THE OUTLAW AND HIS VICTIM.
Lucy Munro re-entered the dwelling at a moment most inopportune. It was
not less her obvious policy than desire--prompted as well by the
necessity of escaping the notice and consequent suspicions of those whom
she had defrauded of their prey, as by a due sense of that delicate
propriety which belonged to her sex, and which her education, as the
reader will have conjectured, had taught her properly to estimate--that
made her now seek to avoid scrutiny or observation at the moment of her
return. Though the niece, and now under the sole direction and authority
of Munro, she was the child of one as little like that personage in
spirit and pursuit as may well be imagined. It is not necessary that we
should dwell more particularly upon this difference. It happened with
the two brothers, as many of us have discovered in other cases, that
their mental and moral make, though seemingly under the same tutorship,
was widely dissimilar. The elder Munro, at an early period in life,
broke through all restraints--defied all responsibilities--scorned all
human consequences--took no pride or pleasure in any of its domestic
associations--and was only known as a vicious profligate, with whom
nothing might be done in the way of restraint or reformation. When grown
to manhood, he suddenly left his parental home, and went, for a time, no
one could say whither. When heard of, it appeared from all accounts that
his licentiousness of habit had not deserted him: still, however, it had
not, as had been anticipated, led to any fearful or very pernicious
results. Years passed on, the parents died, and the brothers grew more
than ever separate; when, in different and remote communities, they each
took wives to themselves.
The younger, Edgar Munro, the father of Lucy, grew prosperous in
business--for a season at least--and, until borne down by a rush of
unfavorable circumstances, he spared neither pains nor expense in the
culture of the young mind of that daughter whose fortunes are now
somewhat before us. Nothing which might tend in the slightest to her
personal improvement had been withheld; and the due feminine grace and
accomplishment which followed these cares fitted the maiden for the most
refined intellectual converse, and for every gentle association. She was
familiar with books; had acquired a large taste for letters; and a vein
of romantic enthusiasm, not uncommon to the southern temperament, and
which she possessed in a considerable degree, was not a little sharpened
and exaggerated by the works which fell into her hands.
Tenderly loved and gently nurtured by her parents, it was at that period
in her life in which their presence and guardianship were most seriously
needed, that she became an orphan; and her future charge necessarily
devolved upon an uncle, between whom and her father, since their early
manhood, but little association of any kind had taken place. The one
looked upon the other as too licentious, if not criminally so, in his
habits and pursuits; he did not know their extent, or dream of their
character, or he had never doubted for an instant; while he, in turn, so
estimated, did not fail to consider and to style his more sedate brother
an inveterate and tedious proser; a dull sermonizer on feelings which he
knew nothing about, and could never understand--one who prosed on to the
end of the chapter, without charm or change, worrying all about him with
exhortations to which they yielded no regard.
The parties were fairly quits, and there was no love lost between them.
They saw each other but seldom, and, when the surviving brother took up
his abode in the _new purchase_, as the Indian acquisitions of modern
times have been usually styled, he was lost sight of, for a time,
entirely, by his more staid and worthy kinsman.
Still, Edgar Munro did not look upon his brother as utterly bad. A wild
indifference to social forms, and those staid customs which in the
estimation of society become virtues, was, in his idea, the most serious
error of which Walter had been guilty. In this thought he persisted to
the last, and did not so much feel the privations to which his death
must subject his child, in the belief and hope that his brother would
not only be able but willing to supply the loss.
In one respect he was not mistaken. The afflictions which threw the
niece of Walter a dependant upon his bounty, and a charge upon his
attention, revived in some measure his almost smothered and in part
forgotten regards of kindred; and with a tolerably good grace he came
forward to the duty, and took the orphan to the asylum, such as it was,
to which his brother's death-bed prayer had recommended her. At first,
there was something to her young mind savoring of the romance to which
she had rather given herself up, in the notion of a woodland cottage,
and rural sports, and wild vines gadding fantastically around secluded
bowers; but the reality--the sad reality of such a home and its
associations--pressed too soon and heavily upon her to permit her much
longer to entertain or encourage the dream of that glad fancy in which
she originally set out.
The sphere to which she was transferred, it was soon evident, was
neither grateful to the heart nor suited to the mind whose education had
been such as hers; and the spirit of the young maiden, at all times
given rather to a dreamy melancholy than to any very animated impulses,
put on, in its new abiding-place, a garb of increased severity, which at
certain moments indicated more of deep and settled misanthropy than any
mere constitutionality of habit.
