one. tired to appear at the Mertons, and when I went to inquire for her, they told me she had had a fainting fit, which had left her so exhausted, that she had gone to bed. For several days she was too ill to see any One morning I was told that if I waited she would come into the balcony of the sitting-room appropriated to her. The morning excursions had not been recommenced, but she still came on to the balcony for a little fresh air. Her maid told me that the motion of the litter was too much for her now. "Surely," I said," she must be suddenly much worse?" She held up to me a crumpled half-torn fold of paper. "It is all written in cipher, but I shall study it till I have deciphered it." "Did you find it, or did Sorrow bring it you?" I asked, ironically. "It looks like a piece of paper I took from between his teeth the other day. I dare say he has buried the rest. I am afraid you will find it is much ado about nothing." She passed on. I was glad she had left me, for I saw through the open doors the glitter of Irene's coverlet as she was brought into her sitting-room and placed on her couch. I was shocked to see the alteration in her. She was painfully changed. Her face was marble white, her eyes looked unnaturally large and bright, and her features were sharpened and attenuated, as after a fever. Her voice was almost inaudible. Sorrow was beside her, licking her hand and caressing her. The thin little pale hand stroked his head with a tenderness which, I confess, I was fool enough to envy. "Sorrow has been more than usually affectionate these last few days. He seems full of contrition for having played truant. He returned out of breath and in the greatest tribulation after you left me. told him I suspected him of having gone off with my missing letter, and of having I swallowed it, and he by no means denied it. In fact, he looked as if he confessed it, and to confess is almost to atone, so I have absolved him." She smiled one of her rare sweet smiles. A chill went to my heart as I listened to her. Was that the letter in cipher which Madame de Beaufort had found? About a fortnight afterwards a murmur of indignation arose among the English in Constantinople, in consequence of a rumour that the French had made peace, or rather that negotiations for the purpose of making peace were going on between them and the Czar. It was hard on Madame de Beaufort that every one belonging to her should swell the court of a woman she disliked and suspected. But no change arose in this regard, either in her dislike or her suspicion: and in her presence Irene seemed under some fatal charm. She was no longer bright and charming, but pale, silent, and drooping. One day Caradoc expostulated with me gently on my being so engrossed with her. "I cannot understand it, Eden. De Beaufort's infatuation is explicable-he has a spice of madness in him, but yours "Do not class us together, I beg." "Your countess does, I think. After talking sentiment and high art with you in the morning, she admits De Beaufort in the afternoon. "Say he inflicts himself upon her." Caradoc smiled. "As you please; you are as mad as he is. I do not pretend, however, to say that they talk of sentiment or art." I parted from Caradoc moodily. That evening I went to her as usual. Her litter had been placed in the balcony. There was a mysterious and solemn shadow on her face, though it was white as a lily. Her hands were clayey cold. "You are ill," I said, anxiously. "Almost worn out; there are only a few grains of sand left in the hour-glassit is nearly run out." I stooped down to kiss her hand. I did not wish her to see the terror which had blanched my cheek as I looked at her. "Ah! friend," she said, with an accent I cannot describe, "how thankful I am to have known you! Your friendship has given a glorious sunset to my stormy life. No, you must not contradict me, I am very contented. I have even been happy at times; but you must confess that, for me, death is best. You cannot look me in the face and not say so." "I can! I do! you have made your life so rich in good deeds and good influences, that no one could honestly echo such a sentiment." "The end is coming, I feel. There is only one thing, Paul, you must promise me:" she now spoke with feverish excitement. "After my death, do not condemn me, whatever you may hear of me, until you have read a letter which I have written, and which will then be given to you. There are mysteries in my life which, while I breathe, I cannot disclose; but I could not rest in my grave without justifying myself to you. Until I am laid in it, have faith in me." I scaled my promise by kissing the hand which lay outside the coverlet. "There is another thing; will you take my dog home with you to-night?" She "I am glad I find you here, Mr. Eden: you will witness what I say. I have long suspected what I now know. Seizing the clue given me by your remark that this paper, picked up by me in the garden below, had been torn by the dog, I showed it to the dog. He recognised it, and piece by piece brought me all that was missing of the document of which