhere, which brought him into contact with much vile company, without helping him towards his end, Morton gave over the search, and returned to Boston.
A day or two after, he met Richards in the street.
"Well, Mr. Richards, I was in New York the other day, and saw your man; but he knew nothing about Speyer."
Richards laughed.
"I dare say not; just let me write to him; he will tell me a different story. I used to be hand and glove with all these refugees; and I will lay you any bet I find Speyer's whereabouts within a week."
Accordingly, three or four days after, Richards called at Morton's lodgings, with an air of great self-satisfaction.
"I have spotted your game for you, sir, and he won't run away in a hurry, either. He'll be sure to wait till you come. He's in jail."
"What, for debt?"
"No, for an assault on a Frenchman. It was about a woman, a friend of Speyer's. You know I told you what a jealous fellow he is." And he proceeded to recount what further information he had gained.
"Odd," pondered Richards, after parting from Morton, "that a millionnaire like him, and not at all a mean man either, should trouble himself so much about any picayune debt that Speyer can owe him. There is something in this business more than I can make out."
While Richards occupied himself with these reflections, Morton repaired to his lodgings and made his preparations. On the next morning, he was in New York again.
He went to the jail where Speyer was confined, and readily gained leave to see him. A somewhat loquacious officer, who was to conduct him to the prisoner's room, confirmed what Richards had told him, and gave him some new particulars. Speyer, he said, had never before, to his knowledge, come under the notice of the police. He had been living in good lodgings, and in a somewhat showy style. The person who had occasioned the quarrel was an Italian girl. "She comes every day to see him," said the policeman—"she's a wild one, I tell you; and he frets himself to death because he is shut up here, and can't be round to look after her."
"So much the better," thought Morton, who hoped that this impatience would aid him in his intended negotiation.
"For how long a time is he sentenced?" he asked.
"For three weeks; unless he can find somebody to pay his fine for him."
On entering the prisoner's room, Morton saw a man of about forty, well dressed, though in a jail, but whose sallow features, deep-set eyes, and square, massive lower jaw, well covered with a black beard, indicated a character likely to be any thing but tractable. If he had been either a gentleman on the one hand, or a common ruffian on the other, his visitor might have better known how to deal with him; but he had the look of one to whom, whatever he might be at heart, a various contact with mankind had armed with an invincible self-possession, and guarded at all points against surprise.
Morton was a wretched diplomatist, and had sense enough to know it. He knew that if he tried to manoeuvre with his antagonist, the latter would outflank him in a moment, and he had therefore resolved on a sudden and direct attack. But when he saw Speyer, he could not repress a lingering doubt whether he were in fact the person of whom he was in search. His chief object was to gain from him, if possible, any letters of Vinal which might be in his hands. There was no direct evidence that he had any such letters; yet Morton thought that the only hope of success lay in assuming his having them as a certainty, and pretending a positive knowledge, where, in truth, he had no other ground of action than conjecture. So he smothered his doubts, and as soon as the policeman was gone, made a crashing onset on the enemy.
"My name is Vassall Morton. I escaped four months ago from the Castle of Ehrenberg. I have known something of you through Mr. Vinal."
If Morton were in doubt before, all his doubts were now scattered, for a look of irrepressible surprise passed across Speyer's features, mingled with as much dismay as his nature was capable of feeling. At the next instant, every trace of it had disappeared; and slowly shaking his head, to indicate unconsciousness, he looked at Morton inquiringly, with an eye perfectly self-possessed and impenetrable. His visitor, however, was not to be so deceived.
"I have no enmity against you, nor any wish to injure you. On the contrary, I will pay your fine, and set you free, if you will have it so. You have letters concerning me, written to you by Vinal. Give them to me, and I will do as I say. No harm shall come to you, and I will give you money to carry you to any part of the world you wish."
"What letters?" asked Speyer.
"We will have no bush-beating. You wish to get out of jail, and have good reason for wishing to get out at once. If you will give me those letters, you shall be free in three hours, and safe. If you will not, I may give you some trouble."
Speyer was silent for a moment.
"I know the letters are of use to you. You can play a profitable game with them; but I can stop your game at any moment I please."
