'I write to you for the last time, lest you should consider yourself any longer bound by the engagements which must long have been distasteful. When I say that Mr. Ford has for some months been my colleague, you will know to what I allude, without my expressing any further. I am already embarked for the U. S. My enemies have succeeded in destroying my character and blighting my hopes. I am at present a fugitive from the hands of so-called justice; but I could have borne all with a cheerful heart if you had not played me false. You will never hear more of one who loved you faithfully.
'TH. MADISON.'
Poor Charlotte! The wound was a great deal too deep for her usual childish tears, or even for a single word. She stood still, cold, and almost unconscious till she heard a step, then she put the cruel letter away in her bosom, and went about her work as usual.
They thought her looking very pale, and Jane now and then reproached her with eating no more than a sparrow, and told her she was getting into a dwining way; but she made no answer, except that she 'could do her work.' At last, one Sunday evening, when she had been left alone with the children, her mistress found her sitting at the foot of her bed, among the sleeping little ones, weeping bitterly but silently. Isabel's kindness at length opened her heart, and she put the letter into her hand. Poor little thing, it was very meekly borne: 'Please don't tell no one, ma'am,' she said; 'I couldn't hear him blamed!'
'But what does he mean? He must be under some terrible error. Who is this Ford?'
'It is Delaford, ma'am, I make no doubt, though however he could have got there! And, oh dear me! if I had only told poor Tom the whole, that I was a silly girl, and liked his flatteries now and then, but constant in my heart I always was!'
Isabel could not but suppose that Delaford, if it were he, might have exaggerated poor Charlotte's little flirtation; but there was small comfort here, since contradiction was impossible. The U. S., over which the poor child had puzzled in vain, was no field in which to follow him up-he had not even dated his letter; and it was a very, very faint hope that Lord Fitzjocelyn might trace him out, especially as he had evidently fled in disgrace; and poor Charlotte sobbed bitterly over his troubles, as well as her own.
She was better after she had told her mistress, though still she shrank from any other sympathy. Even Jane's pity would have been too much for her, and her tender nature was afraid of the tongues that would have discussed her grief. Perhaps the high-toned nature of Isabel was the very best to be brought into contact with the poor girl's spirit, which was of the same order, and many an evening did Isabel sit in the twilight, beside the children's beds, talking to her, or sometimes reading a few lines to show her how others had suffered in the same way. 'It is my own fault,' said poor Charlotte; 'it all came of my liking to be treated like one above the common, and it serves me right. Yes, ma'am, that was a beautiful text you showed me last night, I thought of it all day, and I'll try to believe that good will come out of it. I am sure you are very good to let me love the children! I'm certain sure Miss Salome knows that I'm in trouble, for she never fails to run and kiss me the minute she comes in sight; and she'll sit so quiet in my lap, the little dear, and look at me as much as to say, 'Charlotte, I wish I could comfort you.' But it was all my own fault, ma'am, and I think I could feel as if I was punished right, so I knew poor Tom was happy.'
'Alas!' thought Isabel, after hearing Charlotte's reminiscences; 'how close I have lived to a world of which I was in utter ignorance! How little did we guess that, by the careless ease and inattention of our household, we were carrying about a firebrand, endangering not only poor Walter, but doing fearful harm wherever we went!'
CHAPTER XXI. STEPPING WESTWARD.
On Darien's sands and deadly dew. Rokeby.
Enterprise and speed both alike directed Fitzjocelyn's course across the Isthmus of Panama, which in 1853 had newly become practicable for adventurous travellers. A canal conducted him as far as Cruces, after which he had to push on through wild forest and swamp, under the escort of the muleteers who took charge of the various travellers who had arrived by the same packet.
It was a very novel and amusing journey, even in the very discomforts and the strange characters with whom he was thrown, and more discontented travellers used to declare that Don Luis, as he told the muleteers to call him, always seemed to have the best success with the surly hotel-keepers, though when he resigned his acquisitions to any resolute grumbler, it used to be discovered that he had been putting up with the worst share.
