Come with thy warm and genial heart—Bring sunshine to the prison cell;True goodness, without book or chart,Sees the right path, and treads it well.
Come with thy warm and genial heart—Bring sunshine to the prison cell;True goodness, without book or chart,Sees the right path, and treads it well.
Come with thy warm and genial heart—Bring sunshine to the prison cell;True goodness, without book or chart,Sees the right path, and treads it well.
Come with thy warm and genial heart—
Bring sunshine to the prison cell;
True goodness, without book or chart,
Sees the right path, and treads it well.
It was decided that Julia and her grandmother should accompany Mrs. Gray at once to her old homestead on Long Island. They were about to leave the room, when Julia remembered, with a pang, that she must surrender the little boy to his mother again. Her cheek blanched at the thought. The child had kept by her side since she first entered the room, and now grasped a fold of her dress in his hand almost fiercely. His cheeks were flushed, and his dimpled chin was beginning to quiver, as if he were ready to burst into tears at some wrong premeditated against him.
Tears swelled into Julia's eyes as she bent them upon the child.
"What shall I do? He seems to know that we are about to leave him," she murmured.
"Come with me, I will take you to mamma," said the matron, laying her hand on his head. "There, Georgie, be a little gentleman, dear!"
The tears that had been swelling in the little fellow's bosom broke forth now. He began to sob violently, and shaking off the matron's hand, clung to his new friend.
"Take me up, take me up—I will go too," he sobbed, lifting his little hands and his tearful face to the young girl.
Julia took him in her arms, and putting the curls back from his forehead, pressed a kiss upon it.
"What can I do?" she said, turning her eyes unconsciously upon Robert Otis.
Robert smiled and shook his head; but old Mrs. Gray, whose heart was forever creaming over with the milk of human kindness, came forward at once.
"What can you do? Why, take him along; the homestead is large enough for us all. It will seem like old times to have a little shaver like that running around, now that Robert is away."
"But he has a mother in the prison," said the matron—"a strange, fierce woman, who, somehow or other, has persuaded the authorities to leave him with her for the few days she will be here."
"His mother a prisoner, poor thing. Let me go to her, I dare say she will be glad enough to get a nice home for the boy," answered the good woman, hopefully.
"I'm afraid not," was the matron's reply; "she seems to have a sort of fierce love for the child, and is very jealous that he may become attached to some one beside herself. It was from this feeling she forced him from the poor woman who took him to nurse when only a few weeks old. He was very fond of her, and always fancies that any new face must be hers. I wonder she submits to his fancy for this young girl!"
"But it's wrong, it's abominable to keep the little fellow here. I'll tell her so, I'll expostulate," persisted Mrs. Gray; "just let me talk with this woman—just let me into her cell, madam."
The matron shook her head, and gave the bright key in her hand a little, quiet twirl, which said plainly as words, that it was of no use; but she led the way down stairs, and conducted Mrs. Gray to the prisoner's cell.
The woman was still lying with her forehead against the wall, quite motionless, but she turned her face as the matron spoke, and Mrs. Gray saw that it was drenched with tears.
The huckster woman sat down upon the bed, and took oneof the prisoner's hands in hers. It was a large, but beautifully formed hand, full of natural vigor, but now it lay nerveless and inert in that kind clasp, and, for a moment, Mrs. Gray smoothed down the languid fingers with her own plump palm.
The woman, at first, shrunk from this mute kindness, and, half rising, fixed her great black eyes upon her visitor in sudden and almost fierce astonishment, but she shrunk back from the rosy kindness of that face with a deep breath, and lay motionless again.
Mrs. Gray spoke then in her own frank, cheerful way, and asked permission to take the little boy home with her. She described her comfortable old house, the garden, the poultry, the birds that built their nests in the twin maples, the quantity of winter apples laid up in the cellar. All the elements of happiness to a bright and healthy child she thus lay temptingly before the mother. Again the woman started up.
"Are you a moral reformer?" she said, with a sharp sneer.
"No!" answered Mrs. Gray, with a puzzled look. "At any rate not as I know of, but in these times you have so many new fangled names for simple things, that I may be one without having the least idea of it!"
"A philanthropist then—are you that?"
"Haven't the least notion what the thing is," cried Mrs. Gray, with perfect simplicity.
"Are you one of those women who hang around prisons to pick up other people's children, while their own are running wild at home—who give a garret-bed and second-hand crusts to these poor creatures, and then scream out through society and newspaper reports for the world to come and see what angels you are? Who pick up a poor wretch from the cells here, and impose her off upon some kind fool from the country, whom she robs, of course; and before she has been tried three weeks, blaze out her reformation to the whole world, forgetting to tell the robbery when it comes?
"Do you want my boy for a pattern? Do you intend to have it shouted in some paper or anniversary report, how great athing your society has done in snatching this poor little imp from his mother's bosom as a brand from the burning fire? In short, do you want to hold him up as a lure for the innocent country people who pour money into your laps, honestly believing that it all goes for the cause, and never once asking how yourselves are supported all the while? Are you one of these, I say?"
