"Mr. Strafford had been some little time on the island before he saw me.
I had seen him, however, and I dare say you will understand how the
expression of his face, the honest, manly, kindly look you have often
admired, filled me with indescribable consolation, for I felt that there
would be near me, in future, a countryman on whose counsel and help I
could rely, if I should be driven to extremity. I waited without any
impatience for the visit which he was sure to pay me. Mary, my best
friend, had lately married a young Indian, who had spent much of his
life among Europeans, and who was now employed by Mr. Strafford to teach
him the Ojibway language, and, in the meantime, to act as interpreter
for him. Through Mary and her husband, Henry Wanita, I knew he would
hear of me and be sure to seek me out. I was right; he came one day when
I was, as usual, alone, and before he left I had told him as much of my
story as I could tell to any one, except to you. I expected that he
would pity me, and that his pity would have a little contempt mixed with
it, and I had made up my mind to endure the bitterness of this, for the
sake of establishing that claim upon his advice and aid, which I was
certain, after the first shock of such a confession, my wretchedness
would give me. But he had not one word of reproof to say; either he had
heard, or he guessed that my fault had brought its full measure of
punishment, and that what I needed was rather consolation than reproach.
He went away and left me, as he often left me afterwards, with courage
and patience renewed for the hard struggle of my life.
"My husband had lately been more than ever away; and though in his
absence I had often the greatest difficulty to obtain food, or any kind
of necessaries, yet I was thankful for the peace in which I could then
live. I learned to embroider in the Indian fashion, and was able to
repay the kindness I received from Mary, and some of the other squaws,
by drawing patterns for them, and by teaching them how to make more
comfortable clothes for themselves and their children. After Mr.
Strafford had been a little while on the island, he proposed to
establish a school for this kind of work, and I became the mistress. The
women and girls came to me more readily than they would have done to a
stranger, and I soon had a good number of pupils.
"Several months passed, after Mr. Strafford's coming, without anything
new occurring. Then Christian returned from the States, where he had
been for a longer time than usual. He came late at night, and so
intoxicated that I was obliged to go myself and fasten the canoe, which
would have floated away before morning. When I followed him into the
house he was already fast asleep, and it was not till the next day that
I knew what had brought him home. Then he told me. What I
understood--for he said as little as possible on the subject--was, that
he had been for the last few weeks in the company of a party of
gamblers, to whom he had lost everything he possessed, and, finally,
that having found means of raising money upon the security of the whole
fortune to which I was entitled, he had lost that too, and consequently
we remained penniless. This much I heard with indifference; the money he
received had never benefited me, and had only given him the means for a
life you cannot imagine, and which I could not, if I would, describe to
you; but when he ended by telling me that, as all my relations were
rich, I must contrive to get fresh supplies from some of them, my
patience gave way altogether. Even my fear of him yielded to my anger;
for the first time since our arrival in Canada I spoke to him with all
the bitterness I felt. A horrible scene followed--he threatened to kill
me, and I believe would have done it but for the hope of yet obtaining
money by my means. I tried to escape, but could not; and, at last, when
he was tired of torturing me, he took off a long red sash which he wore,
and tied me to the bed. There, Lucia, for four-and-twenty hours he kept
me a prisoner, standing in a constrained attitude, without rest or food.
How I endured so long without fainting, I do not know; fear of something
worse must have given me unnatural strength, for he never left the
house, but spent the early part of the day in searching all my cupboards
and boxes for money or anything worth money, and the later part in
drinking. Mr. Strafford had gone over to the Canadian shore, or
probably, missing me from the school, he would have come in search of
me. Mary did come, but at the sight of my husband, she went away without
knowing anything of me. All night he sat drinking, for he had brought a
quantity of whisky home some time before, and towards morning he lay
down for a while, but so that I could not move without disturbing him.
After two or three hours' sleep he got up and went away, leaving me
still tied, and telling me I had better think of what he had said, and
make up my mind to get money in some way. When I heard the sound of his
paddle, and knew that he was really gone, the force that had sustained
me gave way; I fainted, and in falling, the sash happily broke, though
not until one of my wrists was badly sprained. The pain of my wrist
brought me back to consciousness. As soon as I could, I wrapped myself
in a shawl and went to Mary's cottage, to ask her to bandage it for me,
and to take my excuses to the school, where I was quite unable to go
that day.
