LIONNE.
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
Dashing her single spur into her horse’s flank, Lionne galloped
furiously, with reeling, headlong speed, across the bridge and down to
the road below. There the snow-drifts impeded her flight, and she had to
labor heavily through them until she reached a bleak track blown clear
by the winds. There she again spurred her horse and took flight as if
possessed by a demon. And she _was_ possessed by a demon. Burning,
agonizing, maddening sense of wrong, roused her whole soul to a frenzy
of indignation, that seemed to hail down lightning from Heaven to scathe
and consume and exterminate her enemy.
Such just and fiery maledictions never bless their subject, and never,
never fail to blight their object. Yet it is better to forgive; all the
ends of justice are quite as well answered. Wrongs for which the law
affords no remedy, never fail to receive punishment from the righteous
hand of God, _even in this world._
For instance, I have seen the slanderer “lying loud” against the
innocent and helpless, brought to unexpected ruin.
I have seen the scornful oppressor of God’s meek poor humbled to the
very dust.
I have seen the wrong-doer brought by God’s justice, overwhelmed and
helpless, to the feet of his victim.
These things I have seen with my eyes in the forenoon of my life.
But what knew this wretched girl of God except his name, or of the sure
retributions of this life, in anywise? Nothing.
And frantic with her wrongs, craving vengeance with all the fierce
passions of her fiery soul, breathing maledictions enough to have
infested a continent with plagues, she hurled herself and steed
furiously along the “river-road.”
And thus she rushed wildly through the day.
Night brought her to the cabin of a pioneer. The owner was absent, and
the cabin empty; but, with the freedom of forest-life she entered, led
in her horse, found oats for him and dried venison for herself, and
water from the spring for both, and after tending him, and drinking a
large draught of water to cool her burning thirst, she threw herself
down upon a hard straw pallet, but not to sleep; to clasp her burning
brow, and roll and toss and tear at her own distracted head and breast,
as though she would tear thence the insufferable agony. There came
another mood, a mood that must have surprised her had her soul had any
room for surprise; it was a transient return of inexpressible tenderness
for her destroyer—a longing to be with him, and to sob out her great
agony on his bosom; then, with unutterable accession of woe, came the
remembrance that this must not and ought not to be, and then a
consciousness of utter and eternal bereavement, that whirled her whole
soul in a storm of frenzy.
So passed the night.
With morning came the thought—the question, who has caused me all this
anguish, and why has he caused it?—bringing again the frenzied sense of
insufferable wrongs, and the raging longing for vengeance. Thus burning
love and bitter hatred, relenting tenderness and desolating revenge,
warring incessantly, made a pandemonium of her bosom.
She resumed her journey, keeping the “river-road” along the eastern bank
of the Potomac, until she reached the ferry-house opposite to
Alexandria. There she crossed the river, and struck into “Braddock’s
road,” leading far into the Western wilderness.
At the close of her third day’s journey, when the sun was setting behind
the ridge of mountains that sheltered the lonely stone-house, she
reached home.
She had been gone seven days.
Vulcan, the giant-dwarf, was sitting in the doorway. Too accustomed to
the eccentric manners of his mistress to feel surprised at her long
absence or her sudden return, he grinned, nodded, and got up to open the
gate. Then, on lifting his head up and meeting her eyes, he saw for the
first time, the stony woe that had turned to marble every feature of
that once fine face. That wistful glance was enough, and was instantly
withdrawn.
Not with her usual lightsome smile and spring did Lionne greet her old
attendant, and bound from the saddle. With the ghost of a smile and a
faint word, she let herself drop to the ground, and gathering up the
skirt of her riding-habit, now deeply soiled with mud from the great
thaw, she passed sadly into the house.
“Has my father reached home yet, Vulcan?” was her first question.
“No, Lionne, you know he said nine days; it’s been but seven! he won’t
be here before day after to-morrow.”
Lionne went up-stairs, threw herself on the bed and longed for death.
Mr. Delaforêt did not come upon the ninth day, nor yet upon the
eighteenth. And Lionne brooded in alternate moods of fierce or sullen
anguish over her deep wrongs and the most terrible manner of avenging
them.
That last, fierce snow-storm had been the valedictory address of winter.
The spring came on apace. Mr. Delaforêt returned; but not looking the
same as when he left home. His form was drawn up, his head erect, his
eye bright, his step elastic, a certain cheerful dignity in every tone
and motion. His glance followed Lionne everywhere with proud joy.
