It was believed by the general public and Mr. Vance that Molly and
Dianthe had perished beneath the waters of the Charles River, although
only Molly’s body was recovered. Aubrey was picked up on the bank of
the river in an unconscious state, where he was supposed to have made
his way after vainly striving to rescue the two girls.
When he had somewhat recovered from the shock of the accident, it was
rumored that he had gone to Canada with a hunting party, and so he
disappeared from public view.
But Dianthe had not perished. As the three struggled in the water,
Molly, with all the confidence of requited love, threw her arms about
her lover. With a muttered oath, Aubrey tried to shake her off, but her
clinging arms refused to release him. From the encircling arms he saw
a sight that maddened him--Dianthe’s head was disappearing beneath the
waters where the lily-stems floated in their fatal beauty, holding in
their tenacious grasp the girl he loved. An appalling sound had broken
through the air as she went down--a heart-stirring cry of agony--the
tone of a voice pleading with God for life! the precious boon of life!
That cry drove away the man, and the brute instinct so rife within
us all, ready always to leap to the front in times of excitement or
danger, took full possession of the body. He forgot honor, humanity,
God.
With a savage kick he freed himself and swam swiftly toward the spot
where Dianthe’s golden head had last appeared. He was just in time.
Grasping the flowing locks with one hand and holding her head above the
treacherous water, he swam with her to the bank.
Pretty, innocent, tender-hearted Molly sank never to rise again.
Without a word, but with a look of anguished horror, her despairing
face was covered by the glistening, greedy waters that lapped so
hungrily about the water-lily beds.
As Aubrey bore Dianthe up the bank his fascinated gaze went backward to
the spot where he had seen Molly sink. To his surprise and horror, as
he gazed the body rose to the surface and floated as did poor Elaine:
“In her right hand the lily,
--All her bright hair streaming down--
--And she herself in white,
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead,
But fast asleep, and lay as tho’ she smiled.”
Staggering like a drunken man, he made his way to a small cottage up
the bank, where a woman, evidently expecting him, opened the door
without waiting for his knock.
“Quick! here she is. Not a word. I will return to-night.” With these
words Livingston sped back to the river bank, where he was found by the
rescuing party, in a seemingly exhausted condition.
For weeks after these happenings Dianthe lived in another world,
unconscious of her own identity. It was early fall before her full
faculties were once more with her. The influence which Livingston had
acquired rendered her quiescent in his hands, and not too curious as
to circumstances of time and place. One day he brought her a letter,
stating that Reuel was dead.
Sick at heart, bending beneath the blight that thus unexpectedly fell
upon her, the girl gave herself up to grief, and weary of the buffets
of Fate, yielded to Aubrey’s persuasions and became his wife. On the
night which witnessed Jim Titus’s awful death, they had just returned
to Livingston’s ancestral home in Maryland.
It would be desecration to call the passion which Aubrey entertained
for Dianthe, love. Yet passion it was--the greatest he had ever
known--with its shadow, jealousy. Indifference on the part of his idol
could not touch him; she was his other self, and he hated all things
that stood between him and his love.
It was a blustering night in the first part of November. It was
twilight. Within the house profound stillness reigned. The heavens were
shut out of sight by masses of sullen, inky clouds, and a piercing
north wind was howling. Within the room where Dianthe lay, a glorious
fire burnt in a wide, low grate. A table, a couch and some chairs were
drawn near to it for warmth. Dianthe lay alone. Presently there came
a knock at the door. “Enter,” said the pale woman on the couch, never
once removing her gaze from the whirling flakes and sombre sky.
Aubrey entered and stood for some moments gazing in silence at the
beautiful picture presented to his view. She was gowned in spotless
white, her bright hair flowed about her unconstrained by comb or pin.
Her features were like marble, the deep grey eyes gazed wistfully
into the far distance. The man looked at her with hungry, devouring
eyes. Something, he knew not what, had come between them. His coveted
happiness, sin-bought and crime-stained, had turned to ashes--Dead-Sea
fruit indeed. The cold gaze she turned on him half froze him, and
changed his feelings into a corresponding channel with her own.
“You are ill, Dianthe. What seems to be your trouble? I am told that
you see spirits. May I ask if they wear the dress of African explorers?”
It had come to this unhappy state between them.
“Aubrey,” replied the girl in a calm, dispassionate tone, “Aubrey, at
this very hour in this room, as I lay here, not sleeping, nor disposed
to sleep, there where you stand, stood a lovely woman; I have seen her
thus once before. She neither looked at me nor spoke, but walked to the
table, opened the Bible, stooped over it a while, seeming to write,
then seemed to sink, just as she rose, and disappeared. Examine the
book, and tell me, is that fancy?”
Crossing the room, Aubrey gazed steadfastly at the open book. It
was the old family Bible, and the heavy clasps had grown stiff and
rusty. It was familiar to him, and intimately associated with his
life-history. There on the open page were ink lines under-scoring the
twelfth chapter of Luke: “For there is nothing covered that shall not
be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.” At the end of this
passage was written the one word “Nina.”