"No one, not even Mr. Strafford, knew the cause of my sprained wrist,
or the conduct of my husband that day and night, but it was impossible
that when such scenes were repeated again and again, they should not
become known. And they were repeated so often and so dreadfully, that
only the feeling that I endured the just penalty of my own conduct,
enabled me to bear the perpetual suffering. At last, even Christian saw
that I could not live long if I had not some respite. Perhaps he had a
little pity for me; perhaps he only thought still of gain. At any rate,
he became less cruel, and my health returned. Again something like a
calm came over my life, and I began to feel hopeful once more. The next
spring you, Lucia, my light and comfort, were born, and from that time I
had double cause both for hope and fear. The birth of a daughter,
however, is no cause of joy to an Indian father; if you had been a boy
you would have been (or so I fancy) far less consolation to me, but to
Christian you would have been more welcome. He was with me when you were
born, but the very next day he left the island for three or four weeks,
and from the time of his next return all my former sufferings
recommenced. Often in terror for your life, I carried you to Mary Wanita
and implored her to keep you until your father was gone; and even in
his absence I scarcely dared to fall asleep with you in my arms, lest he
should come in unexpectedly and snatch you from me.
"When you were about a year old Mr. Strafford married. His wife, who had
already heard of me before her marriage, became the dearest of friends
to me; with her I could always leave you in safety, and with her I began
to feel again the solace of female society and sympathy. She is dead, as
you know, long ago, and her little daughter died at the same time, of a
fever which broke out on the island two or three years after we left it.
"Two years passed after your birth, and things had gone on in much the
same way. My husband never ceased to urge me to try to obtain money from
England, and in the meantime he continually took from me the little I
could earn by my work, for which Mrs. Strafford found me a sale in
different towns of the province.
"Do not misjudge me, Lucia. I tell you these things only to justify what
I did later, and my long concealment even from you of the truth of my
history.
"But when you were about two years old your father left the island, and
did not return. The longest stay he had ever made before was a month,
and when two passed, and I neither saw nor heard of him, I began to feel
uneasy. Mr. Strafford made many inquiries for me, but we only heard of
his having been seen shortly after he left home, and quite failed in
learning where he had gone. Time went on, and, after the first anxious
and troubled feelings passed off, I allowed myself to enjoy the
undisturbed quiet, and to be happy as any other mother might be with her
child. I had a whole year of such peace; you grew hardy and merry, and
were the pet and plaything of the whole village, learning to talk the
strangest mixed language, and showing at that time none of the terror of
Indians which I have seen in you since then.
"But at the end of a year our respite ended. One day when I had been at
the school, and you with me, I was surprised on my return home to see
the door of the house open, and some men sitting at my table. I hurried
on, and walked into the room before they were aware of my coming. There
were four of them, two Indians and two who were either white or of mixed
race; but it was only by his voice, and that after a moment's pause,
that I could recognize my husband. My husband! never till then had I
known the full horror that word could convey. Remember that long ago I
had been charmed, had fallen in love, as girls say, with one who seemed
to represent the very perfection and ideal of manly beauty; that this
beauty and stateliness of outward form had been so great that I took it
for the truthful expression of such a nature as I thought most
heroic--remember this, and then think of what I saw after this year of
absence. A bloated, degraded, horrible creature--not even a man, but a
brute, raving half deliriously, and still drinking, while his
companions, little more sober than himself, made him the subject of
their jests and jeers. I held my little innocent child in my arms while
I saw this, and for the first time, and for her sake, I felt a bitter
hatred rise up in my heart against her father."
A strong shudder crept over Mrs. Costello; she covered her face with her
hands for a moment, while Lucia drew more closely to her side. Presently
she went on. "A cry from you, my child, drew the men's attention to us.
'Here's your squaw,' one of them said to Christian, who tried to get up,
but could not. I saw that it was useless to speak to him, and turned to
leave the house, intending to ask shelter from Mrs. Strafford or Mary,
but before I could pass the door one of the strangers shut and bolted
it, while another seized and held me fast. They made me sit down at the
table; they tried to drag you out of my arms, and failing in that, to
make you swallow some of the whisky they were drinking. I defended you
as well as I could. In my terror and despair I watched for the time when
they should all become as helpless as the miserable creature who had
brought them there; but it was long to wait. Lucia, those hours when I
saw myself and you at the mercy of these wretches were like years of
agony. They saw my fear, however I might try to disguise it, and
delighted in the torment I suffered. They tried again and again to take
you from me; they threatened us both with every imaginable horror; till
I thought night would have quite closed in before their drinking would
end in complete intoxication. At length, at length, it did. One had
fallen asleep; the other two were quarrelling feebly, when I ventured to
move. They tried to get up, to stop me; but I drew the bolt, and fled
into the darkness where I knew they could not follow.
