THE LETTER FROM AUSTRIA.
There had been some trouble with the clerks in the post-office at
Rothsay, and two new ones had just been appointed, and one of these had
entered upon his duties only the day before. As he came from Dayton, and
was a stranger in town, he knew very few people by sight, and was
altogether ignorant of the name and antecedents of the beautiful lady,
who, after depositing her letter, asked if there was any mail for the
Forrest House. Half-bewildered with her beauty and the bright smile she
flashed upon him, the clerk started and blushed, and catching only the
name Forrest, looked in Everard’s box, where lay a letter not yet called
for, as Everard had left town early that morning for a drive into the
country, where he had some business with a client. It was a
soiled-looking letter, with a foreign post-mark upon it, and had either
been mislaid a long time after it had been written, or detained upon the
road, for it was worn upon the edges, and had evidently been much
crumpled with frequent handling. It was directed to J. Everard Forrest,
Esq., Rothsay, Ohio, U. S. A., and in a corner, the two words, “Please
forward” were written, as if the writer were in haste and thought thus
to expedite matters.
Very mechanically, and even indifferently, Josephine took it in her
hand, and glancing at the name saw the clerk had made a mistake and
given her what belonged to another. But she saw, too, something else,
which turned her white as ashes, and riveted her for a moment to the
spot with a feeling that she was either dying or mad, or both. _Surely_,
she knew that writing. She had seen it times enough not to be mistaken.
And she had thought the hand which penned it dead long ago, and laid
away under the grass and flowers of Austria. “_Rossie_,” she tried to
say, but her white lips would not move, and there was about them a
strange prickling sensation which frightened her more than the numbness
of her body.
“I must get into the air where I can breathe,” she thought, and with a
desperate effort she dragged herself to the street, taking the letter
with her, and grasping it with a firm grip as if fearful of losing it,
when in fact she had forgotten that she had it at all, until the air
blowing on her face revived her somewhat and brought her back to a
consciousness of what she was doing.
Then her first impulse was to return the letter to Everard’s box, and
she turned to go back when she saw her husband entering the office, and
that decided her. She would not let him see the letter, for if there
_were_ a great wrong somewhere, _he_ knew it and had contrived it, and
the cold sweat broke out from every pore as she began dimly to
conjecture the nature of the wrong, and to shudder at its enormity. She
was feeling stronger now, and fearful lest her husband should overtake
her she hurried across the common toward home, where she went at once to
her room, and, locking the door, sat down to read that letter from the
dead. She had made up her mind to do that during her rapid walk. She
must know its contents, and so she broke the seal and began to read. And
as she read she felt the blood curdle in her veins; there was a humming
in her ears; a thick feeling in her tongue, and a kind of consciousness
that she was somebody else, whose business for the rest of her life was
to keep the letter and its contents a secret from the world. But where
should she hide it that no one could ever find it, for nobody must see
it? Safety, honor, _everything_ dear to her depended upon that. Not even
her husband must look upon it or know that it was written; and where
should she put it that he would not find it, for he took the liberty to
look through her private drawers and boxes just when it pleased him to
do so? She could not put the letter in a box or keep it about her
person, and she dared not destroy it, though she made the attempt and
lighted the gas in which to burn it to ashes. But as she held it to the
blaze something seemed to grasp her hand and draw it back. And when she
shook off the sensation of fear which had seized her, and again
attempted the destruction of the note, the same effect was produced, and
an icy chill crept over her as if it were a dead hand clutching hers and
holding it fast.
“I can’t destroy it; I dare not!” she whispered; “and what if somebody
should find it? What if _he_ should? He told me once that he had been
guilty of every sin but murder, and under strong provocation he might be
led to do even that;” and a shudder of fear ran through her frame as she
cast about in her own mind for a safe hiding-place for the letter which
affected her so strangely. Suddenly it came to her that she could loosen
a few tacks in the carpet, just where the lace curtains covered the
floor in a corner of the bay window, and pushing the letter out of
sight, drive the tacks in again, and so the secret would be safe, for a
time at least. To do her justice, for once in her life conscience was
prompting her to the only right course left her to pursue,—give the
letter to Everard and abide the consequences. But she could not make up
her mind to do this, knowing that utter poverty and disgrace would be
the result, and she had learned by this time that poverty with Dr.
Matthewson would be a far different thing from poverty with Everard.
