to employ against Mr. Barrows, I set down my lantern on the floor and
escaped to the outer air again. Money, station, fame before the world,
seemed to me but light matters at that moment, and if I had followed my
first impulse I should have rushed back to the assistance of Mr.
Barrows. But considerations terrible and strange prevented me from
following this impulse. In the first place I was not myself free from a
desire to see the contents of the will and judge for myself to what
extent my father had revealed our disgrace to the world; and secondly,
the habit of years is not broken in an instant, and this mother who
gave her countenance to an act I so heartily disapproved, had for all
her reserve and a nature seriously differing from my own, ever been the
dominator of my actions and the controlling force of my life. I could
not brave her, not yet, not while any hope remained of righting
matters, without a demonstration that would lead to open hostilities.
So with a weakness I now wonder at, I let the minutes go by till the
sound of coming steps warned me that my brother was at hand. What he
told me was brief and to the point He had obtained the clergyman's
consent to read the will and was on his way to get it. "But, Mr.
Barrows?" I inquired. "Is in the cellar there with mother." "The
cellar!" I repeated. But he was already in the yard, on his way to the
town. I was disturbed. The calmness of his tone had not deceived me. I
felt that something was wrong; what I could not tell. Taking the
lantern he had left behind him, I made my way to the cellar. It seemed
empty. But when I had reached the other end I found myself confronted
by a ghostly figure in which I was forced to recognize my mother,
though the sight of her in the masquerade costume she had adopted; gave
me a shock serious as the interests involved. But this surprise, great
as it was, was soon lost in that of finding her alone; and when to my
hurried inquiry as to where Mr. Barrows was, she pointed to the vat,
you can imagine the tide of emotions that swept over me. But no, that
is impossible. They were not what you would have felt, they were not
what I would feel now. Mingled with my shame and the indignant protest
of my manhood against so unworthy an exercise of power, was that still
dominating instinct of dread which any interference with my mother's
plans or wishes had always inspired; and so when I learned that the
worst was over and that Mr. Barrows would be released on Guy's return,
I subdued my natural desire to rescue him and went away, little
realizing that in thus allying myself with his persecutors, I had laid
the foundations of a remorse that would embitter my whole after
existence. The return of my brother with the will caused me fresh
emotions. As soon as I saw him I knew there was a struggle before me;
and in handing him back the lantern, I took occasion to ask if he had
opened the document. He looked at me a moment before replying and his
lip took a sinister curl. 'I have,' he said. 'And what does it
contain?' 'What we wish,' he answered, with a strange emphasis. I was
too much astonished to speak. I could not believe this to be true, and
when, Mr. Barrows having been released, we had all returned home, I
asked to see the will and judge for myself. But Guy refused to show it.
'We are going to return it,' he said, and said no more. Nor would my
mother give me any further information. Either I had betrayed myself in
the look I gave Guy on his return to the mill, or else some underlying
regard for my feelings had constrained her to spare me actual
participance in a fraud. At all events, I did not know the truth till
the real will had been destroyed and the substituted one placed in Mr.
Nicholls' hands, and then it was told to me in a way to confound my
sense of right and make me think it would be better to let matters
proceed to this false issue, than by a public acknowledgment of the
facts, bring down upon me and mine the very disgrace from which I had
been so desirous of escaping. I was caught in the toils you see, and
though it would have been a man's part to have broken through every
constraint and proclaimed myself once and for all on the side of right,
I had nothing whereby to show what the last wishes of my father had
been, and could only say what would ruin us without benefiting the
direct object of those wishes. I therefore kept their counsel and my
own; stilling my conscience when it spoke too loud, by an inward
promise to be not only a friend to my older brother's child, but to
part with the bulk of my fortune to her. That she would need my
friendship I felt, as the letter I wrote to her shows, but that such
evil would come upon her as did, or that my delay to see her would make
it impossible for me ever to behold her in this world, I had yet too
much filial regard to imagine. I was consequently overwhelmed by the
news of her death, and though I never knew the whole truth till now, I
was conscious of a distrust so great that from that day to the worser
ones which followed, I never looked at those nearest to me without a
feeling of deep separation such as is only made by some dark and secret
crime. I was alone, or so I felt, and was gradually becoming morbid
from a continual brooding on this subject, when the great blow fell
which changed whatever vague distress I felt into an active remorse and
positive fear. Mr. Barrows was found dead, drowned in the very vat into
which my brother had forced him a month or so before. What did it mean?