"I can get four thousand dollars for them to-morrow," said Speyer.
"Then why are you here in jail?"
"Vinal offers it; here it is." And taking a note from his pocket, Speyer read Vinal's proposal to buy the letters.
"Let me see it," said Morton, taking the note from Speyer's hand. "This, of itself, is evidence against him. With your leave, I will keep it. Now hear my offer. Give me the letters, and I will pay your fine. Then go with me to Boston, and I will make Vinal pay you on the spot every dollar that he has offered, on condition that you promise to leave the United States, and never return."
Speyer reflected. He came to the conclusion that Morton did not mean to expose Vinal; but only, like himself, to extort money from him; and wished that he, Speyer, should leave the country in order to get rid of a competitor. Morton's object was quite different. He could not foresee to what extremities Speyer's extortion might drive its victim; and he aimed to check it, by no means out of any tenderness for Vinal, but lest his wife might suffer from its consequences.
Speyer, on his part, fevered with jealousy, was chafing to be at large again.
"When will you pay my fine?"
"Now."
"Then I accept your proposal."
"Can I rely on your promise to leave the country, and make no further drafts on Vinal?"
Speyer cast a glance at him, as if he had read his mind.
"I will promise."
"Will you swear?"
Speyer readily took the oath, insisting that Morton should swear in turn to keep his part of the condition.
"Now let me see the letters."
"I must send to my lodgings for them. If you will come back in two hours, you shall have them."
"I should have thought you would keep them by you."
"No; but they are safe. Come back at twelve with the money for my fine, and they shall be here for you."
Morton had no sooner left the room, than Speyer despatched an underling of the jail to buy for him a few sheets of the thin, half-transparent paper in common use for European correspondence. This being brought, he opened his trunk, and delving to the bottom, drew up a leather case, from which he took the letters in question. Laying the thin paper over them, he proceeded to trace with a pen an exact facsimile. He was well practised at such work, and after one or two failures, succeeded perfectly. Folding his counterfeits after the manner of the originals, he placed them in the envelopes belonging to the latter; and within a half hour after his task was finished, Morton reappeared.
Speyer gave him one of the facsimiles. He read it attentively, without seeing the imposture. The handwriting, though disguised, was evidently Vinal's; but it had neither the signature of the writer, nor Morton's name. The place of each was supplied by a cipher.
"Reference is made here to another letter. Where is it?"
Speyer gave him the second counterfeit. The envelope bore a postmark of a few days later than the first. The note contained merely the names of Morton and Vinal, with ciphers affixed, referring to those in the first letter.
"Have you no more of Vinal's papers?"
Speyer shook his head. Indeed, the letters, if genuine, would have been amply sufficient to place their writer in Morton's power. The latter at once took the necessary measures to gain the prisoner's release. Speyer no sooner found himself at liberty than he hastened to search out the fair object of his anxieties, promising to meet Morton on the steamboat for Boston in the afternoon. His doubts were strong whether the other would keep faith with him; but he amply consoled himself with the thought that, at the worst, he still had means to bring Vinal to terms.
"Strange," thought Vinal, "that I hear nothing from him."
It was three days since he had written to Speyer; and his chief anxiety was, lest his note should have miscarried. Pain and long confinement had wrought heavily upon him. Every emotion, every care, thrilled with a morbid keenness upon his brain and nerves; but hitherto he had ruled his sensitive organism with an iron self-control, and calmed its perturbations with a fortitude which in a better man would have been heroic.
His wife was in the room, and, as his eye rested on her, it kindled with a kind of troubled delight, for he loved her strongly, after his fashion. He had remarked of late a singular assiduity and tenderness in her devotion to him. Her position, in fact, was not unlike that of one who, broken and overborne by some irreparable sorrow, had renounced the world and its happiness, to embrace a new life, and build up for herself a new hope in the calm sanctuary of a convent. In the same spirit, Edith Leslie, bidding farewell to her girlish dream of life, its morning rose tint, and cloud draperies of gold and purple, gave herself to the practical duties before her, and sought, in their devoted fulfilment, to strengthen herself against the flood which for a time had overwhelmed her.
