CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE ABDUCTION.
The same moonlight which illumined the meeting of Pauline Corsi and the strangers in the streets of New Orleans, shone on the smooth bosom of the Mississippi, and on the white walls of the villa residence of Augustus Horton.
The house and plantation of Hortonville were some miles from the wood in which the duel between Augustus and Gilbert had taken place.
The scenery which surrounded the villa was exquisitely beautiful, and the building itself, seen beneath the light of the moon with its lamp-lit windows gleaming like pale gems in the glory of the summer's night, had the appearance of some fairy palace rather than any earthly habitation.
You might almost have expected to see those white walls melt into thin air and fade away from your gaze.
It was nearly midnight, and the planter's small household had retired to rest.
There were only two watchers in that luxurious habitation.
The first of these was Augustus Horton; the second was Cora, the Octoroon.
The unhappy girl had been brought from the auction room to Hortonville in Augustus's phaeton, the thorough-bred horses of which made brief work of the journey from New Orleans.
Adelaide Horton and her aunt, Mrs. Montresor, were still at their city residence.
Cora scarce dared to think why Augustus had chosen to take her to Hortonville, rather than to his town house.
The answer to that question was too terrible.
Could there be any doubt as to his motive in choosing this lonely villa for the retreat of the Octoroon?
Was it not that the wretched girl might be more fully in his power?
The chamber to which Cora had been conducted was even more luxuriously furnished than her own tastefully decorated apartment in the pavilion on the borders of Lake Pontchartrain, but the Octoroon looked at the splendor around her with a shudder.
She knew that it was not thus that slaves were ordinarily treated, and she knew the sinister meaning of this seeming kindness.
The young mulattress who led Cora to her apartment informed her that she had been appointed to wait upon Miss Leslie.
Cora smiled bitterly.
"Who told you to call me, Miss Leslie?" she asked.
"My master, Mr. Horton."
"Alas, my poor girl," answered Cora, "I am no longer Miss Leslie. I am a slave like yourself, with no name save that which my master chooses to give me. He has bought me; bought me at the auction yonder. Name, fame, happiness, honor, ay, and even soul—as he thinks—are his."
In the bitterness of her despair she buried her face in her hands and sobbed aloud.
The mulattress was touched to the heart by this burst of grief.
"My dear mistress, pray do not weep thus," she said. "You will be no slave here, I know, for our master has had these beautiful rooms prepared on purpose for you, and you are to be treated as a queen."
"A queen!" said Cora, hysterically. "Yes, the empress of a profligate's hour of pleasure, to be trampled beneath his feet when the whim has passed. Go, my good girl; why should I distress you with my griefs. You can never understand my misery."
It was impossible, indeed, for this poor ignorant slave to comprehend the feelings of the highly educated and refined woman, torn from a father she adored, and from him who was to have rescued her from slavery, and made her a happy English wife.
Cora dried her tears; and, affecting a calmness which she did not feel, dismissed the mulattress.
The girl had lighted a shaded lamp upon an elegant little inlaid table, and had brought a tray loaded with delicacies for Cora's refreshment, but the Octoroon turned with a sickened heart from the rich food set before her. She had eaten nothing that day, and her lips and throat were parched and burning with inward fever. She poured out a glass of iced water and drained the cool liquid to the last drop. Then, throwing open the wide Venetian shutters, she looked out into the calm night.
"What if there were yet hope? What if she could escape?"
A thrill vibrated through her inmost soul as she asked herself these questions.
She fell on her knees, and lifting her clasped hands, exclaimed in an outburst of enthusiasm,—
"Oh, Merciful and Beneficent Creator! I cannot believe that Thou wouldst utterly abandon the meanest of thy creatures. Even here, on the brink of terrors more hideous than the most cruel death, I still hope, I still believe that Thou wilt show me a way of deliverance!"
The Octoroon arose from her knees, a new creature after the utterance of this heartfelt prayer. Her very countenance seemed as if transfigured by the sublime emotions of the moment. A holy light shone from her tearless eyes; a faint flush of crimson relieved the pallor of her cheek.
"My father abandons me to my fate. Even he who was to be my husband can do no more to save me. It is to Heaven, then, that I turn, and to One above who is stronger than all earthly friends."
The apartment to which Cora had been conducted was on the upper floor of the villa; but the ceilings of the lower chambers were far from lofty, and the window from which the Octoroon looked was scarcely eleven feet from the ground. Under this window ran a rustic colonnade with slender pilasters, round which hung the leaves and blossoms of the luxuriant creeping-plants familiar to the South. The roof of this colonnade formed a balcony before Cora's window.
For some moments the Octoroon stood at the open casement, gazing on the scene beneath her—lost in thought.
"If I remain in this house," she murmured, "I am utterly in the power of that base man. Another moment, and he may enter this chamber; again I may hear those words which are poison to my soul; and this time he may force me to listen to his infamous proposals. All those beneath this roof are the slaves of his will—it were hopeless, then, to look for help from them; but beneath that purple vault I might surely be safer; and at the worst the river is near at hand."
She shuddered as she spoke. To this girl, religiously educated, there was something horrible in the idea of suicide. It seemed a doubt of Providence even to think of this worst and last resource.
But on one thing she had determined, and that was to escape from the house to the gardens below; once there, she might find her way to some adjoining plantation, where she might meet with some benevolent creature who would interfere to shield her from her hated master.
