Foul Play - Dion Boucicault (the best books to read txt) 📗

her plighted faith, that she felt like a poor bird caught in a silken net.

“Sir Edward is very good,” said he; “he feels for me.”

At that moment, a note was sent up.

“Mr. Wardlaw is here, and has asked me when the marriage is to be. I can’t tell him; I look like a fool.”

Helen sighed deeply and had begun to gather those tears that weaken a woman. She glanced despairingly to and fro, and saw no escape. Then, Heaven knows why or wherefore—probably with no clear design at all but a woman’s weak desire to cause a momentary diversion, to put off the inevitable for five minutes—she said to Arthur: “Please give me that prayerbook. Thank you. It is right you should know this.” And she put Cooper’s deposition, and Welch’s, into his hands.

He devoured them, and started up in great indignation. “It is an abominable slander,” said he. “We have lost ten thousand pounds by the wreck of that ship, and Wylie’s life was saved by a miracle as well as your own. It is a foul slander. I hurl it from me.”

And he made his words good by whirling the prayerbook out of window.

Helen uttered a scream. “My mother’s prayerbook!” she cried.

“Oh! I beg pardon,” said he.

“As well you may,” said she. “Run and send George after it.”

“No, I’ll go myself,” said he. “Pray forgive me. You don’t know what a terrible slander they have desecrated your prayerbook with.”

He ran out and was a long time gone. He came back at last, looking terrified.

“I can’t find it,” said he. “Somebody has carried it off. Oh, how unfortunate I am!”

“Not find it!” said Helen. “But it must be found.”

“Of course it must be found,” said Arthur. “A pretty scandal to go into the hands of Heaven knows who. I shall offer twenty guineas reward for it at once. I’ll go down to the Times this moment. Was ever anything so unlucky?”

“Yes, go at once,” said Helen; “and I’ll send the servants into the Square. I don’t want to say anything unkind, Arthur, but you ought not to have thrown my prayerbook into the public street.”

“I know I ought not. I am ashamed of it myself.”

“Well, let me see the advertisement.”

“You shall. I have no doubt we shall recover it.”

Next morning the Times contained an advertisement offering twenty guineas for a prayerbook lost in Hanover Square, and valuable, not in itself, but as a relic of a deceased parent.

In the afternoon Arthur called to know if anybody had brought the prayerbook back.

Helen shook her head sadly, and said, “No.”

He seemed very sorry and so penitent, that Helen said:

“Do not despair. And if it is gone, why, I must remember you have forgiven me something, and I must forgive you.”

The footman came in.

“If you please, miss, here is a woman wishes to speak to you; says she has brought a prayerbook.”

“Oh, show her up at once,” cried Helen.

Arthur turned away his head to hide a cynical smile. He had good reasons for thinking it was not the one he had flung out of the window yesterday.

A tall woman came in, wearing a thick veil, that concealed her features.

She entered on her business at once.

“You lost a prayerbook in this Square yesterday, madam.”

“Yes.”

“You offer twenty guineas reward for it.”

“Yes.”

“Please to look at this one.”

Helen examined it, and said with joy it was hers.

Arthur was thunderstruck. He could not believe his senses.

“Let me look at it,” said he.

His eyes went at once to the writing.

He turned as pale as death and stood petrified.

The woman took the prayerbook out of his unresisting hand, and said:

“You’ll excuse me, sir; but it is a large reward, and gentlefolks sometimes go from their word when the article is found.”

Helen, who was delighted at getting back her book, and rather tickled at Arthur having to pay twenty guineas for losing it, burst out laughing, and said:

“Give her the reward, Arthur; I am not going to pay for your misdeeds.”

“With all my heart,” said Arthur, struggling for composure.

He sat down to draw a check.

“What name shall I put?”

“Hum! Edith Hesket.”

“Two t’s?”

“No, only one.”

“There.”

“Thank you, sir.”

She put the check into her purse, and brought the prayerbook to Helen.

“Lock it up at once,” said she, in a voice so low that Arthur heard her murmur, but not the words. And she retired, leaving Helen staring with amazement, and Arthur in a cold perspiration.

 

CHAPTER LXV.

 

WHEN the Springbok weighed anchor and left the island, a solitary form was seen on Telegraph Hill.

When she passed eastward, out of sight of that point, a solitary figure was seen on the cliffs.

When her course brought the island dead astern of her, a solitary figure stood on the east bluff of the island, and was the last object seen from the boat as she left those waters forever.

What words can tell the sickening sorrow and utter desolation that possessed that yearning bosom!

