Jacob Gray’s Fears.—The Promise.—Ada’s Meditations.
How long she remained in the passage of the house, Ada had no means of
distinctly knowing, but, when she recovered from her insensibility, she
found herself in the parlour alone, and nearly in total darkness.
A few moments sufficed to bring to her recollection all that had
occurred, and she sprang to her feet, looking anxiously around her, as
well as the dim light would permit, to see if Jacob Gray was in the
room.
An instant inquiry satisfied her that she was alone, but scarcely had
she made this discovery when a gleam of light came in from the passage,
and the door was gently and cautiously pushed open. Ada did not speak,
but she shrunk into a corner of the room, and saw Gray enter, carrying
with him a dim light.
“Ada! Ada!” he said.
“I am here,” she replied.
He set the light on the table, and she saw that his face looked harsh
and haggard.
“We cannot stay here,” he said, after a pause. “This place will be
hideous now.”
“Not stay here!“ cried Ada, and her heart sunk within her at the
thought of being again removed at the very time when there was a chance
of her being rescued by Albert Seyton, should he or any one knowing his
name chance to see the paper she had given to Mad Maud.
“No—no,” added Gray, “I—I would not sleep here. The very air of this
place smells of the grave! We must away, Ada!”
“How came I in this room?” said Ada!
“After a long time when you returned not to me,” replied Gray, “I
descended the staircase, and found you lying in the passage just by the
door which you had evidently been trying to escape by.”
Ada was deeply thankful that Jacob Gray himself put this interpretation
on the circumstance of finding the door open, and she said,—
“My feelings overcame me.”
“Ay—Yes. The sight must have been terrible!” said Gray. “Come, Ada;
’tis a very dark night—attire yourself in the less cumbrous and safer
garments of a boy, and let us leave here.”
“You forget your promise,” said Ada.
“My promise? What promise?”
“You said you would tell me all.”
“And so will I at the proper time and season, which, believe me, will
be the sooner for what has chanced this night.”
“And so am I deceived again,” said Ada.
“Girl,” said Gray, “you are young enough yet to wait a short time.
There will come a day when justice shall be done you, and the cup of my
revenge will be filled to the overflowing! It will be very soon, Ada.”
Ada felt that to urge Gray now that his great fear had passed away to
fulfil any promise he might have made while under its influence, would
be quite futile. Moreover, her great object—the escape of poor Maud—was
accomplished, and she had no new spectre wherewith to frighten Jacob
Gray.
“For that brief time you speak of,” said she, “let us remain here.
Think you the spirits of another world cannot follow you wherever you
go, Jacob Gray?”
“Follow me?” echoed Gray.
“Ay; are not all places alike to them? Why remove from here?”
Gray seemed to remain silent, then he said in a low agitated voice,—
“Girl, what you say may be true. I will think of it again. To-morrow I
will decide! Yes, let it be till to-morrow! You are not weary?”
“Wherefore do you ask?” said Ada.
“Because,” faltered Gray, “I do not wish to be alone.”
“And can you ask me to save you from the horrors of that solitude which
your conscience peoples with hideous forms?”
“Question me not,” cried Gray, impatiently. “I—I would have desired
your company—but will not enforce it.”
“You cannot,” said Ada.
“Cannot? You know not what you say.”
“You dare not!” added Ada.
She had learnt by experience that she could defy Jacob Gray to his face
successfully. Her only fear of him was that he would murder her while
she slept or mingle poison with her food! She could not look on him.
“Leave me, then! Leave me if you will,” he said. “I will not invade
your chamber.”
“If you were,” said Ada, “you might perchance be frozen with horror by
meeting the form you have described, with so much dread—a form which
the voice of nature hints must be that of my murdered father!”
As she spoke, Ada walked to the door of the room, but ere she reached
it, Gray called to her.
“Ada, stay yet a moment!”
“You forget!”
“Forget what?”
“That I must this day again receive your promise to exert no
contrivance for your escape from me. At twelve to-day your word
expired.”
“Oh!” cried Ada. “Then I was free?”
