Chapter XLIV: Burned Letters

The library in which Russell Waldon sat, the next morning after his unpleasant interview with Mrs. Forbes, was like the man himself, a splendid incongruity. The shelves of those tall rosewood bookcases were loaded with contrasting volumes. Heavy treatises on political and social sciences, ponderous histories, quaint manuscript, emblazoned tomes, light poems in blue and gold, library editions of great novelists, pamphlet novels—that flit through each year like autumn leaves, perishing like them—French memoirs and novels appealing to the coarser part of his nature, political pamphlets—all had their place on those shelves, as fine taste, sensuous appetites, sublime aspirations, fierce, selfish will, and wonderful power, struggled and burned in both heart and brain of the man himself.

In a great luxurious easy-chair—one mass of springs, and soft, silken cushions—this man sat, by a table covered with articles of rich bronze, glittering crystal and precious marbles. His velvet slippers were sunk deep into the thick plush of an Oriental carpet, and the loose sleeves of a soft cashmere dressing-gown swept the table whenever he carried his pen to the inkstand.

Near him, on the table, a bouquet of freshly cut flowers sent their perfume across his face. Just beyond them stood a mosaic card-receiver, running over with notes and letters, most of which he had not yet troubled himself to open; for he was busy with a fierce political article, and wrote with great rapidity, as if the words burned under his pen.

After this was completed, he leaned back in his chair, breathed heavily, like a tired race-horse, and taking up the bouquet, sank down among his cushions and idly inhaled its fragrance with half-closed eyes, and a sensuous smile on his lips. After resting thus a minute, he drew the card-receiver toward him, and opened one or two of the most dainty notes, smiling as he broke the crested seals, and unfolded the creamy paper with infinite satisfaction, which more than once ended in a faint sneer.

As he laid one of these missives down, a sudden and unpleasant thought seemed to strike him. He turned over the remaining letters with his hand, flung them down impatiently, not finding what he wanted, and frowning heavily, fell into thought.

“No line from her—no apology, and she fierce as a she-eagle last night! What does this mean? Surely the woman will not attempt to brave it out. That _would_ be inconvenient just now; but the flowers—they, possibly, were from her.”

Waldon rang the bell, which was answered by a trim, velvet-eyed young servant, who seemed to be on very confidential terms with his master.

“Scipio, I forgot to ask where these flowers came from.”

“Don’t know for certain, sir, but the straw-colored note there, just under your hand, came with it.”

“I have not read it yet,” said Waldon, carelessly taking up the note. “What, only her! How the creature loves me—as if one cared to remember a ball flirtation forever; but then the flowers are of use. Here, Scipio, attach my card to that, and have it sent at once to Mrs. Forbes.”

Scipio took the bouquet and went out, breaking into a mellow laugh as he closed the door.

“That’s so like Mr. Waldon,” he said; “gets bouquets from old loves and sends ’em round to new ones, after he’s smelt on ’em long enough hisself—cute as a razor; he! he!”

As Scipio followed his messenger to the door, a gentleman came up the steps.

“Is Mr. Waldon in?”

“Not sure about it—oh, Mr. Forbes—certain sure he’s always at home to you. This way—we shall find him in the library.”

Waldon started from his seat as Scipio flung open the library door, and a quick flush shot over his face.

“What! you, Forbes, at this time in the morning! Come in, come in! How is the mad—”

Waldon was intending to ask after the health of Mrs. Forbes, but a strange expression, that stirred the calm of his visitor’s face, checked the half-uttered word on his insolent lips.

Forbes did not take the seat to which Waldon pointed, but, with his hat in one hand, paused by the library table until Scipio had left the room.

“Sit down—sit down, my dear fellow; there is the mate to my own chair, with its arms wide open.”

Forbes took no heed of this half-jovial, half-nervous invitation, but, leaning one hand on the table, looked Waldon sternly in the face.

“Mr. Waldon, you have some letters addressed to you by my wife.”

A red flush shot across Waldon’s forehead, and a vicious glitter came into his eyes.

“I beg your pardon; I have no letters written by Mrs. Forbes.”

A swift, contemptuous smile stirred the husband’s mouth, and the words he uttered were full of scorn.

“This is subterfuge. I know when the letters were written, and whose signature they bear. When Miss Lane became my wife, she did not change her identity.”

“But what if I still deny that such letters exist?”

“It would be a falsehood; or the threat you made my wife, last night, that of a coward, who did not possess the power he boasted of!”

“Ha!”

“I am waiting for those letters, sir!”

“I will not give them to you, or any other man—would not if they existed. A lady’s letters can only be surrendered to herself.”

“My wife has already demanded them more than once, and you dared to refuse.”

“I dare do a great many things. It does not require much courage to refuse the demands of any woman; but tears and entreaties, such as I have resisted in a beautiful young creature we will hold nameless, bear hard upon me, I must confess.”

“You confess this to _me_?”

“I confess to no man or woman alive!”

The face of the husband was locked like iron. He drew a step nearer to Waldon, who shrank a little among his silken cushions, while the pupils of his eyes dilated with what, in a small, weak man, would have been called cowardice.

“The letters, sir! The letters!”

“Why—why, Forbes, you—you look ready to murder me.”

“I _am_ ready to murder you!” answered the ashen-faced man.

