"And you lie here, poor and dying!" said Hagar, bitterly.
"Yes; it is hard--hard. But I must not complain. God has sent you to me to make my last moments happy. You are good--good, my dear. You have done much for me; but one thing more you must do. Open the teapot."
"What!" cried Hagar, in surprise--"open what has been closed for thirty years!"
"Yes; I wish you to read me John's letters before I die. Let me go to my rest knowing that he loved me once. To-morrow, my dear, you must do this for me. Promise."
"I promise," said Hagar, folding the blankets over her. "To-morrow I shall have the teapot opened, and bring you the letters--your own and John Mask's."
With this promise she took her leave for the night, after first seeing that Margaret was warm and comfortable. In her own bed, Hagar meditated on the sadness of the story which had been told to her, on the passionate love of the man for the blind woman, which had died away so strangely. That he should have ceased to love Margaret was not uncommon, as men, particularly when absent, are only too often prone to forget those they leave at home; but it was curious that he should have married Jane Lorrimer. A doubt stole into Hagar's mind as to whether Margaret had been treated fairly; whether there might not have been other reasons for the sudden ending of her romance than she knew of. For such suspicion Hagar had no grounds to go upon; but all the same she could not rid her mind of the doubt. Perhaps the letters might set it at rest; perhaps all had happened as Margaret had told. Nevertheless, Hagar was anxious that the morrow should come--that the teapot should be opened and the letters read. Then she would learn if treachery and woman's wiles had parted the lovers, or if the story was merely one--as Margaret believed--of a faithless man and a broken-hearted woman.
The next day Hagar left the shop in charge of Bolker, and took the silver teapot to a jeweler in the adjacent thoroughfare. He soon melted the solder, and opened the lid. Within, beneath a pile of dried rose-leaves, she found the packet of letters, tied up with a blue ribbon. There was something sacrilegious to her imaginative mind, in thus disturbing the relics of this dead-and-done-with romance; and it was with reverent care that Hagar carried the teapot and its contents to the house in Carby's Crescent. After thirty years of moldering under the rose-leaves, these letters, yellow and faded, were restored to the light of day; and the woman who had written them when young and fair was now lying withered and dying in the winter of her age. Hagar was profoundly moved as she sat by that humble bedside with the ancient love-letters on her lap.
"Read them all," said Margaret, with the tears running down her face; "read the letters of John in which he told me of his love thirty years ago. Thirty years! Ah, dear God! when I was young and fresh! Oh, oh, oh! Youth and love!" she wept, beating the bedclothes with trembling hands--"love and youth! Gone! gone!--and I lie dying!"
Steadying her voice with an effort in the presence of this sacred grief, Hagar read the letters written from India by the absent lover. There were ten or twelve of them--charming letters, full of pure and undying love. From first to last there was no sentiment but what breathed devotion and trust. The writer spoke tenderly of his poor blind love; he promised to make her her path with roses, and in every way to show himself worthy of honor and affection. Up to the twelfth letter there was not a hint of parting or of a desire to break off the engagement; only in the thirteenth letter--two curt lines, as Margaret had said--came the announcement, with the swiftness and unexpectedness of a thunderbolt. "It is better that our engagement should end," wrote John, coldly; "therefore I return you the thirteen letters you wrote me." And that was all. This unexpected communication, coming so suddenly after the fervor of the dozen letters, took away Hagar's breath.
"Excepting in the last I do not see anything cruel or cold in these letters, Miss Snow," said Hagar, when she had ended her reading.
Margaret put up one thin hand to her head. "No, no," she stammered, confusedly; "and yet I am sure John wrote cruelly. It is so long ago that perhaps I forget; but his last letters were cold, and hinted at a desire that we should part. I remember Jane and Lucy reading them to me."
"I don't see any hint of that," replied Hagar, doubtfully; "in fact, in the last two or three he asks, as you have heard, why you wish the marriage postponed."
"I never wished that!" murmured Margaret, perplexed. "I wanted to marry John and be with him always. Certainly I never said such a thing when I wrote to him. Of that I am sure."
"We can soon prove it," said Hagar, taking up the other packet. "Here are your letters to John--all of them. Shall I read them?"
Receiving an eager assent, the girl arranged the epistles in order of dates, and read them slowly. They were scrawled rather than written, in the large, childish handwriting of the blind; and most of them were short, but the first six were full of love and a desire to be near John. The seventh letter, which was better written than the previous ones, breathed colder sentiments; it hinted that the absent lover could do better than marry a blind girl, who might be a drag on him, it said.
"Stop! Stop!" cried Margaret, breathlessly. "I never wrote that letter!"
She was sitting up in the bed, with her gray hair pushed off her thin, eager face; and turning her sightless eyes towards Hagar, she seemed almost to see the astonished face of the girl in the intensity of her desire.
"I never wrote that letter!" repeated Margaret, in a shrill voice of excitement; "you are making some mistake."
"Indeed I read only what is written," said Hagar; "let me continue. When I finish the other five letters we shall discuss them. But I fear--I fear---"
"You fear what?"
"That you have been deceived. Wait--wait! say nothing until I finish reading."
Margaret sank back on her pillow with a gray face and quick in-drawn breathing. She dreaded what was coming, as Hagar well knew; so the girl continued hurriedly to read the letters, lest she should be interrupted. They were all--that is, the last five or six--written in better style of handwriting than the former ones; and each letter was colder than the last. The writer did not want to leave her quiet English home for distant India. She was afraid that the engagement was a mistake; when she consented to the marriage she did not know her own mind. Moreover, Jane Lorrimer loved him; she was---
"Jane!" interrupted Margaret, with a cry--"what had Jane to do with my love for John? I never wrote those last letters; they are forgeries!"
"Indeed they look like it," said Hagar, examining the letters; "the handwriting is that of a person who can see--much better than the writing of the early letters."
"I always wrote badly," declared Margaret, feverishly. "I was blind; it was hard for me to pen a letter. John did not expect--expect--oh, dear Lord, what does it all mean?"
"It means that Jane deceived you."
"Deceived me!" wailed Margaret, feebly--"deceived her poor blind friend! No, no!"
"I am certain of it!" said Hagar, firmly. "When you told me your story, I was doubtful of Jane; now that I have read those forged letters--for forged they are--I am certain of it. Jane deceived you, with the aid of Lucy!"
"But why, dear Lord, why?"
"Because she loved John and wished to marry him. You stood in the way, and she removed you. Well, she gained her wish; she parted you from John, and became Mrs. Mask."
"I can't believe it; Jane was my friend."
"Naturally; and for that reason deceived you," said Hagar, bitterly. "Oh, I know well what friendship is! But we must find out the truth. Tell me the exact address of Mrs. Mask."
"For what reason?"
"Because I shall call and see her. I shall learn the truth, and right you in the eyes of John."
"What use?" wept Margaret, bitterly. "My life is over, and I am dying. What use?"
Feeble and hopeless, she would have made no effort herself; but Hagar was determined that the secret, buried in the silver teapot for thirty years, should be known, if not to the world, at least to John Mask. These many days he had deemed Margaret faithless,