“I sha’n’t have to,” he said. “But I’m sorry you were here-you know what I mean. I’m ashamed.”
I could not fail to see that his pride was touched to the bleeding-point, and that Margaret was utterly weary. With only a hand-shake and a word of parting I went away, glad enough, you can understand, to make my escape.
I met none of them again till I went to the docks, a month later, to say farewell to Margaret. Charles was with her, but Helen was not there. Margaret looked very old and ill, I thought. Just before the boat sailed, she managed to screen herself from her brother, and hurriedly slipped an envelop into my hand.
“Please give this to Charlie when I’m well out to sea,” she whispered. “I can’t bear to send it through the post-office.”
“How soon?” I asked under my breath, supposing her secrecy to be the whim of a nervous invalid.
“Give me three days,” she replied, glancing furtively at her brother, who was just then absorbed by the spectacle of a donkey-engine on a lower deck. “It’s about mother’s journal and her papers. Don’t you see? I looked them over,—Charlie told me to,—but I couldn’t bear to explain to him, and I haven’t had time yet to copy them. My letter tells about it.”
She turned from me quickly and took her brother’s arm, insisting that both he and I must leave the ship at once. Twenty minutes later she waved gaily to us as the cables slackened and the boat swung out into the river.
I disliked my new commission, but I had been given no opportunity to refuse it. At the time appointed I carried the letter to Charles, whom I found in the family library amid heaps of faded and disorderly manuscript. As I entered the room, he rose excitedly.
“It’s extraordinary!” he exclaimed. “Mother’s journals are gone, and so is all her intimate correspondence. Where can Margaret have put them? She went through everything.”