Cynthia Wakeham's Money Part 29

Dr. Sellick, taken by surprise, stared at the book a minute, then jumped to his feet in almost as much excitement as Frank himself.

"I got that book from Hermione Cavanagh years ago; there was a poem in it she wanted me to read. I did not know I had the book now. I have never even thought of it from that day to this. Harriet Smith! Yes, that is the name you want, and they must be able to tell you to whom it belongs."

"I believe it; I know it; I remember now that they have always shown an interest in the matter. Hermione wanted to read the will, and--Edgar, Edgar, can they be the heirs for whom we are searching, and is that why Huckins haunts the house and is received by them in plain defiance of my entreaties?"

"If they are the heirs they would have been likely to have told you.

Penniless young girls are not usually backward in claiming property which is their due."

"That is certainly true, but this property has been left under a condition. I recollect now how disappointed Hermione looked when she read the will. Give me the book; I must see her sister or herself at once about it." And without heeding the demurs of his more cautious friend, Frank plunged from the house and made his way immediately to the Cavanagh mansion.

His hasty knock brought Emma to the door. As he encountered her look and beheld the sudden and strong agitation under which she labored, he realized for the first time that he was returning to the house before reading the letter upon which so much depended.

But he was so filled with his new discovery that he gave that idea but a thought.

"Miss Cavanagh--Emma," he entreated, "grant me a moment's conversation.

I have just found this book in Dr. Sellick's library--a book which he declares was once given him by your sister--and in it----"

They had entered the parlor by this time and were standing by a table upon which burned a lamp----"is a name."

She started, and was bending to look at the words upon which his finger rested, when the door opened. Hermione, alarmed and not knowing what to think of this unexpected return of her lover so soon, as she supposed, after the receipt of her letter, had come down from her room in that mood of extreme tension which is induced by an almost unendurable suspense.

Frank, who in all his experience of her had never seen her look as she did at this moment, fell back from the place where he stood and hastily shook his head.

"Don't look like that," he cried, "or you will make me feel I can never read your letter."

"And have you not read it?" she demanded, shrinking in her turn till she stood on the threshold by which she had entered. "Why then are you here?

What could have brought you back so soon when you knew----"

"This," he interpolated hastily, holding up the book which he had let fall on the table at her entrance. "See! the name of Harriett Smith is written in it. Tell me, I pray, why you kept from me so persistently the fact that you knew the person to whom the property I hold in trust rightfully belongs."

The two girls with a quick glance at each other drooped their heads.

"What was the use?" murmured Emma, "since Harriet Smith is dead and her heirs can never claim the property. _We_ are her heirs, Mr. Etheridge; Harriet Smith was our mother, married to father thirty-nine years ago after a widowhood of only three months. It was never known in this place that she had had a former husband or had borne the name of Smith. There was so much scandal and unhappiness connected with her first most miserable marriage, that she suppressed the facts concerning it as much as possible. She was father's wife and that was all that the people about here knew."

"I see," said Frank, wondering greatly at this romance in real life.

"But you might have told me," he exclaimed. "When you saw what worriment this case was causing me, you might have informed me that I was expending my efforts in vain."

"I wished to do so," answered Emma, "but Hermione dreaded the arguments and entreaties which would follow."

"I could not bear the thought of them," exclaimed the girl from the doorway where she stood, "any more than I can bear the thought now when a matter of much more importance to me demands your attention."

"I will go," cried Frank. But it was to the empty doorway he spoke; Hermione had vanished with these pa.s.sionate words.

"She is nearly ill," explained Emma, following him as he made for the door. "You must excuse one who has borne so much."

"I do not excuse her," he cried, "I love her." And the look he cast up the stairs fully verified this declaration. "That is why I go with half on my lips unsaid. To-morrow we will broach the topic again, meanwhile beware of Huckins. He means you no good by being here. Had I known his connection with you, he should never have entered these doors."

"He is our uncle; our mother's brother."

"He is a scamp who means to have the property which is rightfully your due."

"And he will have it, I suppose," she returned. "Hermione has never given me a hope that she means to contend with him in this matter."

"Hermione has had no counsellor but her own will. To-morrow she will have to do with me. But shut the door on Huckins; promise me you will not see him again till after you have seen me."

"I cannot--I know too little what is in that letter."

"Oh, that letter!" he cried, and was gone from the house.

