The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861

"Stand aside, Una!" cried Mr. Raleigh, who had worked in a determined characteristic silence, and the horse's head, sharp ear, and starting eye were brought to sight, and then his heaving bulk.

"All right, massa!" cried Capua, after a moment's survey, as he patted the trembling flanks. "Pretty tough ex'cise dat! Spect Massam Clean be mighty high,—his best cretur done about killed wid dat tree;—feared he show dis nigger a stick worf two o' dat!"

"We had like to have finished our dance on nothing," said Mr. Raleigh now, looking back on the splintered wheels and panels. "Will you mount? I can secure you from falling."

"Oh, no,—I can walk; it is only a little way."

"Reach home like Cinderella? If you had but one glass slipper, that might be; but in satin ones it is impossible." And she found herself seated aloft before quite aware what had happened.

Pacing along, they talked lightly, with the gayety natural upon excitement,—Capua once in a while adding a cogent word. As they opened the door, Mr. Raleigh paused a moment.

"I am glad," he said, "that my last day with you has been crowned by such adventures. I leave the Lake at noon."

She hung, listening, with a backward swerve of figure, and regarding him in the dim light of the swinging hall-lamp, for the moment half-petrified. Suddenly she turned and seized his hand in hers,—then threw it off.

"Cher ami," she murmured hastily, in a piercing whisper, like some articulate sigh, "si tu m'aimes, dis moi!"

The door closed in the draught, the drawing-room door opened, and Mr. Laudersdale stepped out, having been awaiting their return. Mr. Raleigh caught the flash of Marguerite's eye and the crimson of her cheek, as she sprang forward up the stairs and out of sight.

The family did not breakfast together the next day, as politeness chooses to call the first hour after a ball, and Mr. Raleigh was making some arrangements preliminary to his departure, in his own apartments, at about the hour of noon. The rooms which he had formerly occupied Mrs. McLean had always kept closed, in a possibility of his return, and he had found himself installed in them upon his arrival. The library was today rather a melancholy room: the great book-cases did not enliven it; the grand-piano, with its old dark polish, seemed like a coffin, the sarcophagus of unrisen music; the oak panelling had absorbed a richer hue with the years than once it wore; the portrait of his mother seemed farther withdrawn from sight and air; Antinoüs took a tawnier tint in his long reverie. The Summer, past her height, sent a sad beam, the signal of decay, through the half-open shutters, and it lay wearily on the man who sat by the long table, and made more sombre yet the faded carpet and cumbrous chair.

There was a tap on the door. Mr. Raleigh rose and opened it, and invited Mr. Laudersdale in. The latter gentleman complied, took the chair resigned by the other, but after a few words became quiet. Mr. Raleigh made one or two attempts at conversation, then, seeing silence to be his visitor's whim, suffered him to indulge it, and himself continued his writing. Indeed, the peculiar relations existing between these men made much conversation difficult. Mr. Laudersdale sat with his eyes upon the floor for several minutes, and his countenance wrapped in thought. Rising, with his hands behind him, he walked up and down the long room, still without speaking.

"Can I be of service to you, Sir?" asked the other, after observing him.

"Yes, Mr. Raleigh, I am led to think you can,"—still pacing up and down, and vouchsafing no further information.

At last, the monotonous movement ended, Mr. Laudersdale stood at the window, intercepting the sunshine, and examined some memoranda.

"Yes, Mr. Raleigh," he resumed, with all his courtly manner, upon close of the examination, "I am in hopes that you may assist me in a singular dilemma."

"I shall be very glad to do so."

"Thank you. This is the affair. About a year ago, being unable to make my usual visit to my daughter and her grandmother, I sent there in my place our head clerk, young Heath, to effect the few transactions, and also to take a month's recreation,—for we were all overworked and exhausted by the crisis. The first thing he proceeded to do was to fall in love with my daughter. Of course he did not mention this occurrence to me, on his return. When my daughter arrived at New York, I was again detained, myself, and sent her to this place under his care. He lingered rather longer than he should have done, knowing the state of things; but I suspected nothing, for the idea of a clerk's marriage with the heiress of the great Martinique estate never entered my mind; moreover, I have regarded her as a child; and I sent him back with various commissions at several times,—once on business with McLean, once to obtain my wife's signature to some sacrifice of property, and so on. I really beg your pardon, Mr. Raleigh; it is painful to another, I am aware, to be thrust upon family confidences"–

"Pray, Sir, proceed," said Mr. Raleigh, wheeling his chair about.

"But since you are in a manner connected with the affair, yourself"–

"You must be aware, Mr. Laudersdale, that my chief desire is the opportunity you afford me."

"I believe so. I am happy to afford it. On the occasion of Mr. Heath's last visit to this place, Marguerite drew attention to a coin whose history you heard, and the other half of which Mrs. Purcell wore. Mr. Heath obtained the fragment he possessed through my wife's aunt, Susanne Le Blanc; Mrs. Purcell obtained hers through her grandmother, Susan White. Of course, these good people were not slow to put the coin and the names together; Mr. Heath, moreover, had heard portions of the history of Susanne Le Blanc, when in Martinique.

