Wives and Widows; or The Broken Life Part 68

"I kissed her while she was dying. Did Judas feel so when he betrayed the Saviour? No wonder he went out and killed himself. A drop of her life-blood clung to my lips. I washed it off again and again, but it burns there yet--it burns there yet....

"Weeks have pa.s.sed, mostly in solitude, for we keep apart from each other, and meet gloomily when forced into domestic companionship. I am sure this man loves me, though as yet he has given no sign. I am equally sure that the other inmates of the house hate me.

"I have written to Lawrence, explaining away many things that drove him from the neighborhood. I have told him that Jessie Lee is not engaged--that she has loved him from the first. This will bring him back. Let him marry her; his presence is my life. That much at least will be secured.

"He has been here, she has refused him utterly, and he is furious. Oh, such words as he used, such cruel, hard truths as he told me! They pierce my heart like arrows poison-tipped. He does not love me--never did. This thought makes me hard as iron, resolute as a tigress.

"I am about to leave the Ridge. I have separated him from his household.

It was the necessity of my position. Had these two women regained their influence over Mr. Lee, I should have lost him too. As it is, they will be left alone. I shall not be absent from his house twenty-four hours before he will depart also.

"He intends to leave home at once and travel in Europe. About the end of this year he will be in Paris. He asked no questions about my movements, but there was anxiety and deep distress in his eyes that I understood.

"I shall go at once to New York, sell my jewels, and hold myself in readiness for anything that comes. But one thing is certain--this man and I meet again."

Mrs. Dennison's journal closed here. I read it through, word by word, until my very heart grew cold with horror and dread. It is a terrible thing to be made the custodian of a great crime. It haunted me night and day, until the very burden of it threatened to undermine my health.

I hid the book away, and locked it close from all knowledge but my own.

For the universe I would not have told Jessie one word of the awful crime it revealed. I think it would have killed her. But all this time my soul grew faint with apprehension. The year was wellnigh at its close. Would this woman carry out her project and meet Mr. Lee in Paris?

The thought drove me wild. I resolved to leave home and cross the ocean rather than allow a n.o.ble and good man to be wiled on to a union with that terrible woman. But this was difficult. How could I leave Jessie to such perfect loneliness? These thoughts filled my mind day and night, haunting me almost into insanity.

Sometimes I thought of Lottie with a gleam of hope: possibly she had undertaken the daring enterprise which I contemplated with so much terror. I resolved to wait a while, hoping that she might send us some intelligence.

Weeks went by and we heard nothing of her. She had not promised to write--still we anxiously expected to hear of her welfare; but nothing came. Like Mr. Lee, Lottie seemed to have been swept out of our lives.

All this was very sad; but we received a little sunshine in the constant visits of young Bosworth, who was so happy now in his but half acknowledged engagement to our Jessie that all our troubles were chased away in his presence. As for the old lady--but it is impossible to explain what a protection and comfort her society proved to us at this time.

A month--six weeks went by, and still nothing of Mr. Lee or of Lottie; both had deserted us, and we were indeed alone. Jessie had some consolation in the dawning tenderness of her second love; but I--oh!

those were dreary, dreary days to me!

CHAPTER LXXIV.

LOTTIE'S LETTER.

One morning I found a letter on the hall-table, which sent all the blood from my heart. The handwriting I did not know, but it had a foreign post-mark, and that set my hand to trembling as I touched it. The address was to myself.

Jessie was still in the room; so, like a thief, I s.n.a.t.c.hed the precious messenger, and went off to my old place on the Ridge, where I could be sure of solitude. I was breathless on reaching the rock, and sat down with a hand pressed hard against my heart, which throbbed with suffocating violence.

I sat down and tore open the envelope. It was a long, heavy letter, closely written. I recognized the handwriting with a thrill of dread.

With a sinking heart I turned over the pages, and saw "Lottie" written on the extreme corner of the last sheet.

"Lottie!" and the letter dated in Paris! What could it mean? It was some moments before I composed myself sufficiently to make out the first few lines, though they were characteristic enough.

"My very dear Miss Hyde," the letter began, "I a'n't much used to writing letters, and it seems to me as if this would be long and hard work; but things must be told, and if I don't write them, who will?

"You thought hard of me, I dare say, for leaving you just as I did; but I thought just the other way about it, and haven't changed my mind yet.

It was tough work, though, to get away from home and bid you both good-bye, as I did. I hope to goodness you will never have to go through with anything like it. I could not tell you then what it was that set me off; but I will now.

"That very morning, before I came down on you for the money, the man from town brought over some things done up in a newspaper more than six weeks old, and in it I read that Mrs. Bab--I beg pardon--Madam Dennison had set sail in a steamboat for a place called Havre, across the Atlantic Ocean; I know more of places and things than you might believe.

I was sure that Havre was in Europe, and knew well enough that Mr. Lee was there--a rich widower--with no one in the wide world to keep him from getting into sc.r.a.pes. Of course, anybody that could see through a mill-stone might have known what that she-Bab--no, I mean that lady and servant--went to Havre for.

"Well, I thought it all over, and made up my mind what to do. First, I concluded to keep a close mouth in regard to Miss Jessie, for I was sure that she would wilt right down; and as for you--well, no matter: that little secret lies between you and me. Silent was the word then; but I had made up my mind to travel, and was bound to do it. But people can't sail across oceans, and gulfs, and inlets, and such kind of waterworks, without money, and I hadn't but two half-dollars in the world. You know how I came down on you and the dear young lady like a roaring lion, and got that six hundred dollars; I'd rather have danced on red-hot coals an hour than do what I did. It was just highway burglary, and nothing less.

