The dance was over; Phil and his partner left the room and turned toward the piazza.
"Shall we go into the fresh air?" said my companion, following them with his eyes. I took his arm, and we went on the piazza. The soft light of the colored lamps, the mellow music floating out to us, the cool air in our faces—I met with a gasp of relief and pleasure. Leading me to a seat rather more secluded than the others, my companion threw himself on the sofa beside me, and exclaimed, removing his mask:
"This is so unsupportably warm, I must take it off for a moment's relief, as I believe you know me. Well! Miss Josephine, how do you think our masquerade has succeeded? Are you satisfied with the result?"
"Perfectly," I said, feeling very guilty, and leaning back further into the shade. "It has been a delightful affair."
He rested his brow thoughtfully and sadly on his hand for a moment. "You are tired," I said.
"Miserably tired."
It was well for me he did not require me to talk; I should have betrayed myself if I had attempted it. His eyes were riveted on the pair who stood a few yards from us. Phil, bending down, was whispering in low tones to his companion in the pink domino. There was something in her attitude, as she listened with half-bent head, that I could not fail to recognize, and from below the edge of her domino, I caught a glimpse of yellow brocade. There was but one to whom Phil could talk in those earnest tones—but one to whom he could tell that tale. Josephine, I saw, must have gone upstairs, and put on the domino over her first dress, the more to puzzle some of her partners. Kitty had in some way become acquainted with her intention, and seized upon it to further the deception that she saw prevailed in regard to me. There was very little that escaped that clever jade. I wished, with a sigh, that she were less unscrupulous. In a few moments, the cousins passed where we sat, nearly concealed from them, walking slowly and talking earnestly.
"You cannot ask me to endure it longer; this suspense is misery," he said, with a quiver in his manly voice.
"Dear Phil," murmured the clear, low tones of his companion, "you must know my feelings toward you; I have never tried to hide them; but you know how it is—you know it would be madness for either of us to think of each other."
"Why would it be madness?" he urged. "Oh, Josephine! Why cannot you give up the ambition that separates us? Depend upon it, it has stood in the way of your happiness all your life."
It had been impossible to avoid hearing this conversation; my companion, starting up, looked after the retreating figures amazed and stern. In his haste, he had pulled down an American flag that had been draped over the sofa we occupied. I started up, and involuntarily raised my hand to replace it. The loose sleeve fell back from my arm, and in the strong light of the lamp overhead, the scar on my wrist caught his eye. With a quick, imperious movement, he seized my hand before I could withdraw it, and held it firmly in one of his, while with the other he raised my mask.
"You have deceived me," he said, between his teeth.
"You have deceived yourself, you are the victim of your own prejudices. You cannot say I did more than humor your decision!" I returned, quickly.
"You only acted a womanly and natural part, lied sweetly in every glance of your bright eyes, in every turn of your graceful figure, in every word on your red lips! I don't blame you; you are a woman."
"You are too cruel! you will repent this some day; it will be the bitterest thing you have to remember; the recollection of it will make you suffer as you have made me suffer."
"Never fear but I shall have enough to suffer, if the present is any earnest of the future for me! Your kindest wishes will be more than realized. For a proud man," he said, with a low, bitter laugh, flinging from him the hand he held, "for a proud man, I have had some humiliations that you would hardly believe if I told you! You could hardly understand them in your simplicity; your soft, woman's heart would bleed, perhaps, but it would heal itself too soon to allay in any great degree my wretchedness. Your morning-glory tenderness would droop before the fierceness of my pain, it would die in my hot grasp!—I will not ask your pity, but spare me your detestation. Save the aversion that your eyes showed then, for those who have deserved it better at your hands."
There was a sound of voices from within, a window near us was thrown open, and a group of people, laughing and talking, stepped out on the piazza. Hastily restoring my mask to its place, I turned away and entered the house through the window they had opened.
"You may have deceived one who is indifferent to you; you cannot deceive one who loves you," said a low voice in my ear, and the black figure I instinctively dreaded stood beside me. "For the sake of heaven, come with me, one moment!"
"Who are you?" I murmured, shrinking back.
He bent down and whispered a name in my ear, at which the color left my cheek, the light my eye, almost the life my pulses.
"Will you come?"
I bent my head without a word, and followed him out of the hall, down the terrace, through the winding paths of the shrubbery, across the garden; hurrying on to suit his fierce pace, but chilled to the heart with a terror that was no longer nameless.
"O man! while in thy early years,How prodigal of time!Misspending all thy precious hours,Thy glorious, youthful prime!Alternate follies take the sway;Licentious passions burn;Which tenfold force give Nature's law,That man was made to mourn."BURNS.
The spot to which my companion led me was a ruined summerhouse, not a stone's throw from the outer garden hedge. It was a lonely place in a sort of hollow, a low, dense orchard stretched dark on one side, while a little knoll, crowned with copse, rose between it and all view of the house and grounds on the other, and a little stream fell murmuring down from rock to rock through the ravine. Why it was so deserted and dilapidated, I had never exactly known; but from something Stephen had said, when I had questioned him about it, I had conjectured that it was associated with the shame and fall of her whose memory was even yet so painful, and that ruin and decay were welcome to hide the place from all eyes.
The night wind was moaning wildly down the little hollow; the ghastly moonlight flickered fitfully through the broken roof and moldering arches; the moss-grown, slimy stones rocked beneath my tread; steadying myself by one of the posts of the ruined doorway, I stood still and waited for my companion to speak. He had sunk down on a seat, but in a moment, raising his head, he loosed the hood of his domino, and, as it fell back, rose and turned his face toward me. With a faint cry, I put out my hands and started back. In the haggard, bloodless face, the wild and troubled eye of the man before me, I could hardly recognize a feature of Victor Viennet's handsome face.
"No need to start away and put out your white hands to keep me off," he said, with a laugh that made my blood run cold. "No need to press your pale lips together to keep back that cry of horror! I have risked my life—aye—sold it, rather—for this interview, and yet I would not lay my guilty grasp upon the hand you have promised to me, I would not touch the distantest fold of your white dress! There is no need to droop, and flutter, and clasp your hands, and pray me to be calm—don't turn your eyes on me with such a look as that! You try to say you love me yet; wait till I tell you, wait till you know all, before you say you love me!"
"You need not tell me, Victor," I faltered, "I guessed it from the first."
"You guessed it from the first, and yet dared come here—alone—at midnight—with me! No, you have not guessed it. Your girl's heart never framed the outline of such a sin, you will swoon but to hear its name!"
