"Grief is proud, and makes its owner stout."
--_King John_
It was nearly one o'clock in the morning when Mrs. Headley, wrapped
in her husband's loose military cloak and forage cap, once more
approached the apartment of Ronayne, situated at the inner extremity
of the low range of buildings inhabited by herself. This disguise
had been assumed, not because she felt ashamed of the errand on
which she was bound, but because she did not wish to provoke
curiosity or remark, in the event of her encountering, while going
or returning, any of the reliefs or patrols, which she knew orders
had been given, for the first time that night, to have changed
every half hour. In the extreme darkness of the night, the difference
of her height could scarcely be distinguished from that of her
husband, and it was not likely that any one would address the
supposed commanding officer, whom all would assume anxious in regard
to the health of his subordinate, and on his way to ascertain the
extent of his malady.
The lights were burning dimly in the apartment. There was a window
on each side of the door, and the farthest of these she fancied
she saw shaded by a human form from without. She stopped suddenly,
and kept her eyes riveted on the object, holding in her breath that
she might not betray her presence. Presently the shadow was removed
from the window, and lost altogether to her sight. A movement of
the light now made within was reflected on the figure of Ronayne,
who, with a candle in his hand, seemed to be approaching the door.
He was still dressed as he had thrown himself on his bed, on
entering, in the deerskin hunting-frock he had worn during the day,
and his temples were bound with a blue-bordered scarlet bandanna
handkerchief--for he had ever loathed the abomination of a nightcap
as being symbolical of the gibbet. As he came nearer to the window,
the light which he bore reflected distinctly without and upon an
Indian standing in the doorway, similarly habited, even to the very
turban.
Mrs. Headley felt that she could not be mistaken in the figure,
but if any doubt had existed, it would have been dissipated when
involuntarily calling out, and in a tone meant to imitate the
harsher voice of her husband, the name of Wau-nan-gee, the
face was wildly turned in the broad light to penetrate the darkness
which half enshrouded her from view, and the features of the boy
distinctly revealed. Surprised, but armed with strong resolution,
she made a rapid forward movement to seize and detain him, knowing
well that Ronayne, at the sound of voices, would come forth at once
to her assistance; but the Indian, without uttering a sound, stole
rapidly away towards the picketing in the distance, and was seen
no more.
As Mrs. Headley now approached the door, it was opened by Ronayne,
who apologised to her for not having sooner attended to her knock,
but declared it to be so low that he had not distinctly heard it.
"Nay," she replied, when she had entered and taken a seat, "I did
not knock, nor had I intended to knock; I have disturbed another
midnight visitor."
"Another visitor! To whom do you allude, my dear Mrs. Headley? I
must have deceived myself, or surely I heard, soon after I had
risen from my couch, the name of Wau-nan-gee."
"You did not deceive yourself," she returned, gravely; "I saw
Wau-nan-gee at the threshold of your door as plainly as I see you,
and habited in the same manner. I called to him, but he fled."
"Impossible!" said the anxious officer; "wherefore should he flee
after knocking for admission? What motive could he have in coming?
and how could he obtain admission unperceived? I have no doubt that
fatigue and excitement and the lateness of the hour have tended to
call up this vision. Would that you could make it real."
"Ronayne," repeated Mrs. Headley, gravely, "you well know that I
am not given much to imagine that which is not. Even to the very
handkerchief you have on your head, his dress was identical, was
Wau-nan-gee's; and I well recollect the occasion when, at the
distribution of the annual presents to the Indians, you appropriated
that handkerchief to yourself, because, as you said, Wau-nan-gee
had manifested so much good taste in choosing one like it."
"But, my dear Mrs. Headley," returned the officer with gravity,
while, after closing the shutters, he took a seat at her side, "you
must pardon me if the very fact of the resemblance in dress only
increases my conviction of the illusion. In all probability, it
was my shadow that you saw reflected by the strong light upon the
glass upper half of the door."
"As you please, Ronayne; but, for my own part, I have not the
slightest doubt on the subject. You ask how he could get here?
Even, as you will remember, you once made an evasion from the
fort--well intended, I grant, but still an evasion from the fort--over
the picketing of the fort. But the matter would not be of so much
consequence at any other time. At present, it is connected with
much that I have to reveal; but how so connected, I cannot even
fancy myself. Ronayne," she continued, taking his hand and pressing
it in her own, "disabuse yourself of the idea that Wau-nan-gee,
whatever he may have been, is now your friend."