Vinal, who, acute as he was, could not understand the state of mind from which her peculiar kindness of manner towards him rose, pleased himself with the idea that his rival's return was not so great a shock to her as he had at first feared, and that, after all, she was more fond of him than of Morton. This notion consoled his disturbed thoughts not a little. Still he was abundantly anxious and harassed.
"If Morton should suspect! He has not come to see me; but that is natural enough, under the circumstances. And if he does suspect, he can have no proof. No one here suspects me. They say it was strange that my European correspondent should have made such a mistake; but that is all. No one dreams that I had a hand in it; and why should they? No one knew of Edith's engagement to him, except herself, her father, and her confidantes. I suppose she has confidantes—all girls have them. I wish their epitaphs were written, whoever they are. Well,
But this is a dangerous business—a cursed business. Why does not Speyer write?"
As his thoughts ran in this strain, he looked up, and his eye caught that of his wife. She was struck with his troubled expression.
"You look anxious and care-worn. Are you ill?"
"Come to me, Edith," said Vinal, with a faint smile.
She came to the side of his chair, and he took her hand.
"Edith, I am not well to-day. My head swims. This long confinement is eating away my life by inches."
"In a week more, I trust, you will be able to move again. The country air will give you new life. But why do you look so troubled?"
"Dreams, Edith,—bad dreams, like Hamlet's, I suppose. It is very strange,—I cannot imagine why it is,—but to-day I have felt oppressed, weighed down, shadowed as if a cloud hung over me. I am not myself. A man is a mere slave to his nervous system, and when that is overthrown, his whole soul is shaken with it. The country is my hope, Edith. We will go there together, soon, and begin life anew."
A knock at the door interrupted him.
"Come in," cried Vinal, in his usual quick, decisive tone.
A servant entered.
"Well, what is it?"
"A gentleman wishes to see you, sir."
"Did he give his name?"
"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 compassion; 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 passage; and returning the pressure of his hand, his wife went out at the door of a small adjoining room, opening upon the side passage 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 Vassall 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 passage," 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 Marseilles, 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 pass 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 damned. Flint and iron could not see you without softening. I have saved you,—not out of mercy, nor forgiveness,—not foryoursake;—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 passive 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, rushing 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.
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 anguish!—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 arenotmy 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 pass 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. Ifhecould 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.EDITHLESLIE.
EDITHLESLIE.
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 passage of the hotel to his apartment, and through which, on the morning of his interview with Morton, she had intended to pass 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.
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 sunshine.
In process of time, however, his ancient interest in his favorite pursuit began to rekindle. He began to feel that the years of his imprisonment had not been the dead and barren blank which he had inclined to think them. His mind had ripened in its solitude, and the studies which he had before followed with the zeal of a boy, more eager than able to deal with the broad questions which they involved, he could now grasp with the matured intellect of a man.
But while Morton was thus laboring on, Edith Leslie was passing through an ordeal incomparably more severe. Month after month dragged on, and her father still lingered, sinking again and again to the very edge of the grave, and then rallying, as if with a fresh life. Vinal, meanwhile, was in a good measure recovered from the effects of his accident. His home and hers, if it could be called a home, was now a house in town, which her father had fitted up for her in view of her marriage. She had a painful and delicate part to act—at her father's bedside, to appear as the happy and contented wife; at home, to endure the presence of the man whose treachery filled her with horror, and whose love for her, though she had never spoken a word of reproof, had changed into fear and hatred. Of his actual presence, however, she had to endure little; for he shunned her studiously; and her house was to her a solitude, where she passed hours of a suffering more intense than Morton had ever known in the dungeons of Ehrenberg.
Meanwhile, the servants, those domestic spies, did not fail to rumor abroad the singular mode of life of the bride and bridegroom; that Vinal avoided the house; that they seldom met, even at meals; and that no word or look of sympathy or confidence seemed ever to pass between them. Such rumors found their currency among the busier gossips of the town; but Morton, secluded among his books, remained wholly ignorant of them.
Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.—Webster.
Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.—Webster.
