Meantime the history of Raby House was the history of what French dramatists call “a pious lie.”
Its indirect effect in keeping Grace Carden apart both from Mrs. Little and Jael Dence was unforeseen and disastrous; its immediate and direct effect on Mrs. Little was encouraging to those concerned; what with the reconciliation to her brother, the return to native air and beloved scenes, the tenderness and firmness of Jael Dence, and the conviction that her son was safe out of the clutches of the dreaded Unions, she picked up flesh and color and spirit weekly.
By-and-by she turned round upon Jael Dence, and the nurse became the pupil. Mrs. Little taught her grammar, pronunciation, dancing, carriage, and deportment. Jael could already sing from notes; Mrs. Little taught her to accompany herself on the pianoforte. The teacher was so vigilant, and the pupil so apt and attentive, that surprising progress was made. To be sure, they were together night and day.
This labor of love occupied Mrs. Little's mind agreeably, and, as the pupil was equally resolute in making the teacher walk or ride on horseback with her every day, the hours glided swiftly, and, to Mrs. Little, pleasantly.
Her brother rather avoided her, by order of Jael Dence; but so many probable reasons were given for his absences that she suspected nothing. Only she said one day, “What a gad-about he is now. This comes of not marrying. We must find him a wife.”
When he was at home they breakfasted together, all three, and then Mrs. Little sometimes spoke of Henry, and so hopefully and cheerfully that a great qualm ran through her hearers, and Raby, who could not command his features so well as Jael could, looked gloomy, and sometimes retired behind his newspaper.
Mrs. Little observed this one day, and pointed it out to Jael. “Oh,” said Jael, “take no notice. You know he wanted Mr. Henry to stay quietly here and be his heir.”
“And so did I. But his very name seems to—”
“He likes him well, for all that, ma'am; only he won't own it yet. You know what Squire is.”
“THE Squire you should say, dear. But, 'Mr. Raby' is better still. As a rule, avoid all small titles: the doctor, the squire, the baronet, the mayor.”
Jael seized this handle, and, by putting questions to her teacher, got her away from the dangerous topic.
Ever on the watch, and occupied in many ways with Mrs. Little, Jael began to recover resignation; but this could not be without an occasional paroxysm of grief.
These she managed to hide from Mrs. Little.
But one day that lady surprised her crying. She stood and looked at her a moment, then sat down quietly beside her and took her hand. Jael started, and feared discovery.
“My child,” said Mrs. Little, “if you have lost a father, you have gained a mother; and then, as to your sister, why my Henry is gone to the very same country; yet, you see, I do not give way to sorrow. As soon as he writes, I will beg him to make inquiries for Patty, and send them home if they are not doing well.” Then Mrs. Little kissed Jael, and coaxed her and rocked with her, and Jael's tears began to flow, no longer for her own great grief, but for this mother, who was innocently consoling her, unconscious of the blow that must one day fall upon herself.
So matters went on pretty smoothly; only one morning, speaking of Henry, Mrs. Little surprised a look of secret intelligence between her brother and Jael Dence. She made no remark at the time, but she puzzled in secret over it, and began at last to watch the pair.
She asked Raby at dinner, one day, when she might hope to hear from Henry.
“I don't know,” said he, and looked at Jael Dence like a person watching for orders.
Mrs. Little observed this, and turned keenly round to Jael.
“Oh,” said Jael, “the doctor—I beg pardon, Dr. Amboyne—can tell you that better than I can. It is a long way to Australia.”
“How you send me from one to another,” said Mrs. Little, speaking very slowly.
They made no reply to that, and Mrs. Little said no more. But she pondered all this. She wrote to Dr. Amboyne, and asked him why no letter had come from Henry.
Dr. Amboyne wrote back that, even if he had gone in a steamboat, there was hardly time for a letter to come back: but he had gone in a sailing-vessel. “Give him three months and a half to get there, and two months for his letters to come back.”
In this same letter he told her he was glad to hear she was renewing her youth like an eagle, but reminded her it would entail some consequences more agreeable to him than to her.
She laid down the letter with a blush and fell into a reverie.
Dr. Amboyne followed up this letter with a visit or two, and urged her to keep her promise and marry him.
She had no excuse for declining, but she procrastinated: she did not like to marry without consulting Henry, or, at least, telling him by letter.