"Wau-nan-gee not my friend?" returned the officer, sadly. "Well,
I was prepared in some degree to hear the assertion, Mrs. Headley,
our conversation an hour since being well calculated to make me
revolve the subject in my mind during your short absence, and I
have done so. When you mentioned a moment ago that Wau-nan-gee
had been at this door, seeking for admission, I felt confident that
you had done him great wrong; but now, I confess, since you so
positively assert his presence and sudden evasion, I am led to
apprehend, I know not what. Speak; let me hear it all," he concluded,
with bitterness.
"Ronayne, my almost son," she said, leaning her arm affectionately
on his shoulder, "it was with the view that suspicion should be
excited in your mind by my language that I stated what I did. I
did not wish the truth to burst upon you with annihilating suddenness,
and therefore sought to prepare you for the blow I am destined to
inflict."
"And that is--" he said, with stern and furrowed brow, a pallid
cheek, and compressed lip.
"Nay, Ronayne, I like not that tone and manner."
"Proceed, Mrs. Headley, pray proceed; I am ready to hear all. Whence
this sorrow so much keener than that I now endure, and how is it
connected with Wau-nan-gee!"
"Has it never occurred to you to connect the one with the other?"
she observed, in low and uncertain accents.
"Ha! is it that?" he exclaimed, vehemently starting and hurriedly
pacing the apartment. "It is then even as your words had led me to
infer. Still, I would not approach the subject myself. I waited
for something more direct from your lips. You have uttered it, and
I am now prepared to hear all. But, Mrs. Headley, mark me, be well
assured of all you say; let not mere appearances be the groundwork
of your suspicions, or you destroy two generous hearts for ever;
but," he resumed more calmly, yet with a look of fierce determination,
as he once more seated himself at her side, "although the love I
bear Maria is deeper far than man ever bore for woman, assure me
that it is not returned, that this soft--eyed boy, with Indian
guile, has stolen the love in which I lived, and then I tear her
from my heart for ever. Think me no mere puling fawnster, craving
a love that is not freely given. As the passion that I feel is
fire, hot as the Virginian sun that nurtured me, so will it become
ice the moment it ceases to be fed by that which first enkindled
it. Yes," he continued, bitterly, "I could tear my heart out if in
its weakness it could pine for one, however once endeared, who had
ceased to respond to all its devotedness and worship. I might think
of her, but only to sustain my wounded spirit. Contempt and scorn
for her fickleness, not love--base and grovelling love--should ever
be associated with her image, when undesiredly it arose to my
repelling memory. But oh, God!" he exclaimed, bowing his head upon
hand, and yielding to his deep emotion, "is it possible that this
can be! Can it be that I should ever speak and think of Maria thus!
Oh, whence this too great affliction! why this separation of soul
from soul! this rending asunder of the mystic bond that once united
us! But stop!" and he raised his head, the hot and inflaming tears
still gathering in his eyes, "she cannot surely thus have acted,
and yet--and yet--oh! Mrs. Headley, if you knew the desolation of
my heart, you would pity me. It is crushed, crushed!"
During this painful ebullition of contradictory feeling, in which
pride and love combated fiercely for the ascendency, Mrs. Headley
had been deeply affected; but feeling the necessity for going
through the task she had imposed upon herself, she strove as much
as possible to appear calm and collected, even severe. His
last appeal brought tears from her own eyes.
"Indeed, indeed, Ronayne," she exclaimed, pressing his hand fervently
between her palms, "I do pity you, I do sympathize with you, even
as a mother, in the desolation of your heavily-stricken heart. I
had dreaded this emotion, and only my strong regard for yourself
gave me strength to undertake the infliction of the counter wound,
which I knew alone could preserve you from utter misery and despair;
and yet, if you would cherish the illusion, if you would not that
the stern reality should sear up each avenue to hope, to each
sweeter recollection of the past, I will, if you desire it, abstain."
"Nay, not so, Mrs. Headley," replied the unhappy officer; "you are
very cruel, but I know you mean it well; proceed--let me be told
all. The stronger your recital, the more confirmatory of the utter
destruction of my dreams of happiness, and the better for myself.
I have already said that scorn and contempt alone can dwell in my
heart, if that which I surmise you are about to relate be but found
to be true. I am ready for the torture--begin!" and, as if with
a dogged determination to hear, and suffer while he heard, he leaned
his elbow on the back of his chair, and covered his eyes with his
hand.
The recital need not be repeated here. All that had occurred on
the preceding day, and that which is already known to the reader,
Mrs. Headley now communicated, adding that she had been undecided
in her opinion on the subject, until the answer to the question
put to Von Voltenberg convinced her that the whole thing had been
planned, and that she had willingly thrown herself into the power
of Wau-nan-gee. The few guns, she concluded, were evidently a signal
of which she availed herself by instantly galloping off, while
Ronayne was yet at some distance from her, and unhorsed.