It was nearly a year since he had landed at New York, and Morton still remained a literary hermit. Society was stale and distasteful to him. He passed three fourths of his day in his library, and the rest on horseback. At length, however, it happened that a cousin of his mother, one of his few relatives in the city, was to give a ball on occasion of her daughter'sdébut;and lest his refusal should be thought unkind, Morton promised to come. He drove to town in the afternoon; and walking through a somewhat obscure street, suddenly, on turning a corner, saw, some four or five rods before him, a well-remembered face. It was the face of Henry Speyer. The discovery was mutual. Speyer instantly turned down a by-lane. Morton quickened his pace, and reached the head of the lane in time to see the broad shoulders of the patriot in full retreat. He soon lost sight of him among a wilderness of back yards and squalid houses. The incident greatly disturbed and exasperated him. "A broken oath is nothing to him," he thought to himself; "he is at Vinal again, dragging at his veins like a vampire."
The evening drew on, and he entered the ball room in a gloomy and dejected frame of mind. After a few words to his relatives, he took his stand among a group who were watching the dancers; and had scarcely done so, when he saw a young lady, simply, but very richly dressed, whose fine figure and powerfully expressive beauty arrested his eye at once. The indifference and listlessness with which he had entered vanished. He soon observed that she was not an object of attention to him alone; for near him stood a certain old beau, well known about town, and a young collegian, both following her with their eyes. The music ceased, and her partner led her to a seat at the farther side of the room. Glancing at his two neighbors, Morton saw that they were in the act of moving towards her; but he, being nearer, had the advantage. Gliding through the dissolving fragments of the dance, he stood by her side.
"Miss Fanny Euston, I see two persons coming to ask you to dance. May I hope that you will reject them for an old friend's sake, and let me be your partner?"
She raised her eyes with a perplexed look, which instantly changed to a bright gleam of recognition, and cordially took his proffered hand.
"So," said Morton, "you have not forgotten me. And yet, as I see you, I hardly dare to take up again the broken thread of our old intimacy. I used to call you Fanny."
"Call me Fanny still," she said, "if only for the memory of auld lang syne."
"I hoped to have seen you before, but you have been away."
"Yes, with my relations, and yours, at Baltimore. I have heard a great deal about you. Your story is the talk of the town. You might be the lion of the season; but I have not seen you at parties."
"No, I have outlived my liking for such matters."
"I cannot wonder at it. What horrors you have suffered! what dangers you have passed!"
"I have weathered them, though."
"You were more than four years in a dungeon."
"Yes, but I gave them the slip."
"You were led out to be shot by the soldiers."
"They thought better of it, and saved their ammunition."
"And yet I see," said Miss Euston, smiling, "that you still remain your former self. I remember telling you that, if you were sentenced to the rack, you would go to it with a gibe on your tongue, and speak of it afterwards as a pleasant diversion. But," she added, with a changed look, "you have not come off unscathed. Your face is darker and thinner than it used to be, and there are lines in it that were not there before."
"Fortune fondled me till she grew tired of me; then turned at me, tooth and nail."
"You banter with your lips, but your look belies your words. You have suffered greatly; you have suffered intensely."
Morton looked grave in spite of himself.
"Perhaps you are right. I have very little heart left for jesting."
The eyes of his companion, as they met his, assumed a peculiar softness.
"You must have suffered beyond all power of words to speak it. The world to you was fresh and full of interest. You were ambitious; full of ardor and energy; loving hardship for its own sake, and obstacles for the sake of conquering them. You were formed for action. It was your element—your breath; and without it you did not care to live. You were high in confidence, and believed that whatever you had once resolved on must, sooner or later, come to pass."
"Why are you saying this?" demanded Morton, in great surprise.
"Out of this life you were suddenly snatched and buried in a dungeon; shut off from all intercourse with men; your energies stifled; your restless mind left to prey upon itself, or sustain a weary siege against despair. Pain or danger you could have faced like a man; but this passive misery must to you have been a daily death."
"Who," interrupted Morton, "taught you, a woman, to penetrate the nature of a man, and describe sufferings that you never felt?"
