University of Virginia Library

59. CHAPTER LIX.

“Strange,” thought Vinal, “that I hear nothing from
him.”

It was three days since he had written to Speyer; and his
chief anxiety was, lest his note should have miscarried.
Pain and long confinement had wrought heavily upon him.
Every emotion, every care, thrilled with a morbid keenness
upon his brain and nerves; but hitherto he had ruled his
sensitive organism with an iron self-control, and calmed its
perturbations with a fortitude which in a better man would
have been heroic.

His wife was in the room, and, as his eye rested on her, it
kindled with a kind of troubled delight, for he loved her
strongly, after his fashion. He had remarked of late a singular
assiduity and tenderness in her devotion to him. Her
position, in fact, was not unlike that of one who, broken and
overborne by some irreparable sorrow, had renounced the
world and its happiness, to embrace a new life, and build up
for herself a new hope in the calm sanctuary of a convent.
In the same spirit, Edith Leslie, bidding farewell to her girlish
dream of life, its morning rose tint, and cloud draperies

of gold and purple, gave herself to the practical duties before
her, and sought, in their devoted fulfilment, to strengthen herself
against the flood which for a time had overwhelmed her.

Vinal, who, acute as he was, could not understand the
state of mind from which her peculiar kindness of manner
towards him rose, pleased himself with the idea that his
rival's return was not so great a shock to her as he had at
first feared, and that, after all, she was more fond of him
than of Morton. This notion consoled his disturbed thoughts
not a little. Still he was abundantly anxious and harassed.

“If Morton should suspect! He has not come to see me;
but that is natural enough, under the circumstances. And if
he does suspect, he can have no proof. No one here suspects
me. They say it was strange that my European correspondent
should have made such a mistake; but that is all. No
one dreams that I had a hand in it; and why should they?
No one knew of Edith's engagement to him, except herself,
her father, and her confidantes. I suppose she has confidantes
— all girls have them. I wish their epitaphs were
written, whoever they are. Well,

But this is a dangerous business — a cursed business. Why
does not Speyer write?”

As his thoughts ran in this strain, he looked up, and his
eye caught that of his wife. She was struck with his troubled
expression.

“You look anxious and care-worn. Are you ill?”

“Come to me, Edith,” said Vinal, with a faint smile.

She came to the side of his chair, and he took her hand.

“Edith, I am not well to-day. My head swims. This
long confinement is eating away my life by inches.”

“In a week more, I trust, you will be able to move again.
The country air will give you new life. But why do you
look so troubled?”

“Dreams, Edith, — bad dreams, like Hamlet's, I suppose.
It is very strange, — I cannot imagine why it is, — but to-day
I have felt oppressed, weighed down, shadowed as if a cloud
hung over me. I am not myself. A man is a mere slave to
his nervous system, and when that is overthrown, his whole
soul is shaken with it. The country is my hope, Edith.
We will go there together, soon, and begin life anew.”

A knock at the door interrupted him.

“Come in,” cried Vinal, in his usual quick, decisive tone.

A servant entered.

“Well, what is it?”

“A gentleman wishes to see you, sir.”

“Did he give his name?”

“Mr. Edwards, sir.”

“Ask him to come up.”

“A man whom I expected this morning on business,” he
said, in explanation to his wife, as the servant closed the
door. “I wish he were any where but here. And so you
are going away.” — She was dressed to go out. — “He will
be here only a moment; do not be gone long.”

“No, I will be with you again in an hour.”

“Do not forget,” said Vinal, pressing her hand, “for when

you leave the room, Edith, it is as if a sunbeam were
shut out.”

As Vinal, sick in body and mind, thus leaned in his distress
on the victim of his villany, he cast into her face a look that
was almost piteous. She, seeing nothing but his love for her,
warmed towards him with compassion; the more so since,
till that moment, she had known him as a calm, firm man, a
model, to her eyes, of masculine self-government. A mind
tortured with suspense, acting upon a weak and morbidly
sensitive body, had betrayed him into this unwonted imbecility.

The step of the visitor sounded in the passage; and returning
the pressure of his hand, his wife went out at the door
of a small adjoining room, opening upon the side passage by
which she commonly entered and left the hotel.

After a few minutes' interview, Edwards took his leave, and
Vinal, left alone, fell into his former train of thought. In a
moment, he was again interrupted by a knock at the door,
quite unlike the hasty rap of the hotel servant.

“Come in,” cried Vinal.

The door opened, and Vassall Morton entered. He had
learned from the retiring visitor that Vinal was alone.

“My dear fellow!” exclaimed Vinal, his face beaming
with a transport of welcome. “My dear fellow!”

But Morton stood without taking his proffered hand. The
smile remained frozen on Vinal's face, and cold drops of
doubt and fear began to gather on his forehead.

“There is another friend of yours in the passage,” said
Morton. — “Come in, Speyer.”

