“You speak as if the triumph were already secured.”
“If he’s on the face of the earth, we’ll find Doctor George Thorley. It is no longer possible that we should be on the wrong track. You know, Richard, that I have not confided all my secrets to you. There will be no one more astonished than yourself when I summon my witnesses and sum up my conclusions. Oh, that the hour were come! But I forget my motto—‘learn to labor and to wait.’ ”
IV
Embarked for California
We were on our way to California by the next steamer. By the advice of Mr. Burton I purchased my ticket under an assumed name, for he did not wish to excite the curiosity of the Argylls, who might happen to see the passage-list, and who would be sure to suspect something from the contiguity of our names. To his friends, who chanced to know of his sudden intentions, Mr. Burton represented that the health of his daughter demanded a change of climate, and business matters had led him to prefer California.
It was fortunate, since the expenses of such a trip had become so unexpected a necessity, that I had lived in the plain, retiring manner which I had done in Washington. I had wasted no money on white kids, bouquets, nor champagne-suppers; I had paid my board and washing-bills, and a very moderate bill to my tailor; the rest of my salary had been placed in a New York bank to my account. My scorched soul and withered tastes had demanded no luxurious gratification—not even the purchase of new books; so that now, when this sudden demand arose, I had a fund sufficient for the purpose. Mr. Burton bore his own expenses, which, indeed, I could not help, for I had not the means of urging a different course upon him.
We had a very definite object, but no definite plans; these were to be formed according to the circumstances we had to encounter after our arrival in El Dorado. Of course our man was living under an assumed name, and had traveled under an assumed one; we might have every difficulty in getting upon his track. At the time the detective had discovered the return of the five-hundred dollar bill from San Francisco, he had, with great perseverance, gained access to, and “made a note of” the passengers’ lists of all the steamers which sailed at or about the time of the murder, for California. These he had preserved. Out of the names, he had chosen those which his curious sagacity suggested were the most likely to prove fictitious, and, if no quicker method presented itself, he intended to trace out one and all of those passengers, until he came upon the man. In all this I was his assistant, willing to carry out his directions, but trusting the whole affair to his more experienced hand.
During the long, monotonous days of our voyage, I seemed to have
“Suffered a sea-change”
into something quite different from the wooden sort of being into which I had gradually been hardening. With the dull routine of my office-life were broken up also many of the cynical ways of thinking into which I had fallen. I felt as if the springs of youth were not quite dried up. The real secret of this improvement was in the eager hope I entertained that the real criminals were soon to be brought to light, and the Argylls made to realize the cruel wrong they had done me. Already, in imagination, I had accepted their regret and forgiven them their injustice. It seemed as if every breath of the sea-breeze, and every bound of the sparkling waves, swept away a portion of the bitterness which had mingled with my nature. The old poetry of existence began to warm my chilled pulses and to flush the morning and evening sky. For hours most melancholy, yet most delicious, I would climb to some lonely post of observation—for I was a perfect sailor among the ropes—and there, where the blue of heaven bent down to meet the blue of the ocean, making an azure round in which floated only the ethereal clouds, all the sweetness of the past would come floating to me in fragments, like the odor of flowers blown from some beloved and distant shore.
The most vivid picture in my sea-dreams, was that of the parlor of the old Argyll mansion, as I had seen it last, on the night of my excursion to the oak-tree. Mary, in the rosy bloom of young womanhood, the ideal of beauty to the eye of a young and appreciative man, whose standard of female perfection was high, while his sensitiveness to its charm was intense—Mary, reading her book beneath the rich light of the chandelier—I loved to recall the vision, except always that it was marred by that shadow of James coming too soon between me and the light. But that flitting vision of Eleanor was as if a saint had looked down at me out of its shrine. I saw, then, that she was no longer of this world, as far as her hopes were concerned. My once strong passion had been slowly changing into reverence; I had grieved with her with a grief utterly self-abnegating, and when I saw that her despair had worked itself up to a patient and aspiring resignation, I now felt less of pity and more of affectionate reverence. I would have sacrificed my life for her peace of heart; but I no longer thought of Eleanor Argyll as of a woman to be approached by the loves of this world. Still, as I mused in my sea-reveries, I believed myself to
