CHAPTER XXVII.
A LAST WORD.
Did Marah Leighton will the coming of her old lover to my inn on thatfatal night? That is the question I asked, when, with the first breakingof the morning light, I discovered lying on the table under an emptyphial, a letter addressed, not to her husband, nor to her child, but tohim, Mark Felt. It is a question that will never be answered, but I knowthat he comforts himself with the supposition, and allows the tremblinghope to pass, at times, across his troubled spirit, that in thebitterness of those last hours some touch of the divine mercy may havemoved her soul and made her fitter for his memory to dwell upon.
The letter I afterward read. It was as follows:
TO THE MAN WHO GAVE ALL, BORE ALL, AND REAPED NOTHING BUT SUFFERING:
I am not worthy to write you, even with the prospect of death before me. But an influence I do not care to combat drives me to make you, of all men, the confidant of my remorse.
I did not perish sixteen years ago in the Hudson River. I lived to share in and profit by a crime that has left an indelible stain upon my life and an ineffaceable darkness within my soul. You know, or soon will know, what that crime was and how we prospered in it. Daring as it was dreadful, I heard its fearful details planned by his lips, without a shudder, because I was mad in those days, mad for wealth, mad for power, mad for adventure. The only madness I did not feel was love. This I say to comfort a pride that must have been sorely wounded in those days, as sorely wounded as your heart.
Edwin Urquhart could make my eyes shine and my blood run swiftly, but not so swiftly as to make me break my troth with you, had he not sworn to me that through him I should gain what moved me more than any man's love. How he was to accomplish this I could not see in the beginning, and was so little credulous of his being able to keep his oaths that I let myself be drawn by you almost to the church door.
But I got no further. There in the crowd he stood with a command in his eyes which forbade any further advance. Though I comprehended nothing then, I obeyed his look and went back, for my heart was not in any marriage, and it was in the hopes to which his looks seemed to point. Later he told me what those hopes were. He had been down to Long Island, and, while there, had chanced to hear in some tavern of the Happy-Go-Lucky Inn and its secret chamber, and he saw, or thought he saw, how he could make me his without losing the benefit of an alliance with Miss Dudleigh. And I thought I saw also, and entered into his plans, though they comprised crime and entailed horrors upon me from which woman naturally shrinks. I was hard as the nether millstone of which the Bible speaks, and went determinedly on in the path of dissimulation and crime which had been marked out for me, till we came to this inn. Then, owing, perhaps, to my long imprisonment in the dreadful box, I began to feel qualms of physical fear and such harrowing mental forebodings that more than once during that terrible evening I came near shouting for release.
But I was held back by apprehensions as great as any from which a premature release from my place of hiding could have freed me. I dared not face Honora, and I dared not subject Edwin Urquhart to the consequences of a public recognition of our perfidy, and so I let my opportunity go by, and became the sharer, as I was already the instigator, of the unheard-of crime by which I became, in the eyes of the world, his wife.
What I suffered during its perpetration no word of mine can convey. I cringed to her moans; I shook under the blow that stifled them. And when all was over, and the bolts which confined me were shot back, and I found myself once more on my feet and in the free air of this most horrible of rooms, I looked about, not for him, but her, and when I did not see her or any token of her death, I was seized by such an agony of revulsion that I uttered a great and irrepressible cry which filled the house, and brought more than one startled inquirer to our door.
For retribution and remorse were already busy within me, and in the lurking shadows about the fireplace I thought I saw the long and narrow slit made by the half-closed panel standing open between me and the secret place of her entombment. And though it was but an optical delusion, the panel being really closed, it might as well have been the truth, for I have never been able to rid myself of the sight of that chimerical strip of darkness, with its suggestions of guilt and death. It haunted my vision; it ruined my life; it destroyed my peace. If I shut my eyes at night, it opened before me. If I arrayed myself in jewels and rich raiment, and paused to take but a passing look at myself in the glass, this horror immediately came between me and my own image, blotting the vision of wealth from my eyes; so that I went into the homes of the noble or the courts of the king a clouded, miserable thing, seeing nothing but that black and narrow slit closing upon youth and beauty and innocence forever and forever and forever.
