CHAPTER X. THE LETTER FROM ALFRED LAYTON

When Sir William Heathcote learned that Mrs. Morris had quitted his house, gone without one word of adieu, his mind reverted to all the bygone differences with his son, and to Charles did he at once ascribe the cause of her sudden flight. His health was in that state in which agitation becomes a serious complication, and for several days he was dangerously ill, violent paroxysms of passion alternating with long intervals of apathy and unconsciousness. The very sight of Charles in his room would immediately bring on one of his attacks of excitement, and even the presence of May Leslie herself brought him no alleviation of suffering. It was in vain that she assured him that Mrs. Morris left on reasons known only to herself; that even to May herself she had explained nothing, written nothing. The old man obstinately repeated his conviction that she had been made the victim of an intrigue, and that Charles was at the bottom of it. How poor May strove to combat this unjust and unworthy suspicion, how eagerly she defended him she loved, and how much the more she learned to love for the defending of him.

Charles, too, in this painful emergency, displayed a moderation and self-control for which May had never given him credit. Not a hasty word or impatient expression escaped him, and he was unceasing in every attention to his father which he could render without the old man's knowledge. It was a very sad household; on every side there was sickness and sorrow, but few of those consolations that alleviate pain or lighten suffering. Sir William desired to be left almost always alone; Charles walked moodily by himself in the garden; and May kept her room, and seldom left it. Lord Agincourt came daily to ask after them, but could see no one. Even Charles avoided meeting him, and merely sent him a verbal message, or a few hasty lines with a pencil.

Upwards of a week had passed in this manner, when, among the letters from the post, which Charles usually opened and only half read through, came a very long epistle from Alfred Layton. His name was on the corner of the envelope, and, seeing it, Charles tossed the letter carelessly across the table to May, saying, in a peevish irony, "You may care to see what your old admirer has to say; as for me, I have no such curiosity."

She paid no attention to the rude speech, and went on with her breakfast.

"You don't mean to say," cried he, in the same pettish tone, "that you don't care what there may be in that letter? It may have some great piece of good fortune to announce. He may have become a celebrity, a rich man,--Heaven knows what. This may contain the offer of his hand.

Come, May, don't despise destiny; break the seal and read your fate."

She made no answer, but, rising from the table, left the room.

It was one of those days on which young Heathcote's temper so completely mastered him that in anger with himself he would quarrel with his dearest friend. Fortunately, they were now very rare with him, but when they did come he was their slave. When on service and in the field, these were the intervals in which his intrepid bravery, stimulated to very madness, had won him fame and honor; and none, not even himself, knew that some of his most splendid successes were reckless indifference to life. His friends, however, learned to remark that Heathcote was no companion at such times, and they usually avoided him.

He sat on at the breakfast-table, not eating, or indeed well conscious where he was, when the door was hastily thrown open, and Agincourt entered. "Well, old fellow," cried he, "I have unearthed you at last.

Your servants have most nobly resisted all my attempts to force a passage or bribe my way to you, and it was only by a stratagem that I contrived to slip past the porter and pass in."

"You have cost the fellow his place, then," said Charles, rudely; "he shall be sent away to-day."

"Nonsense, Charley; none of this moroseness with me."

"And why not with _you?_" cried the other, violently. "Why not with _you?_ You'll not presume to say that the accident of your station gives you the privilege of intruding where others are denied? You 'll not pretend that?"

A deep flush covered the young man's face, and his eyes flashed angrily; but just as quickly a softened expression came over his countenance, and in a voice of mingled kindness and bantering, he said, "I 'll tell you what I 'll pretend, Charley; I'll pretend to say that you love me too sincerely to mean to offend me, even when a harsh speech has escaped you in a moment of haste or anger."

"Offend you!" exclaimed Heathcote, with the air of a man utterly puzzled and confused,--"offend you! How could I dream of offending you? You were not used to be touchy, Agincourt; what, in the name of wonder, could make you fancy I meant offence?"

The look of his face, the very accent in which he spoke, were so unaffectedly honest and sincere that the youth saw at once how unconsciously his rude speech had escaped him, and that not a trace of it remained in his memory.

"I have been so anxious to see you, Charley," said he, in his usual tone, "for some days back. I wanted to consult you about O'Shea. My uncle has given me an appointment for him, and I can't find out where he is. Then there 's another thing; that strange Yankee, Quackinboss,--you remember him at Marlia, long ago. He found out, by some means, that I was at the hotel here, and he writes to beg I 'll engage I can't say how many rooms for himself and some friends who are to arrive this evening.