"Goodness gracious knows I ain't anything of the kind," answered Mrs. Gray. "Never set up for an angel in my life, never expect to on this side of the grave."
"Then you are not a lady president?"
"In our free and glorious country," answered Mrs. Gray, now more at home, for she had listened to a good many Fourth of July orations in her time; "in this country it's against the law for old women to be Presidents. At any rate, I never heard of one in a cap and white apron!"
A gleam of rich humor shot over the prisoner's face.
"Then you are not a member of any society?" she said, won into more kindly temper by the frank cordiality of her visitor.
Mrs. Gray's face became very serious, and her brown eyes shone with gentle lustre.
"It's my privilege to be a humble member of the Baptist church; but unless you have a conscience against immersion, I don't know as that ought to stand in the poor boy's way, especially as he may have been baptized already."
"Then you are not a charitable woman by profession? You are willing to take my boy for his own good? What will you do with him if I say yes?"
"Why, pretty much as I did with nephew Robert; let him run in the garden, hunt eggs, drive the geese home when he knows the way himself; and do all sorts of chores that will keep him out of mischief, and in health; as he grows old enough I will send him to school, and teach him the Lord's prayer myself. In short, I shall do pretty much like other people; scold him when he is bad, kiss him when he is good; in the end make him just such a handsome, honest, noble chap as my Robert is—that nephew of mine. Everybody admits that he is the salt of the earth, and I brought him up myself, every inch of him!"
"And among the rest you will teach him to forget and despise his mother," said the woman, bending her wet eyes upon Mrs. Gray, with a look of passionate scrutiny.
"I never wilfully went against the Bible in my life. When the child learns to read, he will find it written there, 'Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.'"
"Can I see him when I please?"
"Certainly—why not?"
"But I am a prisoner; I have been here more than once."
"You are his mother," was the soft answer.
"You will be ashamed to have me coming to your house."
"Why so? I have been a quiet neighbor—an upright woman, so far as my light went, all my life. Why should I fear to have any one come to my own house?"
"But he will be ashamed of me! With a comfortable home, with friends, schooling—my own child, will learn to scorn and hate his mother!"
"No," answered Mrs. Gray, and her fine old face glowed with the pious prophecy—"no, because his mother will herself be a good woman, by-and-bye,it is sure. You are not dead at the root yet; want care, pruning, sunshine; will live to be a useful member of society before long—I have faith to believe it. God help you—God bless you. Now speak out at once, can I take the little fellow?"
"Yes," answered the woman, casting herself across the bed, and pressing both hands hard against her eyes—"yes, take him—take him!"
And so Mrs. Gray returned to her old homestead with three new inmates that night. It was a bleak, sharp day, and the maple leaves were whirling in showers about the old house as they drove up. A crisp frost had swept every flower from the beds, and all the soft tints of green from the door-yard and garden. Still there was nothing gloomy in the scene; thesitting-room windows were glowing with petted chrysanthemums, golden, snow-tinted and rosy, all bathed and nodding in a flood of light that poured up from the bright hickory-wood fire.
Robert had ridden on before the rest, bearing household directions from Mrs. Gray to the Irish servant girl. A nice supper stood ready upon the table, and a copper tea-kettle was before the fire, pouring out a thin cloud of steam from its spout, and starting off now and then in a quick, cheerful bubble, as if quite impatient to be called into active service. The fine bird's-eye diaper that flowed from the table—the little old-fashioned china cups, and the tall, plated candlesticks, from which the light fell in long, rich gleams, composed one of the most cheering pictures in the world.
Then dear old Mrs. Gray was so happy herself, so full of quiet, soothing kindness; the very tones of her voice were hopeful. When she laughed, all the rest were sure to smile, very faintly it is true; but still these smiles were little gleams won from the most agonizing grief. Altogether it was one of those evenings when we say to one another, "well, I cannot realize all this sorrow when the soul becomes dreamy, and softly casts aside the shafts of pain that goad it so fiercely at other times."
Little George fell asleep after tea, and Julia sat upon the crimson moreen couch under the windows, pillowing his head on her lap. The chrysanthemums rose in a flowery screen behind her, their soft shadows pencilling themselves on her cheek, and lying in the deeper blackness of her hair. Robert Otis spoke but little that night, and his dear, simple old aunt felt quite satisfied that the gaze which he turned so steadily toward the windows was dwelling in admiration on her flowers.
Be this as it may, his glance brought roses to that pale cheek, and kindled up the soft eyes that lay like violets shrouded beneath their thick lashes, with a brilliancy that had never burned there before. Julia's heart was far too sorrowful forthoughtsof love, but there was something thrilling in her bosom deeper than grief, and more exquisite than any joy she had yet known.
But Robert Otis was more self-possessed. His thoughts took a more tangible form, and though he could not account to himself for the feeling of vague regret that mingled with his admiration, as he gazed upon the young girl, it was strong enough to fill his heart with sadness. Mrs. Gray noticed the gloom upon his brow as she sat in her arm-chair, basking in the glow of that noble wood fire. A dish of the finest crimson apples had just been placed on the little round stand before her, and she began testing their mellowness with her fingers, as a hint for her nephew to circulate them among her guests. Robert saw nothing of this, for he was pondering over the miserable position of that young girl, in his mind, and had no idea that his abstraction was noticed.