My child came. Ah! that I should have to mention her here! I do it in penance; I do it in despair; since with her my heart woke, and for her that heart is now broken, never to be healed again. Oh, if the knowledge of my misery wakens in you one thought that is not of revenge, cast a pitying eye upon this darling one, left in a hateful country without friends, without lover, without means. For friends and lover and means will all leave her with the revelations which the morning will bring, and unless Heaven is merciful to her innocence as it has been just to my guilt, she will have no other goal before her than that which has opened its refuge to me.
As for her father, let Heaven deal with him. He gave me this darling child; so I may not curse him, even if I cannot bless.
MARAH.
* * * * *
OCTOBER 23, 1791.
I have seen one bright thing to-day, and that was the faint and almostunearthly gleam which shot for a moment from beneath Honora's fallinglids as I told her what love was and how the marquis only awaited herpermission to speak to assure her of his boundless affection and hisundying purpose to be true to her even to the point of assuming hergriefs and taking upon himself the protection of her innocence.
If it had not been for this, I should have felt that the world was toodark to remain in, and life too horrible to be endured.
* * * * *
NOVEMBER 30, 1791.
I thought that when Honora Urquhart left my house to be married to M. DeFontaine, in the church below the hill, peace would return to us oncemore.
But there is no peace. This morning another horrible tragedy defiled mydoorstep.
I was sitting in the open porch waiting for the mail coach, for itseemed to me that it was about time I received some word from Mr.Tamworth. It was yet some minutes before the time when the rumble ofthe coach is usually heard, and I was brooding, as was natural, over themore than terrible occurrences of the last few weeks, when I heard theclatter of horses' hoofs, and looking up and down the road, saw a smallparty of men approaching from the south. As they came nearer, I noticedthat one of the riders was white-haired and presumably aged, and wasinteresting myself in him, when he came near enough for me todistinguish his features, and I perceived it was no other than Mr.Tamworth.
Rising in perturbation, I glanced at the men behind and abreast of him,and saw that one of these rode with lowered head and oppressed mien, andwas just about to give that person a name in my mind when the horse hebestrod
e suddenly reared, bolted, and dashed forward to where I sat,flinging his rider at the very threshold of my house, where he laysenseless as the stone upon which his head had fallen.
For an instant both his companions and myself paused aghast at a sightso terrible and bewildering; then, amid cries from the road and one wildshriek from within, I rushed forward, and turning over the head, lookedupon the face of the fallen man. It was not a new one to me. Thoughchanged and seamed and white now in death, I recognized it at once. Itwas that of Edwin Urquhart.
. . . . .
This noon I took down the sign which has swung for twenty years over myfront door. "Happy-Go-Lucky" is scarcely the name for an inn accursed byso many horrors.
* * * * *
FEBRUARY 3, 1792.
This week I have fulfilled the threat of years ago. I have had the oakparlor and its hideous adjunct torn from my house.
Now, perhaps, I can sleep.
* * * * *
MARCH 16.
News from Honora. The distant relative who succeeded to the estates andthe title of the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon has fallen a victim to theguillotine. Would this have been the fate of Honora's husband had heforsaken her and returned home? There is reason to believe it. At allevents, she finds herself greatly comforted by this news for thesacrifice which her husband made to his love, and no longer regrets theexile to which he has been forced to submit for her sake. Wonderful,wonderful Providence! I view its workings with renewed awe every day.
* * * * *
SEPTEMBER 5, 1795.
I have been from home. I have been on a visit to New York. I have tastedof change, of brightness, of free and cheerful living, and I can settledown now in this old and fast-decaying inn with something else to thinkabout than ruin and fearful retribution.
