SUBDUED AGONIES.
The entrance of Guy Rivers awakened no emotion among the inmates of the
dwelling; indeed, at the moment, it was almost unperceived. The young
woman happened to be in close attendance upon her parent, for such the
invalid was, and did not observe his approach, while he stood at some
little distance from the couch, surveying the scene. The old lady was
endeavoring, though with a feebleness that grew more apparent with every
breath, to articulate something, to which she seemed to attach much
importance, in the ears of the kneeling girl, who, with breathless
attention, seemed desirous of making it out, but in vain; and,
signifying by her countenance the disappointment which she felt, the
speaker, with something like anger, shook her skinny finger feebly in
her face, and the broken and incoherent words, with rapid effort but
like success, endeavored to find their way through the half-closed
aperture between her teeth. The tears fell fast and full from the eyes
of the kneeling girl, who neither sobbed nor spoke, but, with continued
and yet despairing attention, endeavored earnestly to catch the few
words of one who was on the eve of departure, and the words of whom, at
such a moment, almost invariably acquire a value never attached to them
before: as the sounds of a harp, when the chords are breaking, are said
to articulate a sweet sorrow, as if in mourning for their own fate.
The outlaw, all this while, stood apart and in silence. Although perhaps
but little impressed with the native solemnity of the scene before him,
he was not so ignorant of what was due to humanity, and not so unfeeling
in reference to the parties here interested, as to seek to disturb its
progress or propriety with tone, look, or gesture, which might make
either of them regret his presence. Becoming impatient, however, of a
colloquy which, as he saw that it had not its use, and was only
productive of mortification to one of the parties, he thought only
prudent to terminate, he advanced toward them; and his tread, for the
first time, warned them of his presence.
With an effort which seemed supernatural, the dying woman raised herself
with a sudden start in the bed, and her eyes glared upon him with a
threatening horror, and her lips parting, disclosed the broken and
decayed teeth beneath, ineffectually gnashing, while her long, skinny
fingers warned him away. All this time she appeared to speak, but the
words were unarticulated, though, from the expression of every feature,
it was evident that indignation and reproach made up the entire amount
of everything she had to express. The outlaw was not easily influenced
by anger so impotent as this; and, from his manner of receiving it, it
appeared that he had been for some time accustomed to a reception of a
like kind from the same person. He approached the young girl, who had
now risen from her knees, and spoke to her in words of comparative
kindness:--
"Well, Ellen, you have had an alarm, but I am glad to see you have
suffered no injury. How happened the fire?"
The young woman explained the cause of the conflagration, and narrated
in brief the assistance which had been received from the stranger.
"But I was so terrified, Guy," she added, "that I had not presence of
mind enough to thank him."
"And what should be the value of your spoken thanks, Ellen? The
stranger, if he have sense, must feel that he has them, and the
utterance of such things had better be let alone. But, how is the old
lady now? I see she loves me no better than formerly."
"She is sinking fast, Guy, and is now incapable of speech. Before you
came, she seemed desirous of saying something to me, but she tried in
vain to speak, and now I scarcely think her conscious."
"Believe it not, Ellen: she is conscious of all that is going on, though
her voice may fail her. Her eye is even now fixed upon me, and with the
old expression. She would tear me if she could."
"Oh, think not thus of the dying, Guy--of her who has never harmed, and
would never harm you, if she had the power. And yet, Heaven knows, and
we both know, she has had reason enough to hate, and, if she could, to
destroy you. But she has no such feeling now."
"You mistake, Ellen, or would keep the truth from me. You know she has
always hated me; and, indeed, as you say, she has had cause enough to
hate and destroy me. Had another done to me as I have done to her, I
should not have slept till my hand was in his heart."
"She forgives you all, Guy, I know she does, and God knows I forgive
you--I, who, above all others, have most reason to curse you for ever.
Think not that she can hate upon the brink of the grave. Her mind
wanders, and no wonder that the wrongs of earth press upon her memory,
her reason being gone. She knows not herself of the mood which her
features express. Look not upon her, Guy, I pray you, or let me turn
away my eyes."
"Your spirit, Ellen, is more gentle and shrinking than hers. Had you
felt like her, I verily believe that many a night, when I have been at
rest within your arms, you would have driven a knife into my heart."
