The old house had a look of contentment and repose. The hall door stood wide open. Mr. Graham's arm-chair was in its usual place; Gertrude's birds, of which Mrs. Ellis had taken excellent care, were hopping about on the slender perches of the great Indian cage which hung on the wide piazza. The old house-dog lay stretched in the sun. Plenty of flowers graced the parlour, and all was very comfortable. Mr. Graham thought so as he came up the steps, patted the dog, whistled to the birds, sat down in the arm-chair, and took the morning paper from the hand of the neat housemaid. The dear old place was the dear old place still.
Mr. Graham has been having new experiences; and he is, in many respects, a changed man. Emily is sitting in her own room. She is paler than ever, and her face has an anxious expression. Every time the door opens she starts, trembles, a sudden flush overspreads her face, and twice during the morning she has suddenly burst into tears. Every exertion, even that of dressing, seems a labour to her; she cannot listen to Gertrude's reading, but will constantly interrupt her to ask questions concerning the burning boat, her own and others' rescue, and every circumstance connected with the late terrible scene of agony and death. Her nervous system is shattered, and Gertrude looks at her and weeps.
Gertrude withdrew, but returned in an hour to help her to dress for dinner—a ceremony which Miss Graham would never omit, her chief desire seeming to be to maintain the appearance of health and happiness in the presence of her father. Gertrude retired to her own room, leaving Emily to bow her head upon her hands, and utter a few hysterical sobs. Gertrude is followed by Mrs. Ellis, who seats herself, and in her exciting style adds to the poor girl's fear and distress by stating the dreadful effect the recollection of that shocking accident is having upon poor Emily. "She's completely upset, and if she don't begin to mend in a day or two there's no knowing what the consequences may be. Emily is feeble, and not fit to travel; I wish she had stayed at home."
Gertrude is again interrupted. The housemaid brought her a letter! With a trembling hand she receives it, fearing to look at the writing or post-mark. Her first thought is of Willie; but before she could indulge either a hope or a fear on that score the illusion is dispelled, for, though the post-mark is New York, and he might be there, the handwriting is wholly strange. She breaks the seal, and reads:—
"My darling Gertrude,—My much-loved child—for such you indeed are, though a father's agony of fear and despair alone wrung from me the words that claimed you. It was no madness that, in the dark hour of danger, compelled me to clasp you to my heart, and call you mine. A dozen times before had I been seized by the same emotion, and as often had it been subdued and smothered. And even now I would crush the promptings of nature, and depart and weep my poor life away alone; but the voice within me has spoken once, and cannot again be silenced. Had I seen you happy, gay, and light-hearted, I would not have asked to share your joy, far less would I have cast a shadow on your path; but you are sad and troubled, my poor child, and your grief unites the tie between us closer than that of kindred, and makes you a thousand times my daughter; for I am a wretched, weary man, and know how to feel for others' woe.
"You have a kind and a gentle heart, my child. You have wept once for the stranger's sorrows—will you now refuse to pity, if you cannot love, the solitary parent, who, with a breaking heart and a trembling hand, writes the ill-fated word that dooms him, perhaps, to the hatred and contempt of the only being on earth with whom he can claim the fellowship of a natural tie? Twice before have I striven to utter it, and, laying down my pen, have shrunk from the cruel task. But, hard as it is to speak, I find it harder to still the beating of my restless heart; therefore, listen to me, though it may be for the last time. Is there one being on earth whom you shudder to think of? Is there one associated only in your mind with deeds of darkness and of shame? Is there one name which you have from your childhood learned to abhor and hate; and, in proportion as you love your best friend, have you been taught to shrink from and despise her worst enemy? It cannot be otherwise. Ah! I tremble to think how my child will recoil from her father when she learns the secret, so long preserved, so sorrowfully revealed, that he is
"Phillip Amory!"
