Miriam Monfort / A Novel

by Catherine A. Warfield

"You will do no such thing, my very dear young friend," said Mr. Bainrothe, advancing and laying his hand lightly on my arm—I shook it off, as if it had been a cold, crawling serpent. He retreated quietly but quickly. "You will do no such thing, Miriam," he repeated, resuming his post by the mantel-shelf, without evincing the least discomposure at my behavior to him; "your own good sense, your own good feeling will come to your assistance when you look this matter fully in the face, and dispassionately, which I must say you are not doing now. I have not earned at your hands mistrust and obloquy like this, Miriam; but, for the sake of the past, I shall strive and bear with the present. Who has inspired you with such opinions of me?"

Accomplished hypocrite! He tried to assume a much-injured air, to mingle forbearance with his reproachful words; but my heart was as hard toward him as a nether millstone, and his words made no impression on my flinty feelings, not even enough to strike fire therefrom, or sparks.

"No one," I replied, "no one; I judge for myself in all instances. Why did you secrete gold in the dead hour of the night, which, unless you bore it away in the same mysterious, or even more subtle manner, ought still to be in its hiding-place? Why did you preserve, even from Evelyn, your knowledge of that retreat, and the payment of the loan, which she asserts you have never communicated to her, from first to last? Why make mysteries of business transactions which, by the tenor of my father's will, she had a right to participate in, and be consulted about. Why?"

"I will tell you," he interrupted, gravely, and not without emotion. "Pause, and I will explain my reasons, painful as it is to me to do this, and greatly as I compromise myself by so doing, for, should you choose to be indiscreet, I shall have gained a dangerous enemy. I have no confidence in Evelyn Erie, in her truth, her sincerity, her honesty, even. I would not place temptation in her way. There, that is why I concealed the secrets of the spring-lock and recess in the wall from her, to secure them for you. As to the depositing of gold in that iron chest, I did it simply because I knew of no other place so safe and secret. In my own house none such exists, and, as I never kept gold for more than a few days after it was received, I thought it scarcely worth while to place it in the vaults of the bank. As I tell you, it was removed in September."

Surely no art was ever greater of its kind than that he manifested on this trying occasion, yet it fell to the earth, like the shedding scales of a serpent, before my simple discernment. Yet his words, his manner, did in some strange and unexplained way greatly exonerate Evelyn in my estimation, at least for a time, of complicity.

How could I consistently believe that two persons, entertaining of each other such similar and degrading opinions, could trust one another sufficiently to become confederates? Alas! I did not reflect that it is of such conflicting elements conspirators and conspiracies themselves are usually made, and that union of guilt creates eternal enmity.

I could not penetrate such depths of guile! I surrendered myself readily, I confess, to these fresh convictions. Evelyn was narrow, selfish, scheming, but, at all events, was not in league with this vampire. That was much. We might still make common cause against him—she with her injuries to avenge, I with mine—and preserve intact, and without his hated interference, that which was left to us at least.

There was comfort in the thought.

While these considerations were photographing themselves on my brain, with that indescribable rapidity of process whereby the action of the mind excels even that of light, Mr. Bainrothe was again settling himself down in my father's deep chair, and now once more addressed me in a sad and broken voice, perfectly well suited to the occasion.

"Miriam," he said, "I too have been an extensive loser through the failure of the Bank of Pennsylvania. Like yourself, with the exception of the house I now reside in, and some few small tenements I hold for rent, I find every thing swept away from me. Claude, it is true, is comfortable, and on his slender estate we must both now manage to support ourselves. You see marriage on his part is now simply out of the question. He has his father to take care of."