"Your mind was like a spring of steel, springing up the more strongly the harder it was pressed down. The suffering must have been deep indeed from which you could not rebound. To have escaped, to have reached home, and to have found any thing but relief and delight——"
"Home!" ejaculated Morton, bitterly, as a sharp memory of the anguish which had met him on the threshold came over him. "A prison may be borne with patience. Those are fortunate who have felt no keener stabs."
The words, equivocal as they were, were scarcely spoken, when he had repented them. Fanny Euston was silent for a moment. "Can it be possible," she thought, "that the stories whispered about, that before he went away he was engaged to Edith Leslie, are something more than an idle rumor?"
"Why do you look at me so searchingly?" thought Morton, on his part, as, raising his eyes, he saw those of his friend fixed on him in a gaze in which a woman's curiosity was mingled with a fully equal share of a woman's kindliness and sympathy. He hastened to escape from the critical ground which he had approached.
"I can retort upon you," he said. "You have had your ordeal, too."
"What, do you see its traces? Do you find me scorched and withered?"
"I see," said Morton, "such traces as on gold that has passed through the furnace."
"Truly, I have cause to rejoice, then; for I remember that, among other compliments, you once intimated your opinion that I was possessed with a devil."
"I am afraid that I pushed to its farthest limit my privilege of cousinship."
"And yet, when I look back to that time, I cannot help thinking that you had some reason for believing that an influence from the nether world had some share in me."
"Now pardon me, if I am rude again. Looking at you, I can see the same devil still."
"Indeed, and you will console me now, as you did then, by telling me that a dash of viciousness is necessary to make a character interesting."
"I should prune and explain my speech. By a devil, I did not mean a malicious imp of darkness, wholly bent on evil. I meant nothing more than certain impulses and emotions,—passions, if I may call them so,—very turbulent tenants, yet of admirable use when well dealt with. These were the devil whom I used to see in you, and whom I see still."
"I shall tremble at myself."
"Then you are not so brave as you were when you leaped the fallen tree at New Baden. Your demon has ceased to have an alarming look. I think you have turned him to good account. Shall I illustrate from the legends of the saints?"
"In any way you please; but I should never have expected you to resort to so pious a source."
"St. Bernard, crossing the Alps on some holy errand, was met by Satan, who, being anxious to prevent his journey, broke one of his carriage wheels. But St. Bernard caught him, sprinkled him with holy water, doubled him into a wheel, and put him upon the carriage in place of the broken one. The legend says that he answered the purpose admirably, and bore the saint safely to the end of his journey."
"Your legend is absurd enough; but I think I catch your meaning, and wish I could think you wholly in the right. It is singular that you and I have never met without our conversation becoming personal to ourselves. We are always studying each other—always trying to penetrate each other's thoughts."
"On one side, at least, the success has been complete. As you look at me, I feel that you are reading me like a book, from title page to finis."
"You greatly overrate my penetration. I am conscious, at this moment, of movements in your mind which I do not understand."
"And would you have me confess them to you?"
"You might repent it afterwards; and that would make a breach between us."
"You are a miraculous woman, to postpone your curiosity to a scruple like that. No, I would not have spoken of confession, if I should ever repent it. Do you know, I would rather open my mind to you than to any one else I am now acquainted with."
"But you have male friends; very old and intimate ones."
"Excellent in their way; but I would as soon confess to my horse. Find me a woman of sense, with a brain to discern, a heart to feel, passion to feel vehemently, and principle to feel rightly, and I will show her my mind; or, if not, I will show it to no one. Now, after this preamble, you have a right to think that I should begin to confess something at once. But first, I will ask you a question."
"What is it?"
"Tell me what effect you think any long and severe suffering ought to have on a man—something, I mean, that would bring him to the brink of despair, and keep him there for months and years."
"What kind of man do you mean?"
"Suppose one given over to pleasure, ambition, or any other engrossing pursuit not too disinterested."
"It would depend on how the suffering was taken."
"Suppose him resolved to make the best of a bad bargain."
"Why, the effect ought to be good, I suppose,—so the preachers say."
"I do not wish to know what the preachers say. I wish your own opinion."
"Are you quite in earnest?"
"Quite."
