第22章 CHAPTER VII(1)

MYRTLE'S LETTER--THE YOUNG MEN'S PURSUIT.

"You know all about it, Olive?" Cyprian Eveleth said to his sister, after a brief word of greeting.

"Know of what, Cyprian?"

"Why, sister, don't you know that Myrtle Hazard is missing,--gone!

--gone nobody knows where, and that we are looking in all directions to find her?"Olive turned very pale and was silent for a moment. At the end of that moment the story seemed almost old to her. It was a natural ending of the prison-life which had been round Myrtle since her earliest years. When she got large and strong enough, she broke out of jail,--that was all. The nursery-bar is always climbed sooner or later, whether it is a wooden or an iron one. Olive felt as if she had dimly foreseen just such a finishing to the tragedy of the poor girl's home bringing-up. Why could not she have done something to prevent it? Well,--what shall we do now, and as it is?--that is the question.

"Has she left no letter,--no explanation of her leaving in this way?""Not a word, so far as anybody in the village knows.""Come over to the post-office with me; perhaps we may find a letter.

I think we shall."

Olive's sagacity and knowledge of her friend's character had not misled her. She found a letter from Myrtle to herself, which she opened and read as here follows:

MY DEAREST OLIVE:--Think no evil of me for what I have done. The fire-hang-bird's nest, as Cyprian called it, is empty, and the poor bird is flown.

I can live as I have lived no longer. This place is chilling all the life out of me, and I must find another home. It is far, far away, and you will not hear from me again until I am there. Then I will write to you.

You know where I was born,--under a hot sun and in the midst of strange, lovely scenes that I seem still to remember. I must visit them again: my heart always yearns for them. And I must cross the sea to get there,--the beautiful great sea that I have always longed for and that my river has been whispering about to me ever so many years. My life is pinched and starved here. I feel as old as aunt Silence, and I am only fifteen,--a child she has called me within a few days. If this is to be a child, what is it to be a woman?

I love you dearly,--and your brother is almost to me as if he were mine. I love our sweet, patient Bathsheba,--yes, and the old man that has spoken so kindly with me, good Master Gridley; I hate to give you pain,--to leave you all,--but my way of life is killing me, and I am too young to die. I cannot take the comfort with you, my dear friends, that I would; for it seems as if I carried a lump of ice in my heart, and all the warmth I find in you cannot thaw it out.

I have had a strange warning to leave this place, Olive. Do you remember how the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and told him to flee into Egypt? I have had a dream like that, Olive. There is an old belief in our family that the spirit of one who died many generations ago watches over some of her descendants. They say it led our first ancestor to come over here when it was a wilderness. Ibelieve it has appeared to others of the family in times of trouble.

I have had a strange dream at any rate, and the one I saw, or thought I saw, told me to leave this place. Perhaps I should have stayed if it had not been for that, but it seemed like an angel's warning.

Nobody will know how I have gone, or which way I have taken. On Monday, you may show this letter to my friends, not before. I do not think they will be in danger of breaking their hearts for me at our house. Aunt Silence cares for nothing but her own soul, and the other woman hates me, I always thought. Kitty Fagan will cry hard.

Tell her perhaps I shall come back by and by. There is a little box in my room, with some keepsakes marked,--one is for poor Kitty. You can give them to the right ones. Yours is with them.

Good-by, dearest. Keep my secret, as I told you, till Monday. And if you never see me again, remember how much I loved you. Never think hardly of me, for you have grown up in a happy home, and do not know how much misery can be crowded into fifteen years of a young girl's life. God be with you!

MYRTLE HAZARD.

Olive could not restrain her tears, as she handed the letter to Cyprian. "Her secret is as safe with you as with me," she said.

"But this is madness, Cyprian, and we must keep her from doing herself a wrong.

What she means to do, is to get to Boston, in some way or other, and sail for India. It is strange that they have not tracked her. There is no time to be lost. She shall not go out into the world in this way, child that she is. No; she shall come back, and make her home with us, if she cannot be happy with these people. Ours is a happy and a cheerful home, and she shall be to me as a younger sister, and your sister too, Cyprian. But you must see her; you must leave this very hour; and you may find her. Go to your cousin Edward, in Boston, at once; tell him your errand, and get him to help you find our poor dear sister. Then give her the note I will write, and say Iknow your heart, Cyprian, and I can trust that to tell you what to say."In a very short time Cyprian Eveleth was on his way to Boston. But another, keener even in pursuit than he, was there before him.

Ever since the day when Master Gridley had made that over-curious observation of the young lawyer's proceedings at the office, Murray Bradshaw had shown a far livelier interest than before in the conditions and feelings of Myrtle Hazard. He had called frequently at The Poplars to talk over business matters, which seemed of late to require a deal of talking. He had been very deferential to Miss Silence, and had wound himself into the confidence of Miss Badlam.

He found it harder to establish any very near relations with Myrtle, who had never seemed to care much for any young man but Cyprian Eveleth, and to care for him quite as much as Olive's brother as for any personal reason. But he carefully studied Myrtle's tastes and ways of thinking and of life, so that, by and by, when she should look upon herself as a young woman, and not as a girl, he would have a great advantage in making her more intimate acquaintance.