Munro was not at all times rude of speech and manner; and, when he
pleased, knew well how so to direct himself as to sooth such a
disposition. He saw, and in a little while well understood, the temper
of his niece; and, with a consideration under all circumstances rather
creditable, he would most usually defer, with a ready accommodation of
his own, to her peculiarities. He was pleased and proud of her
accomplishments; and from being thus proud, so far as such an emotion
could consistently comport with a life and a licentiousness such as his,
he had learned, in reality, to love the object who could thus awaken a
sentiment so much beyond those inculcated by all his other habits. To
her he exhibited none of the harsh manner which marked his intercourse
with all other persons; and in his heart sincerely regretted, and sought
to avoid the necessity which, as we have elsewhere seen, had made him
pledge her hand to Rivers--a disposition of it which he knew was no less
galling and painful to her than it was irksome yet unavoidable to
himself.
Unhappily, however, for these sentiments, he was too much under the
control and at the mercy of his colleague to resist or refuse his
application for her person; and though for a long time baffling, under
various pretences, the pursuit of that ferocious ruffian, he felt that
the time was at hand, unless some providential interference willed it
otherwise, when the sacrifice would be insisted on and must be made; or
probably her safety, as well as his own, might necessarily be
compromised. He knew too well the character of Rivers, and was too much
in his power, to risk much in opposition to his will and desires: and,
as we have already heard him declare, from having been at one time, and
in some respects, the tutor, he had now become, from the operation of
circumstances, the mere creature and instrument of that unprincipled
wretch.
Whatever may have been the crimes of Munro beyond those already
developed--known to and in the possession of Rivers--and whatever the
nature of those ties, as well of league as of mutual risk, which bound
the parties together in such close affinity, it is not necessary that we
should state, nor, indeed, might it be altogether within our compass or
capacity to do so. Their connection had, we doubt not, many
ramifications; and was strengthened, there is little question, by a
thousand mutual necessities, resulting from their joint and
frequently-repeated violations of the laws of the land. They were both
members of an irregular club, known by its constituents in Georgia as
the most atrocious criminal that ever offended society or defied its
punishments; and the almost masonic mysteries and bond which
distinguished the members provided them with a pledge of security which
gave an added impetus to their already reckless vindictiveness against
man and humanity. In a country, the population of which, few and far
between, is spread over a wide, wild, and little-cultivated territory,
the chances of punishment for crime, rarely realized, scarcely
occasioned a thought among offenders; and invited, by the impunity which
marked their atrocities, their reiterated commission. We have digressed,
however, somewhat from our narrative, but thus much was necessary to the
proper understanding of the portions immediately before us, and to the
consideration of which we now return.
The moment was inopportune, as we have already remarked, at which Lucy
Munro endeavored to effect her return to her own apartment. She was
compelled, for the attainment of this object, to cross directly over the
great hall, from the room adjoining and back of which the little
shed-room projected in which she lodged. This hall was immediately
entered upon from the passage-way, leading into the court in front, and
but a few steps were necessary for its attainment. The hall had but a
single outlet besides that through which she now entered, and this led
at once into the adjoining apartment, through which only could she make
her way to her own. Unhappily, this passage also contained the stairway
flight which led into the upper story of the building; and, in her haste
to accomplish her return, she had penetrated too far to effect her
retreat, when a sudden change of direction in the light which Rivers
carried sufficed to develop the form of that person, at the foot of the
stairs, followed by Munro, just returning from the attempt which she had
rendered fruitless, and now approaching directly toward her.
Conscious of the awkwardness of her situation, and with a degree of
apprehension which now for the first time seemed to paralyze her
faculties, she endeavored, but with some uncertainty and hesitation of
manner, to gain the shelter of the wall which stretched dimly beside
her; a hope not entirely vain, had she pursued it decisively, since the
lamp which Rivers carried gave forth but a feeble ray, barely adequate
to the task of guiding the footsteps of those who employed it. But the
glance of the outlaw, rendered, it would seem, more malignantly
penetrating from his recent disappointment, detected the movement; and
though, from the imperfectness of the light, uncertain of the object,
with a ready activity, the result of a conviction that the
long-sought-for victim was now before him, he sprang forward, flinging
aside the lamp as he did so, and grasping with one hand and with rigid
gripe the almost-fainting girl: the other, brandishing a bared knife,
was uplifted to strike, when her shrieks arrested the blow.