To hide the letter under the carpet was the work of a moment, and,
unlocking the door, she was going for a hammer, with which to drive the
tacks, when she heard her husband’s voice in the hall below, and knew
that he was coming. He must not know that she held his guilty secret,
lest he should murder her, as in her nervousness she felt that he might
do, and so she retraced her steps to the couch, where she lay half
fainting, and as white as marble, when the doctor entered the room and
asked her what was the matter.
She did not know, she said; she had been down to the village and walked
rather fast, and was very warm, and had drank freely of ice-water, which
made her feel as if her head were bursting. She should probably feel
better soon.
But she did not get better, and she lay all that day and the next upon
the couch, and seemed so strange and nervous that her husband called in
Dr. Rider, who, after a few questions, the drift of which she
understood, and to which she gave false replies for the purpose of
misleading him, assigned a cause for her ailments, and then went away.
Thus deceived, and on the whole rather pleased than otherwise, Dr.
Matthewson was disposed to be very attentive and indulgent to his wife,
with whom he sat a good portion of each day, humoring all her whims and
trying to quiet her restless, nervous state of mind.
“You act as if you were afraid of me, Josey,” he said once, when he sat
down beside her and put his arm around her with something of the old
lover-like fondness. “You tremble like a leaf if I touch you, and shrink
away from me. What is it? What has come between us? You may as well
tell, for I am sure to find it out if there is anything.”
She knew that, and it seemed to her as if his eyes were following hers
to the bay window and seeing the letter hidden under the carpet. She
must say something by way of an excuse, and with her ready tact she
answered him: “I _am_ keeping something from you. I have written Aggie
to come to me. I was so lonesome and sick, and wanted her so much. You
are not angry, are you?”
Her great blue eyes were swimming with genuine tears, for she was a
little afraid of what her husband might say to the liberty she had taken
without his permission. Fortunately, he was in one of his most genial
moods. Dr. Rider had said to him privately that in her present nervous
condition Josephine must not be crossed; and he answered laughingly that
he was not angry, but on the contrary, very glad Aggie was coming, as he
believed her a capital nurse; and “Josey,” he added, “you need building
up. You are growing as thin as a shad and white as a sheet, and that I
don’t like. I thought _you_ would never fade and fall off like Bee
Belknap. I met her this morning, and she positively begins to look like
an old maid. I hear she is to be married soon,” and he shot a keen,
quick glance at his wife, into whose pale cheeks the hot blood rushed at
once, and whose voice was not quite steady as she asked:
“Married,—to whom? Not Everard?”
“No-o,” the doctor answered, contemptuously, annoyed at Josephine’s
manner. “I hope she has more sense than to marry that milksop, who has
grown to be more like a Methodist parson than anything else. You called
him a milksop yourself, once,” he continued, as he saw the flash in
Josephine’s eyes, “and you must not blame me for taking my cue from you,
who know him better than I do. I believe, on my soul, you half feared he
was going to marry, and were sorry for it. He is nothing to you. A woman
cannot have two husbands; that’s bigamy.”
The doctor was growing irritable, and Josephine knew it, but she could
not forbear answering him tartly:
“There are worse crimes than bigamy,—a great deal,—and they are none the
less worse because the world does not know of them.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, sharply, and Josephine replied:
“Nothing in particular; only you told me once that you had broken every
commandment except the one ‘Thou shalt do no murder,’ and that you might
break that under strong provocation. Of course there are sins at your
door not generally known. Suppose some one should be instrumental in
bringing them or the worst of them to light?”
“Then I might break the only commandment you say I have not broken,” he
answered, and in the eyes bent so searchingly on Josephine’s face there
was an evil, threatening look, before which she quailed.
She must never let him know of the letter hidden under the carpet, and
watched by her so carefully. Every day she went to the spot to make sure
it was there, and every day she read it again until she knew it by
heart, and had no need to read it except to see if she had not by some
chance made a mistake and read it wrong. But she had not; the proof was
there, of crime, and guilt, and sin, such as made her terribly afraid of
the man who fondled and caressed her now more than he had done in weeks,
and who at last welcomed Agnes, when she came, even more warmly than she
did herself, though in not quite so demonstrative a manner.
Agnes had gone straight to her sister’s room, which Josephine had not
left since the day she took the foreign letter from the office and hid
it under the carpet. She had become a monomaniac on the subject of that
letter, and dared not leave lest some one should find it, but sat all
day in her easy-chair, which had been drawn into the bay window, and
stood directly over her secret. And there she sat when Agnes came in,
and then, as if all her remaining nerves had given way, she threw her
arms around her neck and sobbing out, “Oh, Aggie, I am glad you have
come; I could not have borne it much longer,” fainted entirely away.