THE LAST INTERVIEW.
Thy race is run--thy fate is sealed,
Trust not the ties that bound thee;
A thousand snares, still unrevealed,
Are woven close around thee.
Nor strength, nor craft availeth now;
Thy stubborn will is riven;
The death drops hang upon thy brow,
There's justice yet in Heaven.
It was over at last. The saloon, the banquet hall, the conservatory,
sleeping in the moonlight shed from many a sculptured vase--all were
deserted; wax candles flared and went out in their silver sockets;
garlands grew dim and shadowy in the diminished light; half a dozen
yawning footmen glided about extinguishing wax lights, and turning off
gas, but they seemed ghost-like and dreary, wandering through the vast
mansion.
But Ada Leicester felt no fatigue; she saw nothing of the gloom that
was so rapidly spreading over the splendor of her mansion. Her boudoir
was still lighted by those two pearl-like lamps. It was a dim, luxurious
twilight, that seemed hazy with the perfume stealing up from a dozen
snowy vases scattered through the dressing-room, the bed-chamber, and
the boudoir. The doors connecting these apartments were ajar, but closed
enough to conceal one room from the other.
Ada entered the boudoir. Her step was imperious; her cheek burning.
Pride, anger and haughty scorn swelled in her bosom, as she seated
herself to wait. One of those mysterious revulsions of feeling that are
so frequent to a passionate and ill-disciplined nature, had swept over
her heart. For the first time in her life she felt disposed to sting the
foot that had trampled so ruthlessly upon her. In that moment, all the
strong love of a lifetime seemed kindling into a fiery hate.
It was one of those hours when we defy destiny--defy our own souls. A
few hours earlier and she could not have met him thus with scorn on her
brow, rebellion in her heart. A few hours after she might repent in
tears, but now she waited his approach without a thrill of pleasure or
of fear. The very memory of former tenderness filled her with
self-contempt. The marble Flora stood over her--crimson roses and
heliotrope had been mingled with the sculptured lilies in its hand. A
few hours before she had stolen away from her guests, to place these
blossoms among the marble counterfeits, for they breathed his favorite
perfume; now, she sickened as the fragrance floated over her, and
tearing them from the statue, tossed them amid a bed of coals still
burning in the silver grate.
She did not go back to the couch, but remained upon the ermine rug, with
one arm resting upon the jetty marble of the mantel-piece. No footstep
could be heard in that sumptuously carpeted house, but the proud spirit
within her seemed to know when he stole softly forth from the
conservatory, and approached the room where she was waiting.
Leicester was self-possessed; he had a game to play, more intricate,
more difficult than his experience had yet coped with, but this only
excited his intellect. With a heart of stone the nerves hold no
sympathy, and are obedient to the will alone: what or who had ever
resisted Leicester's will!
But she also was self-possessed, and this took him by surprise. He moved
toward the grate and leaned his elbow on the mantel-piece, directly
opposite her. She held a superb fan, half open, against her bosom: it
was fringed deep with the gorgeous plumage of some tropical bird, but no
tumult of the heart stirred a feather. She held it there, as she had
often done that evening, when homage floated around her, gracefully and
quietly waiting to be addressed. This mood was one he had not expected;
it deranged all his premeditated plan of attack. Instead of reproaching
him, with that passionate anger that pants for reconciliation, she was
silent.
"Ada!" The name was uttered in a voice that no heart that had loved the
speaker could entirely resist. A faint shiver and an irregular breath
were perceptibly ruffling, as it were, the plumage of her fan, but the
proud woman only bent her head.
"Was it delicate--was it honorable to deceive your husband thus?" he
said, "to grant him one interview after so many years, and then conceal
yourself from his search under this disguise? I have sought for you,
Ada, Heaven only knows how anxiously."
She smiled a cold incredulous smile, for well she knew how he had
searched for her.
"You do not believe me," said Leicester, attempting to take her hand;
but she drew back, pressing the fan harder to her bosom, till the
delicately wrought ivory broke. The demon of pride grew strong within
her. For the first time in her life she felt a knowledge of power over
the man who had been her fate.