it is a part. I told you that I would master the cipher in which it is written, and I have mastered it. Its writer-that woman who hears mewill contradict me, if what I charge her with is false. I charge her with being a Russian Spy. She has deceived, she has entrapped, she has betrayed. It has been her infamous trade to deceive, entrap, and betray. She has broken my heart, but I fear her no more, for she is a Spy!" The scorn of her voice was terrible. No word of reply. The hand I held did not tremble, there was not a quiver in the frail form. At this moment the door was again opened, and M. de Beaufort rushed in. He did not see his wife, or me. "Irene, rejoice! the news is confirmed, France has made peace with the Czar!" "She has fainted," I said. The servants had now entered with lights. I took one in my hand and bent over her. Good God! what look was that on the still, pale face! Was it appealing, imploring, upbraiding? Be it what it might, it was the last look of the Dead. I answered, yes, with a tightening at my heart which taught me that her emotion was contagious. After a time I tried to rouse myself to cheer her, and our succeeding conversation was not wholly sad. said she had known unparalleled sorrows, but had also known most exquisite joys. By-and-by, after a silence, she repeated, with a return of that uncommon agitation, half raising herself from her couch: "Mind! If you hear me accused, suspend your judgment. Within the last six weeks a hideous doubt has sprung up in me, that I have done wrong-but-II killed her?" I answered "No! She was deeply grateful to him, and I had was so nearly dead when you came in, that sworn obedienceI think she did not even hear you speak." She rose, drew down her veil and left the room. I took De Beaufort's nerveless hand and led him from the room. I closed the eyes that had so enchanted and entranced me. The face was as the face of the Angel of Death.. She sank back and was silent for a few minutes; then I saw her lips part, and heard her murmur faintly, Father, forgive me, I knew not what I did." There was silence again, and then she said, with a shudder, "It is cold; let me be carried in.” I rang the little silver bell, and her attendants came, and she was carried back into the drawing-room. I followed her. The couch was placed, as usual, in the centre of the room. The lamps were not lighted, but the faint moonlight struggling in at the windows fell on the couch. It might have been a tomb with the white indication of a recumbent effigy on it. I sate near her with Sorrow (strangely quiet) at my feet. The quiet was intense. I do not know how many minutes were so passed when I heard a distant door open abruptly and voices speaking hastily. Then, with a quick step, Madame de Beaufort entered. Madame de Beaufort asked me, This a Spy! "Have With throbbing brain and beating heart I recalled our intercourse, so brief in time, so long if counted by the power of its influence over my soul. O look upon her, look upon her! This, a Spy! And I loved her. Yes, at this supreme moment I knew I had loved her. I loved her with a love which had so little of earth in it that Death had no power over it. Selfishness, Passion had no part in it. But as I over and over again repeated, without meaning or purpose, the shameful words " A Spy!" an overwhelm ing pity arose in me, and solemnly hovered over the silent form, like the spectre of my love. I went home, and a few hours afterwards Merton came to me. He had found a letter addressed to himself on her writing-table. She had foreseen that she would die suddenly, and had written her last wishes in it. A telegram announcing her decease was to be sent to a certain address in St. Petersburg. No time was lost in despatching it. An answer came, requesting that seals might be put on all her effects until a confidential person should arrive from St. Petersburg and take charge of them. And, in compliance with her strict direction, she was to be buried in the sea. The coffin containing her remains, was placed on the litter she had used in life, and carried on board a small yacht belonging to the Mertons, wherein those faithful friends of hers, and I, put out to sea. The prayers of the Greek church were read, and the coffin, covered with its shining pall (the coverlet which had caused her to be called the Mermaid), was lowered into the peaceful Deep. Not many tides had rolled over it, when a packet sealed with the imperial arms of Russia, was put into my hands. This packet contained the letter she had spoken of. Nothing besides the letter. Thus it ran: I am a Spy. Know how and why I came to be that infamous and shameful thing. At sixteen, I-a child even younger than my age, in feeling, in education, in principle was married to Count Ivan Vassiloff, a man sixty years old. Up to the time of my marriage I had lived in the happiest home in the world. I played and danced, and thought Life meant laughter and mirth and pleasure. My husband was, without a doubt, the most cruel of men. He was stern, vindictive, and suspicions. He was madly in love with me, and madly