"Sister, you have saved me!"
On giving utterance to the ill-understood speech, Helen Armstrong
imprints a kiss upon her sister's cheek, at the same time bedewing it
with her tears. For she is now weeping--convulsively sobbing.
Returning the kiss, Jessie looks not a little perplexed. She can
neither comprehend the meaning of the words, nor the strange tone of
their utterance. Equally is she at a loss to account for the trembling
throughout her sister's frame, continued while their bosoms stay in
contact.
Helen gives her no time to ask questions.
"Go in!" she says, spinning the other round, and pushing her towards the
door of the state-room. Then, attuning her voice to cheerfulness, she
adds:--
"In, and set the game of _vingt-un_ going. I'll join you by the time
you've got the cards shuffled."
Jessie, glad to see her sister in spirits unusually gleeful, makes no
protest, but glides towards the cabin door.
Soon as her back is turned, Helen once more faces round to the river,
again taking stand by the guard-rail. The wheel still goes round, its
paddles beating the water into bubbles, and casting the crimson-white
spray afar over the surface of the stream.
But now, she has no thought of flinging herself into the seething swirl,
though she means to do so with something else.
"Before the game of _vingt-un_ begins," she says in soliloquy, "I've got
a pack of cards to be dealt out here--among them a knave."
While speaking, she draws forth a bundle of letters--evidently old
ones--tied in a bit of blue ribbon. One after another, she drags them
free of the fastening--just as if dealing out cards. Each, as it comes
clear, is rent right across the middle, and tossed disdainfully into the
stream.
At the bottom of the packet, after the letters have been all disposed
of, is something seeming different. A piece of cardboard--a portrait--
in short, a _carte de visite_. It is the likeness of Charles Clancy,
given her on one of those days when he flung himself affectionately at
her feet.
She does not tear it in twain, as she has the letters; though at first
this is nearest her intent. Some thought restraining her, she holds it
up in the moon's light, her eyes for a time resting on, and closely
scanning it. Painful memories, winters of them, pass through her soul,
shown upon her countenance, while she makes scrutiny of the features so
indelibly graven upon her heart. She is looking her last upon them--not
with a wish to remember, but the hope to forget--of being able to erase
that image of him long-loved, wildly worshipped, from the tablets of her
memory, at once and for ever.
Who can tell what passed through her mind at that impending moment? Who
could describe her heart's desolation? Certainly, no writer of romance.
Whatever resolve she has arrived at, for a while she appears to hesitate
about executing it.--
Then, like an echo heard amidst the rippling waves, return to her ear
the words late spoken by her sister--
"Let us think only of the future--_of our father_."
The thought decides her; and, stepping out to the extremest limit the
guard-rail allows, she flings the photograph upon the paddles of the
revolving wheel, as she does so, saying--
"Away, image of one once loved--picture of a man who has proved false!
Be crushed, and broken, as he has broken my heart!"
The sigh that escapes her, on letting drop the bit of cardboard, more
resembles a subdued scream--a stifled cry of anguish, such as could only
come from what she has just spoken of--a broken heart.
As she turns to re-enter the cabin, she appears ill-prepared for taking
part, or pleasure, in a game of cards.
And she takes not either. That round of _vingt-un_ is never to be
played--at least not with her as one of the players.
Still half distraught with the agony through which her soul has passed--
the traces of which she fancies must be observable on her face--before
making appearance in the brilliantly-lighted saloon, she passes around
the corner of the ladies' cabin, intending to enter her own state-room
by the outside door.
It is but to spend a moment before her mirror, there to arrange her
dress, the plaiting of her hair--perhaps the expression of her face--all
things that to men may appear trivial, but to women important--even in
the hour of sadness and despair. No blame to them for this. It is but
an instinct--the primary care of their lives--the secret spring of their
power.
In repairing to her toilette, Helen Armstrong is but following the
example of her sex.
She does not follow it far--not even so far as to get to her
looking-glass, or even inside her state-room. Before entering it, she
makes stop by the door, and tarries with face turned towards the river's
bank.
The boat, tacking across stream, has sheered close in shore; so close
that the tall forest trees shadow her track--the tips of their branches
almost touching the hurricane-deck. They are cypresses, festooned with
grey-beard moss, that hangs down like the drapery of a death-bed. She
sees one blighted, stretching forth bare limbs, blanched white by the
weather, desiccated and jointed like the arms of a skeleton.
'Tis a ghostly sight, and causes her weird thoughts, as under the clear
moonbeams the steamer sweeps past the place.
It is a relief to her, when the boat, gliding on, gets back into
darkness.
Only momentary; for there under the shadow of the cypresses, lit up by
the flash of the fire-flies, she sees, or fancies it, a face! It is
that of a man--him latest in her thoughts--Charles Clancy!
It is among the trees high up, on a level with the hurricane-deck.
Of course it can be but a fancy? Clancy could not be there, either in
the trees, or on the earth. She knows it is but a deception of her
senses--an illusive vision--such as occur to clairvoyantes, at times
deceiving themselves.
Illusion or not, Helen Armstrong has no time to reflect upon it. Ere
the face of her false lover fades from view; a pair of arms, black,
sinewy, and stiff, seem reaching towards her!
More than seem; it is a reality. Before she can stir from the spot, or
make effort to avoid them, she feels herself roughly grasped around the
waist, and lifted aloft into the air.