ADA LEICESTER AND JACOB STRONG.
We drove him to that fearful gulf,
In the sharp pangs of his despair,
As angry hunters chase a wolf
From open field and hidden lair.
The servant who sat waiting in the vestibule was startled by the hard,
tearless misery of Ada's face, as she entered her own dwelling that
night. He looked at her earnestly, and seemed about to speak, but she
swept by him with averted eyes and ascended the stairs.
It was the same man who had stood beside her chair at dinner that day.
The look of anxiety was on his features yet, and he pressed his lips
hard together as she passed him, evidently curbing some sharp sensation
that the haughty bearing of his mistress aroused. He stood looking after
her as she glided with a swift, noiseless tread over the richly carpeted
stairs, her pale hand now and then gleaming out in startling relief from
the ebony balustrade, and her stony face mocking the artificial scarlet
of her mouth. She turned at the upper landing, and he saw her glide away
in the soft twilight overhead. He stood a moment with his eyes riveted
on the spot where she had disappeared, then he followed up the stairs
with a step as firm and rapid as hers had been. Even his heavy foot left
no sound on the mass of woven flowers that covered the steps, and the
shadow cast by his ungainly figure moved no more silently than himself.
He opened several doors, but they closed after him without noise, and
Ada was unconscious of his presence for several moments after he stood
within her boudoir. A fire burned in the silver grate, casting a sunset
glow over the room, but leaving many of its objects in shadow; for save
a moonlight gleam that came from a lamp in the dressing-room, no other
light was near.
Ada had flung her mantle on the couch, and with her arms folded on the
black marble of the mantel-piece, bent her forehead upon them, and stood
thus statue-like gazing into the fire. A clear amethystine flame
quivered over the coal, striking the opals and brilliants that
ornamented her dress, till they burned like coals of living fire upon
the snow of her arms and bosom. Thus with the same prismatic light
spreading from the jewels to her rigid face, she seemed more like a
fallen angel mourning over her ruin than a living woman.
At length the servant made a slight noise. Ada lifted up her head, and a
frown darkened her face.
"I did not ring--I do not require anything of you to-night," she said.
"I know it. I know well enough that you require nothing of me--that my
very devotion is hateful to you. Why is it? I came up here, to-night, on
purpose to ask the question--why is it?" answered the man, with a grave
dignity, which was very remote from the manner which a servant, however
favored, is expected to maintain toward his mistress. "What have I done
to deserve this treatment?"
Ada looked at him earnestly for a moment, and then her lip curled with a
bitter smile.
"What have you done, Jacob Strong! Can you ask that question of William
Leicester's wife, so soon after your own act has made her a widow?"
"But how?--how did I make you a widow?" said he, turning pale with
suppressed feeling.
"How?" cried Ada, almost with a shriek, for the passion of her nature
had been gathering force all day, and now it burst forth with a degree
of violence that shook her whole frame. "Who sat like a great, hideous
spider in his web, watching him as he wove and entangled the meshes of
crime around him? Who stung my pride, spurred on all that was
unforgiving and haughty in my nature, till I too--unnatural wretch--who
had wronged and sinned against him--turned in my unholy pride, and
drove him into deeper evil? It was you, Jacob Strong, who did this. It
was you who urged him into the fearful strait, that admitted of no
escape but death. The guilt of this self-murder rests with you, and with
me. My heart is black with his blood; my brain reels when the thought
presses on it. I hate you--and oh! a thousand times more do I hate
myself--the pitiful tool of my own menial!"
"Your menial, Ada Wilcox--have I ever been that?"
"No," was the passionate answer, "I have been _your_ menial, your dupe.
You have made me his murderer. I loved him, oh! Father of mercies, how I
loved him!"
The wretched woman wrung her hands, and waved them up and down in the
firelight so rapidly, that the restless brilliants upon them seemed
shooting out sparks of lightning.
"I thought he would come back. He was cruel--he was insolent--but what
was that? We might have known his haughty spirit would never bend. If he
had died any other death--oh! anything, anything but this rankling
knowledge, that I, his wife, drove him to self-murder!"
Jacob Strong left his position at the door, and coming close up to his
mistress, took both her hands in his. He could not endure her
reproaches. Her words stung his honest heart to the core.
"Sit down," he said, with gentle firmness--"sit down, Ada Wilcox, and
listen to me. There is yet something that I have to say. If it will
remove any of the bitterness that you harbor against me, if it can
reconcile you to yourself, I can tell you that there is great doubt if
your--if Mr. Leicester did commit suicide. Thinking it might grieve you
more deeply, I kept the papers away that said anything of the matter;
but even now a man lies in prison charged with his murder!"
"Charged with his murder!" repeated Ada, starting. "How?--when? She--his
mother--said it was self-destruction!"