When the boat that had carried Helen away was out of sight, he came back with uneven steps to the cave, and looked at all the familiar objects with stony eyes, and scarce recognized them, for the sunshine of her presence was there no more. He wandered to and fro in a heavy stupor, broken every now and then by sharp pangs of agony that almost made him scream. And so the poor bereaved creature wandered about all day. He could not eat, he could not sleep, his misery was more than he could bear. One day of desolation succeeded another. And what men say so hastily was true for once. “His life was a burden.” He dragged it about with him he scarce knew how.

He began to hate all the things he had loved while she was there. The beautiful cave, all glorious with pearl, that he had made for her, he could not enter it, the sight killed him, and she not there.

He left Paradise Bay altogether at last and anchored his boat in a nook of Seal Bay. And there he slept in general. But sometimes he would lie down, wherever he happened to be, and sleep as long as he could.

To him to wake was a calamity. And when he did wake, it was always with a dire sense of reviving misery, and a deep sigh at the dark day he knew awaited him.

His flesh wasted on his bones, and his clothes hung loosely about him. The sorrow of the mind reduced him almost to that miserable condition in which he had landed on the island.

The dog and the seal were faithful to him; used to lie beside him, and often whimpered; their minds, accustomed to communicate without the aid of speech, found out, Heaven knows how! that he was in grief or in sickness.

These two creatures, perhaps, saved his life or his reason. They came between his bereaved heart and utter solitude.

Thus passed a month of wretchedness unspeakable.

Then his grief took a less sullen form.

He came back to Paradise Bay, and at sight of it burst into a passion of weeping.

These were his first tears, and inaugurated a grief more tender than ever, but less akin to madness and despair.

Now he used to go about and cry her name aloud, passionately, by night and day.

“Oh, Helen! Helen!”

And next his mind changed in one respect, and he clung to every reminiscence of her. Every morning he went round her haunts, and kissed every place where he had seen her put her hand.

Only the cave he could not yet face.

He tried, too. He went to the mouth of it again and again, and looked in; but go into it and face it, empty of her—he could not.

He prayed often.

One night he saw her in a dream.

She bent a look of angelic pity on him, and said but these words, “Live in my cave,” then vanished.

Alone on an island in the vast Pacific, who can escape superstition? It fills the air. He took this communication as a command, and the next night he slept in the cave.

But he entered it in the dark, and left it before dawn.

By degrees, however, he plucked up courage and faced it in daylight. But it was a sad trial. He came out crying bitterly after a few minutes.

Still he persevered, because her image had bade him; and at last, one evening, he even lighted the lamp, and sat there looking at the glorious walls and roof his hapless love had made.

Getting stronger by degrees, he searched about, and found little relics of her—a glove, a needle, a great hat she had made out of some large leaves. All these he wept over and cherished.

But one day he found at the very back of the cave a relic that made him start as if a viper had stung his loving heart. It was a letter.

He knew it in a moment. It had already caused him many a pang; but now it almost drove him mad. Arthur Wardlaw’s letter.

He recoiled from it, and let it lie. He went out of the cave, and cursed his hard fate. But he came back. It was one of those horrible things a man abhors, yet cannot keep away from. He took it up and dashed it down with rage many times; but it all ended in his lighting the lamp at night, and torturing himself with every word of that loving letter.

And she was going home to the writer of that letter, and he was left prisoner on the island. He cursed his generous folly, and writhed in agony at the thought. He raged with jealousy, so that his very grief was blunted for a time.

He felt as if he must go mad.

Then he prayed—prayed fervently. And at last, worn out with such fierce and contending emotions, he fell into a deep sleep, and did not wake till the sun was high in heaven.

He woke; and the first thing he saw was the fatal letter lying at his feet in a narrow stream of sunshine that came peering in.

He eyed it with horror. This, then, was then to haunt him by night and day.

He eyed it and eyed it. Then turned his face from it; but could not help eying it again.

And at last certain words in this letter seemed to him to bear an affinity to another piece of writing that had also caused him a great woe. Memory by its subtle links connected these two enemies of his together. He eyed it still more keenly, and that impression became strengthened. He took the letter and looked at it close, and held it at arm’s length and devoured it; and the effect of this keen examination was very remarkable. It seemed to restore the man to energy and to something like hope. His eyes sparkled, and a triumphant “Ah!” burst from his bosom.

He became once more a man of action. He rose, and bathed, and walked rapidly to and fro upon the sands, working himself up to a daring enterprise. He took his saw into the jungle, and cut down a tree of a kind common enough there. It was wonderfully soft, and almost as light as cork. The wood of this was literally useless for any other purpose than that to which Penfold destined it. He cut a great many blocks of this wood, and drilled holes in them, and, having hundreds of yard of good line, attached these quasi corks