Vassall Morton Part 43

"I remember his showing me that ring," said her father, "and telling me that it was older than the voyage of the Mayflower. It was a kind of heirloom, which his mother had left him."

"Yes," suggested the sympathizing Vinal, who had long known that Morton used no other seal than this ring; "and the device on it was supposed to be his armorial bearing, and so cut on the gravestone, as it is on the Va.s.sall tomb at Cambridge."

All doubt of Morton's death was now dispelled. His betrothed stored his image in her thoughts, as that of one lost for this world; and Vinal saw the field clear before him. Leslie was failing fast; and, as his life ebbed, his wish for his daughter's marriage with Vinal grew and strengthened. He urged her, daily, to listen to his suit; extolling his favorite's talents, energy, acquirements, and unimpeachable character--praises which she believed to be wholly just.

Vinal, on his part, seconded these parental efforts with most earnest, beseeching, not to say abject importunities. The compa.s.sion which he contrived to excite, an idea of duty, and an urgent wish to gratify her dying father, at length prevailed with her; and laying before Vinal the true state of her feelings, she consented, on such terms, to accept his suit.

Vinal had gained his point; but he had scarcely done so, when his spirits were dashed by an untoward incident, the nature of which may be guessed hereafter. And, as it never rains but it pours, this reverse of luck was soon followed by a second, of another kind.

One afternoon, returning from his customary const.i.tutional ride, he was in the act of turning the upper corner of a street which slopes downward somewhat steeply till it meets a main thoroughfare of the town. A small ragam.u.f.fin boy was standing on the curbstone, with a blade of gra.s.s between his thumbs, through which he blew with might and main, evidently to startle Vinal's horse, whose head was within a yard of him. He succeeded to his complete satisfaction. Vinal switched at the youngster with his whip; but this only made matters worse. The horse galloped down the street at a rate which his rider's weak arm could not check; and, at the corner of the main street, wheeling suddenly to the left, he slipped on the wet pavement, and fell with a crash on his side. Horse and man lay motionless, till a city teamster, running up, raised the former by the bridle. Two or three pa.s.sers by came to Vinal's aid; but as they lifted him, he set his teeth with pain. The horse had fallen on his left leg, breaking it above the knee.

Vinal was timid to excess in time of danger; but he could bear pain with the firmness of a stoic. While he felt himself run away with, and at the moment of his fall, he had been greatly confused. He no sooner saw that the worst was over, than he rallied his faculties, and a.s.serted his usual self-mastery. His face was fast growing pale with violence of pain; but he was quite himself again.

A crowd gathered about him, as he lay leaning on the steps of the neighboring church.

"Shall we carry you to the ---- Hotel?" asked a gentleman.

"Yes, if you please. But first be kind enough to bring a shutter. They will give you one at the school round the corner. When a man is killed, drunk, or maimed, there is nothing like a shutter. How do you do, Edwards?"--to a man whom he recognized in the crowd.

"I hope you are not badly hurt."

"My leg is broken."

"Are you in great pain?"

"Yes; a bad business, I think. Will you oblige me by seeing that my horse is led to the stable in ---- Street?"

The shutter was soon brought.

"Thank you. Lift me very gently."

As they moved him he clinched his teeth again in silent torture.

"All right. Now one take the shutter at the head, and one at the feet.

You'll find me a light weight."

And thus, between two men, escorted by a procession of schoolboys just let loose, Vinal was carried to the hotel.

The event justified his presage. He was forced to lie motionless for weeks, suffering greatly from bodily pain, and no less from certain anxieties which of late had hara.s.sed him. Leslie, on his part, was in great distress at the disaster. He felt, or fancied himself, near his end; and the wish next his heart was to see the marriage accomplished before he died. It was therefore determined that, notwithstanding the inauspicious plight of the bridegroom, it should take place at the time before fixed upon, four months after the beginning of the engagement.

