CHAPTER V.
AN INTERIM OF SUSPENSE.
MAY 5, 1791.
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How fearful! To hear a spade in the night and know that this spade isdigging a grave! I sit at my desk and listen to hear if any one in thehouse has been aroused or is suspicious, and then I turn to the windowand try to pierce the gloom to see if anything can be discerned, fromthe house, of the grewsome act now being performed in the garden. Forafter much consultation and several conferences with the authorities, wehave decided to preserve from public knowledge, not only the secret ofthe room hidden in my house, but of the discovery which has lately beenmade there. But while much harm would accrue to me by revelations whichwould throw a pall of horror over my inn, and make it no better than aplace of morbid curiosity forever, the purposes of justice would berather hindered than helped by a publicity which would give warning tothe guilty couple, and prevent us from surprising them in the imaginedsecurity which the lapse of so many years must have brought them.
And so a grave is being dug in the garden, where, at the darkest hour ofnight, the remains of the sweet and gentle bride are to be placedwithout tablet or mound.
Meanwhile do there hide in any part of this wicked world two heartswhich throb with unusual terrors this night? Or does there pass acrossthe mirror of a guilty memory any unusual shapes of horror prognostic ofdetection and coming punishment? It would comfort my uneasy heart toknow; for the spirit of vengeance has seized upon me, and my house willnever seem washed of its stain, or my conscience be quite at rest as tothe past, till that vile man and woman pay, in some way, the penalty oftheir crime.
That we know nothing of them but their names lends an interest to theirpursuit. The very difficulty before us, the hopelessness almost of thetask we have set ourselves, have raised in me a wild and well-nighsuperstitious reliance on Providence and the eternal justice, so that itseems natural for me to expect aid even from such sources as dreams andvisions, and make the inquiry in which I have just indulged thereasonable expression of my belief in the mysterious forces of right andwrong, which will yet bring this long triumphant, but now secretlythreatened, pair to justice.
Dr. Kenyon, who is as practical as he is pious, smiles at my confidence;but Mr. Tamworth neither mocks nor frowns. He has shouldered theresponsibility of finding this man, and has often observed, in his longlife, that a woman's intuitions go as far as a man's reasoning.
To-morrow he will start upon his travels.
JUNE 12, 1791.
It is foolish to put every passing thought on paper, but these sheetshave already served me so well that I cannot resist the temptation ofmaking them the repositories of my secret fears and hopes. Mr. Tamworthhas been gone a month, and I have heard nothing from him. This is allthe more difficult to bear that Dr. Kenyon also has left me, thustaking from my house all in whom I can confide or to whom I can talk.For I will not place confidence in servants, and there are no guestshere at present upon whose judgment I can rely concerning even a lessermatter than this which occupies all my thoughts.
I must talk, then, to thee, unknown reader of these lines, and declareon paper what I have said a thousand times to myself--what a mysterythis whole matter is, and how little probability there is of our everunderstanding it! Why was it that Edwin Urquhart, if he loved one womanso well that he was willing to risk his life to gain her, would subjecthimself to the terrors which must follow any crime, no matter howsecretly performed, by marrying a woman he must kill in twenty-fourhours? Marriages are not compulsory in this country, and any one mustacknowledge that it would be easier for a strong man--and he certainlywas no weakling--to refuse a woman at the nuptial altar than toundertake and carry out a scheme so full of revolting details andinvolving so much risk as this which we have been forced to ascribe tohim.
Then the woman, the unknown and fearful creature who had allowed herselfto be boxed up and carried, God knows, how many fearful miles, just forthe purpose of assuming a position which she seemingly might haveobtained in ways much less repulsive and dangerous! Was it in humannature to go through such an ordeal, and if it were, what could thecircumstances have been that would drive even the most insensible natureinto such an adventure! I question, and try to answer my own inquiries,but my imagination falters over the task, and I am no nearer to thesatisfaction of my doubts than I was in the harrowing minute when theknowledge of this tragedy first flashed upon me.
I must have patience. Mr. Tamworth must write to me soon.
AUGUST 10, 1791.
News, news, and such news! How could I ever have dreamed of it! But letme transcribe Mr. Tamworth's letter:
To Mrs. Clarissa Truax, Mistress of the Happy-go-lucky Inn:
RESPECTED MADAM: After a lengthy delay, occupied in researches, made doubly difficult by the changes which have been wrought in the country by the late conflict, I have just come upon a fact that has the strongest bearing upon the serious tragedy which we are both so interested in investigating. It is this:
That every year the agent of a certain large estate in Albany, N. Y., forwards to France a large sum of money, for the use and behoof of one Honora Quentin Urquhart, daughter of the late Cyrus Dudleigh, of Albany, and wife of one Edwin Urquhart, a gentleman of that same city, to whom she was married in her father's house on January 27, 1775, and with whom she at once departed for France, where she and her husband have been living ever since.
Thus by chance, almost, have I stumbled upon an explanation of the tragedy we found so inexplicable, and found that clew to the whereabouts of the wretched pair which is so essential to their apprehension and the proper satisfaction of the claims of justice.
With great consideration I sign myself,
Your obedient servant, ANTHONY TAMWORTH.
AUGUST 11, 8 o'clock.
I was so overwhelmed by the above letter that I found it impossible atthe time to comment upon it. To-day it is too late, for this morning apacket arrived from Mr. Tamworth containing another letter of suchlength that I am sure it must be one of complete explanation. I burn toread it, but I have merely had time to break the seal and glance at thefirst opening words. Will my guests be so kind as to leave me in peaceto-night, so that I may satisfy a curiosity which has become almostinsupportable?
MIDNIGHT.
No time to-night; too tired almost to write this.
AUGUST 12.
The packet is read. I am all of a tremble. What a tale! What a-- But whyencumber these sheets with words of mine? I will insert the letter andlet it tell its own portion of the strange and terrible history whichtime is slowly unrolling before us.
PART II.
AN OLD ALBANY ROMANCE.
The Forsaken Inn: A Novel Page 5