The Cryptogram: A Novel

by James De Mille

"No," said Lord Chetwynde, coldly and severely.

Hilda raised her head, and looked at him with mute inquiry.

"I will explain," said Lord Chetwynde. "I have already said all that I ought to say; but you force me to say more, though I am unwilling. Your letters, Lady Chetwynde, were the things which quelled and finally killed all kindly feelings."

"Letters!" burst in Hilda, with eager vehemence. "They were the letters of a hot-tempered girl, blinded by pique and self-conceit, and carelessly indulging in a foolish spite which in her heart she did not seriously feel."

"Pardon me," said Lord Chetwynde, with cold politeness, "I think you are forgetting the circumstances under which they were written--for this must be considered as well as the nature of the compositions themselves. They were the letters of one whom my father loved, and of whom he always spoke in the tenderest language, but who yet was so faithless to him that she never ceased to taunt me with what she called our baseness. She never spared the old man who loved her. For months and for years these letters came. It was something more than pique, something more than self-conceit or spite, which lay at the bottom of such long-continued insults. The worst feature about them was their cold-blooded cruelty. Nothing in my circumstances or condition could prevent this--not even that long agony before Delhi"--added Lord Chetwynde, in tones filled with a deeper indignation--"when I, lost behind the smoke and cloud and darkness of the great struggle, was unable to write for a long time; and, finally, was able to give my account of the assault and the triumph. Not even that could change the course of the insults which were so freely heaped upon me. And yet it would have been easy to avoid all this. Why write at all? There was no heavy necessity laid upon you. That was the question which I used to put to myself. But you persisted in writing, and in sending to me over the seas, with diabolical pertinacity, those hideous letters in which every word was a stab."

While Lord Chetwynde had been speaking Hilda sat looking at him, and meeting his stern glance with a look which would have softened any one less bitter. Paler and paler grew her face, and her hands clutched one another in tremulous agitation, which showed her strong emotion.

"Oh, my lord!" she cried, as he ceased, "can you not have mercy? Think of that black cloud that came down over my young life, filling it with gloom and horror. I confess that you and your father appeared the chief agents; but I learned to love _him_, and then all my bitterness turned on _you_--you, who seemed to be so prosperous, so brave, and so honored. It was you who seemed to have blighted my life, and so I was animated by a desire to make you feel something of what I had felt. My disposition is fiery and impetuous; my father's training made it worse. I did not know you; I only felt spite against you, and thus I wrote those fatal letters. I thought that you could have prevented that marriage if you had wished, and therefore could never feel any thing but animosity. But now the sorrows through which I have passed have changed me, and you yourself have made me see how mad was my action. But oh, my lord, believe me, it was not deliberate, it was hasty passion! and now I would be willing to wipe out every word in those hateful letters with my heart's blood!"

Hilda's voice was low but impassioned, with a certain burning fervor of entreaty; her words had become words almost of prayer, so deep was her humiliation. Her face was turned toward him with an imploring expression, and her eyes were fixed on his in what seemed an agony of suspense. But not even that white face, with its ashen lips and its anguish, nor those eyes with their overflowing tears, nor that voice with its touching pathos of woe, availed in any way to call up any response of pity and sympathy in the breast of Lord Chetwynde.

"You use strong language, Lady Chetwynde," said he, in his usual tone. "You forget that it is you yourself who have transformed all my former kindliness, in spite of myself, into bitterness and gall. You forget, above all, that last letter of yours. You seem to show an emotion which I once would have taken as real. Pardon me if I now say that I consider it nothing more than consummate acting. You speak of consideration. You hint at mercy. Listen, Lady Chetwynde"--and here Lord Chetwynde raised his right hand with solemn emphasis. "You turned away from the death-bed of my father, the man who loved you like a daughter, to write to me that hideous letter which you wrote--that letter, every word of which is still in my memory, and rises up between us to sunder us for evermore. You went beyond yourself. To have spared the living was not needed; but it was the misfortune of your nature that you could not spare the dead. While he was, perhaps, yet lying cold in death near you, you had the heart to write to me bitter sneers against him. Even without that you had done enough to turn me from you always. But when I read that, I then knew most thoroughly that the one who was capable, under such circumstances, of writing thus could only have a mind and heart irretrievably bad--bad and corrupt and base. Never, never, never, while I live, can I forget the utter horror with which that letter filled me!"

"Oh, my God!" said Hilda, with a groan.