Speyer entered, bowing with his usual composure. Vinal
sank bank in his chair, collapsing like a man withered with a
palsy stroke.

“Vinal,” said Morton, after a silence of some moments,
“you have a cool way of receiving your acquaintances.”

He made no answer, but still sat, or rather crouched, in
the depths of his easy chair, where the thick bounding of
his heart almost choked him. Morton stood for some time
longer, looking at him. He had not reached such a point of
Christian forgiveness as not to find pleasure in his enemy's
tortures, and he saw that his silence tortured him more than
words.

“Vinal,” he said at length, “I used to know you in college
for a liar and a coward; and since then you have grown
well in both ways. You have hatched into a full-fledged
villain; and now that I have found you out, you crouch like
a whipped cur.”

No answer was returned, and Morton's anger began to
yield to a different feeling. If he could have seen the condition
of Vinal's mind and body, he might, between pity and
contempt, have spared him.

“I came to upbraid you with your knaveries; but I find
you hardly worth the trouble. Do you see this letter? It is
the same that you wrote to this man at Marseilles, instructing
him to forge a story that I was dead, and that he had seen
my gravestone, with my mother's family device upon it.
Will you dare deny that you wrote it? You will not! I
thought as much. I have unravelled you from first to last.
Five years ago, you bribed Speyer, here, to compromise me

with the Austrian police. Pretending to be my friend, you
gave me letters which betrayed me into a prison, where you
hoped that I would end my days; and, next, you contrived
this trickery to prove me dead. Is there any name in the
English tongue too vile to mark you?”

Vinal sat as if stricken dumb.

“I know your reputation,” pursued Morton. “You are
in high feather here. You pass for a man of virtue, integrity,
and honor. You make speeches at public meetings; Fourth
of July orations; Phi Beta orations; charity harangues —
any thing that smacks of philanthropy and goodness; any
thing that will varnish you in the public eye. Why am I
not bound to lay bare this whitewashed lie? What withholds
me from grinding you like a scorpion under my boot-heel,
or flinging you on the pavement to be stared at like a
scotched viper? A word from me, and you are ruined.
You need not fear it. Stay, and enjoy your honors as you
can; but my foot shall be on your neck. This letter of
yours is the spell by which I will rule you, body and soul.”

Here he paused again; but Vinal's tongue was powerless.

“I tell you again, for I would not have you desperate, that
I do not mean to ruin you. Bear yourself wisely, and you
are safe, at least from me. Have you lost your speech? Are
you turned dumb?”

Vinal muttered inarticulately.

“There is another danger which I have done my best to
ward off from you. This man, who had you at his mercy,
has sworn to leave the country, and never to return; on
which score you will please to pay him the money you offered
him for the purchase of your letters.”

Vinal seemed confused and stupefied, and Morton was
forced to be more explicit in his demands. At length, the
former signed a note for the amount, though not without
stammering objections to his name appearing on it in connection
with Speyer's. Morton, however, turned a deaf ear to
these remonstrances.

“Here is your pay,” he said to Speyer. “Any bank will
discount this for you. Now, to what place do you mean
to go?”

“To Venezuela. I have a friend there in the army. He
will get a commission for me.”

“Very well. See that you stay there; or, at all events,
do not come back to the United States. If you do, you will
perjure yourself. Now, go; I have done with you. Vinal,
I will leave you to your reflections; and when you can sleep
in peace, free from Speyer's persecutions, remember to whom
you owe it.”

Vinal sat like a withered plant, his head sinking between
his shoulders, while his hand, still unconsciously holding the
pen, rested on the arm of his chair. There was something
in his appearance at once so abject and so piteous, that a
changed feeling came over Morton as he looked on him. By
a sudden impulse, akin to pity, he stepped towards him, and
took his wrist. The pen dropped from his pale fingers,
which quivered like an aspen bough; and as Morton stood
gazing on him, Vinal's upturned eyes met his, as if riveted
there by a helpless fascination.

“You unhappy wretch! You are burning already with
the pains of the damned. Flint and iron could not see you

without softening. I have saved you, — not out of mercy,
nor forgiveness, — not for your sake; — but I have saved you.
I have pushed away the sword that hung over you by a hair.
You are free now to be happy.”

But as he spoke this last word, so fierce a pang shot into
his heart, remembering what he had lost, and what Vinal had
won, that his pity was scattered like mist before a thunder
squall. He flung back the passive hand against the breast
of its terrified owner, turned abruptly, and left the room.

No sooner had the door closed behind him, than the door
of the anteroom opposite was flung open, and Edith Leslie,
rushing in, stood before Vinal with the wild look of one who
gasps for breath. She attempted to speak, but broken words
and inarticulate sounds were all her lips would utter.
Strength failed her in the effort, and pressing her hands to
her forehead, she sank fainting to the floor.