"Come—come," said Mrs. Gray, "you have been moping there long enough, nephew, forgetting manners and everything else. Here are the apples waiting, and no one to hand them round, for when I once get settled in this easy-chair"—here the good woman gave a smiling survey of her ample person, which certainly overflowed the chair at every point, leaving all but a ridge of the back and the curving arms quite invisible—"it isn't a very easy thing to get up again. Now bustle about, and while we old women rest ourselves, you and Julia, there, can try your luck with the apple-seeds.
"I remember the first time I ever surmised that Mr. Gray had taken a notion to me, was once when we were at an apple-cutting together down in Maine. Somehow Mr. Gray got into my neighborhood when we ranged round the great basket of apples. I felt my cheeks burn the minute he drew his seat so close to mine, and took out his jack-knife to begin work. He pared and I quartered. I never looked up but once—then his cheek was redder than mine, and he held the jack-knife terribly unsteady. By-and-bye he got a noble, great apple, yellow as gold, and smooth as a baby's cheek. I was looking at his hands sidewise from under my lashes, and saw that he was paring it carefully, as if every round of the skin was a strip of gold. At last he cut it off at the seed end, and the softrings fell down over his wrist as I took the apple from his fingers.
"'Now,' says he, in a whisper, bending his head a little, and raising the apple-peel carefully with his right hand, 'I'm just as sure this will be the first letter of a name that I love, as I am that we are alive.' He began softly whirling the apple-peel round his head; the company was all busy with one another, and I was the only one who saw the yellow links quivering around his head, once, twice, three times. Then he held it still a moment, and sat looking right into my eyes. I held my breath, and so did he.
"'Now,' says he, and his breath came out with a quiver, 'what if it should be your name?'
"I did not answer, and we both looked back at the same time. Sure enough it was a letter S. No pen ever made one more beautifully. 'Just as I expected,' says he, and his eyes grew bright as diamonds—'just as I expected.' That was all he said."
"And what answer did you make, aunt?" asked Robert Otis, who had been listening with a flushed face, "What did you say?"
"I didn't speak a word, but quartered on just as fast as I could. As for Mr. Gray, he kept paring, and paring, like all possessed. I thought he would never stop paring, or speak a word more. By-and-bye he stuck the point of his knife into an apple, and unwinding the skin from around it, he handed it over to me. It was a red skin, I remember, and cut as smooth as a ribbon.
"'I shouldn't a bit wonder if that dropped into a letter G,' says Mr. Gray. 'Supposing you try it.'
"Well, I took the red apple-skin, and whirled it three times round my head, and down it went on to the floor, curled up into the nicest capital G that you ever sat eyes on.
"Mr. Gray, he looked at the letter, and then sort of sidewise into my face. 'S. G.,' says he, taking up the apple-skin, and eating it, as if it had been the first mouthful of aThanksgiving dinner. 'How would you like to see them two letters on a new set of silver teaspoons?'
"I re'lly believe you could have lit a candle at my face, it burned so; but I couldn't speak more than if I'd been born tongue-tied."
"But did you never answer about the spoons?" asked Julia.
"Well, yes, I believe I did, the next Sunday night," said the old lady, demurely, smoothing her apron.
What was there in Mrs. Gray's simple narrative that should have brought confusion and warm blushes into those two young faces? Why, after one hastily withdrawn glance, did neither Robert Otis nor Julia Warren look at each other again that night?
Wine, wine for the heart, in its struggle of pride,And music to drown all this with'ring pain!The arrow, the arrow is deep in her side!Bring music and wine with their madness again.
Wine, wine for the heart, in its struggle of pride,And music to drown all this with'ring pain!The arrow, the arrow is deep in her side!Bring music and wine with their madness again.
Wine, wine for the heart, in its struggle of pride,And music to drown all this with'ring pain!The arrow, the arrow is deep in her side!Bring music and wine with their madness again.
Wine, wine for the heart, in its struggle of pride,
And music to drown all this with'ring pain!
The arrow, the arrow is deep in her side!
Bring music and wine with their madness again.
The passions take their distinctive expression from the nature in which they find birth. The grief that rends one heart like an earthquake, sinks with dead, silent weight into another, uttering no sound, giving no outward sign, and yet is powerful, perhaps, as that which exhausts itself in tumult. Some flee from grief, half defying, half evading it, pausing, breathless, in the race, now and then, to find the arrow still buried in the side, rankling deeper and deeper with each fierce effort to cast it out.
Thus it was with the woman to whom our story tends—Ada, the insulted and suffering widow of Leicester. There had been mutual wrong between the two; both had sinned greatly; both had tasted deep of the usual consequences of sin. During hislife her love for him had been the one wild passion of existence; now that he was dead, her grief partook of the same stormy nature. It was wild, fierce, brilliant; it thirsted for change; it was bitter with regrets that stung her into the very madness of sorrow.
