The first thing Mat did when he got to his lodgings, was to fill and
light his pipe. He then sat down on his bear-skins, and dragged the box
close to him which he had brought from Dibbledean.
Although the machinery of Mat’s mind was constructed of very clumsy and
barbaric materials; although book-learning had never oiled it, and wise
men’s talk had never quickened it; nevertheless, it always contrived to
work on--much as it was working now--until it reached, sooner or later,
a practical result. Solitude and Peril are stern schoolmasters, but they
do their duty for good or evil, thoroughly with some men; and they
had done it thoroughly, amid the rocks and wildernesses of the great
American continent, with Mat.
Many a pipe did he empty and fill again, many a dark change passed over
his heavy features, as he now pondered long and laboriously over every
word of the dialogue that had just been held between himself and Zack.
But not so much as five minutes out of all the time he thus consumed,
was, in any true sense of the word, time wasted. He had sat down to his
first pipe, resolved that, if any human means could compass it, he would
find out how the young girl whom he had seen in Mr. Blyth’s studio, had
first come there, and who she really was. When he rose up at last, and
put the pipe away to cool, he had thought the matter fairly out from
beginning to end, had arrived at his conclusions, and had definitely
settled his future plans.
Reflection had strengthened him in the resolution to follow his first
impulse when he parted from Zack in the street, and begin the attempt to
penetrate the suspicious secret that hid from him and from every one the
origin of Valentine’s adopted child, by getting possession of the Hair
Bracelet which he had seen laid away in the inner drawer of the bureau.
As for any assignable reason for justifying him in associating this Hair
Bracelet with Madonna, he found it, to his own satisfaction, in young
Thorpe’s account of the strange words spoken by Mrs. Peckover in Mr.
Blyth’s hall--the suspicions resulting from these hints being also
immensely strengthened, by his recollections of the letter signed “Jane
Holdsworth,” and containing an enclosure of hair, which he had examined
in the cattle-shed at Dibbledean.
According to that letter, a Hair Bracelet (easily recognizable if
still in existence, by comparing it with the hair enclosed in Jane
Holdsworth’s note) had once been the property of Mary Grice. According
to what Zack had said, there was apparently some incomprehensible
confusion and mystery in connection with a Hair Bracelet and the young
woman whose extraordinary likeness to what Mary Grice had been in her
girlhood, had first suggested to him the purpose he was now pursuing.
Lastly, according to what he himself now knew, there was actually a
Hair Bracelet lying in the innermost drawer of Mr. Blyth’s bureau--this
latter fragment of evidence assuming in his mind, as has been already
remarked, an undue significance in relation to the fragments preceding
it, from his not knowing that hair bracelets are found in most houses
where there are women in a position to wear any jewelry ornament at all.
Vague as they might be, these coincidences were sufficient to startle
him at first--then to fill him with an eager, devouring curiosity--and
then to suggest to him the uncertain and desperate course which he was
now firmly resolved to follow. How he was to gain possession of the
Hair Bracelet without Mr. Blyth’s knowledge, and without exciting the
slightest suspicion in the painter’s family, he had not yet determined.
But he was resolved to have it, he was perfectly unscrupulous as to
means, and he felt certain beforehand of attaining his object. Whither,
or to what excesses, that object might lead him, he never stopped and
never cared to consider. The awful face of the dead woman (now fixed
for ever in his memory by the living copy of it that his own eyes had
beheld) seemed to be driving him on swiftly into unknown darkness, to
bring him out into unexpected light at the end. The influence which
was thus sternly at work in him was not to be questioned--it was to be
obeyed.
His resolution in reference to the Hair Bracelet was not more firmly
settled than his resolution to keep his real sensations on seeing
Madonna, and the purpose which had grown out of them, a profound secret
from young Thorpe, who was too warmly Mr. Blyth’s friend to be trusted.