"Was I to seek you that your foot might be planted on my heart once
more? Was I to offer my bosom to the serpent fang again and again? Have
you forgotten our interview in the chamber overhead?--that chamber
where I had hoarded every thing connected with the only happy months you
ever permitted me to know--so full of precious memories? I thought they
would touch even your heart."
He attempted to speak, but she would not permit him. "I did not know
you, notwithstanding past experience. Your heart has blacker shades than
I imagined! Not up there--not among objects holy from association with
my child, should I have taken you, but here! here! do not these things
betoken great wealth?" A scornful smile curved her lips, and she glanced
around the boudoir.
There was one word in this speech that Leicester seized upon. "_Your_
child, Ada. Great Heaven! would you exclude me from all share even in
the love of our child!"
Even this did not soften her, though she was fearfully moved at the
mention of her lost infant. He saw this, and his manner instantly
changed.
"Why should I plead with you--why waste words thus?" he said, casting
aside all affectation of tenderness:--"you are my wife--lawfully
married--the mother of my child. If you have property, by the laws of
this land that property is mine! I plead no longer, madam! Being the
master of this house, if it is yours, my province is to command. Tell
me, then! this wealth--for which people give their idol, _Mrs. Gordon_,
so much credit--this mansion; are they real?--are they yours?--and
therefore mine?"
The scorn that broke over Ada's face was absolutely sublime.
"Yes," she said, "this wealth is mine, yours, if the law makes it so;
but listen--then say if you will use it!"
She bent forward; her lips and cheek were pale as death, but across the
snow of her forehead a crimson flush came and went, like an arrow
shooting back and again.
"You asked me that night in the room above, if I had lived in Europe as
the governess of that man's daughter--the governess only--I answered
yes; a governess only. It was false! Every dollar of the millions I
possess comes from this man; he bequeathed them on his death-bed, that I
might not again become your slave!" The haughty air gave way as she
uttered this confession; her limbs trembled so violently that she was
obliged to lean on the mantel-piece to keep from sinking to the floor.
Pride, that treacherous demon, left her then, helpless as a child.
"This," said Leicester, with a stern, clear enunciation, "this in no way
interferes with my claim on the property. Were it double, that would be
poor atonement for the outrage to my affections--the disgrace brought
upon my name."
She did not speak, but listened in breathless silence, trying to
comprehend the moral enormity before her, with a confused sense that
even yet she had not fathomed the black depths of his heart.
Leicester had paused, thinking that she would answer; but as she
remained silent he spoke again, still calmly, and with measured
intonation.
"But that which you have confessed becomes important in another sense.
If the law gives me your property, it also enables me to divest it of
the only incumbrance that would be unpleasant. Your confession, madam,
entitles me to a divorce."
"You would not--oh, Heavens, no!" gasped the wretched woman.
"Now you seem natural--now you are meek again," he said with a laugh
that cut to the heart. "So, you thought to dazzle me with your
wealth--wither me with haughty pride--fool! miserable fool!"
"Mercy, mercy! Will no one save me from this man?" shrieked the wretched
woman, flinging her clasped hands wildly upward.
Leicester was about to speak again, something fearfully bitter--you
could see it in the curve of his lip--but her cry had reached other
ears, and while the taunt was yet unspoken, Jacob Strong entered the
boudoir. Leicester gazed upon him in utter amazement, for he advanced
directly toward Ada, and taking the clasped hands she held out in both
his, led her to the couch, trembling, and so faint that she was
incapable of uttering a word.
"What is this? how came you here, fellow?" said Leicester, the moment he
could break from the astonishment occasioned by Jacob's presence.
"My mistress called for help, and I came," was the steady answer.
"Your mistress! where--who?"
"This lady--your _first_ wife! the other----"
"Villain! who are you?"
Jacob looked into his master's eyes with a calm stare: "Look at me, Mr.