"Such suffering, rightly taken, would strip life of its disguises, and show it in its naked truth. It would teach the man to know himself and to know others. It would awaken his sympathies, enlarge his mind, and greatly expand his sphere of vision; teach him to hold present pleasure and present pain in small account, and to look beyond them into a future of boundless hopes and fears."
"Now," said Morton, "you have betrayed yourself."
"How have I betrayed myself?" asked his friend, in some discomposure.
"You have shown me the secrets of your own mind. You have given me a glimpse of your own history, since we last met."
"And so, under pretence of confessing to me, you have been plotting to make me confess to you!"
"No, you shall hear my confession. I have it now, such as it is, at my tongue's end."
"I have no faith in you."
"Perhaps you will have still less when you have heard this great secret. You remember me before I went away. I was a very exemplary young gentleman,—quiet, orderly, well behaved,—of a studious turn,—soberly and virtuously given."
"You give yourself an excellent character."
"And what should be the results of the discipline of a dungeon on such a person?"
"Discipline would be a superfluity, considering your perfections."
"So I thought myself. Nevertheless, for four years, or so, I was shut up, with nothing to look at but stone walls, under circumstances most favorable for the culture of patience, resignation, forgiveness, and all the Christian virtues; and yet the devil has never been half so busy with me as since I came out; never whispered half so many villanous suggestions into my ears, nor baited me with such scandalous temptations."
"That is very strange," said Fanny Euston, who was looking at him intently.
"For example," pursued Morton, "a little more than a year ago, in New York, he said to me, 'Renounce all your old plans, and habits, and antiquated scruples—reclaim your natural freedom—fling yourself headlong into the turmoil of the world—chase whatever fate or fortune throws in your way—enjoy the zest of lawless pleasures—launch into mad adventure—embark on schemes of ambition—care nothing for the past or the future—think only of the present—fear neither God nor man, and follow your vagrant star wherever it leads you."
Morton knew that, restrained and governed as it might be, there was quicksilver enough in his companion's veins to enable her to understand what he had said, and prevent her being startled at it. But he was by no means prepared for the close attack she proceeded to make on him.
"Such a state of mind is foreign to your nature. You have prudence and forecast. You used to make plans for the future, and study the final results of every thing you did. There is something upon your mind. It is not imprisonment only that has caused that compression of your lips, and marked those lines on your face. You have met with some deep disaster, some overwhelming disappointment. Nothing else could have wrought such a convulsion in you."
Morton was taken by surprise; and, as he struggled to frame an answer, his features betrayed an emotion which he could not hide. Fanny Euston hastened to relieve his embarrassment, and assuage, as far as she could, the tumult she had called up.
"With whatever fate you may have had to battle, your wounds are in the front,—all honorable scars. Your desperation is past;—it was only for the hour;—and for the other extreme, it is not in you to suffer that."
"What other extreme?"
"Idle dreaming;—melancholy;—weak pining at disappointment."
"No, thank God, it is not in me to lie and whine like a sick child."
"You are the firmer for what you have passed. Manhood, the proudest of all possession to a man, is strengthened and deepened in you."
"What do you call this manhood, which you seem to hold in such high account?"
"That unflinching quality which, strong in generous thought and high purpose, bears onward towards its goal, knowing no fear but the fear of God; wise, prudent, calm, yet daring and hoping all things; not dismayed by reverses, nor elated by success; never bending nor receding; wearying out ill fortune by undespairing constancy; unconquered by pain or sorrow, or deferred hope; fiery in attack, steadfast in resistance, unshaken in the front of death; and when courage is vain, and hope seems folly, when crushing calamity presses it to the earth, and the exhausted body will no longer obey the still undaunted mind, then putting forth its hardest, saddest heroism, the unlaurelled heroism of endurance, patiently biding its time."
"And how if its time never come?"
"Then dying at its post, like the Roman sentinel at Pompeii."
Her words struck a chord in Morton's nature, and roused his early enthusiasm, dormant for years.
"Fanny," he said, "I thank you. You give me back my youth. An hour ago, the world was as dull to me as a November day; but you have brought June back again. You would make a coward valiant, and breathe life into a dead man."
