NECROMANCY IN A THUNDER-STORM--A VERY IMPROPER "JOINING OF HANDS"--BELL
CRAWFORD'S EYES, AND OTHER EYES--TWO PICTURES IN THE DUSSELDORF--A
THUNDER-CLAP AND A SHRIEK--THE RED WOMAN WITHOUT A MASK.
It was perhaps four o'clock in the afternoon when the trio of
fortune-seekers reached the door that had been designated by the
advertisement as No. -- Prince Street; and the fiery heat that had been
pouring down during all the earlier part of the day was somewhat
moderated by heavy clouds rising in the West and skimming half the upper
sky, indicating a thunder-storm rapidly approaching. Perhaps Tom Leslie
thought, as he approached the door sacred to the sublime mysteries of
humbug, of the appropriateness of thunder in the heavens and lightning
playing down on the beaten earth--provided he _should_ find the
mysterious woman of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard, who had succeeded in
giving to his frank and bold spirit the only shock it had ever received
from the powers of the supernatural world. Perhaps he felt that for
whatever was to come--melancholy jest or terrible earnest--the bursting
roar of the warring elements would be a fitting accompaniment, to lend
it a little dignity in the one event and to distract the overstrained
attention in the other.
Perhaps he was even a little theatrical in his fancies, and remembered
the crashes of sheet-iron thunder and the blinding blaze of the
gunpowder lightning, that always accompanied the shot-cylinder rain when
Macbeth was seeking the weird sisters for the second time--when the
fearful incantations of "Der Freischutz" were about to be commenced--or
when the ever-ready demon was invoked by Faust, the first printer-devil.
If he had any of these fancies he was in a fair way of being
accommodated; for casting a glance up at the heavens as they approached
the house, he saw that the obscurity was becoming still denser; and more
than once, above the rumble of the carts and omnibuses that made
Broadway one wide earthquake of subterranean noises, he caught a far-off
booming that he knew to be the thunder of the advancing storm, already
playing its fearful overture among the mountains of Pennsylvania.
His companions were too much absorbed by the novelty of their errand,
and a little expressed apprehension on the part of Bell that if the rain
came on and the carriage should not be ready at the exact moment when it
was wanted, her costly summer drapery might run a chance of being wetted
and disordered,--to make any close examination of the outside of the
building at the door of which Leslie rang; and indeed they had not the
same reason for remarking any peculiarities. Leslie saw that it was
certainly the same at which Harding and himself had stood two nights
before--that the tree (_his_ tree, for had he not "hugged" it?--and who
shall dare, in this proper age, to "hug" what is not his own?)--that the
tree stood in the relation he remembered, to the window--and that at
that window the same white curtain was visible, though not swept back,
and now covering all the sash completely. He almost thought that he
could distinguish the flag in the pavement on which he must have struck
the hardest when tumbling down from the tree, and his vivid imagination
would not have been much surprised to see a slight dint there, such as
may be made on a tin pot or a stovepipe by the iconoclastic hammer in
the hand of an exuberant four-year-old.
On one of the lintels of the door, as he had not noticed on the previous
visit, was a narrow strip of black japanned tin, with "Madame Elise
Boutell" in small bronze letters, of that back-slope writing only made
by French painters, and which can only be met with, ordinarily, in the
French cities or those of the adjacent German provinces. It seems
unlikely that any particular attention should have been paid to the
latter unimportant detail at that moment; but the detail was really
_not_ an unimportant one. Among the half-working amusements of his idle
hours in youth, Leslie had indulged in a little amateur sign-painting,
and he boasted that he could distinguish one of the cities of the Union
from any other, by the styles of the signs alone, if he should be set
down blindfold in the commercial centre, and then allowed the use of his
eyes. In the present instance, by the use of his quick faculty of
observation, he saw that the lettering of the sign was no American
imitation, but really French. The deductions were that it had been done
in Paris--that it had been used there--that "Madame Elise Boutell" had
used it for the same purpose there. Was not here a corroboration of the
theory of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard?
All these observations, of course, had been made very briefly--in the
little time necessary for Bell Crawford finally to congratulate herself
that the ribbons of her hat would at least be sheltered by the house for
a time, and for Joe Harris to remark what a dirty and tumble-down
precinct Prince Street seemed to be, altogether. By this time, the ring
was answered and the door opened by a neatly dressed negro girl, who
seemed to have none of the peculiarities of the race except its color,
and of whom Leslie asked:
"Madame Boutell? Can we see her?"
"If Monsieur and Mesdames will have the goodness to step into this
room," was the reply of the servant, opening the door of the parlor,
"Madame Boutell will have the honor of receiving them in a few moments."