When he arrived at Dr. Sellick's again, he found Doris awaiting him, looking very flushed and anxious. She had a shawl drawn around her, and she held some bundles under that shawl.

"I hope," she said, "that you did not get impatient, waiting for me. I had some errands to do, and while doing them I lost the letter you expected and had to go back and look for it. I found it lying under the counter in Mr. Davis' store and that is why it is so soiled, but the inside is all right, and I can only beg your pardon for the delay."

Drawing the packet from under her shawl, she handed it to the frowning lawyer, her heart standing still as she saw him turn it over and over in his hand. But his looks if angry were not suspicious, and with a relieved nod she was turning to go when he observed:

"I have one word to say to you, Doris. You have told me that you have the welfare of the young ladies you serve at heart. Prove this to be so.

If Mr. Huckins comes to the door to-night, or in the early morning, say that Miss Cavanagh is not well and that he had better go to the hotel.

Do not admit him; _do not even open the door_, unless Miss Cavanagh or her sister especially command you to do so. He is not a safe friend for them, and I will take the responsibility of whatever you do."

Doris, with wide-stretched eyes and panting breath, paused to collect her faculties. A week ago she would have received this intimation regarding anybody Mr. Etheridge might choose to mention, with grat.i.tude and a certain sense of increased importance. But ambition and the sense of being on intimate and secret terms with a man and bachelor who boasted of his thousands, had made a change in her weak and cunning heart, and she was disposed to doubt the lawyer's judgment of what was good for the young ladies and wise for her.

But she did not show her doubt to one whom she had secretly wronged so lately; on the contrary she bowed with seeming acquiescence, and saying, "Leave me alone to take good care of my young ladies," drew her shawl more closely about her and quietly slid from the house.

A man was standing in the shadow of a great elm on the corner.

As she pa.s.sed, he whispered: "Don't stop, and don't expect to see me to-night. There is some one watching me, I am sure. To-morrow, if I can I will come."

She had done a wicked and dangerous thing, and she had not learned the secret.

XX.

THE DEVIL'S CAULDRON.

Frank, being left alone, sat down with the letter Doris had given him.

These are the words he read:

"DEAR MR. ETHERIDGE:

"I must ask you to walk by my house as early as nine o'clock to-morrow morning. If, having read this letter, you still feel ready to meet fate at my side, you will enter and tell me so. But if the horror that has rested upon my life falls with this reading upon yours, then pa.s.s by on the other side, and I will understand your verdict and accept it.

"It was at a very early age that I first felt the blight which had fallen upon my life with the scar which disfigures one side of my face.

Such expressions as 'Poor dear! what a pity!'--'She would be very beautiful if it were not for that,' make a deep impression upon a child's mind, especially if that child has a proud and sensitive nature, eager for admiration and shrinking from pity. Emma, who is only a year younger than myself, seemed to me quite an enviable being before I knew what the word envy meant, or why I felt so hot and angry when the neighbors took her up and caressed her, while they only cast looks of compa.s.sion at me. I hated her and did not know it; I hated the neighbors, and I hated the places where they met, and the home where I was born. I only loved my mother; perhaps, because she alone never spoke of my misfortune, and when she kissed me did not take pains to choose that side of my face which was without blemish. O my mother! if she had lived! But when I was just fifteen, and was feeling even more keenly than ever what it was to have just missed being the beauty of the town, she died, and I found myself left with only a stern and cruelly abstracted father for guardian, and for companion a sister, who in those days was a girl so merry by nature, and so full of play and sport, that she was a constant source of vexation to me, who hated mirth, and felt aggrieved by a cheerfulness I could not share. These pa.s.sions of jealousy and pride did not lessen with me as I slowly ripened into womanhood. All our family have been victims of their own indomitable will, and even Emma, gentle as you see her to be now, used to have violent gusts of temper when she was crossed in her plans or pleasures.

I never flashed out into bitter speech as she did, or made a noise when I was angry, but I had that slow fire within me which made me perfectly inexorable when I had once made up my mind to any course--no one, not even my father or my sister, having the least influence over me. And so it was that those who knew me began to dread me, even while they were forced to acknowledge that I possessed certain merits of heart and understanding. For the disappointment which had soured my disposition had turned me towards study for relief, and the determination to be brilliant, if I could not be beautiful, came with my maturity, and saved me, perhaps, from being nothing but a burden to my family and friends.