Chapter VII: A Wicked Deed

“Look not upon the wine when it
Is red within the cup;
Stay not for pleasure when she fills
Her tempting beaker up.
Though clear its depths and rich its glow,
A spell of madness lurks below.”
--EDWIN CHARLES.

Eve and her companion stroll down to the river, and she laments in velvet tones the quick temper of Vivian, wondering why she was vexed because they saw her letter.

“It is really nothing new, her liking for Max Verne,” she says. “And if she chooses to recall him after their lovers’ quarrel it is no one’s business but her own!”

But the fires of jealousy are seething wildly in Earle Essex’s heart.

Vivian has written--actually written--to his hated rival! Oh, that it were torn into a million fragments! Oh, that he might prevent Max Verne from receiving it!

Eve’s silly chit-chat grows unendurable. Almost rudely he hastens their return to the house, and excusing himself at the steps, hurries away for a walk to the post-office, saying that he has had no letters for several days.

At the little country store that does duty as mercantile depot and post-office he inquires for letters--his own--and, by the way, he will take the mail for Leigh Place, too--if there is any.

A rustic-looking youth doles out a budget of letters and papers. Essex snatches them and hurries out into the green recesses of the wood, sits down on the mossy roots of a tree to rest and runs over the letters with eager haste.

There are two for Charlton, one for Vivian.

At this latter one he stares and frowns as if the clear, elegant address were a serpent writhing across the fair, white envelope, for well he knows every curve and line of that bold, free hand. Hesitating only a moment he slips that letter inside his breast-pocket.

When he saunters home it is the fashionably late dinner hour, and he hands over all the mail--all except that letter hidden against his breast--hidden from all but the All-Seeing Eye of Heaven.

There was wine for dinner--“rosy wine, golden wine,” said Diana, who loved the vintage of the purple grape. Earle Essex has no appetite for anything else, but he tosses off glass after glass of the fiery liquid, drowning the accusing voice of conscience in those heavy potations.

“All is fair in love or war,” he murmurs to himself a few hours later, as, safe inside his locked door, he unseals and peruses the letter that Max Verne has written to Vivian.

He yields to overmastering temptation.

“I have but to write another letter in place of this, inclose it in this envelope, and in the bitterness of her wounded pride and love, when she receives it, she will remember my humble devotion and turn to me for solace.”

He starts up, and paces his room excitedly.

A new thought has occurred to him.

“That letter she has written to Max--may it not explain away everything? He will return, there will be a reconciliation.”

But no, no, no!--he will not contemplate such a possibility. Vivian must and shall be his by any means he can find to accomplish it.

But there is her letter to Max--the stumbling-block in his path to success. He ought to see it, he must see it.

And why not? whispers the tempting devil he has put to his lips to steal away his brains.

The letter will not be mailed till morning. It lies there still where she angrily thrust it into the unlocked desk in the open school-room. Madame Orne is out of doors with the girls in the moonlight. How easy to possess himself of the letter and return--how easy, and his heart gives a startled throb--to substitute another in its place! He is an adept at counterfeiting chirography. It is his one talent.

There is a tempting devil in strong drink. It stimulates every evil impulse, paralyzes healthy moral sentiment. It inflames Earle Essex’s passions, goads him on to the wicked deed that drives asunder two young, loving hearts that have been linked together in the bonds of tenderest affection.

* * * * *

It is done! The dainty white missive, the letter-dove of peace that has plumed its wings to bear the olive-branch to a sad heart, has been purloined from the desk, and the angry eyes of Essex devour the few girlish lines. Then with alert nerves he seats himself to his task--the writing of a note in Vivian’s dainty hand on a sheet of the same fair paper taken from the desk.

“So there is an end of Verne’s dream,” he mutters, grimly, and goes back to the school-room to return the forged letter to the desk.

Hark! As his nervous hand lifts the desk lid a light step comes along the hall, a light form flits across the threshold, and there is a low, startled cry from a woman’s lips. He turns and faces the governess, standing before him in the flood of white moonlight that pours into the window. The letter drops from his hand and the desk lid falls.

“Good heavens!” she exclaims, scornfully. “You are not surely base enough to be trying to steal Vivian’s letter to Mr. Verne!”