The Cryptogram: A Novel

by James De Mille

"Yes," said the Earl; "he lived there for two years, and I scarcely ever saw him. I was in politics; he was in the army. I was busy every moment of my time; he had all that leisure which officers enjoy, and leading the life of gayety peculiar to them. But why do you ask? What connection has all this with the papers?"

Zillah murmured some inaudible words, and then sat watching the Earl as he began to examine the papers, with a face on which there were visible a thousand contending emotions. The Earl looked over the papers. There was the cipher and the key; and there was also a paper written out by Zillah, containing the explanation of the cipher, according to the key. On the paper which contained the key was a written statement to the effect that two-thirds of the letters had no meaning. Trusting to this, Zillah had written out her translation of the cipher, just as Hilda had before done.

The Earl read the translation through most carefully.

"What's this?" he exclaimed, in deeper agitation. Zillah made no reply. In fact, at that moment her heart was throbbing so furiously that she could not have spoken a word. Now had come the crisis of her fate, and her heart, by a certain deep instinct, told her this. Beneath all the agitation arising from the change in the Earl there was something more profound, more dread. It was a continuation of that dark foreboding which she had felt at Pomeroy Court--a certain fearful looking for of some obscure and shadowy calamity.

The Earl, after reading the translation, took the cipher writing and held up the key beside it, while his thin hands trembled, and his eyes seemed to devour the sheet, as he slowly spelled out the frightful meaning. It was bad for Zillah that these papers had fallen into his hands in such a way. Her evil star had been in the ascendant when she was drawn on to this. Coming to him thus, from the hand of Zillah herself, there was an authenticity and an authority about the papers which otherwise might have been wanting. It was to him, at this time; precisely the same as if they had been handed to him by the General himself. Had they been discovered by himself originally, it is possible--in fact, highly probable--that he would have looked upon them with different eyes, and their effect upon him would have been far otherwise. As it was, however, Zillah herself had found them and given them to him. Zillah had been exciting him by her agitation and her suffering, and had, last of all, been rousing him gradually up to a pitch of the most intense excitement, by the conversation which she had brought forward, by her timidity, her reluctance, her strange questionings, and her general agitation. To a task which required the utmost coolness of feeling, and calm impartiality of judgment, he brought a feverish heart, a heated brain, and an unreasoning fear of some terrific disclosure. All this prepared him to accept blindly whatever the paper might reveal.

As he examined the paper he did not look at Zillah, but spelled out the words from the characters, one by one, and saw that the translation was correct. This took a long time; and all the while Zillah sat there, with her eyes fastened on him; but he did not give her one look. All his soul seemed to be absorbed by the papers before him. At last he ended with the cipher writing--or, at least, with as much of it as was supposed to be decipherable--and then he turned to the other papers. These he read through; and then, beginning again, he read them through once more. One only exclamation escaped him. It was while reading that last letter, where mention was made of the name Redfield Lyttoun being an assumed one. Then he said, in a low voice which seemed like a groan wrung out by anguish from his inmost soul:

"Oh, my God! my God!"

At last the Earl finished examining the papers. He put them down feebly, and sat staring blankly at vacancy. He looked ten years older than when he had entered the dining-room. His face was as bloodless as the face of a corpse, his lips were ashen, and new furrows seemed to have been traced on his brow. On his face there was stamped a fixed and settled expression of dull, changeless anguish, which smote Zillah to her heart. He did not see her--he did not notice that other face, as pallid as his own, which was turned toward his, with an agony in its expression which rivaled all that he was enduring. No--he noticed nothing, and saw no one. All his soul was taken up now with one thought. He had read the paper, and had at once accepted its terrific meaning. To him it had declared that in the tragedy of his young life, not only his wife had been false, but his friend also. More--that it was his friend who had betrayed his wife. More yet--and there was fresh anguish in this thought--this friend, after the absence of many years, had returned and claimed his friendship, and had received his confidences. To him he had poured out the grief of his heart--the confession of life-long sorrows which had been wrought by the very man to whom he told his tale. And this was the man who, under the plea of ancient friendship, had bought his son for gold! Great Heaven! the son of the woman whom he had ruined--and for gold! He had drawn away his wife to ruin--he had come and drawn away his son--into what? into a marriage with the daughter of his own mother's betrayer.

Such were the thoughts, mad, frenzied, that filled Lord Chetwynde's mind as he sat there stunned--paralyzed by this hideous accumulation of intolerable griefs. What was Zillah to him now? The child of a foul traitor. The one to whom his noble son had been sold. That son had been, as he once said, the solace of his life. For his sake he had been content to live even under his load of shame and misery. For him he had labored; for his happiness he had planned. And for what? What? That which was too hideous to think of--a living death--a union with one from whom he ought to stand apart for evermore.

Little did Zillah know what thoughts were sweeping and surging through the mind of Lord Chetwynde as she sat there watching him with her awful eyes. Little did she dream of the feelings with which, at that moment, he regarded her. Nothing of this kind came to her. One only thought was present--the anguish which he was enduring. The sight of that anguish was intolerable. She looked, and waited, and at last, unable to bear this any longer, she sprang forward, and tore his hands away from his face.