And whilst she was thus temporizing, events took place at Eastbank which ended by rudely disturbing the pious falsehood at Raby Hall.
That sequence of events began with the interview between Mr. Carden and Mr. Coventry at Woodbine Villa.
“Little had made a will. My own solicitor drew it, and holds it at this moment.” This was the intelligence Coventry had to communicate.
“Very well; then now I shall know who is coming to the 'Gosshawk' for the five thousand pounds. That will be the next act of the comedy, you will see.”
“Wait a moment. He leaves to Mrs. Little his own reversion to a sum of nineteen hundred pounds, in which she has already the life interest; he gives a hundred pounds to his sweetheart Dence: all the rest of his estate, in possession or expectation, he bequeaths to—Miss Carden.”
“Good heavens! Why then—” Mr. Carden could say no more, for astonishment.
“So,” said Coventry, “If he is alive, she is the confederate who is to profit by the fraud; those five thousand pounds belong to her at this moment.”
“Are you sure? Who is your authority?”
“A communicative clerk, who happens to be the son of a tenant of mine. The solicitor himself, I believe, chooses to doubt his client's decease. It is at his private request that horrible object is refused Christian burial.”
“On what grounds, pray?”
“Legal grounds, I suppose; the man did not die regularly, and according to precedent. He omitted to provide himself with two witnesses previously to being blown up. In a case of this kind we may safely put an old-fashioned attorney's opinion out of the question. What do YOU think? That is all I care to know.”
“I don't know what to think now. But I foresee one thing: I shall be placed in rather an awkward position. I ought to defend the 'Gosshawk;' but I am not going to rob my own daughter of five thousand pounds, if it belongs to her honestly.”
“Will you permit me to advise you?”
“Certainly, I shall be very much obliged: for really I don't see my way.”
“Well, then, I think you ought to look into the matter carefully, but without prejudice. I have made some inquiries myself: I went down to the works, and begged the workmen, who knew Little, to examine the remains, and then come here and tell us their real opinion.”
“Oh, to my mind, it all depends on the will. If that answers the description you give—hum!” Next morning they breakfasted together, and during breakfast two workmen called, and, at Coventry's request, were ushered into the room. They came to say they knew Mr. Little well, and felt sure that was his dead hand they had seen at the Town Hall. Coventry cross-examined them severely, but they stuck to their conviction; and this will hardly surprise the reader when I tell him the workmen in question were Cole and another, suborned by Coventry himself to go through this performance.
Mr. Carden received the testimony readily, for the best of all reasons—he wanted to believe it.
But, when they were gone, he recurred to the difficulty of his position. Director of the “Gosshawk,” and father to a young lady who had a claim of five thousand pounds on it, and that claim debatable, though, to his own mind, no longer doubtful.
Now Mr. Coventry had a great advantage over Mr. Carden here: he had studied this very situation profoundly for several hours, and at last had seen how much might be done with it.
He began by artfully complimenting Mr. Carden on his delicacy, but said Miss Carden must not be a loser by it. “Convince her, on other grounds, that the man is dead; encourage her to reward my devotion with her hand, and I will relieve you of everything disagreeable. Let us settle on Miss Carden, for her separate use, the five thousand pounds, and anything else derivable from Mr. Little's estate; but we must also settle my farm of Hindhope: for it shall never be said she took as much from that man as she did from me. Well, in due course I apply to the 'Gosshawk' for my wife's money. I am not bound to tell your Company it is not mine but hers; that is between you and me. But you really ought to write to London at once and withdraw the charge of fraud; you owe that piece of justice to Miss Carden, and to the memory of the deceased.”
“That is true; and it will pave the way for the demand you propose to make on Mrs. Coventry's behalf. Well, you really are a true friend, as well as a true lover.”
In short, he went back to Hillsborough resolved to marry his daughter to Coventry as soon as possible. Still, following that gentleman's instructions, he withheld from Grace that Little had made a will in her favor. He knew her to be quite capable of refusing to touch a farthing of it, or to act as executrix. But he told her the workmen had identified the remains, and that other circumstances had also convinced him he had been unjust to a deceased person, which he regretted.
When her father thus retracted his own words, away went Grace's last faint hope that Henry lived; and now she must die for him, or live for others.
She thought of Jael Dance, and chose the latter.
Another burst or two of agony, and then her great aim and study appeared to be to forget herself altogether. She was full of attention for her father, and, whenever Mr. Coventry came, she labored to reward him with kind words, and even with smiles; but they were sad ones.