"Aha!" said Leslie to himself, as they entered the room, the door closed
and the negro-girl disappeared. "Aha! 'Monsieur' and 'Mesdames,' besides
being marvellously correct in her speech and polite enough for a French
dancing master! All this looks more and more suspicious."
"Nothing so very terrible here," remarked Josephine Harris, at once
addressing her attention to some excellent prints, commonly framed,
hanging on the wall. "Some of these pictures are very nice, and as I
could throw away the frames, I should not much mind hooking them if I
had a good opportunity."
"But the piano is shockingly out of tune," remarked Bell, who had
immediately commenced a listless kind of assault on that ill-used
indispensable of all rooms in which people are expected to wait.
"Bell, for conscience sake leave that piano alone! You have nearly
murdered the one at home, and I do not see why you should be the enemy
of the whole race!" was the complimentary reply of Josephine, which
caused Bell, with a little pout on her lip, to leave the piano and
commence tapping the cheap bronzes on the mantel with the end of her
parasol, by way of discovering whether they were metal or plaster.
Just then there were steps in the hall, the outer door opened, and Joe,
running suddenly to the window, was enabled to catch a glimpse through
the blinds, of a gentleman and a lady passing down the steps from the
door and walking hurriedly towards Broadway. The next moment the door
from the hall opened, and the negro girl, stepping within, said:
"Madame Boutell will have the honor to receive Monsieur and Mesdames, if
they will be so good as to ascend the stairs."
"Now for it," said Joe, touching Leslie's arm with a little bit of
shudder, real or affected, and speaking in a tone so low that it seemed
designed only for his ear and flattered that male person's vanity
amazingly. "Now for it!--I have never been anywhere near the infernal
regions before, to my knowledge, and you must take care of us!"
"I will _try_--Miss Harris--may I not say Josephine?" was the reply of
Leslie, who, though he had said very little in that direction, kept his
eyes pretty closely on the wild female counterpart of himself, and was
really getting on somewhat rapidly towards an entanglement.
The apartment into which the seekers after information (or _no_
information) were ushered, was reached by ascending an old-fashioned
stair, through a hall not very well lighted, even in a summer afternoon;
and when they entered it they found it to be one of two, divided by a
red curtain which dropped to the floor and supplied the place of a door.
No necromantic appliances were visible in the room; and with the
exception of a table, three or four chairs and a carpet more or less
worn, it was without articles of use or ornament. Motioning the party to
chairs, which only Bell accepted, the negro attendant said:
"Will Monsieur and the ladies enter Madame's private room together, or
singly? Madame does not often receive more than one at once, but will do
so for this distinguished company, if they wish?"
"Ahem!" said Leslie, involuntarily pulling up his collar at the words
"distinguished company," while "Good gracious--how did they know that
_we_ were coming?" was the exclamation of Joe, to Bell, _sotto voce_.
"Oh, let us all go in together," said Bell, who probably had less
suspicion of a secret that could possibly be awkward of disclosure, in
her own breast, than either of her companions.
"No, I think not," said Joe. "You may have nothing to conceal, Bell, but
I have--lots of things; and though I may be willing to have the French
woman drain me dry, like a pump, I do not know that I shall offer _you_
the same privilege."
"No, on the whole, decidedly not," said Leslie. "Of course, ladies,
there is really nothing for the most timid to fear; and even if there
were, the two others will be in the room immediately adjoining.
Decidedly, if you are both willing, each had better tempt fate alone."
"And who will go in first, then?" asked Bell.
"Humph!" said Joe, "there _is_ a grave question. The decrees of fate
must not be tampered with, and the wrong one going in first might send
those 'stars' on which the witch depends, into most alarming collision."
"Easily arranged," said Leslie, drawing a handful of coin from his
pocket, handing one of the pieces to each of the girls, and retaining
one himself. "As fate is the deity to be consulted, let fate take care
of her own. The one who happens to hold the piece of oldest date shall
take the first chance, and the others will follow according to the same
rule. I have settled more than one important question of my life in this
manner, and I have an idea that they have been settled quite as
satisfactorily as they could have been by any exercise of judgment."
"Eighteen hundred and fifty-two," said Bell, looking at the date on her
coin. "Eighteen hundred and fifty-seven," said Joe, paying the same
attention to the one she held. And "Eighteen hundred and sixty-one--only
last year!" said Leslie, jingling the coins in his hand and then
dropping them back into his pocket,--from which (_par parenthese_) they
were so soon and so effectually to disappear, with all others of their
kind, in the turning of exchanges against us and the general derangement
of the currency of the country.