I don't think you are listening to me, are you?"

"Yes, I hear you,--go on."

"I mean to clear out of the diggin's if these Yankees come, and you must tell me where to go. I don't dislike the 'Kernal,' but his following would be awful, eh?"

"Yes, quite so."

"What do you mean by 'Yes'? Is it that you agree with me, or that you haven't paid the slightest attention to one word I've said?"

"Look here, Agincourt," said Charley, passing his arm inside the other's, and leading him up and down the room. "I wish I had not changed my mind; I wish I had gone to India. I have utterly failed in all that I hoped to have done here, and I have made my poor father more unhappy than ever."

"Is he so determined to marry this widow, then?"

"She is gone. She left us more than a week ago, without saying why or for whither. I have not the slightest clew to her conduct, nor can I guess where she is."

"When was it she left this?"

"On Wednesday week last."

"The very day O'Shea started."

They each looked steadfastly at the other; and at last Agincourt said,--

"Would n't that be a strange solution of the riddle, Charley? On the last night we dined together you may remember I promised to try what I could make of the negotiation; and so I praised the widow, extolled her beauty, and hinted that she was exactly the clever sort of woman that helps a man on to fortune."

"How I wish I had gone to India!" muttered Charles, and so immersed in his own cares as not to hear one word the other was saying.

"If I were to talk in that way, Charley, you 'd be the very first to call out, What selfishness! what an utter indifference to all feelings but your own! You are merely dealing with certain points that affect yourself, and you forget a girl that loves you."

"Am I so sure of that? Am I quite certain that an old attachment--she owned to me herself that she liked him, that tutor fellow of yours--has not a stronger hold on her heart than I have? There 's a letter from him. I have n't opened it I have a sort of half suspicion that when I do read it I 'll have a violent desire to shoot him. It is just as if I knew that, inside that packet there, was an insult awaiting me, and yet I 'd like to spare myself the anger it will cause me when I break the seal; and so I walk round the table and look at the letter, and turn it over, and at last--" With the word he tore open the envelope, and unfolded the note. "Has he not given me enough of it? One, two, three, ay, four pages! When a man writes at such length, he is certain to be either very tiresome or very disagreeable, not to say that I never cared much for your friend Mr. Layton; he gave himself airs with us poor unlettered folk--"

"Come, come, Charley; if you were not in an ill mood, you 'd never say anything so ungenerous."

It was possible that he felt the rebuke to be just, for he did not reply, but, seating himself in the window, began to read the letter.

More than once did Agincourt make some remark, or ask some question.

Of even his movements of impatience Heathcote took no note, as, deeply immersed in the contents of the letter, he continued to read on.

"Well, I'll leave you for a while, Charley," said he, at last; "perhaps I may drop in to see you this evening."

"Wait; stay where you are!" said Heathcote, abruptly, and yet not lifting his eyes from the lines before him. "What a story!--what a terrible story!" muttered he to himself. Then beckoning to Agincourt to come near, he caught him by the arm, and in a low whisper said, "Who do you think she tarns out to be? The widow of Godfrey Hawke!"

"I never so much as heard of Godfrey Hawke."

"Oh, I forgot; you were an infant at the time. But surely you mast have heard or read of that murder at Jersey?--a well-known gambler, named Hawke, poisoned by his associates, while on a visit at his house."

"And who is she?"

"Mrs. Penthony Morris. Here's the whole story. But begin at the beginning."

Seated side by side, they now proceeded to read the letter over together, nor did either speak a word till it was finished.

"And to be so jolly with all that on her mind!" exclaimed Agincourt.

"Why, she most have the courage of half a dozen men."

"I now begin to read the meaning of many things I never could make out her love of retirement,--she, a woman essentially of the world and society, estranging herself from every one; her strange relations with Clara, a thing which used to puzzle me beyond measure; and lastly, her remarkable injunction to me when we parted, her prayer to be forgotten, or, at least, never mentioned."

"You did not tell me of that."

"Nor was it my intention to have done so now; it escaped me involuntarily."

"And what is to become of Clara?"

"Don't you see that she has found an uncle,--this Mr. Winthrop,--with whom, and our friend Quackinboss, she is to arrive at Rome to-night or to-morrow?"

"Oh, these are the friends for whom I was to bespeak an apartment; so, then, I 'll not leave my hotel. I 'm delighted to have such neighbors."