As for Coventry, he saw, with secret exultation, that she was now too languid and hopeless to resist the joint efforts of her father and himself, and, that some day or other, she must fall lifeless into his arms.
He said to himself, “It is only a question of time.”
He was now oftener at the villa than at Hillsborough, and, with remarkable self-denial, adhered steadily to the line of soothing and unobtrusive devotion.
One morning at breakfast the post brought him a large envelope from Hillsborough. He examined it, and found a capital “L” in the corner of the envelope, which “L” was written by his man Lally, in compliance with secret instructions from his master.
Coventry instantly put the envelope into his pocket, and his hand began to shake so that he could hardly hold his cup to his lips. His agitation, however, was not noticed.
Directly after breakfast he strolled, with affected composure, into the garden, and sat down in a bower where he was safe from surprise, as the tangled leaves were not so thick but he could peep through them.
He undid his inclosure, and found three letters; two were of no importance; the third bore a foreign postmark, and was addressed to Miss Carden in a hand writing which he recognized at a glance as Henry Little's.
But as this was not the first letter from Henry to Grace which he had intercepted and read, perhaps I had better begin by saying a few words about the first.
Well, then, the letters with which Coventry swam the river on the night of the explosion were six, viz., to Mr. Bolt, to Doctor Amboyne, to Mr. Baynes, to Jael Dence, to Mrs. Little, and to Grace Carden. The letter to Grace Carden was short but touching, full of devotion, hope, resolution, and grief at parting. He told her he had come to take leave that afternoon, but she had been out, luckily; for he felt he ought to go, and must go, but how could he look at her and then leave her? This was the general purport, and expressed with such anguish and fortitude as might have melted a heart of marble.
The reader may have observed that, upon his rival's disappearance, Coventry was no happier. This letter was the secret cause. First it showed him his rival was alive, and he had wasted a crime; secondly, it struck him with remorse, yet not with penitence; and to be full of remorse, yet empty of that true penitence which confesses or undoes the wrong, this is to be miserable.
But, as time rolled on, bringing the various events I have related, but no news of Little, Coventry began to think that young man must really have come to some untimely end.
From this pleasant dream he was now awakened by the second intercepted letter. It ran thus:
“BOSTON, U. S., June 20th.
“MY OWN DEAR LOVE,—It is now nine weeks since I left England, and this will be a fortnight more getting to you; that is a long time for you to be without news from me, and I sadly fear I have caused you great anxiety. Dearest, it all happened thus: Our train was delayed by an accident, and I reached Liverpool just in time to see the steam-packet move down the Mersey. My first impulse, of course, was to go back to Hillsborough; but a seaman, who saw my vexation, told me a fast schooner was on the point of sailing for Boston, U.S. My heart told me if I went back to Hillsborough, I should never make the start again. I summoned all my manhood to do the right thing for us both; and I got into the schooner, heaven knows how; and, when I got there, I hid my face for ever so many hours, till, by the pitching and tossing, I knew that I was at sea. Then I began to cry and blubber. I couldn't hold it any longer.
“At such a time a kind word keeps the heart from breaking altogether; and I got some comfort from an old gentleman, a native of Boston: a grave old man he was, and pretty reserved with all the rest; but seeing me in the depths of misery, he talked to me like a father, and I told him all my own history, and a little about you too—at least, how I loved you, and why I had left England with a heavy heart.
“We had a very long passage, not downright tempestuous, but contrary winds, and a stiff gale or two. Instead of twenty days, as they promised, we were six weeks at sea, and what with all the fighting and the threats—I had another letter signed with a coffin just before I left that beautiful town—and the irritation at losing so much time on the ocean, it all brought on a fever, and I have no recollection of leaving the boat. When I came to myself, I was in a house near Boston, belonging to the old gentleman I spoke of. He and his nieces nursed me, and now I am as well as ever, only rather weak.
“Mr. Ironside, that is his name, but it should be Mr. Goldheart, if I had the christening of him—he has been my good Samaritan. Dear Grace, please pray for him and his family every night. He tells me he comes of the pilgrim fathers, so he is bound to feel for pilgrims and wanderers from home. Well, he has been in patents a little, and, before I lost my little wits with the fever, he and I had many a talk. So now he is sketching out a plan of operation for me, and I shall have to travel many a hundred miles in this vast country. But they won't let me move till I am a little stronger, he and his nieces. If he is gold, they are pearls.