"You are first, Bell, you see!" said Joe, "and I hope you will be able
to take the fiery edge off the teeth of the dragon before I get in to
him."
"And _I_ am the last, you perceive!" said Leslie. "The last, as I always
have been where women were concerned--too late, and of course
unsuccessful."
There may have been no positive reason for the slight flush which
crossed the face of Josephine Harris at that moment, or for the
conscious look of pleasure that danced for an instant in her eyes; and
yet there may have been a thought of true happiness at the assurance
which the last words of Leslie conveyed, that he was an unmarried man
and had been, so far, near enough heart-whole for all practical
purposes. If the latter should even have been true, she need not have
flushed a second time at recognizing the feeling in herself; for most
certainly those apparently light words of Tom Leslie had been, so to
speak, shot at her, with a determined intention of feeling ground to be
afterwards trodden.
"Madame is waiting your pleasure," said the negro girl, who had remained
standing near the curtain all this while, but too far distant to catch
many of the words passing between the three visitors, which had all been
uttered in a low tone.
"Ah, yes, we have kept her waiting too long, perhaps," said Leslie, "and
who knows but the fates may be the more unkind to us for the neglect of
their priestess." He was really not very well at his ease, but somewhat
anxious to appear so, as all very bashful people can fully understand,
when they remember the efforts they have sometimes made to appear the
most impudent men in creation. Tom Leslie was not in the slightest
degree bashful, and so the comparison fails in that regard; but he was
more than a little nervous at the certainty which he felt of once more
meeting the "red woman," and for that reason he wished to seem the man
with no nerves whatever.
"It is my turn--I will go in," said Bell Crawford, rising from her chair
and following the negro attendant within the curtain, which only parted
a little to admit her and then swept down again to the floor, giving no
glimpse to the two outsiders of what might be within.
The sky had now grown perceptibly darker, though it was still some hours
to night; and at the moment when Bell Crawford entered the inner room of
the sorceress the gathering thunder-storm burst in fury. The thunder was
not as yet peculiarly heavy, and the flashes of lightning had often been
surpassed in vividness; but the rain poured down in torrents and the
gust of wind, which swept through the streets set windows rattling and
doors and shutters banging at a rate which promised work for the
carpenters. The two windows of the room looked out upon the street,
though through closed blinds; and whether intentionally or
inadvertently, the two in waiting drew two chairs to one of the windows,
very near together, and sat there, watching the dashing rain and
listening to the storm. Had there been any possibility of hearing the
words spoken in the adjoining room, that possibility would now have been
entirely destroyed by the noise of the storm; and whatever of curiosity
either may have felt for the result of Bell's adventure, was rendered
inefficient for the time. Meanwhile, something else was working of quite
as much consequence.
Chances and accidents are very curious things; and those who have no
belief in a Supreme Being who brings about great results by apparently
insignificant agencies, must have a very difficult time of it, in
reconciling the incongruous and the inadequate. Holmes, the merriest and
wisest of social philosophers (when he does not run mad on the
human-snake theory, as he has done in "Elsie Venner") very prettily
illustrates the opposite, as to how the agency which moves the great
may also perform the little, in
"The force that wheels the planets round delights in spinning tops,
And that young earthquake t'other day was great on shaking props;"
but the opposite may be illustrated more easily, and is certainly
illustrated much oftener. Not only may
"A broken girth decide a nation's fate,"
in battle; but a gnawing insignificant rat may sink a ship, and one
contemptible traitor be able to disseminate poison enough to destroy a
republic; while the question of whether Bobby does or does not take his
top with him to school to-day, may decide whether he does or does not
wander off to the neighboring pond to be drowned; and Smith's being seen
to step into a billiard-room may decide the question of credit against
him in the Bank discount-committee, and send him to the commercial wall,
a bankrupt. That glance of unnecessary and unladylike scorn which Lady
Flora yesterday cast upon a beggar-woman who accidently brushed against
her costly robes on Broadway, may have lost her a rich husband, who
would otherwise have been deceived until after marriage, as to her real
character; and the involuntary act of courtesy of John Hawkins, stooping
down to pick up the dropped umbrella of a common woman with a baby and
two bundles, in a passenger-car, may make him a friend for life, worth
more than all he has won by twenty-five years of hard-working industry
and honesty.
In this point of view there are no "little things;" and probably he is
best prepared for all the exigencies of coming life, who is ready to be
the least surprised at finding a dwarfed shrub growing up from an acorn,
and a mighty tree springing from the proverbial "grain of mustard seed."
