Though they were letters in form, they proved to be only notes in substance, when he opened them: the writing, in some, not extending to more than four or five lines. At least fifteen or twenty were expressed, with unimportant variations, in this form:
"MY DEAREST MARY--Pray try all you can to meet me to-morrow evening at the usual place. I have been waiting and longing for you in vain to-day. Only think of me, love, as I am now, and always, thinking of you; and I know you will come. Ever and only yours, A. C."
All these notes were signed in the same way, merely with initial letters. They contained nothing in the shape of a date, except the day of the week on which they had been written; and they had evidently been delivered by some private means, for there did not appear to be a post-mark on any of them. One after another Mat opened and glanced at them--then tossed them aside into a heap. He pursued this employment quietly and methodically; but as he went on with it, a strange look flashed into his eyes from time to time, giving to them a certain sinister brightness which altered very remarkably the whole natural expression of his face.
Other letters, somewhat longer than the note already quoted, fared no better at his hands. Dry leaves dropped out of some, as he threw them aside; and little water-color drawings of rare flowers fluttered out of others. Hard botanical names which he could not spell through, and descriptions of plants which he could not understand, occurred here and there in postscripts and detached passages of the longer letters. But still, whether long or short, they bore no signature but the initials "A. C.;" still the dates afforded no information of the year, month, or place in which they had been written; and still Mat quietly and quickly tossed them aside one after the other, without so much as a word or a sigh escaping him, but with that sinister brightness flashing into his eyes from time to time. Out of the whole number of the letters, there were only two that he read more than once through, and then pondered over anxiously, before he threw them from him like the rest.
The first of the two was expressed thus:--
"I shall bring the dried ferns and the passion flower for your album with me this evening. You cannot imagine, dearest, how happy and how vain I feel at having made you as enthusiastic a botanist as I am myself. Since you have taken an interest in my favorite pursuit, it has been more exquisitely delightful to me than any words can express. I believe that I never really knew how to touch tender leaves tenderly until now, when I gather them with the knowledge that they are all to be shown to you, and all to be placed in your dear hand.
"Do you know, my own love, I thought I detected an alteration in you yesterday evening? I never saw you so serious. And then your attention often wandered; and, besides, you looked at me once or twice quite strangely, Mary.--I mean strangely, because your color seemed to be coming and going constantly without any imaginable reason. I really fancied, as I walked home--and I fancy still--that you had something to say, and were afraid to say it. Surely, love, you can have no secrets from me!--But we shall meet to-night, and then you will tell me everything (will you not?) without reserve. Farewell, dearest, till seven o'clock."
Mat slowly read the second paragraph of this letter twice over, abstractedly twisting about his great bristly whiskers between his finger and thumb. There was evidently something in the few lines which he was thus poring over, that half saddened, half perplexed him. Whatever the difficulty was, he gave it up, and went on doggedly to the next letter, which was an exception to the rest of the collection, for it had a postmark on it. He had failed to notice this, on looking at the outside; but he detected directly on glancing at the inside that it was dated differently from those which had gone before it. Under the day of the week was written the word "London"--noting which, he began to read the letter with some appearance of anxiety. It ran thus:
"I write, my dearest love, in the greatest possible agitation and despair. All the hopes I felt, and expressed to you, that any absence would not last more than a few days, and that I should not be obliged to journey farther from Dibbledean than London, have been entirely frustrated. I am absolutely compelled to go to Germany, and may be away as long as three or four months. You see, I tell you the worst at once, Mary, because I know your courage and high spirit, and feel sure that you will bear up bravely against this unforeseen parting, for both our sakes. How glad I am that I gave you my hair for your Bracelet, when I did; and that I got yours in return! It will be such a consolation to both of us to have our keepsakes to look at now.
"If it only rested with me to go or not, no earthly consideration should induce me to take this journey. But the rights and interests of others are concerned in my setting forth; and I must, therefore, depart at the expense of my own wishes, and my own happiness. I go this very day, and can only steal a few minutes to write to you. My pen hurries over the paper without stopping an instant--I am so agitated that I hardly know what I am saying to you.
"If anything, dearest Mary, could add to my sense of the misfortune of being obliged to leave you, it would be the apprehension which I now feel, that I may have ignorantly offended you, or that something has happened which you don't like to tell me. Ever since I noticed, ten days ago, that little alteration in your manner, I have been afraid you had something on your mind that you were unwilling to confide to me. The very last time we saw each other I thought you had been crying; and I am sure you looked away uneasily, whenever our eyes met. What is it? Do relieve my anxiety by telling me what it is in your first letter! The moment I get to the other side of the Channel, I will send you word, where to direct to. I will write constantly--mind you write constantly too. Love me, and remember me always, till I return, never, I hope, to leave you again.--A. C."
Over this letter, Mat meditated long before he quietly cast it away among the rest. When he had at last thrown it from him there remained only three more to examine. They proved to be notes of no consequence, and had been evidently written at an earlier period than the letters he had just read. After hastily looking them over, he searched carefully all through the box, but no papers, of any sort remained in it. That hurried letter, with its abrupt announcement of the writer's departure from England, was the latest in date--the last of the series!
After he had made this discovery, he sat for a little while vacantly gazing out of the window. His sense of the useless result to which the search he had been prosecuting had led him, thus far, seemed to have robbed him of half his energy already. He looked once or twice at the letter superscribed by Joanna Grice, mechanically reading along the line on the cover:--"Justification of my conduct towards my niece,"--but not attempting to examine what was written inside.