“Dearest, it has taken me two days to write this: but I am very happy and hopeful, and do not regret coming. I am sure it was the right thing for us both.
“Please say something kind for me to the good doctor, and tell him I have got over this one trouble already.
“Dearest, I agreed to take so much a year from Bolt, and he must fight the trades alone. Such a life is not worth having. Bayne won't wrong me of a shilling. Whatever he makes, over his salary and the men's wages, there it will be for me when I come home; so I write to no one at Hillsborough but you. Indeed, you are my all in this world. I travel, and fight, and work, and breathe, and live for you, my own beloved; and if any harm came to you, I wouldn't care to live another moment.”
At this point in the letter the reader stopped, and something cold seemed to pass all through his frame. It struck him that all good men would pity the writer of this letter, and abhor him who kept it from that pale, heart-broken girl inside the cottage.
He sat freezing, with the letter in his hand, and began to doubt whether he could wade any deeper in crime.
After a minute or two he raised his head, and was about to finish reading the letter.
But, in the meantime, Grace Carden had resumed her accustomed place in the veranda. She lay upon the couch, and her pale face, and hollow, but still beautiful eyes, were turned seaward. Out of those great sad eyes the sad soul looked across the waste of waters—gazed, and searched, and pined in vain. Oh, it was a look to make angels weep, and hover close over her head with restless, loving pinions, longing to shadow, caress, and heal her!
Coventry, with Henry Little's letter in his hand, peered through the leaves, and saw the woman he loved fix this look of despair upon the sea—despair of which he was the sole cause, and could dispel it with a gesture.
“And this brings me back to what is my only great trouble now. I told you, in the letter I left behind me, you would hear from me in a month at furthest. It will be not a month, but eleven weeks. Good heavens! when I think what anxiety you may have suffered on my account! You know I am a pupil of the good doctor, and so I put myself in your place, and I say to myself, 'If my Grace had promised to write in a month, and eleven weeks had passed without a word, what would my feelings be?' Why, I think I should go mad; I should make sure you were ill; I should fear you were dead; I should fancy every terrible thing on earth, except that you were false to your poor Henry. That I should never fear: I judge you by myself. Fly, steamboat, with this letter to my love, and set her mind at ease. Fly back with a precious word from her dear hand, and with that in my bosom, nothing will ever daunt me.
“God bless you! angel of my life, darling of my heart, star on which all my hopes are fixed! Oh, what miserable bad tools words are! When I look at them, and compare them with how I love you, I seem to be writing that I love you no more than other people love. What I feel is so much greater than words.
“Must I say farewell? Even on paper, it is like tearing myself away from heaven again. But that was to be: and now this is to be. Good-by, my own beloved.
“Yours till death, HENRY.”
Coventry read this sentence by sentence, still looking up, nearly every sentence, at her to whom it was addressed.
The letter pleaded on his knee, the pale face pleaded a few yards off; he sat between the two bleeding lovers, their sole barrier and bane.
His heart began to fail him. The mountain of crime looked high. Now remorse stung him deeper than ever; jealousy spurred him harder than ever; a storm arose within his breast, a tempest of conflicting passion, as grand and wild as ever distracted the heart; as grand and wild as any poet has ever tried to describe, and, half succeeding, won immortal fame.
“See what I can do?” whispered conscience. “With one bound I can give her the letter, and bring the color back to that cheek and joy to that heart. She will adore me for it, she will be my true and tender friend till death. She will weep upon my neck and bless me.”
“Ay,” whispered jealousy, “and then she will marry Henry Little.”
“And am I sure to succeed if I persist in crime? Deserve her hatred and contempt, and is it certain they will not both fall on me?”
“The fault began with them. He supplanted me—she jilted me. I hate him—I love her. I can't give her up now; I have gone too far. What is intercepting a letter? I have been too near murder to stop at that.”
“But her pale face! her pale face!”
“Once married, supplant him as he has supplanted you. Away to Italy with her. Fresh scenes—constant love—the joys of wedlock! What will this Henry Little be to her then?—a dream.”
“Eternal punishment; if it is not a fable, who has ever earned it better than I am earning it if I go on?”
“It IS a fable; it must be. Philosophers always said so, and now even divines have given it up.”