A place called Guallaval seemed to be the most squalid and forlorn of all the stations-outside, an atmosphere of mosquitoes; inside, an atmosphere of brandy and smoke, the master an ague-stricken Yankee, who sat with his bare feet high against the wall, and only deigned to jerk with his head to show in what quarter was the drink and food, and to 'guess that strangers must sleep on the ground, for first- comers had all the beds'-hammocks slung up in a barn, or unwholesome cupboards in the wall.
At the dirty board sat several of the party first arrived, washing down tough, stringy beef with brandy. Louis was about to take his place near a very black-bearded young man, who appeared more civilized than the rest, and who surprised him by at once making room for him, leaving the table with an air of courtesy; and when, in his halting Spanish, he begged 'his Grace' not to disturb himself, he was answered, in the same tongue, 'I have finished.'
After the meal, such as it was, he wandered out of the hut, to escape the fumes and the company within; but he was presently accosted by the same stranger, who, touching his slouched Panama hat, made him a speech in Spanish, too long and fluent for his comprehension, at the same time offering him a cigar. He was civilly refusing, when, to his surprise, the man interrupted him in good English. 'These swamps breed fever, to a certainty. A cigar is the only protection; and even then there is nothing more dangerous than to be out at sunset.'
'Thank you, I am much obliged,' said Louis, turning towards the hut. 'Have you been long out here?'
'The first time on the Isthmus; but I know these sort of places. Pray go in, my Lord.'
The title and the accent startled Louis, and he exclaimed, 'You must be from the Northwold country?'
He drew back, and said bluntly, 'Never mind me, only keep out of this pestiferous air.'
But the abrupt surliness completed the recognition, and, seizing his hand, Louis cried, 'Tom! how are you?' You have turned into a thorough Spaniard, and taken me in entirely.'
'Only come in, my Lord; I would never have spoken to you, but that I could not see you catching your death.'
'I am coming: but what's the matter? Why avoid me, when you are the very man I most wished to see?'
'I'm done for,' said Tom. 'The fellows up there have saddled their rogueries on me, and I'm off to the States. I-'
'What do you say? There, I am coming in. Be satisfied, Tom; I am come out with a commission from Mr. Dynevor, to see what can be arranged.'
'That's right,' cried Tom, 'now poor Miss Ponsonby will have one friend.'
'Your letter to Charlotte brought me out-' began Louis; but Madison broke in with an expression of dismay and self-reproach at seeing him walking somewhat lame.
'It is only when I am tired, and not thinking of it,' said Louis; 'do you know that old ash stick, Tom, my constant friend? See, here are the names of all the places I have seen cut out on it.'
'I knew it, and you, the moment you sat down by the table,' said Tom, in a tone of the utmost feeling, as Louis took his arm. 'You are not one to forget.'
'And yet you were going to pass me without making yourself known.'
'A disgraced man has no business to be known,' said Tom, low and hoarsely. 'No, I wish none of them ever to hear my name again; and but for the slip of the tongue that came so naturally, you should not, but I was drawn to you, and could not help it. I am glad I have seen you once more, my Lord-'
He would have left him at the entrance, but Louis held him fast.
'You are the very man I depend on for unravelling the business. A man cannot be disgraced by any one but himself, and that is not the case with you, Tom.'
'No, thank Heaven,' said Tom, fervently; 'I've kept my honesty, if I have lost all the rest.'
Little more was needed to bring Madison to a seat on a wooden bench beside Fitzjocelyn, answering his anxious inquiries. The first tidings were a shock-Mr. Ponsonby was dead. He had long been declining, and the last thing Tom had heard from Lima was, that he was dead; but of the daughter there was no intelligence; Tom had been too much occupied with his own affairs to know anything of her. Robson had returned from Guayaquil some
