ARTHUR'S LETTER.
Two weeks had passed since Jerry's return to her lessons, and people had
ceased to talk of the missing diamonds, although the offered reward of
$500 was still in the weekly papers, and a detective still had the
matter in charge, without, however, achieving the slightest success. No
one had been suspected, and the thief, whoever he was, must have been
an expert, and managed the affair with the most consummate skill. Now
that she had another set, Mrs. Tracy was content, and peace and quiet
reigned in the household, except so far as Arthur was concerned. He was
restless and nervous, and given to fits of abstraction, which sometimes
made him forget the two little girls, one of whom watched him narrowly;
and once, when they were alone and he seemed unusually absorbed in
thought, she asked him if he were trying to think of something.
"Yes," he said, looking up quickly and eagerly; "that is it. I am trying
to remember something which, it seems to me, I ought to remember; but I
cannot, and the more I try, the farther it gets from me. Do you know
what it is?"
Jerry hesitated a moment, and then she asked:
"Is it the diamonds?"
"Diamonds! No. What diamonds? Didn't I tell you never to say diamonds to
me again? I am tired of it," he said; and in his eyes there was a gleam
which Jerry had never seen there before when they rested upon her. It
made her afraid, and she answered, meekly:
"Then I cannot help you to remember."
"Of course not. No one can," Arthur replied, in a softened tone. "It is
something long ago, and has to do with Gretchen."
Then suddenly brightening, as if that name had been the key to unlock
his misty brain, he added:
"I have it; I know; it has come to me at last! Gretchen always sets me
right. I wrote her a letter long ago--a year, it seems to me--and it has
never been posted. Strange that I should forget that; but something came
up--I can't tell what--and drove it from my mind."
As he talked he was opening and looking in the drawer which Jerry had
never seen but once before, and that, when he took from it the letter in
German, a paragraph of which he had bidden her read.
"Here it is!" he said, joyfully, as he took out a sealed envelope and
held it up to Jerry. "This is the letter which you must post at once."
He gave her the letter, which she took with a beating heart and a sense
of shame and regret as she remembered her pledge to Mr. Frank Tracy. She
had promised to take him any letter which Mr. Arthur might intrust to
her care, and if she took this one she must keep her word.
"Oh, I can't do it--I can't! It would be mean to Mr. Arthur," she
thought; and returning him the letter, she said: "Please post it
yourself; then you will be sure, and I might lose it, or forget. I am
careless sometimes. Don't ask me to take it."
She was pleading with all her might; but Arthur paid no heed, and only
laughed at her fears.
"I know you will not forget, and I'd rather trust you than Charles.
Surely, you will not refuse to do so small a favor for me?"
"No," she said, at last, as she put the letter in her pocket, with the
thought that she would show it to Mr. Frank as she had promised but
would not let him keep it.
She found him in the room, where the dead woman had lain in her coffin,
and where he often sat alone thinking of the day when the inquest was
held, and when he took his first step in the downward road, which had
lead him so far that now it seemed impossible to turn back.
"If I had never secreted the photograph, or the book with the
handwriting, everything would have been so different, and I should have
been free," he was thinking, when Jerry knocked timidly at the door,
rousing him from his reverie, and making him start with a nameless fear
which was always haunting him.
"Oh, Jerry, it is you," he said, as the little girl crossed the
threshold, and shutting the door, stood with her back against it, and
her hands behind her. "What is it?" he asked, as he saw her hesitating.
With a quick, jerky movement of the head, which set in motion the little
rings of hair, now growing so fast, and brought his brother to his mind,
Jerry replied:
"I came to tell you that Mr. Arthur has written the letter."
"What letter?" Frank asked, for the moment forgetting the conversation
he had held with the child in the Tramp House.
"The one I promised to bring you--the one to Germany," was Jerry's
answer.
And then Frank remembered what, in the excitement of the diamond theft,
had passed from his mind.
"Yes, yes, I know; give it to me," he said, advancing rapidly toward
her, and putting out his hand. "When did he write it? Let me see it,
please."
Rather reluctantly Jerry handed him the bulky letter, the direction of
which covered nearly the whole of one side of the envelope.
Very nervously Frank scanned the address, which might as well have been
in the Hindoo language for any idea it conveyed to him.
"To whom is it directed? I cannot read German," he said.
"I don't know," Jerry replied. "I have not looked at it, and would
rather not."
"Why, what a little prude you are;" and Frank laughed, uneasily. "What
possible harm is there in reading an address? The postmaster has to do
it, and any one who took it to the office would do it if he could."