“Her pale face! her pale face! Never mind HIM, look at her. What sort of love is this that shows no pity? Oh, my poor girl, don't look so sad—so pale! What shall I do? Would to God I had never been born, to torture myself and her!”
His good angel fought hard for him that day; fought and struggled and hoped, until the miserable man, torn this way and that, ended the struggle with a blasphemous yell by tearing the letter to atoms.
That fatal act turned the scale.
The next moment he wished he had not done it.
But it was too late. He could not go to her with the fragments. She would see he had intercepted it purposely.
Well, all the better. It was decided. He would not look at her face any more. He could not bear it.
He rushed away from the bower and made for the seaside; but he soon returned another way, gained his own room, and there burnt the fragments of the letter to ashes.
But, though he was impenitent, remorse was not subdued. He could not look Grace Carden in the face now. So he sent word he must go back to Hillsborough directly.
He packed his bag and went down-stairs with it.
On the last landing he met Grace Carden. She started a little.
“What! going away?”
“Yes, Miss Carden.”
“No bad news, I hope?” said she, kindly.
The kindly tone coming from her, to whom he had shown no mercy, went through that obdurate heart.
“No—no,” he faltered; “but the sight of your unhappiness—Let me go. I am a miserable man!”
And with this he actually burst out crying and ran past her.
Grace told her father, and asked him to find out what was the matter with Mr. Coventry.
Mr. Carden followed Coventry to the station, and Coventry, who had now recovered his self-possession and his cunning, told him that for some time Miss Carden had worn a cheerful air, which had given him hopes; but this morning, watching her from a bower in the garden, he had seen such misery in her face that it had quite upset him; and he was going away to try and recover that composure, without which he felt he would be no use to her in any way.
This tale Carden brought back to his daughter, and she was touched by it. “Poor Mr. Coventry!” said she. “Why does he waste so much love on me?”
Her father, finding her thus softened, pleaded hard for his friend, and reminded Grace that she had not used him well. She admitted that at once, and went so far as to say that she felt bound never to marry any one but Mr. Coventry, unless time should cure him, as she hoped it would, of his unfortunate attachment.
From this concession Mr. Carden urged her daily to another, viz., that Mr. Coventry might be permitted to try and win her affection.
Her answer was, “He had much better content himself with what I can and do give him—my esteem and gratitude and sincere pity.”
Mr. Carden, however, persisted, and the deep affection he had shown his daughter gave him great power. It was two against one; and the two prevailed.
Mr. Coventry began to spend his whole time at Eastbank Cottage.
He followed Grace about with a devotion to which no female heart could be entirely insensible; and, at last, she got used to him, and rather liked to have him about her. He broke her solitude as a dog does, and he fetched and carried for her, and talked when she was inclined to listen, and was silent when he saw his voice jarred upon her bereaved heart.
Without her father, matters might have gone on so for years; but Mr. Carden had now so many motives for marrying his daughter to Coventry, that he used all his judgment and all his influence. He worked on his daughter's pride, her affection, her sense of honor, and her sense of duty.
She struggled, she sighed, she wept; but, by little and little, she submitted. And, since three months more passed with no striking event, I will deviate from my usual custom and speak a little of what passed in her mind.
First of all, then, she was so completely deceived by appearances, that she believed the exact opposite of the truth in each particular. To her not only did black seem white, but white black. Her dead lover had given her but half his heart. Her living lover was the soul of honor and true devotion. It was her duty, though not her pleasure, to try and love him; to marry him would be a good and self-denying action.
And what could she lose by it? Her own chance of happiness was gone. All she could hope for hereafter was the gentle satisfaction that arises from making others happy. She had but a choice of evils: never to marry at all, or to marry Frederick Coventry.
Thus far she was conscious of her own feelings, and could, perhaps, have put them into words; but here she drifted out of her depth.
Nature implants in women a genuine love of offspring that governs them unconsciously. It governs the unconscious child; it governs the half-conscious mother who comes home from the toyshop with a waxen child for her girl, and a drum for her boy.
Men desire offspring—-when they desire it at all—from vanity alone. Women desire it from pure love of it.
This instinct had probably its share in withholding Grace from making up her mind never to marry; and so operated negatively, though not positively, in Coventry's favor.
