“God is good!” he said, shaking my hand, as if thus congratulating me. “Leesy Sullivan is alive, but very feeble. She is scarcely able to undertake a journey; but, since I have explained the object, she has consented to go. She says she is so near death’s door, that it matters not how soon she passes through; and she is willing, for the sake of others, to endure a trial from which she might naturally shrink. So far, then, all is well.”
Was this trial, of which he spoke, that pang which she must feel in confessing herself implicated in this matter? Did he think, and had he persuaded her, since she was too far gone for the grasp of the law to take hold of her, she might now confess a dangerous and dark secret?
I could not answer the questions my mind persisted in asking. “It will be but a few hours,” I whispered to myself.
“We are to go up to Blankville by the evening train,” he continued. “Leesy will accompany us. Until that time, there is nothing to do.”
I would rather have worked at breaking stones or lifting barrels than to have kept idle; but, as the detective wished me to remain in the house as a matter of caution against meeting any prying acquaintance upon the streets, I was forced to that dreariest of all things—to wait. The hours did finally pass, and Mr. Burton set out first with a carriage, to convey Miss Sullivan to the depot, where I was to meet him in time for the five o’clock train. When I saw her there, I wondered how she had strength to endure the ride, she looked so wasted—such a mere flickering spark of life, which a breath might extinguish. Mr. Burton had almost to carry her into the car, where he placed her on a seat, with his overcoat for a pillow. We took our seats opposite to her, and as those large, unfathomable eyes met mine, still blazing with their old luster, beneath the pallid brow, I can not describe the sensations which rushed over me. All those strange scenes through which I had passed at Moreland villa floated up and shut me in a strange spell, until I forgot what place we were in, or that any other persons surrounded us. When the cars moved rapidly out of the city, increasing their speed as they got beyond the precincts, Leesy asked to have the window open.
The air was cold and fresh; her feverish lips swallowed it as a reviving draught. I gazed alternately at her and the landscape, already flushed with the red of early sunset. It was a December day, chill but bright; the ground was frozen, and the river sparkled with the keen blueness of splintered steel. The red banner of twilight hung over the Palisades. I lived really three years in that short ride—the three years just past—and when we reached our destination, I walked like one in a dream. It was quite evening when we got out at Blankville, though the moon was shining. A fussy little woman passed out before us, lugging a large band-box; she handed it to the town express, telling the driver to be very careful of it, and take it round at once to Esquire Argyll’s.
“I suppose it contains the wedding-bonnet,” he said, with a laugh.
“That it does, and the dress, too, all of my own selection,” said the little woman, with an air of importance. “Just you carry it in your hand, sir, and don’t you allow nothing to come near it.”
When I heard these words, a hot flush came to my face. That Mary Argyll was already married, or expected to be very soon, I knew; but I could not hear this reference to the wedding, nor see this article of preparation, without keen pain. Yet what business was it of mine?
Mr. Burton had also heard the brief colloquy, and I noticed his lips pressed together with a fierce expression as we passed under the lamp which lighted the crossing. He took us into the hotel by the depot. Oh, how suffocating, how close, became memory! Into this building poor Henry had been carried on that wretched morning. It seemed to be but yesterday. I think Leesy was recalling it all, for when a cup of tea was brought in for her, at Mr. Burton’s bidding, she turned from it with loathing.