Every word that Zack had let slip, had been of vital importance,
hitherto; every word that might yet escape him, might be of the most
precious use for future guidance. “If it’s his fun and fancy,” mused
Mat, “to go on thinking I’m sweet on the girl, let him think it. The
more he thinks, the more he’ll talk. All I’ve got to do is to _hold in;_
and then he’s sure to _let out.”_
While schooling himself thus as to his future conduct towards Zack, he
did not forget another person who was less close at hand certainly, but
who might also be turned to good account. Before he fairly decided on
his plan of action, he debated with himself the propriety of returning
to Dibbledean, and forcing from the old woman, Joanna Grice, more
information than she had been willing to give him at their first
interview. But, on reflection, he considered that it was better to leave
this as a resource to be tried, in case of the failure of his first
experiment with the Hair Bracelet. One look at that--one close
comparison of the hair it was made of, with the surplus hair which had
not been used by the jeweler, in Mary Grice’s bracelet, and which had
been returned to her in her friend’s letter--was all he wanted in
the first place; for this would be enough to clear up every present
uncertainty and suspicion connected with the ornament in the drawer of
Mr. Blyth’s bureau.
These were mainly the resolutions to which his long meditation had now
crookedly and clumsily conducted him. His next immediate business was to
examine those letters in the box, which he had hitherto not opened; and
also to possess himself of the enclosure of hair, in the letter to “Mary
Grice,” that he might have it always about him ready for any emergency.
Before he opened the box, however, he took a quick, impatient turn or
two up and down his miserable little room. Not once, since he had set
forth to return to his own country, and to the civilization from which,
for more than twenty years, he had been an outcast, had he felt (to use
his favorite expression) that he was “his own man again,” until now.
A thrill of the old, breathless, fierce suspense of his days of deadly
peril ran through him, as he thought on the forbidden secret into which
he was about to pry, and for the discovery of which he was ready to dare
any hazard and use any means. “It goes through and through me, a’most
like dodging for life again among the bloody Indians,” muttered Mat to
himself, as he trod restlessly to and fro in his cage of a room, rubbing
all the while at the scars on his face, as his way was when any new
excitement got the better of him.
At the very moment when this thought was rising ominously in his mind,
Valentine was expounding anew the whole scope and object of “Columbus”
to a fresh circle of admiring spectators--while his wife was
interpreting to Madonna above stairs Zack’s wildest jokes about his
friend’s love-stricken condition; and all three were laughing gaily at a
caricature, which he was maliciously drawing for them, of “poor old Mat”
in the character of a scalped Cupid. Even the little minor globe of each
man’s social sphere has its antipodes-points; and when it is all bright
sunshine in one part of the miniature world, it is all pitch darkness,
at the very same moment, in another.
Mat’s face had grown suddenly swarthier than ever, while he walked
across his room, and said those words to himself which have just been
recorded. It altered again, though, in a minute or two, and turned once
more to the cold clay-color which had overspread it in the hosier’s shop
at Dibbledean, as he returned to his bear-skins and opened the box that
had belonged to “Mary Grice.”
He took out first the letter with the enclosure of hair, and placed it
carefully in the breast pocket of his coat. He next searched a moment or
two for the letter superscribed and signed by Joanna Grice; and, having
found it, placed it on one side of him, on the floor. After this he
paused a moment, looking into the box with a curious, scowling sadness
on his face; while his hand vacantly stirred hither and thither the
different objects that lay about among the papers--the gaily-bound
album, the lace-collar, the dried flower-leaves, and the other little
womanly possessions which had once belonged to Mary Grice.
Then he began to collect together all the letters in the box. Having
got them into his hands--some tied up in a packet, some loose--he spread
them out before him on his lap, first drawing up an end of one of the
bear-skins over his legs for them to lie on conveniently. He began by
examining the addresses. They were all directed to “Mary Grice,” in
the same clear, careful, sharply-shaped handwriting. Though they were
letters in form, they proved to be only notes in substance, when he
opened them: the writing, in some, not extending to more than four or
five lines. At least fifteen or twenty were expressed, with unimportant
variations, in this form:
“MY DEAREST MARY--Pray try all you can to meet me to-morrow evening at
the usual place. I have been waiting and longing for you in vain to-day.