Not to be prolix on this subject--let us remember one capital
illustration--that of the clown and his two pieces of fireworks. No
matter in what pantomime the scene occurs, as it may do for any. The
clown approaches the door of a dealer in fireworks, finds no one on
duty in the shop, enters, and comes out laden with pyrotechnic spoils.
He takes a small rocket, fires it, and is knocked down, frightened and
stunned by the unexpectedly-heavy explosion. But he recovers directly,
and determines to try the experiment over again. There is one immense
rocket among the collection he has brought out--one almost as long as
himself and apparently capable of holding half a barrel of explosive
material. He shakes his head knowingly to the audience, indicative of
the fact that _this_ is something immense and that he is going to be
very careful about it. He sticks it up in the very middle of the stage,
secures a light at the end of a long pole, and touches it off with great
fear and trembling. The explosion which follows is exactly that of one
Chinese fire-cracker; and the comically disappointed face which the
clown turns to the audience is precisely the same that each individual
of that audience is continually turning to another audience surrounding
him, when the great and small rockets of his daily life go off with such
disproportionate effect.
Perhaps it was chance that not only produced the previous circumstances
of that day, but so ordered that Bell Crawford should be the first to
vacate the outer room, leaving that extraordinary couple alone together.
Perhaps it was chance that led them to take seats beside each other at
the window, when they might so easily have found room to sit with some
distance between them. Perhaps it was chance that made the lightning
flash in long lines of blinding light across the sky, and sent the
thunder booming and crashing above the roofs of the houses, producing
that indefinable feeling that needed companionship--that "huddling
together" which even the terrible beasts of the East Indian jungles show
in the midst of the fearful tornadoes of that region. Perhaps it was
chance that, after a moment or two of silence, induced Tom Leslie,
without well knowing why he did it, to lay his open palm on his knee,
and to look for a moment with a glance of inquiry, full in the eyes of
the young girl who sat at his right, as if to say: "There is my open
hand--we have known each other but a little while--dare you lay _your_
hand in it?" Perhaps it was chance that made the young girl return the
steady glance--then drop her eyes with so sad a look that tears might
easily have been trembling under the long lashes,--color a little on
cheek and brow, as if some tint of the sunrise flush had for a moment
rested upon her face--then slowly reach over her right hand and let it
drop and nestle into the one ready to receive it. Perhaps all these
things were chance: well, let them be so set down--such "chances" are
worth something in life, to those who know how to embrace them!
What have we here? Two persons who had spoken to each other for the
first time, only a few hours before, and who had since held marvellously
little conversation, now sitting hand in hand, their soft palms pressed
close together, and every pulse of the mental and physical natures of
both thrilling at the touch! Exceedingly improper!--exceedingly
hurried!--exceedingly indelicate! Modesty, where were you about this
time? If we have gone so fast already, how fast may we go by-and-bye?
Alas, they are living people whom we have before us--not cherubim and
seraphim; and they do as they please, and act very humanly, in spite of
every care we can take of their morals. They have not said one word of
love to each other, it is true; but the mischief seems to have been
done. Nothing may have been said, in the way of a promise of marriage,
capable of being taken hold of by the keenest lawyer who pleads in the
Brown-Stone building; but we are not sure that ever tongue spoke to ear,
or ever lip kissed back to lip, so true and enduring a betrothal as has
sometimes been signed in the meeting of two palms, when not a word had
been spoken and when neither of the pair had one rational thought of the
future.
Suddenly and without warning the curtain between the two rooms moved.
How quickly those two hands drew apart from each other, as if some act
of guilt had been doing! If any additional proof was wanting, of
something clandestine (and of course improper!) between the parties,
here it was certainly supplied. People never attempt to deceive, who
have not been playing tricks. Well-regulated and candid people, who do
everything by rule, never start and blush at any awkward _contretemps_,
never have any concealments, but tell everything to the outer world.
Privacy is a crime--all sly people are reprobates. Wicked Tom and
erring Joe!--what a gulf of perdition they were sinking into without
knowing it!
The curtain not only moved but was drawn aside, and out of it stepped
Bell Crawford. She walked slowly and deliberately, like one in deep
thought, and without a word crossed the room towards the point where her
two friends were sitting. Something in her face brought them both to
their feet. What was that something? She had been absent from them for
perhaps ten minutes--certainly not more than a quarter of an hour; and
yet change enough had passed over her, to have marked the passage of ten
twelve-months. The face looked older, perhaps sadder, more like that of
her brother, and yet less querulous, more womanly, better and more
loveable. Something seemed to have stirred the depths of her nature, of
which only the surface had been before exposed to view. The revelation
was better than the index. She was capable of generous things at that
moment, of which she had been utterly incapable the hour before. It was
probable that she could never again dash all over town in the search for
a yard of ribbon of a particular color: her next search was likely to be
a much more serious one.