Prepared as the unhappy officer had been for intelligence involving
this mysterious change of affection in his wife, he was utterly
dismayed when Mrs. Headley recounted what she had witnessed in the
summer-house, to which she had voluntarily gone, and from which
she probably never would have returned had not accident disclosed
the secret of the trap--door.
"This is, indeed, a terrible blow!" he said, solemnly, removing
his hand and exhibiting a pale cheek and lip, and a stern and
knitted brow; "but now I know the worst, I better can bear the
infliction. Strange, I almost hate myself for it; but I feel my
heart relieved. I know I am no longer cared for there, and wherefore
seek to force an erring woman to my will? And yet, when I think of
it, of the monstrous love that weds rich intellect and gorgeous
beauty to the mere blushing bud of scarce conscious boyhood, I feel
as one utterly bewildered. Still, again, since that love be hers,
since she may not control the passion that urges her to her fate,
so unselfish am I in my feeling, even amid all the weight of my
disappointment, that rather would I have her free and happy in the
love she has exchanged, than know her pining in endless captivity,
separated from and consumed with vain desire for a reunion with
myself--her love for me unquenched and unquenchable."
"Ah! what a husband has she not lost! Generous, noble Ronayne, that
is what I had expected. You bear this bravely; I knew you would,
or never should I have dared to enter upon the matter. But
your generosity must go further; it must never be known that Maria
has gone off willingly--no doubt must be entertained of her
continued love for you. She must still be respected, even as she
is pitied and deplored; the belief that she has been made captive
and carried off must not be shaken."
"The struggle at her heart must indeed have been great before she
fell," remarked Ronayne, musingly, and with an air of profound
sadness; "for although her appearance in the rude vault beneath
the floor of the summer-house would appear to indicate compulsion,
her after conduct justifies not the belief. The imploring earnestness
with which she entreated you, Mrs. Headley, not to make known what
you had seen to me; her abstaining from all censure of Wau-nan-gee
at the moment, and her subsequent interest in him, too forcible to
be concealed; her strange and unaccountable manner during our ride,
as if to banish some gnawing reproach at her heart; her galloping
off when freed for the moment from my presence, and at the evident
signal given to announce that everything was prepared for her
reception; the appearance of her trunks in the farm-house, evidently,
I am now convinced, taken there within a day or two; the pretended
desire of the Indians, friends of Wau-nan-gee, to make me a prisoner,
and thus induce in me the belief that such was her fate. Oh! yes,"
he continued, rising and pacing the room rapidly, "I can see through
the whole plot. His party were Pottowatomies, painted as warriors
of a distant tribe, that suspicion might be averted from themselves.
Their object was not to make either Von Voltenberg or myself
prisoners, but merely to give such evidence of hostility as to
cause us to believe they were enemies. Oh, what sin, what artifice
for a woman once so ingenious, a boy so young! But now I am assured
of all this, I am better--I am better. Some sudden inspiration has
flashed the truth upon me, that I might, find that relief which a
knowledge of her unfaithfulness alone can render me."
"It must have been even so," rejoined Mrs. Headley; "for, certainly,
the fact of yourself and Von Voltenberg being allowed to escape by
hostile Indians, who could so easily have shot you down, or taken
you prisoners, had they been really so inclined, appears to me to
be incredible."
"And yet, if it was planned," pursued Ronayne thoughtfully, "what
opportunity of communication had they to arrange their measures?
Wau-nan-gee has, we know, long been absent for weeks, or certainly
not once within the fort."
"Ronayne," said Mrs. Headley, significantly, "I speak to you of
these things freely as to one so much younger than myself. Have I
not just said that I saw Wau-nan-gee most distinctly at your door
as I entered--nobody but ourselves know that he has got in, much
less in what manner."
"I understand you, my dear Mrs. Headley; you would infer that he
has stolen in at some obscure part of the fort, and under cover of
the darkness; but even if so, am I not always at home?"
"Never on guard, Ronayne; or am I mistaken," she added with a faint
smile, "in supposing that the officer on duty passes the night with
his men?"
"By heaven it is so," returned the Virginian vehemently, and striking
his brow with his open palm, "this intimacy is of long standing.
Though pretending absence, Wau-nan-gee has been ever present. My
guard nights have been selected for those interviews. The
poison of his young love has been infused into the willing woman's
ear and heart, and now that I recollect it, often on my return home
have I seen her, pale, dejected, and full of thought--he has
entreated her to fly with him--to suffer him to be the sole, the
undivided sharer of her love--she has hesitated, struggled, and
finally consented. By the same means by which his entrance has been
effected, the trunks of Hardscrabble have been removed, and all
was prepared for her evasion yesterday, had she not been baffled
in her object by your sudden appearance. Oh, I see it all!"