“I wants my fissle danmusser brought me,” Arthur said to his father, who was amusing him in the nursery one day, the fourth after Edith had banished him from her room and bidden him stay away until she sent for him.
“I wants my fissle,” the child kept saying, and then the search for it commenced again, and Mary, the nurse, suddenly remembered having seen it last on the day when her mistress was taken sick. “She had Arthur in her lap, and might have put it in her pocket. She sometimes did so,” she said.
“What dress did she have on?” the colonel asked, and on being told went himself to the closet where the cashmere wrapper was hanging. The missing toy was there, and also the letter, which he drew out with the whistle and held a moment in his hand, wondering what it contained, and why it had never reached him.
“Col. Howard Schuyler, Oakwood,” was the direction in Edith’s handwriting, and by that he knew that it was written years ago when he was in England, and his wonder increased as to the cause of its having been so long withheld and not destroyed.
Had Edith written it, intending to send it to him, and then changed her mind, and if so, why? he asked himself as he stood turning it over in his hand, and then there flashed upon him a remembrance of the time when she said he did not know all about that early love affair of hers, and he felt convinced that the all was contained in that soiled, yellow letter. And if so, should he read it? Ought he to read it? he questioned, as, having given the toy to Arthur, he went to his own private room to be alone and think. Never since Edith came to Hampstead had there been the slightest allusion to that affaire du cœur to which she had seemed to attach so much importance, and he had not the least idea who the young man was or where he had lived and died. Possibly it was all here in the letter, which he laid down and took up again three times before deciding to read it. And when at last he did open it and glanced at the heading, “Caledonia St., June 20th, 18—. Col. Howard Schuyler: Dear Sir,” he would not for a moment let his eye go any further, but held it fast on the “Dear Sir,” while he pondered again his right to read the letter. Then his eye wandered a little and caught a word here and there, and lighted at last on the names “Abelard Lyle” and “Rev. Mr. Calvert,” and then he began at the beginning and read every word twice, to be sure there was no mistake, while his heart seemed to stop beating, and he tore off both cravat and collar in order to breathe more freely. There was a humming in his ears, and he could not hear the December storm beating against the windows, and there was a mist before his eyes, so that he could not see the paper he held in his trembling hand. Nor was vision longer needful to him. He had read and re-read, and the lines had burned themselves into his brain word for word, and even with his eyes shut he could see the sentence, “Abelard Lyle, your hired workman, was my husband, and I was Heloise Fordham, who lived in the cottage by the bridge at Hampstead.”
“Abelard Lyle her husband!,” he tried to say, but his lips only gave a sound which made him shiver and wonder if he was dying, it was so unnatural, so like the cry of an animal wounded and in mortal agony.
And he was wounded, sorely, and every nerve quivered with pain, and he could feel the hot blood surging through his veins as he had felt it once when under the influence of ether. Then he had fought and struck at the dentist operating on him, and acted like a madman. But he did not do so now. He neither fought nor struck, but sat motionless, thinking of the words, “Abelard Lyle was my husband, and I was Heloise Fordham.”
He remembered that young girl, remembered the face framed in the green leaves, and the clear voice telling him Abelard’s name and place of birth. He remembered, too, that people had said the young man was her lover, and how suddenly she disappeared with her mother. And Edith, his Edith, the woman he loved so much, was that girl!—was Abelard’s wife, and the mother of his child, and had married him without telling him a word of the real truth as written in this letter! There had been a show of sincerity, and that was all. She had at first meant to tell him, but had changed her mind and given him no hint of the actual state of things. She had really come to him stained with falsehood and treachery and deceit, a lie on her lips, a lie in her heart, and a lie in every act of hers, since her beautiful head was first pillowed on his bosom.
Oh, what bitter things he thought against her in the first moments of surprise and anguish I How black the record was, and how he shrank from ever looking in her face again, as he thought of the imposition practised upon him.
“Oh, Edith! Edith! I loved you so much, and thought you so innocent and pure. I can never trust you again, or take you for my wife,” he said, when his lips could frame his thoughts into words, and his heart was hardening like adamant against the woman who had so deceived him, when the door was pushed cautiously open, and little Arthur came in, blowing his whistle vigorously at first, and then staring wonderingly at his father’s white, haggard face.