Chapter 8

The secret-service man has gone. The physician is there and the nurse, both conversing with their patient, when the two gentlemen appear. Major Abbot presents his father and looks around the room somewhat disappointedly. Despite his excitement of the day, and possibly because of it, Doctor Warren seems in higher spirits and better condition than Abbot has imagined it possible for him to be. The two old gentlemen shake hands, and Mr. Abbot speedily seats himself by the side of the invalid, and frees himself of his impressions as to the extraordinary charges that had been preferred, and his satisfaction at their speedy refutation. The local physician, in low tones, is assuring Major Abbot that a day or two will restore their patient to strength sufficient to journey homewards, and that he believes the "set back" of the early evening will be of no avail if he can get him to sleep by midnight. Abbot hastily explains that he leaves at daybreak for Boston, and had only come in fulfilment of a promise. Then he accosts his father.

"I know we have both a great deal to say to Doctor Warren, father, but it is a pleasure only to be deferred. We must say good-night, so that he can sleep, and will meet in New York next week."

Doctor Warren looks up inquiringly. He is far from willing to let them go, but the physician interposes. They say their adieux and still Abbot hesitates; his eyes wander to the door which communicates with Bessie's room, and, as though in answer, it opens and she softly enters.

"I am so glad you have come," he says, in low, eager tone. "Let me present my father," and the old gentleman bows with courtly grace and comes forward to take her hand. She is a lovely picture to look at, with the sweet, shy consciousness in her face. The very gaze in Abbot's eyes has sent the color to her brows, and he holds her hand until he has to transfer it to his father's out-stretched palm.

"The doctor tells us we must not stay, Miss Bessie," he continues, "but I could not go without a word. I am ordered to Boston by first train in the morning, but shall see you--may I not--in New York?"

Brave as she is, it comes too suddenly--this news that she must part with her knight just as he has done her such loyal service, and before she has even thanked him by look or word. All the radiance, all the bright color fades in an instant, and Paul Abbot cannot but see it and divine, in part at least, the reason. He has in his pocket letters from her own fair hand, that he knows were written for him, and yet that he has no right to see. He reads in her lovely eyes a trust in him, a pain at this sudden parting, that he thrills in realizing, yet should steel his heart against or be no loyal man. But he cannot go without a word from her, and it is a moment before she can speak:

"Is--is it not very sudden? I shall never thank you enough for what you have done for father--for _us,_ this evening. What would we have done without you?"

"That is nothing. There is no time now--but next week--New York--I may see you there, may I not?"

May he not? What man can look in her eyes and ask less? He holds her hand in close pressure one instant and hastens from the room.

* * * * *

Forty-eight hours later he is in the presence of the woman who had promised to be his wife. The evening has seemed somewhat long. She was out when he called at an earlier hour, but was to be found at a dinner-party in the neighborhood. Major Abbot feels indisposed to meet her in presence of "society," and leaves word that he will return at ten o'clock. He finds her still absent and has to wait. Mr. Winthrop is at his club; Mrs. Winthrop has begged to be excused--she had retired early with a severe headache. She does not want to see me, thinks Abbot, and that looks as though Viva were obdurate. It is a matter that has served to lose its potency for ill, and the major is angered at himself because of a thrill of hope; because of the thought of another face that _will_ intrude. It is nearly eleven o'clock when he hears the rumble of carriage wheels at the door. He steps to the front window and looks out upon the pavement. Yes, there is the old family carriage drawn up in front in the full glare of the gas lamp. The footman is opening its door and Viva Winthrop steps quickly forth, glances up and down the street as though expectant of some one's coming, and turns quickly to speak to some one in the carriage. Abbot recognizes the face at the open window as that of an old family friend nodding good-night. The footman still stands, but Viva speaks to him; he touches his hat respectfully, but in some surprise, and then springs to his perch; the two ladies nod and exchange cordial good-nights again, and away goes the carriage, leaving Miss Winthrop standing on the sidewalk, where she is still searchingly looking up and down and across the street. As though in answer there comes springing through the dim light the hulking, slouching, round-shouldered figure of a big man. He is across the street and at her side in a few vigorous leaps, and away as quick as he came. No word has been interchanged, no sign on his part. He has handed her a small white parcel. She has placed in his hand a dark roll of something that he eagerly seizes and makes off with. It all happens before Abbot has time to realize what is going on, then she scurries up the stone steps and rings the bell. His first impulse is to go and open the door himself, but that will produce confusion. She will have no time to dispose of that packet, and Major Abbot will not take advantage of what he has inadvertently seen. He hears the old butler shuffling along the marble hallway, and his deferential announcement.