The night wind howling through the shivering trees, the restless brook moaning down the hollow, if ever their wild lament had ceased, would have heard, brokenly and incoherently, such a story as this:
In a quaint, secluded village, in some remote province of France, Victor Viennet's early childhood had been passed. It was a childhood so companionless that, but that he was happy and needed nothing save his sad mother's love and his wild freedom, one would have pitied him even then, before he knew the shame he had to bear and the sufferings it would bring. For months together no stranger's foot would cross the threshold of the lonely cottage; the neighbors looked askance at the two pale women and the pretty boy, who had come so strangely and so stealthily into their midst, and rumor had been busy even there. The village children were forbid to play with "le petit Anglais;" they taunted and mocked him, and he, in his turn, spurned and hated them, and clung more entirely to his mother, who strove to interfere between him and every insult, every harshness, and vexation. And but too well she succeeded in guarding him; when death came to unloose her arms from around him, he was left too sensitive and shrinking a plant to bear the first breath of the scorching simoon of scorn and ignominy that had been gathering up its strength so long. The fatal secret of his birth, that explained all, burst suddenly upon him while his childish heart was yet bleeding with his first grief. He learned that he must thank his dead mother for the brand of shame that he must bear through life; that for her, whom he had worshipped as an angel, there was on every lip a name of scorn. He learned that every man's hand was against him, as an outcast and a bastard; and all the strength of his nature became a strength of hatred; his southern blood turned to gall in his young veins. The home that had been his sanctuary, his city of refuge, was a desecrated and hateful place. The same fever that had struck down his mother, had laid her nurse and companion low. Tenderness and compassion had been blasted in the boy's heart; they had both deceived and wronged him; he owed nothing to the memory of the one, nor to the misery of the other; and without a look, he left her in her unconsciousness, and turned his back forever on his home, with the curse in his heart for which he had not yet learned the words.
Who needs be told the career on which the boy entered? Who but would sicken and turn away from the record of his houseless wanderings, his desperate shifts, his recklessness and wickedness. Who that could read with anything but sorrow of the scenes of squalid want, of cunning vice, of mad profligacy, through which he passed before his youth was yet begun. There could be but one result; all that was weak in him was bent to the service of sin, all that was noble was turned to bitterness; the refinement of his nature made him rise, but it was to no heights of truth and virtue; ambition had taken the place of all noble aspirations, and sustained him through ignominy, and reproach, and poverty, helped him to trample on difficulties that would have daunted a less desperate man, and scruples that would have shaken a better one, aided him to free himself from the pollutions that his wild boyhood had contracted, and to shake off the trammels of the past, and crown himself with the success that he had made his god. But through it all, there lived a fear lest the forgotten stain of his birth should be revived, the foundation stone be pulled from his fair fabric of good fortune; and this morbid dread so haunted him, that he came to hate the very sunshine and soft air of France, to fear the very children in the streets, the strangers whose curious eyes he met in the thoroughfares of business. And with all the fearful and enslaved of the earth, he turned his eyes toward the fair land that promises absolution and new life to the sinful and miserable of other lands, and denies its rich benison of hope and freedom neither to the criminal who flies from justice, nor the miserable who flies from memory. With three thousand miles of ocean between him and France, perhaps he could shake off the slavish dread that gnawed forever at his peace, and rise to a position where he need not fear its sting. The untainted air of that new land had never heard the whisper of his shame, should never hear it; even in his own bosom, it should die forgotten and unfeared.
But than his strong will, there had been a stronger. Within the first week of his arrival in America, he was seized with a malignant fever, and from delirium and raving, sunk to stupor and an almost death-like torpor, and for weeks lay so. When at last he rallied and shook off the lethargy that had so long dulled intelligence and feeling, it was to find, that in the first hours of his delirium, he had betrayed his secret and undone himself; and betrayed it to a man whom neither honor nor pity could bind, but whose cunning malice gloated over the power his discovery had invested him with, and who would use it maliciously and unscrupulously. It did no good to rave and curse his fate; all the power of his strong will must go to the repairing of the error, and to the hushing and pacifying this low man who held him at such advantage. It seemed an easy enough thing at first; the man was ready to promise silence and assure him of his good will, and seemed to require nothing in return but good fellowship and confidence. Anything would have been easier for Victor to have given; his proud spirit revolted at such companionship and bondage, but at the first sign of contempt or impatience, the glistening serpent showed his sting, and chafed and despairing, the victim felt the toils tighten around him. There was no escape from his familiarity; he haunted and exasperated him, dogged his steps, followed him into the company of men who could not but wonder at the intimacy and draw their own conclusions from his endurance of such a man.
With the exception of this cruel drawback, the new land indeed proved an Eldorado to Victor. Friends thickened, fortune smiled; he rose with hasty steps to success, social and commercial. Only the sly gleam of Dr. Hugh's treacherous eye sent an occasional fear through the pride of his heart, and kept it in a sort of check. But it did not humble him, it only galled and goaded him, and quickened his determination to prove himself a man for a' that; it strengthened his haughtiness and self-reliance. In the course of a year or two, however, circumstances somewhat changed; Dr. Hugh left the city, and Victor breathed freer. Occasional letters still reached him, keeping him in mind, but they ceased after awhile, and the young adventurer began to feel secure; he was on the road to fortune, the only barrier to success was gone, and the happiness he had never dared enjoy before, seemed just within his grasp. And just then, just when the new hopes of love, and the nearly crowned ambition, most demanded the hiding of the hated secret, chance threw him upon the only man who held it. No wonder that his cheek had blanched the evening that he came to Rutledge, when he found the doctor there before him. The doctor had not forgotten, the doctor had not lost sight of him, though he had lost sight of the doctor, and soon his stealthy hand was on the festering wound again, and his old cunning at work to exasperate his victim, and with a new zest.
That Victor had been a successful man of business he had not minded; it only made his power over him the more desirable, and the remuneration for his silence greater; but that Victor should be the successful lover of one whom he had reason to regard with resentment and aversion, was too severe a trial for his love of malice to endure. Here was an opportunity for humbling the girl who had treated him with scorn and ridicule, and the proud man who endured him with but half concealed impatience. Victor Viennet should give up the woman he loved, and only buy a promise of continued silence at a heavy price. The girl should lose her lover; in any case he promised himself that. If Victor refused to give her up, a whisper in his ear of what he knew ofhersecret, would damp his ardor and bring pride to weigh down the balance as he wished. And her pride, if even Victor's infatuation led him to prefer exposure and disgrace to separation, would never suffer her to marry a man, who, from the first she had never loved, now stripped of his name and honor. In any event that was secure to him. But he had overreached his aim when he drove Victor to resolve on such a sudden departure. Once in Europe, he might lose track of him; his vigilance at such a distance might be eluded, and all but his revenge would be lost; and chance had thrown into his hand the threads of a mystery that only time could unravel, that promised power over more than him; but Victor's absence would ruin all.
Late on the night before his intended departure from Rutledge, a note was handed to him from Dr. Hugh, demanding another interview before he sailed. Victor dared not neglect or refuse the demand. It was too late now to change his plans, and of all things he desired to conceal the fact of his having any private business with Dr. Hugh, from his host and the guests at Rutledge. Gnashing his teeth at the humiliation of feeling himself at the beck and call of this low villain, and cursing the fate that forced him to stoop to such stratagems, he hastily returned a few lines to the doctor, appointing to meet him the following day at noon, at Brandon, the next station to Rutledge, distant about twelve miles, intending to send his baggage on in the train in which he should start, and remaining an hour at Brandon with the doctor, should go on himself in the next train. By this, he would avoid suspicion and meet the persecutor on neutral ground. He found no difficulty in leaving the cars unobserved, and repairing to the inn he had appointed for rendezvous.