"I reached Mr. Strafford's door, and we were received with all kindness;
but the fright, the sudden exposure to cold night air, after being for
so many hours shut up in a stifling room, and perhaps, added to all a
few drops of spirit which had been forced into your mouth, brought on
you a sudden, and to me most terrible, illness. It was your first; I had
never seen you suffer, and I thought you would die; that God would take
you from me as the last and crowning punishment for my disobedience. In
the great anguish of this idea, I wrote to my father--wrote by your
bedside while you slept, and confessing all my folly, implored his
forgiveness, as if that would preserve my child's life. You recovered,
and in my joy I almost forgot that the letter had been written. While
you lay ill, the Straffords concealed from me that my husband had been
to the house demanding my return home; but when you were almost well,
they told me not only this, but that he had declared in the village that
he would punish us both for our flight. It was then that Mr. Strafford
recommended me to think seriously of a final escape.
"'It is evident,' he said, 'that you neither can, nor ought, to put
yourself and your child again into his power--while you remain on the
island it must be here; but I strongly advise you to return to England,
or conceal yourself from him in some way.'
"I gratefully accepted his invitation to remain for a little while at
his house--the rest of his plan could not be hastily decided upon; and
while I deliberated, a letter arrived from England. Mr. Strafford, on
hearing of the scene which ended in your illness, had carried out an
idea which, he afterwards told me, he had long entertained, and written
to my cousin George. The letter which now arrived was in answer to this,
though it contained an enclosure for me. My appeal to my father had been
made just in time; it reached him on his deathbed, and he forgave me. He
did more than that; he altered, at the very last, a will made many years
before, and left me an equal sum to that I had before inherited from my
mother, but with the condition that I should never return to England.
You understand now why, loving the dear old country as I still do, I
have always told you I should never see it again--to do so would be to
forfeit all our living, and more even than that, it would be to disobey
my father's last command. My cousin's note was as kind and brotherly as
if he had never had the least reason to complain of me. He told me that
he had married some years before a good woman who, I have since thought,
might have been his first choice if regard for my father's wishes had
not influenced him. At any rate, they were and, I hope, still are happy
together, filling my father and mother's places in the old home.
"These letters made my way clearer. It was settled that I should take
advantage of Christian's absence (for he had again left the island) to
remove with you to the most secure hiding-place we could find, and as a
large town always offers the best means of concealment, we decided upon
Montreal. So after a residence of six years on the island, I left it at
last, carrying you with me and calling myself a widow. It was then that
I took the name of Costello. It was my mother's family name, and is
really, as you have always supposed, Spanish--my great-grandfather
having been a Spaniard. I gave you the name at your baptism, so that it
is really yours, though not mine.
"For six months we remained in Montreal; but I had been so long used to
the silence and free air of the island that my health failed in the
noisy town. I was seized with a terror of dying, and leaving you
unprotected, and therefore determined to try whether I could not remain
concealed equally well in the country. A chance made me think of this
neighbourhood, which, though rather too near my old home, was then very
retired, and not inhabited at all by Indians. I came up, found this
place for sale and bought it. There was only a very rough log-house upon
the ground, but I went into that until this cottage was ready, and here
you can remember almost all that has happened."
Lucia raised her head as her mother finished speaking.
"But--my father!" she said hesitatingly.
"I forgot." Mrs. Costello resumed. "Mr. Strafford kept me informed of
his movements for some time. He came back shortly after we had left the
island, and on finding us gone, he tried all means to discover where we
were. He actually traced us to Montreal, but there lost the clue, and
came back disappointed. For some years he continued to live much as he
had done ever since his return from England, frequently staying two or
three weeks on the island, and never forgetting to make some effort to
trace us. The perpetual terror I suffered during those years never
subsided. I feared to go outside of my own garden lest he should meet
and recognize me. At last Mr. Strafford sent me word that he had gone to
the Hudson's Bay Territory.
"After that I began to feel that I was free, and from the time you were
nine until you were sixteen I had little immediate anxiety; then, as I
saw you growing up, I knew that the time when you must know your own
birth and my history drew very near, and the idea weighed on me
constantly. Other anxieties came too, and finally, worst of all, news
that Christian had returned."
"And now," Lucia asked, "do you know where he is?"
"No. But I have been warned that he is seeking for us. They say that we
have more reason than ever to fear him, and that he is looking for us in
this part of the province."
Mrs. Costello's voice sunk almost to a whisper. She seemed to fancy that
the man she had so long escaped might be close at hand, and Lucia caught
the infection of her terror. They remained silent a minute, listening
fearfully to the light rustling of the leaves outside, as the breeze
stirred them.