Without a comment, but with anxious brows, Aubrey returned to his
wife’s couch, stooped and impressed several kisses on her impassive
face. Then he left the room.
Dianthe lay in long and silent meditation. Servants came and went
noiselessly. She would have no candles. The storm ceased; the moon
came forth and flooding the landscape, shone through the windows upon
the lonely watcher. Dianthe’s restlessness was soothed, and she began
tracing the shadows on the carpet and weaving them into fantastic
images of imagination. What breaks her reverie? The moonlight gleams
on something white and square; it is a letter. She left the couch and
picked it up. Just then a maid entered with a light, and she glanced
at the envelope. It bore the African postmark! She paused. Then as the
girl left the room, she slipped the letter from the envelope and read:
“Master Aubrey,--I write to inform you that I have not been able to
comply with your wishes. Twice I have trapped Dr. Briggs, but he has
escaped miraculously from my hands. I shall not fail the third time.
The expedition will leave for Meroe next week, and then something
will surely happen. I have suppressed all letters, according to your
orders, and both men are feeling exceedingly blue. Kindly put that
first payment on the five thousand dollars to my sister’s credit in
a Baltimore bank, and let her have the bank book. Next mail you may
expect something definite.
“Yours faithfully,
“Jim Titus.”
Aubrey Livingston had gone to an adjoining city on business, and would
be absent three or four days.
That night Dianthe spent in his library behind locked doors, and all
about her lay open letters--letters addressed to her, and full of love
and tenderness, detailing Reuel’s travels and minutely describing every
part of his work.
Still daylight found her at her work. Then she quitted it, closed
up the desk, tied up the letters, replaced them, left the room, and
returned to her boudoir to think. Her brain was in a giddy whirl, and
but one thought stood out clearly in her burning brain. Her thoughts
took shape in the one word “Reuel,” and by her side stood again the
form of the pale, lovely mulattress, her long black curls enveloping
her like a veil. One moment--the next the room was vacant save for
herself.
Reuel was living, and she a bigamist--another’s wife! made so by
fraud and deceit. The poor overwrought brain was working like a
machine now--throbbing, throbbing, throbbing. To see him, hear his
voice--this would be enough. Then came the thought--lost to her, or
rather she to him--and how? By the plans of his would-be murderer. O,
horrible, inhuman wretch! He had stolen her by false tales, and then
had polluted her existence by the breath of murder. Murder! What was
murder? She paused and gasped for breath; then come the trembling
thought, “Would he were dead!”
He would return and discover the opening of the letters. “O, that he
were dead!”
She wandered about the grounds in the cold sunshine, burning with
fever, and wild with a brain distraught. She wished the trees were
living creatures and would fall and crush him. The winds in their fury,
would they but kill him! O, would not something aid her? At last she
sat down, out of breath with her wanderings and wearied by the tumult
within her breast. So it went all day; the very heavens beckoned her to
commit a deed of horror. She slept and dreamed of shapeless, nameless
things that lurked and skulked in hidden chambers, waiting the signal
to come forth. She woke and slept no more. She turned and turned the
remainder of the night; her poor warped faculties recalled the stories
she had read of Cenci, the Borgias, and even the Hebrew Judith. And
then she thought of Reuel, and the things he had told her on many an
idle day, of the properties of medicine, and how in curiosity she had
fingered his retorts used in experiments. And he had told her she was
apt, and he would teach her many things of his mysterious profession.
And as she thought and speculated, suddenly something whispered, as it
were, a name--heard but once--in her ear. It was the name of a poison
so subtle in its action as to defy detection save by one versed in its
use. With a shudder she threw the thought from her, and rose from her
couch.
We know we’re tempted. The world is full of precedents, the air with
impulses, society with men and spirit tempters. But what invites sin?
Is it not a something within ourselves? Are we not placed here with
a sinful nature which the plan of salvation commands us to overcome?
If we offer the excuse that we were tempted, where is the merit of
victory if we do not resist the tempter? God does not abandon us to
evil prompters without a white-robed angel, stretching out a warning
hand and pointing out the better way as strongly as the other. When we
conquer sin, we say we are virtuous, triumphant, and when we fall, we
excuse our sins by saying, “It is fate.”
The days sped on. To the on-looker life jogged along as monotonously
at Livingston Hall as in any other quiet home. The couple dined and
rode, and received friends in the conventional way. Many festivities
were planned in honor of the beautiful bride. But, alas! these days but
goaded her to madness. The uncertainty of Reuel’s fate, her own wrongs
as a wife yet not a wife, her husband’s agency in all this woe, the
frailness of her health, weighed more and more upon a mind weakened
by hypnotic experiments. Her better angel whispered still, and she
listened until one day there was a happening that turned the scale, and
she pronounced her own dreadful doom--“For me there’s no retreat.”