“There,” soliloquized Rudolph, reading over the letter. “That covers the whole ground, and still gives him no clue in case he should come to New York. The —— does sail the very day I have named, and though ‘Sarah Green’ may not be among her passengers, it answers my purpose quite as well. I believe I’ve steered clear of all doubtful points which might lead him to suspect it a forgery. He knows Marian would not attempt to deceive him thus, and he will, undoubtedly, think old Mrs. Green some good soul, who dosed the patient with saffron tea, and then saw her decently interred! He’ll have a nice time hunting up her grave if he should undertake that. But he won’t—he’ll be pleased enough to know that he is free, for by all accounts he didn’t love her much, and in less than six weeks he’ll be engaged to Isabel. But I’ll be on their track. I’ll watch them narrowly, and when the day is set, and the guests are there, one will go unbidden to the marriage feast, and the story that uninvited guest can tell will humble the proud beauty to the dust. He will tell her that this letter was a forgery, and Sarah Green a myth: that Marian Lindsey lives, and Frederic Raymond, if he takes another wife, can be indicted for bigamy; and when he sees her eyes flash fire, and her cheek grow pale with rage and disappointment, Rudolph McVicar will be avenged.”
This, then, was the plan which Rudolph had formed, and, without wavering for an instant in his purpose, he sealed the letter, and directing it to Frederic, sent it on its way, going himself the next morning to New Haven, where he had some money deposited in the bank. This he withdrew, and after a few days started for Lexington, where he intended to remain and watch the proceedings at Redstone Hall, until the denouement of his plot.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE EFFECT.
Not quite one year has passed away since the warm Spring night when Ben Burt first strolled leisurely up the long avenue leading to Redstone Hall. It was April, then, and the early flowers were in bloom, but now the chill March winds are blowing, and the brown stocks of the tall rose-tree brush against the window, from which a single light streams out into the darkness. It is the window of the little library where we have seen Frederic before, and where we meet him once again. He has changed somewhat since we saw him last, and there is upon his face a sad, thoughtful expression, as if far down in his heart there were a haunting memory which would follow him through all time, and embitter every hour.
Little by little, step by step, he had come to hate the wealth which had tempted him to sin—to loathe the beautiful home he once loved so well—and this had prompted him to leave it and go back to the old house on the river, where his early boyhood was passed. There were not so many mournful memories clustering around that spot, he thought, and if he once were there, he might perhaps forget the past, and be happy again. He would open an office in the city, and if possible earn his own living, so as not to spend more of Marian’s fortune than was necessary. He could not tell why he wished to save it. He only knew that he could not bear to use it, and he roused himself at last, determining to do something for himself. This plan of moving to the Hudson was opposed by Isabel, who liked the easy, luxurious life she led at Redstone Hall; but, for once, Frederic would not listen to her, and he had made his arrangements to leave Kentucky in May, at which time his house would be in readiness to receive him. Isabel would go with him, of course—she was necessary to him now, though, faithful to the promise made to little Alice, he had never talked to her of love. And she was glad that he had not; for, with the knowledge she possessed, she would not have dared to listen to his suit, and she often questioned herself as to what the end would be.
One year or more of the dreary seven was gone, but the future looked almost hopeless to her, and she was sometimes tempted to go away and leave the dangerous game at which she was so hazardously playing. Still, when she seriously contemplated such a proceeding, she shrunk from it—for, even though she were never Frederic’s wife, she would rather remain where she was, and see that no other came to dispute the little claim she had. All her assurance was gone, and in her dread lest Frederic should say the words she must not hear, she assumed toward him a half distant, half bashful manner, far more attractive than a bolder course of conduct would have been, and Frederic, while watching her in this new phase of character, struggled manfully against the feeling which sometimes prompted him to break his promise to the blind girl. She was faulty, he knew—far more so than he had once imagined—but she was brilliant, beautiful, accomplished, and he thought that he loved her.
But not of her was he thinking that chill March night when he sat alone in the library watching the flickering of the lamp, and listening to the evening wind, as it shook the bushes beneath his window. It was Marian’s seventeenth birthday, and he was thinking of her, wondering what she would have been had she lived to see this day. She was surely dead, he thought, or some tidings of her would have come to him ere this, and when he remembered how gentle, how pure and self-denying her short life had been, he said involuntarily, “Poor Marian—she deserved a better fate, and should she come back to me again I would prove to her that I am not all unworthy of her love.”
There was a shuffling tread in the hall, and Josh appeared bringing several letters. One bore the Louisville post-mark—one was from New Orleans—one from Lexington, and one from Sarah Green!
“Who writes to me from New York?” was Frederic’s mental query, and tearing open the wrapper he drew nearer to him the lamp and read, while there crept over him a nameless terror as if even while he was thinking of the lost, the grave had opened at his feet and shown him where she lay; not in the moaning river—not in the deep, dark woods, nor on the western prairies, as he had sometimes feared, but far away in the great city, where there was no one to pity—no eye to weep for her save that of the rude woman who had written him the letter.
There Marian had suffered and died for him. His Marian—his young girl-wife! He could call her so now, and he did, saying it softly, reverently, as we speak always of the departed, while the tears he was not ashamed to weep, dropped upon the soiled sheet. He did not think of doubting it. There was no reason why he should, and his heart went out after the dead as it had never gone after the living. It seemed to him so terrible that she should die among strangers, so far from home; and he wondered much how she ever chanced to get there. She had remembered him to the last, “forgiving all his sins,” the woman said, and knowing how much those few words meant, he said again, “Poor Marian,” just as the door opened and Alice came slowly in.