This sounded reasonable enough, and standing beside him, Jerry read the
address in German first, then, as he said to her: "I don't understand
that lingo, put it into English," she read again:
"To Marguerite Heinrich, if living, and if dead to any of her friends;
or, to the Postmaster at Wiesbaden, Germany. If not delivered within two
months, return to Arthur Tracy, Tracy Park, Shannondale, Mass., U.S.A."
"Marguerite--Marguerite Heinrich!" Frank repeated. "That is not
Gretchen. The letter is not to her."
"I guess it is," Jerry replied. "He told me once that Gretchen was a pet
name for Marguerite."
"Yes," Frank returned, with a sigh of disappointment, while to himself
he said "It is not Marguerite Tracy and that makes me less a scoundrel
than I should otherwise have been." Then turning to Jerry, as he put the
letter in his pocket, he said, "thank you for bringing this to me. I had
forgotten all about it."
"Mr. Tracy, you mustn't keep the letter. It is not yours--No harm will
be done if it goes. Mr. Arthur will never let Maude be wronged. Give it
to me, please." Jerry cried in a tone and manner she might have
borrowed from Arthur himself, it was so like him when on his dignity.
And Frank felt it, and knew that he had more than a child to deal with,
and must use duplicity if he would succeed. So he said to her quietly
and naturally:
"Why, how excited you are! Do you think I intend to keep the letter? It
is as safe with me as with you. It is true that when I talked with you
in the Tramp House I thought it must not be sent, but I have changed my
mind, and do not care. I am going to the office, and will take it
myself. John is saddling my horse now, and if I hurry I shall be in time
for the Western mail. Good-by, and do not look so worried. Do you take
me for a villain?"
He was leaving the room as he talked, and before he had finished he was
in the hall and near the outer door, leaving Jerry stupefied, and
perplexed, and only half re-assured.
"If I had not sold myself to Satan before, I have now, for sure; and
still I did not actually tell her that I would post it, though it
amounted to that," Frank thought, as he galloped through the park toward
the highway which led to the town.
Once he took the letter from his pocket and examined it again, wishing
that he knew its contents.
"If I could read German, I believe I am bad enough to open it; but I
can't, and I dare not take it to any one who can," he said, as he put it
again in his pocket, half resolving to post it and take the chances of
its ever reaching Gretchen's friends, or any one who had known her.
"I'll see how I feel when I get inside," he thought, as he dismounted
from his horse before the door of the post-office.
The mail was just in, and the little room was full of people waiting for
it to be distributed; and Frank waited with them, leaning against the
wall, with his head bent down, and beating his boot with his
riding-whip.
"I must decide soon," he thought, when a voice not far from him caught
his ear, and glancing from under his hat, he saw Peterkin coming in,
portly and pompous, and with him a dapper little man, who, in the days
of the 'Liza Ann, had been a driver for the boat, but who now, like his
former employer, was a millionaire, and wore a thousand-dollar diamond
ring. To him Peterkin was saying:
"There, that's him--that's Frank Tracy, the biggest swell in town--lives
in that handsome place I was telling you about."
Strange that words like these from a man like old Peterkin should have
inflated Frank's pride; but he was weak in many points, and though he
detested Peterkin, it gratified him to be pointed out to strangers as a
swell who lived in a fine house, and with the puff of vanity came the
reflection that, as Frank Tracy of some other place than Tracy Park, and
a poor man, he would not be one whom strangers cared to see, and Jerry's
chance was lost again.
"Here is your mail Mr. Tracy," the postmistress said; and stepping
forward, Frank took his letters from her, just as Peterkin slapped him
on the shoulder, and, with a familiarity which made Frank want to knock
him down, called out:
"Hallo, Tracy! Just the feller I wanted to see. Let me introduce you to
Mr. Bijah Jones, from Pennsylvany; use to drive hosses for me in the
days I ain't ashamed of, by a long shot. He's bought him a place out
from Philadelphy, and wants to lay it out _a la--a la_--dumbed if I know
the word, but like them old chaps' gardens in Europe, and I told him of
Tracy Park, which beats everything holler in this part of the country.
Will you let us go over it and take a survey?"
"Certainly; go where you like," Frank said, struggling to reach the
door; but Peterkin button-holed him and held him fast, while he
continued:
"I say, Tracy, heard anything from them diamonds?"
"Nothing," was the reply.
"Didn't hunt in the right quarter," Peterkin continued; "leastwise
didn't foller it up, or you'd a found 'em without so much advertisin'."
"What do you mean?" Frank asked.