And so, by degrees and in course of time, after saying “no” a dozen times, she said “yes” once in a moment of utter lassitude, and afterward she cried and wished to withdraw her consent, but they were two to one, and had right on their side, she thought.
They got her to say she would marry him some day or other.
Coventry intercepted several letters, but he took care not to read them with Grace's sad face in sight. He would not give conscience such a power to torment him. The earlier letters gave him a cruel satisfaction. They were written each from a different city in the United States, and all tended to show that the writer had a year or two to travel yet, before he could hope to return home in triumph and marry his Grace.
In all these letters she was requested to send her answers to New York (and, now I think of it, there was a postscript to that effect in the very letter I have given in extenso).
But at last came a letter that disturbed this delightful dream. It was written from the western extremity of the States, but the writer was in high spirits; he had sold his patents in two great cities, and had established them in two more on a royalty; he had also met with an unexpected piece of good fortune: his railway clip had been appreciated, a man of large capital and enterprise had taken it up with spirit, and was about to purchase the American and Canadian right for a large sum down and a percentage. As soon as this contract should be signed he should come home and claim Mr. Carden's promise. He complained a little that he got no letters, but concluded the post-office authorities were in fault, for he had written to New York to have them forwarded. However, he soon should be in that city and revel in them.
This troubled Coventry, and drove him to extremities. He went on his knees to Grace, and implored her to name the day.
She drew back with horror and repugnance; said, with a burst of tears, she was a widow, and would not marry till a decent time had elapsed since—; then, with sudden doggedness, “I will never marry at all.”
And so she left him to repent his precipitation.
He was at his wits' end, and could do nothing but look unhappy, and temporize, and hope the wind might change.
The wind did not change, and he passed a week or two of outward sorrow, but inward rage.
He fell ill, and Mr. Carden pitied him openly.
Grace maintained a sullen silence.
One day, as he was in bed, an envelope was brought him, with a large “L.” He opened it slowly, fearing the worst.
The letter was full of love, and joy, and triumph that made the reader's heart faint within him till he came to this sentence:
“The gentleman who treats with me for the railway clip makes it an express stipulation that I shall spend a month in his works at Chicago, superintending the forging and perfecting of the clip. As he intends to be there himself, and to buy it out-and-out if it answers his expectations, I shall certainly go, and wear a smith's apron once more for your sake. He is even half inclined to go into another of my projects—the forging of large axes by machinery. It was tried at Hillsborough two years ago, but the Union sent a bullet through the manufacturer's hat, and he dropped it.”
The letter from which I give this extract was a reprieve. He had five or six weeks before him still.
Soon after this, his faithful ally, Mr. Carden, worked on Grace's pity; and as Coventry never complained, nor irritated her in any way, she softened to him. Then all the battery of imploring looks was brought to bear on her by Coventry, and of kind admonition and entreaty by her father; and so, between them, they gently thrust her down the slope.
“Stop all their tongues,” said Mr. Carden. “Come back to Hillsborough a wife. I gave up my choice to yours once. Now give me my way. I am touched to the heart by this young man's devotion: he invites me to live with him when you are married. What other young fellow would show me so much mercy?”
“Does he?” said Grace. “I will try and reward him for that, and for speaking well of one who could not defend himself. But give me a little time.”
Mr. Carden conveyed this to Coventry with delight, and told him he should only have another month or so to wait. Coventry received this at first with unmixed exultation, but by-and-by he began to feel superstitious. Matters were now drawing to such a point that Little might very well arrive before the wedding-day, and just before it. Perhaps Heaven had that punishment in store for him; the cup was to be in his very grasp, and then struck out of it.
Only a question of time! But what is every race? The space between winner and loser strikes the senses more obviously; but the race is just as much a question of time as of space. Buridan runs second for the Derby, defeated by a length. But give Buridan a start of one second, and he shall beat the winner—by two lengths.
Little now wrote from Chicago that every thing was going on favorably, and he believed it would end in a sale of the patent clip in the United States and Canada for fifty thousand dollars, but no royalty.
This letter was much shorter than any of the others; and, from that alone, his guilty reader could see that the writer intended to follow it in person almost immediately.
Coventry began almost to watch the sun in his course. When it was morning he wished it was evening, and when it was evening he wished it was morning.
Sometimes he half wondered to see how calmly the sun rose and set, and Nature pursued her course, whilst he writhed in the agony of suspense, and would gladly have given a year out of his life for a day.