As an unbroken horse plunges beneath the rider's heel, the object of grief like this seeks for amelioration in excitement. It is a sorrow that thirsts for action; that arouses some kindred passion, and feeds itself with that.
Ada Leicester was not known to be connected, even remotely, with the man for whose murder old Mr. Warren was now awaiting his trial. She was a leader in the fashionable world; her very anguish must be concealed; her groans must be uttered in private; her tears quenched firmly till they turned to fire in her heart. All her life that man had been a pain and a torment to her. The last breath she had seen him draw was a taunt, his last look an insult; and yet these very memories embittered her grief. He had turned the silver thread of her life into iron, but it broke with his existence, leaving her appalled and objectless. She never had, never could love another; and what is a woman on earth without love as a memory, a passion, or a hope?
Her grief became a wild passion. She strove to assuage it in reckless gaiety, and plunged into all the excitements of artificial life with a fervor that made every hour of her existence a tumult. The opera season was at its full height. Society had once more concentrated itself in New York, and still Ada was the brightest of its stars. Morning dances by gas-light took place in some few houses where novelty was an object. Not long after Leicester's death her noble mansion was closed for a morning revel; every pointed window was sealed with shutters and muffled with the richest draperies. Light in every form of beauty—the pure gas-flame—the soft glow of wax-candles—the moonlight gleam of alabaster lamps flooded the sumptuous rooms, excluding every ray of the one glorious lamp which God has kindled in the sky. Dancers flitted to and froin those lofty rooms; garlands of choice green-house flowers scattered fragrance from the walls, and veiled many a classic statue with their impalpable mist.
Never in her whole life had Ada appeared more wildly brilliant. Reckless, sparkling, scattering smiles and wit wherever she passed; now whirling through the waltz; now exchanging bright repartees with her guests amid the pauses of the music; fluttering from group to group like a bird of Paradise, dashing perfume from its native flower thickets, she flitted from room to room; now sitting alone in a dark corner of the conservatory, her hands falling languidly down, her face bowed upon her bosom, the fire quenched in her eyes, she felt the very life ebbing, as it were, from her parted and pale lips.
Thus with the strongest contrasts, fierce alike in her gaiety and her grief, she spent that miserable morning. The transition from one state to another would have been startling to a close observer, but the changes in her mood were like lightning; the pale cheek became instantly so red; the dull eye so bright, that her guests saw nothing but the most fascinating coquetry in all this, and each new shade or gleam that crossed her beautiful face brought down fresh showers of adulation upon her. The usual quiet elegance of her manner was for the time forgotten.
More than once her wild, clear laugh rang from one room to another, chiming in or rising above the music, and this only charmed her guests the more. It was a new feature in their idol. It was not for her wealth or her beauty alone that Ada Leicester became an object of worship that day. Like a wounded bird that makes the leaves tremble all around with its anguish, she startled society into more intense admiration by the splendor of her agony.
At mid-day her guests began to depart, pouring forth from those sumptuous rooms into the noontide glare, when delicate dresses, flushed cheeks and languid eyes were exposed in all the disarray which is sometimes picturesque when enveloped in night shadows, but becomes meretricious in the broad sunshine.
A few of her most distinguished guests remained to dinner thatday, for Ada dreaded to be alone, and so kept up the excitement that was burning her life out. If her spirits flagged, if the smile fled from her lips even for an instant, those lips were bathed with the rich wines that sparkled on her board, kindling them into smiles and bloom again. The resources of her intellect seemed inexhaustible; the flashes of her delicate wit grew keener and brighter as the hours wore on.
Her table was surrounded by men and women who flash like meteors now and then through the fashionable circles of New York, intellectual aristocrats that enliven the insipid monotony of those changing circles, as stars give fire and beauty to the blue of a summer sky. But keen-sighted as these people were, they failed to read the heart that was delighting them with its agony. All but one, and he was not seated at the table, he spoke no word, and won no attention from that haughty circle, save by the subdued and even solemn awkwardness of look and manner, which was too remarkable for entire oblivion.
Behind Ada's seat there stood a tall man, with huge, ungainly limbs, and a stoop in the shoulders. He was evidently a servant, but wore no livery like the others; and those who gave a thought to the subject saw that he waited only upon his mistress, and that once or twice he stooped down and whispered a word in her ear, which she received with a quick and imperious motion of the head, which was either rejection or reproof of something he had urged.
Nothing could be more touching than the sadness of this man's face as the spirits of his mistress rose with the contest of intellect that was going on around her. He saw the bitter source from which all this brightness flowed, and every smile upon those red lips deepened the gloom so visible in his face.
"Now," said Ada, rising from the table, and leading the way to her boudoir, for it had been an impromptu dinner, and the drawing-room was yet in confusion after the dance; "now let us refresh ourselves with music. An hour's separation, a fresh toilet, and we will all meet at the opera—then to-morrow—what shall we do to-morrow?"
She entered the boudoir while speaking, and as if smitten by some keen memory, lifted one hand to her forehead, reflecting languidly, "To-morrow—yes, what shall we do to-morrow?"
"You are pale; what is the matter?" inquired one of the lady guests, in that hurried tone of sympathy which is usually superficial as sweet. "We have oppressed you with all this gaiety!"
