Part 24

"Never mind whose it is," interrupted the doctor; "it is just as well not to know anything about that. Well, Jekyll, what I want you to do, is simply to keep a sharp lookout for any letters, in that handwriting, which may come to Godfrey Bergan, or his daughter, or his wife, and hand them over to me."

Jekyll opened his eyes wide with surprise and terror. "Good gracious!" he exclaimed, "it's a penitentiary business!"

"Not at all," replied Doctor Remy, calmly. "In the first place, no one will know anything about it but you and me. In the second, you are not doing this thing for your own advantage, but just to help me to save certain excellent people from sore sorrow and trouble."

Jekyll did not answer, but he still looked dismayed and unconvinced.

"If it will ease your scruples any," pursued the doctor, after a pause, "I don't mind telling you, in confidence, that Mr. Godfrey Bergan very much desires the suppression of these letters, though he does not want to appear in the matter himself. And you must admit that he has a right to control the correspondence of his own household.

"But why does he want his own letters stopped?" asked Jekyll.

"For the best of reasons,--he does not want to receive them. He prefers to be able to say that he hears nothing, and knows nothing. Therefore, you will readily understand that nothing is to be said, or even hinted, to him. He puts the matter in my hands, and you are responsible to me only."

It is unnecessary to trace the conversation to the end. Its results are already patent to the reader. Doctor Remy was specious and plausible; Jekyll was weak and grateful; the yielding of the pliant nature of the former to the stronger one of the latter, could only be a question of time.

IX.

SMOOTHER THAN BUTTER.

No sooner was the way made clear, by the removal of Bergan and Astra, than Doctor Remy began to visit assiduously at Oakstead; taking good care, at first, that the object of these visits should seem to be anything but Carice. He came to discuss local politics or town hygiene with Mr. Bergan; or he sought to interest his wife in some newly discovered object of charity. By and by, it was a mere matter of pleasant habit, apparently, that he stopped at Oakstead four or five times a week, as he came and went on his professional rounds.

If Carice was absent, on these occasions, he never asked for her; if she was present, he rarely addressed his conversation to her; nevertheless he weighed every word, and shaped every sentence, with artful reference to its effect upon her ear and mind. Every resource of his tact and skill was exhausted, in his effort to attract and keep the attention of the fair, silent girl, sitting in the shadow, with the drooping head, and the patient, preoccupied face.

It was long ere he could congratulate himself upon any measure of success. The little that Carice had hitherto known of Doctor Remy, she had intuitively disliked. She now acknowledged that she had scarcely done him justice in her thought; or he had changed since then. Occasionally, in his mention of his poorer patients, there peeped out traits of thoughtful kindness and generosity,--or something that looked like them,--for which she would never have given him credit. She was glad to know that he was better than he had seemed. But here the matter ended, so far as she was concerned. She did not care for him, personally; she shunned his visits, as much as possible; when compelled to be present, she oftenest sat a little apart, thinking her own thoughts over her embroidery or her drawing, and letting the brightest flow of his conversation pass by her unheeded.

But so consummate a social strategist as Doctor Remy was not thus to be baffled. One day, he took fitting occasion to bring Bergan's name into his talk,--speaking of him quietly and unconcernedly, as it was natural to speak of a man with whom he had been intimately associated for some months,--and speaking of him kindly, too, as of one for whom he entertained a real regard. Carice turned away her head, and tears sprang to her eyes. It was so long since she had heard Bergan's name spoken in a friendly tone, and unaccompanied by a disparaging commentary! When she ventured to look at Doctor Remy, it was with a soft, grateful expression, which he did not fail to detect and understand. There was a certain wistfulness, also, as of a flower which, having been refreshed by one little drop of unexpected dew, opens its petals for more. This, too, the doctor understood, and was too wise to disappoint.

"By the way," said he, turning to Mr. Bergan, "perhaps I can give you the latest news from your sister,--I had a letter from Mr. Arling this morning."