"Mr. Abbot is in the parlor, Miss Winthrop."

And then he steps forward under the chandelier to meet her.

It is a moment before she enters. Evidently his coming is a shock for which she is unprepared. She comes in with swiftly changing color and lips that tremble despite the unflinching courage of her eyes.

"This is indeed a surprise," she says, as she gives him her hand. "Why--when did you come, and how did you come, and how well you look for a man who has had so much suffering--I mean from your wounds," she finishes, hurriedly. It is all said nervously and with evident purpose of simply talking to gain time and think. "Won't you sit down? You must be so fatigued. Take this chair, it's so much more comfortable than that one you are getting. Have you seen mamma! No? Why? Does she know you are here? Oh, true; she did speak of a headache before I went out. Mrs. Laight and I have been to dinner at the Farnham's and have just returned. Why didn't you come round there--they'd have been so delighted to see you? You know you are quite a hero now."

He lets her run on, sitting in silence himself, and watching her. She continues her rapid, nervous talk a moment more, her color coming and going all the time, and then she stops as suddenly. "Of course you can answer no questions when I keep chattering like a magpie."

She is seated now on the sofa facing him, as he leans back in one of those old-fashioned easy-chairs that used to find their way into some parlors in the _ante-bellum_ days. When silence is fully established, and she is apparently ready to listen, he speaks:

"I came to-night, Viva, and to see _you_. Did you get my letter?"

"Your last one, from Washington? Yes. It came yesterday."

"I have come to see the letters."

"What letters?"

"Those which you must have received or been shown in order to make you believe me disloyal to you."

"I have no such letters."

"Did you send them to me, Viva?"

"No."

"What did you do with them?"

She hesitates, and colors painfully; then seeks to parry.

"How do you know I ever saw any letters?

"Because nothing less could explain your action; nor does this justify it. Still, I am not here to blame you. I want to get at the truth. What did you do with them?"

"They--went back."

"When? Before or after you got my letter?"

No answer for a moment, then:

"Why do you ask that? What possible difference can it make? They were shown me in strict confidence. I had long believed you cared more for another girl than you did for me, and these letters proved it."

"I do not admit that, Viva," is the grave, almost stern reply. "But do you mean that, after receiving my letter, you returned those that I asked for--that I had a right to see?"

"They were called for; and they were not mine to do as I chose with."

"Will you tell me how and by whom they were called for?"

He has risen now, and is standing under the chandelier, drawn to his full height.

"I do not wish to speak of it further. I have told the person that you denied the truth of them, and that is enough."

"I am sorry that you mentioned me to the person, or weighed my statements in any such scale."

"Paul Abbot!" she breaks in impetuously, rising too. "You say you never wrote to this girl, and I believe you; but tell me this: have you never seen her? do you not at this moment care for her infinitely more than you do for me?"

He considers a moment. It is a leading question; one he had not expected; but he will not stoop to the faintest equivocation. Still, he wants her to understand.

"Listen, Viva. Up to the time of your letter's coming she was a stranger to me. Now I have met her. She and her father were in the same hotel with us at Washington; and she, too, has been victimized by forged letters as you have."

