The Dead Letter. Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
had the uncertainty of human purposes so impressed me as when I looked abroad over that stately residence and thought of the prosperous future which had come to so awful a standstill. I gathered a handful of pansies—they were Eleanor’s favorites. As I approached the house by the garden, I came nearly upon the portico which extended across its western front before I perceived that it was occupied. Sitting on its outer edge, with one arm half wound around one of its pillars, and her bonnet in the grass at her feet, I beheld the sewing-girl after whom I had dispatched an officer to New York. She did not perceive me, and I had an opportunity of studying the face of the woman who had fallen under my suspicion, when she was unaware that my eye was upon it, and when her soul looked out of it, unvailed, in the security of solitude. The impression which she made upon me was that of despair. It was written on attitude and expression. It was neither grief nor remorse—it was blank despair. It must have been half an hour that I remained quiet, watching her. In all that time she never stirred hand nor eyelid; her glance was upon the greensward at her feet. When I turn to that page of my memory, I see her, photographed, as it were, upon it—every fold of the dark dress, which was some worsted substance, frayed, but neat; the black shawl, bordered, drawn close about the slender shoulders, which had the slight, habitual stoop of those who ply the needle for a living; the jetty hair pushed back from her forehead, the marble whiteness and rigidity of the face and mouth.
It was a face made to express passion. And, although the only passion expressed now was that of despair, so intense that it grew like apathy, I could easily see how the rounded chin and full lips could melt into softer moods. The forehead was rather low, but fair, consorting with the oval of the cheek and chin; the brows dark and rather heavy. I remembered the wild black eyes which I had seen the previous day, and could guess at their hidden fires.
This was a girl to attract interest at any time, and I mutely wondered what had entangled the threads of her fate in the glittering web of a higher fortune, which was now suddenly interwoven with the pall of death. All her movements had been such as to confirm my desire to ascertain her connection, if any, with the tragedy. It seemed to me that if I could see her eyes, before she was conscious of observance, I could tell whether there was guilt, or only sorrow, in her heart; therefore I remained quiet, waiting. But I had mistaken my powers, or the eyes overbore them. When she did lift them, as a steamer came puffing around the base of the mountain which ran down into the river at the east, and they suddenly encountered mine, where I stood not ten feet from her, I saw only black, unfathomable depths, pouring out a trouble so intense, that my own gaze dropped beneath their power.
She did not start, upon observing me, which, as I thought, a guilty person, buried in self-accusing reveries, would have done—it seemed only slowly to penetrate her consciousness that a stranger was confronting her; when I raised my eyes, which had sunk beneath the intensity of hers, she was moving rapidly away toward the western gate.
“Miss Sullivan, you have forgotten your bonnet.”
With a woman’s instinct she put up her hand to smooth her disordered hair, came slowly back and took the bonnet which I extended toward her, without speaking. I hesitated what move to make next. I wished to address her—she was here, in my grasp, and I ought to satisfy myself, as far as possible, about the suspicions which I had conceived. I might do her an irreparable injury by making my feelings public, if she were innocent of any aid or instigation of the crime which had been committed, yet there were circumstances which could hardly pass unchallenged. That unaccountable absence of hers on Saturday, from three o’clock until an hour after the murder was committed; the statement of her aunt that she was in the city, and my finding her in this spot, in connection with the midnight visit to the window, and the other things which I had observed, were sufficient to justify inquiry. Yet, if I alarmed her prematurely I should have the less chance of coming upon proofs, and her accomplices, if she had any, would be led to take steps for greater safety. Anyhow, I would make her speak, and find what there was in her voice.
“Your aunt told me that you had gone to New York,” I said, stepping along beside her, as she turned away.
“She thought so. Did you come here to see me, sir?” stopping short in her walk, and looking at me as if she expected me to tell my business.
This again did not look like the trepidation of guilt.
“No. I came out for a walk. I suppose our thoughts have led us both in the same direction. This place will have an interest to many, hereafter.”
“Interest! the interest of vulgar curiosity! It will give them something to talk about. I hate it!” She spoke more to herself than to me, while a ray of fire darted from those black orbs; the next instant her face subsided into that passionate stillness again.
Her speech was not that of her station; I recalled what her aunt had said about the education she had bestowed on her, and decided that the girl’s mind was one of those which reach out beyond their circumstances—aspiring—ambitious—and that this aspiring nature may have led her into her present unhappiness. That she was unhappy, if not sinful, it took but a glance to assure me.
“So do I hate it. I do not like to have the grief of my friends subjected to cold and curious eyes.”
“Yet, it is a privilege to have the right to mourn. I tell you the sorrow of that beautiful lady he was to have married is light compared with trouble that some feel. There are those who envy her.”
It was not her words, as much as her wild, half-choked voice, which gave effect to them; she spoke, and grew silent, as if conscious that the truth had been wrung from her in the ear of a stranger. We had reached the gate, and she seemed anxious to escape through it; but I held it in my hand, looking hard at her, as I said—“It may have been the hand of envy which dashed the cup of fruition from her lips. Her young life is withered never to bloom again. I can imagine but one wretchedness in this world greater than hers—and that is the wretchedness of the guilty person who has murder written on his or her soul.”
A spasm contracted her face; she pushed at the gate which I still held.
“Ah, don’t,” she said; “let me pass.”
I opened it and she darted through, fleeing along the road which led out around the backward slope of the hill, like Io pursued by the stinging fly. Her path was away from the village, so that I hardly expected to see her again that day.
Within two minutes the gardener’s wife came up the road to the gate. She had been down to visit the corpse of her young master; her eyes were red with weeping.
“How do you do, Mr. Redfield? These be miserable times, ain’t they? My very heart is sore in my breast; but I couldn’t cry a tear in the room where he was, a-lying there like life, for Miss Eleanor sot by him like a statue. It made me cold all over to see her—I couldn’t speak to save me. The father and mother are just broke down, too.”
“How is Miss Eleanor, this morning?”
“The Lord knows! She doesn’t do any thing but sit there, as quiet as can be. It’s a bad symptom, to my thinking. ‘Still waters run deep.’ They’re a-dreading the hour when they’ll have to remove the body from the house—they’re afraid her mind ’ll go.”
“No, no,” I answered, inwardly shuddering; “Eleanor’s reason is too fine and powerful to be unstrung, even by a blow like this.”
“Who was that went out the gate as I came around the bend? Was it that girl, again?”
“Do you mean Leesy Sullivan?”
“Yes, sir. Do you know her? She acts mighty queer, to my thinkin’. She was out here Saturday, sittin’ in the summer-house, all alone, ’till the rain began to fall—I guess she got a good soaking going home. I didn’t think much about her; it was Saturday, and I thought likely she was taking a holiday, and there’s many people like to come here, it’s so pleasant. But what’s brought her here again to-day is more’n I can guess. Do you know, sir?”
“I do not. I found her sitting on the portico looking at the river. Maybe she comes out for a walk and stops here to rest. She probably feels somewhat at home, she has sewed so much in the family.