Chapter 8

From being the most silent of children, a perfect creep-mouse in every way, Ernie had become fearfully loquacious under my care, and was now as talkative as he had ever been observant.

The action that most children develop through exercise of limb had been reserved for his untiring tongue. He had literally learned to talk from hearing me read aloud, which I did daily, much to Mrs. Clayton's delight and edification, for the benefit of my own lungs, which suffered from such confirmed silence, as I had at first indulged in. His exquisite ear--his prodigious memory--aided him in the acquirement of words, and even long and difficult sentences, of which he delivered himself oracularly when engaged with his blocks and dominoes.

He told himself wonderful stories in which the "buful faiwry" and "hollible" giant of the story-books figured largely. I am almost ashamed to acknowledge that I would hold my breath and strain my ear at times to listen to these murmured stories, self-addressed, as I have never done to receive the finest ebullitions of eloquence or the veriest marvels of the _raconteur_. There was something so sweet, so wondrous to me in this little, ever-babbling baby-brain fountain, content with its own music, having no thought of auditors or effect, no care for appreciation, totally self-addressed and self-absorbed, that I was never weary of giving it my ear and interest. Had the child known of or perceived this, the effect would have been destroyed, and a fatal self-consciousness have been instituted instead of this lotus-eating infantile _abandon_--the very existence of which mood indicated genius. What poor Ernie's father might nave been I could only surmise from his own qualities, which, after all, may have flowed from a far-off source; but that his mother had been gentle, simple, and inefficient, I knew full well, from my slight acquaintance with her, and observation of her non-resisting organization. Ernie, on the contrary, grappled with obstacles uncomplainingly, and was only outspoken in his moments of gratification. His was the temperament that is the noblest and the most magnanimous in its very moulding. Whining children are selfish, as a rule, and petty-minded, and most often incapable of enjoyment--which last is a gift of itself that goes not always with possession.

Among other accomplishments self-acquired, Ernie had the power of mimicry to a singular degree. Mrs. Clayton had a slight hitch in her gait of late from rheumatic suffering, which he simulated solemnly, notwithstanding every effort on my part to restrain him.

Without a smile or any effort of mirth, he would limp behind as she walked across the floor, unconscious of his close attendance, and when she would turn suddenly and detect him, and shake her clinched fist at him, half in jest, he would retaliate by a similar gesture, and scowl, and stamp of the foot, that so nearly resembled her own proceedings as to cause me much internal merriment. But of course for his own advantage, as well as from regard for her feelings, it was necessary for me on such occasions to assume a gravity of deportment bordering on displeasure.

It may be supposed, then, that when, on the morning after Dr. Englehart's visit, before my chamber had been swept and garnished, and while Mrs. Clayton was busy in her own, Ernie brought me a letter and laid it on the table before me, as Dr. Englehart had done the night before in his presence, I was infinitely amused.

What, then, was my surprise in stooping over it to find this letter addressed to myself in the unfamiliar yet never-to-be-forgotten character of Wardour Wentworth!

After the first moment of bewilderment I opened the already-fastened letter--closed, as was the fashion of the day, without envelope, and sealed originally with wax, of which a few fragments still remained alone.

The date, the subject, the earnest contents, convinced me that I now held the clew of that mystery which had baffled me so long, and that the missing letter said to have been lost at Le Noir's Landing was at last in my possession. It needed not this additional proof of treachery to convince me that my suspicions had been correct, and that, next to the arch-fiend Bainrothe, I owed the greatest misery of my life to him who, in his ill-adjusted disguise, had dropped this letter from his pocket on the preceding evening--my evil genius, Dr. Englehart--_alias_ Luke Gregory.

It was a gracious thing in God to permit me to owe the great happiness of this discovery to the little crippled child he had cast upon my care so mysteriously, and I failed not to render to him with other grateful acknowledgments "most humble and hearty thanks" for this crowning grace. Henceforth Hope should lend her torch to light my dearth--her wings to bear me up--her anchor wherewith to moor my bark of life wherever cast, and to the poor waif I cherished I owed this immeasurable good. Had Mrs. Clayton anticipated him with her infallible besom--that housewifely detective, that drags more secrets to light than ever did paid policeman--I should never have grasped this talisman of love and hope, never have waked up as I did wake up from that hour to the endurance which immortalizes endeavor, and renders patience almost pleasurable.

On the back of this well-worn letter was a pencil-scrawl, which, although I read it last, I present first to my reader, that he may trace link by link the chain of villainy that bound together my two oppressors.

