A THREATENING LETTER.
On the day after the departure of Dudleigh, Edith found a letter lying
on her table. It was addressed to her in that stiff, constrained hand
which she knew so well as belonging to that enemy of her life and of her
race--John Wiggins. With some curiosity as to the motive which he might
have in thus writing to her, she opened the letter, and read the
following:
“DEAR MISS DALTON,--I feel myself incapable of sustaining another
interview with you, and I am therefore reduced to the necessity of
writing.
“I have been deeply pained for a long time at the recklessness with
which you receive total strangers as visitors, and admit them to your
confidence. I have already warned you, but my warnings were received by
you in such a manner as to prevent my encountering another interview.
“I write now to inform you that for your own sake, your own future, and
your own good name, it is my fixed intention to put a stop to these
interviews. This must be done, whatever may be the cost. You must
understand from this that there is nothing left for you but to obey.
“If after this you allow these adventurers one single interview more, I
shall be under the unpleasant necessity of limiting your freedom to an
extent that may be painful to you, and even still more so to myself.
“Yours, JOHN WIGGINS.”
Edith read this letter over and over again, with many mingled feelings.
Wiggins had left her so much to herself of late that she had begun to
count upon his continued inaction, and supposed that he was too much
afraid of Dudleigh to interfere, or to make any opposition whatever to
his visits. Now, however, she saw that he had made up his mind to
action, and she fully believed that he was not the man who would make
any idle menace.
The thing that offended Edith most in this letter was what she
considered its insolence. Its tone was that of a superior addressing an
inferior--a patron speaking to a dependent. At this all the stubborn
pride of Edith's nature was outraged, and rose in rebellion; but above
all was that pride stimulated by the word “obey.”
She also saw in that letter the indications of an unpleasant development
of the policy of Wiggins, which would make her future darker than her
present was. Hitherto he had simply surrounded her with a barrier over
which she could not pass, admitting to her only those whom he wished, or
whom he could not keep away. But now she saw some approach made to a
more positive tyranny. There was a threat of limiting her freedom.
What that meant she could easily conjecture. Wiggins was evidently
dissatisfied with the liberty which she still had of walking over the
grounds. He now intended to confine her within the Hall--perhaps in her
own room.
This showed her what she had to expect in the future. The steps of her
tyrant's progress would be gradual, but terrible. First, perhaps she
would be confined to the Hall, then to her own rooms, and finally
perhaps to some small chamber--some cell--where she would live a living
death as long as her jailer might allow her.
In addition to this open show of tyranny, she also saw what seemed to
her the secret craft by which Wiggins had contrived an excuse for
further restraint. She considered Mowbray and Mrs. Mowbray as direct
agents of his. As for Dudleigh, she now though that Wiggins had not been
so much afraid of him as he had appeared to be, but had allowed him to
come so as to gain an excuse for further coercion. It was evident to
Edith that Dudleigh's transparent integrity of character and his ardent
espousal of her cause must be well known to Wiggins, and that he only
tolerated this visitor so as to gain a plausible pretext for putting her
under restraint.
That letter threw an additional gloom over Edith's life, and lent a
fresh misery to her situation. The prospect before her now was dark
indeed. She was in a prison-house, where her imprisonment seemed
destined to grow closer and closer. There was no reason why Wiggins
should spare her at all. Having so successfully shut her within the
grounds for so long a time, he would now be able to carry out any mode
of confinement which might be desirable to him. She had heard of people
being confined in private mad-houses, through the conspiracy of
relatives who coveted their property. Thus far she had believed these
stories to be wholly imaginary, but now she began to believe them true.
Her own case had shown her the possibility of unjust and illegal
imprisonment, and she had not yet been able to find out any mode of
escape. This place seemed now to be her future prison-house, where her
imprisonment would grow from bad to worse, and where she herself, under
the terrible struggle of feeling to which she would be subject, might
finally sink into a state of madness.
Such a prospect was terrible beyond words. It filled her with horror,
and she regarded her future with the most gloomy forebodings. In the
face of all this she had a sense of the most utter helplessness, and the
disappointments which she had thus far encountered only served to deepen
her dejection.
In the midst of all this there was one hope for her, and one only.
That solitary hope rested altogether on her friend Dudleigh. When he
last left her he had promised to come to her again in six or eight
weeks. This, then, was the only thing left, and to his return she looked
forward incessantly, with the most eager and impatient hope.
To her it now seemed a matter of secondary importance what might be her
own feelings toward Dudleigh. She felt confident of his love toward her,
and in the abhorrence with which she recoiled from the terrible future
which Wiggins was planning for her she was able to contemplate
Dudleigh's passion with complacency. She did not love the little man,
but if he could save her from the horror that rose before her, she
resolved to shrink from no sacrifice of feeling, but grant him whatever
reward he might claim.
Time passed. Six weeks were over, but there were no signs of Dudleigh.
The suspense of Edith now became terrible. She began to fear that
Wiggins had shut him out, and had refused to allow him to enter again.
If this were so, and if Dudleigh had submitted to such exclusion, then
all was indeed lost. But Edith would not yet believe it. She clung to
hope, and since he had said “six or eight weeks,” she thought that she
might wait the extreme limit mentioned by him before yielding to
despair.
Eight weeks passed.
On the day when those weeks had expired Edith found herself in a fever
of suspense, devoured by the most intolerable impatience, with all her
thoughts and feelings now centred upon Dudleigh, and her last hope fixed
upon him only.
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