“No,” said Gray, “you were not free! I knew that if you meditated
escape, you would seize the first moment! I watched this house from
twelve till two. Then as you came not forth, I knew I was safe.”
“And you departed?”
“I did.”
Had Jacob Gray watched another hour he would have seen Maud hunted to
the old house.
“Your promise, girl,” he cried. “Before we part to-night I must have
your solemn promise!”
“On the same condition,” said Ada, “to preserve that life which God has
given me, I will give you my promise.”
“Be it so,” said Gray.
“Then in the name of Heaven, I promise from, one month from now that if
aid come not to me—if no one comes here to take me hence, and offer me
liberty, I will remain a prisoner! So help me Heaven!”
“Enough,” said Gray, “I am content. I know you will keep your word,
Ada.”
“How is it,” said Ada, “that you can trust thus to my word, Jacob Gray?
Have you not taught me deceit? Were I to deceive you as you have
deceived me, could you blame me?”
“Question me not,” cried Gray. “I have said I would trust to your word.
Let that suffice.”
Ada turned away, and sought the solitude of her own room. She always
wept bitterly after renewing her promise to Gray—it seemed like pushing
hope to a further distance from her heart, and on this occasion, when
she was alone, the tears dimmed her eyes as she reflected another
month—another month! But then even upon the instant, a small still
voice within her heart seemed to whisper to her that there were now
better grounds for hope than ever. She had made an effort by the slip
of paper that poor Mad Maud had taken with her—and her promise to Gray
was expressly conditional, so that if Albert Seyton should seek her,
she was free! How delightful did that word sound to the desolate heart
of the young girl. She clasped her hands, and a smile played over her
face like a sunbeam on a lake.
“Oh!” she cried, “if kind Heaven has indeed joy in store for the poor,
persecuted Ada, surely it will be more delightful by the contrast with
what has passed! Friends will be dearer to me, because I have known
none! The sunshine will to me possess a greater charm than to those who
have always been so happy as to revel in its beams! The charms of music
will entrance me, where they present but ordinary sounds to others, for
I shall contrast then with the echoes of this dreary house. The voices
of those who will love me, and use kindly phrases when they speak to
me, will ring in my ears with an unknown beauty! Mere freedom—the dear
gift of being able, at my own free-will, to seek the leafy glade of
some old forest—or walk in the broad sunlight of an open plain, will be
a rich reward for all that I have suffered! Oh! How can the world be
unhappy while Heaven has left it youth, sunshine, and love?”
Thus the young, ardent, enthusiastic girl beguiled the tediousness of
her imprisonment. She lived in a world of romance of her own creating,
a romance, too, that was mixed up with a pure and holy system of
natural theology culled from her own heart, and those mysterious
impulses which tell all, but those who wilfully shut their ears against
the solemn glorious truth—that there is a great and good God above
all—a Being to be loved more than to be feared.
Ada would now sit for hours picturing to herself the meeting of poor
Maud with Albert Seyton. She would frame all the dialogue that would
pass between them, until Albert had, piece by piece, extracted from the
wandering mind of the poor creature the exact situation of the old
house in which Ada was immured; then she would imagine his joy, his
rapture, until busy Fancy almost conjured up the reality of his voice
in her charmed ears.
The dull sons of system and calculation—the plodders through life
without the capacity to look beyond the present, or reason on the past,
may condemn the airy freaks of the imagination, because of their
unreality; but what would the lonely, the persecuted, and the unhappy
do, if Heaven, in its great mercy, had not laid up within the chambers
of the brain, such stores of joy and ecstatic thought ready to be drawn
forth infinitely to cheat what is real of its terrors, by contrasting
it with the rare creations of the ideal. Oh, is it not a rare and
amiable faculty of mind, that can thus shift, as it were, the scenes of
life, and with a thought, change a dungeon to a sweet glade in some
deep forest, where birds are singing for the pure love of song. Let
then the dreamy “castle builder” pile story upon story of his æriel
fabric,—he will be the nearer Heaven.