END OF THE LADY'S STORY.
Of the present naught is bright,
But in the coming years I see
A brilliant and a cheerful light,
Which burns before thee constantly.
--W. D. Gallagher.
At the appointed hour the next morning Traverse Rocke repaired to the
cell of his mysterious patient.
He was pleased to find her up, dressed with more than usual care and
taste and looking, upon the whole, much better in health and spirits
than upon the preceding day.
"Ah, my young hero, it is you; you see that I am ready for you," she
said, holding out her hand.
"You are looking very well this morning," said Traverse, smiling.
"Yes, hope is a fine tonic, Doctor Rocke."
She was seated by the same window at which Traverse had first seen her,
and she now beckoned the young doctor to come and take a seat near her.
"My story is almost as melodramatic as a modern romance, Doctor Rocke,"
she said.
Traverse bowed gravely and waited.
"My father was a French patriot, who suffered death in the cause of
liberty when I, his only child, was but fourteen years of age. My
mother, broken-hearted by his loss, followed him within a few months. I
was left an orphan and penniless, for our estate was confiscated."
"Ah, your sorrows came early and heavily indeed," said Traverse.
"Yes; well, a former servant of my father held an humble situation of
porter on the ground floor of a house, the several floors of which were
let out to different lodgers. This poor man and his wife gave me a
temporary home with themselves. Among the lodgers of the house there
was a young Virginian gentleman of fortune, traveling for pleasure and
improvement; his name was Mr. Eugene Le Noir."
"Le Noir!" cried Traverse, with a violent start.
"Yes--what is the matter?"
"It is a familiar Virginia name, Madam, that is all; pray go on."
"Mr. Le Noir was as good and kind as he was wise and cultivated. He
used to stop to gossip with old Cliquot every time he stopped at the
porter's room to take or to leave his key. There he heard of the poor
little orphan of the guillotine, who had no friend in the world but her
father's old servant. He pitied me, and after many consultations with
Father and Mother Cliquot, he assumed the position of guardian to me,
and placed me at one of the best schools in Paris. He lingered in the
city and came to see me very often; but always saw me in the presence
of Madame, the directress. I clung to him with affection as to a father
or an elder brother, and I knew he loved me with the tender, protecting
affection that he would have given a younger sister, had he possessed
one. Ah! Doctor Rocke, tell me, besides yourself, are there many other
men in your State like him?"
"I knew but one such; but go on, dear Madam."
"When I had been to school some months he came to me one day scarcely
able to conceal his woe. He told me that his father was ill and that he
should have to sail in the first packet from Havre, and that, in fact,
he had then come to take leave of me. I was wild with grief, not only
upon his account but upon my own, at the prospect of losing him, my
only friend. I was but a child, and a French child to boot. I knew
nothing of the world; I regarded this noble gentleman, who was so much
my superior in years as in everything else, as a father, guardian or
elder brother; so in an agony of grief I threw myself into his arms,
sobbing and weeping bitterly and imploring him not to break my heart by
leaving me. It was in vain Madame the Directress exclaimed and
expostulated at these improprieties. I am sure I did not hear a word
until he spoke. Putting me out of his arms, he said:
"'I must go, my child; duty calls me.'
"'Then take me with you; take your poor little one with you, and do not
pull her out of your warm, good heart, or she will wither and die like
a flower torn up by the roots!' I cried, between my sobs and tears.
"He drew me back to his bosom and whispered:
"There is but one way in which I can take you with me, my child. Will
you be my wife, little Capitolie?"
"Capitola!" cried Traverse, with another great start.
"Yes! Why? What is the matter now?"
"Why, it is such an odd name, that is all! Pray proceed, Madam."
"We were married the same day, and sailed the third morning thereafter
from Havre for the United States, where we arrived, alas! only to find
the noble gentleman, my Eugene's father, laid in his grave. After Mr.
Le Noir's natural grief was over we settled down peaceably to our
country life at the Hidden House----"
"The Hidden House!" again exclaimed Traverse Rocke.
"Yes! that is another odd name, isn't it? Well, I was very happy. At
first when I understood my real position, I had been afraid that my
husband had married me only from compassion; but he soon proved to me
that his love was as high, as pure and as noble as himself. I was very
happy. But one day, in the midst of my exultant joy, a thunderbolt fell
and shattered my peace to destruction forever! Oh, Doctor Rocke, my
husband was murdered by some unknown hand in his own woods, in open
day! I cannot talk of this!" cried the widow, breaking down,
overwhelmed with the rush of terrible recollections.
