Chapter XLIV: Confessions of Deception

When Hannah Arnold found herself alone with Osborne, she arose, went towards him, and laid her hand on his arm.

“I think they mean to kill each other. You are one of God’s holy ministers. I beseech you, I charge you to prevent it. This man is my betrothed husband; Benedict is my brother. The very thought of a conflict between them is awful.”

“My poor young lady, I will do my best; but no person has influence over Arnold, I less than any one living. But I will not shrink from the duty.”

Hannah pressed his arm gratefully with her trembling hand.

“Hush!” she whispered. “It is his step.”

She had heard aright. Arnold opened the door and looked into the room.

“Hannah, go help my mother. Amy has just come out of her fainting-fit. Go: we must not have the servants called up, or this miserable affair will be all over town before morning.”

Hannah left the room. Arnold addressed the clergyman:

“She has been frightfully ill, poor thing, and I now see that if this other affair had come off it would have killed her. I told her not to write, and did not know all. Whatever it was that sent you back, I am grateful for the accident. But for that, I might have gone on. After I saw you, the thing was impossible, and I am glad of it, for I never have and never shall love another woman.”

“Poor thing! how she must have suffered!” said Osborne.

“It is over now. I will be kind to her, Osborne. Only help me to get her home again without scandal. I think the other party will be as anxious for that as I am. Go after them, Osborne. If the affair can be kept quiet among ourselves, I will make it worth your while.”

“How!” exclaimed Osborne, sharply, and his forehead flushed crimson. “This to me, Arnold?”

“Well, well, whether you will aid me or not, I must tell you a truth which you will thank me for. The remembrance of that night in New York has made you unhappy.”

“Unhappy!” exclaimed Osborne, turning pale again. “It has made me weary of life.”

“But there was nothing in it. I wonder you ever believed what we told you.”

“But I remember——”

“Yes, being in a gambling-hell. Certainly that much is true; but it happened innocently enough. You remember going out into a hot August sun with us, after drinking moderately of wine at dinner, and being seized with a vertigo. We took you to the hotel, poured some brandy down your throat, and afterwards administered a rather heavy dose of laudanum,—congratulating each other that you were so easily disposed of, having made an engagement to meet some of our friends at the hall, and try our luck at cards. Your clerical character was in the way, and we did not know how to get rid of you. The sudden fit of illness was a godsend to us; but in our inexperience we gave just enough laudanum to excite instead of stupefying you.

“For a little time you were quiet, and seemed dropping off to sleep. We thought ourselves safe then, and stole away. Just as we entered the hall, my companion turned and saw that you were following us. The door was already open, and several card-tables revealed. It was too late then,—so we made no resistance, and you walked in with us. The moment the blaze of the chandelier fell on your face, I saw that the opiate had made you delirious. You looked around bewildered, spoke to no one, but walking wearily to a sofa, lay down, not to sleep, but in restless wakefulness. There you lay, hour after hour through the night, watching us as we lost and won at the card-table. Once or twice you got up and leaned over my chair, taking a sort of dazed interest in my game.

“Towards morning, the effects of the opiate left you. I never saw a look of wilder astonishment than came over your face. The anxiety with which you inquired how we came there first gave us the idea of hoaxing you. The rest I need not relate. You believed us,—believed that the wine we drank at dinner had unsettled your brain, and a night of ill-luck at card-playing had followed. We were a little taken aback when you asked us where the money had come from; but my companion answered that you had borrowed it of me. Pray remember that you offered the note. I took it in order to carry out the deception, but never intended to use it against you in any way. Indeed, I would have told you the truth at once; but in this community gambling is considered a horrible offence, and while you thought yourself my participant, I was sure of secresy.”

Osborne sat with an elbow resting on his knee, shading his face with one hand: after one earnest glance at Arnold he had fallen into that position. As the end drew near, he began to tremble with thrills of intense gratitude: great tears came raining down from under his quivering fingers; and he listened as if every word drained the agony from his heart.

When Arnold paused, his great joy broke forth; and lifting his face—where every delicate feature quivered with thankfulness—heavenward, he cried out:

“Thank God! Oh, Father of mercies, I thank thee!”

Not a shade of bitterness rested in his heart against the man who had deceived him so. He forgot the wrong in this sudden redemption from self-reproach, and turning to Arnold wrung his hand gratefully.

“You have taken the burden from my shoulders,—that cruel sense of guilt from my soul. I cannot remember the wrong sufficiently for reproaches. Thank God the service you demanded of me was not an absolute crime.”

“I used the note to coerce you into that secret marriageservice, and to force you out of the country; but, upon my honor, I never thought of claiming the money,” said Arnold, touched, in spite of himself, by this generous forgiveness. “At first I never thought of using it at all.”

“Let that pass, Arnold. It was well, perhaps, that I should be tried in the furnace. We must not be unforgiving to the instruments our Divine Master uses in humbling us. I have nothing but thankfulness to offer,—nothing but joy to express. But there was something that you asked of me. Ah, I remember. Yes, I will do that for the sake of your young wife.”

“I shall be greatly obliged if you will, Osborne.”

“But there was something else,—threats, harsh words,—between you and that young Frenchman. Let me implore you, offer him no violence.”

Arnold’s face flushed and his lip curved.

“Osborne, that man called me a coward!”

“That was in his justifiable rage.”

“Well, well, we will talk of that to-morrow. Just now I want you to serve me in the matter I spoke of. As yet, no one except yourself, beyond those who are interested, knows any thing of the scene which passed here this evening. See that it does not spread. The De Montreuil pride will second you in this.”

“I will go at once,” was the prompt reply; and Osborne, weary as he was, hastened away on his kind mission.

But when he reached Paul De Montreuil’s door the servant refused him admission.

Arnold had smothered his wrath in the presence of the clergyman, but it burned fiercely yet. The word coward, applied to him, still rang in his ear. Indeed, few men ever lived who deserved it less. He had been humiliated, defied, and this thought kept the iron of his temper at a white heat. About an hour after Osborne left, he took his hat and went out, bending his steps to the house he had left early in the evening.

“Is De Montreuil in?” he inquired of the servant at the door.

“You, Mr. Arnold, or any messenger from you, I was to admit,” answered the man. “He is in the library.”

Arnold strode through the hall and passed into the library. Paul received him standing. Notwithstanding the rage that burned within them, these young men were pale, and seemed cold as ice.

“You have called me a villain, sir. Let that pass. I have come to prove that I am no coward. This quarrel is private; let it remain so. We shall gain nothing by challenging scandal; therefore let us have no seconds. You have a servant who can be faithful and silent. He shall load our pistols and measure the ground. I require no one. Does this please you, Paul De Montreuil?”

“And the place?”

This was De Montreuil’s sole answer.

“Between the cedar grove and the shore on the way to East Haven. The hour must be sunrise, or we may be interrupted.”

“And the arms?”

“Pistols, if that pleases you.”

De Montreuil bowed and turned away. Arnold left the house.

“Francis,” said De Montreuil, looking into the hall, “go to some stable and have a carriage ready before daybreak.”

The servant went out in haste, for it was getting late.

Just before dawn the next morning, a hackney carriage drove from Paul De Montreuil’s door, moving cautiously at first, but driving off, as it left the town, at a rapid speed.

Another carriage left the Elm Tree tavern at the same hour.