"Oh, nothin'," Peterkin replied; "only them diamonds never went off
without hands, and them hands ain't a thousand miles from the park."
"Perhaps not," Frank answered mechanically, more intent upon getting
away than upon what Peterkin was saying.
He longed to be in the open air, and as he mounted his horse, he said,
as if speaking to some one near him:
"Well, old fellow, I've done it again, and sunk myself still lower. You
are bound to get me now some day, unless I have a death-bed repentance
and confess everything. The thief was forgiven at the last hour, why not
I?"
Frank could have sworn that he heard a chuckle in his ear as he rode on,
fast and far, until his horse was tired and he was tired, too. Then he
began to retrace his steps, so slowly that it was dark when he reached
the village and turned down the road which led by the gate through which
the woman had passed to her death on the night of the storm.
As he drew near the gate, it seemed to him that there was something on
the post nearest the fence which had not been there in the afternoon
when he rode by--something dark and peculiar in shape, and motionless as
a stone. He was not by nature a coward, and once he had no belief in
ghosts or supernatural appearances, but now he did not know what he
believed, and this object, whose outline, seen against the western sky
where a dim light was lingering, seemed almost like that of a human
form, made his heart beat faster than its wont, and he involuntarily
checked his horse, just as a clear, shrill voice called out:
"Mr. Tracy, is that you? I have waited so long, and I'm so cold sitting
here. Did you post the letter?"
It was Jerry, who, after he had left her in his office, had been seized
with an indefinable terror lest he might not post the letter after all.
It seemed wrong to doubt him, and she did not really think that she did
doubt him; still she should feel happier if she knew, and after supper
was over she started along the grassy road until she reached the gate.
Here she waited a long time, and then, as Mr. Tracy did not appear, she
walked up and down the lane until the sun was down and the ground began
to feel so damp and cold that she finally climbed up to the top of the
gate-post, which was very broad, and where, on her way to town, she had
frequently sat for a while. It was very cold and tiresome waiting there,
and she was beginning to get impatient and to wonder if it could be
possible that he had gone home by some other road, when she heard the
sound of horses' hoofs and felt sure he was coming.
"Why, Jerry, how you frightened me!" Frank said, as he reined his horse
close up to her. "Jump down and get up behind me. I will take you home."
She obeyed, and with the agility of a little cat got down from the
gate-post and on to the horse's back, putting both arms around Frank's
waist to keep herself steady, for the big horse took long steps, and she
felt a little afraid.
"Did you post the letter?" she asked again, as they left the gate behind
them and struck into the lane.
To lie now was easy enough, and Frank replied without hesitation:
"Of course. Did you think I would forget it?"
"No," Jerry answered. "I knew you would not. I only wanted to be sure,
because he trusted it to me, and not to have sent it would have been
mean, and a sneak, and a lie, and a steal. Don't you think so?"
She emphasized the "steal," and the "lie," and the "sneak," and the
"mean," with a kick which made the horse jump a little and quicken his
steps.
"Yes," Frank assented; it would be all she affirmed, and more, too, and
the man who could do such a thing was wholly unworthy the respect of any
one, and ought to be punished to the full extent of the law.
"That's so," Jerry said, with another emphatic kick and a slight
tightening of her arms around the conscience-stricken man, who wondered
if he should ever reach the cottage and be free from the clasp of those
arms, which seemed to him like bands of fire burning to his soul. "I'd
never speak to him again," Jerry continued "and Mr. Arthur wouldn't
either. He is so right-up and hates a trick. I don't believe, either,
that any harm will come to Maude from that letter, as you said. If there
does, and Mr. Arthur can fix it, he will, I know, for I shall ask him,
and he once told me he would do anything for me, because I look as he
thinks Gretchen must have looked when she was a little girl like me."
They had reached the cottage by this time, where they found Harold in
the yard looking up and down the lane for Jerry, whose protracted
absence at that hour had caused them some anxiety, even though they
were accustomed to her long rambles by herself and frequent absences
from home.
"You see, I have picked up your little girl and brought her home. Jump
down, Jerry, and good-night to you," Mr. Tracy said as Harold came up to
them.
She was on the ground in an instant, and he was soon galloping toward
home, saying to himself:
"I don't believe I can even have a death-bed repentance. I have told too
many lies for that, and worse than all, must go on lying to the end. I
have sold my soul, for a life of luxury, which after all is very
pleasant," he continued, as he drew near the house, which was
brilliantly lighted up, while through the long windows of the
dining-room he could see the table, with its silver and glass and
flowers, and the cheerful blaze upon the hearth. There was company
staying in the house, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond from Kentucky, father and
mother to Fred; and Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire, and Grace Atherton, and
Squire Harrington had been invited to dinner and were already in the
dining-room when Frank entered it after a hasty toilet.