Only think of _me,_ love, as I am now, and always, thinking of _you;_
and I know you will come. Ever and only yours,
“A. C.”
All these notes were signed in the same way, merely with initial
letters. They contained nothing in the shape of a date, except the day
of the week on which they had been written; and they had evidently
been delivered by some private means, for there did not appear to be a
post-mark on any of them. One after another Mat opened and glanced at
them--then tossed them aside into a heap. He pursued this employment
quietly and methodically; but as he went on with it, a strange look
flashed into his eyes from time to time, giving to them a certain
sinister brightness which altered very remarkably the whole natural
expression of his face.
Other letters, somewhat longer than the note already quoted, fared no
better at his hands. Dry leaves dropped out of some, as he threw them
aside; and little water-color drawings of rare flowers fluttered out
of others. Hard botanical names which he could not spell through, and
descriptions of plants which he could not understand, occurred here and
there in postscripts and detached passages of the longer letters. But
still, whether long or short, they bore no signature but the initials
“A. C.;” still the dates afforded no information of the year, month, or
place in which they had been written; and still Mat quietly and quickly
tossed them aside one after the other, without so much as a word or a
sigh escaping him, but with that sinister brightness flashing into his
eyes from time to time. Out of the whole number of the letters, there
were only two that he read more than once through, and then pondered
over anxiously, before he threw them from him like the rest.
The first of the two was expressed thus:--
“I shall bring the dried ferns and the passion flower for your album
with me this evening. You cannot imagine, dearest, how happy and how
vain I feel at having made you as enthusiastic a botanist as I am
myself. Since you have taken an interest in my favorite pursuit, it has
been more exquisitely delightful to me than any words can express. I
believe that I never really knew how to touch tender leaves tenderly
until now, when I gather them with the knowledge that they are all to be
shown to _you,_ and all to be placed in your dear hand.
“Do you know, my own love, I thought I detected an alteration in you
yesterday evening? I never saw you so serious. And then your attention
often wandered; and, besides, you looked at me once or twice quite
strangely, Mary.--I mean strangely, because your color seemed to be
coming and going constantly without any imaginable reason. I really
fancied, as I walked home--and I fancy still--that you had something to
say, and were afraid to say it. Surely, love, you can have no secrets
from me!--But we shall meet to-night, and then you will tell me
everything (will you not?) without reserve. Farewell, dearest, till
seven o’clock.”
Mat slowly read the second paragraph of this letter twice over,
abstractedly twisting about his great bristly whiskers between his
finger and thumb. There was evidently something in the few lines
which he was thus poring over, that half saddened, half perplexed him.
Whatever the difficulty was, he gave it up, and went on doggedly to the
next letter, which was an exception to the rest of the collection, for
it had a postmark on it. He had failed to notice this, on looking at the
outside; but he detected directly on glancing at the inside that it was
dated differently from those which had gone before it. Under the day of
the week was written the word “London”--noting which, he began to read
the letter with some appearance of anxiety. It ran thus:
“I write, my dearest love, in the greatest possible agitation and
despair. All the hopes I felt, and expressed to you, that any absence
would not last more than a few days, and that I should not be obliged
to journey farther from Dibbledean than London, have been entirely
frustrated. I am absolutely compelled to go to Germany, and may be away
as long as three or four months. You see, I tell you the worst at once,
Mary, because I know your courage and high spirit, and feel sure that
you will bear up bravely against this unforeseen parting, for both our
sakes. How glad I am that I gave you my hair for your Bracelet, when I
did; and that I got yours in return! It will be such a consolation to
both of us to have our keepsakes to look at now.
