In the meantime, what thought, and what felt, and what said Minnie? She said nothing—she thought she was most unreasonable and ungrateful not to be perfectly contented—she felt as if the best years of her life were gliding away, and bearing with them the youth, and freshness and cheerfulness which were her chief claims upon Hubert’s affection.
Ten years had passed away since the quiet, half-acknowledged engagement which bound the cousins to each other, and opened for Minnie a vista of happiness which seemed ever receding as life advanced. Ten years had passed and Minnie was certainly changed. The unsatisfied yearnings of affection, the wearing anxiety of hope deferred, the dull stagnation of a life whose destiny seemed decided, yet never fulfilled, all aided the work of time, and the thin, pale, careful-looking woman of nine-and-twenty was only the shadow of the quiet, gentle, graceful creature of nineteen. Busied in accumulating wealth, Hubert had scarcely noticed these gradual changes, but when the shock of his mother’s death awakened his faculties, and startled up his home feelings, then he beheld Minnie’s faded face in the mirror of his own altered heart. At thirty-four he was as handsome as ever, notwithstanding the lines of care which Mammon had stamped on his brow. He was rich, too—rich even beyond his hopes; he felt full of the energy of animal life, for his health was perfect, and he began to fancy that he had made a mistake in confining himself to so monotonous a kind of existence. There was an uncomfortable routing of conscience whenever he caught himself thinking of Minnie’s faded looks, so, with his usual palliating policy, he resolved to settle up his business, spend a winter in Washington, and marry Minnie the following spring.
His business was soon arranged, he retained a special partnership in the lucrative concern, leaving all responsibility in the hands of trusty persons, and, without informing Minnie of his final intentions, set off on his winter’s pleasuring. It was just as well that he was silent on the subject, for it would only have increased the turpitude of his conduct. His good looks, pleasant manners, and great wealth, made him a favorite in that emporium of speculation. His vanity, which had been kept so long in abeyance by his love of money, was called forth by the flatteries and attentions of society. He was surrounded by beautiful and gifted women; he lived in a constant whirl of excitement, and the remembrance of his home, haunted by the sad-eyed spectre of the woman he had once loved, became utterly disgusting to him.
The end of all this may easily be guessed. One night Hubert sat until dawn, pondering over a letter which he wanted to write, which he felt he must write, yet which he knew not how to shape into words without branding himself as a villain. At last the letter was written and dispatched; he had not quite satisfied himself, but it read thus:
“I write to you, my dear cousin, because I want you to inform my father of an event which may not be altogether pleasing to him, but which you can soften away so as to quiet any irritation he may feel. You perhaps know, Minnie, that he has always wished you to become my wife, indeed I partly made him a promise to that effect, ages ago, at the time when you and I had some boy-and-girl love-passages—do you remember them, my little cousin? or have you forgotten our moonlight rambles, and all our juvenile love-making when I first returned from Europe. It seems to me like a far-off dream, and yet it was only ten or twelve years ago. Well—I was a romantic boy then, and you as romantic a little girl—my father always liked you, and fearing I might be led into bondage by some strange Delilah, he wanted to make a match between us. My mother, poor soul, liked your housewifery, and so she joined in the plot. Had we been married then, Minnie, we might have been a quiet, comfortable couple, treading in the footsteps of my honored parents; I, daily growing pursy and plethoric, you a matron, in all the dignity of lace-caps, growing more learned every year in the management of children and the making up of baby-linen. When I look back at the past, Minnie, I can almost find it in my heart to wish it had been so. But perhaps it is best as it is. If under the excitement of my boyish passion I ever said any thing to you, Minnie, which could involve any bond between us, I pray you to forgive me, and to attribute it entirely to my ignorance of my own nature. We have lived on terms of the closest intimacy ever since I found you, a little sick and suffering child, without a friend or protector in the wide world. It has been a bond closer than that of brother and sister, because it had much of the peculiar piquancy which belongs only to that sweetest of all relationships, which early entitled me to call you my little cousin. But I am dallying with old recollections, when I should be telling you of coming events. I am going to be married, Minnie; you will wonder when I tell you that my bride has not yet counted her eighteenth summer. She is the prettiest little fairy in the world, and as artless as a child, indeed she has not been out in society, so I have plucked the flower with the morning dew yet fresh upon it. My father will object to her youth, and will conjure up the image of my mother, armed with her bunch of keys, the insignia of her old-fashioned housekeeping. But you must make my peace with him, Minnie. My intention at present is to take furnished lodgings in New York, where I can be near my business, which I mean to resume as soon as this affair is settled. You will of course remain with my father and watch over his declining years, unless you should marry, when I shall take care that a suitable provision be made for you. And now, my dear cousin, having wearied you, doubtless, as well as myself, with this long epistle, I bid you adieu; trusting that my father may not be inexorable under your kind ministry, I shall wait with some impatience for your reply.”
Such was the heartless, yet craftily worded letter which was put into Minnie’s hands, as she sat watching beside the sick-bed of poor Mr. Woodley, who had been stricken with paralysis, and now lay between life and death. It would require a colder heart and more graphic pen than mine to describe her feelings. Fortunately for her Mr. Woodley was utterly insensible, and there was no one to witness her emotion. When the doctor came to visit the patient at evening, he looked amazed at the change which he saw, not in the sick man, but in the gentle nurse.
“You are ill, Miss Clifton, suffer me to send a nurse for Mr. Woodley, and let me persuade you to go to bed.”
“If I am not better tomorrow, doctor, I will accept your kind offer, but I would rather watch him to-night!”
The next morning the good doctor found Minnie looking as pallid as a corpse, though she had now obtained more control over her nerves. She refused to give up her charge, but she requested the doctor to write to Mr. Hubert Woodley and inform him of the event which had befallen his father. In the course of the following day came a Washington paper. With trembling hands Minnie unfolded it and looked at the list of marriages. She had conjectured truly; Hubert had been married the day after he wrote the letter which had crushed that gentle and loving heart.
The doctor’s letter did not reach Hubert until his return from his bridal tour. Leaving his wife among her relatives to lament over the interruption which this untoward event would necessarily make in her wedding festivities, he hastened to his father’s bedside. But Mr. Woodley had lost the use of every faculty. He did not know his son—he could not lift his hand to welcome him—all that remained to him of life was the merest animal existence; he could take food and sleep, but all hope of restoration to reason and the use of his limbs was out of the question.