The ceremony was very private. None were present but two or three friends of Miss Leslie, the dying father, borne thither in a chair, the disabled bridegroom, and the pale and agitated bride; for that morning, standing before Morton's picture, a strange misgiving and a dark foreboding had fallen upon her, and the sun never shone on a bride more wretched. Her nearest friend, Mrs. Ashland, was at her side. She was the only person, besides her father and Vinal, who knew of her engagement to Morton, and, indeed, had been her confidante from first to last. Soon after Morton's disappearance, an accident had brought them together, reviving an old school intimacy; and Edith Leslie, in her suspense and misery, was but too glad to find a friend in whom she could trust without reserve.

The rite was ended, and Edith Leslie was Edith Vinal. Days and weeks pa.s.sed; Leslie slowly declined, and Vinal slowly recovered. She divided her time between them, pa.s.sing the greater part of the day with the latter, and returning at evening to watch by her father's bed or rest within sound of his voice. At length, three weeks after her marriage, on a morning the horror of which remained scarred always in her memory, Morton's letter from Genoa was put into her hands; and the long-disciplined patience with which she had armed herself, the religion which she had called to her aid, all the guards and defences of her mind, were borne down, for a time, by the resistless flood of pa.s.sion, which, like a river bursting its barriers, swept all before it.

CHAPTER LV.

We twain have met like s.h.i.+ps upon the sea, Who hold an hour's converse, * * *

One little hour! and then away they speed On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam, To meet no more.--_Alexander Smith_.

"Good morning, Ned," said Morton to his friend Meredith. He had come to Boston the day before, and had already seen Meredith more than once.

"Going already? Sit down, man. Why are you in such a hurry?"

"I shall look in again before night."

"You are not well. I never thought you could look so worn and haggard."

"Try the prison of Ehrenberg for four or five years, and see how you will look when you get out. It's nothing, though. A little rest will make all right again."

"You are not very likely to get it. You are a lion now, and people will not leave you alone."

"They shall. I am not in the humor for b.a.l.l.s and dinner parties."

He went to the house of Mrs. Ashland, whom he had accompanied homeward from New York.

"Have you the letter for me?"

The letter was that which had come from Europe with the story of his death. On hearing Mrs. Ashland's account, he had at once conjectured that this was but another stroke of Vinal's diplomacy; but he had been careful not to intimate to his friend the least suspicion against the latter.

The commission of obtaining from Edith the letter in question was far from an agreeable one; but Mrs. Ashland had accomplished it, and now placed the paper in Morton's hands.

The signature was not that of Speyer; but at the first glance, Morton was sure that the small, neat handwriting was the same with that of the treacherous notes of introduction given him by Vinal at Paris. As he studied the letter, reading and re-reading it, his companion, who remembered him chiefly as a frank, good-humored young man, was startled at the stern and almost fierce expression which once or twice came over his features, and seemed to be banished by an effort. A vague suspicion of some mystery rose in her mind, but Morton hastened to divert her.

"I hope that Edith will not refuse a visit from me."

Here, again, Mrs. Ashland promised to mediate for him, and in the afternoon he received a note from her, saying that Vinal's wife would see him on the next morning.

At the hour named, he rang at the door, forced his lips to inquire for "Mrs. Vinal," gave his name to the servant, and was shown into the drawing room.

It was nearly five years since he had last seen that well-remembered room. Nothing was changed. It remained precisely as he had known it when he stood prosperously on the farther verge of that dreary chasm of time; and as each familiar object met his eye, such a flood of bitter recollection came upon him, that for a moment he bent his head upon his breast.

He raised it, and started as he did so. Reflected in the mirror at the end of the room, as if the art of some new Cornelius had evoked it, stood, pale as marble, the form that had so long attended his sleeping and waking dreams. Morton turned quickly, and saw Edith standing motionless in the doorway.

He advanced towards her, and took her hand in both his own. She raised her eyes to his face in silence. He tried to speak, but tried in vain.

At length he found utterance.

"I know it all. Ellen Ashland has told me every thing. I do not blame you;--no one can blame you."

"Thank G.o.d that you think so."

"Yes, thank G.o.d; for when I thought that you had forgotten me----"

"Then you _did_ think so?"

"For a time; and it seemed to me as if no more constancy were left on earth; as if it had been sapped and undermined in its very citadel."