Leicester! I have grown since you saw me at old Mr. Wilcox's! No doubt
you have forgotten the awkward boy, who tended your horse, and pointed
out the best trout streams for you? But I--I shall never forget! No
angry looks--no frowns, sir! The rocks we climbed together would feel
them more than I do."
"Go on--go on--I would learn more," said Leicester, paling fearfully
about the mouth. "You have been a spy in my service!"
"Yes--a spy--a keeper of your most dangerous secrets! I read the letter
from Georgia--I have that old copy-book, which was to have sent Robert
Otis, my own nephew, to state prison. There is a check of ten thousand,
which I can lay my hand on at any moment--you comprehend! I saw it
written--I saw it pass from your hand to his. I was in the back room.
Villain! I am your master."
The palor spread up from Leicester's mouth to his temples, leaving a
dusky ring around his eyes. For the first time in his life, this man of
evil and stern will was terrified. Yet wrath was stronger in his heart
than fear, even then. His white lips curled in fierce disdain. He turned
towards Ada, who lay with her face buried in the silken pillows,
conscious of nothing but her own unutterable wretchedness. She did not
feel the fiendish glance that he cast upon her; but Jacob saw it, and
his grey eyes kindled, till they seemed black as midnight: "If you wish
to see another, come in here--come, I say! Victims are plenty about you;
come in."
Jacob looked terribly imposing in this burst of indignation. His awkward
form dilated into rude grandeur--his wrath, ponderous and intense,
rolled forth like some fathomless stream, whose very tranquillity is
terrible. He flung his powerful arm around Leicester, and drew him
forward as if he had been a child.
Through the dressing-room, still flooded with soft light and redolent of
flowers, and into the bed-chamber beyond, Jacob strode, grasping his
companion firmly with one arm. He paused close by the bed. With an
upward motion of his arms, he flung aside the cloud of lace that fell
over it, and pointed to a form that lay underneath, pillowed, as it
were, upon a snow drift. "Look! here is another!" said Jacob, towering
above the man who had been his master--for there was no stoop in his
shoulders then--"look! it is your last victim--to all eternity, the
last!"
Leicester did look, for his gaze was fascinated by the soft eyes lifted
to his from the pillow; the sweet, sweet smile that played around that
lovely mouth. It went to his soul--that impenetrable soul--that Ada's
anguish had failed to reach.
"She heard it all. She saw everything that passed between you and your
wife," said Jacob.
"What--and smiles upon me thus?" There was something of human feeling in
his voice. He stooped down, and put back some raven tresses that fell
over the eyes that were searching for his.
Then the smile broke into a laugh so wild with insane glee, that even
Leicester shuddered and drew back. Florence started up in the bed. The
lace of her wedding garments was crushed around her form--her arms were
entangled in the rich white veil which still clung, torn and ragged, to
the diamond star fastened over her temple. The cypress and jessamine
wreath, half torn away, hung in fragments among her black tresses. She
saw that Leicester avoided her, and tearing the veil fiercely, set both
her arms free. She leaned half over the bed, holding them out, as a
child aroused from sleep, pleads for its mother. Leicester drew near,
for a fiend could not have resisted that look. She caught both his
hands, drew herself up to his bosom, and then began to laugh again.
That moment a female, whose black garments contrasted gloomily with the
drift-like whiteness of the couch, came from the shadowy part of the
room, and taking Florence in her arms laid her gently back upon the
pillows. She had seen that of which Leicester and Jacob were
unconscious--Ada Leicester, standing in the gorgeous gloom of her
dressing-chamber, and watching the scene.
"Mother, you here also!" exclaimed Leicester, and his voice had, for the
instant, something of human anguish in it. His mother pointed toward the
dressing-room, and only answered--
"Would you drive her mad also?"
"Would to Heaven it were possible," answered Leicester, with a cold
sneer. He bowed low, and with a gesture full of sarcastic defiance moved
toward the dressing-room. Jacob followed him.
"Stay," said Ada, standing before them--"what is this--who are the
persons you have left in my chamber?"
"One of them," answered Leicester, with calm audacity, "one of them is
of little consequence, though you may find in her, my dear madam, an old
acquaintance. The other is a young lady, very beautiful, as you may see
even from here--to whom I had the honor of being married last evening.