Carice's heart gave a great leap, of mingled pleasure and pain. At last she was to hear something;--yet, certainly, it ought not to be in this roundabout way.

"It will be the earliest news as well as the latest," responded Mr. Bergan, drily; "I have heard nothing, as yet."

"Is it possible!" exclaimed Doctor Remy, with well-feigned surprise; "I had no idea of that. Still, severe sickness is an engrossing guest in a house, as I often have occasion to notice; outside friends are apt to be forgotten, or rather ignored, except as they can be made useful. Probably, Arling would not have written to me, if he had not wanted something supplementary to certain medical suggestions with which I furnished him, when he left, and which seem to have been of use. Anyway, I am glad to be able to tell you that the fever has passed the crisis."

"I am glad to hear it," returned Mr. Bergan, heartily enough, yet with an evident dislike of the subject. Carice being present, he could not forget that talking of Mrs. Arling was the next thing to talking of her son.

Mrs. Bergan, however, was more alive to the demands both of kinship and of courtesy. "Is our sister out of danger, then?" she asked with interest.

"Except as there is always danger of a relapse," answered Doctor Remy. "Still, judging from Mr. Arling's letter, I should say that there is good reason to hope that his mother's convalescence will be sure and swift. In that case, we may look for him back among us, ere long."

Mr. Bergan frowned; Carice turned away her face, that her gladness might not be seen shining in her eyes. This, then, was the reason why Bergan had not written to Oakstead. At first, there had been engrossing anxiety and fear; then, finding that he should soon be able to come and plead his cause in person, he had not thought it wise to commit it to the colder advocacy of a letter. There were many advantages in a face-to-face discussion; especially where, as he doubtless suspected, prejudice was to be met and overcome! And he could not honorably write to her, until he had written to her father.

Nor would she admit, even to herself, that this explanation did not quite cover every point, that it hardly excused Bergan for subjecting her to so long a strain of expectation and suspense. She was so glad, poor child! to discern even the outline of a reasonable solution of the mystery that had so oppressed her! And, for the rest, was he not coming soon, to make everything smooth and plain? Might he not be here in a few days,--a week,--a fortnight,--at farthest? Or, suppose it should be a month:--well, no need for her heart to sink thus,--could a month ever seem long again, in comparison with that which was just past?

Perhaps it may be well to offset the foregoing scene with one or two veritable paragraphs from Bergan's letter:--

"The crisis of the fever, Doctor Trubie thinks, was passed a week ago. But my mother does not rally, in the least. We just succeed in keeping her alive--if anything so like death can be called life--by the means which you suggested. If she does live, we shall owe it, under God, to you. The great obstacle to her recovery, now, is the ulceration mentioned above; Doctor Trubie warns us that it may terminate fatally, any day. If you have any further suggestions to offer, I need not say how gratefully we shall accept them.

"Can you tell me if they are all well at Oakstead? I wrote some time ago, but have heard nothing."

The second of these paragraphs, Doctor Remy had dismissed with a single reading and a sinister smile; but, over the first, he had knitted his brows into their sternest, deepest lines of thought,--the look of a man hurling all his reserved force into the fight, and determined to wring victory from defeat.

"She must not die!" he muttered to himself,--"that would set Arling free too soon. The longer and slower her convalescence, the better,--but she _must not die!_"

And the return mail carried back to Mrs. Arling's bedside--where the battle seemed wellnigh over--the strong reinforcements of Doctor Remy's science and experience, to carry on the fight.

From all of which, it will easily be seen that Carice's days of suspense were not yet over. Doctor Remy had artfully lifted her a little way into the sunshine, first, as a means of commending himself to her favor, and next, in order that her lapse into the shadow should be the more complete.

