The next morning, after General Garnet had left the house—for the whole day—Alice arose, still dizzy and weak, not only from the effects of the blow, but from fasting and anxiety. She was scarcely seated in her chair when a letter was brought to her that had come in the mail-bag from the post office. It was superscribed in the handwriting of Dr. Hardcastle. Alice tore it open, and read a much longer epistle than I can find space to transcribe here, reader, but the sum total of it was this: Magnus informed his friend Alice of what she already knew—General Garnet’s expressed determination to break the engagement existing between himself and Elsie, for mere mercenary motives; of his own and Elsie’s fixed resolution to abide by their betrothal, and his hopes that their decision would meet her—Alice’s—approval. He told her of his wish that their marriage should take place on Thursday, as had been first proposed; and of his intention to depart on the following Monday for his home, among the new settlements in the backwoods of Maryland. He told her, farther, that he had called the day before to see her and Elsie, but that he had been refused admittance at the very threshold, the servants adducing their master’s commands as their warrant. He had heard, he said, that Elsie was immured, but hoped and believed that this was not so. He concluded by entreating Alice to write and inform him of her own and Elsie’s state of health and spirits, and advise him how to proceed.
Alice folded the letter, clasped her hands, and closed her eyes a moment in intense thought and prayer. Then, bidding Milly wheel her writing table before her, she took pen and paper, and wrote the following short but important note:
“Dear Magnus:
“As soon as you see this, go to a locksmith and send him instantly to me. Then get a carriage, procure your license, call at Fig’s to take up the young Methodist minister who boards there, and come at once to Mount Calm. When you return, Elsie shall accompany you.
“Your friend,
“Alice Garnet.”
She sealed this note, dispatched it, and then dropped her head into her hands, holding it tightly, as though to chain thought to its object. Then once more she drew her writing-desk nearer to her, took her pen, and wrote these hurried lines to Elsie:
“Within a very few hours from this, my own dear Elsie, you will be released and married. And now let me tell you, my own dear child, my reasons for advising and aiding you in this step. It is not only, my Elsie, that your heart has long been given to Magnus; that your hand has long been pledged to him with the approbation of both your parents; that your happiness is concerned in being united to him; that your honor is implicated in keeping faith with him; it is not, either, that it would be a heinous wickedness to forsake your betrothed at the very moment that fortune forsakes him, and in the hour of his greatest adversity; it is not that this very desertion of yours would shake his faith in all that is good and true in heaven or on earth, palsy his energy and enterprise, and thus do him a serious mortal and social injury. And, on the other hand, it is not that you do not love Lionel. No, Elsie, it is simply because Magnus is entirely the better man of the two,—better, incomparably better,—physically, mentally, morally, religiously. Magnus is healthful, strong, handsome, energetic, highly intellectual, purely moral, profoundly religious; and he loves you completely. Lionel is broken in constitution, evidently by excess; indolent, selfish, voluptuous, yet irritable and often violent. His interest in you is a low compound of vanity, cupidity, and sense—it would be false and profane to call it by the sacred name of love. Magnus would make you better and happier, in loving you greatly, in elevating your moral and religious nature, while Lionel would draw you down to the misery and degradation of his own low nature. My child, my one lone child, it is for this consideration that I bar you from wealth, luxury, ease, adulation, and give you to the stern but kindly discipline of poverty, toil, and privation—with love by your side, to lighten all your labors and God above you to reward them. May God love you, my only child! my little Elsie!”
No tear-drop blotted this paper, though her tears had fallen thick, and fast, and blindingly, while she wrote it. She had turned her head away; for no sign of sorrow should wound and weaken Elsie in the letter written to comfort and sustain her. She had turned her head away, and the tears had rained upon her lap. Many times she had arisen from her writing desk and fallen, overcome with grief, upon the bed. But it was done. She had succeeded. And there was nothing upon the paper or in the letter to betray the anguish of mind in which it was written.
Trying to steer as blamelessly as she could through her labyrinth of duties, Alice would not call one of the servants, all of whom had been expressly forbidden to approach the attic, but took the paper herself, went feebly up the stairs, and supporting herself by the balustrades, she reached the topmost landing, and went to the door of Elsie’s room.