READING THE LETTER.
Oh, how still it was in that room, and the click of the key as it turned
the slender bolt echoed through the silent apartment, causing Marian to
start as if a living presence had been near. The drawer was opened, and
she held the letter in her hand, while unseen voices seemed whispering
to her, “Oh, Marian, Marian—leave the letter still untouched. Do not
seek to know the secret it contains, but go back to the man who is your
husband, and by those gentle acts which seldom fail in their effect, win
his love. It will be far more precious to you than all the wealth of
which you are the unsuspecting heiress.”
But Marian did not understand—nor know why it was she trembled so. She
only knew she had the letter in her hand—her letter—the one left by her
guardian. It bore no superscription, but it was for her, of course, and
fixing herself in a comfortable position, she broke the seal and read:
“_My Dear Child_:”
There was nothing in those three words suggestive of a mistake—and
Marian read on till, with a quick, nervous start, she glanced forward,
then backward—and then read on and on, until at last not even the fear
of death itself could have stopped her from that reading. That letter
was never intended for her eye—she knew that now, but had the cold hand
of her guardian been interposed to wrest it from her, she would have
held it fast until she learned the whole. Like coals of living fire, the
words burned into her soul, scorching, blistering as they burned—and
when the letter was finished she fell upon her face with a cry so full
of agony and horror that Frederic in the parlor heard the wail of human
anguish, and started to his feet, wondering whence it came.
With the setting of the sun the November wind had risen, and as the
young man listened it swept moaning past the window, seeming not unlike
the sound he had first heard. “It was the wind,” he said, and he resumed
his seat, while, in that little room, not very far away, poor Marian
came back to consciousness, and crouching on the floor, prayed that she
might die. She understood it now—how she had been deceived, betrayed,
and cruelly wronged. She knew, too, that she was the heiress of untold
wealth, and for a single moment her heart beat with a gratified pride,
but the surprise was too great to be realized at once, and the feeling
was soon absorbed in the reason why Frederic Raymond had made her his
wife. It was not herself he had married, but her fortune—her
money—Redstone Hall. She was merely a necessary incumbrance, which he
would rather should have been omitted in the bargain. The thought was
maddening, and, stretching out her arms, she asked again that she might
die.
“Oh, why didn’t he come to me?” she cried, “and tell me? I would gladly
have given him half my fortune—yes, all—all—rather than be the wretched
thing I am, and he would have been free to love and marry this—”
She could not at first speak the name of her rival—but she said it at
last, and the sound of it wrung her heart with a new and torturing pain.
She had never heard of Isabel Huntington before, and as she thought how
beautiful and grand she was, she whispered to herself, “Why didn’t he go
back to her, and leave me, the red-headed fright, alone? Yes, that was
what he wrote to his father. Let me look at it again,” and the tone of
her voice was bitter and the expression of her face hard and stony, as
taking up the letter she read for the second time that “she was uncouth,
uneducated and ugly,” and if his father did not give up that foolish
fancy, Frederic would positively “hate the red-headed fright.” Her
guardian had not given up the foolish fancy, consequently there was but
one inference to be drawn.
In her excitement she did not consider that Frederic had probably
written of her harsher things than he really meant. She only thought,
“He loathes me—he despises me—he wishes I was dead—and I dared to kiss
him too,” she added. “How he hated me for that, but ’twas the first, and
it shall be the last, for I will go away forever and leave him Redstone
Hall, the bride he married a few hours ago,” and laying her face upon
the chair Marian thought long and earnestly of the future. She had come
into that room a happy, simple-hearted, confiding child, but she had
lived years since, and she sat there now a crushed but self-reliant
woman, ready to go out and contend with the world alone. Gradually her
thoughts and purposes took a definite form. She was ignorant of the
knotty points of law, and she did not know but Frederic could get her a
divorce, but from this publicity she shrank. She could not be pointed at
as a discarded wife. She would rather go away where Frederic would never
see nor hear of her again, and she fancied that by so doing he would
after a time at least be free to marry Isabel. She had not wept before,
for her tears seemed scorched with pain, but at the thought of another
coming there to take the place she had hoped to fill, they rained in
torrents over her white face, and clasping her little hands convulsively
together, she cried—“How can I give him up when I love him so much—so
much?”