It was in the small, clear calligraphy of Basil Bainrothe, before described; characterized, I believe, as a backhand--and thus it ran:

"You are right--it was a master-stroke! Keep them in ignorance of each other, and all will yet go well. I sail to-morrow, and have only time to inclose this with a pencilled line. Try and head them at New York. My first idea was the best--my reason I will explain later.

"Yours truly,

"B.B.

"N.B.--The man could not have played into our hands better than by taking up such an impression. There is no one there to undeceive him."

THE LETTER.

"My Miriam: Your note, through the hands of Mr. Gregory, has been received--read, noted, pondered over with pain and amazement. The avowal of your name so uselessly withheld from me, lets in a whole flood of light, blinding and dazzling, too, on a subject that fills me with infinite solicitude.

"There have been strange reserves between us that never ought to have existed, on my part as well as yours. I should have told you that I once had a half-sister, called Constance Glen--older than myself by many years--who married during my long absence from our native land a gentleman much older than herself, an Englishman by the name of Monfort, and, after giving birth to a daughter, died suddenly. These particulars I gathered from strangers, but there were many wanting which you can best supply. I know that this gentleman had a daughter, or daughters, by an earlier marriage--and I can find no clew to the date of my sister's marriage--which might in itself determine the possible age of her own daughter. That this child survived I have painful cause to remember. I had sustained shipwreck, and was in abeyance for clothes and money both, when it occurred to me to call on my brother-in-law, present to him my credentials, and remain a few days at his house as his guest, in the enjoyment of my sister's society, until my needs could be supplied from certain resources at a distance. The reception I met with from his elder daughter, and the information she haughtily gave me, determined my course. I sought no more the inhospitable roof of Mr. Monfort, to find shelter beneath which I had forfeited all claim by the death of my sister, then first suddenly revealed to me. Her child, I was told, had been recently injured by burning and could not be seen, even by so near a relative, and the manner of the young lady, whom I now identify as Evelyn Monfort, was such as to lead me at the time to believe this a mere excuse or evasion, which I did not seek to oppose.

"It is just possible that there may be a third sister, yet I think I have heard you say you had but one, and this reminiscence is anguish to my mind. Even more, the careless and unwarrantable allusions of Mr. Gregory to certain scars, evidently from burns that he had the insolence to observe on your neck and arms, and remark upon as mere foils to their beauty, in my first acquaintance with you and before I had a right to silence him, recurred to me as a partial confirmation of my fears. Without explaining to him my motives, I questioned him on this subject again soon after he handed me your note, a proceeding that I should have shrunk from as gross and unworthy of a gentleman under any other circumstances. I did not stop to think what impression my inquiries would leave upon his mind, ever prone to levity and suspicion; but he must have seen that I was deeply moved, and that no impertinent curiosity could sway me to such a course with regard to the woman I loved and had openly declared my plighted wife. You will understand all this and make allowance for me. Write to me immediately, and relieve, if possible, my intense solicitude. At all events, let me know the truth, and look it in the face as soon as may be. Any reality is better than suspense. Yet I must 'hope against hope,' or surrender wholly. I have not time to write another line. My business is imperative, or I should certainly retrace my steps.

"Yours eternally,

"WENTWORTH."

The man who wrote this letter was capable of condensing in a few calm words a world of passion, whether he spoke or wrote them; but he had governed his pen carefully in his agonizing uncertainty. It was yet to be determined when he penned these lines whether he should be considered a lover addressing his mistress, or an uncle writing to his niece, and in this bitter perplexity he commanded his inclinations to the side of principle.

I wept with tears of joy and thankfulness above this constrained epistle--I pressed it to my heart, my lips, a thousand times, in the quiet hours of night, in the moments of retirement my jailer granted me. The child Ernie alone saw and wondered at these manifestations of which I first saw the extravagance through his solemn imitations thereof, which yet made me catch him rapturously in my arms and kiss him a thousand times, until he put me aside, at last, with decorous dignity, as one transcending privilege.

By some vicarious process, best understood by lovers, I lavished on little Ernie a thousand terms of endearment, meant only for another, and by the light of my own happiness he seemed transfigured. He was identified with the lifting away of a burden more bitter than captivity itself. They could but kill my body now--my soul was filled with a new life that nothing could extinguish; and believing in Wentworth, I felt that I could die happy, let death come when and how it would. I knew now that in the course of time, whether I lived or died, Wentworth would know that I was not his niece, and claim Mabel as his own, remembering my estimate of those who held her in charge. Then would the tide of love and passion, so long repressed, roll back in its old channel, and he would leave no stone unturned, no path unexplored, whereby to trace my fate.