"Not in the least—nothing of the kind!" exclaimed the hostess, with a clear laugh. "It was the perfume from those vases. It put me in mind—it made me faint!"
She rang the bell while speaking, and the servant, who stood all dinner-time behind her chair, entered.
"Take these flowers away, Jacob," she said, pointing to the vases, "there is heliotrope among them, and you know the scent of heliotrope affects me—kills me. Never allow flowers to be put in these rooms again. Not a leaf, not a bud—do you understand?"
"Yes, madam," answered the servant, with calm humility, "I understand! It was not I that placed them there now!"
Ada seated herself on the couch, resting her forehead upon one hand, as if the faintness still continued. Her lips and all around her mouth grew pallid. Though the flowers were gone, their effect still seemed to oppress her more and more. At length she started up with a hysterical laugh and went into the bed-chamber. When she came forth her cheeks were damask again, and her lips red as coral; but a dusky circle under the eyes, and a faint, spasmodic twitching about the mouth, revealed how artificial the bloom was. From that moment all her gaiety returned, and in her graceful glee her guests forgot the agitation that had for a moment surprised them.
Later in the evening, Ada drove to the Opera House, where she again met the gay friends who had thronged her dwelling at mid-day. Still did she surpass them all in the superb but hasty toilet which she had assumed, after the morning revel. Many an eye was turned admiringly upon her sofa that night, little dreaming that the opera-cloak of rose-colored cashmere,with its blossom-tinted lining and border of snowy swan's-down, covered a bosom throbbing with suppressed anguish. Little could that admiring crowd deem that the brilliants interlinked with burning opal stones that glowed with ever-restless light upon her arms, her bosom, and down the corsage of her brocade dress, were to the wretched woman as so many pebbles that the rudest foot might tread upon. Her cheeks were in a glow; her eyes sparkled, and the graceful unrest which left her no two minutes in the same position, seemed but a pretty feminine wile to exhibit the splendor of her dress. How could the crowd suppose that the heart over which those jewels burned, was aching with a burden of crushed tears.
She sat amid the brilliant throng, unmindful of its admiration. The music rushed to her ear in sweet gushes of passion. But she sat smilingly there, unconscious of its power or its pathos. It sighed through the building soft and low as the spring air in a bed of violets; but even then it failed to awake her attention. Unconsciously the notes stole over her heart, and feeling a rush of emotions sweeping over her, she started up, waved an adieu to her friends, and left the Opera House. Half a dozen of the most distinguished gentlemen of her party sprang up to lead her out. She took the nearest arm and left the house, simply uttering a hurried good-night as she stepped into the carriage. There was no eye to look upon her then. Those who had followed her with admiring glances as she left the opera, little thought how keen was her agony as she rolled homeward in that sumptuous carriage, her cheek pressed hard against the velvet lining; her fingers interlocked and wringing each other in the wild anguish to which she abandoned herself.
We drove him to that fearful gulf,In the sharp pangs of his despair,As angry hunters chase a wolfFrom open field and hidden lair.
We drove him to that fearful gulf,In the sharp pangs of his despair,As angry hunters chase a wolfFrom open field and hidden lair.
We drove him to that fearful gulf,In the sharp pangs of his despair,As angry hunters chase a wolfFrom open field and hidden lair.
We drove him to that fearful gulf,
In the sharp pangs of his despair,
As angry hunters chase a wolf
From open field and hidden lair.
The servant who sat waiting in the vestibule was startled by the hard, tearless misery of Ada's face, as she entered her own dwelling that night. He looked at her earnestly, and seemed about to speak, but she swept by him with averted eyes and ascended the stairs.
It was the same man who had stood beside her chair at dinner that day. The look of anxiety was on his features yet, and he pressed his lips hard together as she passed him, evidently curbing some sharp sensation that the haughty bearing of his mistress aroused. He stood looking after her as she glided with a swift, noiseless tread over the richly carpeted stairs, her pale hand now and then gleaming out in startling relief from the ebony balustrade, and her stony face mocking the artificial scarlet of her mouth. She turned at the upper landing, and he saw her glide away in the soft twilight overhead. He stood a moment with his eyes riveted on the spot where she had disappeared, then he followed up the stairs with a step as firm and rapid as hers had been. Even his heavy foot left no sound on the mass of woven flowers that covered the steps, and the shadow cast by his ungainly figure moved no more silently than himself.
He opened several doors, but they closed after him without noise, and Ada was unconscious of his presence for several moments after he stood within her boudoir. A fire burned in the silver grate, casting a sunset glow over the room, but leaving many of its objects in shadow; for save a moonlight gleam thatcame from a lamp in the dressing-room, no other light was near.
Ada had flung her mantle on the couch, and with her arms folded on the black marble of the mantel-piece, bent her forehead upon them, and stood thus statue-like gazing into the fire. A clear amethystine flame quivered over the coal, striking the opals and brilliants that ornamented her dress, till they burned like coals of living fire upon the snow of her arms and bosom. Thus with the same prismatic light spreading from the jewels to her rigid face, she seemed more like a fallen angel mourning over her ruin than a living woman.
