The Dead Letter: An American Romance

by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

Jim was summoned. His story, weeded out, was this: On Saturday evening, after tea, his mistress, Miss Eleanor, had asked him to go to the post-office for the evening mail. It was very dark and rainy. He lighted the lantern. As he went out the back gate, he stopped a minute and lifted his lantern to take a look about the premises, to see if there was any thing left out which ought to be taken in from the storm. As he waved the light about, he saw something in the flower-garden, about six feet from the bay-window. It had the appearance of a woman; its face was white, its hair hung down on its shoulders; it stood quite still in the rain, just as if the water was not coming down by bucketfuls. It had very large, bright eyes, which shone when the candle threw the light on them, as if they had been made of fire. He was so frightened that he let his lantern fall, which did not happen to extinguish the candle, but when he lifted it up again, the wraith had vanished. He felt very queer about it, at the time; and next day, when the bad news came, he knew it was a warning. They often had such in the old country.

We did not undeceive Jim as to the character of the phantom. With the assurance that it probably would not come again, since its mission had been accomplished, and a caution not to make the girls in the kitchen too nervous about it, we dismissed him.

CHAPTER VII.
ELEANOR.

One week, another—a third—a fourth, passed by. Our village was as if it had never been shaken by a fierce agitation. Already the tragedy was as if it had not been, except to the household whose fairest flower it had blighted. People no longer looked over their shoulders as they walked; the story now only served to enliven the history of the little place, when it was told to a stranger.

Every thing that human energy could accomplish had been done to track the murder to its origin; yet not one step had been gained since we sat, that Wednesday afternoon, in the parlor, holding a council over the handkerchief. Young and healthful as I was, I felt my spirits breaking down under my constant, unavailing exertions. The time for my examination came, which could not be unsuccessful, I had so long been thoroughly prepared, but I had lost my keen interest in this era of my life, while my ambition grew torpid. To excel in my profession had become, for the time, quite the secondary object of my life; my brain grew feverish with the harassment of restless projects—the recoil of thwarted ideas. There was not one in the family group (always excepting that unseen and cloistered sufferer) who betrayed the wear-and-tear of our trouble so much as I. James remarked once that I was improved by losing some of my boyish ruddiness—I was “toning down,” he said. On another occasion, with that Mephistophiles smile of his, he observed that it must be that I was after the handsome rewards—the sum-total would make a comfortable setting-out for a person just starting in the world.

I do not think he wished to quarrel with me; he was always doubly pleasant after any such waspish sting; he was naturally satirical, and he could not always curb his inclination to be so at my expense.

In the mean time an impression grew upon me that he was watching me—with what intent I had not yet decided.

In all this time I had not seen Eleanor. She had recovered from her illness, so as to be about her room, but had not yet joined the family at meals. I went frequently to the house; it had been a second home to me ever since I left the haunts of my boyhood and the old red-brick mansion, with the Grecian portico, whose massive pillars were almost reflected in the waters of Seneca lake, so close to the shore did it stand—and where my mother still resided, amidst the friends who had known her in the days of her happiness—that is, of my father’s life.

With the same freedom as of old, I went and came to and from Mr. Argyll’s. I was not apprehensive of intruding upon Eleanor, because she never left her apartments; while Mary, gay young creature, troubled and grieved as she was, could not stay always in the shadow. At her age, the budding blooms of womanhood require sunshine. She was lonely, and when she left her sister to the solitude which Eleanor preferred, she wanted company, she said. James was gloomy, and would not try to amuse her—not that she wanted to be amused, but every thing was so sad, and she felt so timid, it was a relief to have any one to talk to, or even to look at. I felt very sorry for her. It became a part of my duty to bring her books, and sometimes to read them aloud, through the lengthening evenings; at others to while away the time with a game of chess. The piano was abandoned out of respect for the mourner in the chamber above. Carols would rise to Mary’s lips, as they rise from a lark at sunrise, but she always broke them off, drowning them in sighs. Her elastic spirit constantly asserted itself, while the tender sympathy of a most warm, affectionate nature as constantly depressed it. She could not speak of Eleanor without tears; and for this my heart blessed her. She did not know of the choking in my own throat which often prevented me from speaking, when I ought, perhaps, to be uttering words of help or comfort.

James was always hovering about like a restless spirit. It had been one of his indolent habits to spend a great deal of time with the young ladies; and now he was forever in the house; but so uneasy, so irritable—as Mary said—he was not an agreeable companion. He would pick up a book in the library; in five minutes he would throw it down, and walk twice or thrice up and down the hall, out upon the piazza, back into the parlor, and stand looking out of the windows—then to the library and take up another book. He had the air of one always listening—always waiting. He had, too, a kind of haunted look, if my reader can imagine what that is. I guessed that he was listening and waiting for Eleanor—whom, like myself, he had not seen since the Sunday so memorable; but the other look I did not seek to explain.