"Enough, enough! Why not end it where it is? You know well that if you cared for me _that_ would be the first assurance. Granted that we have both been cheated, fooled, tricked, why keep up the farce of a loveless engagement? That, at least, must end _now_."

"Even if it should, Viva, I am not absolved from a duty I owe you. It is my conviction that you have been drawn into a correspondence with a man against whom it is my solemn right and duty to warn you at once. You have no brother. For Heaven's sake be guided by what I say. Whatever may have been his influence in the past, you can never in the future recognize Mr. Hollins. If not captured by this time, he is a disgraced exile and deserter."

"He is nothing of the kind! You, and imperious men like you, denied to him the companionship of his brother officers, and his sensitive nature could not stand it. He has resigned and left the service, that is all."

"You are utterly mistaken, Viva. What I tell you is the solemn truth. For your name's sake I implore you tell me what has been his influence in the past. I well know he can be nothing to you in the future, Viva. You are not in communication with him now, are you?"

A ring at the bell. The old butler comes sleepily shuffling along the hall again, and appears at the parlor with a telegram. "They sent it after you, sir," is the explanation. Abbot, with curious foreboding, opens, and hurriedly reads the words,

"Rix also deserted; is believed to have gone to Boston."

"Viva!" he exclaims, "the man you gave that packet to was Rix, another deserter. My God! Do you _know_ where Hollins is?"

But Viva Winthrop has fallen back on the sofa, covering her face with her hands.

X.

Major Abbot's stay in Boston is but brief. He had a hurried conference with the police late at night, after his painful interview with Miss Winthrop, and there is lively effort on part of those officials to run down the bulky stranger to whom she had intrusted that packet. There has been a family conference, too, between the elders of the households of Abbot and Winthrop, and the engagement is at an end. Coming in suddenly from his club, Mr. Winthrop entered the parlor immediately after the receipt of the telegram, and he is overwhelmed with consternation at the condition of affairs. He has insisted on a full statement from Viva's lips, and to her mother the story has been told. She withholds no point that is at all material, for her pride has been humbled to the dust in the revelation that has come to her. She is not the first woman, nor is she at all liable to be the last, to undertake the task of championing a man against the verdict of his associates, and the story is simple enough. With his sad, subdued manner, his air of patient suffering, and his unobtrusive but unerring attentions, Mr. Hollins had succeeded in making a deep impression while they were abroad. Not that her heart was involved; she protests against that; but her sympathy, her pity, was aroused. He had never inflicted his confidences upon her, but had deftly managed to rouse her curiosity, and make her question. By the time they returned to America she believed him to be a sensitive gentleman, poor, talented, struggling, and yet burdened with the support of helpless relatives, too distant of kin for her father's notice. She had come back all aflame with patriotic fervor, too; and his glowing words and soldierly longings had inspired her with the belief that here was a man who only needed a start and fair treatment to enable him to rise to distinction in his country's service. Through her father's influence he was commissioned in the--th, then being organized, and in her friendship she had sought to make his path easy for him. But he was certainly deep in her confidence even then, and shrewd enough to take advantage of it. He had frequently written before, and it was not unnatural he should write after the regiment left for the front--letters which intimated that he was far from content among his associates, which hinted at distress of mind because he daily saw and heard of things which would cause bitter sorrow to those who had the right to command his most faithful services. He had shown deep emotion when informed of her engagement to Mr. Abbot, and it was hard to confess this. It soon became apparent to her that he desired her to understand that he deeply loved her, and was deterred only by his poverty from seeking her hand. Then came letters that were constructed with a skill that would have excited the envy of an Iago, hinting at other correspondences on part of Mr. Abbot and of neglects and infidelities that made her proud heart sore. Still there were no direct accusations; but, taken in connection with the long periods of apparent silence on his part and the unloverlike tone of his letters when they reached her, the hints went far to convince her that she had promised her hand to a careless and indifferent wooer. This palliated in her mind the disloyalty of which she was guilty towards him, and at last, in the summer just gone, she had actually written to Mr. Hollins for proofs of his assertions. For a long time--for weeks--he seemed to hold back, but at last there came three letters, written in a pretty, girlish hand. She shrank from opening them, but Mr. Hollins, in his accompanying lines, simply bade her have no such compunction. They had been read by half a dozen men in camp already, and the girl was some village belle who possibly knew no better. She did read, just ten lines, of one of them, and was shamed at her act as she was incensed at her false _fiancé_. The ten lines were sweet, pure, maidenly words of trust and gratitude for his praise of her heroic brother; and in them and through them it was easy for the woman nature to read the budding love of a warm-hearted and innocent girl.

