University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.
A Change.

IT IS MIDNIGHT. There are strange
movements in Mr. Acton's house at this
late hour. Pale faces, trembling hands and
hurrying footsteps.

What means it all?

Upon a bed in a darkened room, lay the
form of Henry Acton. He had been taken
suddenly ill in the evening, and Frederick
Farley had been sent for by his wife, without
his knowledge. The young doctor arrived.
He found Mr. Acton in great pain
and growing rapidly worse. He was at a
loss to know what ailed him, for Mr. Acton
purposely deceived him, that he might not
suspect the true cause of his sudden illness.

Maria gave her husband her undivided attention,
administering to his wants with the
greatest care. Mr. Acton sometimes raised
his eyes in agony to her face, to see if she
looked tenderly upon him, and seeing her
cold, pale features gliding by, or fixed by his
side, he would clasp his hands and turn upon
his pillow with a groan.

Frederick, Maria and Edith were by his
bedside. Mrs. Acton asked him if he was
willing that other physicians should be sent
for.

`No,' said he, `I have reasons for saying
no. You will understand them soon.'

Shortly after he called his wife to his side.
They were alone.

`Maria,' said he, `I have not an hour to
live. Nay, do not interrupt me, but hear
me out. I have but a few words to say—I
can say but few—and these will be briet.'

`You are discouraged,' said Maria.—
`This pain will last but a little longer, I
trust, and then you will be better.

`No,' said Henry. `Nothing can save
me now. I am going fast. Give me your
hand.'

Maria put her hand in his. He pressed
it convulsively.

`You are the only person I ever really
loved,' he murmured. `My parents—even
my child, who is lost—possessed but little of
my affection. But for you I should have
been the most cold, selfish, miserable wretch
on earth. I have always loved you devotedly,
and to possess your affection and esteem
has always been my chief aim in life. You
can judge, then, of my despair on finding
that you loathed and despised me!'

`Henry—'

`Don't interrupt me. Let me speak while
I may. I confess that I have been guilty of

a dark villainy, and that I have done you
grievous wrong. But consider the cause of
my treachery. What prompted me to deal
with Chivers as I did? It was my love for
you, which was so strong that I would have
made any sacrifice—nay, have committed
almost any crime to win you. It was a selfish
love, but it was a true, compulsive and
eternal love as well!'

Mr. Acton looked up and saw the cold,
pale features of his companion relax and
quiver with emotion, and he felt the hand
he held in his own tremble.

`I do not blame you,' he went on to say,
`for despising my crime and me; but oh!
judge me not too severely. Consider my
motive—'

He murmured something more, but in
such low tones that Maria heard them not.

There was a long pause, when at last Mr.
Acton drew his wife towards him, still holding
her hand in his, and whispered—

`Can you forgive me?'

There was another pause—a long silence
broken only by the stifled sobs of Mrs. Acton,
and Henry's deep drawn sighs!

Sympathy for her husband overcame every
other feeling, and Maria bowed her head
upon his bosom, while the hot tears coursing
down her cheeks fell thick and fast upon his
hand.

`Oh! I forgive you all!' she sobbed.—
But do not die—I shall feel as if I had killed
you!'

Henry smiled faintly.

`It is too late,' he murmured. `Yet I
die with the satisfaction of being assured of
your forgiveness!'

Death entered the house that night before
the hour of one.

When daylight appeared, the form of
Henry Acton lay cold and stiff and senseless
in a dark, still, solemn chamber. His soul
had gone to its eternal resting place, freed
from its natural tenement by its own will
and power.

The sudden death of Mr. Acton created
quite a sensation in the county at that time,
for he was a man of considerable influence,
such as wealth will always command. Inquiries
were made, reports were spread—
grave surmises were whispered—but none
divined the true cause of his decease.

None, except Frederick Farley, Maria
and her sister, who knew but too well that
his death was occasioned by poison!

Mrs. Acton was crushed by sorrow. Notwithstanding
the late events in her husband's
life, there was never a woman that mourned
more seriously for a husband than she.

She was now, as it were, alone in the
world. Her husband and her child had
been snatched from her as if by Fate, and
she had no bosom friend, save her sister
Edith, left.

Mr. Acton left a large property behind
him, which was willed to his wife and child
alone.