"She believes it, perhaps believes it yet, but others think
differently. He was found dead in a miserable basement, alone with the
old man they have imprisoned. Why he went there no one can guess; but it
is known that he was in that basement the night before, but a little
earlier than the time when he appeared at your ball. If he had any
portion of the money obtained from us about him, that may have tempted
the old man, who is miserably poor."
Jacob was going on, but his mistress, who had listened with breathless
attention, interrupted him.
"Do you believe this? Do you believe that he was murdered?"
"Very strong proofs exist against the old man," replied Jacob--"the
public think him guilty."
Ada drew a deep breath.
"You have taken a terrible load from my heart," she said, pressing one
hand to her bosom, and sinking down upon the couch with a low,
hysterical laugh. "He is dead, but there is a chance that I did not kill
him. I begin to loathe myself less."
"And me!--_me_ you will never cease to hate?"
"You have been a good friend to me, Jacob Strong, better than I
deserved," answered Ada, reaching forth her hand, which the servant
wrung rather than pressed.
"And this last act," he said, "when I tried to free you from the grasp
of a vile man, was the most kind, the most friendly thing I ever did!"
Ada started up and drew her hand from his grasp.
"Hush, not a word more," she said, "if we are to be anything to each
other hereafter. He was my husband--he is dead!"
She sunk back to the cushions of her couch a moment after, and veiling
her eyes with one hand, fell into thought. Jacob stood humbly before
her; for though they spoke and acted as friends, nay, almost as brother
and sister, he never lost the respectful demeanor befitting his position
in Ada's household.
She sat up, at length, with a calmer and more resolute expression of
countenance.
"Now tell me all that relates to his death," she said. "Who is charged
with it? What is the evidence?"
Jacob related all that he knew regarding the arrest of old Mr. Warren.
In his own heart he did not believe the poor man guilty, but he
abstained from expressing this, for it was an intuition rather than a
belief, and Jacob could not but see that his own exculpation in the eyes
of the fair creature to whom he spoke, would depend upon her belief in
another's guilt. Jacob had no courage to express more than known facts
as they appeared in the case. The vague impressions that haunted him
were, in truth, too indefinite for words.
Ada listened with profound attention. She had not been so still or so
firm before, since her husband's death. It required time for feelings
strong as hers to turn into a new channel, and the passage from
self-hatred to revenge was still as it was terrible.
She remained silent for some minutes after Jacob had told her all, and
when she did speak, the whole character of her face was changed.
"If this man is guilty, Leicester's death lies not here!" she said,
pressing one hand hard upon her heart, as she walked slowly up and down
the boudoir. "When he is arraigned for trial, I am acquitted or
convicted. You also, Jacob Strong; for if this old man is not
Leicester's murderer, you and I drove him to suicide."
Jacob did not reply. In his soul he believed every step that he had
taken against William Leicester to be right, and he felt guiltless of
his death, no matter in what form it came; but he knew that argument
would never remove the belief that had fixed like a monomania upon that
unhappy woman, and wisely, therefore, he attempted none.
"I have told you all," he said, moving toward the door. "In any case my
conscience is at rest!"
She did not appear to heed his words, but asked abruptly,
"Are the laws of America strict and searching? Do murderers ever escape
here?"
"Sometimes they do, no doubt," answered Jacob, with a grim smile, "but
then probably quite as many innocent men are hung, so that the balance
is kept about equal."
"And how do the guilty escape?"
"Oh, by any of the thousand ways that a smart lawyer can invent. With
money enough it is easy to evade the law, or tire it out with exceptions
and appeals."
"Then money can do this?"
"What is there that money _cannot_ do?"
A wan smile flitted over Ada's face.
"Oh! who should know its power better than myself?" she said. Then she
resumed. "But this man, this grey-headed murderer--has he this
power?--can he control money enough to screen the blood he has shed?"
"He is miserably poor!"
"Then the trial will be an unprejudiced one. If proven guilty he must
atone for the guilt. If acquitted fairly, openly, without the aid of
money or influence, then are we guilty, Jacob Strong, guilty as those
who hurl a man to the brink of a precipice, which he is sure to plunge
down."
"No man who simply pursues his duty should reproach himself for the
crime of another," was the grave reply.
"But have _I_ done my duty? Can I be guiltless of my husband's desperate
act?"
Jacob was silent.
"You cannot answer me, my friend," said Ada mournfully.
"Yes! I can. William Leicester's death, if he in fact fell by his own
hand, was the natural end of a vicious life."
Ada waved her hand sharply, thus forbidding him to proceed with the
subject, and entering her dressing-room, closed the door.
Jacob stood for a time gazing vacantly at the door through which she had
disappeared, then heaving a deep sigh, the strange being left the
boudoir, but a vague feeling of self-reproach at his heart, rendered
him more than usually sad all the next day. True, he had changed the
current of Ada's grief, had lifted a burden of self-reproach from her
heart; but had he not filled it with other and not less bitter passions?