Put Yourself in His Place [216]
his family every night. He tells me he comes of the pilgrim fathers, so he is bound to feel for pilgrims and wanderers from home. Well, he has been in patents a little, and, before I lost my little wits with the fever, he and I had many a talk. So now he is sketching out a plan of operation for me, and I shall have to travel many a hundred miles in this vast country. But they won't let me move till I am a little stronger, he and his nieces. If he is gold, they are pearls.
"Dearest, it has taken me two days to write this: but I am very happy and hopeful, and do not regret coming. I am sure it was the right thing for us both.
"Please say something kind for me to the good doctor, and tell him I have got over this one trouble already.
"Dearest, I agreed to take so much a year from Bolt, and he must fight the trades alone. Such a life is not worth having. Bayne won't wrong me of a shilling. Whatever he makes, over his salary and the men's wages, there it will be for me when I come home; so I write to no one at Hillsborough but you. Indeed, you are my all in this world. I travel, and fight, and work, and breathe, and live for you, my own beloved; and if any harm came to you, I wouldn't care to live another moment."
At this point in the letter the reader stopped, and something cold seemed to pass all through his frame. It struck him that all good men would pity the writer of this letter, and abhor him who kept it from that pale, heart-broken girl inside the cottage.
He sat freezing, with the letter in his hand, and began to doubt whether he could wade any deeper in crime.
After a minute or two he raised his head, and was about to finish reading the letter.
But, in the meantime, Grace Carden had resumed her accustomed place in the veranda. She lay upon the couch, and her pale face, and hollow, but still beautiful eyes, were turned seaward. Out of those great sad eyes the sad soul looked across the waste of waters-- gazed, and searched, and pined in vain. Oh, it was a look to make angels weep, and hover close over her head with restless, loving pinions, longing to shadow, caress, and heal her!
Coventry, with Henry Little's letter in his hand, peered through the leaves, and saw the woman he loved fix this look of despair upon the sea--despair of which he was the sole cause, and could dispel it with a gesture.
"And this brings me back to what is my only great trouble now. I told you, in the letter I left behind me, you would hear from me in a month at furthest. It will be not a month, but eleven weeks. Good heavens! when I think what anxiety you may have suffered on my account! You know I am a pupil of the good doctor, and so I put myself in your place, and I say to myself, 'If my Grace had promised to write in a month, and eleven weeks had passed without a word, what would my feelings be?' Why, I think I should go mad; I should make sure you were ill; I should fear you were dead; I should fancy every terrible thing on earth, except that you were false to your poor Henry. That I should never fear: I judge you by myself. Fly, steamboat, with this letter to my love, and set her mind at ease. Fly back with a precious word from her dear hand, and with that in my bosom, nothing will ever daunt me.
"God bless you! angel of my life, darling of my heart, star on which all my hopes are fixed! Oh, what miserable bad tools words are! When I look at them, and compare them with how I love you, I seem to be writing that I love you no more than other people love. What I feel is so much greater than words.
"Must I say farewell? Even on paper, it is like tearing myself away from heaven again. But that was to be: and now this is to be. Good-by, my own beloved.
"Yours till death, HENRY."
Coventry read this sentence by sentence, still looking up, nearly every sentence, at her to whom it was addressed.
The letter pleaded on his knee, the pale face pleaded a few yards off; he sat between the two bleeding lovers, their sole barrier and bane.
His heart began to fail him. The mountain
"Dearest, it has taken me two days to write this: but I am very happy and hopeful, and do not regret coming. I am sure it was the right thing for us both.
"Please say something kind for me to the good doctor, and tell him I have got over this one trouble already.
"Dearest, I agreed to take so much a year from Bolt, and he must fight the trades alone. Such a life is not worth having. Bayne won't wrong me of a shilling. Whatever he makes, over his salary and the men's wages, there it will be for me when I come home; so I write to no one at Hillsborough but you. Indeed, you are my all in this world. I travel, and fight, and work, and breathe, and live for you, my own beloved; and if any harm came to you, I wouldn't care to live another moment."
At this point in the letter the reader stopped, and something cold seemed to pass all through his frame. It struck him that all good men would pity the writer of this letter, and abhor him who kept it from that pale, heart-broken girl inside the cottage.
He sat freezing, with the letter in his hand, and began to doubt whether he could wade any deeper in crime.
After a minute or two he raised his head, and was about to finish reading the letter.
But, in the meantime, Grace Carden had resumed her accustomed place in the veranda. She lay upon the couch, and her pale face, and hollow, but still beautiful eyes, were turned seaward. Out of those great sad eyes the sad soul looked across the waste of waters-- gazed, and searched, and pined in vain. Oh, it was a look to make angels weep, and hover close over her head with restless, loving pinions, longing to shadow, caress, and heal her!
Coventry, with Henry Little's letter in his hand, peered through the leaves, and saw the woman he loved fix this look of despair upon the sea--despair of which he was the sole cause, and could dispel it with a gesture.
"And this brings me back to what is my only great trouble now. I told you, in the letter I left behind me, you would hear from me in a month at furthest. It will be not a month, but eleven weeks. Good heavens! when I think what anxiety you may have suffered on my account! You know I am a pupil of the good doctor, and so I put myself in your place, and I say to myself, 'If my Grace had promised to write in a month, and eleven weeks had passed without a word, what would my feelings be?' Why, I think I should go mad; I should make sure you were ill; I should fear you were dead; I should fancy every terrible thing on earth, except that you were false to your poor Henry. That I should never fear: I judge you by myself. Fly, steamboat, with this letter to my love, and set her mind at ease. Fly back with a precious word from her dear hand, and with that in my bosom, nothing will ever daunt me.
"God bless you! angel of my life, darling of my heart, star on which all my hopes are fixed! Oh, what miserable bad tools words are! When I look at them, and compare them with how I love you, I seem to be writing that I love you no more than other people love. What I feel is so much greater than words.
"Must I say farewell? Even on paper, it is like tearing myself away from heaven again. But that was to be: and now this is to be. Good-by, my own beloved.
"Yours till death, HENRY."
Coventry read this sentence by sentence, still looking up, nearly every sentence, at her to whom it was addressed.
The letter pleaded on his knee, the pale face pleaded a few yards off; he sat between the two bleeding lovers, their sole barrier and bane.
His heart began to fail him. The mountain