It was dated the very night preceding the morning when Squire Irving had been found dead by Aleck Floyd, and it commenced much like the one which Roger had guarded so religiously as his father’s last message to him:
“Millbank, April —.
“My Dear Boy, — For many days I have been haunted with a presentiment that I have not much longer to live. My heart is badly diseased, and I may drop away any minute, and as death begins to stare me in the face, my thoughts turn toward you, the boy whom I have been so proud of and loved so much. You don’t remember your mother, Roger, and you don’t know how I loved her, she was so beautiful and artless, and seemed so innocent, with her blue eyes and golden hair. Her home was among the New Hampshire hills, a quarter of a mile or so from the little rural town of Schodick, whose delightful scenery and pure mountain air years ago attracted visitors there during the summer months. Her father was poor and old and infirm, and his farm was mortgaged for more than it was worth, and the mortgage was about to be foreclosed, when, by chance, I became an inmate for a few weeks of the farm-house. I was stopping in Schodick, the hotel was full, and I boarded with Jessie’s father. He had taken boarders before,—one a young man, Arthur Grey, a fast, fashionable, fascinating man, who made love to Jessie, a mere child of sixteen. Her letter, which I enclose, will tell you the particulars of her acquaintance with him, so it is not needful that I go over with them. I knew nothing of Arthur Grey at the time I was at the farm-house, except that I sometimes heard him mentioned as a reckless, dashing young man. I was there during the months of August and September. I had an attack of heart disease, and Jessie nursed me through it, her soft hands and gentle ways and deep blue eyes weaving around me a spell I could not break. She was poor, but a lady every whit, and I loved her better than I had ever loved a human being before, and I wanted her for my wife. As I have said, her father was old and poor, and the farm was mortgaged to a remorseless creditor. They would be homeless when it was sold, and so I bought Jessie, and her father kept his home. I know now that it was a great mistake; know why Jessie fainted when the plan was first proposed to her, but I did not suspect it then. Her father said she was in the habit of fainting, and tried to make light of it. He was anxious for the match, and shut his eyes to his daughter’s aversion to it.
“I brought her to Millbank in December, and within the year you were born. I heard nothing of Arthur Grey. I only knew that Jessie was not happy; satins and pearls and diamonds could not drive that sad, hungry look from her eyes, and I took her for a change to Saratoga, and there she met the villain again, and as the result she left Millbank to go with him to Europe. In a few days she was drowned, and her letter written on the ‘Sea Gull’ was sent to me by that accursed man who, when she tried to escape him, followed her to the ship bound for Charleston. I believe that part, and a doubt of your legitimacy never entered my heart until Walter’s wife put it there. I had made my will, and given nearly all to you, when Helen, who was here a few months ago, began one day to talk of Jessie, very kindly, as I remember, and seemed trying to find excuses for what she called her sin, and then said she was so glad that I had always been kind to the poor innocent boy who was not to blame for his mother’s error. I came gradually to understand her, though she said but little which could be repeated, but I knew that she doubted your legitimacy, and she gave me reason to doubt it too, by hinting that Arthur Grey had been seen in Belvidere more than once after Jessie’s marriage. Her husband, Walter, was her informant; but she had promised secrecy, as he wished to spare me, and so she could not be explicit. But I had heard enough to drive me mad with jealousy and rage, and I made another will, and gave you little more than the Morton farm, which, when Jessie’s father died, as he did the day when you were born, I bought to please your mother. I was wild with anger when I made that will, and my love for you has ever since kept tugging at my heart, and has prevented me from destroying the first will, as I twice made up my mind to do. To-day I have read your mother’s letter again, and I have forgiven Jessie at last, though Helen’s insinuations still rankle in my mind. But I have repented of leaving you so little, and have sent for young Schofield to change my last will, and make you equal with Frank.
“Perhaps I may never see you again, for something about my heart warns me that my days are numbered, and what I do for you must be done quickly. Heaven forgive me if I wronged your mother, and forgive me doubly, trebly, if in wronging her I have dealt cruelly, unnaturally by you, my darling, my pride, my boy, whom I love so much in spite of everything; for I do, Roger, I certainly do, and I feel even now that if you were here beside me, the sight of your dear face would tempt me to burn the later will and reacknowledge the first.
“Heaven bless you, Roger. Heaven give you every possible good which you may crave, and if in the course of your life there is one thing more than another which you desire, I pray Heaven to give it to you. I wish Schofield was here now. There is a dreadful feeling in my head, a cold, prickling sensation in my arms, and I must stop, while I have power to sign myself,
“Yours lovingly and affectionately,
“William H. Irving.”
This was the letter, and the old man must have been battling with death as he wrote it, and with the tracing of Roger’s name the pen must have dropped from his nerveless fingers, and his spirit taken its flight to the world where poor, wronged Jessie had gone before him. The fact that she was innocent did not prevent her child from receiving the punishment of her seeming guilt, and at first every word of his father’s letter had been like so many stabs, making his pain harder than ever to bear. Magdalen comprehended it in full, and pitied him now more than she had before.
“Oh, I am so sorry for you, Mr. Irving; sorrier than I was about the will,” she said, moving a little nearer to him.