It was not yet daybreak when he got back, and, gaining his room, locked the door. He knew not why he did so, but in the fear and turmoil of his mind he dreaded the possibility of seeing or being seen. He feared, besides, lest some chance word might escape him, some vague phrase might betray him as the witness of a scene he resolved never to disclose. Sometimes, indeed, as he sat there, he would doubt the whole incident, and question whether it had not been the phantasm of an excited brain; but there before him on the table lay the letters; there they were, the terrible evidences of the late crime, and perhaps the proofs of guilt in another too!
This latter thought nearly drove him distracted. There before him lay what secured to him the prize he sought for, and yet what, for aught he knew, might contain what would render that object a shame and a disgrace. It lay with himself to know this. Once in her possession, he, of course, could never know the contents, or if by chance discovery came, it might come too late. He reasoned long and anxiously with himself; he tried to satisfy his mind that there were cases in which self-preservation absolved a man from what in less critical emergencies had been ignominious to do. He asked himself, “Would not a man willingly burn the documents whose production would bring him to disgrace and ruin? and, by the same rule, would not one eagerly explore those which might save him from an irreparable false step? At all events,” thought he, “Fortune has thrown the chance in my way, and so—” He read them.
CHAPTER VII. THE COTTAGE NEAR BREGENZ
There was something actually artistic in the choice old Holmes had made for his daughter's residence near Bregenz. It was an old-fashioned farmhouse, with a deep eave, and a massive cornice beneath it. A wooden gallery ran the entire length, with a straggling stair to it, overgrown with a very ancient fig-tree, whose privilege it was to interweave through the balustrades, and even cross the steps at will, the whole nearly hidden by the fine old chestnut-trees which clothe the Gebhardts-Berg to its very summit. It was the sort of spot a lone and sorrowing spirit might have sought out to weep away unseen, to commune with grief in solitude, and know nothing of a world she was no more to share in. The simple-hearted peasants who accepted them as lodgers asked no reason for their selection of the place, nor were they likely, in their strange dialect, to be able to discuss the point with others, save their neighbors. The chief room, which had three windows opening on a little terrace, looked out upon a glorious panorama of the Swiss Alps, with the massive mountains that lead to the Splugen; and it was at one of these Mrs. Morris—or rather, to give her that name by which for the last few pages of our story she may be called, Mrs. Hawke—now sat, as the sun was sinking, watching with an unfeigned enjoyment the last gorgeous tints of declining day upon the snow peaks.
Perhaps at that moment the sense of repose was the most grateful of all sensations to her, for she had passed through a long day of excitement and fatigue. Like a great actress who had, in her impersonation of a difficult part, called forth all her powers of voice, look, and gesture, straining every fibre to develop to the utmost the passion she would convey, and tearing her very heart to show its agony, she was now to feel the terrible depression of reaction, the dreary void of the solitude around her, and the death-like stillness of her own subdued emotions. But yet, through all this, there was a rapturous enjoyment in the thought of a task accomplished, an ordeal passed.
On that same morning it was Trover had arrived with Mr. Winthrop, and her first meeting took place with the friend of her late husband,—perhaps the one living being whom alone of all the world she felt a sort of terror at seeing. The fear he inspired was vague, and not altogether reasonable; but it was there, and she could not master it. Till she met him, indeed, it almost overcame her; but when she found him a mild old man, of gentle manners and a quiet presence, unsuspecting and frank, and extending towards her a compassionate protection, she rallied quickly from her fears, and played out her part courageously.
How affecting was her grief! It was one of those touching pictures which, while they thrill the heart, never harrow the feelings. It was sorrow made beautiful, rather than distressing. Time, of course, long years, had dulled the bitterness of her woe, and only cast the sombre coloring of sadness over a nature that might have been—who knows?—made for joy and brightness. Unused to such scenes, the honest American could only sit in a sort of admiring pity of such a victim to an early sorrow; so fair a creature robbed of her just meed of this world's happiness, and by a terrible destiny linked with an awful event! And how lovely she was through it all, how forgiving of that man's cruelty! He knew Hawke well, and he was no stranger to the trials a woman must have gone through who had been chained to his coarse and brutal nature; and yet not a harsh word fell from her, not a syllable of reproach or blame. No; she had all manner of excuses to make for him, in the evil influences by which he was surrounded, the false and bad men who assumed to be his friends.
It was quite touching to hear her allude to the happiness of their early married life,—their contentment with humble fortune, their willing estrangement from a world of luxury and display, to lead an existence of cultivated pursuits and mutual affection. Winthrop was moved as he listened, and Trover had to wipe his eyes.
Of the dreadful event of her life she skilfully avoided details, dwelling only on such parts of it as might illustrate her own good qualities, her devotion to the memory of one of whom she had much to pardon, and her unceasing affection for his child. If the episode of that girl's illness and death was only invented at the moment of telling, it lost nothing by the want of premeditation; and Winthrop's tears betrayed how he took to heart the desolate condition of that poor bereaved woman.