The first glance at her face, and the marvellous change there exhibited,
wrought in so short a time, not only puzzled but alarmed Josephine
Harris. She could not see where and in what feature lay the change, any
more than she could realize what could have been powerful enough to
produce it. Tom Leslie may have been quite as much alarmed; but his
older years and wider experience, conjoined with the feelings with which
he had come to that house, made it impossible that he should be so much
puzzled. He saw at once that the marked change was in the _eyes_. In
their depths (he had before remarked them, that day, as indicating a
nature a little weak, purposeless and not prone to self-examination)--in
their depths, clear enough now, there lay a dark, sombre, but not
unpleasing shadow, such as only shows itself in eyes that have been
turned _inward_. We usually say of a man whose eyes show the same
expression: "That man has studied much," or, "he has suffered much," or,
"he is a _spiritualist_." By the latter expression, we mean that he
looks more or less beneath the surface of events that meet him in the
world--that he is more or less a student of the spiritual in mentality,
and of the supernatural in cause and effect. Such eyes do not stare,
they merely gaze. When they look at you, they look at something else
through you and behind you, of which you may or may not be a part.
Let it be said here, the occasion being a most inviting one for this
species of digression,--that the painter who can succeed in transferring
to canvas that expression of _seeing more than is presented to the
physical eye_, has achieved a triumph over great difficulties. Frequent
visitors to the old Dusseldorf Gallery, now so sadly disrupted and its
treasures scattered through twenty private galleries where they can only
be visible to the eyes of a favored few,--will remember two instances,
perhaps by the same painter, of the eye being thus made to reveal the
inner thought and a life beyond that passing at the moment. The first
and most notable is in the "Charles the Second fleeing from the Battle
of Worcester." The king and two nobles are in the immediate foreground,
in flight, while far away the sun is going down in a red glare behind
the smoke of battle, the lurid flames of the burning town, and the royal
standard just fluttering down from the battlements of a castle lost by
the royal arms at the very close of Cromwell's "crowning mercy." Through
the smoke of the middle distance can be dimly seen dusky forms in
flight, or in the last hopeless conflict. Each of the nobles at the side
of the fugitive king is heavily armed, with sword in hand, mounted on
heavy, galloping horses, going at high speed; and each is looking out
anxiously, with head turned aside as he flies, for any danger which may
menace--not himself, but the sovereign. Charles Stuart, riding between
them, is mounted upon a dark, high-stepping, pure-blooded English horse.
He wears the peaked hat of the time, and his long hair--that which
afterward became so notorious in the masks and orgies of Whitehall, and
in the prosecution of his amours in the purlieus of the capital--floats
out in wild dishevelment from his shoulders. He is dressed in the dark
velvet short cloak, and broad, pointed collar peculiar to pictures of
himself and his unfortunate father; he shows no weapon, and is leaning
ungracefully forward, as if outstripping the hard-trotting speed of his
horse. But the true interest of this figure, and of the whole picture,
is concentrated in the eyes. Those sad, dark eyes, steady and immovable
in their fixed gaze, reveal whole pages of history and whole years of
suffering. The fugitive king is not thinking of his flight, of any
dangers that may beset him, of the companions at his side, or even of
where he shall lay his perilled head in the night that is coming. Those
eyes have shut away the physical and the real, and through the mists of
the future they are trying to read the great question of _fate_!
Worcester is lost, and with it a kingdom: is he to be henceforth a
crownless king and a hunted fugitive, or has the future its
compensations? This is what the fixed and glassy eyes are saying to
every beholder, and there is not one who does not answer the question
with a mental response forced by that mute appeal of suffering thought:
"The king shall have his own again!"
The second picture lately in the same collection, is much smaller, and
commands less attention; but it tells another story of the same great
struggle between King and Parliament, through the agency of the same
feature. A wounded cavalier, accompanied by one of his retainers, also
wounded, is being forced along on foot, evidently to imprisonment, by
one of Cromwell's Ironsides and a long-faced, high-hatted Puritan
cavalry-man, both on horseback, and a third on foot, with musquetoon on
shoulder. The cavalier's garments are red and blood-stained, and there
is a bloody handkerchief binding his brow, and telling how, when his
house was surprised and his dependants slaughtered, he himself fought
till he was struck down, bound and overpowered, still hurling defiance
at his enemies and their cause, until his anger and disdain grew to the
terrible height of silence and he said no more. He strides sullenly
along, looking neither to the right nor the left; and the triumphant
captors behind him know nothing of the story that is told in his face.