The bar-room was crowded with passengers for the cars going west, so, an unnoticed guest, he awaited with growing impatience the keeping of his appointment. Half suspecting that the man's object was to keep him back, and make him lose the train, his impatience and vexation knew no bounds, as the hour slowly waned and no one appeared. The train came rushing through the town, paused a moment, and rushed on, and his last chance for that day had passed. For one moment he had resolved to defy his persecutor, and escape him once and forever; but he knew that before another sunset his secret would be published, and what was this vexation to that ruin? As the crowd hurried from the tavern to the ears, a horseman had alighted at the door, and Victor shrunk back with a guilty feeling of humiliation and fear as he recognized Mr. Rutledge. What a degrading bondage was this for a man of honor—what a damnable humiliation! To be skulking away from the man whom, a few hours ago, he had met as his host and his equal. To be waiting submissively the pleasure of a low villain, whose greedy cunning and mean rascality marked him below the revenge of a gentleman.
"It shall end," muttered Victor, between his teeth, as he screened himself from the sight of the new comer, who had entered the bar-room. He was engaged for several minutes in conversation with the bar-keeper, left a message for a neighboring workman, paid a bill for the cartage of some timber, and was about leaving the room, when his eye fell upon a note that was lying on a table near the door; and Victor's dark cheek mantled with shame and vexation, as, taking it up, Mr. Rutledge read, in a tone of surprise:
"Mr. Victor Viennet. To be left at the Brandon Shades."
"When was this brought here?" he inquired of the man behind the bar.
"This morning, sir, I think," he returned. "A man from your village came with it—a dark, thick-set fellow, if I'm not mistaken; one of the hands from the factory."
"And no one has called for it—no one answering to that name has been here?"
"Not to my knowledge, sir."
Mr. Rutledge knit his brow, and paced the floor uneasily. The haughty curl of his lip, as he glanced again at the note, made the blood boil in Victor's veins. It was almost impossible to keep back the defiant words that rushed to his lips; but detection would be fatal now, and he remained motionless, while Mr. Rutledge, crossing over to the barkeeper, said, in a lower tone:
"You will oblige me by noticing who comes for that note, and by what way he returns. I will stop here on my return from Renwick, before night."
The man promised obsequiously, and Mr. Rutledge left the room. Victor only waited to hear his horse's hoofs die away down the street, and to see the bar-keeper's attention fully engaged with a group of jovial mechanics just entering for their noon-day drink, to leave his place of concealment, and possessing himself hastily of the note, opened it carefully, and abstracting the contents, substituted a business circular which he had in his pocket, sealed up the envelope again, threw it on the table, and left the room by a side-door.
He had walked some distance down the street before he ventured to read the letter, which proved, of course, to be from Dr. Hugh, apologizing for the delay, but saying that it would be impossible for him to be at Brandon before four o'clock. At that hour he should hope to find Mr. Viennet at the Shades, as first named, etc.
"The Shades" was the last place where he desired to see him now, so he determined to walk forward on the road to Rutledge, and meet him on the way. It was a hot and dusty road, upon which the afternoon sun shone down unmercifully, but the heat and the dust were unheeded and indifferent to the over-wrought and exasperated traveller. The exercise and the fatigue of walking were in some measure a relief to his strained nerves, and without stopping to reflect, he hurried fiercely on, till eight miles of the twelve had been accomplished. Something familiar in the road had drawn his attention to his locality, and warned him of his nearness to Rutledge. It had been so lonely and monotonous a road before that, his attention had not been attracted to it; he had passed the last farmhouse three or four miles back, and only paused now, struck by the familiarity of the Hemlock Hollow road, leading off at the left. It was now only four miles to the village, and he stopped, resolved to await Dr. Hugh here.
It was no balm to his vexed and angry mood, to remember how near he was to what was at once dearest and most unattainable to him. It was no soother to his wounded pride, to feel that he was skulking like a thief around the place where for weeks he had been entertained as a guest; and as hour after hour dragged on, and no one approached down the lonely road, his impatience grew into a kind of frenzy, and before the glaring sun had sunk behind the woods, and the thick, dull twilight had crept slowly over the gloomy hollow, from an angry and exasperated, he had become a revengeful and desperate man.
It was in this mood that his persecutor met him. It was when all the venomous rancor that a long subjection had bred in his haughty nature, was roused to its utmost, that the interview for which Dr. Hugh had schemed, and planned, and lied, took place. Cold and cunning, plausible and imperturbable, he met a man with whose keenest feelings he had been playing for years, and who was even then lacerated to madness by insults and indignities that would have roused a tamer nature. Some fiend was blinding his eyes surely, and lulling him into security, that he did not feel a warning throb of fear as he rode into the lonely hollow, and through the dusky twilight discerned the waiting form of him he had wronged so deeply. Some luring devil put into his mouth the cold and sneering words with which he greeted him—the fool-hardy and contemptuous bravado with which he taunted him. Beyond any length he had ever gone before, he now dared, claiming his power over him, defying him to disdain it, and threatening him with instant exposure if he dared leave America.
And when Victor, driven to desperation, and quivering with passion, turned fiercely upon him and defied him to do it—from this hour he cared not whether it was known or not, the cunning fiend in the wretch's bosom prompted him to ask if he had grown tired of his pretty mistress so soon, that he gave her up so easily? Or did he flatter himself that the haughty girl, at whose feet he had been so long, would continue her hardly-won smiles when she knew him for a nameless, low-born adventurer, hiding the stain of his birth at the cost of his honor?
"You may tell it! You may proclaim it the length and breadth of the land! Who will believe you, low villain and known knave as you are, against the word and credit of a gentleman? Who will believe your paltry version of the delirium of a fever, that none but you heard—none but you interpreted? They will ask you for proofs—what then?"
"I will give them proofs. I will tell them more than you know yourself of the story of your birth, and prove it by more damning proofs than you have dreamed existed. You doubt me? You defy and mock the threat? Listen! At this moment I hold that about me that would prove the tale I tell to be as true as heaven, and would send you branded to lower depths of shame than you have ever known. I hold it but till you shall dare to thwart me, till you shall dare to set a foot on foreign shores, and then the world—the woman that you love—the friends you trust—your gloating enemies—shall have the story, and shall see its proof!"
The words hissed through the dead, dull, twilight of the still night, and smote like livid fire on the brain of him who heard them—on his overwrought and maddened brain—and shot through every pulse, and tingled like wild-fire in his veins. The whispers of hell crept into his tempted soul; there was no light in the heavens above—there was none on the dark earth; the still night had no voice to breathe the things that should be done; hell had no torments worse than these, and these he might be free from with one blow! one cunning, short, sharp blow—one quick, well-aimed, unerring blow! It would revenge him—free him—restore him to peace—give him back his love.
If there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents, what must there be of demoniac triumph in the vaults of hell, when another yields to sin—a fresh soul is lost! What mad exultation and unholy joy must have echoed in the regions of the damned, as the last cry of the murdered man died away among the whispering tree-tops and gloomy depths of Hemlock Hollow! and Victor Viennet pressed his blood-stained hand before his eyes to blot out the image that now neither time, nor sleep, nor anything save death could efface from his guilty vision.
A horror, of such fear as none but murderers know, fell upon him as he bent over that ghastly corpse, hardly still from the death-struggle yet—hardly cold in the life-blood that his hand had spilled. He had not feared his foe in life with such palpitating fear as now, when, with eager, trembling hands, he searched, unresisted, for the fatal proof that he had threatened him with. That found, he no longer strove to resist the impulse of flight, and through the blackness and stillness of that night, chased by such terror and such remorse as God suffers the dead to avenge themselves with, he fled from the sight of the dead and the justice of the living.