In the first of these objects, he was measurably successful. Carice no longer shunned him. He was certain to see her, soon or late, whenever he came to Oakstead. With the current of feeling setting so strongly against Bergan, in every other quarter, she could not afford to lose any kindly mention of him, in this one. Though she still sat a little apart, it was plain that she lost no word of his conversation. Her face, as she listened, had the same look of patient interest, with which a solitary prisoner might watch for the flight of a bird across the small square of blue sky which is his only prospect.

Her parents noticed the change, and rejoiced in it, inasmuch as they did not suspect its cause. For it must be confessed that Doctor Remy acquitted himself marvellously well of the delicate task of mentioning Bergan in terms at once pleasant to the daughter's ears, and void of offence to those of the parents. He understood perfectly the art of constructing two-sided sentences, which gave Carice the impression that he was the young man's stanch, if undemonstrative, friend, at the same time that Mr. and Mrs. Bergan found in them abundant confirmation of their prejudices.

Of course, neither party discussed these impressions with the other. Carice, feeling the uselessness of the task, had long since ceased to defend Bergan; her parents, believing that his silence was operating more powerfully against him than any arguments of theirs could do, had ceased to attack him. Nor will it seem any paradox to say that, while they were unspeakably glad of his omission to write, it was, on the whole, his worst fault, in their eyes. They resented the slight to their daughter none the less, because it hastened the end which they ardently desired. To have sought her love was bad enough, but to have flung it aside so quickly, as a thing of no value, was a thousand times worse. Godfrey Bergan gnashed his teeth, whenever he thought of it, with an indignation for which he had no words.

One day, Doctor Remy, to his great gratification, found Carice alone in the library; and at once seized upon the opportunity to speak of Bergan, in kinder and fuller strain than he had ever yet ventured to do,--though not in a way to suggest that he was aware of any special bond between his listener and his subject. He described his first meeting with the young man, and its immediate results; he sketched various pleasant scenes and incidents that had come to pass under Mrs. Lyte's kindly roof; and he dwelt with hearty admiration upon Bergan's oratorical and intellectual gifts. Carice listened like one entranced. Her joy was too perfect to admit of any alloy, even when Doctor Remy went on to speak of Bergan as a young man whose character was still in process of formation, whose talents were, as yet, far in advance of his judgment, and whose kindly impulses often led him into error. Yet these few words, of all that had ever been spoken disparagingly of Bergan, in her hearing, were the only ones that had yet effected any lodgment in her mind. So artfully thrown in, among much that was friendly and encomiastic, as to be scarcely noticed at the moment, the time came when these words shot up, in Carice's memory, into manifold thorn-branches of suggestion.

At present, however, she was inexpressibly cheered by this hour's talk on the subject that lay nearest her heart. She greeted her parents, upon their return, with a face so much more like that which had once been the sunshine of their hearts, that they exchanged looks of surprise and delight. They were looks of questioning too. Was this pleasant change owing to Doctor Remy's influence? Was he beginning to think of Carice, in lover's wise? Was she beginning to turn unconsciously from the love that had failed her, to the calm and mature affection that was certain to stand by her? Then, by all means, let the matter so arrange itself. Though Doctor Remy was not quite the man whom they would have chosen for Carice, he was infinitely better and safer than their nephew. His reputation was fair, his talents undeniable; he was certain to win eminence in his profession; and possibly, fame beyond it, as a man of science. If he had seemed a little cold and hard, hitherto, love would soften him. Who could be otherwise than soft to Carice!

And so, Doctor Remy came and went, and unlimited opportunities were given him to talk to Carice,--of Bergan, or of anything else,--of which he failed not to make artful use, with reference both to the present and the future. In due time, she came to look upon him somewhat as Astra had once done,--as a man more wise and calm than tender, more just than genial, but a man to be greatly esteemed and trusted, nevertheless; and, certainly a true, if not an enthusiastic, friend of Bergan. Yet she never thought of him, strange to say, as a friend to herself. Her instincts were far too fine and clear for that. If ever, for a moment, she felt inclined to turn to him for sympathy, she immediately shrank back from him, as powerless to give her what she sought. It was precisely the same feeling--though she did not recognize it as such--with which she would have turned away from an image in a mirror, which, during a single illusive moment of twilight, she had mistaken for a living form.