"Mother," Lucia said at last, "how soon can we leave here?"
"I have thought much of that," Mrs. Costello answered, "but we have ties
here too strong to be broken suddenly; and, indeed, a hasty removal
might but draw upon us the very notice we wish to avoid."
"We must go soon though, as soon as possible. Oh! mamma, I could not
bear to stay here now."
It was a cry of impatience--of acute pain--the child had suddenly turned
back from her mother's story to her own trial and loss. Love, happiness,
two hours ago clasped to her heart, and now torn from her pitilessly;
for a moment she was all rebellion at the thought--she, at least, had
not sinned, why should she suffer? Yet in her heart she knew that she
must; she saw the one path clear before her, and felt that the time for
acting was now; the time for grieving must come after. She rose, and
walked up and down the room, gathering her strength and courage as she
could.
At last she stopped in front of her mother's chair. Her face was pale,
but so steady and composed that its girlishness seemed gone--she looked,
what she would be from that time, a woman able to endure, and resolute
to act.
"Mother," she said quietly, "Mr. Percy is coming to-morrow morning. He
is coming to see you, but I would rather speak to him myself. There is
no need that he should know anything whatever--of my father, or of what
you have told me--we shall never see him again."
Except once, there was neither hesitation nor faltering in her voice,
but her meaning could not be misunderstood. For a moment Mrs. Costello
felt her convictions and her judgment shaken; if, after all, this love,
which Lucia was about to lose, should be true and perfect? if Percy
should be capable of knowing all, and yet cherishing and prizing her?
Ought pride, ought her own opinion of him, to stand between her child
and possible happiness and safety?
But she saw in Lucia's face that underneath all her love, the same
feeling, that his would not stand this shock, lay deep in her heart, and
the doubt died away as suddenly as it had risen.
"Do as you will, my child," she said. "But think well first. I, who have
failed where I most desired to succeed, cannot venture now to advise
you."
Lucia bent down and kissed her. "Poor mother!" she said tenderly, "you
have thought too much for me, and I have never known what a burden I was
to you. But we shall do better in future--when we are far away and have
begun life again."
The hopeful words sounded very dreary in the sweet young voice, which
seemed to have changed its tone, and taken the low mournful intonation
of her Indian race; but she moved calmly away, replaced the contents of
the desk with care, and closed and locked it. Then she gave the key to
her mother, and bent over her again to say good-night.
There were no more words spoken between them. A long kiss, and they
separated. But for the first time Mrs. Costello did not visit her
daughter's room--she guessed that a battle had to be fought there in
solitude, and that hers was not the only vigil kept that night. So the
two watched apart; and the dawn, which was not far distant when they
bade each other good-night, came in and found them both looking out
with sleepless eyes at the grey sky and the familiar landscape, from
which they were each planning to escape for ever.
But as the sky reddened, Lucia remembered that her sleepless night would
leave traces which she wished to avoid, in her pale cheeks and heavy
eyes. She lay down therefore, and at last fell asleep. Her over-excited
brain, however, could not rest; the most troubled and fantastic dreams
came to her,--her mother, Mary Wanita, Percy, Maurice, and many other
persons seemed to surround her--but in every change of scene there
appeared the shadowy figure of her father, constantly working or
threatening harm. Sometimes she saw him as he looked in his portrait,
and shrank from him as a kind of evil genius, beautiful and yet
terrible--sometimes like the Indian who had met her by the river, a
hideous, scarcely human object. Then, last of all, she saw him
distinctly, as the scene her mother had described, the last time when
she had really seen him, came before her, not by the power of
imagination but of memory. For, waking up, she knew that, impressed upon
her childish recollection by terror, that scene had never been entirely
forgotten. Having no clue to its reality, she had always supposed it to
be a dream; but now as it came back with some degree of vividness, she
saw plainly the face which was neither that of the likeness nor that of
her assailant, but might well be a link between the two--the same face
in transition.
The idea was too horrible. She rose, and tried by hurried dressing to
drive it from her mind; but it returned persistently. She went, at last,
to her looking-glass and looked into it with a terror of herself. Never
was ugliness so hateful as the beauty she saw there. For there could be
no doubt about this, at least; except for the softening into womanly
traits, and for a slightly fairer complexion, the picture her glass
showed her was a faithful copy of that other, which she had seen for the
first time last night. What beauty her mother had ever possessed had
been thoroughly English in its character--hers was wholly Indian. She
turned away with a feeling of loathing for herself, and a fearful glance
into her heart as if to seek there also for some proof of this hateful
birthright.