jealous of me. centre of a yet gloomier forest, some forty miles south of Moscow, and fifteen miles away from the nearest village. In the forest were the hovels of a few serfs, but no other habitation, save his. My heart sank as I retired to rest. “He will murder me," I thought, "and no one will ever know it." I believe the wine I had drunk at supper was drugged. When I awoke, I was in the dark. I felt about, but instead of papered walls or carpeted floor, I touched nothing but cold stone. I screamed, and the echoes of my screams seemed to resound as from a vault. At last I fainted. When I came to my senses, my husband, with a lamp in his hand, was bending over me. I was on a low pallet bed covered with woollen cloth, in a lofty stone dungeon. "You are now wholly in my power," said my husband, "and until your wicked temper is subdued, you shall remain here. When you have learned to obey me in all things and submit yourself wholly to me, I will restore you to liberty, and we will travel. You shall never see St. Petersburg again, for I intend to announce your death to your parents and to the world." Ι was like a fury, and I had the triumph for a moment of making even him turn pale, but I was wholly in his power, and that fact restored him to himself, and made him insensible to my denunciations. He told me that twice a week he would bring me food, and that at those times I would have the opportunity of begging his pardon and beseeching his indulgence. I took an oath to rot in that dungeon rather than yield to him. I kept my oath, but how I suffered! An ardent, bright, joyous temperament like mine condemned at eighteen to darkness and solitude. How I did not go mad, I cannot divine. I was buoyed up, perhaps, with a sense that my wretched captivity could not last, that deliverance must come. I used to sing while I could; but after the first year my voice became too weak for that, and then I used I had married him to please my parents. to compose verses and repeat them aloud, I had no prepossession in favour of any one and try to remember all I had read, and else, and I could have learned to love him; invent stories, and declaim scenes out of the but he made me abhor him, and defy him. plays I had seen. I never once spoke to him, One day, after two years of hard usage, in five long dreary years. He spoke fiercely he informed me that he intended taking to me, as often as he came; but I never me to a country house he possessed near answered. Sometimes I believe he thought Moscow, where, in solitude and quiet, II had grown deaf, he would shout so loudly might learn to forget the frivolities of my youth. I went with him. For, in spite of all, I had not learned to fear him. We arrived at a gloomy house in the to me. He had shown me the notice of my death sent to my parents and their reply: so I knew I was cut off from the living. Still I hoped. Morning and evening I prayed to be rescued. At last the hour came. On one of the days of his coming, his angry threats and reproaches, raising the echoes of the place, were heard without by a child at play near a ruined well. It had always been a wonder to the poor serfs in the forest, why their master should persistently remain in a house he had never before visited. There had been a rumour that his wife had accompanied him on his arrival, had been taken ill, and had died a day or two later. There had been a funeral, but the whole transaction had been mysterious, and no one had seen me. The Count had brought with him but one servant wholly devoted to him, and he had been sent away after the funeral. The mother of the child at play, could not believe his story when he ran home, frightened, to tell it; but she determined to listen for herself next day, and returned to listen day by day until she heard the voice. She recognised it (as the child had done), and could almost distinguish the words spoken. With a reticence marvellous in one of her class, she told no one, but made her way to the village fifteen miles off, and confided her secret to a priest there! She convinced him, and he went to St. Petersburg. Passing from mouth to mouth, his story at length reached the emperor, who put my wrong at once into the hands of one able and willing to right it. It was his portrait you saw in my room. Within a month, I was borne up into the light of day and the world of the living, after an entombment of more than five years. I had preserved my life through the darkness and the silence, but my limbs were dead. No relative remained to me. Very slowly I came to bear the light and to recover health. It was then that I set myself to fulfil another vow I had made in that horrible tomb. I had sworn there to devote myself, body and soul, to my deliverer, if deliverance should ever come. I had sworn to be his slave, and to subject myself, body and brain, to his will. I told this to my deliverer. He looked at me steadfastly. "Are these only words ?" he said. "Try me," I replied. me. I did not at first comprehend the full scope of the service required of Vassiloff had been sent to Siberia, his great wealth had