And now I must shut this up,' sealing it with a kiss from baby, and one from your own HELEN.
Helen Griswold sealed her letter, placed it in a large envelope, on which she wrote, with a strange shrinking repugnance, Trenton Warren's New York address, despatched it by a special messenger to his office, and went immediately to her child. A nervous flurry had come upon her while writing the last lines of her letter, and it was only by a determined struggle with herself that she kept off a passionate fit of crying; but she put it down, and went into the nursery with a calm face. This woman was growing apace. By what mysterious process? She talked cheerfully to Mrs. Jenkins, and taking the baby, who was sleepy, in her arms, rocked it to rest. The monotonous movement had a quieting influence upon herself, and by degrees her cheerfulness was restored.
That night, when Helen Griswold was in her own room, she wrote for a while in the private memorandum-book in which we have already seen her record the circumstances which had given a double current and meaning to her life. Having made a few cursory notes of the main points of her letter to her husband, laying special stress upon the mention of Trenton Warren, she went on to note in her duplicate chronicle the principal event of the day--this was Thornton Carey's visit.
'I wonder,' she wrote, 'why it is that a pure and unmitigated pleasure, one totally unassociated with any pain, one perfectly free from any drawback, should not avail to crush, at least for a time, the oppressing pain and dread which has been troubling me of late. If I have, as I believe I have, a relentless enemy in Trenton Warren, I have a friend upon whose fidelity I may rely, whose love I can trust with all my heart, and accept with all my conscience, to oppose to him. My friend is a cleverer man than my enemy; he surpasses him by all the distance which makes a gentleman to surpass a man who is not a gentleman; his will is as steadfast; his courage is, or I am much mistaken, far more high; of his devotion to me I have many years' experience; of his devotion to Alston I have the guarantee of a nature large enough and good enough to contain that great virtue, gratitude; and yet there is no reassurance, there is no consolation, there is no rest for me in all this knowledge. I don't think it would come, if even I should tell Thornton what is in my heart; and that I could not do! I could not bear that lie should know that such a profanation had ever overtaken me as the avowal of this man's hideous love; the mere remembrance of it seems to stain my soul, as it troubles my repose; it has gotten into my life like a bad influence. When I awake in the morning, I think not of Alston, but of Warren, and I welcome sleep because it shuts out the hateful remembrance. I must shake this off, or I shall turn the fancied evil into a real one, and give my own fears their worst fulfilment.'
[CHAPTER IV.]
'SCOT FREE.'
On the morning after the murder, so much of the daylight as could force its way through the begrimed glass, or greased paper acting as substitute for absent glass, in the low window of the tramps' home struggled in a shame-faced manner into the den, and faintly revealed the prostrate forms of its inhabitants.
Most of them were still asleep, but by one man there the advent of that streak of light had been long and anxiously looked for. This was the man dressed in sailor's clothes, whose dread proceedings on the previous night have been at length recounted; he who was called Tom Summers by those lying around him, and whose demand for a pillow, and complaint of the loss of his bundle, had alternately roused their scorn and mirth.
As the first ray penetrated the room, Tom Summers cautiously withdrew the arm which, during the night, he had kept drawn across his face, and looked round him. So far as he could make out, none of his companions were yet awake, and he availed himself of the opportunity to take a small looking-glass from his pocket, and propping it against the wall, he rapidly surveyed himself in it, pulling his red wig further down over his face, and settling the red beard, which had become shifted during the night. No stings of conscience, no terrifying reminiscences of the foul deed which he had committed, disturbed his rest; the strain upon his mental and bodily faculties had been so great that he had slept heavily and soundly, without a dream, without a movement. Even then, as he surveyed himself in the little pocket glass, he felt his eyelids closing, the elbow on which he leant giving way under him, and he felt more than half inclined to drop down upon his side, and slumber again.
It must not be! He had set himself the task of rousing with daylight, and had fulfilled it, and he had too much to do to permit himself to relapse into slumber; so, after indulging in one luxurious but silent yawn and stretch, he pulled himself together by an effort, and staggered to his feet. One or two of the sleepers in his immediate neighbourhood, roused by the noise he made, cursed him roundly; but beyond this no notice was taken of his proceedings.