Traverse poured out a glass of water and handed it to her.
She drank it, made an effort at self-control, and resumed:
"Thus, scarcely sixteen years of age, I was a widow, helpless,
penniless and entirely dependent upon my brother-in-law, Colonel
Gabriel Le Noir, for by the terms of their father's will, if Eugene
died without issue the whole property descended to his younger brother,
Gabriel. To speak the truth, Colonel Le Noir was exceedingly kind to me
after my awful bereavement, until a circumstance was discovered that
changed all our relations. It was two months after my husband's death
that I discovered, with mingled emotions of joy and sorrow, that heaven
had certainly destined me to become a mother! I kept my cherished
secret to myself as long as it was possible, but it could not indeed be
long concealed from the household. I believe that my brother-in-law was
the first to suspect it. He called me into his study one day, and I
obeyed like a child. And there he rudely questioned me upon the subject
of my sacred mother-mystery. He learned the truth more from my silence
than from my replies, for I could not answer him."
"The brute! the miserable hound!" ejaculated Traverse.
"Oh, Doctor Rocke, I could not tell you the avalanche of abuse, insult
and invective that he hurled upon my defenseless head. He accused me of
more crimes than I had ever heard talk of. He told me that my condition
was an impossible one unless I had been false to the memory of his
brother; that I had dishonored his name, disgraced his house and
brought myself to shame; that I should leave the roof, leave the
neighborhood and die as I deserved to die, in a ditch! I made no reply.
I was crushed into silence under the weight of his reproaches."
"The caitiff! The poltroon! Ah, poor stranger, why did you not leave
the house at once and throw yourself upon the protection of the
minister of your parish or some other kind neighbor?"
"Alas! I was a child, a widow and a foreigner all in one! I did not
know your land or your laws or your people. I was not hopeful or
confident; I had suffered so cruelly and I was overwhelmed by his
abuse."
"But did you not know, dear lady, that all his rage was aroused only by
the fact that the birth of your child would disinherit him?"
"Ah, no! I was not aware, at that time, that Gabriel Le Noir was a
villain. I thought his anger honest, though unjust, and I was as
ignorant as a child. I had no mother nor matronly friend to instruct
me. I knew that I had broken no command of God or man; that I had been
a faithful wife, but when Gabriel Le Noir accused me with such bitter
earnestness I feared that some strange departure from the usual course
of nature had occurred for my destruction. And I was overwhelmed by
mortification, terror and despair!"
"Ah, the villain!" exclaimed Traverse, between his teeth.
"He told me at last that to save the memory of his dead brother he
would hide my dishonor, and he ordered me to seclude myself from the
sight of all persons. I obeyed him like a slave, grateful even for the
shelter of his roof."
"A roof that was your own, as he very well knew. And he knew, also, the
caitiff! that if the circumstance became known the whole State would
have protected you in your rights, and ejected him like a cur."
"Nay, even in that case no harm should have reached him on my account.
He was my husband's brother."
"And worst enemy! But proceed, dear lady."
"Well, I secluded myself as he commanded. For four months I never left
the attic to which he had ordered me to retreat. At the end of that
time I became the mother of twins--a boy and a girl. The boy only
opened his eyes on this world to close them again directly. The girl
was living and healthy. The old nurse who attended me had an honest and
compassionate face; I persuaded her to secrete and save the living
child, and to present the dead babe to Colonel Le Noir as the only one,
for the suspicions that had never been awakened for myself were alarmed
for my child. I instinctively felt that he would have destroyed it."
"The mother's instinct is like inspiration," said Traverse.
"It may be so. Well, the old woman pitied me and did as I desired. She
took the dead child to Colonel Le Noir, who carried it off, and
afterward buried it as the sole heir of his elder brother. The old
woman carried off my living child and my wedding ring, concealed under
her ample shawl. Anxiety for the fate of my child caused me to do what
nothing else on earth would have tempted me to do--to creep about the
halls and passages on tiptoe and under cover of the night and listen at
keyholes," said the lady, blushing deeply at the recollection.
"You--you were perfectly right, Mrs. Le Noir! In a den of robbers,
where your life and honor were always at stake, you could have done no
otherwise!" exclaimed Traverse, warmly.
