CHAPTER XLII.
LITTLE RUSES, AND WAITING.
When she had recovered somewhat of her calm again, Garde found herself confronted by several difficulties with which she would be obliged to cope. In the first place she had ruined Adam’s letter to Henry Wainsworth, crumpling the sheets and permitting her tears to fall upon their surfaces, till no one save herself, aided by love, could have deciphered some of the sentences at all.
In the second place, if Henry had really intended to ask her hand in marriage, as she could not avoid believing, there might be complications in that direction at an early date. She could only resolve, upon this point, that she must not, under any circumstances, permit Henry to make his proposal, either orally or through the medium of another letter.
As to this letter, from Adam to Henry, it was certainly of a private character, but Henry had asked her to read it, and now she could not have disguised the fact that she had done so. She could not see how she could possibly return it to Henry at all, under the circumstances. She could not bear to think of letting him see the evidence of her emotions, wrought upon it. Moreover, it was precious to her. She felt entitled to own it. To her it meant far more than it possibly could to any other person in the world. She resolved to make a fair copy of it, for Henry, while she herself would retain the original—in Adam’s own writing.
Her third proposition was the most vital of them all. She could not think of what she should do to repair the harm which she alone, after all, had done, when she sent Adam away with that little word “Forever!” How should she let him know of the infamous story which she had been made to believe? How should she convince him, even supposing she could reach him with a word, that the story had left no room in her mind for doubt of its truth? How could she manage to persuade him that she had loved him always; that she knew at last of the wrong she had done him; that she begged his forgiveness; that she should wait for him even longer than the fifty years of which he had spoken on that last agonizing night?
He might not forgive her, she told herself. It might be too late already. She knew not where he had gone, or what he had done. He too might have thought of marriage with somebody else—to try to forget.
As a result of her brain cudgeling, to know what she would do to make Adam aware that she had made a great mistake and desired his forgiveness, she determined to write him a letter. Having decided, she wrote at once. Had she waited a little longer, her letter might have been more quiet in its reserve, but it could not then have been so utterly spontaneous, nor expressive of the great love she bore him, kept alive during all those months of doubt and agony.
As it was, the little outburst was sufficiently dignified; and it was sweet, and frank. She told him that she had read his letter to Henry, and that suddenly she had known of the great wrong she had done him. She mentioned that a dreadful story had been fastened upon him, with all too terrible semblances of truth and justice. She begged his forgiveness in a hundred runes. Finally, when she had finished, she signed it “Garde—John Rosella,” in memory of her walk with him through the woods, from near Plymouth to Boston.
Not without blushes and little involuntary thrills of delight did she add the name which confessed the tale of that wonderful walk, but she felt that Adam would know, by this very confession, how deep for him must be her love and trust and how contrite was the spirit in which she desired his forgiveness.
This epistle having at length been disposed of to her satisfaction, she made the fair copy of Adam’s letter to Henry and sent it to Wainsworth at once, with a short note of explanation that some moisture having fallen upon the original, making it quite illegible and indeed destroying it utterly, for his use, she felt she could do no less than to make this reparation. She likewise expressed the compliment she felt it was to herself that Henry had desired her to know of this sad affair in the life of his brother, but that she had been so affected by the tale that she must beg him not to permit her to read any further letters for some time to come.