Many were the friends that came to visit
Mrs. Acton in her affliction, but all failed to
restore her mind to peace.

It was on the second day after her husband's
funeral that Mrs. Acton received a
stranger, an unexpected visitor.

It was Louis, the valet de chambre of
Gustavus Burnam.

Strange emotions crowded Maria's heart
as she recognized Burnam's confidential
servant. She grasped a letter he handed her
and eagerly tore it open.

It was couched in these terms:

Pardon me for addressing you at this
time, and overlook the impropriety of the
step, in consideration of the motive by which
I am actuated. It is to make known to you
that your son Robert has been found. He
was stolen by Cabel Crowl, or an accomplice
of his; and that villain carried him, the
same night on which he was taken, to the
house of an old woman, living in a miserable
quarter of the town. I kept the villain

in custody from that time until the day on
which you saw him. On the next day evening
he came to me again, and said, that
having gone to the woman with whom he
left your son, he had learned that the child
was lost again. Through the vigilance of
Louis, I discovered that Crowl had carried
off Robert, and learned where he had concealed
him, on the very night the event took
place; and directed Louis to see that the
child was restored to you directly.

`Before he could do so, however, Robert
tired probably of the company of the woman
under whose charge he was, ran away from
her and was lost in the streets of Boston.—
As soon as I learned this, I ordered Louis to
spare no pains or expense in tracing him
out, which he has at last succeeded in doing.

`You may have seen an announcement of
Crowl's death in the papers. If not it will
be news to inform you that he was drowned
the night on which he made known to me
that Robert had been lost from the woman
with whom he left him.

`I leave Boston to-morrow, to spend the
winter in the south. Remember me to your
sister, and to Dr. Farley, to whom I feel under
lasting obligations. Adieu,

Mrs. Acton did not stop to read the whole
of this letter at once, but as soon as she saw
the intelligence that Robert was found, she
started up, calling upon Louis to tell her
what had been done with the child.

Mrs. Barnes had him in the hall, and the
next minute he was clasped to his mother's
breast.

`My dear, dear boy!' she exclaimed, covering
his face with kisses; `I thank God
that you have been restored to me—I thank
God!'

`That ugly woman carried me off!' said
the boy, looking up into his mother's face.
`She took away my clothes too; but a good
man gave me some new ones and sent me
home! He was a good man, wasn't he,
mother?'

`Yes, yes!' answered Maria, hastily.

And now, when Edith came to embrace
the happy boy, Maria caught up the letter
she had dropped, and brushing away the
tears of joy that bedimmed her eyes, read it
through, stopping from time to time to
glance around upon her child, as if to make
sure that it was not all a dream.

Meanwhile Louis stood waiting.

Maria sat down at the table, and with a
trembling hand, penned a brief note of
thanks, which ran thus:

`Would I could express my joy and gratitude
for the restoration of my dear child!
My heart is too full! I can only say that to
the last day of my life you will be remembered
with the warmest sensations of thankfulness,
friendship and respect, by

She folded this note, superscribed it with
the name of Gustavus Burnam, and gave it
to the valet de chambre, saying to him in
French,—

`Dites a Monsieur q'une autre fois j'aurais
mieux exprimé ma reconnaisance. A
present c'est la joie qu'il m'a causee qui me
fait folle!'

Louis bowed and disappeared.

`Voici une reponse,' he said, as, half an
hour after, he gave Maria's letter to his master—`here
is her reply; and she told me to
say to you that another time she could have
expressed her gratitude in better terms than
now, when frantic with the joy she owes entirely
to you.'

Burnam's features betrayed more excitement
than was his wont, as he eagerly tore
open Maria's letter, and cast his eye over the
characters which her own hand had traced
and her own tears had blotted.

In a moment, however, all emotion had

faded from his eye; and with his wonted
coolness he folded the note, and proceeded
to give Lewis further orders concerning
their departure on the morrow for the south
as if nothing had happened.

On the following day Gustavus took leave
of Boston, to the great disappointment of
divers managing mothers, among the upper
classes, who regarded him as a desirable
match for the wealthiest and fairest of maidens,
and who now, seeing that he withstood
all the charms of youth and beauty, whispered
among themselves—

`What a strange, incomprehensible being!'