But the morning found him a baffled and a desperate man. The news had spread far and wide, the country was alive with it. A large reward had been offered for the apprehension of the murderer, and no boor within miles around but tried his best to earn it, and sharpened up his sluggish wits, and stood his watch, and scoured the woods, with incredible activity. It soon became apparent, though, to the wretched fugitive, that there was one on his track who brought more knowledge of the facts to the chase than his compeers, or, indeed, than he chose to own. One there was, who night and day dogged and hunted him with unflagging energy and terrible certainty, and from whom he knew he had no chance of escape if once he left the woods and high lands and took to the open country. There was only one hope, that of eluding and wearing him out, and back he plunged into the woods again, and night and day fought desperately against his fate. He had seen his pursuer pass almost within pistol-shot of him, and had recognized in him one who added the spur of malice to the sordid love of gold that animated the others. It was the dread of losing his game, and putting others on the track, that kept him from divulging what he knew, which was enough to fasten the murder upon the man to meet whom, to his knowledge, the doctor had started on the evening of his murder. And much more he might have told, of concerted plans to dog and waylay the young stranger, and to keep him in their power—of malicious watching, and intriguing, and vindictive hatred and cunning, and cruel purposes. But this he kept in his own vile breast, and, inspired by thirst for blood and love of gold, he pursued with deadly vigilance the murderer of the man whose tool and accomplice he had been.
The third night of this unequal warfare was waning; the fugitive, worn out and hopeless, had resolved to end it; he had lost all privilege to hope, all right to love, and without these what was life worth?
The breaking dawn showed him that he was in the pine-grove that bordered Rutledge lake. He felt no fear at the danger of his nearness to detection; he had done with fear now; what malice his enemies had to wreak must be wreaked on his dead body; and God have pity on the only one of all the world who would suffer pain or shame from his disgrace!
Parting the thick branches, he made his way down to the water's-edge. In the dim light of dawn, the lake spread calm and unruffled before him, but what was this that lay so dark and motionless among the reeds and lily-pads, not a stone's throw from the shore? Dark and motionless as the haunting memory of that corpse in the black Hollow; nothing but flesh and blood ever showed so dumb and horrible through the grey light—nothing but death ever lay so still as that. It was the stark and lifeless form of his enemy that he looked upon, and dying hope started up and whispered of reprieve; all might not be over yet, and suicide and temptation drew back chagrined. It looked almost like a mercy from the Heaven he had outraged that the only tongue that could have betrayed him had been stilled in death, and that not by his hand, and a dumb feeling of gratitude warmed his heart and melted him into something like repentance toward the Father and the Heaven he had sinned against.
Now flight was clear and almost easy; once safely beyond the neighborhood of Rutledge, there would be nothing to prevent his escaping to Canada; no suspicion as yet had been attached to his name, and no one need know that he had not fulfilled his intention of sailing at the time he had mentioned, till he was safely embarked from Halifax.
But then love stepped in, and pleaded for one last look—one last embrace—before the life-long separation that his crime had doomed him to; what could one day more or less endanger him? And Fate, baffled of his ruin at one hand, now lured him into this worse snare, and he yielded. Hiding himself through the day in the dense thicket that covered the opposite bank of the lake, he had ventured forth at twilight, and by bold manoeuvre and sharpened cunning, had obtained an interview with Kitty. Not one girl in a thousand would have been capable of what he required of her—not one in a thousand would have been willing or trustworthy; but Kitty was as true as steel; her keen wits were equal to the task, and though she only guessed the truth, the rack and torture could not have won it from her. Before she dressed me for the evening, she had dressed Victor in the coarse domino that she had made since twilight for him, out of the black stuff that had lain so many years in the trunk upstairs, forgotten and unused since the last time that the household was in mourning. She had brought about the meeting and recognition between us, and now watched anxiously for us, no doubt, somewhere in the shrubbery.
We were both but too unconscious of the flight of the moments now so precious, when Kitty, with hurried hand, pushed aside the branches of the thicket, and sprang down the ravine.
"Fly, fly for your life, Mr. Victor! You are lost, if you stop for a moment! The officers are at the house; they say a suspicious person has been seen hanging about the grounds, and master has given them permission to search the outhouses and the premises, and they say the police are swarming all around. My dear young lady, let him go! Oh, that I should see you in such trouble!"
"But where shall I go!" murmured Victor, burying his face in his hands. "I see no safety anywhere; the blood-hounds are on my track. It would have been easy to die this morning! Why did I shrink from it then?"
"Kitty!" I gasped, "can you think of no place—nowhere that we can hide him?"
"None! They will search the barn and stables. There's not an inch of ground about the place they'll spare."
"And the house; have they a warrant for that?"
"They have searched the house, they had gone nearly through it before I knew anything about it; I was watching for you outside."
"Then, Kitty, the house is the safest place, if they are out of it; and, if we could only get him there, there isone roomwhere he would be safe!"
Kitty started with a keen look as she caught my meaning.
"Heaven help us! If we only could—I can think of one way—if you wouldn't be afraid"——
"No, no, I wouldn't be afraid of anything," I said, laying my hand in Victor's. "Speak quick."
"Mr. Victor must give me his domino, and you and I must watch our chance and go boldly in at the front door; there's no other way, there are people all over the hall and piazza, and plenty saw you go out together, and will notice if you come back alone; there has been a great deal of suspicion about the black domino, and master, I know, is on the look-out for him, and very likely will try to find out; and no harm's done, you know, if I'm found in it; and then soon as I'm in the house I'll slip upstairs, and throw down the pink domino that Miss Josephine has taken off by this time, and Mr. Victor will wait for it at the west corner of house, where it is more retired than anywhere else; he'll put it on where it's dark there, in the shade of the trees, and join you on the piazza, where you'll wait for him, and then try to get him upstairs while they're at supper. I'll have the keys ready and get everybody out of the way. It's the only thing we can do—there's not a minute to lose!"
It was desperate enough, but I saw no other way. Whispering a courage and confidence I did not feel to Victor, I hurried off his domino, and Kitty threw it over her dress. There was no time for fear; I did not stop to think, or I should not have shaken off Victor's grasp so hastily as I did, when we reached the shrubbery, nor have parted with so hurried an adieu, only imploring him to be calm and cautious, and not to lose a minute in gaining the west corner of the house.
"Alas!" murmured Kitty, as we hurried up the steps, "there's a hundred chances to one we don't see him again! It'll be just God's mercy and nothing else, if he gets into the house. There goes the constable now, and the men"——
"Which way?" I gasped.
"Down toward the garden. Heaven help him! If he only sees them in time! Take my arm, Miss, and come in; we can't stop now to see whether they meet him; they're watching us on the piazza."
I needed all the support of Kitty's arm as I entered the hall; the glare of the lights made me sick and faint, and she hurried me to a chair.
"Don't wait a minute to attend to me," I murmured, "hurry upstairs."
"It won't do yet; everybody is looking at us; I must sit down and talk to you awhile."
A gentleman, Mr. Mason, approached me, and began to rally me upon keeping up my incognito so long, the rest of the maskers, he said, had consented to reveal themselves.
"Say you won't unmask till supper," whispered Kitty.
I mechanically repeated the words. Others came up to talk to me, there was evidently some curiosity felt about me; I knew that I was not recognized. I can hardly tell how I found answers to the questions put to me; the questioners must have been satisfied with very vague and senseless responses, if mine satisfied them. Kitty, at once prompt and self-possessed, relieved me, and kept up her own part, disguising her voice, and answering readily.