And the days came and went, and another month drew nigh its close.

X.

A WICKED DEVICE.

Carice was strolling languidly along the bank of the creek, the heaviness of her heart easily discoverable in her absent face and languid step. Her eyes rested on the same stream, her ears were filled with the murmur of the same leaves, which had witnessed her parting with Bergan, nearly two months before, yet neither made any distinct impression on her mind; she saw and heard but the flow and murmur of her own troubled thoughts. She had noticed a singular change of tone in Doctor Remy, of late, with respect to Bergan. He no longer made the young man the subject of free and frank conversation; if obliged to mention him at all, he did it with a certain reserve and caution, an air of picking and choosing his phrases, which at first puzzled, and was now beginning to alarm, the poor girl, already worn and nervous with the long sickness of hope deferred.

Her fears, however, took a different direction from what Doctor Remy had anticipated. He had intended his alteration of manner to suggest the grave, stern reserve of a man, who, though he had himself lost confidence in his friend, is still honorably reluctant to injure him in the estimation of another. But from any such suggestion, Carice's mind was shielded by her loyal faith in her lover, as by an armor of proof. Dr. Remy's change of manner only served to strengthen her growing conviction that Bergan's failure either to write, or to appear in person, could be caused by nothing short of some great and unexpected calamity. As her eyes followed a swift cloud-shadow from object to object of the summer landscape, so her mind followed the dark shade of her fears from point to point of possible ill. Perhaps the fever, quitting his mother, had fastened upon Bergan himself; perhaps he was ill, suffering, unconscious, dying, even, or--the thought shook her like a sudden blow--dead! Gasping for breath, she leaned against a friendly tree, and closed her eyes, as if to shut out the agonizing vision, which, nevertheless, rose but the more vividly before her. Quickly opening them again, she saw Doctor Remy coming toward her from the direction of the cottage. He had espied her from the piazza, as he was taking his leave, after having spent a half-hour with her mother.

She was glad to see him. He could set her free from the intolerable chafing of suspense, though it were but to hand her over to the chill bondage of despair. He would doubtless have done so, ere this, but for some request or warning of her parents to the contrary. How far this might have let him into the secret of her relations with Bergan, she know not,--neither did she care much, just now; how far it might avail to close his lips was a much more important consideration,--still she believed that she could gather something from the expression of his face, even though he should think it right to evade her questions.

She seized upon the first opportunity, therefore, to look him, steadily in the face, though her own flushed a little, as she did so; and to ask, quietly,--"Have you heard anything from my cousin Bergan lately?"

Doctor Remy's face underwent a quick change of expression, none the less effective that it was obedient to his will. "Yes," replied he, sombrely, "I had a letter from him two or three days ago."

Carice could scarcely restrain a cry of joy; it was such a relief to know that Bergan was alive, and able to write. But her immediate perception that something was kept back, saved her self-possession.

"And my aunt," she went on, as soon as she could, command her voice, "is she quite recovered?"

"Yes,--that is, I inferred so."

Carice looked a little surprised. It would seem that Bergan's letter had made no mention of his mother. "Has the fever attacked any of the others?" she continued.

"None."

"And Bergan is quite well himself?"

"He says nothing to the contrary."

Satisfactory as were these replies, in substance, there was a degree of dryness and brevity about them which was far otherwise. Unwilling to quit the subject thus, Carice ventured another query:--"Then, I suppose he may be expected back very soon?"

Doctor Remy looked grave even to sternness. "No, I think not."

Carice's heart sank. "Did he not say when he should come?" asked she, anxiously.