The eyes fixed and steady in the shadow of the bloody bandage, tell
nothing of the pain of his wound or the tension of the cords which are
binding his crossed wrists. In their intense depth, which really seems
to convey the impression of looking through forty feet of the still but
dangerous waters of Lake George and seeing the glimmering of the golden
sand beneath,--we read of a burned house and an outraged family, and we
see a prophecy written there, that if his mounted guards could read,
they would set spurs and flee away like the wind--a calm, silent, but
irrevocable prophecy: "I can bear all this, for my time is coming! Not a
man of all these will live, not a roof-tree that shelters them but will
be in ashes, when I take my revenge!" Not a gazer but knows, through
those marvellous eyes alone, that the day is coming when he _will_ have
his revenge, and that the subject of pity is the victorious Roundhead
instead of the wounded and captive cavalier!
Not all this, of course, was expressed in the eyes of Bell Crawford as
she stood before her two companions under the circumstances just
detailed; but it scarcely needed a second glance to tell the keen man of
the world that the eyes and the brain beneath them had both been taught
something before unknown. He thought what might possibly have been the
expression of his own eyes, on a night so many times before alluded to,
could he but have seen them as did others; and if he had before held one
lingering doubt of the personality of the woman whose presence she had
just quitted, that doubt would have remained no longer. It _was_ the
"red woman," beyond a question. For just one moment another thought
crossed his mind, founded upon that "union of hands" so lately
consummated. Should he permit _her_ to be subjected to the same
influences? And yet, why not? The good within her could not be injured,
either by sorcery or super-knowledge--either by the assumption or the
possession on the part of the seeress, of information beyond that of
ordinary mortality and altogether out of its pale. He _would_ permit her
to undergo the same influences, even as in a few moments he would submit
to them himself.
Josephine Harris, in the time consumed by all these reflections running
through the mind of Leslie, had not yet recovered from her surprise at
the altered expression on the face of her friend--an expression, oddly
enough, that pleased her better than any she had ever before observed
there, and yet frightened her correspondingly.
"Dear Bell," she said, anxiously, and using a word of endearment that
had been very rare between them, spite of their extreme intimacy.--"What
has happened? What have you seen? Are you sick? Your eyes frighten
me--they seem so sad and earnest!"
"Do they?" said Bell, forcing a smile that was really sad enough, but
better became her face than many expressions that had before passed over
it. "Well, Josey, to tell you the truth, I have seen some strange
things, of which I will tell you at another time; and I have been
thinking very deeply. Nothing more."
"You have seen nothing frightful--dreadful--terrible?" the young girl
asked, with an unmistakable expression of anxiety upon her face.
"Nothing terrible, though something very strange," was the reply of
Bell. "Nothing that you need fear."
"Oh, _I_ am not afraid!" answered Joe, with an assumption of bravery
that she probably felt to be a sham all the while. "I believe it is my
turn now. Dear me, how heavy that thunder is! Try and amuse yourselves,
good people, while I 'follow in the footsteps of my illustrious
predecessor'!" and with an affectation of gaiety that was a little
transparent, she obeyed the summons of the black girl who at that moment
made her appearance again outside the curtain, and followed her within.
Bell Crawford dropped into one of the chairs that stood by the window,
and leaned her head upon her hand, in an attitude of deep thought.
Leslie did not attempt to speak to her at that moment, either aware that
such a course could only be painful to her, or too much absorbed in the
remembrance of the other who had just passed within the curtain, to wish
to do so. He walked the floor, from one side to the other of the room,
the sound of his heel falling somewhat heavily even on the carpeted
floor, and his head thrown forward in such a position that when he threw
his glance on a level with his line of vision it came out from under his
bent brows. The rain seemed to beat heavier and heavier outside, and
dashed against the windows with such force as to threaten to beat them
in; and successive discharges of thunder, accompanied with constant
flashes of fierce lightning, crashed and rumbled among the house-tops
and seemed to be at times actually booming through the room, immediately
over their heads.
In this way some fifteen minutes passed, seeming almost so many hours to
the young man, whatever they may have appeared to the young girl who sat
by the window, so absorbed by her own thoughts that she scarcely heard
the muttering thunder or saw the blinding flashes of the lightning.