At last, by Mr. Carden's influence, the wedding-day was fixed. But soon after this great triumph came another intercepted letter. He went to his room and his hands trembled violently as he opened it.
His eye soon fixed on this passage:
“I thought to be in New York by this time, and looking homeward; but I am detained by another piece of good-fortune, if any thing can be called good-fortune that keeps me a day from you. Oh, my dear Grace, I am dying to see your handwriting at new York, and then fly home and see your dear self, and never, never quit you more. I have been wonderfully lucky; I have made my fortune, our fortune. But it hardly pays me for losing the sight of you so many months. But what I was going to tell you is, that my method of forging large axes by machinery is wonderfully praised, and a great firm takes it up on fair terms. This firm has branches in various parts of the world, and, once my machines are in full work, Hillsborough will never forge another ax. Man can not suppress machinery; the world is too big. That bullet sent through Mr. Tyler's hat loses Great Britain a whole trade. I profit in money by their short-sighted violence, but I must pay the price; for this will keep me another week at Chicago, perhaps ten days. Then home I come, with lots of money to please your father, and an ocean of love for you, who don't care about the filthy dross; no more do I, except as the paving-stones on the road to you and heaven, my adored one.”
The effect of this letter was prodigious. So fearful had been the suspense, so great was now the relief, that Coventry felt exultant, buoyant. He went down to the sea-side, and walked, light as air, by the sands, and his brain teemed with delightful schemes. Little would come to Hillsborough soon after the marriage, but what of that?
On the wedding-night he would be at Dover. Next day at Paris, on his way to Rome, Athens, Constantinople. The inevitable exposure should never reach his wife until he had so won her, soul and body, that she should adore him for the crimes he had committed to win her—he knew the female heart to be capable of that.
He came back from his walk another man, color in his cheek and fire in his eye.
He walked into the drawing-room, and found Mr. Raby, with his hat on, just leaving Grace, whose eyes showed signs of weeping.
“I wish you joy, sir,” said Raby. “I am to have the honor of being at your wedding.”
“It will add to my happiness, if possible,” said Coventry.
To be as polite in deed as in word, he saw Mr. Raby into the fly.
“Curious creatures, these girls,” said Raby, shrugging his shoulders.
“She was engaged to me long ago,” said Coventry, parrying the blow.
“Ah! I forgot that. Still—well, well; I wish you joy.”
He went off, and Coventry returned to Grace. She was seated by the window looking at the sea.
“What did godpapa say to you?”
“Oh, he congratulated me. He reminded me you and I were first engaged at his house.”
“Did he tell you it is to be at Woodbine Villa?”
“What?”
“The wedding.” And Grace blushed to the forehead at having to mention it.
“No, indeed, he did not mention any such thing, or I should have shown him how unadvisable—”
“You mistake me. It is I who wish to be married from my father's house by good old Dr. Fynes. He married my parents, and he christened me, and now he shall marry me.”
“I approve that, of course, since you wish it; but, my own dearest Grace, Woodbine Villa is associated with so many painful memories—let me advise, let me earnestly entreat you, not to select it as the place to be married from. Dr. Fynes can be invited here.”
“I have set my heart on it,” said Grace. “Pray do not thwart me in it.”
“I should be very sorry to thwart you in any thing. But, before you finally decide, pray let me try and convince your better judgment.”
“I HAVE decided; and I have written to Dr. Fynes, and to the few persons I mean to invite. They can't all come here; and I have asked Mr. Raby; and it is my own desire; and it is one of those things the lady and her family always decide. I have no wish to be married at all. I only marry to please my father and you. There, let us say no more about it, please. I will not be married at Woodbine Villa, nor anywhere else. I wish papa and you would show your love by burying me instead.”
These words, and the wild panting way they were uttered in, brought Coventry to his knees in a moment. He promised her, with abject submission, that she should have her own way in this and every thing. He petted her, and soothed her, and she forgave him, but so little graciously, that he saw she would fly out in a moment again, if the least attempt were made to shake her resolution.
Grace talked the matter over with Mr. Carden, and that same evening he begged Coventry to leave the Villa as soon as he conveniently could, for he and his daughter must be there a week before the wedding, and invite some relations, whom it was his interest to treat with respect.
“You will spare me a corner,” said Coventry, in his most insinuating tone. “Dear Woodbine! I could not bear to leave it.”