This roused her wrath, and would have led to denunciation of him but for the news of his wounds and danger. Then came other letters from Hollins, hinting at troubles in which he was involved; and then, right after Antietam, he seemed to cease to write for a fortnight, and his next letter spoke of total change in all his prospects--resignation from the service, serious illness, possibly permanently impaired health, and then of suffering and want. A foul accusation had been trumped up against him by enemies in the regiment; he was alleged to have stolen letters belonging to officers. In part it was true. He had bribed a servant to get those three letters which he sent her, that she might be saved from the fate that he dreaded for her. It was for her sake he had sinned; and now he implored her to keep his secret, and to return to him all his letters on that subject, as well as those he had sent as proofs. He dare not trust them to the mails, but a faithful friend, though a poor man like himself, would come with a note from him, and he would be a trusty bearer. The friend had come but the morning of Abbot's arrival. He humbly rang at the basement door; sent up a note; and, recognizing Hollins's writing, she had gone down and questioned him. He sadly told her that the quartermaster was in great trouble. "His enemies had conspired against him;" his money accounts were involved, and there lay the great difficulty. Mr. Hollins would never forgive him, said the man, if he knew he was hinting at such a thing, but what he needed to help him out of his trouble was money. It made her suspicious, but she reread the note. "He is devoted to me, and perfectly reliable. I have cared for him and his sister from childhood. Do not fear to trust the letters, or anything you may write, to him."

Mr. Hollins was too proud ever to ask for money and could not contemplate the possibility of its being asked in his behalf, she argued. But if anything she might write was to be trusted to the messenger, surely she could trust his statements, and so she questioned eagerly. The bearer thought a thousand dollars might be enough to straighten everything, and she bade him be at the front of the house that night by half after ten, to bring her a little packet he spoke of as having received from Hollins--her own letters to him--and the money would be ready. There was something about the man's face and carriage that was familiar. She could not tell where she had seen him, but felt sure that she had, and it seemed to her that it was in uniform. But he denied having ever been in service, and seemed to shrink into shadow as though alarmed at the idea. During the day she got the money from the bank and gave it, as Abbot saw, and then when the telegram came it all flashed across her--the messenger was indeed Rix. Rix was a deserter beyond all peradventure. Then, doubtless, she was all wrong and Abbot all right as to the real status of Mr. Hollins. No wonder she was overwhelmed.

But in all her self-abasement and distress of mind Viva Winthrop was clear-headed on the question of the dissolution of that engagement. "He does not love me and I do not deserve that he should," was her epitome of the situation. "It will cause him no sorrow now, and it must be ended." And it was. He called and asked to see her, if she felt well enough to receive him; he acquiesced in her decision, but he wanted to part as friends. She begged to be excused, explaining that she had not left her rooms since the night of his arrival, which was true. And now, with a heart that beats more joyously despite the major's proper and conscientious effort to believe that he is not happier in his freedom, he is hastening back to the front, for his orders have come.

Two things remain to be attended to before reporting for duty. He makes every effort to find Hollins's hiding-place, but without avail. Miss Winthrop tells him that beyond the postmark, Baltimore, there is not a clew in any of the letters, and that they have ceased coming entirely. Rix made no mention beyond saying that he was in Baltimore among people who would guard him, and Rix himself has gone--no man can say whither.