I hate myself for it yet.

"Well, after I got the money I made quick work of it, sat up all night, did a little packing, a little praying, and a great deal of crying till daylight came; then I put for the railroad and flashed down to New York.

A newspaper that I bought of a little boy in the cars told me that a steamer sailed for Havre that very day. The minute we stopped in New York I got lost in a crowd of carriage-drivers and long whips, that seemed terribly glad to see me; and one of them took me on one side as kind as could be, asking where I wanted to go, promising to take me right there--that is, to the steamer--trunk and all, in no time.

"The man kept his word. I got into his carriage, and we drove through long streets, and cross-streets, down among acres of ships that looked like blasted trees, and at last we got to a steamer with stairs down its black sides, and smoke puffing out from its chimneys in a frightful way.

"The man climbed up the stairs with my trunk on his shoulder; I followed. He set it down, and I sat down on it. Then the man wanted two dollars, and I gave him one, at which he grumbled a little; but I told him that I had travelled, and knew what was what. Then he went away and left me alone in the crowd; so I had a good cry all to myself, thinking of you folks at home, and wondering what would become of me in the end.

"While I was sitting there _so_ heavy-hearted, the bells started out a-ringing, the steamer began to heave and groan, half the people went helter-skelter down the side of the vessel, and the other half crowded toward one end. Then we began to move, and I felt the blood creep up and down my limbs as shivery as ice. I remember seeing, through the tears that almost blinded me, handkerchiefs waving and people crying on the deck and down on the wharf; but there was n.o.body to cry about me, nor shake away their sorrow from a white handkerchief; so I just huddled down on the trunk and gave right up.

"Oh! how my heart sunk as the steamer swung round and dashed out into the great river; and, to scare me worse, a gun went off, bang! sending a stream of smoke behind us. I covered my face in my hands and cried--oh!

how I did cry!

"When I looked up again, New York was a great way off; the ships looked like a forest of dead pine-trees, and everything else lay in a blue fog.

I looked the other way, where the sun was going down in the deep, deep water. There everything was lonesome as the grave, and I almost wished that I was dead. But the steamer kept on prowling along the water, like a great wild beast, worrying us all into the next world. It seemed as if I was going off, far, far away from where my mistress had gone.

"I had been lonesome before in my life; but this was worse than that. I wanted to creep into some corner and die. Then I remembered that I had promised _her_, when she lay dead in the tower-chamber, to be a mother to you and Miss Jessie, and made a little prayer to G.o.d that He would help me in the thing that I was going about. It was all I could do.

"When the steamer was out in the deep waters, and the dark came on, a man stood by my trunk and asked why it was that I stayed out of my room.

Then I told him my trunk was room enough for me just then; so he went away and brought another man, who asked if I had a state-room and a ticket.

"I told him the truth--that I didn't know what a state-room was; but that something I had eaten must have made me sick, and I wanted to lie down dreadfully.

"The man told me that a state-room would cost more than a hundred dollars; so I told him I'd rather stay on deck, for there was no certainty how much money I might want to spend before I got back.

"Then they began talking about second cabins, and asked how much money I could pay; but, somehow, I was too sick to care much, and let 'em pay themselves; so they took me down into a room with beds made like shelves along the sides, and I fell into one. Oh, mercy! I can't think of it now without being dizzy.

"Day and night--day and night--rock, rock--plunge, plunge--till at last there was an end of the eternal waters, and we landed at Havre,--an old fussy place that seemed as unsteady as the ship.

"Europe is a large place, Miss Hyde, and I didn't know whereabouts in it Mr. Lee or that woman was to be found; but I had money, and the mistress always taught me to trust in G.o.d when I couldn't do anything on my own hook. So I watched everything that went on among the pa.s.sengers, and kept a prayer for help stirring in the bottom of my heart.

"At first I was about to ask some of the pa.s.sengers which way I'd better turn, but concluded to wait. So I followed the crowd when it left the steamer, and it took me into a hotel as old as the hills, where women were running round in their nightcaps and chattering like tame crows.

"I went into a room with the rest, and sat down with my satchel on my lap, keeping a keen eye on everything. We had to wait a good while; for the men at the wharf wanted to see if everything was put up nicely in my trunk; but they promised to give it back, and a pa.s.senger said he would send it with his to the hotel, as I was alone. I had to wait.

"As I sat there watching, some gentlemen came in that seemed to know some of our pa.s.sengers. They had just run down from Paris, I heard them say, to meet their friends on landing. They were nice, genteel men, and I listened to their talk, having nothing else to busy myself with. After a good deal of shaking hands and questioning about the voyage, they began to talk about Paris, especially about its hotels, and what Americans were at them.

"I held my breath and listened. The Hotel de Louvre, or Loofer, or something like that, they said, was the hotel where Americans went most.

There was a great number of distinguished persons there now, and they went over a list of names. When they came to that of Mr. Lee, I caught my breath, and sprang up, dropping my satchel, with the gold in it, with a clank to the floor. No one minded me; so I sat down again, trembling all over, and listened. Then Mrs. Dennison's name was huddled in among the rest, and I knew that the persons I was in search of were in the same town together, and very near too; for the men who had run down from Paris didn't seem out of breath or the least tired. So I made up my mind to go there at once, and come back in an hour or two after my trunk.

"'Please, sir,' said I to one of the gentlemen, 'can you tell me just how far Paris is from this hotel, and which way I must turn?'