To this, as yet, he held no clew. The sea had seemed to swallow Miriam Harz, by which name I had been registered in the ship's books and known to the passengers; nor could it be surmised that the young "mad girl," since spoken of, as I had been told, in the papers, as having been restored to her friends by the accident of meeting the Latona, and Miriam Monfort, were one and the same person. But if the time should come when all should be explained, either by my own lips or the revelations of others, good cause might Basil Bainrothe and his confederate have to tremble!

Like all cold, patient, deeply-feeling men, there were untold reserves of power and passion in the nature of Wardour Wentworth which might, for aught I knew to the contrary, tend naturally to and culminate in revenge. The wish to retaliate was, I knew, a fundamental fault in my own character, one I had often occasion to struggle with even in childhood, when Evelyn, my despot, was also my dependant, and generosity had been called to the aid of forbearance. Vengeance was a fierce thirst in my Judaic heart which only Christian streams could ever allay or quench, and I judged the man I loved by self--not always a fitting standard of comparison.

And Gregory! I could imagine well the fiendish delight with which he had seen me day by day writhing uncomplainingly beneath the unexplained and as I had deemed unsuspected alienation of Wentworth, the cause of which his act had wrapped in mystery! Afraid to tamper with the note I gave him for the cool, discerning eye of Wentworth, curiosity had at first led him to break the seal of that intrusted to his care in return, and dark malevolence to retain it rather than destroy, for the eye of his confederate. That he had dispatched it at once for Paris was very evident from the pencilling on the back of the letter; and that the snare was set for me already, in which the accident of the encountered raft proved an assistant, I could not doubt.

I fell into the hands of Bainrothe on shipboard instead of into those of Gregory in New York; this was the only difference, for subterfuge could have done its work as well, if not as daringly, on land as on sea; and the league of iniquity was made before I sailed from Savannah.

How perfectly I could comprehend, for the first time since this revelation, what Wentworth must have suffered beneath his burden of unrelieved doubt and conjecture! I could see how, day by day, as no answer came to change the current of his thoughts, conviction slowly settled down like a cloud upon his heart, his reason; and what stern confirmation of all he dreaded most, my silence must have seemed to him!

All this I saw in my mental survey with pity, with concern, with wild desire to fly to him, and whisper truth and consolation in his arms; for I loved this man as it is given to passionate, earnest natures to love but once, be it early or late; loved him as Eve loved Adam, when the whole inhabited earth was given to those two alone.

"You seem in very good spirits to-day, Miss Monfort," said Mrs. Clayton, with unusual asperity on one occasion, when, holding Ernie in my arms, I lavished endearments upon him; "your king, indeed! your angel! I really believe you admire as well as love that hideous little elf."

"Of course I do," Mrs. Clayton; "all things I love are beautiful to me;" and I remembered how Bertie's plain face had grown into touching loveliness in my sight from the affection I bore her.

"And do you really love this child?"

"Most certainly, and very tenderly too; is he not my sweetest consolation in this dreary life?"

"What if they remove him?"

"Ah! what, indeed!" and, relaxing my grasp, I clasped my hands together patiently; that thought had occurred to me before.

"It is a very strong affection to have sprung up from a short acquaintance on a raft," she remarked, sententiously.

"I saved his infant life, you know; and the benefactor always loves the thing he benefits. It is on this principle alone God loves his erring creatures, Mrs. Clayton, rest assured."

"If you had loved the child with true friendship, you would have pushed him into the sea, rather than have held him in your arms above it."

"Do you suppose he is less near to God than you or I--to Christ the all-merciful?" I questioned, sternly. "Much rather would I have that infant's yet unconscious hope of heaven than either yours or mine, Mrs. Clayton!"

"But his earthly hope--it was that I alluded to; what chance for him? Poor, weakly, deformed; he had better be at rest than knocked from pillar to poet, as he must be in this hard, cold world of chance and change."

"And that shall never be while I live, Ernie," I said, taking him again in my lap, at his silent solicitation. "Why, Mrs. Clayton, with such a noble soul, such intelligence as this child possesses, he may fill a pulpit, and save erring souls, or write such beautiful poems and romances as shall thrill the heart, or draw from an instrument sounds as divine as De Beriot's, or paint a picture, and immortalize his name; there is nothing too good, too great for Ernie to do, should God grant him life to achieve; and, as surely as I am spared to be enfranchised, shall I make this gifted child my charge."

"You are perfectly infatuated, Miss Monfort; I declare, I shall begin to believe--"

"No, you shall not begin to believe any such thing," I interrupted her, smiling; "you are surely too sensible and just a woman to begin to believe fallacies thus late in the day."

"Have it your own way," she said, sharply; "you always get the better of me at last."

"Not always," I pursued, "or I should not be here, you know. It rests with you to keep or let me go--"

"To ruin my child's husband! There, now! you have my life-secret," she said, with a desperate gesture; "use it as you will."