I have been visiting Madame De Fontaine. She wished me to come, I think,that I might see how amply her married life had fulfilled the promise ofher courtship days. Though she and her noble husband live in peacefulretirement, and without many of the appurtenances of wealth, they findsuch resources of delight in each other's companionship that it would behard for the most exacting witness of their mutual felicity to wish themany different fate, or to desire for them any wider field of socialinfluence.
The marquis--I shall always call him thus--has found a friend in GeneralWashington, and though he is never seen at the President's receptions,or mingles his voice in the councils of his adopted country, there areevidences constantly appearing of the confidence reposed in him by thisgreat man, which cannot but add to the exile's contentment andsatisfaction.
Honora has developed into a grand beauty. The melancholy which herunhappy memories have necessarily infused into her countenance havegiven depth to her expression, which was always sweet, and frequentlytouching. She looks like a queen, but like a queen who has known notonly grief, but love. There is nothing of despair in her glance, rathera lofty hope, and when her affections are touched, or her enthusiasmroused, she smiles with such a heavenly brightness in her countenance,that I think there is no fairer woman in the world, as I am assuredthere is none worthier.
Her husband agrees with me in this opinion, and is so happy that shesaid to me one day:
"I sometimes wonder how my heart succeeds in holding the joy whichHeaven has seen fit to grant me. In it I read the forgiveness of God forthe unutterable sins of my parents; and though the shadows will come,and do come, whenever I think upon the past, or see a face which, likeyours, recalls memories as bitter as ever overwhelmed an innocent girlin her first youth, I find that with every year of love and peacefulliving the darkness grows less, as if, somewhere in the boundlessheavens, the mercy of God was making itself felt in the heart of her whoonce called herself my mother."
And hearing her speak thus, I felt my own breast lose something of theoppression which had hitherto weighed it down. And as the days passed,and I experienced more and more of the true peace that comes withperfect love and perfect trust, I found my tears turned to rejoicing andthe story of my regrets into songs of hope.
And so I have come back comforted and at rest. If there are yet ghostshaunting the old inn, I do not see them, and though its walls aredismantled, its custom gone, and its renown a thing of the past, I canstill sit on its grass-grown doorstep and roam through its fast-decayingcorridors without discovering any blacker shadow following in my wakethan that of my own figure, bent now with age, and only held upright bythe firmness of the little cane with which I strive to give aid to mytottering and uncertain steps.
The grace of God has fallen at last upon the Happy-Go-Lucky Inn.
FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS
Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size.Printed on excellent paper--most of them with illustrations of markedbeauty--and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume,postpaid.
BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK. By George Barr McCutcheon. With Color Frontispieceand other illustrations by Harrison Fisher. Beautiful inlay picture incolors of Beverly on the cover.
"The most fascinating, engrossing and picturesque of the season's novels."--_Boston Herald._ "'Beverly' is altogether charming--almost living flesh and blood."--_Louisville Times._ "Better than 'Graustark'."--_Mail and Express._ "A sequel quite as impossible as 'Graustark' and quite as entertaining."--_Bookman._ "A charming love story well told."--_Boston Transcript._
HALF A ROGUE. By Harold MacGrath. With illustrations and inlay coverpicture by Harrison Fisher.
"Here are dexterity of plot, glancing play at witty talk, characters really human and humanly real, spirit and gladness, freshness and quick movement. 'Half a Rogue' is as brisk as a horseback ride on a glorious morning. It is as varied as an April day. It is as charming as two most charming girls can make it. Love and honor and success and all the great things worth fighting for and living for the involved in 'Half a Rogue.'"--_Phila. Press._
THE GIRL FROM TIM'S PLACE. By Charles Clark Munn. With illustrations byFrank T. Merrill.
"Figuring in the pages of this story there are several strong characters. Typical New England folk and an especially sturdy one, old Cy Walker, through whose instrumentality Chip comes to happiness and fortune. There is a chain of comedy, tragedy, pathos and love, which makes a dramatic story."--_Boston Herald._
THE LION AND THE MOUSE. A story of American Life. By Charles Klein, andArthur Hornblow. With illustrations by Stuart Travis, and Scenes fromthe Play.