Disappointed in not finding the object he sought, the fury of the outlaw
was rather heightened than diminished when he discovered that his arm
only encircled a young and terrified female; and his teeth were gnashed
in token of the bitter wrath in his bosom, and angry curses came from
his lips in the undisguised vexation of his spirit. In the meantime,
Munro advanced, and the lamp having been dashed out in the onset of
Rivers, they were still ignorant of the character of their prisoner,
until, having somewhat recovered from her first alarm, and struggling
for deliverance from the painful gripe which secured her arm, she
exclaimed--
"Unhand me, sir--unhand me, on the instant. What mean you by this
violence?"
"Ha! it is you then, fair mistress, that have done this work. It is you
that have meddled in the concerns of men, prying into their plans, and
arresting their execution. By my soul, I had not thought you so ready or
so apt; but how do you reconcile it to your notions of propriety to be
abroad at an hour which is something late for a coy damsel? Munro, you
must look to these rare doings, or they will work you some difficulty in
time to come."
Munro advanced and addressed her with some sternness--"Why are you
abroad, Lucy, and at this hour? why this disquietude, and what has
alarmed you?--why have you left your chamber?"
The uncle did not obtain, nor indeed did he appear to expect, any answer
to his inquiries. In the meanwhile, Rivers held possession of her arm,
and she continued fruitlessly struggling for some moments in his grasp,
referring at length to the speaker for that interference which he now
appeared slow to manifest.
"Oh, sir! will you suffer me to be treated thus--will you not make this
man undo his hold, and let me retire to my chamber?"
"You should have been there long before this, Lucy," was the reply, in a
grave, stern accent. "You must not complain, if, found thus, at
midnight, in a part of the building remote from your chamber, you should
be liable to suspicions of meddling with things which should not concern
you."
"Come, mistress--pray answer to this. Where have you been to-night--what
doing--why abroad? Have you been eavesdropping--telling tales--hatching
plots?"
The natural ferocity of Rivers's manner was rather heightened by the
tone which he assumed. The maiden, struggling still for the release for
which her spirit would not suffer her to implore, exclaimed:--
"Insolent! By what right do you ask me these or any questions? Unhand
me, coward--unhand me. You are strong and brave only where the feeble
are your opponents."
But he maintained his grasp with even more rigidity than before; and she
turned towards the spot at which stood her uncle, but he had left the
apartment for a light.
"Your speech is bold, fair mistress, and ill suits my temper. You must
be more chary of your language, or you will provoke me beyond my own
strength of restraint. You are my property--my slave, if I so please it,
and all your appeals to your uncle will be of no effect. Hark you! you
have done that to-night for which I am almost tempted to put this dagger
into your heart, woman as you are! You have come between me and my
victim--between me and my enemy. I had summed up all my wrongs,
intending their settlement to-night. You have thwarted all my hopes--you
have defrauded me of all my anticipations. What is it prevents me from
putting you to death on the spot? Nothing. I have no fears, no loves, to
hold and keep me back. I live but for revenge, and that which stays and
would prevent me from its enjoyment, must also become its victim."
At this moment, Munro returned with a lamp. The affrighted girl again
appealed to him, but he heeded her not. He soon left the passage, and
the outlaw proceeded:--
"You love this youth--nay, shrink not back; let not your head droop in
shame; he is worthy of your love, and for this, among other things, I
hate him. He is worthy of the love of others, and for this, too, I hate
him. Fool that you are, he cares not for you. 'Spite of all your aid
to-night, he will not remember you to-morrow--he has no thought of
you--his hope is built upon--he is wedded to another.
"Hear me, then! your life is in my hands, and at my mercy. There are
none present who could interfere and arrest the blow. My dagger is even
now upon your bosom--do you not feel it? At a word--a single suggestion
of my thought--it performs its office, and for this night's defeat I am
half revenged. You may arrest my arm--you may procure your release--even
more--you may escape from the bondage of that union with me for which
your uncle stands pledged, if you please."
"Speak--say--how!" was the eager exclamation of the maiden when this
last suggestion met her ears.
"Put me on the scent--say on what route have you sent this boy, that I
may realize the revenge I so often dream of."
"Never, never, as I hope to live. I would rather you should strike me
dead on the spot."
"Why, so I will," he exclaimed furiously, and his arm rose and the
weapon descended, but he arrested the stroke as it approached her.
"No! not yet. There will be time enough for this, and you will perhaps
be more ready and resigned when I have got rid of this youth in whom you
are so much interested. I need not disguise my purpose to you--you must
have known it, when conspiring for its defeat; and now, Lucy, be
assured, I shall not slumber in pursuit of him. I may be delayed, my
revenge may be protracted, but I shall close with him at last. With
holding the clue which you may unfold, can not serve him very greatly;
and having it in your hands, you may serve yourself and me. Take my
offer--put me on his route, so that he shall not escape me, and be free
henceforward from pursuit, or, as you phrase it, from persecution of
mine."