Unable to control my agony at the delay any longer, I exclaimed suddenly: "I feel faint, won't you (turning to the black domino) won't you get the bottle of salts I left in the dressing-room?"
Her height and step nearly betrayed her; and Mr. Mason catching sight of a woman's foot as she ran up the stairs, proclaimed the fact, and excited a general exclamation of wonder.
"Never saw a character better sustained—everybody had thought it a man all the evening."
I listened for the opening of the window in the west room overhead, then for Kitty's step as she stole out. I I heard it through all the din of music and of voices. Then came a dreadful suspense; how to get rid of the people, how to get on the piazza, I could not tell. Victor might even now be waiting for me, a moment more might be too late; the officers might at any instant return. Just then supper was announced, and, "now you have promised to unmask, now you must tell us who you are," exclaimed the gentlemen.
"Not while you are all here," I exclaimed, "I will not take off my mask to-night unless you all go to supper and leave me."
It was long before I rid myself of my admirers; the last one was dismissed to bring me an ice, and the instant I was alone, I stole out on the piazza and round to the appointed spot, and sheltering myself from sight, waited with a throbbing heart the appearance of the rose-colored domino. But the throbs sunk to faint and sickening slowness as minute after minute passed and no one came; dull, slow, torturing minutes that seemed to count themselves out by the dropping of my life's blood, each one left me so much fainter and more deathlike than before. Reason and endurance began to give way under the intense pressure, the laughter and merriment from within rang hideously in my ears, the gaudy lamps and glaring lights swam before me, I clung to the balcony for support; it seemed to reel from my grasp, and staggering forward, I should have fallen, but for the arm of some one that approached, and hurried to my side. He pushed back my mask and in a moment the fresh air in my face revived me, I raised my head and cast an agonized look down the walk that led to the shrubbery, and this time it was hope and not despair that followed the look.
"Pray leave me," I said imperiously to my attendant, "I am well now, I had rather be alone."
It was only when he turned to leave me that I saw it was Mr. Rutledge; the figure that approached down the walk claimed all my thoughts. It faltered a moment irresolutely on the steps.
"Courage!" I whispered putting my hand in his. "Follow me to this window, and we will cross the parlors, they are nearly clear."
I knew that the spirit of the man I led was broken hopelessly, he who had been so brave and reckless! At every step he wavered and held back; "I cannot," he murmured shrinking as we reached the hall, now filling with the gay throng from the supper room and library and the adjoining balconies. I hurried him forward, nerved with a new courage; I braved the inquisitive eyes of the crowd that thronged us, I had a bold answer for all their questions, a repartee for all their jests, and so I fought my way to the foot of the stairs.
"Go up," I whispered to Victor, pushing him forward, and turning, I kept back with laugh and raillery the knot of people clustered round the landing-place.
"You shall be mobbed!" cried Grace. "We all unmasked half an hour ago. No one has a right to invisibility now!"
"I am just going up to unmask, but you will not let me."
"Will you promise to come instantly down?" asked Mr. Mason.
"Instantly."
"Will you dance the next set with me?" asked Ellerton.
"With great pleasure."
"Then it's but fair we should leave her," said Phil, and they moved away. Kitty, as I reached the upper hall, made me a hasty gesture to turn out the light at the head of the stairs. I obeyed, and in a moment the lights at that end of the hall were all extinguished, and only one left burning dimly at the other extremity.
"Quick!" whispered Kitty. "Mrs. Roberts is in her room. I have the key."
We hurried toward her, groping along the dark passage. The heavy wardrobe moved from its place with a dull, rumbling sound; the key grated in the unused lock.
"Quick! quick!" whispered Victor. "There is a step on the stairs!" There was a cruel moment of suspense as the key refused to turn; Victor held my hand in his with a grasp of iron; a low cry of despair burst from Kitty, as the step on the stairs mounted quickly. It was a matter of life and death indeed; discovery seemed inevitable now.
"Push, push it with all your might," I cried in an agony, "perhaps it will give way!"
"Thank heaven!" murmured Victor, as it yielded to her desperate strength. In less time than it takes to speak it, the door closed upon him, the wardrobe was pushed back to its place.
"What is the meaning of this?" said the stern voice of the master at the head of the stairs. "Why are the lights put out? Who is there? Answer me."
Kitty thrust me into the nearest room, and advanced to meet her angry master.
"It's me, sir—Kitty; and I was just come up myself to see what had made it so dark up here; I think, sir, that the north windows there have been left open, and the wind has come up strong from that way, and the draught has put them out. It was very careless of Mrs. Roberts not to look after it," she continued, busying herself in relighting the lamps.
"Kitty," said Mr. Rutledge in a voice that I knew had more terror for the girl, than any other in the world, "your falsehoods are very ready, but they can never deceive me, remember that. Tell me promptly who put the lamps out."
"The fact is, master," she said dropping her eyes and looking contrite as she approached him, "my poor young lady has had a fainting-fit down stairs, and she wanted to get to her own room without anybody recognizing her, so I turned the lights out, for several of the young gentlemen were waiting about the stairs to see what room she'd go to."
"That lie is even more ingenious than the first. It is useless to question you further; you do not know how to speak the truth even when it is the best policy. Bring that light and follow me."
"Don't scold Kitty," I said, faintly, coming forward. "It was my fault, I wanted the lights put out. I thought it would do no harm, just for a moment, but I beg your pardon."
Mr. Rutledge turned abruptly away with a curling lip. "Mistress and maid together are too much for a plain man like me. I accept whatever interpretation you choose to put upon it." And he strode angrily down the stairs.
"Take off your domino and go down quick!" exclaimed Kitty.
"Oh Kitty! How can I? I can hardly stand, I am so faint."
"No matter," she said, inexorably. "Everybody will be wondering if you don't come, and there's been enough already! Take this, Miss, and do be brave, and don't give way."
She poured me out a dose of valerian; I swallowed it, submitted unquestioningly to her as she smoothed my hair, and arranged my dress and sent me downstairs. After that it is all a misty sort of dream; I danced and laughed with a gaiety that startled all who had seen the recent listlessness of my manner; I was daring, coquettish, brilliant; I hardly knew what words were on my lips, but they must have been light and merry, for the others laughed and whispered: "What would absent friends say to such high spirits!" and arch and coquettish I turned away to hide the pang their words awoke, and danced—danced till the last guest had gone and the tired musicians faltered at their task, and the weary members of the household eagerly turned to their own rooms. Once in mine, the unnatural tension of my nerves gave way; Kitty laid me on the bed, and for hours, I fancy, thought it an even chance whether I ever came out of that death-like swoon or not.
"I lived on and on,As if my heart were kept beneath a glassAnd everybody stood, all eyes and ears,To see and hear it tick,"E.B. BROWNING.
"Mr. Rutledge, sir!" exclaimed the captain, vehemently, bringing his hand down on the table with a force that made the glasses ring, "it's my opinion that there's a black mystery to be unravelled yet about that murder. It's my opinion that all our ears would tingle if we knew the truth. Certainly, in some inexplicable way, this place is connected with it. The man lurking about the grounds, the footprints across the garden-beds, the cravat found at the old summer-house—all seem to point out this neighborhood as his hiding-place."