The novel duplicated the success of the play; in fact the book is greater than the play. A portentous clash of dominant personalities that form the essence of the play are necessarily touched upon but briefly in the short space of four acts. All this is narrated in the novel with a wealth of fascinating and absorbing detail, making it one of the most powerfully written and exciting works of fiction given to the world in years.
THE AFFAIR AT THE INN. By Kate Douglas Wiggin. With illustrations byMartin Justice.
"As superlatively clever in the writing as it is entertaining in the reading. It is actual comedy of the most artistic sort, and it is handled with a freshness and originality that is unquestionably novel."--_Boston Transcript._ "A feast of humor and good cheer, yet subtly pervaded by special shades of feeling, fancy, tenderness, or whimsicality. A merry thing in prose."--_St. Louis Democrat._
ROSE O' THE RIVER. By Kate Douglas Wiggin. With illustrations by GeorgeWright.
"'Rose o' the River,' a charming bit of sentiment, gracefully written and deftly touched with a gentle humor. It is a dainty book--daintily illustrated."--_New York Tribune._ "A wholesome, bri
ght, refreshing story, an ideal book to give a young girl."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ "An idyllic story, replete with pathos and inimitable humor. As story-telling it is perfection, and as portrait-painting it is true to the life."--_London Mail._
TILLIE: A Mennonite Maid. By Helen R. Martin. With illustrations byFlorence Scovel Shinn.
The little "Mennonite Maid" who wanders through these pages is something quite new in fiction. Tillie is hungry for books and beauty and love; and she comes into her inheritance at the end. "Tillie is faulty, sensitive, big-hearted, eminently human, and first, last and always lovable. Her charm glows warmly, the story is well handled, the characters skilfully developed."--_The Book Buyer._
LADY ROSE'S DAUGHTER. By Mrs. Humphry Ward. With illustrations by HowardChandler Christy.
"The most marvellous work of its wonderful author."--_New York World._ "We touch regions and attain altitudes which it is not given to the ordinary novelist even to approach."--_London Times._ "In no other story has Mrs. Ward approached the brilliancy and vivacity of Lady Rose's Daughter."--_North American Review._
THE BANKER AND THE BEAR. By Henry K. Webster.
"An exciting and absorbing story."--_New York Times._ "Intensely thrilling in parts, but an unusually good story all through. There is a love affair of real charm and most novel surroundings, there is a run on the bank which is almost worth a year's growth, and there is all manner of exhilarating men and deeds which should bring the book into high and permanent favor."--_Chicago Evening Post._
LAVENDER AND OLD LACE. By Myrtle Reed.
A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance finds a modern parallel. One of the prettiest, sweetest, and quaintest of old-fashioned love stories * * * A rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception, full of delicate fancy, of tenderness, of delightful humor and spontaneity. A dainty volume, especially suitable for a gift.
DOCTOR LUKE OF THE LABRADOR. By Norman Duncan. With a frontispiece andinlay cover.
How the doctor came to the bleak Labrador coast and there in saving life made expiation. In dignity, simplicity, humor, in sympathetic etching of a sturdy fisher people, and above all in the echoes of the sea, _Doctor Luke_ is worthy of great praise. Character, humor, poignant pathos, and the sad grotesque conjunctions of old and new civilizations are expressed through the medium of a style that has distinction and strikes a note of rare personality.
THE DAY'S WORK. By Rudyard Kipling. Illustrated.
The _London Morning Post_ says: "It would be hard to find better reading * * * the book is so varied, so full of color and life from end to end, that few who read the first two or three stories will lay it down till they have read the last--and the last is a veritable gem * * * contains some of the best of his highly vivid work * * * Kipling is a born story-teller and a man of humor into the bargain.
ELEANOR LEE. By Margaret E. Sangster. With a frontispiece.
A story of married life, and attractive picture of wedded bliss * * * an entertaining story of a man's redemption through a woman's love * * * no one who knows anything of marriage or parenthood can read this story with eyes that are always dry * * * goes straight to the heart of every one who knows the meaning of "love" and "home."
