PART II.
CHAPTER I.
THE LETTER.
The reader can now understand why it was that I turned cold with excitement as I sat there in the dead-letter office, holding the time-stained epistle in my hand. Every word burned itself into my brain. Obscure as it was—non-committal—directed to an unknown person of a neighboring village—I yet felt assured that those vague hints had reference to the sinful tragedy which had occurred October 17th, 1857. Here was placed in my hands—at last!—a clue to that mystery which I had once sworn to unravel. Yet, how slender was the clue, which might, after all, lead me into still profounder labyrinths of doubt and perplexity! As I pondered, it seemed to break and vanish in my fingers. Yet, I felt, in spite of this, an inward sense that I held the key which was surely to unlock the awful secret. I can never rightly express the feelings which, for the first few moments, overpowered me. My body was icy cold, but my soul stung and stirred me as with fire, and seemed to rise on “budding wings” of flame with conviction of a speedy triumph which was to come after long suffering. I arose, clutched my hat, and went forth from the Department, to return to it no more, for the present. Half the night I sat in my room at my boarding-place, looking at that letter on the table before me.
Before I proceed further with its history, I will give, in a few words, the brief, monotonous record of my life, since I was driven—driven is the word you must use, Richard, haughty and sensitive though you may be—from the friendship and presence of the Argylls, and from my prospects of a long-cherished settlement in life. I made the visit to my mother. She was shocked at the change in me, and grieved that I withheld my confidence from her. But, I did not feel in a confiding mood. The gentleness of my nature had been hardened; I was bitter, sneering, skeptical; not from my own mother would I accept the sympathy which my chilled heart seemed no longer to crave. Only one thing saved me from utter loathing of humanity, and that was the memory of Mary’s face, as she had sought me at parting. In those sweet eyes were trust and love; the tears which streamed down and fell upon her bosom, the quiver of her lip, the sobs and fond words, attested to the sorrow with which she had beheld my banishment.
Of course my mother was surprised to hear that I had left Blankville, with no intention of returning to it; that the long-understood partnership was not to be entered into. But, she did not press me for explanations. She waited for me to tell her all, patiently; ministering to my health and comfort, meanwhile, as a widowed mother will minister to an only son—with a tenderness only less than that of heaven, because it is yet, perforce, of earth.
Before I had been at home a fortnight, the unnatural tension of my mind and nerves produced a sure result—a reäction took place, and I fell sick. It was in the softer mood which came over me, as I was convalescing from this illness, that I finally told my mother all the dreadful story of the influences which had broken up my connection with the Argylls. Her grief for me, her indignation against my enemy or enemies, was what might have been expected. I could hardly restrain her from starting at once for Blankville, to stand before her old friend, the friend of my father, and accuse him, face to face, of the wrong he had done her boy. But, out of this I persuaded her. I asked her if she did not see that the wrong was irreparable? I could not forgive it. It did not admit of being talked about; let the cloud drop between them and us; our paths were henceforth apart. To this she finally yielded; and, if there could have been any balm to my wounded pride and still more deeply wounded affections, I should have found it in the enhanced, touching, almost too-perfect tenderness with which my parent sought to make up to me that which I had lost.
For a few weeks I abandoned myself to her healing attentions. Then I set myself resolutely to find work both for hands and mind. My mother was not without influential friends. As I have said, my fortunes were somewhat nipped by my father’s untimely death, but our family and associations were among the best. We had a relative in power at Washington. To him I applied for a clerkship, and received, in answer, the situation I was filling, at the time when that dead-letter came so strangely into my hands.
It may be thought improbable that I should abandon the profession for which I had studied with so much zeal. But, the very memory of that zeal, and of the hopes which had stimulated it, now gave me a dislike to the law. I required both change of scene and of pursuits. The blow dealt at my heart had stunned my ambition, also. To one of my temperament, aspirations, acquisitiveness, all the minor passions and pursuits of life are but steps leading up the hillside to the rose-crowned summit, where love sits smiling under the eye of heaven. And I, being for the time at least, blasted prematurely, was no more myself, but was to myself like a stranger within my own sanctuary. I went into the dead-letter office, and commenced my routine of breaking seals and registering contents, as if I had been born for that business. I was a rapid worker, quiet, and well-thought-of by my associates, who deemed me a little cold and skeptical, a trifle reserved, very steady for so young a fellow, and an efficient clerk who thoroughly earned his salary. That was all they knew of Richard Redfield. And in those days I did not know much more about myself. The months had worn away, one after the other, with a dreary coldness. In the summer I struggled through the suffocating dust; in the winter I picked my way through the disgusting mud, to and fro, from my lodgings to the office buildings; that was about all the change which the seasons brought to me, whom once the smell of spring violets filled with pungent delight, and the odor of June roses made happy as a god on Olympus.
Half the night I sat brooding over that brief revelation, so precious to me, yet so loathsome. The longer I pondered its words the less vivid grew my hope of making any triumphant use of it for the detection of the two guilty persons—the one who wrote it, and the one to whom it was addressed. I might lay it before Mr. Argyll, but he might not feel, as I did, that it had any connection with the murder, neither was there anything to prove but that the missive might have been directed to me. Indeed, Mr. Argyll might well inquire how I could pretend that it should have reached me through the routine of the dead-letter department, after all this stretch of time—very nearly two years!