"I cannot see that exactly, Captain McGuffy," returned his host. "I acknowledge that there is a mystery, and a dark one, yet to be cleared away from the matter; and that the murderer may have taken a temporary refuge in the woods near the house, is a possible, though not an infallible deduction to be drawn from the circumstances you have mentioned. The fact of garden-beds defaced with footprints on such a night as that of the masquerade, can hardly excite any surprise; and as to the suspicious-looking person lurking about the grounds all day, why, none of the three witnesses who swear to having seen him, can at all describe his appearance or occupation. A drunken loafer from the village sleeping off the effects of a night's carouse in the shelter of our woods, is a much more simple interpretation of it, to my mind."
The captain shook his head. "I cannot agree with you, sir; I cannot think that that cravat, blood-stained and soiled, was left in the summer-house by any village loafer. Village loafers, sir, do not, as a general thing, wear such cravats, nor stain them with anything darker than the drippings of their lager-bier."
"I know you'll all laugh at me,"' said Ellerton Wynkar, "but, absurd as it is, I can't help thinking I've seen that cravat worn by——. Good heavens! what's the matter now! Mrs. Churchill, your niece is going to faint!"
"Oh no!" said Grace, coolly passing me a glass of water. "Only turning white and looking distractingly pretty, then rallying a little, and looking up and saying faintly, 'I'm better, thank you,' and regaining composure gradually and gracefully. That's the programme. We're quite used to it by this time. When I have afiancéwho must go to Europe, I shall be perfected in the art of graceful grief if I attend properly to the example I have now before me."
"There's one art you're not perfected in at all events," said Phil.
"What's that, bonnie Phil; what's that?"
"The art of feeling," said her cousin, shortly.
"Grace is thoughtless," said her mother, and entered into an apology so elaborate, that Phil was really distressed, and felt that he had been most unkind and unjust. He gave his hand to Grace, and said, with an honest smile:
"I didn't mean any reproach, Gracie, only you know youarea tease!"
"But, sir," continued the captain, unable to relinquish the subject that most interested him, "do you really feel that everything has been done toward the clearing up of this mystery that lays within your power? Don't you think that if some stronger measures were taken, some more detectives placed on the track, the thing might be ferreted out? It's aggravating to one's feelings to think that the villain may be within pistol shot of us, and get clear after all."
"It makes me so nervous," said Ella Wynkar, "I can't sleep at night, and Josephine makes Frances barricade the doors and windows as if we were preparing to stand a siege."
"It's truly horrible," said Josephine, with a shudder. "I wouldn't go half a dozen yards from the house alone for any consideration."
"Yes, Joseph, you are a coward, there's no denying it. Mr. Rutledge, what do you think of a girl of her age looking in all the closets, and even the bureau drawers, before she goes to bed at night, and making Frances sit beside her till she gets asleep?"
"I really think," said Mr. Rutledge, rising from the table, "that you are all alarming yourselves unnecessarily. Every precaution has been taken to insure the arrest of any suspicious person, and there is no danger of any abatement in the zeal and activity of our rustic police. The woods and neighborhood are swarming with volunteer detectives, and till the offer of the reward is withdrawn, you may rest assured that their assiduity will not be. I think the young ladies may omit the nightly barricading, and excuse Frances from mounting guard after eleven o'clock. I should not advise your walking very far from the house unattended, but beyond that, really, I think you need not take any trouble."
"And reallyIthink," muttered the captain, as we moved into the hall, "that he takes it very coolly. Upon my word, I didn't think he was the man to let such a thing as this be passed over in such an indifferent way."
"God bless him for it!" I thought in my heart.
"Stephen is waiting at the door to speak with you, sir," said Thomas to his master. Stephen's face expressed such a volume of alarm and importance, that we involuntarily stopped in the hall, as he answered Mr. Rutledge's inquiry as to his errand.
"The body of a man, sir, has just been found in the lake. It has evidently been there a day or more. The men are down there, sir; I came immediately up to let you know."
Mr. Rutledge gave a hurried glance at me, as he said quickly:
"Possibly one of the laborers. I will go down with you at once."
Capt. McGuffy, with an I-told-you-so nod to Phil, snatched his hat, and, followed by the other gentlemen, hurried with Stephen toward the lake. The ladies, in a frightened group, clustered together on the lawn and watched them from a distance.
How well I could have told them who it was, and how long the bloated, disfigured corpse had lain floating among the reeds and alder-bushes at the head of the lake! How their ears, indeed, would tingle, if they should know the quarter part of what I knew. How sleepless and terrified Josephine's nights might well be, if she knew that a single foot of brick and mortar was all that separated her from the execrated murderer, with the horror of whose crime the country rang. How doubly aghast she would be, if she knew that the murderer was none other than the guest she had herself invited to Rutledge—the brilliant and clever man whose admiration she had vainly striven to obtain—the affianced husband of her cousin! What if they knew all this? What if my brain should give way under the pressure of this dreadful secret, and I should betray all! Sometimes I really thought I was losing my reason; the knowledge that I held the life of another in my own weak hands, made them tremble more; the keeping of the secret was wearing my very life away; sleepless nights and wretched days were doing their sure work with me, and the terrible excitement within, shone out in my eyes and burned in a crimson spot on each white cheek, throbbed in my quick pulse and sapped the strength and vigor of my being. I could have wrestled with and overcome fear and timidity, if they had been all; I could have been brave and strong, if I had had but his sin to cover, his crime to hide; if I had been true, if my own heart had been pure of sin, I could have borne it. But it was the weight of remorse, added to all the rest, that crushed me to the dust. It was remembering how great a part I had had in Victor's sin, that took all courage out of my heart. If I had not deceived him, and allowed him to believe I loved him—would he not now have been safe? From those first beginnings of pride and resentment, I traced my sin in regard to him. Whenever they had got a foothold, the soothing flattery of Victor's love had crept in, to allay and lull the pain they caused. And I had not remembered to pray in those hours; I had trusted to myself, and gone on sinning. Just so far as I had been estranged from duty, and grown cold to holy things, just so far had I gone forward in the path which had now brought me to such terrible bewilderment. Whenever I had prayed and repented, his influence and the temptation of his presence had been weakened or withdrawn; whenever I had listened to the whispers of wounded pride or determined resentment, his voice had been at my ear, his love laid at my feet. When little Essie's death had drawn my thoughts awhile toward heaven, and made me realize the littleness and impotence of pride and wrath, and the insignificance of things seen, the power and eternity of things unseen, he had been forgotten and indifferent; but so soon as I had allowed the return of worldliness, so soon had I found myself snared in hypocrisy and deceit toward him. The little sins of every day, they had tempted me on to where I now stood. It was so easy to look back and see it all—how one slight omission of duty had led to another—how one moment of indulgence had weakened self-control—one disregard of truth had grown into the tyrant sin from which I could not now release myself; struggle as I might, I was helpless in its grasp. Every step but plunged me deeper; every word was but a fresh deceit.