Gradually there stole over her the noble, unselfish thought, that
because she loved him so much, she would willingly sacrifice herself and
all she had for the sake of making him happy—and then she grew calm
again and began to decide where she would go. Instinctively her mind
turned toward New York city as the great hiding place from the world.
Mrs. Burt, the woman who had lived with them in Yonkers, and who had
always been so kind to her, was in New York she knew, for she had
written to Colonel Raymond not long before his death, asking if there
was anything in Kentucky for her son Ben to do. This letter her guardian
had answered and then destroyed with many others, which he said were of
no consequence, and only lumbered up his drawer. Consequently there was
no possibility that this letter would suggest Mrs. Burt to Frederic, who
had never seen her, she having come and gone while he was away at
school, and thus far the project was a safe one. But her name—she might
some time be recognized by that, and remembering that her mother’s
maiden name was _Mary Grey_, and that Frederic, even if he had ever
known it, which was doubtful, had probably forgotten it, she resolved
upon being henceforth MARIAN GREY, and she repeated it aloud, feeling
the while that the change was well—for she was no longer the same girl
she used to know as Marian Lindsey. Once she said softly to herself,
“Marian Raymond,” but the sound grated harshly, for she felt that she
had no right to bear that name.
This settled, she turned her thoughts upon the means by which New York
was to be reached, and she was glad that she had not bought the dress,
for now she had ample funds with which to meet the expense, and she
would go that very night, before her resolution failed her. Redstone
Hall was only two miles from the station, and as the evening train
passed at half-past nine, there would be time to reach it, and write a
farewell letter, too, to Frederic, for she must tell him how, though it
broke her heart to do it, she willingly gave him everything, and hoped
he would be happy when she was gone forever. Marian was beautiful then
in her desolation, and so Frederic Raymond would have said, could he
have seen her with the light of her noble sacrifice of self shining in
her eyes, and the new-born, womanly expression on her face. The first
fearful burst was over, and calmly she sat down to her task—but the
storm rose high again as she essayed to write that good-by, which would
seem to him who read it a cry of despair wrung from a fainting heart.
“Frederic—_dear Frederic_,” she began, “can I—may I say _my husband_
once—just once—and I’ll never insult you with that name again?
“I am going away forever, Frederic, and when you are reading this I
shall not be at Redstone Hall, nor anywhere around it. Do not try to
find me. It is better you should not. Your father’s letter, which was
intended for you, and by mistake has come to me, will tell you why I go.
I forgive your father, Frederic—fully, freely forgive him—but _you_—oh,
Frederic, if I loved you less I should blame you for deceiving me so
cruelly. If you had told me all I would gladly have shared my fortune
with you. I would have given you more than half, and when you brought
that beautiful Isabel home I would have loved her as a sister.
“Why didn’t you, Frederic? What made you treat me so? What made you
break my heart when you could have helped it? It aches so hard now as I
write, and the hardest pain of all is the loss of faith in you. I
thought you so noble, so good, and I may confess to you here on paper, I
loved you so much—how much you will never know, for I shall never come
back to tell you.
“And I kissed you, too. Forgive me for that, Frederic. I didn’t know
then how you hated me.—Wash the stain from your forehead, can’t you?—and
don’t lay it up against me. If I thought I could make you love me, I
would stay. I would endure torture for years if I knew the light was
shining beyond, but it cannot be. The sight of me would make you hate me
more. So I give everything I have to you and Isabel. You’ll marry her at
a suitable time, and when you see how well she becomes your home, you
will be glad I went away. If you must tell her of me, and I suppose you
must, speak kindly of me, won’t you?—You needn’t talk of me often, but
sometimes, when you are all alone, and you are sure she will not know,
think of poor little Marian, who gave her life away, that one she loved
the best in all the world might have wealth and happiness.