“If it only rested with _me_ to go or not, no earthly consideration
should induce me to take this journey. But the rights and interests of
others are concerned in my setting forth; and I must, therefore, depart
at the expense of my own wishes, and my own happiness. I go this very
day, and can only steal a few minutes to write to you. My pen hurries
over the paper without stopping an instant--I am so agitated that I
hardly know what I am saying to you.
“If anything, dearest Mary, could add to my sense of the misfortune of
being obliged to leave you, it would be the apprehension which I now
feel, that I may have ignorantly offended you, or that something has
happened which you don’t like to tell me. Ever since I noticed, ten days
ago, that little alteration in your manner, I have been afraid you had
something on your mind that you were unwilling to confide to me. The
very last time we saw each other I thought you had been crying; and I
am sure you looked away uneasily, whenever our eyes met. What is it? Do
relieve my anxiety by telling me what it is in your first letter! The
moment I get to the other side of the Channel, I will send you word,
where to direct to. I will write constantly--mind you write constantly
too. Love me, and remember me always, till I return, never, I hope, to
leave you again.--A. C.”
Over this letter, Mat meditated long before he quietly cast it away
among the rest. When he had at last thrown it from him there remained
only three more to examine. They proved to be notes of no consequence,
and had been evidently written at an earlier period than the letters he
had just read. After hastily looking them over, he searched carefully
all through the box, but no papers, of any sort remained in it. That
hurried letter, with its abrupt announcement of the writer’s departure
from England, was the latest in date--the last of the series!
After he had made this discovery, he sat for a little while vacantly
gazing out of the window. His sense of the useless result to which the
search he had been prosecuting had led him, thus far, seemed to have
robbed him of half his energy already. He looked once or twice at the
letter superscribed by Joanna Grice, mechanically reading along the line
on the cover:--“Justification of my conduct towards my niece,”--but not
attempting to examine what was written inside. It was only after a long
interval of hesitation and delay that he at last roused himself. “I must
sweep these things out of the way, and read all what I’ve got to read
before Zack comes in,” he said to himself, gathering up the letters
heaped at his feet, and thrusting them all back again together, with an
oath, into the box.
He listened carefully once or twice after he had shut down the lid,
and while he was tying the cords over it, to ascertain whether his wild
young friend was opening the street door yet, or not. How short a time
he had passed in Zack’s company, yet how thoroughly well he knew him,
not as to his failings only, but as to his merits besides! How wisely
he foreboded that his boisterous fellow-lodger would infallibly turn
against him as an enemy, and expose him without an instant’s hesitation,
if young Thorpe got any hint of his first experimental scheme for
discovering poor Mr. Blyth’s anxiously-treasured secret by underhand and
treacherous means! Mat’s cunning had proved an invaluable resource to
him on many a critical occasion already; but he had never been more
admirably served by it than now, when it taught him to be cautious of
betraying himself to Zack.
For the present there seemed to be no danger of interruption. He corded
up the box at his leisure, concealed it in its accustomed place, took
his brandy-bottle from the cupboard, opened Joanna Grice’s letter--and
still there was no sound of any one entering, in the passage downstairs.
Before he began to read, he drank some of the spirit from the neck of
the bottle. Was there some inexplicable dread stealing over him at the
mere prospect of examining the contents of this one solitary letter?
It seemed as if there was. His finger trembled so, when he tried to
guide himself by it along each successive line of the cramped writing
which he was now attempting to decipher, that he had to take a second
dram to steady it. And when he at length fairly began the letter, he
did not pursue his occupation either as quietly or as quickly as he had
followed it before. Sometimes he read a line or two aloud, sometimes he
overlooked several sentences, and went on to another part of the long
narrative--now growling out angry comments on what he was reading;
and now dashing down the paper impatiently on his knees, with
fierce outbursts of oaths, which he had picked up in the terrible
swearing-school of the Californian gold mines.
He began, however, with perfect regularity at the proper part of the
letter; sitting as near to the window as he could, and slanting the
closely written page before him, so as to give himself the full benefit
of all the afternoon light which still flowed into the room.