As Gertrude finished reading this strange and unintelligible letter her countenance expressed complete bewilderment—her eyes glistened with tears, her face was flushed with excitement; but she was evidently at a total loss to account for the meaning of the stranger's words. She sat for an instant wildly gazing into vacancy; then, springing suddenly up, with the letter grasped in one hand, ran to Emily's room, to read the wonderful contents, and ask her opinion of their hidden meaning. She stopped, however, when her hand was on the door-lock. Emily was already ill—it would not do to distress or even disturb her; and, retreating to her own room, Gertrude sat down to re-peruse the singular letter.
That Mr. Phillips and the letter-writer were identical she at once perceived. It was no slight impression that his exclamation and conduct during the time of their imminent danger on board the boat had left upon the mind of Gertrude. During the three days that succeeded the accident the words, "My child! my own darling!" had been continually ringing in her ears, and haunting her imagination. Now the blissful idea would flash upon her, that the noble, disinterested stranger, who had risked his life in her own and Emily's cause, might indeed be her father; and every fibre of her being had thrilled at the thought, while her head grew dizzy and confused with the strong sensation of hope that almost overwhelmed her brain.
Her first inquiries, on recovering consciousness, had been for the preserver of Emily and Isabel, but he had disappeared; no trace of him could be obtained, and Mr. Graham arriving and hurrying them from the neighbourhood, she had been compelled to abandon the hope of seeing him again. The same motives which induced her not to consult Emily concerning the mysterious epistle had hitherto prevented her from imparting the secret of Mr. Phillips' inexplicable language and manner; but she had dwelt upon them none the less.
The first perusal of the letter served only to excite and alarm her. But as she sat for an hour gazing upon the page, which she read and re-read until it was blistered with the varying expression of her face denoted the emotions that, one after another, possessed her; and which at last, snatching a sheet of paper, she committed to writing with a feverish rapidity that betrayed how she staggered beneath the weight of contending hopes and gloomy fears.
"My dear, dear Father,—If I may dare to believe that you are so, and if not that, my best of friends—how shall I write to you, and what shall I say, since all your words are a mystery? Father! blessed word. Oh, that my noble friend were indeed my father! Yet tell me, tell me, how can this be? Alas! I feel a sad presentiment that the bright dream is all an illusion, an error. I never before remember to have heard the name of Phillip Amory. My sweet, pure, and gentle Emily has taught me to love all the world; and hatred and contempt are foreign to her nature, and, I trust, to my own. Moreover, she has not an enemy in the wide world, never had, or could have. One might as well war with an angel of heaven as with a creature so holy and lovely as she.
"Nor bid me think of yourself as a man of sin and crime. It cannot be. It would be wronging a noble nature to believe it, and I say again it cannot be. Gladly would I trust myself to repose on the bosom of such a parent; gladly would I hail the sweet duty of consoling the sorrows of one so self-sacrificing, so kind, so generous; whose life has been so freely offered for me, and for others whose existence was dearer to me than my own. When you took me in your arms and called me your child, your darling child, I fancied that the excitement of that dreadful scene had for the moment disturbed your mind and brain so far as to invest me with a false identity—perhaps confound my image with that of some loved and absent one. I now believe that it was no sudden madness, but rather that I have been all along mistaken for another, whose glad office it may perhaps be to cheer a father's saddened life, while I remain unrecognized, unsought—the fatherless, motherless one, I am accustomed to consider myself. If you have lost a daughter, God grant she may be restored to you, to love you as I would do, were I so blessed as to be that daughter! And I—consider me not a stranger; let me be your child in heart; let me love, pray, and weep for you; let me pour out my soul in thankfulness for the kind care and sympathy you have already given me. And yet, though I disclaim it all, and dare not, yes, dare not, dwell for a moment on the thought that you are otherwise than deceived in believing me your child, my heart leaps up in spite of me, and I tremble and almost cease to breathe as there flashes upon me the possibility, the blissful God-given hopes! No, no! I will not think of it, lest I could not bear to have it crushed! Oh, what am I writing? I know not. I cannot endure the suspense long; write quickly, or come to me, my father—for I will call you so once, though perhaps never again.
"Gertrude."