"On resuming his duties in the counting-house, after this little incident, one day, at the close of business-hours, he demanded from me the remnants of this history with which he might be unacquainted. When I paused, he took up the story and finished it with ease, and—and poetical justice, I may say, Mr. Raleigh. Susanne was the sister of Mrs. Laudersdale's father, though far younger than he. She met a young American gentleman, and they became interested in each other. Her brother designed her for a different fate,—the governor of the island, indeed, was her suitor,—and forbade their intercourse. There were rumors of a private marriage; her apartments were searched for any record, note, or proof, unsuccessfully. If there were such, they had been left in the gentleman's hands for better concealment. It being supposed that they continued to meet, M. Le Blanc prevailed upon the governor to arrest the lover on some trifling pretence and send him out of the island. Shortly afterward, as he once confessed to his wife, he caused a circumstantial account of the death and funeral obsequies of each to reach the other. Immediately he urged the governor's suit again, and when she continued to resist, he fixed the wedding-day, himself, and ordered the trousseau. Upon this, one evening, she buried the box of trinkets at the foot of the oleanders, and disappeared the next, and no trace of her was found.

"When I reached this point, young Heath turned to me with that impudently nonchalant drawl of his, saying,—

"'And her property, Sir?'

"'That,' I replied innocently, 'which comprised half the estate, and which she would have received, on attaining the requisite age, was inherited by her brother, upon her suicide.'

"'Apparent suicide, you mean,' said he; and thereupon took up the story, as I have said, matched date to date and person to person, and informed me that exactly a fortnight from the day of Mademoiselle Susanne Le Blanc's disappearance, a young lady took rooms at a hotel in a Southern city, and advertised for a situation as governess, under the name of Susan White. She gave no references, spoke English imperfectly, and had difficulty in obtaining one; finally, however, she was successful, and after a few years married into the family of her employer, and became the mother of Mrs. Heath. The likeness of Mrs. Purcell, the grandchild of Susan White, to Susanne Le Blanc, was so extraordinary, a number of years ago, that, when Ursule, my daughter's nurse, first saw her, she fainted with terror. My wife, you are aware, was born long after these events. This governess never communicated to her husband any more specific circumstance of her youth than that she had lived in the West Indies, and had left her family because they had resolved to marry her,—as she might have done, had she not died shortly after her daughter's birth. Among her few valuables were found this half-coin of Heath's, and a miniature, which his mother recently gave your cousin, but which, on account of its new interest, she has demanded again; for it is probably that of the ancient lover, and bearing, as it does, a very striking resemblance to yourself, you have pronounced it to be undoubtedly that of your uncle, Reuben Raleigh, and wondered how it came into the possession of Mrs. Heath's mother. Now, as you may be aware, Reuben Raleigh was the name of Susanne Le Blanc's lover."

"No,—I was not aware."

Mr. Laudersdale's countenance, which had been animated in narration, suddenly fell.

"I was in hopes," he resumed,—"I thought,—my relation of these occurrences may have been very confused; but it is as plain as daylight to me, that Susanne Le Blanc and Susan White are one, and that the property of the first is due to the heirs of the last."

"Without doubt, Sir."

"The same is plain, to the Heaths. I am sure that Marguerite will accept our decision in the matter,—sure that no daughter of mine would retain a fraudulent penny; for retain it she could, since there is not sufficient proof in any court, if we chose to contest; but it will beggar her."

"How, Sir? Beggar her to divide her property?"

"It is a singular division. The interest due on Susanne's moiety swells it enormously. Add to this, that, after M. Le Blanc's death, Madame Le Blanc, a much younger person, did not so well understand the management of affairs, the property depreciated, and many losses were encountered, and it happens that the sum due Mrs. Heath covers the whole amount that Marguerite possesses."

"Now, then, Sir?" exclaimed Mr. Raleigh, interrogatively.

"Now, then, Mrs. Heath requests my daughter's hand for her son, and offers to set off to him, at once, such sum as would constitute his half of her new property upon her decease, and allow him to enter our house as special partner."

"Ah!"

"This does not look so unreasonable. Last night he proposed formally to Marguerite, who is still ignorant of these affairs, and she refused him. I have urged her differently,—I can do no more than urge,—and she remains obdurate. To accumulate misfortunes, we escaped 1857 by a miracle. We have barely recovered; and now various disasters striking us,—the loss of the Osprey the first and chief of them,—we are to-day on the verge of bankruptcy. Nothing but the entrance of this fortune can save us from ruin."

"Unfortunate!" said Mr. Raleigh,—"most unfortunate! And can I serve you at this point?"

"Not at all, Sir," said Mr. Laudersdale, with sudden erectness. "No,—I have but one hope. It has seemed to me barely possible that your uncle may have communicated to you events of his early life,—that you may have heard, that there may have been papers telling of the real fate of Susanne Le Blanc."

"None that I know of," said Mr. Raleigh, after a pause. "My uncle was a very reserved person. I often imagined that his youth had not been without its passages, something to account for his unvarying depression. In one letter, indeed, I asked him for such a narration. He promised to give it to me shortly,—the next mail, perhaps. The next mail I received nothing; and after that he made no allusion to the request."

"Indeed? Indeed? I should say,—pardon me, Mr. Raleigh,—that your portion of the next mail met with some accident. Your servants could not explain it?"

"There is Capua, who was major-domo. We can inquire," said Mr. Raleigh, with a smile, rising and ringing for that functionary.

On Capua's appearance, the question was asked, if he had ever secretly detained letter or paper of any kind.

"Lors, massa! I alwes knew 'twould come to dis!" he replied. "No, massa, neber!" shaking his head with repeated emphasis.

"I thought you might have met with some accident, Capua," said his master.

"Axerden be –, beg massa's parden; but such s'picions poison any family's peace, and make a feller done forgit hisself."

"Very well," said Mr. Raleigh, who was made to believe by this vehemence in what at first had seemed a mere fantasy. "Only remember, that, if you could assure me that any papers had been destroyed, the assurance would be of value."

"'Deed, Mass Roger? Dat alters de case," said Capua, grinning. "Dere's been a good many papers 'stroyed in dis yer house firs' an' last."

"Which in particular?"