Suddenly there was a louder and fiercer crash of thunder than any that
had preceded it--a crash of that peculiar sharpness indicating that it
must have struck the very house in which they heard it; and this
accompanied by one of those terribly intense flashes of lightning which
seemed to sear the eyeballs and play in blue flame through the air of
the room,--then followed by a heavy dull rumbling shock and boom like
that of a thousand pieces of artillery fired at once, rocking the
building to its foundation and threatening to send it tumbling in ruins
on their heads. Tom Leslie involuntarily put his hands to his eyes, to
shut out the flash, and Bell Crawford, at last startled, sprung from her
chair; but both were worse startled, the very second after, by a long,
loud, piercing shriek, in the voice of Josephine Harris, that burst from
the inner room and seemed like some cry extorted by mortal pain or
unendurable terror.
Both rushed towards the curtain, at once, but Leslie in advance--both
with the impression that some dreadful catastrophe connected with the
lightning must have occurred. But just as Leslie laid his hand upon the
curtain to draw it aside, it was dashed open from within, and Josephine
Harris literally flung herself through it, still shrieking and in that
deadly mortal terror which threatens the reason. She seemed about to
fall, and Tom Leslie stretched out his arms to receive her. She half
fell into them, then rolled, nearer than described any other motion,
into those of Bell Crawford; and almost before Leslie could quite
realize what had occurred, she lay with her head in Bell's lap, the
extremity of her terror over, uttering no word, but sobbing and moaning
like a little child that had been too severely dealt with and broken
down under the blow.
Tom Leslie's hand, it has been said, was on the curtain, to remove it.
He released it for the instant, to look after the welfare of the
frightened girl; but when he saw her lying in Bell's lap another feeling
became paramount even to his anxiety for her safety, and he grasped the
curtain again and dashed through into the inner room.
As he had expected, the red woman of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard stood
before him, presenting the same magnificent outline of face and the same
ghastly redness of complexion that she had shown at such a distance of
time and place. In her hand was a white wand, glittering like silver,
with some bright and flashing colorless stone at the end. Her dress, as
he then remembered, had been red when he saw her in Paris, and no relief
to her ghastly color had been shown, except in the mass of dark hair
sweeping down her shoulders. Now her tall and stately form was wrapped
in black, against which her cloud of dark hair was unnoticed. Leslie had
not observed, at any time during the absence of either of the two girls,
any odor of smoke or any appearance of it creeping out from the curtain
into the room; but now, as he looked, he saw white wreaths of vapor
circling near the ceiling and fading away there; and he realized at
once, with the memory of the past in mind, what had been the form in
which the images were presented, producing so startling an effect on
both.
At the moment when he entered, the black girl was just disappearing
through what appeared to be a small door opening out of the room upon
the landing of the stairs, and ordinarily concealed by the sweeping
drapery of dark cloth that was looped around the entire apartment.
Whether the attendant was carrying away any of the properties that might
have been used in the late jugglery, he had, of course, no means of
judging. The sorceress herself, at the moment when he broke in upon her,
was apparently advancing from the little table at which she had been
standing, partially within the sweep of the hangings, towards the
dividing curtain. At sight of the intruder she stopped suddenly and drew
her tall form to its full height, while such a flash of anger appeared
to dart from her keen eyes as would have produced a sensible effect on
any man less used to varying sensations than the cosmopolitan
journalist.
"What do you want?" she asked, and the words came from her lips with the
same short hissing tone that he so well remembered, creating the
impression that there must be a serpent hidden somewhere in the throat
and hissing through what would otherwise be the voice.
"What sorcery have you practised upon that poor girl, to drive her into
this state of distraction, red fiend?" was the answering question, bold
enough in seeming, though Tom Leslie, asked in regard to the matter
to-day, would undoubtedly acknowledge that he had felt far less tremor
when under the heaviest play of the Russian cannon at Inkermann, than
when throwing this sharp taunt into the teeth of the sorceress.
"Nothing but what _you_ have seen and endured!" was the reply, made in
the same tone as before. "I have shown them the truth, and the truth is
terrible. It is murder and ruin in their own households--it is battle
and death around those they love--it is desolation and destruction to
the land! Go!--those who cannot witness my power without blenching,
should never seek me; and _you_ blench like those sick girls--I have
seen you blench before?"
"Seen _me_?" echoed Leslie.
"Seen _you_!" was the fierce reply of the sorceress. "Fool! do you think
I cannot penetrate that thin disguise--that old man's hair and those
false wrinkles? You were younger-looking, eighteen months since, in
another land where the eagle screams less but tears its enemies more
deeply with its talons!"