At length the servant made a slight noise. Ada lifted up her head, and a frown darkened her face.
"I did not ring—I do not require anything of you to-night," she said.
"I know it. I know well enough that you require nothing of me—that my very devotion is hateful to you. Why is it? I came up here, to-night, on purpose to ask the question—why is it?" answered the man, with a grave dignity, which was very remote from the manner which a servant, however favored, is expected to maintain toward his mistress. "What have I done to deserve this treatment?"
Ada looked at him earnestly for a moment, and then her lip curled with a bitter smile.
"What have you done, Jacob Strong! Can you ask that question of William Leicester's wife, so soon after your own act has made her a widow?"
"But how?—how did I make you a widow?" said he, turning pale with suppressed feeling.
"How?" cried Ada, almost with a shriek, for the passion of her nature had been gathering force all day, and now it burst forth with a degree of violence that shook her whole frame. "Who sat like a great, hideous spider in his web, watching him as he wove and entangled the meshes of crime around him? Who stung my pride, spurred on all that was unforgiving and haughty in my nature, till I too—unnatural wretch—who hadwronged and sinned against him—turned in my unholy pride, and drove him into deeper evil? It was you, Jacob Strong, who did this. It was you who urged him into the fearful strait, that admitted of no escape but death. The guilt of this self-murder rests with you, and with me. My heart is black with his blood; my brain reels when the thought presses on it. I hate you—and oh! a thousand times more do I hate myself—the pitiful tool of my own menial!"
"Your menial, Ada Wilcox—have I ever been that?"
"No," was the passionate answer, "I have beenyourmenial, your dupe. You have made me his murderer. I loved him, oh! Father of mercies, how I loved him!"
The wretched woman wrung her hands, and waved them up and down in the firelight so rapidly, that the restless brilliants upon them seemed shooting out sparks of lightning.
"I thought he would come back. He was cruel—he was insolent—but what was that? We might have known his haughty spirit would never bend. If he had died any other death—oh! anything, anything but this rankling knowledge, that I, his wife, drove him to self-murder!"
Jacob Strong left his position at the door, and coming close up to his mistress, took both her hands in his. He could not endure her reproaches. Her words stung his honest heart to the core.
"Sit down," he said, with gentle firmness—"sit down, Ada Wilcox, and listen to me. There is yet something that I have to say. If it will remove any of the bitterness that you harbor against me, if it can reconcile you to yourself, I can tell you that there is great doubt if your—if Mr. Leicester did commit suicide. Thinking it might grieve you more deeply, I kept the papers away that said anything of the matter; but even now a man lies in prison charged with his murder!"
"Charged with his murder!" repeated Ada, starting. "How?—when? She—his mother—said it was self-destruction!"
"She believes it, perhaps believes it yet, but others thinkdifferently. He was found dead in a miserable basement, alone with the old man they have imprisoned. Why he went there no one can guess; but it is known that he was in that basement the night before, but a little earlier than the time when he appeared at your ball. If he had any portion of the money obtained from us about him, that may have tempted the old man, who is miserably poor."
Jacob was going on, but his mistress, who had listened with breathless attention, interrupted him.
"Do you believe this? Do you believe that he was murdered?"
"Very strong proofs exist against the old man," replied Jacob—"the public think him guilty."
Ada drew a deep breath.
"You have taken a terrible load from my heart," she said, pressing one hand to her bosom, and sinking down upon the couch with a low, hysterical laugh. "He is dead, but there is a chance that I did not kill him. I begin to loathe myself less."
"And me!—meyou will never cease to hate?"
"You have been a good friend to me, Jacob Strong, better than I deserved," answered Ada, reaching forth her hand, which the servant wrung rather than pressed.
"And this last act," he said, "when I tried to free you from the grasp of a vile man, was the most kind, the most friendly thing I ever did!"
Ada started up and drew her hand from his grasp.
"Hush, not a word more," she said, "if we are to be anything to each other hereafter. He was my husband—he is dead!"
She sunk back to the cushions of her couch a moment after, and veiling her eyes with one hand, fell into thought. Jacob stood humbly before her; for though they spoke and acted as friends, nay, almost as brother and sister, he never lost the respectful demeanor befitting his position in Ada's household.
She sat up, at length, with a calmer and more resolute expression of countenance.
"Now tell me all that relates to his death," she said. "Who is charged with it? What is the evidence?"
Jacob related all that he knew regarding the arrest of old Mr. Warren. In his own heart he did not believe the poor man guilty, but he abstained from expressing this, for it was an intuition rather than a belief, and Jacob could not but see that his own exculpation in the eyes of the fair creature to whom he spoke, would depend upon her belief in another's guilt. Jacob had no courage to express more than known facts as they appeared in the case. The vague impressions that haunted him were, in truth, too indefinite for words.
Ada listened with profound attention. She had not been so still or so firm before, since her husband's death. It required time for feelings strong as hers to turn into a new channel, and the passage from self-hatred to revenge was still as it was terrible.
