"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 of _her_ secret,
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 is _one room_ where 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.