How she became your guest I do not know, but treat her with all
hospitality, I beseech you, if it were only for the love that I bear
her--love that I never felt for mortal woman before."
"Go," said Ada, stung into some degree of strength by his insolence,
"or, rather let me go, if you are indeed the master here."
She took a shawl which had been flung across a chair, and folded it
around her.
"Take everything, but let me go in peace. Jacob, oh, my friend, _you_
will not abandon me now?"
"No," answered Jacob, with a degree of respectful tenderness that gave
to his rude features something more touching than beauty. "Take off your
shawl, madam--he has lost all power to harm you--there is desperation in
his insolence, nothing more. His own crimes have disabled him."
"How? how? Not that which he hinted--not marriage with another? Tell me,
that it was only bravado. Rather, much rather, could I go forth
penniless and bare-headed into the street."
She approached Leicester, holding out her hands. He saw all the
unquenched love that shed anguish over that beautiful face, and took
courage. In this weakness, lay some hope of safety.
"Ada let me see you alone," he said, with an abrupt change of voice and
manner. She looked at Jacob irresolutely. He saw the danger at once, and
taking her hand, led her with gentle force into the bed-chamber. "Look,"
he said, pointing to Florence, who lay upon the couch--"ask her, she
will tell you what it means."
Ada advanced toward the old lady, who came to meet her as one who
receives the mourners who gather to a funeral.
"It is Leicester's mother," broke from the pale lips of Leicester's
wife.
"My poor daughter," said the old lady, wringing the trembling hand that
Ada held out.
"Will you--can you, call me daughter? oh madam, how long it is since
that sweet word has fallen on my ear." The pathos of her words--the
humility of her manner--melted the old lady almost to tears. She opened
her arms, and received the wretched woman to her bosom.
Jacob went out and found Leicester in the boudoir.
"Will she come? I am tired of waiting," he said, as Jacob closed and
locked the door leading to the dressing-room.
"Expect nothing from her weakness--never hope to see her again. It is
with me--not a weak, loving, forgiving woman, you have to deal."
"With you--her father's clownish farmer-boy--my own servant."
"I have no words to throw away, and you will need them to defend
yourself," answered Jacob, with firm self-possession. "You have
committed, within the last twenty-four hours, two crimes against the
law. You have married a woman, knowing your wife to be alive. I am the
witness, I, her playmate when she was a little girl, her protector and
faithful servant in the trouble and sin which you heaped upon her after
she was a woman. I went with her to the hotel that night, I witnessed
all--all--to the scene last evening. Let that pass, for it _should_
pass, rather than have her history connected with yours before the
world. But another crime. This forged check--this attempt to ruin as
warm-hearted and honest a boy as ever lived. In this, her name cannot,
from necessity, appear; for this you shall suffer to the extent of the
law; for this, you shall live year after year in prison, not from
revenge, mark, but that she, Ada Wilcox, may breathe in peace. Leave
this house, sir, quietly, for I must not have a felon arrested beneath
her roof. Go anywhere you like, for a few hours, not to the hotel, for
Robert Otis is waiting in your chamber with an officer; not to ferry, or
steamboat, in hopes of escaping; men are placed everywhere to stop you;
but till noon you are safe from arrest."
"I will not leave this house without speaking with Ada," said Leicester,
in a whisper so deep and fierce, that it came through his clenched teeth
like the hiss of a wounded adder.
"Five minutes you have for deliberation; go forth quietly, and as a
departing guest, or remain to be marshalled out by half a dozen men,
whom the chief of police has sent to protect the grounds--you
understand, to protect the grounds."
Leicester did not speak, but a sharp, fiendish gloom shot into his eyes,
and he thrust one hand beneath his snowy vest, and drew it slowly out;
then came the sharp click of a pocket pistol. Jacob watched the motion,
and his heavy features stirred with a smile.
"You forget that I am your servant; that I laid out your wedding dress,
and loaded the pistol; put it up, sir--as I told you before, when I play
with rattlesnakes, I take a hard grip on the neck."