She remained silent for some minutes after Jacob had told her all, and when she did speak, the whole character of her face was changed.
"If this man is guilty, Leicester's death lies not here!" she said, pressing one hand hard upon her heart, as she walked slowly up and down the boudoir. "When he is arraigned for trial, I am acquitted or convicted. You also, Jacob Strong; for if this old man is not Leicester's murderer, you and I drove him to suicide."
Jacob did not reply. In his soul he believed every step that he had taken against William Leicester to be right, and he felt guiltless of his death, no matter in what form it came; but he knew that argument would never remove the belief that had fixed like a monomania upon that unhappy woman, and wisely, therefore, he attempted none.
"I have told you all," he said, moving toward the door. "In any case my conscience is at rest!"
She did not appear to heed his words, but asked abruptly,
"Are the laws of America strict and searching? Do murderers ever escape here?"
"Sometimes they do, no doubt," answered Jacob, with a grim smile, "but then probably quite as many innocent men are hung, so that the balance is kept about equal."
"And how do the guilty escape?"
"Oh, by any of the thousand ways that a smart lawyer can invent. With money enough it is easy to evade the law, or tire it out with exceptions and appeals."
"Then money can do this?"
"What is there that moneycannotdo?"
A wan smile flitted over Ada's face.
"Oh! who should know its power better than myself?" she said. Then she resumed. "But this man, this grey-headed murderer—has he this power?—can he control money enough to screen the blood he has shed?"
"He is miserably poor!"
"Then the trial will be an unprejudiced one. If proven guilty he must atone for the guilt. If acquitted fairly, openly, without the aid of money or influence, then are we guilty, Jacob Strong, guilty as those who hurl a man to the brink of a precipice, which he is sure to plunge down."
"No man who simply pursues his duty should reproach himself for the crime of another," was the grave reply.
"But haveIdone my duty? Can I be guiltless of my husband's desperate act?"
Jacob was silent.
"You cannot answer me, my friend," said Ada mournfully.
"Yes! I can. William Leicester's death, if he in fact fell by his own hand, was the natural end of a vicious life."
Ada waved her hand sharply, thus forbidding him to proceed with the subject, and entering her dressing-room, closed the door.
Jacob stood for a time gazing vacantly at the door through which she had disappeared, then heaving a deep sigh, the strange being left the boudoir, but a vague feeling ofself-reproach at his heart, rendered him more than usually sad all the next day. True, he had changed the current of Ada's grief, had lifted a burden of self-reproach from her heart; but had he not filled it with other and not less bitter passions?
My tortured soul is sick, and every nerveAnswers its promptings with an aching strain,Yet from my task I may not pause or swerve—Rest is a curse, and every thought a pain.
My tortured soul is sick, and every nerveAnswers its promptings with an aching strain,Yet from my task I may not pause or swerve—Rest is a curse, and every thought a pain.
My tortured soul is sick, and every nerveAnswers its promptings with an aching strain,Yet from my task I may not pause or swerve—Rest is a curse, and every thought a pain.
My tortured soul is sick, and every nerve
Answers its promptings with an aching strain,
Yet from my task I may not pause or swerve—
Rest is a curse, and every thought a pain.
For the first time since her husband's death, Ada slept soundly, till deep in the morning. But her slumber was haunted by dreams that sent shadows painful and death-like over her beautiful face. More than once her maid stole from the dressing-room into the rosy twilight of the bed-chamber, and stooped anxiously over her mistress as she slept, for the faint moans that broke from her lips, pallid even in that rich light, and parted with a sort of painful smile—startled the servant as she prepared her mistress's toilet.
It was almost mid-day when this unearthly slumber passed off, but the brightest sun could only fill those richly draped chambers with a twilight atmosphere, that allowed the sleeper to glide dreamily from her couch to the pursuits of life. When the mechanics throughout the city were at their noonday meal, Ada crept into her dressing-room, pale and languid as if she had just risen from a sick-bed. Upon a little ebony table near the fire, a breakfast service of frosted silver, and the most delicate Sèvres china stood ready. Ada sunk into the great easy-chair, which stood near it, cushioned with blossom-colored damask, which gleamed through an over drapery of heavypoint lace. The maid came in with chocolate, snowy little rolls, just from the hands of her French cook, and two crystal dishes, the one stained through with the ruby tint of some rich foreign jelly, the other amber-hued with the golden honeycomb that lay within it. Delicate butter, moulded like a handful of strawberries, lay in a crystal grape-leaf in one corner of the salver, and a soft steam floated from the small chocolate urn, veiling the whole with a gossamer cloud.
Altogether, that luxurious room, the repast so delicate, but evidently her ordinary breakfast; the lady herself in all the beautiful disarray of a muslin wrapper, half hidden, half exposed by the loosely knotted silk cord that confined a dressing-gown, quilted and lined with soft white silk—all this composed a picture of the most sumptuous enjoyment. But look in that woman's face! See the dark circles beneath those heavy violet eyes. Mark how languidly that mouth uncloses, when she turns to speak. See the nervous start which she makes when the crystal and silver jar against each other, as the maid places them upon the table. Is there not something in all this that would make the rudest mechanic pause, before he consented to exchange the comforts won by his honest toil, for the splendor that seemed so tempting at the first glance?
