“Going down to the bank, I procured the bonds from my box in the safe. I felt like a thief, and the manner in which it was done was unwittingly suggestive of crime, but with that and the position in which I have since found myself placed by this very action, I need not cumber my present narrative. Handing the bonds to my agent with orders to sell them to the best advantage, I took a short walk to quiet my nerves and realize what I had done, and then went home.
“Paula, had God in his righteous anger seen fit to strike me down that day, it would have been no more than my due and aroused in me, perhaps, no more than a natural repentence. But when I saw her for whose sake I had ostensibly committed this fresh abuse of trust, lying cold and dead before me, the sword of the Almighty pierced me to the soul, and I fell prostrate beneath a remorse to which any regret I had hitherto experienced, was as the playing of a child with shadows. Had I by the losing of my right arm been able to recall my action, I would have done it; indeed I made an effort to recover myself; had my agent followed up with an order to return me the bonds I had given him, but it was too late, the compromise had already been effected by telegraph and the money was out of our hands. The deed was done and I had made myself unworthy of your presence and your smile at the very hour when both would have been inestimable to me. You remember those days; remember our farewell. Let me believe you do not blame me now for what must have seemed harsh and unnecessary to you then.
“There is but little more to write, but in that little is compressed the passion, longing, hope and despair of a lifetime. When I told you as I did a few hours ago that my sin was dead and its consequences at an end, I repeat that I fully and truly believed it. The hundred thousand dollars I had sent West, had been used to advantage, and only day before yesterday I was enabled to sell out my share in the mine, for a large sum that leaves me free and unembarrassed, to make the fortune of more than one Japha, should God ever see fit to send them across my pathway. More than that, Mr. Delafield, of whose discretion I had sometimes had my fears, was dead, having perished of a fever some months before in San Francisco; and of all men living, there were none as I believed, who knew anything to the discredit of my name. I was clear, or so I thought, in fortune and in fame; and being so, dreamed of taking to my empty and yearning arms, the loveliest and the purest of mortal women. But God watched over you and prevented an act whose consequences might have been so cruel. In an hour, Paula, in an hour, I had learned that the foul thing was not dead, that a witness had picked up the words I had allowed to fall in my interview with my father-in-law in the restaurant two years before; an unscrupulous witness who had been on my track ever since, and who now in his eagerness for a victim, had by mistake laid his clutch upon our Bertram. Yes, owing to the similarity of our voices and the fact that we both make use of a certain tell-tale word, this patient and upright nephew of mine stands at this moment under the charge of having acknowledged in the hearing of this person, to the committal of an act of dishonesty in the past. A foolish charge you will say, and one easily refuted. Alas, a fresh act of dishonesty lately perpetrated in the bank, complicates matters. A theft has been committed on some of Mr. Stuyvesant’s effects, and that, too, under circumstances that involuntarily arouse suspicion against some one of the bank officials; and Bertram, if not sustained in his reputation, must suffer from the doubts which naturally have arisen in Mr. Stuyvesant’s breast. The story which this man could tell, must of course shake the faith of any one in the reputation of him against whom it is directed, and the man intends to repeat his story, and that, too, in the very ears of him upon whose favor Bertram depends for his life’s happiness and the winning of the woman he adores. I adore you, Paula, but I cannot clasp you to my heart across another sin. If the detectives whom we shall call in to-morrow, cannot exonerate those connected with the bank from the theft lately committed there—and the fact that you have been allowed to read this letter, prove they have not—I must do what I can to relieve Bertram from his painful position, by taking upon myself the onus of that past transgression which of right belongs to my account; and this once done, let the result be for good or ill, any bond between you and me is cut loose forever. I have not learned to love at this late hour, to wrong the precious thing I cherish. Death as it is to me to say good-bye to the one last gleam of heavenly light that has shot across my darkened way, it must be done, dear heart, if only to hold myself worthy of the tender and generous love you have designed to bestow upon me. Bertram, who is all generosity, may guess but does not know, what I am about to do. Go down to him, dear; tell him that at this very moment, perhaps, I am clearing his name before the wretch who has so ruthlessly fastened his fang upon him; that his love and Cicely’s shall prosper, as he has been loyal, and she trusting, all these years of effort and probation; that I give him my blessing, and that if we do not meet again, I delegate to him the trust of which I so poorly acquitted myself. But before you go, stop a moment and in this room, which has always symbolized to my eyes the poverty which was my rightful due, kneel and pray for my soul; for if God grants me the wish of my heart, he will strike me with sudden death after I have taken upon myself the disgrace of my past offences. Life without love can be borne, but life without honor never. To come and go amongst my fellow-men with a shadow on the fame they have always believed spotless! Do not ask me to attempt it! Pray for my soul, but pray too, that I may perish in some quick and sudden way before ever your dear eyes rest upon my face again.
“And now, as though this were to be the end, let me take my last farewell of you. I have loved you, Paula, loved you with my heart, my mind and my soul. You have been my angel of inspiration and the source of all my comfort. I kneel before you in gratitude, and I stand above you in blessing. May every pang I suffer this hour, redound to you in some sweet happiness hereafter. I do not quarrel with my fate, I only ask God to spare you from its shadow. And He will. Love will flow back upon your young life, and in regions where our eye now fails to pierce, you will taste every joy which your generous heart once thought to bestow on
“Edward Sylvester.”
XL.
HALF-PAST SEVEN.
“I would it were midnight, Hal, and all well.”—Henry IV.