I understood more than ever the hopelessness of my case from the moment of that impulsive revelation, to which I made no answer.

"What is more," she said, huskily, "I, too, am watched; I never knew this until two days ago: a negro man, an attendant of the house, an old servant of your guardian's, I believe, guards the doors below, and refuses to let me pass to and fro. Dinah, even, is employed to dog my steps. This is not exactly what I bargained for; yet, in spite of all, on her account I shall be faithful to the end." And for a time she busied herself in that careful dusting of the ornaments of the chamber, which seemed mechanical, so habitual was it to her sense of order and tidiness.

Her hand was on the gold-emblazoned Bible, I remember, and her party-colored bunch of plumes lifted above it, as if for immediate action, when her arm fell heavily to her side, and she heaved a bitter sigh, so deep, it sounded like a long-suppressed sob, rather, to my ear.

"If I could only think you did not hate me, Miss Miriam," she said, "I believe I could be better satisfied to lead the life I do."

"Hate you! Why should I hate you, Mrs. Clayton? You are only a tool in the hands of my persecutor, I know, from your own confession, and I understand your motive better in the last few moments than I did before (inadequate as it seems to my sense of justice), for aiding this oppressor. You have been very kind to me in some respects; an inferior person could have tortured in a thousand ways, where you have shown yourself considerate, delicate even, and for all this I thank you more than I can express. I should be very ungrateful, indeed, were I to hate you. The word is strong."

"Yet you prefer even that hump-backed child to me or my society," she said, peevishly.

"The comparison cannot be instituted with any propriety," I responded, gravely, turning away and dismissing the boy to his blocks and books, as I did so, which made for him, I knew, a fairy kingdom of delight, through the aid of his splendid imagination.

A commonplace infant will tire of the choicest toys; they are to such minds but effigies and delusion, which last, the delight of imaginative infancy, to the cut and dried, dull, childish understanding is impossible.

I once overheard one little girl at a theatre--a splendid spectacle, calculated to dazzle and delight imaginative childhood--say to another: "It is nothing but make-believe! That house and garden are only painted. See how they shake! And the women are dressed in paste jewelry, like that our cook-maid wears to parties, and no jeweler would give a cent for them; and the fairies are poor girls, dressed up for the occasion; and the whole play is made up as they go. You see, I know all about it, father says."

I heard no more, but had a glimpse of a little, eager face suddenly dashed in its expression, and of small fingers pressed to unwilling ears to shut out unwelcome truths.

The discriminating child seemed a little monster in my eyes, who ought to have been sent out of the way at once of all companions capable of _abandon_ and enjoyment; and, as to the "father" she quoted from, I could imagine him as the embodiment of asinine wisdom, so to speak--the quintessence of the practical, which so often, I observe, inclines its devotees to idiocy!

I knew very well that Wattie was not of the stamp to doubt the truth and splendor of "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," or "Cinderella," as surveyed from the stage-box, in his confiding infancy, any more than to believing in baubles when the time came to justly discriminate. Woe for the incredulous child, too matter-of-fact to be enlisted in the creations of fancy, and who tastes in infancy the chief bitterness of age--the incapability of surrendering life to the ideal!

How fresh imagination keeps the heart--how young! What a glorious gift it is when rightly used and governed! Hear Charlotte Bronte's testimony, as recorded by her biographer: "They are all gone," she says, "the sisters I so loved, and I have only my imagination left to comfort me. But for this solace I should despair or perish." The words are not exact--the book is not beside me, but such is their substance. He who lists can seek them for himself in the pages of that wondrous spell woven by Mrs. Gaskell--that tragic and strange biography which once in a season of deep despondency did more to reconcile me to my own condition, through my pity and admiration for another, than all the condolences that came so freely from lip and pen. Every fabric that love had erected crumbled about her or turned to Dead-Sea ashes on her lip. See what a world of passion those French letters and themes of hers betray!

The brand of suffering and suffocating sorrow is on every one of them, plain to the eye of the initiated alone, they who have gazed on the wonders of the inner temple--the holy of holies--and gone forth reverently to dream of the revelation evermore in silence.

But, above every ruin of hope, or pride, or affection, like an imperial banner flung from "the outer wall," her imagination waved and triumphed. "The clouds of glory" she trailed after her were dyed in spheres unapproachable by death, or shame, or disappointment, and the gift described in the Arabian story as conferred by the genii's salve when he touched therewith the eyes of the traveler and caused him to see all the wonders of the earth, its gems, its gold, its gleaming chrysolites, its inward fires, unobscured by the interposition of dust and clay, which veiled them from all the rest of humanity, may stand as a type of her ideality.