The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems Part 7

Mrs. Greyfield smiled and sighed, and remarked upon the fact that the hour-hand of the clock pointed to two in the morning. "It is really unkind of me to keep you out of bed until such an hour as this," she said, laughing a little, as if we had only been talking of ordinary things. "But I am in the mood, like the 'Ancient Mariner;' and you are as much forced to listen as the 'Wedding Guest.'"

"There is one thing yet I desire to be satisfied about," I replied. "As a woman, I cannot repress my curiosity to know whether, since all the troubles of your early life have been past, you have desired to marry again. Opportunities I know you must have had. What I want to be informed about is your feeling upon this subject, and whether any man has been able to fill your eye or stir your heart."

The first smile my question called up died away, and an introspective look came over Mrs. Greyfield's still handsome face. She sat silent for a little time, that seemed long to me, for I was truly interested in her reply.

"I think," she said at last, "that women who have had anything like my experience, are unfitted for married life. Either they are ruined morally and mentally, by the terrible pressure; or they become so sharp-sighted and critical that no ordinary man would be able to win their confidence. I believe in marriage; a single life has an incomplete, one-sided aspect, and is certainly lonely." Then rallying, with much of her usual brightness: "Undoubtedly I have had my times of doubt, when I found it hard to understand myself; and still, here I am!

n.o.body would have me; or I would not have anybody; or both."

"One more question, then, if it is a fair one: Could you love again the husband of your youth; or has your ideal changed?"

Mrs. Greyfield was evidently disturbed by the inquiry. Her countenance altered, and she hesitated to reply.

"I beg your pardon," I said; "I hope you will not answer me, if I have been impertinent."

"That is a question I never asked myself," she finally replied. "My husband was all in all to me during our brief married life. His death left me truly desolate, and his memory sacred. But we were both young, and probably he may have been unformed in character, to a great degree, as well as myself. How he would seem now, if he could be restored to me as he was then, I can only half imagine. What he would now _be_, if he had lived on, I cannot at all imagine. But let us now go take a wink of sleep. My eyelids at last begin to feel dry and heavy; and you, I am sure, are perishing under the tortures of resistance to the drowsy G.o.d."

"The storm is over," I said. "I thought you felt that something was going to happen!"

"It will be breakfast, I suppose. By the way, I must go and put a note under Jane's door, telling her not to have it before half-past nine.

There will be a letter from Benton, by the morning mail. Good night; or, good morning, and sweet slumber."

"G.o.d be with you," I responded, and in twenty minutes was sleeping soundly.

Not so my hostess, it seems, for when we met again at our ten o'clock breakfast, she looked pale and distraught, and acknowledged that she had not been able to compose herself after our long talk. The morning was clear and sunny, but owing to the storm of the night, the mail was late getting in, a circ.u.mstance which gave her, as I thought, a degree of uneasiness not warranted by so natural a delay.

"You know I told you," she said, trying to laugh off her nervousness, "that something was going to happen!"

"It would be a strange condition of things where nothing did happen," I answered; and just then the horn of the mail-carrier sounded, and the lumbering four-horse coach rattled down the street in sight of our windows.

"There," I said, "is your U. S. M. safe and sound, road-agents and land-slides to the contrary and of no effect."

Very soon our letters were brought us, and my hostess, excusing herself, retired to her room to read hers. Two hours later she sent for me to come to her. I found her lying with a wet handkerchief folded over her forehead and eyes. A large and thick letter laid half open upon a table beside the bed.

"Read that," she said, without uncovering her eyes. When I had read the letter, "My dear friend," I said, "what _are_ you going to do? I hope, after all, this may be good news."

"What _can_ I do? What a strange situation!"

"You will wish to see him, I suppose? 'Arthur Greyfield.' You never told me his name was Arthur," I remarked, thinking to weaken the intensity of her feelings by referring to a trifling circ.u.mstance.

"Why have I not died before this time?" she exclaimed, unheeding my attempt at diversion. "This is too much, too much!"

"Perhaps there is still happiness in store for you, my dear Mrs.

Greyfield," I said. "Strange as is this new dispensation, may there not be a blessing in it?"

She remained silent a long time, as if thinking deeply. "He has a daughter," she at length remarked; "and Benton says she is very sweet and loveable."

"And motherless," I added, not without design. I had meant only to arouse a feeling of compa.s.sion for a young girl half-orphaned; but something more than was in my mind had been suggested to hers. She quickly raised herself from a reclining posture, threw off the concealing handkerchief, and gazed intently in my face, while saying slowly, as if to herself: "Not only motherless, but according to law, fatherless."

"Precisely," I answered. "Her mother was in the same relation to Mr.

Greyfield, that you were in to Mr. Seabrook; but happily she did not know it in her lifetime."

