One Of Them

“On Wednesday week last.”

“The very day O’Shea started.”

They each looked steadfastly at the other; and at last Agincourt said, —

“Would n’t that be a strange solution of the riddle, Charley? On the last night we dined together you may remember I promised to try what I could make of the negotiation; and so I praised the widow, extolled her beauty, and hinted that she was exactly the clever sort of woman that helps a man on to fortune.”

“How I wish I had gone to India!” muttered Charles, and so immersed in his own cares as not to hear one word the other was saying.

“If I were to talk in that way, Charley, you ‘d be the very first to call out, What selfishness! what an utter indifference to all feelings but your own! You are merely dealing with certain points that affect yourself, and you forget a girl that loves you.”

“Am I so sure of that? Am I quite certain that an old attachment – she owned to me herself that she liked him, that tutor fellow of yours – has not a stronger hold on her heart than I have? There ‘s a letter from him. I have n’t opened it I have a sort of half suspicion that when I do read it I ‘ll have a violent desire to shoot him. It is just as if I knew that, inside that packet there, was an insult awaiting me, and yet I ‘d like to spare myself the anger it will cause me when I break the seal; and so I walk round the table and look at the letter, and turn it over, and at last – ” With the word he tore open the envelope, and unfolded the note. “Has he not given me enough of it? One, two, three, ay, four pages! When a man writes at such length, he is certain to be either very tiresome or very disagreeable, not to say that I never cared much for your friend Mr. Layton; he gave himself airs with us poor unlettered folk – ”

“Come, come, Charley; if you were not in an ill mood, you ‘d never say anything so ungenerous.”

It was possible that he felt the rebuke to be just, for he did not reply, but, seating himself in the window, began to read the letter. More than once did Agincourt make some remark, or ask some question. Of even his movements of impatience Heathcote took no note, as, deeply immersed in the contents of the letter, he continued to read on.

“Well, I’ll leave you for a while, Charley,” said he, at last; “perhaps I may drop in to see you this evening.”

“Wait; stay where you are!” said Heathcote, abruptly, and yet not lifting his eyes from the lines before him. “What a story! – what a terrible story!” muttered he to himself. Then beckoning to Agincourt to come near, he caught him by the arm, and in a low whisper said, “Who do you think she turns out to be? The widow of Godfrey Hawke!”

“I never so much as heard of Godfrey Hawke.”

“Oh, I forgot; you were an infant at the time. But surely you must have heard or read of that murder at Jersey? – a well-known gambler, named Hawke, poisoned by his associates, while on a visit at his house.”

“And who is she?”

“Mrs. Penthony Morris. Here’s the whole story. But begin at the beginning.”

Seated side by side, they now proceeded to read the letter over together, nor did either speak a word till it was finished.

“And to be so jolly with all that on her mind!” exclaimed Agincourt. “Why, she most have the courage of half a dozen men.”

“I now begin to read the meaning of many things I never could make out her love of retirement, – she, a woman essentially of the world and society, estranging herself from every one; her strange relations with Clara, a thing which used to puzzle me beyond measure; and lastly, her remarkable injunction to me when we parted, her prayer to be forgotten, or, at least, never mentioned.”

“You did not tell me of that.”

“Nor was it my intention to have done so now; it escaped me involuntarily.”

“And what is to become of Clara?”

“Don’t you see that she has found an uncle, – this Mr. Winthrop, – with whom, and our friend Quackinboss, she is to arrive at Rome to-night or to-morrow?”

“Oh, these are the friends for whom I was to bespeak an apartment; so, then, I ‘ll not leave my hotel. I ‘m delighted to have such neighbors.”

“May ought to go and meet her; she ought to bring her here, and of course she will do so. But, first of all, to show her this letter; or shall I merely tell her certain parts of it?”

“I ‘d let her read every line of it, and I ‘d give it to Sir William also.”

Charles started at the counsel; but after a moment he said, “I believe you are right. The sooner we clear away these mysteries, the sooner we shall deal frankly together.”

“I have come to beg your pardon, May,” said Charles, as he stood on the sill of her door. “I could scarcely hope you ‘d grant it save from very pity for me, for I have gone through much this last day or two. But, besides your pardon, I want your advice. When you have read over that letter, – read it twice, – I ‘ll come back again.”

May made him no answer, but, taking the letter, turned away. He closed the door noiselessly, and left her. Whatever may be the shock a man experiences on learning that the individual with whom for a space of time he has been associating on terms of easy intimacy should turn out to be one notorious in crime or infamous in character, to a woman the revulsion of feeling under like circumstances is tenfold more painful. It is not alone that such casualties are so much more rare, but in the confidences between women there is so much more interchange of thought and feeling that the shock is proportionately greater. That a man should be arraigned before a tribunal is a stain, but to a woman it is a brand burned upon her forever.