I saw Victor that evening for a few moments; Kitty had watched long for a safe chance to admit me. Mrs. Roberts, contrary to all precedent, had taken her knitting and seated herself in one of the hall windows, declaring that it was the coolest place in the house, and there remained the whole afternoon. There was nothing to induce her to do it but the obstinate instincts of her nature, to which she was ever true. She may have had some lurking suspicion that there was "something going on" upstairs, and though entirely ignorant of its nature, she could not doubt its evil tendency, believing as she had reason to, that Kitty was concerned in it. She had encountered that young person on the stairs after dinner, with a surreptitious plate of confectionery and fruit from dessert. Kitty had readily answered upon demand, that it was for her young lady; and Mrs. Roberts had very tartly remarked that inhertime, young ladies thought it best manners to eat as much as they wanted at the table, and not take the credit of being delicate, and then have extra plates of good things brought up to their rooms. Kitty could hardly brook the implied taunt, but she had to swallow it. She hovered anxiously around all the afternoon, inventing all manner of excuses to get Mrs. Roberts away, but to no avail, and it was only after dusk, when she had at last withdrawn to order tea, that Kitty eagerly beckoned me to follow her to the door of the hidden room, that had always had such a mysterious awe in my eyes.
As I crept through the narrow space between the wardrobe and the door, I grasped Kitty's hand with an involuntary shudder. "Don't go away," I whispered.
"No, Miss. I'll stay just outside the door and watch, and you must come the very minute I tap at it, for Mrs. Roberts will be back as soon as ever she has given out the things for tea. I won't go away, don't be afraid, Miss."
The twilight was too dim for me to distinguish anything as Kitty closed the door softly behind me, and I groped my way into the room. "Victor!" I said, in a whisper, as no sound met my ear.
A dark figure between me and the faint light of the window, started forward as I spoke, and, in another moment, my hands were grasped in hands as cold and trembling. Did it give me a shudder to remember the work those hands had done in the grey shadowy twilight, one short week before? I tried not to think of it. I tried to remember it was the man who loved me—who had risked his life for my love. But crime and remorse had strangely darkened and changed him. There was a wild sort of despair in his very tenderness—a fierce recklessness when he spoke of the future; I tried in vain to reassure myself and soothe him, but I quailed before a nature, beside the strength of whose passion, all that I had known or seen of despair and desperation faded into insignificance. A weak man can sin weakly, and bewail it feebly and with tears: a strong man, who is hurried into crime by the very intensity and strength, of his nature, turns fiercely upon the remorse that besets him; the very gall of bitterness is his repentance—blood and curses are the tears he sheds.
Tenderness and confidence shrunk back affrighted from such contact; I trembled in his grasp, and he caught a suspicion of my fear. I never shall forget the agony of the gesture with which he released me, and turning away, buried his face in his hands. I started forward, and tried, in faltering accents, to assure him of—what? The words died on my lips. At that moment there was a hurried tap at the door, and Kitty's voice whispered:
"Quick!"
"There is your release!" he exclaimed, bitterly. "You have done your duty; draw a long breath, and hurry back into the light and freedom of the outer world. Quick! I must not keep you."
"You are wrong," I murmured, "I must go, but it is just as dark and miserable outside to me, as it is here for you. Don't fancy, Victor, that there is any pleasure for me now."
"You need not remind me of that!" he exclaimed, sinking down, and bowing his face on the table before him. "You need not remind me of that! I know I have dragged you down with me in my fall, and it is the cruellest thought in all my cruel anguish; but you shall be freed—be sure you shall be freed!"
"Why will you talk so strangely, Victor? What have I done to make you doubt me now? I would die to serve you—I have no other thought than how to save you from the danger that threatens"——
Kitty shook the door impatiently, and implored me to come out.
"I must go, Victor," I whispered. "Will you not speak to me? Good night."
I bent over him, and touched my lips to his forehead, and then groped my way hastily to the door. He did not move or speak, and I turned back irresolutely, to beg him for a word of forgiveness, but Kitty, opening the door, caught me by the hand, and pulled me out.
"They are all asking for you; Miss Josephine has been upstairs for you, and when she came down and said you weren't in your room, master looked so white, and started up so frightened, that the others all caught it of him, and began to call you and hunt all about for you; and I couldn't let you know, for old Roberts was marching up and down the hall, and keeping her eyes all about her. She's gone into her room a minute—now's your chance; run right down the private staircase—there's nobody in the butler's pantry—go out on the piazza, and so around to the front door. Quick! She's coming back!"
I should have done anything Kitty told me to do at that moment. It was lucky for me she was the clear-headed, ingenious girl she was. I ran downstairs, and hurried round the piazza. At the hall door I paused a moment, and leaned against one of the pillars, to recover myself before I entered. Some one hurrying out of the house brushed against me. An exclamation of surprise and relief escaped his lips, and looking up, I saw Mr. Rutledge.
"Where have you been?" he asked, abruptly.
The suddenness of the question, and my miserable nervousness, overcame my self-possession entirely. I struggled in vain to speak, but ended by putting my face in my hands, and bursting into a flood of tears.
"You are not well," he said, kindly, taking my hand and drawing me to a seat. "You are very unhappy. I cannot bear to see you suffer so. Will you not tell me what it is, and let me help you?"
"No one can help me—no one can do me the least good."
"You think so, perhaps; but you do not know how far I might. You do not know how much I would sacrifice to see you happy again. If you will only confide to me the anxiety that I see is killing you, I will promise to further your wishes, and to endeavor to relieve your mind, at the cost of anything to myself except my honor."
I shook my head. "You cannot help me—no one can."
"If it is only grief at parting with your lover," he went on, quickly, "I cannot do you any good; but if it is what I fear for you, I can perhaps advise you—perhaps materially aid you. Trust in me for this; show the confidence in me that you have hitherto refused, and you shall see how well I will serve you—how unselfishly and unreservedly I will try to restore you to happiness."
Pity can make the human face almost like the face of an angel; there is no emotion that is so transforming. When pride, self-will, and selfishness, resign their sway, and pity, heaven-born and god-like, dawns, all that is mean, and coarse, and earthly, seems to fade before it, to grow dumb and quiet in the calm radiance of its risen fullness. Such pity beamed on me now, but its healing and tenderness came too late,
"As on the uprooted flower, the genial rain."
"You are very kind," I murmured; "but there is nothing anybody can do for me."
He rose sadly. "I will not torment you, then. Will you come into the house? If you desire to go to your room, I will manage your excuses for you."
With almost inaudible thanks, I hurried into the hall and upstairs. My aunt came up in the course of the evening, but Kitty represented me as "just going to sleep," and I was spared an interview.
"Kitty!" I exclaimed, starting up, long after she had fancied I was soothed to sleep, "how—how will it all end? What is to become of him after we go? It was decided yesterday that we leave in two days' time, and you know it will not be safe for him to think of escape till the excitement has died away in the country. Poor Victor! What is to become of him?"
"Don't fret," said Kitty, soothingly, "even if you have to leave him here, there'll be no more danger for him than if you stayed. Mr. Rutledge is going too, you know, and the house will be shut up, and it will be safer, if anything, than now. I'll write you every day of my life, and tell you how things go on. And, depend upon it, the worst of the danger is over. Since this body has been found in the lake, people will begin to content themselves that there's no use in looking further for the murderer—that he did it and then drowned himself in despair. Michael hasn't brought up the news of the inquest yet—he's waiting in the village to hear it; but I've no manner of doubt what it'll be. Everybody knows he and the doctor had dealings together, and that, with the character he bears, will tell against him."
"You don't suppose he had any papers about him that might do Victor harm?"