"Nor he--nor he! Arthur Greyfield is not to be spoken of in the same breath with Mr. Seabrook."

The spirit with which this vindication of her former husband was made, caused me to smile, in spite of the dramatic interest of the situation.

The smile did not escape her notice.

"You think I am blown about by every contending breath of feeling," she said, wearily; "when the truth is, I am trying to make out the right of a case in which there is so much wrong; and it is no easy thing to do."

"But you will find the right of it at last," I answered. "You are not called upon to decide in a moment upon a matter of such weight as this.

Take time, take rest, take counsel."

"Will you read the letter over to me?" she asked, lying down again, and preparing to listen by shielding her face with her hands.

The letter of Arthur Greyfield ran as follows:

"My Dear Anna: How strange it seems to me to be writing to you again! It is like conversing with one returned from another world, to you, too, no doubt. There is so much to explain, and some things that perhaps will not ever be explained satisfactorily to you, that I know not where to begin or what to say. Still Benton insists on my writing before seeing you, and perhaps this is best.

"To begin at the beginning. When I was left for dead by my frightened comrades on the plains, I had not died, but was only insensible; and I do not believe they felt at all sure of my death, for they left me unburied, as if to give me a chance; and deserted me rather than take any risks by remaining any longer in that place. How long I laid insensible I do not know. When I came to myself I was alone, well wrapped up in a large bed-quilt, and lying on the ground close by the wagon-trail. Nothing was left for my support, if alive, from which I concluded that they agreed to consider me dead.

"When I opened my eyes again on the wilderness world about me, the sun was shining brightly, and the wind blowing cool from the near mountains; but I was too much exhausted to stir; and laid there, kept alive by the pure air alone, until sunset. About that time of day I heard the tread of cattle coming, and the rumbling of wagons. The shock of joy caused me to faint, in which condition I was found by the advance guard of a large train bound for the mines in California. I need not tell you all those men did for me to bring me round, but they were n.o.ble fellows, and earned my everlasting grat.i.tude.

"You can imagine that the first thought in my mind was about you and Benton. When I was able to talk about myself and answer questions, my new friends, who had laid by for a couple of days on my account, a.s.sured me that they should be able to overtake the California train, in which I supposed you were, before they came to the Sierras. But we had accidents and delays, and failed to come up with that train anywhere on the route.

"At last we arrived in the mining country, and my new friends speedily scattered abroad, looking for gold. I was still too feeble to work in the water, washing out, or to dig. I had no money or property of any kind, and was obliged to accept any means that offered of earning a subsistence. Meanwhile I made such inquiry as I could under the circ.u.mstances, and in such a country, but without learning anything of any of my former friends and acquaintances, for two years. Before this time, however, my health was restored, notwithstanding great hardships; and being quite successful in mining, I was laying up considerable gold-dust.

"About this time a man came into our camp from Oregon. As I was in the habit of inquiring of any newcomer concerning you, and the people in the train you were in, I asked this man if he had ever met a Mrs. Greyfield, or any of the others. He replied that he thought there was a woman of my name living in Portland, Oregon, a year or two before--he was sure he had heard of a young widow of that name. I immediately wrote to you at that place; but whether the letter was lost on the way, or whether it was intercepted there (as by some intimations I have from Benton, it might have been), no reply ever came to it. I also sent a letter to Mr.

----, in whose care I had left you, but nothing was ever heard from him.

"When I had waited a reasonable length of time I wrote again to the postmaster of the same place, asking him if he knew of such a person as Mrs. Greyfield, in Oregon. The reply came this time from a man named Seabrook, who said that there had been a woman of the name of Greyfield in Portland at one time, but that both she and her child were dead. This news put an end to inquiries in that direction, though I continued to look for any one who might have known you, and finally found one of our original party, who confirmed the intelligence of your having gone to Oregon instead of California, and so settled the question, as I supposed, forever.

"You may wonder, dear Anna, that I did not go to Oregon when I had the barest suspicion of your being there. The distance and the trouble of getting there were not what deterred me. I was making money where I was, and did not wish to abandon my claim while it was producing well, for an uncertain hint that might mislead me."

"Stop there!" interrupted Mrs. Greyfield. "Do you think _I_ should have hesitated in a case like that? But go on."

"I knew you had considerable property, and thought I knew you were with friends who would not let you suffer--"

"Though they had abandoned him while still alive, in the wilderness! Beg pardon; please go on again."

"And that Oregon was really a more comfortable, and safe place for a family than California, as times were then--"

Mrs. Greyfield groaned.

"And that you, if there, would do very well until I could come for you.

I could not suspect that you would avail yourself of the privilege of widowhood within so short a time, if ever."

"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed my listener, with irrepressible impatience.

I read on without appearing to observe the interruption.