“Farewell, Frederic, farewell. Death itself cannot be harder than
bidding you good-by, and knowing it is for ever.”
And well might Marian say this, for it seemed to her that she dipped her
pen in her very heart’s blood, when she wrote that last adieu. She
folded up the letter and directed it to Frederic—then taking another
sheet she wrote to the blind girl:
“DEAREST ALICE—Precious little Alice. If my heart was not already
broken, it would break at leaving you. Don’t mourn for me much, darling.
Tell Dinah and Hetty, and the other blacks, not to cry—and if I’ve ever
been cross to them, they must forget it now that I am gone. God bless
you all. Good by—good by.”
The letters finished, she left them upon the desk, where they could not
help being seen by the first one who should enter—then stealing up the
stairs to the closet at the extremity of the hall, she put on her
bonnet, vail and shawl, and started for her purse, which was in the
chamber where Alice slept. Careful, very careful were her footsteps now,
lest she should waken the child, who, having cried herself to sleep, was
resting quietly. The purse was obtained, as was also a daguerreotype of
her guardian which lay in the same drawer—and then for a moment she
stood gazing at the little blind girl, and longing to give her one more
kiss; but she dared not, and glancing hurriedly around the room which
had been hers so long, she hastened down the stairs and out upon the
piazza. She could see the light from the parlor window streaming out
into the darkness, and drawing near she looked through blinding tears
upon the solitary man, who, sitting there alone, little dreamed of the
whispered blessings breathed for him but a few yards away. It seemed to
Marian in that moment of agony that her very life was going out, and she
leaned against a pillar to keep herself from falling.
“Oh, can I leave him?” she thought. “Can I go away forever, and never
see his face again or listen to his voice?” and looking up into the sky
she prayed that if in heaven they should meet again, he might know and
love her there for what she suffered here.
On the withered grass and leaves near by there was a rustling sound as
if some one was coming, and Marian drew back for fear of being seen, but
it was only Bruno, the large watch dog. He had just been released from
his kennel, and he came tearing up the walk, and with a low savage growl
sprang toward the spot where Marian was hiding.
“Bruno, good Bruno,” she whispered, and in an instant the fierce mastiff
crouched at her feet and licked her hand with a whining sound, as if he
suspected something wrong.
One more yearning glance at Frederic—one more tearful look at her old
home, and Marian walked rapidly down the avenue, followed by Bruno, who
could neither be coaxed nor driven back. It was all in vain that Marian
stamped her little foot, wound her arms round his shaggy neck, bidding
him return; he only answered with a faint whine quite as expressive of
obstinacy as words could have been. He knew Marian had no business to be
abroad at that hour of the night, and, with the faithfulness of his
race, was determined to follow. At length, as she was beginning to
despair of getting rid of him, she remembered how pertinaciously he
would guard any article which he knew belonged to the family—and on the
bridge which crossed the Elkhorn, she purposely dropped her glove and
handkerchief, the latter of which bore her name in full. The ruse was
successful, for after vainly attempting to make her know that she had
lost something, the dog turned back, and, with a loud, mournful howl,
which Marian accepted as his farewell, he laid himself down by the
handkerchief and glove, turning his head occasionally in the direction
Marian had gone, and uttering low plaintive howls when he saw she did
not return.
Meantime Marian kept on her way, striking out into the fields so as not
to be observed—and at last, just as the cars sounded in the distance,
she came up to a clump of trees growing a little to the left, and on the
opposite side of the road from that on which the depot stood. By getting
in here no one would see her at the station, and when the train stopped
she came out from her concealment, and bounding lightly upon the
platform of the rear car, entered unobserved. As the passengers were
sitting with their backs toward her, but one or two noticed her when she
came in, and these scarce gave her a thought, as she sank into the seat
nearest to the door, and drawing her vail over her face trembled
violently lest she should be recognized, or at least noted and
remembered. But her fears were vain, for no one there had ever seen or
heard of her—and in a moment more the train was moving on, and she,
heart-broken and alone, was taking her bridal tour!