There had been a time when May and Mrs. Morris lived together as sisters. May had felt all the influence of a character more formed than her own, and of one who, gifted and accomplished as she was, knew how to extend that influence with consummate craft. In those long-ago days May had confided to her every secret of her heart, – her early discontents with Charles Heathcote; her pettish misgivings about the easy confidence of his security; her half flirtation with young Layton, daily inclining towards something more serious still. She recalled to mind, too, how Mrs. Morris had encouraged her irritation against Charles, magnifying all his failings into faults, and exaggerating the natural indolence of his nature into the studied indifference of one “sure of his bond.” And last of all she thought of her in her relations with Clara, – poor Clara, whose heart, overflowing with affection, had been repelled and schooled into a mere mockery of sentiment.

That her own fortune had been wasted and dissipated by this woman she well knew. Without hesitation or inquiry, May had signed everything that was put before her, and now she really could not tell what remained to her of all that wealth of which she used to hear so much and care so little.

These thoughts tracked her along every line of the letter, and through all the terrible details she was reading; the woman herself, in her craft and subtlety, absorbed her entire attention. Even when she had read to the end, and learned the tidings of Clara’s fortune, her mind would involuntarily turn back to Mrs. Penthony Morris and her wiles. It was in an actual terror at the picture her mind had drawn of this deep designing woman that Charles found her sitting with the letter before her, and her eyes staring wildly and on vacancy.

“I see, May,” said he, gently taking her hand, and seating himself at her side, “this dreadful letter has shocked you, as it has shocked me; but remember, dearest, we are only looking back at a peril we have all escaped. She has not separated us; she has not involved us in the disgrace of relationship to her; she is not one of us; she is not anything even to poor Clara; and though we may feel how narrowly we have avoided all our dangers, let us be grateful for that safety for which we really contributed nothing ourselves. Is it not so, dearest May? We have gained the harbor, and never knew that we had crossed a quicksand.”

“And, after all, Charles, painful as all this is now, and must be when remembered hereafter, it is not without its good side. We will all draw closer to each other, and love more fondly where we can trust implicitly.”

“And you forgive me, May?”

“Certainly not – if you assume forgiveness in that fashion!”

Now, though this true history records that May Leslie arose with a deep flush upon her cheek, and her massy roll of glossy hair somewhat dishevelled, there is no mention of what the precise fashion was in which Charles Heathcote sued out his pardon; nor, indeed, with our own narrow experiences of such incidents, do we care to hazard a conjecture.

“And now as to my father, May. How much of this letter shall we tell him?”

“All; every word of it. It will pain him, as it has pained us, or even more; but, that pain once over, he will come back, without one reserved thought, to all his old affection for us, and we shall be happy as we used to be.”

CHAPTER XI. AN EAGER GUEST

When Lord Agincoort returned to his hotel, he was astonished to see waiters passing in and out of his apartment with trays covered with dishes, decanters of wine, and plates of fruit; but as he caught the deep tone of O’Shea’s voice from within, he quickly understood how that free-and-easy personage was making himself at home.

“Oh, it is here you are!” said Agincourt, entering; “and Charley and I have been just speculating whether you might not have been expiating some of your transgressions in an Austrian jail.”

“I am here, as you perceive,” said the O’Shea, wiping his lips with his napkin, “and doing indifferently well, too. By the way they treat me, I ‘m given to believe that your credit stands well with the hotel people.”

“When did you arrive?”

“An hour ago; just in time to make them roast that hedgehog. They call it a sucking-pig, but I know it’s a hedgehog, though I was eight-and-forty hours without eating.”

“How was that?”

“This way,” said he, as he drew out the lining of his pockets, and showed that they were perfectly empty. “I just left myself enough for the diligence fare from Bologna, and one roll of bread and a pint of wine as I started; since that I have tasted nothing but the pleasures of hope. Don’t talk to me, therefore, or talk away, but don’t expect me to answer you for fifteen minutes more.”

Agincourt nodded, and seated himself at the table, in quiet contemplation of the O’Shea’s performance. “I got an answer to my letter about you,” said he, at length, and rather curious to watch the struggle between his hunger and his curiosity.

O’Shea gave a nod, as though to say “Proceed;” but Agincourt said nothing.

“Well, go on!” cried O’Shea, as he helped himself to half a duck.

“It’s a long-winded sort of epistle,” said Agincourt, now determined to try his patience to the uttermost. “I ‘ll have to show it to you.”