MY letter from Mr. Playmore, inclosing the agent’s extraordinary
telegram, was not inspired by the sanguine view of our prospects which
he had expressed to me when we met at Benjamin’s house.
“If the telegram mean anything,” he wrote, “it means that the fragments
of the torn letter have been cast into the housemaid’s bucket (along
with the dust, the ashes, and the rest of the litter in the room), and
have been emptied on the dust-heap at Gleninch. Since this was done,
the accumulated refuse collected from the periodical cleansings of the
house, during a term of nearly three years--including, of course, the
ashes from the fires kept burning, for the greater part of the year, in
the library and the picture-gallery--have been poured upon the heap, and
have buried the precious morsels of paper deeper and deeper, day by day.
Even if we have a fair chance of finding these fragments, what hope can
we feel, at this distance of time, of recovering them with the writing
in a state of preservation? I shall be glad to hear, by return of post
if possible, how the matter strikes you. If you could make it convenient
to consult with me personally in Edinburgh, we should save time,
when time may be of serious importance to us. While you are at Doctor
Starkweather’s you are within easy reach of this place. Please think of
it.”
I thought of it seriously enough. The foremost question which I had to
consider was the question of my husband.
The departure of the mother and son from Spain had been so long delayed,
by the surgeon’s orders, that the travelers had only advanced on their
homeward journey as far as Bordeaux, when I had last heard from Mrs.
Macallan three or four days since. Allowing for an interval of repose at
Bordeaux, and for the slow rate at which they would be compelled to
move afterward, I might still expect them to arrive in England some time
before a letter from the agent in America could reach Mr. Playmore.
How, in this position of affairs, I could contrive to join the lawyer in
Edinburgh, after meeting my husband in London, it was not easy to see.
The wise and the right way, as I thought, was to tell Mr. Playmore
frankly that I was not mistress of my Own movements, and that he had
better address his next letter to me at Benjamin’s house.
Writing to my legal adviser in this sense, I had a word of my own to add
on the subject of the torn letter.
In the last years of my father’s life I had traveled with him in Italy,
and I had seen in the Museum at Naples the wonderful relics of a bygone
time discovered among the ruins of Pompeii. By way of encouraging Mr.
Playmore, I now reminded him that the eruption which had overwhelmed the
town had preserved, for more than sixteen hundred years, such perishable
things as the straw in which pottery had been packed; the paintings on
house walls; the dresses worn by the inhabitants; and (most noticeable
of all, in our case) a piece of ancient paper, still attached to the
volcanic ashes which had fallen over it. If these discoveries had been
made after a lapse of sixteen centuries, under a layer of dust and ashes
on a large scale, surely we might hope to meet with similar cases of
preservation, after a lapse of three or four years only, under a layer
of dust and ashes on a small scale. Taking for granted (what was perhaps
doubtful enough) that the fragments of the letter could be recovered, my
own conviction was that the writing on them, though it might be faded,
would certainly still be legible. The very accumulations which Mr.
Playmore deplored would be the means of preserving them from the rain
and the damp. With these modest hints I closed my letter; and thus for
once, thanks to my Continental experience, I was able to instruct my
lawyer!
Another day passed; and I heard nothing of the travelers.
I began to feel anxious. I made my preparations for my journey southward
overnight; and I resolved to start for London the next day--unless I
heard of some change in Mrs. Macallan’s traveling arrangements in the
interval.
The post of the next morning decided my course of action. It brought me
a letter from my mother-in-law, which added one more to the memorable
dates in my domestic calendar.
Eustace and his mother had advanced as far as Paris on their homeward
journey, when a cruel disaster had befallen them. The fatigues of
traveling, and the excitement of his anticipated meeting with me, had
proved together to be too much for my husband. He had held out as far as
Paris with the greatest difficulty; and he was now confined to his bed
again, struck down by a relapse. The doctors, this time, had no fear
for his life, provided that his patience would support him through a
lengthened period of the most absolute repose.
“It now rests with you, Valeria,” Mrs. Macallan wrote, “to fortify and
comfort Eustace under this new calamity. Do not suppose that he has ever
blamed or thought of blaming you for leaving him with me in Spain,
as soon as he was declared to be out of danger. ‘It was _I_ who left
_her,_’ he said to me, when we first talked about it; ‘and it is my
wife’s right to expect that I should go back to her.’ Those were his
words, my dear; and he has done all he can to abide by them. Helpless in
his bed, he now asks you to take the will for the deed, and to join him
in Paris. I think I know you well enough, my child, to be sure that you
will do this; and I need only add one word of caution, before I close my
letter. Avoid all reference, not only to the Trial (you will do that of
your own accord), but even to our house at Gleninch. You will understand
how he feels, in his present state of nervous depression, when I tell
you that I should never have ventured on asking you to join him here,
if your letter had not informed me that your visits to Dexter were at
an end. Would you believe it?--his horror of anything which recalls our
past troubles is still so vivid that he has actually asked me to give my
consent to selling Gleninch!”
So Eustace’s mother wrote of him. But she had not trusted entirely
to her own powers of persuasion. A slip of paper was inclosed in her
letter, containing these two lines, traced in pencil--oh, so feebly and
so wearily!--by my poor darling himself:
“I am too weak to travel any further, Valeria. Will you come to me and
forgive me?” A few pencil-marks followed; but they were illegible. The
writing of those two short sentences had exhausted him.
It is not saying much for myself, I know--but, having confessed it when
I was wrong, let me, at least, record it when I did what was right--I
decided instantly on giving up all further connection with the recovery
of the torn letter. If Eustace asked me the question, I was resolved to
be able to answer truly: “I have made the sacrifice that assures your
tranquillity. When resignation was hardest, I have humbled my obstinate
spirit, and I have given way for my husband’s sake.”
There was half an hour to spare before I left the vicarage for the
railway station. In that interval I wrote again to Mr. Playmore, telling
him plainly what my position was, and withdrawing, at once and forever,
from all share in investigating the mystery which lay hidden under the
dust-heap at Gleninch.