"You offer highly, very highly, Guy Rivers, and I should be tempted to
anything, save this. But I have not taken this step to undo it. I shall
give you no clue, no assistance which may lead to crime and to the
murder of the innocent. Release my hand, sir, and suffer me to retire."
"You have the means of safety and release in your own hands--a single
condition complied with, and, so far as I am concerned, they are yours.
Where is he gone--where secreted! What is the route which you have
advised him to take? Speak, and to the point, Lucy Munro, for I may not
longer be trifled with."
"He is safe, and by this time, I hope, beyond your reach. I tell you
thus much, because I feel that it can not yield you more satisfaction
than it yields to me."
"It is in vain, woman, that you would trifle with and delay me; he can
not escape me in the end. All these woods are familiar to me, in night
as in day, as the apartment in which we stand; and towards this boy I
entertain a feeling which will endue me with an activity and energy as
unshrinking in the pursuit as the appetite for revenge is keen which
gives them birth and impulse. I hate him with a sleepless, an
unforgiving hate, that can not be quieted. He has dishonored me in the
presence of these men--he has been the instrument through which I bear
this badge, this brand-stamp on my cheek--he has come between my passion
and its object--nay, droop not--I have no reference now to you, though
you, too, have been won by his insidious attractions, while he gives you
no thought in return--he has done more than this, occasioned more than
this, and wonder not that I had it in my heart at one moment to-night to
put my dagger into your bosom, since through you it had been defrauded
of its object. But why tremble--do you not tell me he is safe?"
"I do! and for this reason I tremble. I tremble with joy, not fear. I
rejoice that through my poor help he is safe. I did it all. I sought
him--hear me, Guy Rivers, for in his safety I feel strong to speak--I
sought him even in his chamber, and felt no shame--I led the way--I
guided him through all the avenues of the house--when you ascended the
stairs we stood over it in the closet which is at its head. We beheld
your progress--saw, and counted every step you took; heard every word
you uttered; and more than once, when your fiend soul spoke through your
lips, in horrible threatenings, my hand arrested the weapon with which
the youth whom you now seek would have sent you to your long account,
with all your sins upon your head. I saved you from his blow; not
because you deserved to live, but because, at that moment, you were too
little prepared to die."
It would be difficult to imagine--certainly impossible to describe, the
rage of Rivers, as, with an excited spirit, the young girl, still
trembling, as she expressed it, from joy, not fear, avowed all the
particulars of Colleton's escape. She proceeded with much of the fervor
and manner of one roused into all the inspiration of a holy defiance of
danger:--
"Wonder not, therefore, that I tremble--my soul is full of joy at his
escape. I heed not the sneer and the sarcasm which is upon your lips and
in your eyes. I went boldly and confidently even into the chamber of the
youth--I aroused him from his slumbers--I defied, at that moment of
peril, what were far worse to me than your suspicions--I defied such as
might have been his. I was conscious of no sin--no improper thought--and
I called upon God to protect and to sanction me in what I had
undertaken. He has done so, and I bless him for the sanction."
She sunk upon her knees as she spoke, and her lips murmured and parted
as if in prayer, while the tears--tears of gladness--streamed warmly and
abundantly from her eyes. The rage of the outlaw grew momently darker
and less governable. The white foam collected about his mouth--while his
hands, though still retaining their gripe upon hers, trembled almost as
much as her own. He spoke in broken and bitter words.
"And may God curse you for it! You have dared much, Lucy Munro, this
hour. You have bearded a worse fury than the tiger thirsting after
blood. What madness prompts you to this folly? You have heard me avow my
utter, uncontrollable hatred of this man--my determination, if possible,
to destroy him, and yet you interpose. You dare to save him in my
defiance. You teach him our designs, and labor to thwart them yourself.
Hear me, girl! you know me well--you know I never threaten without
execution. I can understand how it is that a spirit, feeling at this
moment as does your own, should defy death. But, bethink you--is there
nothing in your thought which is worse than death, from the terrors of
which, the pure mind, however fortified by heroic resolution, must still
shrink and tremble? Beware, then, how you chafe me. Say where the youth
has gone, and in this way retrieve, if you can, the error which taught
you to connive at his escape."
"I know not what you mean, and have no fears of anything you can do. On
this point I feel secure, and bid you defiance. To think now, that,
having chiefly effected the escape of the youth, I would place him again
within your power, argues a degree of stupidity in me that is wantonly
insulting. I tell you he has fled, by this time, beyond your reach. I
say no more. It is enough that he is in safety; before a word of mine
puts him in danger, I'll perish by your hands, or any hands."
