Nevertheless, before he gets there, and can read those letters—precious, precious manuscripts—it will be my painful duty, as a chronicler of (what might well be) truth, to put the reader in possession of one little hint, which seemed likeliest to wreck the happiness of these two children of affection.
I am Emily's invisible friend: and as the dear girl ran to me one morning, with tears in her eyes, to ask me what I thought of a certain mysterious paragraph, I need not scruple to lay it straight before the reader.
At the end of a voluminous love-letter, which I really did not think of prying into, occurred the following postscript, evidently written at the last moment of haste.
"Oh! my precious Emmy, I have just heard the most fearful rumour of ill that could possibly befall us: the captain of our ship—you will remember Captain Forbes, he knew you and the general well, he said—has just assured me that—that—! I dare not, cannot write the awful words. Oh! my own Emmy—Heaven grant you be my own!—pray, pray, as I will night and day, that rumour be not true: for if it be, my love, both God and man forbid us ever to meet again! How I wish I could explain it all, or that I had never heard so much, or never written it here, and told it you, though thus obscurely: for I can't destroy this letter now, the ships are just parting company, and there is no time to write another. Yet will I hope, love, against hope. Who knows? through God's good mercy, it may all be cleared up still. If not—if not—strive to forget for ever, your unhappy
"Charles.
"Perhaps—O, glorious thought!—Nurse Mackie may know better than the captain, after all; and yet, he seems so positive: if he is right, there is nothing for us both but Wo! Wo! Wo!"
Now, to say plain truth, when Emily showed me this, I looked very blank upon it. That Charles had heard some meddlesome report, which (if true) was to be an insuperable barrier to their future union, struck me at a glimpse. But I had not the heart to hint it to her; and only encouraged hope—hope, in God's help, through the means of Mrs. Mackie and her papers.
As for the poor girl herself, she asked me, in much humility, and with many sobs, if I did not fear that her Hindoo mystery was this:—she was the vilest of the vile, a Pariah, an outcast, whose very presence is contamination!
Beautiful, loving, heavenly-hearted creature! so humble in the midst of her majestic loveliness! how touching was the thought, that she thus readily acquiesced in any the deepest humiliation holy Providence had seen fit to send her; and though the sentence would have crushed her happiness for ever, till the day of death, that she could still look up and say, "Be it to thine handmaid even as thou wilt."
As I had no better method of explaining the matter, and as her infantine reminiscences and prejudices about caste were strong, I even let her think so, if she would: it was a far better alternative than my own sad thoughts about the business: and, however painful was the process, it was something consolatory to observe, that this voluntary humiliation mellowed and chastened her own character, subduing tropical fires, and tempering the virgin gold by meekness.