THE COLONEL OF THE RED HUZZARS. By John Reed Scott. Illustrated byClarence F. Underwood.
"Full of absorbing charm, sustained interest, and a wealth of thrilling and romantic situations. So naively fresh in its handling, so plausible through its naturalness, that it comes like a mountain breeze across the far-spreading desert of similar romances."--_Gazette-Times_, Pittsburg. "A slap-dashing day romance."--_New York Sun._
THE FAIR GOD; OR, THE LAST OF THE TZINS. By Lew Wallace. Withillustrations by Eric Pape.
"The story tells of the love of a native princess for Alvarado, and it is worked out with all of Wallace's skill * * * it gives a fine picture of the heroism of the Spanish conquerors and of the culture and nobility of the Aztecs."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
"_Ben Hur_ sold enormously, but The Fair God was the best of the General's stories--a powerful and romantic treatment of the defeat of Montezuma by Cortes."--_Athenaeum._
THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS. By Louis Tracy.
A story of love and the salt sea--of a helpless ship whirled into the hands of cannibal Fuegians--of desperate fighting and tender romance, enhanced by the art of a master of story telling who describes with his wonted felicity and power of holding the reader's attention * * * filled with the swing of adventure.
A MIDNIGHT GUEST. A Detective Story. By Fred M. White. With afrontispiece.
The scene of the story centers in London and Italy. The book is skilfully written and makes one of the most baffling, mystifying, exciting detective stories ever written--cleverly keeping the suspense and mystery intact until the surprising discoveries which precede the end.
THE HONOUR OF SAVELLI. A Romance. By S. Levett Yeats. With cover andwrapper in four colors.
Those who enjoyed Stanley Weyman's _A Gentleman of France_ will be engrossed and captivated by this delightful romance of Italian history. It is replete with exciting episodes, hair-breadth escapes, magnificent sword-play, and deals with the agitating times in Italian history when Alexander II was Pope and the famous and infamous Borgias were tottering to their fall.
SISTER CARRIE. By Theodore Drieser. With a frontispiece, and wrapper incolor.
In all fiction there is probably no more graphic and poignant study of the way in which man loses his grip on life, lets his pride, his courage, his self-respect slip from him, and, finally, even ceases to struggle in the mire that has engulfed him. * * * There is more tonic value in Sister Carrie than in a whole shelfful of sermons.
THE SHUTTLE, By Frances Hodgson Burnett With inlay cover in colors byClarence F. Underwood.
This great international romance relates the story of an American girl who, in rescuing her sister from the ruins of her marriage to an Englishman of title, displays splendid qualities of courage, tact and restraint. As a study of American womanhood of modern times, the character of Bettina Vanderpoel stands alone in literature. As a love story, the account of her experience is magnificent. The masterly handling, the glowing style of the book, give it a literary rank to which very few modern novels have attained.
THE MAKING OF A MARCHIONESS, By Frances Hodgson Burnett
Illustrated with half tone engravings by Charles D. Williams. Withinitial letters, tail-pieces, decorative borders. Beautifully printed,and daintily bound, and boxed.
A delightful novel in the author's most charming vein. The scene is laid in an English country house, where an amiable English nobleman is the centre of matrimonial interest on the part of both the English and Americans present.
Graceful, sprightly, almost delicious in its dialogue and action. It is a book about which one is tempted to write ecstatically.
THE METHODS OF LADY WALDERHURST, By Francis Hodgson Burnett
A Companion Volume to "The Making of a Marchioness."
With illustrations by Charles D. Williams, and with initial letters,tail-pieces, and borders, by A. K. Womrath. Beautifully printed an
ddaintily bound, and boxed.
"The Methods of Lady Walderhurst" is a delightful story which combines the sweetness of "The Making of a Marchioness," with the dramatic qualities of "A Lady of Quality." Lady Walderhurst is one of the most charming characters in modern fiction.