been transferred to me for my life, and every external circumstance was in favour of my doing that service well. Travelling was needful for my health, and I had that ostensible reason for visiting the various places to which I was sent. I was furnished with letters to the most important persons in the countries I visited, and the political events and personages of those countries were to be watched and influenced with my utmost skill, according to directions I received. He understood me thoroughly, and knew that I should die if I had not something to love. When I first left St. Petersburg he brought me my poor dog. It was my most stringent order to make no European friend. The name of the dog was to be a perpetual reminder of my deliverance, and my bondage and fealty to my deliverer. I obeyed my benefactor in all things, until I disobeyed him by making a friend of you, and I pay the penalty. Until some six weeks since, I had no scruple, no doubt or hesitation. At about that time my eyes seemed suddenly opened to my disgrace. I owe that enlightenment to the change wrought in me by my association with you. But the knowledge has killed me. Better that I had perished in | my dungeon than been released to do the evil I have done-God knows how blindly and unwittingly! You know all now. I have tried to atone to the woman who is my bitter enemy by writing her an avowal of my purpose in fascinating her husband. I have told her it is for his eyes too. She had no small need to be jealous of me, and she will be avenged in his detestation of my memory. You can forgive me, can you not? Now Ready, price 5s. 6d., bound in green cloth, ALL THE YEAR ROUND. To be had of all Booksellers. MR. CHARLES DICKENS'S FINAL READINGS. MESSRS. CHAPPELL AND CO. have great pleasure in announcing that MR. CHARLES DICKENS will resume and conclude his interrupted series of FAREWELL READINGS at St. James's Hall, London, early in the New Year. The Readings will be TWELVE in NUMBER, and none will take place out of London. All communications to be addressed to Messrs. CHAPPELL and Co., 50, New Bond-street, W. The Right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors. Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street, Strand. Printed by C. WHITING, Beaufort House, Strar d. CHAPTER XIII. JOE DOWSETT'S NEWS. It was not far from ten o'clock when Joe Dowsett returned from Shipley Magna. Joe was in some respects an excellent servant, but he had his failings-among which might be reckoned an inability to resist strong liquor when proffered gratuitously. During twenty years Joe had not been known to be drunk at his own expense. But a visit to the Crown at Shipley Magna, where he was an old crony and customer of the head ostler, was pretty sure to result in Joe's partial intoxication. On the present occasion he had ridden to Shipley and back on the old pony, the sole beast of burthen belonging to the vicar. And Joe attributed the enormous amount of time occupied in the journey, to his own remarkable humanity to the pony. "Mustn't press him hard, the old beast," said Joe, on his return, standing before the kitchen fire, the heat of which caused his wet clothes to steam again. master the tidings of Joe's return. "Master's fine and vexed," she said, "at Joe being so late. He said he wanted to send Joe to fetch home Miss Veronica if he had come at any reasonable hour. But now it's too late." "Why was he unwilling to let her stay at Mrs. Plew's ?" asked Joanna. "O, I don't know. Miss Veronica has stayed there before. But the vicar said as he'd have gone to fetch her hisself, only it's such a night, and been getting worse and worse since sundown. I think master feels lonely after being used to Sir John's company. And then both the young ladies being away the first evening and all-it's made him cross. He says he shall go to bed, and you're to send him up a slice of dry toast and a glass of negus, with not too much nutmeg in it." "Negus ain't a bad thing," observed Joe Dowsett. "You go to your bed, Joe, for mercy's sake!" cried the old woman, impatiently. "Don't stand a steaming there like a copper on washing day." "I feel pretty comfortable, Jo-anna. I see a friend of yours at the Crown this evening-Mr. Paul." "Paul at the Crown!" exclaimed Cathe "No fear of you pressing him hard to come away from the Crown," retorted Joanna. "I advise you to get to your bed, and take off them damp things. Else you'll be get-rine. ting a fever, or the rheumaticks, or something. Only," she added, under her breath, "only we know there's a special providence for certain folks; and I'm sure you're one on 'em this night, Joe Dowsett." "All right, Jo-anna. I feel pretty comfortable, thank 'ee. No, no; mustn't press the old pony. The merciful man is merciful to his beast." "Yes, Paul at the Crown. He pretended not to see me, and skulked through the tap-room like a rat. Sir John's a gentleman. I say nothing against Sir John. But Paul-Paul's a sneak." Paul never "And "Don't you talk nonsense. did you no harm," said Joanna. I don't believe you saw him at all tonight." VOL. II. 42 |