Waldon turned his eyes from that threatening face to the hand, clenched like a vice upon the table. It looked hard and cold as marble—a thin wiry hand, strong enough in itself to take a man’s life.

“Turn that diabolical look away, Forbes, and let us talk this thing over. After all, it amounts to nothing.”

The hand upon the table was slowly lifted, thrust into a pocket, and drawn forth again grasping a pistol.

“There is no argument or explanation here. I want every line my wife ever wrote to you!”

This man was not to be trifled with. Waldon saw that with a strange thrill which he would not recognize as cowardice. But he struggled to maintain some show of dignity.

“I will send them to her,” he said, eying the pistol nervously. “You cannot, as a gentleman, ask more than that of me.”

“Very well—I will be your messenger!”

“But it was you she most feared.”

“I will be your messenger!”

These words were repeated with a sharp click, which made the stalwart man in that easy-chair catch his breath.

“Put up your pistol. We are neither cowards nor bullies, to settle our difficulties in this way. Trusting to your honor as a gentleman not to read these letters, I will deliver them to you.”

“I make no promise!”

“And I demand none. The honor—”

“We will not talk of honor here!” interrupted Forbes, sternly.

“Besides,” persisted Waldon, “if she authorized you—”

“I am waiting for the letters!”

“You shall possess them at once. I have no wish to continue an interview in which all rules of ordinary politeness are ignored,” answered Waldon, struggling hard to maintain some show of dignity.

He arose from his chair and opened a drawer of the library table, which was half full of daintily folded notes—cream-colored, rose-tinted, and pale blue—from which a faint confusion of perfume stole out, sickening to the man who waited for his share of the hoarded correspondence.

Waldon took from this mass a package neatly tied with white ribbon, for he was an orderly man in such matters. This he extended to Forbes, who reached forth his hand for it as men shrink from serpents when compelled to touch them.

“They are all here?” he demanded.

“Every one—and much good may they do you,” Waldon added, in a fierce undertone, locking the drawer with a jerk.

Without a word or a gesture of all the contempt he felt, Forbes turned and left the room firmly, till he closed the door; then with slow, wavering footsteps, for he had thrust those letters in his bosom, and their perfumes made him faint.

“Is your mistress in her room?” he inquired of a French maid, in a pretty morning dress and butterfly cap, whom he met in the hall, after letting himself into his own house.

“Yes, sir, she is there, but not well; her head aches terribly, and her eyes are heavy.”

Forbes did not wait to hear more, but went at once to the pretty room in which his wife lay suffering upon that couch of pale blue silk, as if it had been a rack of torture.

She knew where her husband had gone, and shivered as the sound of his footsteps smote her from the stairs.

He came into the room quietly; but it seemed to her as if his footsteps shook the house.

“Alice!”

Her nerves were so strained that even this gentle word brought a cry from the woman’s lips.

“Look up, Alice; here are your letters.”

She sprang to her feet, took the letters between her trembling hands, and broke into a low, hysterical laugh, which was shaken with sobs in its first utterance. Then she lifted her eyes to his, and saw the expression that had crushed her still there.

“Read them!” she said. “For my sake—for God’s sake—read them, every word!”

A flash of lightning seemed to burn across the husband’s face. He snatched the letters from her hands, went to a wood fire that blazed behind its fender of glittering steel, and cast them into the flames. Then he turned, fell down upon his knees by the couch she had left, and the passion so long suppressed shook him like a tempest.

The woman stood as he had left her, pale and terrified. Was this the agony of an eternal parting? Had he read those letters, and found, in their mad, girlish enthusiasm, words which his sensitive nature could not forgive? Surely, surely they could not contain anything so false to the truth as that! Oh, if he had not burned them!

She looked from her prostrate husband to the fire, which had seized upon the package and was curling around it in sharp threads of flame. With a single leap she sprang to the hearth, snatched her letters from the hot, red coals, and stamped the fire out from them with her feet. Then she threw herself down by her husband, clung to him with both arms, and besought him with many tears to read the letters before he condemned her so bitterly—before he left her forever.

Wilson Forbes started from his knees, lifting up his wife in his arms as if she had been the little child she seemed like in her pathetic pleading and passionate tears.

“Leave you forever—leave you forever, my wife! Did you not know—could you not feel—that the thought had left my heart? I was thanking Almighty God that He had taken that bitter cup from me.”

Forbes drew her closer to his bosom as he spoke. His trembling lips touched her forehead. He smoothed back her hair with his hands, and gazed into her eyes tenderly, as if she had just been given back to him from the brink of the grave.

“But you did think of it!” she said, with a thrill of pain in her voice.

“When I had those letters in my hands, Alice, and could have read them, I forbore. The fear of what I might find there took away my strength. I could not thus read your heart. ‘I will give them to her,’ I said. ‘If she falters, or hesitates, I shall understand that she can henceforth be no wife of mine. By her own acts my wife shall accuse or defend herself.’ It was a fearful ordeal, and deep, deep is my thanksgiving that all doubts, like those miserable papers, are in ashes.”

“But they are not entirely burned, Wilson. You will read them yet.”

“No! Let them perish out of our lives, never to be thought of again.”

Forbes seized the half-burned letters as he spoke, and thrust them deep into the flames. As they were consumed, his wife felt like a prisoner from whose limbs a ball and chain had dropped.