"I learned by this means that my poor old nurse had paid with her
liberty for her kindness to me. She had been abducted and forced from
her native country together with a child found in her possession, which
they evidently suspected, and I knew, to be mine. Oh, heaven! the agony
then of thinking of what might be her unknown fate, worse than death,
perhaps! I felt that I had only succeeded in saving her life--doubtful
good!"
Here Mrs. Le Noir paused in thought for a few moments and then resumed.
"It is the memory of a long, dreary and hopeless imprisonment, my
recollection of my residence in that house! In the same manner in which
I gained all my information, I learned that it was reported in the
neighborhood that I had gone mad with grief for the loss of my husband
and that I was an inmate of a madhouse in the North! It was altogether
false; I never left the Hidden House in all those years until about two
years ago. My life there was dreary beyond all conception. I was
forbidden to go out or to appear at a window. I had the whole attic,
containing some eight or ten rooms, to rove over, but I was forbidden
to descend. An ill-looking woman called Dorcas Knight, between whom and
the elder Le Noir there seemed to have been some sinful bond was
engaged ostensibly as my attendant, but really as my jailer.
Nevertheless, when the sense of confinement grew intolerable I
sometimes eluded her vigilance and wandered about the house at night."
"Thence, no doubt," said Traverse, "giving rise to the report that the
house was haunted."
Mrs. Le Noir smiled, saying:
"I believe the Le Noirs secretly encouraged that report. I'll tell you
why. They gave me a chamber lamp inclosed in an intense blue shade,
that cast a strange, unearthly light around. Their ostensible reason
was to insure my safety from fire. Their real reason was that this
light might be seen from without in what was reputed to be an
uninhabited portion of the house, and give color to its bad reputation
among the ignorant of being haunted."
"So much for the origin of one authenticated ghost story," said
Traverse.
"Yes, and there was still more circumstantial evidence to support this
ghostly reputation of the house. As the years passed I had, even in my
confined state, gathered knowledge in one way and another--picking up
stray books and hearing stray conversation; and so, in the end I
learned how gross a deception and how great a wrong had been practised
upon me. I was not wise or cunning. I betrayed constantly to my
attendant my knowledge of these things. In consequence of which my
confinement became still more restricted."
"Yes, they were afraid of you, and fear is always the mother of
cruelty," said Traverse.
"Well, from the time that I became enlightened as to my real position,
all my faculties were upon the alert to find means of escaping and
making my condition known to the authorities. One night they had a
guest, Colonel Eglen, of the army, Old Dorcas had her hands full, and
forgot her prisoner. My door was left unlocked. So, long after Colonel
Eglen had retired to rest, and when all the household were buried in
repose, I left my attic and crept down to the chamber of the guest,
with no other purpose than to make known my wrongs and appeal to his
compassion. I entered his chamber, approached his bed to speak to him,
when this hero of a hundred fields started up in a panic, and at the
sight of the pale woman who drew his curtains in the dead of the night,
he shrieked, violently rang his bell and fainted prone away."
"Ha! ha! ha! he could brave an army or march into a cannon's mouth
easier than meet a supposed denizen of another world! Well, Doctor
Johnson believed in ghosts," laughed Traverse.
"It remained for me to retreat as fast as possible to my room to avoid
the Le Noirs, who were hurrying with headlong speed to the
guest-chamber. They knew of course, that I was the ghost, although they
affected to treat their visitor's story as a dream. After that my
confinement was so strict that for years I had no opportunity of
leaving my attic. At last the strict espionage was relaxed. Sometimes
my door would be left unlocked. Upon one such occasion, in creeping
about in the dark, I learned, by overhearing a conversation between Le
Noir and his housekeeper, that my long lost daughter, Capitola, had
been found and was living at Hurricane Hall! This was enough to comfort
me for years. About three years ago the surveillance over me was so
modified that I was left again to roam about the upper rooms of the
house at will, until I learned that they had a new inmate, young Clara
Day, a ward of Le Noir! Oh, how I longed to warn that child to fly! But
I could not; alas, again I was restricted to my own room, lest I should
be seen by her. But again, upon one occasion, old Dorcas forgot to lock
my door at night. I stole forth from my room and learned that a young
girl, caught out in the storm, was to stay all night at the Hidden
House. Young girls were not plentiful in that neighborhood, I knew.