Ada broke a roll in two, allowed one of the golden strawberries to melt away in its fragments, then laid it down untasted. Her heart was sick, her appetite gone, and after drinking one cup of the chocolate, she turned half loathing from that exquisite repast.
"Move the things away!" she said, to the waiting-woman.
"Will madam chose nothing else?" said the servant, hesitating and looking back as she carried off the tray.
"Nothing," replied her mistress.
The tone was one that forbade further inquiry; so the maid left the apartment; and Ada was alone, restless, feverish, unhappy.
She rose, and walking to the window, looked out; but a few minutes spent thus appeared to tire her; and throwing herselfagain into her chair, she took up a book and attempted to read. But she still found no occupation for her thoughts. At last she flung down the volume, and rising, paced the chamber.
The reflection grew and grew upon her, that if the old man should be convicted of the murder, she would be free from the guilt of Leicester's death. Her mind had been in a morbid condition ever since that event, or she would not now have thought this, nor have before regarded herself as criminal. That the old man should be proved guilty, became an insane wish on her part. She clutched at it with despairing hope. The more she thought of this means of escape from her remorse, the wilder became her desire to see the prisoner convicted. Soon the belief in his criminality became as fixed in her mind as the persuasion of her own existence.
A stern, passionate desire for revenge now took possession of her. The very idea that the accused might yet escape, through some technicality, drove her almost to madness; and as she conjured up this picture, her eyes flashed like those of an angry tigress, and the workings of her countenance betrayed the tumult of her soul.
At last, catching the reflection of her person in a mirror, she started at her wild appearance; a bitter smile passed over her face, and she said—
"Why do I seek this old man's blood? Am I crazed, or a woman no longer? But heaven knows," she added, clasping her forehead with her hands, "that I have endured enough to transform me out of humanity."
With a heavy movement she rang the bell, ordered her maid to dress her, and directed the carriage to be in waiting.
When Ada Leicester descended to her carriage, radiant in majestic beauty, the last thought that would have presented itself to a spectator must have been that this queenly woman was unhappy. But the color in her cheek; the blaze of her brilliant eyes; and the proud, almost disdainful step with which she crossed the sidewalk, were deceptive as thefever of disease. The excitement which so increased her lofty beauty, was purchased with inexpressible pangs, as the hues of the dying dolphin are procured by intolerable anguish.
The day was bright; the breeze was fresh; everything around was beautiful and exhilarating. But the pleasant face of nature failed to allay the fever of Ada Leicester's soul. One thought only possessed her; "What if the old man should be acquitted?" This idea grew upon her, and still grew. She tried to shake it off. She endeavored to become interested in the equipages driving past on the Bloomingdale road, and failing there, turned her heavy eyes on the green fields along the North River, or the sailing vessels ploughing up and down its water. But it was all in vain; Ada had no interest in anything so quiet as those scenes.
That dark thought clung to her. Now it rose into a terror, and a new idea crossed her mind. If the murderer should escape, and her husband be unavenged, would not her guilt be then almost as great as if she had driven Leicester to suicide?
Everything became a blank around her; she was only conscious of this one thought. She saw nothing, heard nothing; for her entire soul was absorbed in one morbid idea. It became a monomania. Finally she pulled the check string, and, in a sharp tone, directed the coachman to drive back to the city.
The man looked around, startled by her voice; he was alarmed at the aspect of her countenance, which was almost livid. She did not notice it, but closed the curtain, and threw herself back on the cushions.
This terror was visible in his look. As they entered the city, the coachman asked if he should drive home.
This roused her from her stupor. A distance of five miles had been traversed since she had last spoken, yet the interval appeared to her scarcely a minute. She looked out with surprise. Recognizing the place, she pulled the check-string and directed the servant to drive to the office of an advocate, renowned, especially in criminal cases, for his acute cross-examinations, not less than for his eloquence.
The lawyer was at home when the carriage drew up at hisdoor. He knew Ada Leicester as a leading star in society, and was surprised to see her enter his office so abruptly. He rose, bowed profoundly, and handed her a chair.
His visitor hesitated a moment, and then said,
"There is a man now in prison, charged with the murder of one William Leicester—you know the case, perhaps—and I have called on you to make it impossible for the prisoner to escape unless he is really innocent." She uttered these last words slowly, with her eye fixed on the advocate as she spoke.
"There is such a thing, I believe, as the friends of a guilty man securing legal assistance when the commonwealth proves lax or indifferent."
"Oh! yes, madam," said the lawyer. "The thing is of common occurrence."
"Very well," said Ada, slowly, taking a note of large value from herporte-monnaie. "I wish you to see the district-attorney, and assist him in this trial."
"You would retain me—I understand your wish," said the lawyer, too polite to touch the note which she laid before him, yet unable to prevent a glance at its denomination; and bowing again profoundly, as his visitor rose to go, he continued, "the guilty man shall not escape, madam."
Ada Leicester drove home with a lighter heart, feeling as if a great duty had been discharged.