Doctor Remy seemed to become suddenly aware that she really had something more than a conventional interest in the subject, and to be willing to gratify it, to the best of his ability.

"I forget exactly what he said about it," replied he, "but I think I have his letter in my pocket-book." He drew forth a closely written sheet, and glanced rapidly over it, but seemed not to find what he sought. Applying again to the envelope, he produced a separate bit of paper. "Ah, yes, here we have it, in this slip of a postscript," he went on,--"'In order to'--um--um--'I think I shall postpone my return until after Christmas.' That is all."

Carice stood as in a dream. Bergan well! Bergan silent only to her! Bergan not coming back for three months yet!--her mind utterly refused to receive three such incongruous ideas. There must be some miserable mistake,--but where? She put her hand to her brow with a piteous gesture of perplexity and bewilderment.

Doctor Remy, meanwhile, failed not to observe the effect of his words, though apparently thinking only of refolding and rearranging his papers. It was precisely what he had expected; and, feeling quite secure, for the moment, from Carice's observation, he took occasion, as he returned Bergan's letter to his pocket-book, to let the postscript drop to the ground, taking care to conceal it with his foot during the remainder of his stay, which he wisely made short.

"Can I do anything more for you?" he asked, graciously, as he put up his pocket-book.

Carice gave a slight start, and turned toward him, with an inquiring look. She had heard, but she had not understood. He repeated his question.

"No, thank you," replied Carice, letting her eyes go back to the far, dark line of the pine forest.

"Then I must leave you. I only stopped to say good morning and good-bye. I had already spent my few moments of leisure with Mrs. Bergan."

He raised his hat courteously, and was gone.

Carice remained, trying her best to reduce the confusion of her mind to order, and, especially, to discover some clue to the mystery of Bergan's doings and intentions. She gave up the difficult task, at last, with a weary little shake of the head, and a smile of pity at her own helplessness.

"It is too deep for me," she said to herself, "but Bergan will be sure to explain it all. I must just go on trusting till he comes, or writes. He shall never be able to say that my faith in him was conquered by the first difficulty!"

There was something quieting and strengthening in the mere resolve. Trust has its own special delight,--a far subtler and sweeter thing than any satisfaction of the understanding. Carice's face was almost bright, as she turned to go home.

A folded paper lay directly in her path. Mechanically she picked it up; mechanically she read it almost through, before her mind, busy with other thoughts, began, even vaguely, to grasp its meaning.

It ran thus:--

"P.S. I cannot understand how my foolish engagement to Astra Lyte should have leaked out. With all due respect for your opinion, I cannot think of fulfilling it; indeed, I wrote to break it off immediately after coming home. I should never have entered into it, but for a mistaken notion that it would advance my interests in a certain quarter. Finding that it was likely to do just the opposite, there was nothing for it but to take the shortest cut out of the scrape. Never fear for Astra, she does not belong to the Ophelia order of women, she has pride and pluck enough to carry her through a worse disappointment; besides, hearts are never broken except in novels and plays. I am much obliged to her for leaving Berganton, the affair will blow over the sooner. In order to give it time to do so, I think I shall postpone my return until after Christmas. "Yours, B.A."

Twice did Carice read the paper's contents through, before she began to understand what it was, and whence it came. She had seen Bergan's handwriting a few times, in notes addressed to her mother; and she remembered enough of its peculiarities to recognize them in the lines before her, as soon as her mind was able to grasp the fact that, in this heartless production, she beheld the postscript which she had seen in Doctor Remy's hand, and which he had doubtless dropped accidentally, while replacing his papers in his pocket-book. That it should have been deliberately forged, and designedly put in her way--a sort of moral torpedo, loaded with mischief--was a depth of wickedness, of which, in her innocence, she could never have conceived. She could scarcely make herself comprehend the evil tenor of the words before her eyes. She read them over again, with a feeling that either their form or their purport must change, if she only studied them carefully enough; it was impossible that she had read them aright.