He had been out in the country and ridden further than he intended, he
said, by way of apology, as he greeted his guests, and then took Mrs.
Raymond in to dinner. Dolly was very fine that evening in claret velvet,
with her new diamonds, which were greatly admired, Grace Atherton
declaring that she liked them quite as well as the stolen ones, whose
setting was rather _passee_.
"That is just why I prized them so much; it made them look like
heir-looms, and as if one had always had a family," Dolly said.
Grace Atherton shrugged her still plump shoulders just a little, and
thought of the first call she ever made upon Dolly, when the lady
entertained her in her working-apron.
Dolly did not look now as if she had ever seen a working-apron, and was
very bright and talkative, and entertaining, and all the more so because
of her husband's silence. He was given to moods, and sometimes
aggravated his wife to desperation when he left all the conversation to
her.
"Do talk," she would say to him when they were alone. "Do talk to
people and not sit so glum, with that great wrinkle between your eyes as
if you were mad at something; and do laugh, too, when any body tells any
thing worth laughing at, and not leave it all to me. Why, I actually
giggle at times until I feel like a fool, while you never smile or act
as if you heard a word. Look at me occasionally, and when I elevate my
eye-brows--_so_--brace up and say something, if it isn't so cunning."
This _elevating of the eyebrows_ and _bracing up_ were matters of
frequent occurrence, as Frank grew more and more silent and abstracted,
and now, after he had sat through a very funny story told by Mr. St.
Claire, and had not even smiled, or given any sign that he heard it, he
suddenly caught Dolly's eye, and saw that both eyebrows, and nose, and
chin were up as marks of unusual disapprobation, for how could she guess
of what he was thinking as he sat with his head bent down, and his eyes
seemingly half shut. But they came open wide enough, and his head was
high enough when he saw Dolly's frown; and turning to Mrs. Raymond, he
began to talk rapidly and at random. She had just returned from Germany,
where she had left her daughter, Marion, in school, and Frank asked her
of the country, and if she had visited Wiesbaden, and had there met or
heard of any one by the name of Marguerite Heinrich.
Mrs. Raymond had spent some months in Wiesbaden, for it was there her
daughter was at school, and she was very enthusiastic in her praises of
the beautiful town. But she had never seen or heard of Marguerite
Heinrich, or of any one by the name of Heinrich.
"Marguerite Heinrich?" Dolly repeated. "Who in the world is she--and
where did you know her?"
"I never did know her. I have only heard of her," Frank replied, again
lapsing into a silence from which he did not rouse again.
He was thinking of the letter and of the lies he had told since his
deception began, and how sure it was that he had sinned beyond
forgiveness. When he was a boy he had often listened, with the blood
curdling in his veins, to a story his grandmother told with sundry
embellishments, of a man who sold his soul to the devil in consideration
that for a certain number of years he was to have every pleasure the
world could give. It had been very pleasant listening to the recital of
the fine things the man enjoyed, for Satan kept his promise well; but
the boy's hair had stood on end as the story neared its close, and he
heard how, when the probation was ended, the devil came for his victim
down the wide-mouthed chimney, scattering bricks and fire-brands over
the floor, as he carried the trembling soul out into the blackness of
the stormy night.
Strangely enough this story came back to him now, and notwithstanding
the horror of the thing he laughed aloud as he glanced up at the tall
oak mantel, wondering if it would be that way he would one day go with
his master, and seeing in fancy Dolly's dismay when the tea-cups, and
saucers, and vases, and plaques, came tumbling to the floor as he
disappeared from sight in a blue flame, which smelled of brimstone.
It was a loud, unnatural laugh, but fortunately for him it came just as
Grace Atherton had set the guests in a roar with what she was saying of
Peterkin's struggle to enter society, and so it passed unnoticed by most
of them. But that night in the privacy of his room, where Dolly
delivered most of her lectures, she again upbraided him with his
taciturnity, telling him that he never laughed but once, and then it
sounded more like a groan than a laugh.
"You have hit the nail on the head this time, for it was a groan," Frank
said, as he plunged into bed; and Dolly, as she undressed herself
deliberately, and put her diamonds carefully away, little dreamed what
was passing in the mind of the man, who, all through the long hours of
the night, lay awake, seldom stirring lest he should disturb her, but
repeating over and over to himself the words:
"Lost forever and ever, but if Maude is happy I can bear it."