Leicester drew his hand up deliberately, and dashed the pistol in
Jacob's face. The stout man recoiled a step, and blood flowed from his
lips. It was fortunate for him that Leicester had found the revolver
which he was in the habit of wearing too heavy for his wedding garments.
As it was, he took out a silk handkerchief, and coolly wiped the blood
from his mouth, casting now and then a look at the tiny clock upon the
mantel-piece. The fiendish smile excited by the sight of his enemy's
blood was just fading from Leicester's lip, when Jacob put the
handkerchief back in his pocket.
"You will save a few hours of liberty by departing at once," he said.
"To a man, who has nothing but prison walls before him, they should be
worth something."
"Yes, much can be done in a few hours," muttered Leicester to himself,
and gently settling his hat, he turned to go.
"Open the door," he said, turning coolly to Jacob; "your wages are paid
up to this time, at any rate."
Jacob bowed gravely, and dropping into his awkward way, followed his
master down stairs. He opened the principal door, and Leicester stepped
into the street quietly, as if the respectful attendance had been real.
The morning had just dawned, cold, comfortless, and humid; a slippery
moisture lay upon the pavements, dark shadows hung like drapery along
the unequal streets; Leicester threaded them with slow and thoughtful
step. For once, his great intellect, his plotting fiend, refused to
work. What should he do? how act? His hotel, the very street which he
threaded perhaps, beset with officers; his garments elegantly
conspicuous; his arms useless, and in his pockets only a little silver
and one piece of gold. Never was position more desperate.
Hour after hour wore on, and still he wandered through the streets. As
daylight spread over the sky, kindling up the fog that still clung
heavily around the city, Leicester saw two men walking near him. He
quickened his pace, he loitered, turned again, down one street and up
another; with their arms interlaced, their bodies sometimes enfolded in
the fog, distinct or shadowy, those strange wanderers had a power to
make Leicester's heart quail within him.
All at once he started, and stood up motionless in the street. That
child--those two old people! He had recognized them at once the night
before as Mr. Wilcox and his wife, poor, friendless; he had striven to
cast them from his mind, to forget that they lived. The after events of
that night had come upon him like a thunder-clap; in defending himself
or attacking others, he had found little time to calculate on the
discovery of his daughter and her old grand parents. Now, the thought
came to his brain like lightning. He would secure the young girl--Ada's
lost child. The secret of her existence was his; it should redeem him
from the consequence of his great crime. The old people were poor--they
would give up the child to a rich father, and ask no questions. With
this last treasure in his power, Ada would not refuse to bribe it from
him at any price. Her self-constituted guardian, too, that man of rude
will, and indomitable strength, he who had sacrificed a lifetime to the
mother of this child, who had tracked his own steps like a hound, could
he, who had given up so much, refuse to surrender his vengeance, also?
This humble girl, from whom Leicester had turned so contemptuously, how
precious she became as these thoughts flashed through his brain.
Leicester proceeded with a rapid step to the neighborhood that he had
visited the previous night. He descended to the area, glided through the
dim hall, and entered the back basement just as old Mr. Warren, or
Wilcox we must now call him, was sitting down to breakfast with his wife
and grandchild. A look of poverty was about the room, warded off by care
and cleanliness, but poverty still. Leicester had only time to remark
this, when his presence was observed. Old Mr. Wilcox rose slowly from
his chair, his thin face grew pale as he gazed upon the elegant person
of his visitor, and the rich dress, so strongly at variance with the
place. A vague terror seized him, for he did not at once recognize the
features, changed by time, and more completely still, by a night of
agonizing excitement. At length he recognized his son-in-law, and
sinking to his chair, uttered a faint groan.
Julia started up, and flung her arms around the old man's neck.
Leicester came quietly forward.
"Have you forgotten me, sir?" he said, laying one hand softly upon the
table.
"No," gasped the old man, "no."
"And the little girl, she seems afraid of me, but when she knows--"
"Hush," said the old man, rising, with one arm around the child, "not
another word till we are alone. Wife, Julia, leave the room."