Besides, some secret instinct told me that this was my daughter: I knew
that she would sleep in the chamber under mine, because that was the
only habitable guest-room in the whole house. In the dead of night I
left my room and went below and entered the chamber of the young girl.
I went first to the toilet table to see if among her little girlish
ornaments, I could find any clue to her identity. I found it in a
plain, gold ring--the same that I had intrusted to the old nurse. Some
strange impulse caused me to slip the ring upon my finger. Then I went
to the bed and threw aside the curtains to gaze upon the sleeper. My
girl--my own girl! With what strange sensations I first looked upon her
face! Her eyes were open and fixed upon mine in a panic of terror. I
stooped to press my lips to her's and she closed her eyes in mortal
fear, I carried nothing but terror with me! I withdrew from the room
and went back, sobbing, to my chamber. My poor girl next morning
unconsciously betrayed her mother. It had nearly cost me my life."
"When the Le Noirs came home, the first night of their arrival they
entered my room, seized me in my bed and dragged me shrieking from it!"
"Good heaven! What punishment is sufficient for such wretches!"
exclaimed Traverse, starting up and pacing the narrow limits of the
cell.
"Listen! They soon stopped both my shrieks and my breath at once. I
lost consciousness for a time, and when I awoke I found myself in a
close carriage, rattling over a mountain road, through the night. Late
the next morning we reached an uninhabited country house, where I was
again imprisoned, in charge of an old dumb woman, whom Le Noir called
Mrs. Raven. This I afterwards understood to be Willow Heights, the
property of the orphan heiress, Clara Day. And here, also, for the term
of my stay, the presence of the unknown inmate got the house the
reputation of being haunted.
"The old dumb woman was a shade kinder to me than Dorcas Knight had
been, but I did not stay in her charge very long. One night the Le
Noirs came in hot haste. The young heiress had been delivered from
their charge by a degree of the Orphans' Court, and they had to give up
her house. I was drugged and hurried away. Some narcotic sedative must
have been insinuated into all my food, for I was in a state of
semi-sensibility and mild delirium during the whole course of a long
journey by land and sea, which passed to me like a dream, and at the
end of which I found myself here. No doubt, from the excessive use of
narcotics, there was some thing wild and stupid in my manner and
appearance that justified the charge of madness. And when I found that
I was a prisoner in a lunatic asylum, far, far away from the
neighborhood where at least I had once been known I gave way to the
wilder grief that further confirmed the story of my madness. I have
been here two years, occasionally giving way to outbursts of wild
despair, that the doctor calls frenzy. I was sinking into an apathy,
when one day I opened the little Bible that lay upon the table of my
cell. I fixed upon the last chapters in the gospel of John. That
narrative of meek patience and divine love. It did for me what no power
under that of God could have done. It saved me! It saved me from
madness! It saved me from despair! There is a time for the second birth
of every soul; that time had come for me. From that hour, this book has
been my constant companion and comfort. I have learned from its pages
how little it matters how or where this fleeting, mortal life is
passed, so that it answers its purpose of preparing the soul for
another. I have learned patience with sinners, forgiveness of enemies,
and confidence in God. In a word, I trust I have learned the way of
salvation, and in that have learned everything. Your coming and your
words, young friend, have stirred within my heart the desire to be
free, to mingle again on equal terms with my fellow beings, and above
all, to find and to embrace my child. But not wildly anxious am I even
for these earthly blessings. These, as well as all things else, I
desire to leave to the Lord, praying that His will may be mine. Young
friend, my story is told."
"Madam," said Traverse, after a thoughtful pause, "our fates have been
more nearly connected than you could have imagined. Those Le Noirs have
been my enemies as they are yours. That young orphan heiress, who
appealed from their cruelty to the Orphans' Court, was my own
betrothed. Willow Heights was her patrimony and is now her quiet home
where she lives with my mother, and where in their names I invited you
to come. And take this comfort also; your enemy no longer lives: months
ago I left him ill with a mortal wound. This morning the papers
announce his death. There remains, therefore, but little for me to do,
but to take legal measures to free you from this place, and restore you
to your home. Within an hour I shall set out for New Orleans, for the
purpose of taking the initiatory steps. Until my return then, dear
lady," said Traverse, respectfully taking her hand--"farewell, and be
of good cheer!"