“Oh, of course you can stay there till we actually come; but we can't have the bride and bridegroom under one roof. Why, my dear fellow, you know better than that.”
There was no help for it. It sickened him with fears of what might happen in those few fatal days, during which Mr. Carden, Grace herself, and a household over which he had no control, would occupy the house, and would receive the Postman, whose very face showed him incorruptible.
He stayed till the last moment; stopped a letter of five lines from Little, in which he said he should be in New York very soon, en route for England; and the very next day he received the Cardens, with a smiling countenance and a fainting heart, and then vacated the premises. He ordered Lally to hang about the Villa at certain hours when the post came in, and do his best. But his was catching at a straw. His real hope was that neither Little himself, nor a letter in his handwriting, might come in that short interval.
It wanted but five days to the wedding.
Hitherto it had been a game of skill, now it was a game of chance; and every morning he wished it was evening, every evening he wished it was morning.
The day Raby came back from Eastbank he dined at home, and, in an unguarded moment, said something or other, on which Mrs. Little cross-examined him so swiftly and so keenly that he stammered, and let out Grace Carden was on the point of marriage.
“Marriage, while my son is alive!” said Mrs. Little, and looked from him to Jael Dence, at first with amazement, and afterward with a strange expression that showed her mind was working.
A sort of vague alarm fell upon the other two, and they waited, in utter confusion, for what might follow.
But the mother was not ready to suspect so horrible a thing as her son's death. She took a more obvious view, and inveighed bitterly against Grace Carden.
She questioned Raby as to the cause, but it was Jael who answered her. “I believe nobody knows the rights of it but Miss Carden herself.”
“The cause is her utter fickleness; but she never really loved him. My poor Henry!”
“Oh yes, she did,” said Raby. “She was at death's door a few months ago.”
“At death's door for one man, and now going to marry another!”
“Why not?” said Raby, hard pushed; “she is a woman.”
“And why did you not tell me till now?” asked Mrs. Little, loftily ignoring her brother's pitiable attempt at a sneer.
Raby's reply to this was happier.
“Why, what the better are you for knowing it now? We had orders not to worry you unnecessarily. Had we not, Jael?”
“That is all very well, in some things. But, where my son is concerned, pray never keep the truth from me again. When did she break off with Henry—or did he quarrel with her?”
“I have no idea. I was not in the country.”
“Do YOU know, dear?”
“No, Mrs. Little. But I am of your mind. I think she could not have loved Mr. Henry as she ought.”
“When did you see her last?”
“I could not say justly, but it was a long while ago.”
Mrs. Little interpreted this that Jael had quarreled with Grace for her fickleness, and gave her a look of beaming affection; then fell into a dead silence, and soon tears were seen stealing down her cheek.
“But I shall write to her,” said she, after a long and painful silence.
Mr. Raby hoped she would do nothing of the kind.
“Oh, I shall not say much. I shall put her one question. Of course SHE knows why they part.”
Next morning Jael Dence asked Mr. Raby whether the threatened letter must be allowed to go.
“Of course it must,” said Raby. “I have gone as far off the straight path as a gentleman can. And I wish we may not repent our ingenuity. Deceive a mother about her son! what can justify it, after all?”
Mrs. Little wrote her letter, and showed it to Jael:
“DEAR MISS CARDEN,—They tell me you are about to be married. Can this be true, and Henry Little alive?”
An answer came back, in due course.
“DEAR MRS. LITTLE,—It is true, and I am miserable. Forgive me, and forget me.”
Mrs. Little discovered the marks of tears upon the paper, and was sorely puzzled.
She sat silent a long time: then looking up, she saw Jael Dence gazing at her with moist eyes, and an angelic look of anxiety and affection.
She caught her round the neck, and kissed her, almost passionately.
“All the better,” she cried, struggling with a sob. “I shall have my own way for once. You shall be my daughter instead.”
Jael returned her embrace with ardor, but in silence, and with averted head.
When Jael Dence heard that Grace Carden was in Hillsborough, she felt very much drawn to go and see her: but she knew the meeting must be a sad one to them both; and that made her put it off till the very day before the wedding. Then, thinking it would be too unkind if she held entirely aloof, and being, in truth, rather curious to know whether Grace had really been able to transfer her affections in so short a time, she asked Mr. Raby's leave, and drove one of the ponies in to Woodbine Villa.
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