Alas, Lionne did not understand, nor care for, nor even, perhaps,
observe her father’s change of expression. She was too absorbed in her
own wretchedness to notice his cheerfulness. She only shrunk from his
gaze; and as day followed day, more and more sensitively she shrank from
all eyes around. As the weather moderated and settled, Lionne resumed
her wild forest-habits, spending her days in long rides, long walks, and
long watchings in the vast solitudes of nature.
For sometime the exquisitely torturing memories awakened by the
associations of her grotto, kept her from its neighborhood.
Who has not, after the loss of a beloved friend, been pierced to the
heart by even the accidental, sudden sight of some place or object
closely associated with the lost love?
Thus Lionne shivered in anguish at the sight of her grotto. It had been
full of love and joy—it was now vacant and solitary as her own aching
heart, or else filled with agonizing associations as was her desolate
heart with perverted passions.
At last, however, Lionne began to try to use herself to the sight of the
grotto. Her first visit there was signalized by a gush of wild grief.
Her second and third were scarcely less agonizing to her heart; but at
last she bore the trial with equanimity, and even began to restore the
place to order and make it almost habitable.
Hay was thickly spread over the rugged floor to fill up its
inequalities, and a carpet was laid down. Next a pitcher and glass were
conveyed thither. Then a low chair; and finally a pillow and comforter.
Here, in this grotto, Lionne spent many hours of each day; and as the
season still advanced, here, unknown to her father, she came to sleep at
night. One day she came down-stairs with the intention of going to her
grotto, when her father called her from the door of his sitting-room.
She turned and went in.
He was sitting in his usual place beside the centre-table, his head
raised and a look of proud exultation in his face, as he held out his
hand to his daughter and said:
“Lionne, you are very beautiful, my child!—I know you will be considered
so in the world we are about to enter. Come near and sit down beside me,
my dear.”
Lionne approached and dropped wearily in the chair that her father, with
stately, old-fashioned courtesy, had placed for her accommodation.
“By the way, now that I look at you more closely, you are thin and pale,
Lionne!—and—why do you wrap yourself in that large shawl? Are you not
well?”
“I am well, but—_cold_,” said Lionne, with a shiver.
“Chills, I should not wonder! You expose yourself recklessly to the
noonday sun and the midnight vapors. You must give up such wild ways,
Lionne, or rather you will naturally resign them, in the world to which
we are going. And in the meantime I must bring a physician from
Winchester to prescribe for you.”
“Oh, no, no, no!” exclaimed Lionne in alarm: “I am not sick; I never had
a chill in my life; it is but the freshness of the day that I feel.”
“Very well; I am glad to hear it. And now, my daughter,” said Mr.
Delaforêt, solemnly, “I am about to speak of that which should drive
chills from your heart forever!”
Lionne turned suddenly and deadly pale, but a glance at her father’s
calmly exultant face reassured her. He was not about to enter upon a
humiliating subject—he knew nothing of _her_ secret.
“Lionne,” continued the recluse, “have you ever suspected your father to
be other than he has seemed, the poor Scotch pioneer?”
“No, sir.”
“Then, my daughter, know me now as the Earl of Glen Lennark, and the
representive of one of the oldest earldoms of the united kingdom,” said
Mr. Delaforêt, with pardonable exultation. For after so many years of
renunciation, the resumption of his title filled him with triumph.
Lionne did not seem in the least to sympathize with this feeling. She
sat and gazed at her father in a sort of apathy, which he pleasantly
mistook for the stupor of astonishment.
“Yes,” he continued, “and my young lioness of the forest is no longer
Lionne Delaforêt, but—Lady Leonore Lorne!”
“LORNE!” exclaimed Lionne, with a half-smothered shriek, sinking back in
her chair and covering her face with her hands.
“Lady Leonora, what is the meaning of this agitation?” asked her father
in the utmost astonishment.
Lionne struggled with herself, and by a supreme effort regained
self-command, dropped her hands from before her face, and looking up,
said—
“All this that you have told me, my father, is so strange that it quite
startled me.”
“_You_ hysterical? Who would have thought it of you?”
Lionne made an effort to seem interested.
“What has happened, father, that, after all these years of seclusion and
secrecy, you at last reveal to me your rank and title, and talk of going
into another world?”
“My child, I was a warm partizan of Charles Edward, the young Chevalier,
the last of the Stuarts. After his fatal defeat and the total dispersion
of his followers, I became a fugitive and an exile. Within the last few
months I have been pardoned, and restored to my rank and country.”
“Then you will return to Scotland?” asked Lionne, forcing herself to
talk.
“No; first to France, where I shall place you at boarding-school for two
years. At the end of which time I shall bring you out in London and
present you at court, where I predict that the singular beauty of
Leonora Lorne will rather startle those accustomed only to conventional
faces.”