"Then shall you perish, fool!" cried the ruffian; and his hand, hurried
by the ferocious impulse of his rage, was again uplifted, when, in her
struggles at freedom, a new object met his sight in the chain and
portrait which Ralph had flung about her neck, and which, now falling
from her bosom, arrested his attention, and seemed to awaken some
recognition in his mind. His hold relaxed upon her arm, and with eager
haste he seized the portrait, tearing it away with a single wrench from
the rich chain to which it was appended, and which now in broken
fragments was strewed upon the floor.
Lucy sprang towards him convulsively, and vainly endeavored at its
recovery. Rivers broke the spring, and his eyes gazed with serpent-like
fixedness upon the exquisitely beautiful features which it developed.
His whole appearance underwent a change. The sternness had departed from
his face which now put on an air of abstraction and wandering, not
usually a habit with it. He gazed long and fixedly upon the portrait,
unheeding the efforts of the girl to obtain it, and muttering at
frequent intervals detached sentences, having little dependence upon one
another:--
"Ay--it is she," he exclaimed--"true to the life--bright, beautiful,
young, innocent--and I--But let me not think!"--
Then turning to the maid--
"Fond fool--see you the object of adoration with him whom you so
unprofitably adore. He loves _her_, girl--she, whom I--but why should I
tell it you? is it not enough that we have both loved and loved in vain;
and, in my revenge, you too shall enjoy yours."
"I have nothing to revenge, Guy Rivers--nothing for you, above all
others, to revenge. Give me the miniature; I have it in trust, and it
must not go out of my possession."
She clung to him as she spoke, fruitlessly endeavoring at the recovery
of that which he studiously kept from her reach. He parried her efforts
for a while with something of forbearance; but ere long his original
temper returned, and he exclaimed, with all the air of the demon:--
"Why will you tempt me, and why longer should I trifle? You cannot have
the picture--it belongs, or should belong, as well as its original, to
me. My concern is now with the robber from whom you obtained it. Will
you not say upon what route he went? Will you not guide me--and,
remember well--there are some terrors greater to your mind than any
threat of death. Declare, for the last time--what road he took."
The maiden was still, and showed no sign of reply. Her eye wandered--her
spirit was in prayer. She was alone with a ruffian, irresponsible and
reckless, and she had many fears.
"Will you not speak?" he cried--"then you must hear. Disclose the fact,
Lucy--say, what is the road, or what the course you have directed for
this youth's escape, or--mark me! I have you in my power--my fullest
power--with nothing to restrain my passion or my power, and--"
She struggled desperately to release herself from his grasp, but he
renewed it with all his sinewy strength, enforcing, with a vicelike
gripe, the consciousness, in her mind, of the futility of all her
physical efforts.
"Do you not hear!" he said. "Do you comprehend me."
"Do your worst!" she cried. "Kill me! I defy your power and your
malice!"
"Ha! but do you defy my passions. Hark ye, if ye fear not death, there
is something worse than death to so romantic a damsel, which shall teach
ye fear. Obey me, girl--report the route taken by this fugitive, or by
all that is black in hell or bright in heaven, I--"
And with a whisper, he hissed the concluding and cruel threat in the
ears of the shuddering and shrinking girl. With a husky horror in her
voice, she cried out:--
"You dare not! monster as you are, you dare not!" then shrieking, at the
full height of her voice--"Save me, uncle! save me! save me!"
"Save you! It is he that dooms you! He has given you up to any fate that
I shall decree!"
"Liar! away! I defy you. You dare not, ruffian! Your foul threat is but
meant to frighten me."
The creeping terrors of her voice, as she spoke, contradicted the tenor
of her speech. Her fears--quite as extreme as he sought to make
them--were fully evinced in her trembling accents.
"Frighten you!" answered the ruffian. "Frighten you! why, not so
difficult a matter either! But it is as easy to do, as to threaten--to
make you feel as to make you fear--and why not? why should you not
become the thing at once for which you have been long destined? Once
certainly mine, Lucy Munro, you will abandon the silly notion that you
can be anything to Ralph Colleton! Come!--"
Her shrieks answered him. He clapped his handkerchief upon her mouth.
"Uncle! uncle! save me!"
She was half stifled--she felt breath and strength failing. Her brutal
assailant was hauling her away, with a force to which she could no
longer oppose resistance; and with a single half-ejaculated prayer--"Oh,
God! be merciful!" she sunk senselessly at his feet, even as a falling
corse.