It was impossible for me to guess the truth, but I could not but
recognize the fact that we were more or less responsible for his death;
that the frenzy which had doubtless led to this tragedy was the outcome
of the strain which had been put upon his nerves, and though personally
I had had nothing to do with placing him in the vat, I was certainly
responsible for allowing him to remain there a moment after I knew
where he was. It was, therefore, with the deepest horror and confusion
that I rushed home with this news, only to find that it had outstripped
me, and that my mother, foreseeing the dangers which this death might
bring upon us, had succumbed to the shock, and lay, as you know, in a
most alarming condition herself. The perilous position into which we
were thrown by these two fatal occurrences necessitated a certain
confidence between my brother and myself. To watch our mother, and
stifle any unguarded expressions into which she might be betrayed, to
watch you, and when we saw it was too late to prevent your sharing our
secret, to make our hold upon you such that you would feel it to your
own advantage to keep it with us, was perhaps only pardonable in
persons situated as we were. But, Constance, while with Guy the feeling
that made this last task easy was one of selfish passion only, mine
from the first possessed a depth and fervency which made the very
thought of wooing you seem a desecration and a wrong. For already had
your fine qualities produced their effect, and in the light of your
high and lofty nature, my own past looked deformed and dark. And when
the worst came, and Rhoda Colwell's threats put a seemingly immovable
barrier between us, this love which had sprung up in a very nightmare
of trouble, only seemed to take deeper and more lasting root, and I
vowed that whether doomed to lifelong regret or not, I would live
worthy of you, and be in misery what I could so easily be in joy, the
man you could honor, if not love. That this hour would ever come I
dared not dream, but now that it has, can you, will you give me so much
as you have, and not give me more? I know I have no right to ask any
thing from you; that the secrets of our family are a burden which any
woman might well shrink from sharing, but if you do not turn from me,
will you turn from them? Love is such a help to the burdened, and I
love you so fondly, so reverently."
He was on his knees; his forehead was pressed against my arm. The
emotion which shook his whole body communicated itself to me. I felt
that whatever his past weaknesses had been, he possessed a character
capable of the noblest development, and, yielding to the longing with
which my whole being was animated, I was about to lay my hand upon his
head, when he lifted his face and, gazing earnestly at me, said:
"One moment; there is yet a cloud which ought to be blown away from
between us--Rhoda Colwell. I loved her; I sought her love; but once
gained, my eyes opened. I saw her imperfections; I felt the evil in her
nature. I knew if I married her, I should ruin my life. I left her. I
seemed to have no choice, for my love died with my esteem, and she was
not a woman to marry without love. Could I have done differently,
Constance?"
I answered as my whole heart inclined me to. I could not refuse this
love coming into my desolate life. It seemed to be mine. Whatever
trials, fear, or disquietude it might bring, the joy of it was great
enough to make these very trials desirable, if only to prove to him and
me that the links which bound us were forged from truest metal, without
any base alloy to mar their purity and undermine their strength.
And so that spot of gloom, which had been the scene of so much that was
dark and direful, became the witness of a happiness which seemed to
lift it out of the veil of reserve in which it had been shrouded for so
long, and make of the afternoon sun, which at that moment streamed in
through the western windows, a signal of peace, whose brightness as yet
has never suffered change or eclipse.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Mill Mystery, by Anna Katharine Green