VAYENNE, By Percy Brebner With illustrations by E. Fuhr.
This romance like the author's _The Princess Maritza_ is charged to the brim with adventure. Sword play, bloodshed, justice grown the multitude, sacrifice, and romance, mingle in dramatic episodes that are born, flourish, and pass away on every page.
DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES. By Irving Bacheller. With illustrations byArthur Keller.
"Darrel, the clock tinker, is a wit, philosopher, and man of mystery. Learned, strong, kindly, dignified, he towers like a giant above the people among whom he lives. It is another tale of the North Country, full of the odor of wood and field. Wit, humor, pathos and high thinking are in this book."--_Boston Transcript._
D'RI AND I: A Tale of Daring Deeds in the Second War with the British.Being the Memoirs of Colonel Ramon Bell, U. S. A. By Irving Bacheller.With illustrations by F. C. Yohn.
"Mr. Bacheller is admirable alike in his scenes of peace and war. D'ri, a mighty hunter, has the same dry humor as Uncle Eb. He fights magnificently on the 'Lawrence,' and was among the wounded when Perry went to the 'Niagara.' As a romance of early American history it is great for the enthusiasm it creates."--_New York Times._
EBEN HOLDEN: A Tale of the North Country. By Irving Bacheller.
"As pure as water and as good as bread," says Mr. Howells. "Read 'Eben Holden'" is the advice of Margaret Sangster. "It is a forest-scented, fresh-aired, bracing and wholly American story of country and town life. * * * If in the far future our successors wish to know what were the real life and atmosphere in which the country folk that saved this nation grew, loved, wrought and had their being, they must go back to such true and zestful and poetic tales of 'fiction' as 'Eben Holden,'" says Edmund Clarence Stedman.
SILAS STRONG: Emperor of the Woods. By Irving Bacheller. With afrontispiece.
"A modern _Leatherstocking_. Brings the city dweller the aroma of the pine and the music of the wind in its blanches--an epic poem * * * forest-scented, fresh-aired, and wholly American. A stronger character than Eben Holden."--_Chicago Record-Herald._
VERGILIUS: A Tale of the Coming of Christ. By Irving Bacheller.
A thrilling and beautiful story of two young Roman patricians whose great and perilous love in the reign of Augustus leads them through the momentous, exciting events that marked the year just preceding the birth of Christ.
Splendid character studies of the Emperor Augustus, of Herod and his degenerate son, Antipater, and of his daughter "the incomparable" Salome. A great triumph in the art of historical portrait painting.
* * * * *
GROSSET & DUNLAP, - NEW YORK
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 336, "shrink" changed to "shrinks" (woman naturally shrinks)
Page 345, "personalties" changed to "personalities" (of dominantpersonalities)
Page 347, "or" changed to "of" (story of a)
Page 348, "breath" changed to "breadth" (hair-breadth escapes)
There were some typesetting errors in the original text resulting inmisplaced lines on pages 139 and 177.
Original text page 139:
deceit where I had looked for honesty and gratitude.'
the result of a compact entered into with the despicable Urquhart, who,if he could not have her grasp at this wisp of hope and cling to it,though I knew it would never hold, and that her only chance forhappiness was passing from her.
Original page 177 text:
almost overwhelmed it.
"For to me her death--if she were dead--was
"I was a coward, perhaps, but I did not try to dissuade her. Though shewas fatherless and motherless, and loverless and friendless, I let herfor himself, was willing she should go where no
This was changed to:
Page 139:
deceit where I had looked for honesty and gratitude.'
"I was a coward, perhaps, but I did not try to dissuade her. Though shewas fatherless and motherless, and loverless and friendless, I let hergrasp at this wisp of hope and cling to it, though I knew it would neverhold, and that her only chance for happiness was passing from her.
and Page 177:
almost overwhelmed it.
"For to me her death--if she were dead--was the result of a compactentered into with the despicable Urquhart, who, if he could not have herfor himself, was willing she should go where no
The Forsaken Inn: A Novel Page 27