It was not slavery she feared, it was dishonor.
The rope with which she had been bound still hung to one of her wrists. This rope might be the means of saving her.
She examined the door of her chamber and found that it was locked on the outside.
"So much the better," she thought; "he believes his prisoner to be safe. He thinks that I would not dare a leap of a few feet even to escape from him. How little he knows of a woman's power in the moment of desperation!"
She hurried to the balcony, and attached the cord, which was about five feet long, to the iron railing, then with the help of this cord she dropped lightly to the ground.
She lighted unhurt upon the soft earth of a flower-bed, but the slender ropes broke with her weight, and the best part remained in her hand. She was free!
Free did she think, when still within a few paces of her master?
Swift as the wind she flew from the villa in the direction of the river-side, scarce knowing which path she took in her eagerness to escape.
Her footsteps made no sound upon the dewy turf, and she did not hear another footstep hurrying close behind her.
A broad lawn stretched before her, and beyond that a thick plantation.
Her anxiety was to reach this friendly shelter, for the moonlight night was bright and clear as day, and she trembled lest she should be perceived from the windows of the villa.
She was nearing the plantation when an iron hand was laid upon her shoulder, and turning round with a scream of mingled anguish and terror, she confronted Augustus Horton bare-headed in the moonlight.
He had watched her escape from the window of his own apartment, and had lingered long enough to allow her to imagine herself free before he had left the house in pursuit of her.
"So, Cora," he said, "this is the way you repay me for my foolish indulgence. This is how you show your gratitude for being received at Hortonville like a princess! Do you know how we treat runaway slaves in the South?"
"No," answered Cora, with a look of defiance.
"Oh! You don't; I'm afraid they neglected your education in England."
"They did," replied the Octoroon; "the free citizens of that land of liberty forgot to teach me that beneath God's bounteous heaven there live a race of men who traffic in the bodies and souls of their fellow-creatures! That was a lesson they forgot to teach me."
"Then I'm afraid you'll have to learn it here," said the planter; "and if you don't take care what you're about, it may be taught you in rather a rough fashion. But why, why, Cora, do you compel me to use this language? It is not the right of a master that I would exercise, but that of a lover."
"You forget," replied Cora, with icy coldness, "that I love, and am beloved by an honorable man, who would make me his wife."
"It is you who must forget that, Cora," answered Augustus, fiercely. "Henceforth, Gilbert Margrave and you are strangers. You are mine, I have kept my promise; I have given the fifty thousand dollars owed me by your father as the price of this moment. But it is not as a master that I address you. The rigors of slavery are not for you. Reward my devotion with one smile, one word of encouragement, and a life of luxury shall be yours; but, if you value your own happiness, do not force me to remember—"
"That I am your slave. Pardon me, Mr. Horton, it is that which I would not forget; but, as my English education has left me very ignorant, I must beg you to teach me the duties of a slave."
"Those duties are told in one word, Cora," replied the planter, "and that word is submission! absolute and unquestioning submission to every wish of the master. Blind obedience to every word, to each command, however revolting to the will of the slave. Body and soul, Cora, you are mine. Shriek, and your voice will echo through the plantation, but will awake no answer; for those who alone could hear it are slaves like yourself, and powerless to help you. Cease this mad folly, then, and thus let me—"
He advanced as if to encircle her in his arms, but the Octoroon stepped back a few paces, and raising the cord which she held in her right hand, addressed him thus:
"One step further, and it is I who will inflict upon you the chastisement of a slave, by striking you across the face."
As Cora uttered these words, a whistle resounded through the plantation, near the spot upon which she and the planter stood, and in another moment two dark figures emerged from the shade of the trees.
Before Augustus could interpose, Cora was seized in the arms of one of these men, and carried into the plantation, while the other grasped the shoulder of the planter with a hand of iron.
The moonlight on this man's face revealed his identity to Augustus.
"Gilbert Margrave!" he exclaimed.
"Ay, Gilbert Margrave, the affianced husband of the woman you would have destroyed. You refused to-day to accede to the appeal made by one gentleman to another. You gave me the answer of a ruffian; to-night it is I who use the ruffian's argument, force!"
"The law shall make you pay dearly for this," cried Augustus, hoarse with rage.
"Be it so. I am an Englishman, and am willing to suffer the worst penalty the laws of Louisiana can inflict upon me, rather than sacrifice the honor of my affianced wife."
The man who had seized Cora disappeared beneath the shade of the trees. Gilbert tried to follow him, but Augustus Horton sprang toward him, with an open bowie knife in his hand.
"I am armed," cried Gilbert, "and wrong has made me desperate, follow me at your peril."
He bounded through the brushwood, and reached the bank of the river, by the side of which was moored a boat, with three men, who held their oars, ready to strike the water at the first signal.
The man carrying Cora had already taken his place at the stern of the boat; Gilbert sprang in after them, the oars dipped into the water, and before Augustus Horton reached the brink of the river, the boat had shot out toward the center of the stream.
Upon his own estate, and within a few hundred yards of a regiment of slaves, the planter had been defied and defeated in his hour of triumph.
The Octoroon had fainted from the excitement of the moment, but the cool breeze from the river quickly restored her to consciousness.
When she re-opened her eyes she found herself reclining on the shoulder of the man who had seized her.
That man was her father, Gerald Leslie.