The old woman hesitated. She, too, had recognized Leicester, and dreaded
to leave him alone with her husband. Julia looked from one to the other,
amazed and in trouble.
"As you wish. I have no time to spare. Send them away, and we can more
readily settle my demands and your claims."
"Go!" replied the old man, laying his hand on Julia's head.
That withered hand shook like a leaf.
Julia and her grandmother went out, but not beyond the hall. There they
stood, distant as the space would permit, but still within hearing of
the voices within. Now and then a word rose high, and old Mrs. Wilcox
would draw Julia's head against her side, and press a hand upon her ear,
as if she dreaded that even those indistinct murmurs should reach her.
While these poor creatures stood trembling in the hall, a strange,
fierce scene was going on over that miserable breakfast-table. Leicester
had been persevering and plausible at first; with promises of wealth,
and protestations of kindness, he had endeavored to induce the poor old
man to render up the child. When this failed, he became irritated, and,
with fiercer passions, attempted to intimidate the feeble being whom he
had already wronged almost beyond all hopes of human forgiveness. The
old man said little, for he was terrified, and weak as a child; but his
refusal to yield up the little girl was decided. "If the law takes her
away, I cannot help it," he said, "but nothing else ever shall." Tears
rolled down the old man's face as he spoke, but his will had been
expressed, and the man who came to despoil him saw that it was
immovable.
Despairing at last, and fiercely desperate, Leicester rushed from the
basement. Julia and her grandmother shrunk against the wall, for the
palor of his face was frightful. He did not appear to see them, but went
quickly through the outer door and up to the side-walk. Here stood the
two men, arm-in-arm, ready to follow him. He turned back, and retraced
his steps, with a dull, heavy footfall, utterly unlike the elasticity of
his usual tread. Further and further back crowded the frightened
females. The old man was so exhausted that he could not arise from the
chair to which he had fallen. He looked up when Leicester entered the
room, and said, beseechingly, "Oh, let me alone! See how miserable you
have made us! Do let us alone!"
"Once more--once more I ask, will you give up the child?"
"No--no."
A knife lay upon the table, long and sharp, one that Mrs. Wilcox had
been using in her household work. Leicester's eye had been fixed on the
knife while he was speaking. His hand was outstretched toward it before
the old man could find voice to answer. Simultaneous with the brief
"no," the knife flashed upward, down again, and Leicester fell dead at
the old man's feet. Mr. Wilcox dropped on his knees, seized the knife,
and tore it from the wound. Over his withered hands, over the white
vest, down to his feet, gushed the warm blood. It paralyzed the old man;
he tried to cry aloud, but had no power. A frightful stillness reigned
over him; then many persons came rushing into the room.
A light shone in that pretty cottage--a single light from the chamber
where Julia had robed Florence Nelson in her bridal dress. A bed was
there, shrouded in drapery, that hung motionless, like marble, and as
coldly white; glossy linen swept over the bed, frozen, as it were, over
the outline of a human form. Death--death--the very atmosphere was full
of death. On one corner of the bed, crushing the cold linen, wrinkled
with her weight, Florence Nelson had seated herself, and with her black
ringlets falling over the dead, sung to him as no human being ever sung
before. Sometimes she laughed--sometimes wept. Every variation of her
madness was full of pathos, sweet with tenderness, save when there came
from the opposite room a pallid and grief-stricken creature, with
drooping hands, and eyes heavy with unshed tears.
If this unhappy woman attempted to approach the bed, or even enter the
room, Florence would spring up with the fierce cry of a wounded eagle;
the song rose to a wail, then, with her waxen hands, she would gather up
the linen in waves, over the dead, and if Ada came nearer, shriek after
shriek rose through the cottage. Thus poor Ada Leicester, driven from
the death-couch of her husband, would creep back to where his mother
knelt in her calm, still grief. There, with her stately head bowed down,
her limbs prone upon the floor, she would murmur, "Oh, God help me! It
is just--but help me, help me! Oh, my God!"