Lionne shivered, but did not reply.
“And now,” continued her father, “while I am making confidences, let me
tell you why it was that last autumn, I, in one instance, departed from
my usual rule of strict privacy, and admitted to my house young Orville
Deville.”
Lionne suddenly averted her head to conceal the deadly paleness of her
face.
“It was because he was my half-nephew, my step-sister, Elizabeth Lorne,
having married Mr. Deville, of Maryland. You did not think, when you
were succoring Mr. Deville, that you were saving the life of your own
cousin!”
“No, sir,” said Lionne, with forced calmness.
“Well, my child, I have told you the great secret of my life. We leave
this place on the first of July. Pack up what you need for your journey,
or wish to preserve as souvenirs of your forest life. You will need
clothing and many other things. Here is a purse with a hundred guineas.
Take Vulcan as protection, and go to Winchester to make purchases of
such things as you need,” said her father, putting a heavy purse in her
hand.
Lionne took it mechanically, and with faintly spoken thanks retired from
the room, and then, despair in her heart and madness in her brain, she
cast the purse into a corner of the hall and rushed wildly from the
house, and on, on, on frantically to the brink of the river, and walked
up and down its sands.
Anon she threw herself upon her face and rolled in agony, smiting her
breast, tearing her hair out by handfulls, and groaning—
“Ah, what can I do? what can I do to escape the coming wreck? Would that
I could go mad, or break my heart and die! But I cannot! I cannot! brain
and breast are too strong to give way! What shall I do? oh, what shall I
do?”
Again she started to her feet, and walked wildly up and down the banks
of the river, and wringing her hands and crying—
“He is so proud and happy in his reviving fortunes! He expects so much
from me; alas! he has no other child but me! and I am about to turn all
the sweetness of his love to gall and bitterness! to change all the
glory of his triumph to the deep dishonor of——Oh, heaven! I cannot—I
cannot bear it! Why can I not die? Death! Death! you are this night, as
always, battening on reluctant prey! Leave your unwilling victims
to-night—restore the dying to the loving, and come and take me, who am a
shame to the dead and a curse to the living! Come and take me, who calls
for you as the greatest boon in the gift of fate! Alas! Death will not
come! he is like man! he turns away from a too-willing bride!”
She paused and gazed moodily down into the depths of the river. The
water just below her was very deep, and clear, and still.
“_There_ is peace—deep peace,” she said, musingly. “_Is_ suicide the one
great, last and unpardonable sin?—the sin for which there is no pardon,
because for it there can be no repentance. I do not know that! I never
saw a command in the Scripture forbidding suicide! And the old classic
moralists often looked upon it as an act of virtue. Ah, I know that it
is not an act of virtue, but neither can it be in all cases an
unpardonable sin! I die to expiate my sin! I die to save my father from
the deep dishonor of my life! I die, oh heaven, repenting that I must
die!” exclaimed Lionne, and raising both hands above her head, she
leaped from the bank. She felt herself suddenly and powerfully checked,
and she fell back into the arms of—Vulcan, the Dwarf!
“You shall _not_ die! There is _no_ peace _there_ or _elsewhere_ for the
self-destroyer!” said the old man, with stern solemnity.
“Oh, Vulcan! Vulcan! you know not what you have done!” exclaimed Lionne,
in a voice of despair, as she cast herself down upon the sands.
“I _do_ know, my child! I know that I have saved you from changing
transient trouble into eternal misery! there is no repentance in the
grave, Lionne.”
“Oh, Vulcan! Vulcan! which is worse, _death_, or _dishonor_?”
“Death,” said the old man, sturdily—“when it is the death of a suicide.
But there is no need, Lionne, for the one or the other. Ah, my child! my
child, whom I have known longer than you have known yourself! my child,
whom for sixteen years I have carried in my arms—confide in your old
servant and he will save you! Confide in your old brute, who asks no
better than to lay down his life in your service!”
“Oh, Vulcan! Vulcan! you know not what you ask! You know not why I ought
to die!”
“I know all, my child, and I know that you ought to live!”
“I ought to live! Oh yes, I ought to live for vengeance!”
“‘Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, saith the Lord.’”
“_Oh-h-h!_” aspirated the lost one, in a low, deep, quick, fierce tone,
that thrilled to the very marrow of the hearer’s bones—“_Oh-h-h!_ may
the judgment fall from heaven, a thunderbolt of fire upon his naked
head—scathing! burning! blasting! biting through brain, and heart, and
vitals, until his whole nature shrivels up as a worm in the flames!”