"If he had had, they wouldn't be of any use now; they've been in the water too long to serve any purpose, good or bad. No, Black John, as they call him, will have to bear the credit of the crime he was hunting poor Mr. Victor to death for. There ain't many that he didn't deserve to take the credit of. Everybody knows that he was nothing slow at all manner of wickedness, and it seems the likeliest thing in the world that he should do the devil's work; and, mark my words, before a week is over, there won't be man, woman or child in the country round, that won't curse Black John as Dr. Hugh's murderer. It won't do him much harm now, poor wretch; a few curses more or less won't make much difference to him where he is now, I suppose."
"Had he a wife?"
"A drunken, half-crazy thing. She spends her time between the poor-house and the grog-shop. She'll never mind about her husband, beyond howling for an hour or two when she first hears it, if she happens to be sober. Now, Miss, don't think any more about it, but try to go to sleep. You'll be quite worn out."
And Kitty threw herself upon her mattress by my bed, where she now slept, and, faithfullest and tenderest of attendants, never left me, day or night.
"Nor peace nor ease, the heart can know,That, like the needle true,Turns at the touch of joy or woe,But, turning, trembles too."GREVILLE.
"Things seem to be taking a new turn," said the captain, meditatively, over his coffee the next morning. "I own I thought we were at the bottom of the mystery, yesterday, but this woman's testimony seems to set us all adrift again, and we're no nearer a conclusion than we were a week ago."
"What woman's?" asked Ellerton, who had just come in.
"The man's wife," said the captain.
"What man's?" demanded Ella, who generally arrived at a subject about ten minutes after it had been introduced.
"Why the man who was supposed to have murdered the doctor, Miss Ella, and whose body was found in the lake. We were all mightily relieved yesterday, and thought the murderer had found his reward, and were only sorry that he'd cheated the hangman. But in the meantime his wife turns up, and brings a lot of things to light; swears that on the night of the murder he was at Brandon, on an errand for the doctor, and brings the landlord and barkeeper of the 'Brandon Shades' to testify to his remaining there till after eleven o'clock. She also states that the doctor and her husband were on good terms, and that the doctor often employed him in a confidential way; that there was a person who, she knew, bore malice against the doctor; she had overheard a conversation between her husband and Dr. Hugh, in which"——
"But her testimony goes for nothing," I interrupted, eagerly. "She is well known to be half crazy, and hardly ever sober. Her testimony can't be worth a straw—nobody would listen to her for a moment."
"I don't know about that; her story hangs together, she's sober enough now, and will be kept so till they have done with her. She says that the doctor came to their shanty late the night before the murder, and called John out; she crept to the keyhole and listened. She lost a good deal of what they said for a little while, they talked so low; then John raised his voice, and said with an oath, he'd take down the villain's pride for him a bit; he wondered the doctor had stood his cursed ugliness so long; for his part, he'd put a bullet through him to-morrow, with pleasure. The doctor hushed him, and said, 'Not so fast, John, not so fast, wait awhile; we must get a little more out of him before we send him to his long account. We'll settle up old scores with pleasure, after we've no further use for him. Attend to this little errand for me to-morrow, and don't let him slip, and that'll be the first step toward a reckoning.'"
"Well, but I cannot see," said Mr. Rutledge, "what it all amounts to, even if the woman's testimony is received, which is more than doubtful. She didn't hear any names. Nobody has any doubt but that the doctor had plenty of enemies, and that her man John was a scoundrel, and I cannot see what else her evidence goes to prove."
"It goes to prove that there wassomebodywith whom the doctor was not on good terms, who has not appeared on the stage as yet, and of whom we want to get hold. It goes to prove, my dear sir, that the man John was sent to Brandon on a matter in some way connected with this person; and, to my mind, when we shall have, found out who that person was, we shall have found out who was the murderer of Dr. Hugh!"
"But," said Phil, "what do the barkeeper and landlord of 'The Shades' say? Don't they know who he came to meet, and for whom he waited till eleven?"
"John, it seems, 'kept dark,' lounged around the bar-room, and spoke little to any one, as was his manner, but went often to the door, and seemed to wait for some one. The barkeeper thinks, but is not sure, that it was he who was there once before during the morning, with a letter which he left, directed to a gentleman whose name he has forgotten, who never called for it."
"Ah!" cried Phil, "now we shall get at it, I think. "What became of the letter?"
"The letter," interrupted Mr. Rutledge, "the letter that was left there that morning"——
I crushed the newspaper that lay beside me with my nervous hand; I smothered the cry that trembled on my lips, but my eyes burned on his face. He avoided them and went on.
"The letter which was left there by some one, who, it is conjectured, onlyconjectured, may have been this man, was addressed to some person not at all known in Brandon, and who never came for it. It was opened and examined, and proved to be only the business circular of some importing house in New York. So all idea of tracing anything from that was given up, and the letter thrown aside."
"Strange," said Phil, thoughtfully. "I should have thought something could have been made out of it. In a small place like Brandon, where everybody knows everybody, I should have thought that the circumstance of a strange name on a letter left at a little tavern would have excited some interest."
"Brandon is a railway station, you know, and consequently there are strangers always coming and going."
"Do you remember the name on the letter, sir?"
"Some foreign name, I think. Captain McGuffy, do you remember it?" said Mr. Rutledge, indifferently.
"I don't think I heard it," returned the captain. "And I really have the curiosity to want to know something more about that letter, though all the legal gentlemen, I know, have decided against its usefulness in the case. I must remember to ask Judge Talbot to let me look at it," he continued, taking out his memorandum-book and making an entry. "Phil, don't you feel like taking a drive over to Brandon with me, this morning, and seeing if there's anything new to be learned?"
"Captain McGuffy," I exclaimed, "don't you want to do me a favor? I am perfectly wild to have a ride on horseback this morning, and you know you promised to give me some lessons in 'cavalry practice' before we left, and there is only one day more. What do you say to a canter over to Windy Hill this fine morning?"
The captain fell in with the proposition very readily, and Mr. Rutledge suggested that it would be a very good arrangement for all of the party to accompany us, in the carriage and open wagon, and to make our farewell call, also, to the Emersons.
"To-morrow may not be fine," said Mr. Rutledge, "and perhaps we had better secure to-day."
The rest were agreed, and we hurried off to dress; as the two places were far distant from each other and from Rutledge, it was necessary to start as soon as possible. In my dread lest Phil should decline being of the party, and should ride over to Brandon by himself, I called out to him to know if he would not accept an appointment in my regiment? He laughed, and accepted; and unheeding the flaming battery of Josephine's eyes, I ran up to put on my habit. There was another lady's horse in the stable, besides the one I should use, but Josephine and Ella, though dying to ride, would neither of them volunteer to accompany me.
"You are too nervous to ride, Miss," said Kitty, as she buttoned my gloves. "See how your hand shakes. Why will you go? You are not fit."
"I must; there is no help. Tell him why I go, Kitty, and that I will be back as soon as I can, and you must manage to let me see him in the course of the afternoon. And be sure you make him understand about my going."
Glorious Madge! I had never expected to mount her again. I had never expected to burden her with such a heavy heart. What a contrast to the daring young rider of a few short months ago. Madge Wildfire was as eager and untamed as then, but not so her mistress. Her mistress, the fire quenched in her eye, the pride of her free step humbled, the courage of her spirit broken, trembled at the very beauty of the animal she rode.