"I _was_," answered Leslie, carried beyond himself. "I remember the Rue
la Reynie Ogniard, and I acknowledge your fearful power, though I know
not if it comes from heaven or hell! But tell me--who are _you_, so
magnificently beautiful, and yet so--so--" and here (a rare thing for
him,) the voice of Tom Leslie faltered.
"So horribly hideous, you would say," broke in the sorceress. "Stay! you
have said one word that touches the woman within me. You have recognized
my beauty as well as my terror. Look for one instant at what no mortal
eye has seen for years or may ever see again! Look!"
Tom Leslie started, nay, staggered--for no other word can express the
motion--back towards the door, infinitely more surprised than he had
been on the night of his first adventure with the sorceress. She held
something in her hand, but that could only be seen afterwards: for the
moment his eyes could only behold that marvellous face. If the Sons of
God when they intermarried with the beautiful daughters of clay, left
any descendants behind them, certainly that face must have belonged to
one of the number. No longer ghastly red, but almost marble white, with
the hue of health yet mantling beneath the wondrous transparent skin,
and every line and curve of beauty such as would make the sculptor drop
his chisel in despair--with a lip that might have belonged to Juno and a
brow that should have been set beneath the helmet of Athena--with the
glorious dark eye fringed with long sweeping lashes and the wealth of
the dark brown hair swept back in masses of rippled and tangled shadow
that caught and lost the eye continually,--what a perfect vision of
high-born beauty was that face, the patent of nobility coming direct
from heaven!
And what was that which she held in her hand, and the removal of which
had produced so wonderful a transformation? One of those masks of dark
red golden wire, so fine as to be almost impalpable, and wrought by
fingers of such cunning skill that while it concealed the natural skin
of the face, every lineament and even every sweep and dimple was copied,
as if the moulder had been working in wax--the eye looking through as
naturally as in the ordinary face, and even the very play of the lips
permitted. That strange red light which had seemed to permeate the whole
face and affect even the eyes, had merely been the red metallic glitter
of the gold, leaving little work for the imagination to complete a
picture fascinating as unnatural.
"Great God!--can such beauty be real?" broke out Leslie, when he had
gazed for one instant on the splendid vision before him. "Matchless,
peerless, glorious woman! Let me come nearer! Let me look longer on
God's master-work, if I even die at the sight!"
Here was the faithful lover of Josephine Harris half an hour
before,--and in what a situation! Oh man, man, what an eye for
miscellaneous beauty is that with which your sex is gifted! All Mormons
at heart, it is to be feared, however a more self-denying canon may be
observed perforce! It is not certain that Tom Leslie would have run away
with his new divinity, had the chance been offered at that moment; and
it is not certain that he would _not_ have done so. Very fortunately,
the opportunity was wanting. Very fortunately, too, the storm had not
yet ceased altogether, and the two ladies in the other room were likely
to be too busy in restoring and being restored, to hear very clearly
what was going on within.
"Back!" said the sharp voice of the sorceress, at the impassioned tone
of the last words and that clasping of the hands which told that the
subject might be kneeling the next moment. "Back! No nearer, on your
life! I have not the power of life and death, but I may have the power
of happiness and misery. Go!--or wish that you had done so, till the
very day you die!"
Her arm was stretched out with a queenly gesture, at once of warning and
command. Tom Leslie obeyed, with such an effort as one sometimes makes
in a forced arousing from sleep. He took one more glance at the
motionless face and form, then dashed through the curtain and let it
fall behind him. Joe Harris had partially recovered from her excitement,
and sat beside Bell, with her face on the latter's shoulder. She roused
herself and even attempted a laugh with some success, when the voice of
Leslie was heard; and if for one instant the allegiance of the young man
had wavered in the presence of the unnatural and the overwhelming, there
was something in that bright, clear, good face, only temporarily
shadowed by her late excitement, calculated to restore him at once to
thought and to truth.
With the heavy crash of thunder which had accompanied if it had not
caused the fright of the young girl, the storm seemed to have culminated
and spent itself; and by this time the rain had nearly ceased. Not a
word passed between the three as to what had occurred to either--any
conversation on that subject was naturally reserved for another place
and a later hour. The black girl came out again from behind the curtain
and received with a "Thank you, Monsieur!" and a curtsey the half eagle
which dropped into her hand. Leslie left the ladies alone for a moment,
ran down to the door and found a carriage; and in a few moments, without
further adventure, the three were on their way up-town, the journalist
to return again to his evening avocations, after accompanying the two,
whose disordered nerves he scarcely yet dared trust alone, to their
place of destination.
If during that ride the hand of Josephine Harris, a little hot and
feverish from late excitement, accidentally fell again into his own and
rested there as if it rather liked the position--whose business was it,
except their own?