As she spoke, her look was terrible! her eyes blazed, her lips glowed,
her face was white as the light ashes of a living coal! One might almost
fancy the vengeance she had invoked, darting, a fork-tongued serpent of
fire from her lips, to strike its fangs deep in the heart of her
destroyer.
“Lionne! Lionne! for the Saviour’s sake, hush! hush! Your very breath is
enough to wither all the fair herbage of this fair day!” cried Vulcan,
in horror.
“I know it! Oh, I know it! Oh-h! I know it!—I could cast my body in
burning flames and not feel them, because of the fiercer fire in my
soul! But it is a fire that shall consume my foe—mind, and soul, and
spirit! flesh, and blood, and bones!”
“Oh, my child! for the Lord’s sake, be patient!”
“Don’t talk to me of patience or of the Lord! I am not patient and I am
not a child of the Lord! I am a child of Satan, and will live to do the
work of my father!”
“Oh, my girl! my girl! you utter blasphemies!”
“Yes! a child of Satan am I! could I not now live in his fires?”
“Poor child, you are mad! God will not hold you accountable for these
ravings!” said Vulcan, gazing piteously upon her.
Lionne, felled by her own fierce passions, had fallen again upon the
sands, where she writhed like a crushed worm.
Vulcan stood and folded his hands and prayed for her.
At last the “waters of Marah” flowed over her soul and quenched its
fires. Her burning indignation was melted into bitter tears.
“If I had been a weak or a selfish girl——I should have deserved my fate,
and yet, not suffered from it so bitterly. But I was not! the love I
gave that traitor was as pure as the loves of the angels!” she
exclaimed, with a burst of grief.
“I know it! I know it, my child!” murmured the dwarf, gently.
“And _he_ was sure of it! thence his blackest deception! Vulcan! he led
me before God’s minister and made me his wife, in the sight of heaven
and earth! Look! here is the certificate of our marriage!” she cried,
and drawing the document from her bosom, she held it up before the
dwarf.
“I knew there must have been something like that! but since you are his
wife, he must be forced to acknowledge and protect you!”
“If I _were_ his wife, he should not be forced to any thing, even if it
were to save my life from death or my soul from perdition! but I am
_not_ his wife! he was married before! and this certificate is not worth
the paper it is written upon!” exclaimed Lionne, fiercely tearing the
instrument.
Vulcan snatched it from her hands, exclaiming—
“It is worth every thing! A gold mine should not purchase it! it is
_your_ justification and _his_ condemnation! This instrument produced in
court would consign the proud Orville Deville of River-view, the husband
of the high-born Lady Adelaide, to slavery in the penal colonies for
half his life! Lionne, would that not be a just and satisfactory
retribution?”
“No! no! no! it would take him far away out of my reach and power! No!
if I live for vengeance, I must work it out with my own hands, and watch
its operation, and he must know it! No hand shall torture him but mine!
no eye shall watch his writhing but mine! no soul shall know the secret
that shall turn all his life to living death but me! You are right,
however, about the certificate! It is a tremendous instrument of power
in my hands!”
“Lionne! come home!”
“Home! home! I cannot! I dare not! Ah, Vulcan, did my father know what
you know he would put a pistol to his forehead and blow his desperate
brains out!”
“He need not know it!” said Vulcan, soothingly. “Desperate evils require
desperate remedies. The brilliant life that might have been yours in the
revived fortunes of your father, is, of course, forfeited. You cannot
carry your deep wrongs into that world of which he so fondly speaks.”
“Therefore, you see there is nothing left me but to die,” said Lionne,
in a voice of despair.
“Oh, you must not speak of death! You dare not die! You must live for
the sake of that other little life that your fatal love has evoked.”
“Ah! what would you have me to do?”
“Die to your father, but live for your child!”
“Oh, what mean you?”
“Your father, who could not bear dishonor, would be strong to support
grief. You must inflict upon him sorrow to save him from despair!”
“Riddles! riddles! you talk in riddles!”
“Then I will speak plainly. I know an old Indian doctress, who will
attend you faithfully in your coming trial, and take charge of your
child, if it lives, for a season. Your father need know nothing of this.
Afterwards, Kalougoora, my Indian, will give you a safe sleeping potion,
that shall put you in a state closely resembling death. You will seem to
die! Your father will grieve bitterly, but other matters will demand his
attention and divert his sorrow! He will return to England, and in time
find happiness. Meanwhile, I will ensure your safety, and convey you to
the wigwam of Kalougoora, to stay until we can fix upon some plan for
the future.”
Lionne reflected for a moment and then said:
“Vulcan, you have saved me for the present! for what after-fate—who
knoweth?”
“Will you now come home, Lionne?”
“Yes,” she said, rising and giving him her hand.