‘SQUIRE IRVING’S LETTER.
It was dated the very night preceding the morning when Squire Irving had
been found dead by Aleck Floyd, and it commenced much like the one which
Roger had guarded so religiously as his father’s last message to him:
“MILLBANK, April —.
“MY DEAR BOY, — For many days I have been haunted with a presentiment
that I have not much longer to live. My heart is badly diseased, and I
may drop away any minute, and as death begins to stare me in the face,
my thoughts turn toward you, the boy whom I have been so proud of and
loved so much. You don’t remember your mother, Roger, and you don’t
know how I loved her, she was so beautiful and artless, and seemed so
innocent, with her blue eyes and golden hair. Her home was among the
New Hampshire hills, a quarter of a mile or so from the little rural
town of Schodick, whose delightful scenery and pure mountain air years
ago attracted visitors there during the summer months. Her father was
poor and old and infirm, and his farm was mortgaged for more than it
was worth, and the mortgage was about to be foreclosed, when, by
chance, I became an inmate for a few weeks of the farm-house. I was
stopping in Schodick, the hotel was full, and I boarded with Jessie’s
father. He had taken boarders before,—one a young man, Arthur Grey, a
fast, fashionable, fascinating man, who made love to Jessie, a mere
child of sixteen. Her letter, which I enclose, will tell you the
particulars of her acquaintance with him, so it is not needful that I
go over with them. I knew nothing of Arthur Grey at the time I was at
the farm-house, except that I sometimes heard him mentioned as a
reckless, dashing young man. I was there during the months of August
and September. I had an attack of heart disease, and Jessie nursed me
through it, her soft hands and gentle ways and deep blue eyes weaving
around me a spell I could not break. She was poor, but a lady every
whit, and I loved her better than I had ever loved a human being
before, and I wanted her for my wife. As I have said, her father was
old and poor, and the farm was mortgaged to a remorseless creditor.
They would be homeless when it was sold, and so I _bought_ Jessie, and
her father kept his home. I know now that it was a great mistake; know
why Jessie fainted when the plan was first proposed to her, but I did
not suspect it then. Her father said she was in the habit of fainting,
and tried to make light of it. He was anxious for the match, and shut
his eyes to his daughter’s aversion to it.
“I brought her to Millbank in December, and within the year you were
born. I heard nothing of Arthur Grey. I only knew that Jessie was not
happy; satins and pearls and diamonds could not drive that sad, hungry
look from her eyes, and I took her for a change to Saratoga, and there
she met the villain again, and as the result she left Millbank to go
with him to Europe. In a few days she was drowned, and her letter
written on the ‘Sea Gull’ was sent to me by that accursed man who,
when she tried to escape him, followed her to the ship bound for
Charleston. I believe that part, and a doubt of your legitimacy never
entered my heart until Walter’s wife put it there. I had made my will,
and given nearly all to you, when Helen, who was here a few months
ago, began one day to talk of Jessie, very kindly, as I remember, and
seemed trying to find excuses for what she called her sin, and then
said she was so glad that I had always been kind to the poor innocent
boy who was not to blame for his mother’s error. I came gradually to
understand her, though she said but little which could be repeated,
but I knew that she doubted your legitimacy, and she gave me reason to
doubt it too, by hinting that Arthur Grey had been seen in Belvidere
more than once after Jessie’s marriage. Her husband, Walter, was her
informant; but she had promised secrecy, as he wished to spare me, and
so she could not be explicit. But I had heard enough to drive me mad
with jealousy and rage, and I made another will, and gave you little
more than the Morton farm, which, when Jessie’s father died, as he did
the day when you were born, I bought to please your mother. I was wild
with anger when I made that will, and my love for you has ever since
kept tugging at my heart, and has prevented me from destroying the
first will, as I twice made up my mind to do. To-day I have read your
mother’s letter again, and I have forgiven Jessie at last, though
Helen’s insinuations still rankle in my mind. But I have repented of
leaving you so little, and have sent for young Schofield to change my
last will, and make you equal with Frank.
“Perhaps I may never see you again, for something about my heart warns
me that my days are numbered, and what I do for you must be done
quickly. Heaven forgive me if I wronged your mother, and forgive me
doubly, trebly, if in wronging her I have dealt cruelly, unnaturally
by you, my darling, my pride, my boy, whom I love so much in spite of
everything; for I do, Roger, I certainly do, and I feel even now that
if you were here beside me, the sight of your dear face would tempt me
to burn the later will and reacknowledge the first.
“Heaven bless you, Roger. Heaven give you every possible good which
you may crave, and if in the course of your life there is one thing
more than another which you desire, I pray Heaven to give it to you. I
wish Schofield was here now. There is a dreadful feeling in my head, a
cold, prickling sensation in my arms, and I must stop, while I have
power to sign myself,
“Yours lovingly and affectionately,
“WILLIAM H. IRVING.”
This was the letter, and the old man must have been battling with death
as he wrote it, and with the tracing of Roger’s name the pen must have
dropped from his nerveless fingers, and his spirit taken its flight to
the world where poor, wronged Jessie had gone before him. The fact that
she was innocent did not prevent her child from receiving the punishment
of her seeming guilt, and at first every word of his father’s letter had
been like so many stabs, making his pain harder than ever to bear.
Magdalen comprehended it in full, and pitied him now more than she had
before.
“Oh, I am so sorry for you, Mr. Irving; sorrier than I was about the
will,” she said, moving a little nearer to him.
He looked quickly at her, and guessing of what he was thinking, she
rejoined:
“Don’t imagine for a moment that I distrust your mother. I know she was
innocent and I hate the woman who breathed the vile slander against
her.”
“Hush, Magda, that woman is Frank’s mother,” Roger said, gently, and
Magdalen replied:
“I know she is, and your sister-in-law. I did not think of the
relationship when I spoke, or suppose you would care.”
She either did not or _would_ not understand him, and she went on to
speak of Jessie and the man who had been her ruin.
“Grey,” she repeated, “Arthur Grey! It surely cannot be Alice’s father?”
Roger did not know. He had never thought of that. “I never saw him,” he
said, “and never wish to see him or his. I could not treat him civilly.
There is more about him here in mother’s letter. She loved him with a
woman’s strange infatuation, and her love gives a soft coloring to what
she has written. I have never shown it to a human being, but I want you
to read it, Magda, or rather let me read it to you.”
He was not angry with her, Magdalen knew, and she felt as if a great
burden had been lifted from her as she listened to the letter written
thirty years before.