Miss Euston seemed, for a moment, in embarrassment what to reply; indeed, she showed some signs of discomposure, contrasting with her former frankness. They were still in the recess of the window. She was visible to those in the room; while he, standing opposite, was hidden by a curtain. At this moment, a gentleman, with a slight limp in his gait, approaching quickly, accosted Miss Euston, smiling with an air of the most earnest affability. She looked up to reply, but, as she did so, her eyes were arrested by a sudden change in the features of her companion, who was bending on the new comer a look so fierce and threatening, that she scarcely repressed an ejaculation of surprise. Mr. Horace Vinal followed the direction of her gaze, and saw himself face to face with the victim of his villany. He started as if he had found a grizzly bear behind the curtain. The smile vanished from his lips, the color from his cheeks, and he hastily drew back, and mingled with the crowd.
This sudden apparition, breaking in upon the brightening mood of the moment, incensed Morton almost to fury; and his anger, absurdly enough, was a little tinged with a feeling not wholly unlike jealousy. He made an involuntary movement to follow his enemy, but recollecting himself, smoothed his brow and calmed his ruffled spirit as he best might.
"You seem to know that man very well," he said to Miss Euston.
"Yes, I know him."
"He seems to think himself on excellent terms with you."
"He has charge of my mother's property."
"You are good at reading faces. I hope you liked the expression on his, as he slunk away just now."
"It was fear—abject fear. Why are you so angry? Why is he so frightened?"
"His nerves, you may have observed, are something of the weakest. He is my attendant genius, my familiar. A word from me, and he will run my errand like a spaniel."
"How could you gain such power over him?" she asked, in great astonishment.
"Magnetism, Fanny, magnetism. The effects of the mesmeric fluid are wonderful. See, the polking is over; they are forming a quadrille. Shall we take our places in the set?"
During the dance, Morton looked for his enemy, but could not discover him till it was over, and he had led his partner to a seat.
"Look," he said, "there is our friend again; in the next room, just beyond the folding doors, talking with Mrs. —— and Mrs. ——. He seems to have got the better of the shock to his nerves; at least, he stands up manfully against it. Mr. Horace Vinal has a stout heart, and needs nothing but valor, and one other quality, to make a hero. But his face is flushed. I fear he suffers in his health. See, he makes himself very agreeable. Vinal was always famous for his wit. Pardon me a moment; I have a word for my friend's ear."
Fanny Euston looked at him doubtingly.
"Pray, don't be discomposed. There's no gunpowder impending. Vinal is not a fighting man; nor am I. What I have to say is altogether pacific, loving, and scriptural."
And passing into the adjoining room, he approached Vinal, who no sooner saw the movement, than he showed a manifest uneasiness. His forced animation ceased, his manner became constrained, and while Morton stood near, waiting an opportunity to speak to him, he withdrew to another part of the room. Morton followed, and pronounced his name. Vinal, with pretended unconsciousness, mingled with the crowd. Morton again tried to accost him, and again Vinal moved away. Impatient and exasperated, Morton stepped behind him, touched his shoulder, and whispered in his ear,—
"You fool, do you know your danger? Speyer is looking for you. I saw him this afternoon. He looks as if he needed your charity. You had better be generous with him. He is a tiger, and will be upon you before you know it."
Anger and terror, of which the latter vastly predominated, gave a ghastly look to Vinal's face, as he turned it towards Morton. But he drew back without a word, and soon left the room.
"Where is Mr. Vinal?" asked the wondering Fanny Euston, as her companion returned to her side. The momentary interview had been invisible from where she sat.
"Obeyed the magic word, and vanished. Never doubt again the power of magnetism. Now you may see that the claptrap of the charlatans about the mutual influence of congenial spheres is not quite such trash as one might think. Vinal and I, being congenial spheres, put each other, the one into a passion, the other into a fright. But I have a request to you. Whoever knows you, knows, in spite of the libellers, a woman who can keep counsel; and as I am modest in respect to my magnetic gifts, I shall beg it of you, that you will not mention these experiments to any one. Good evening. I have revived to-night an old and valued friendship. If I can help it, it shall not die again."
He took leave of his hostess, wrapped his cloak about him, and walked out into the drizzling night.