"Horrible, Guy! how can you imagine such a thing? Base and worthless as
you have made me, I am too much in your power, I fear--I love you still
too much; and, though like a poison or a firebrand you have clung to my
bosom, I could not have felt for you a single thought of resentment. You
say well when you call me shrinking. I am a creature of a thousand
fears; I am all weakness and worthlessness."
"Well, well--let us not talk further of this. When was the doctor here
last?"
"In the evening he came, and left some directions, but told us plainly
what we had to expect. He said she could not survive longer than the
night; and she looks like it, for within the last few hours she has sunk
surprisingly. But have you brought the medicine?"
"I have, and some drops which are said to stimulate and strengthen."
"I fear they are now of little use, and may only serve to keep up life
in misery. But they may enable her to speak, and I should like to hear
what she seems so desirous to impart."
Ellen took the cordial, and hastily preparing a portion in a wine-glass,
according to the directions, proceeded to administer it to the gasping
patient; but, while the glass was at her lips, the last paroxysm of
death came on, and with it something more of that consciousness now
fleeting for ever. Dashing aside the nostrum with one hand, with the
other she drew the shrinking and half-fainting girl to her side, and,
pressing her down beside her, appeared to give utterance to that which,
from the action, and the few and audible words she made out to
articulate, would seem to have been a benediction.
Rivers, seeing the motion, and remarking the almost supernatural
strength with which the last spasms had endued her, would have taken the
girl from her embrace; but his design was anticipated by the dying
woman, whose eyes glared upon him with an expression rather demoniac
than human, while her paralytic hand, shaking with ineffectual effort,
waved him off. A broken word escaped her lips here and there,
and--"sin"--"forgiveness"--was all that reached the ears of her
grandchild, when her head sank back upon the pillow, and she expired
without a groan.
A dead silence followed this event. The girl had no uttered anguish--she
spoke not her sorrows aloud; yet there was that in the wobegone
countenance, and the dumb grief, that left no doubt of the deep though
suppressed and half-subdued agony of soul within. She seemed one to whom
the worst of life had been long since familiar, and who would not find
it difficult herself to die. She had certainly outlived pride and hope,
if not love; and if the latter feeling had its place in her bosom, as
without doubt it had, then was it a hopeless lingerer, long after the
sunshine and zephyr had gone which first awakened it into bloom and
flower. She knelt beside the inanimate form of her old parent, shedding
no tear, and uttering no sigh. Tears would have poorly expressed the wo
which at that moment she felt; and the outlaw, growing impatient of the
dumb spectacle, now ventured to approach and interrupt her. She rose,
meekly and without reluctance, as he spoke; with a manner which said as
plainly as words could have, said--'Command, and I obey. Bid me go even
now, at midnight, on a perilous journey, over and into foreign lands,
and I go without murmur or repining.' She was a heart-stricken, a
heart-broken, and abused woman--and yet she loved still, and loved her
destroyer.
"Ellen," said he, taking her hand, "your mother was a Christian--a
strict worshipper--one who, for the last few years of her life, seldom
put the Bible out of her hands; and yet she cursed me in her very soul
as she went out of the world."
"Guy, Guy, speak not so, I pray you. Spare me this cruelty, and say not
for the departed spirit what it surely never would have said of itself."
"But it did so say, Ellen, and of this I am satisfied. Hear me, girl. I
know something of mankind, and womankind too, and I am not often
mistaken in the expression of human faces, and certainly was not
mistaken in hers. When, in the last paroxysm, you knelt beside her with
your head down upon her hand and in her grasp, and as I approached her,
her eyes, which feebly threw up the film then rapidly closing over them,
shot out a most angry glare of hatred and reproof; while her lips
parted--I could see, though she could articulate no word--with
involutions which indicated the curse that she could not speak."
"Think not so, I pray you. She had much cause to curse, and often would
she have done so, but for my sake she did not. She would call me a poor
fool, that so loved the one who had brought misery and shame to all of
us; but her malediction was arrested, and she said it not. Oh, no! she
forgave you--I know she did--heard you not the words which she uttered
at the last?"
"Yes, yes--but no matter. We must now talk of other things, Ellen; and
first of all, you must know, then, I am about to be married."
Had a bolt from the crossbow at that moment penetrated into her heart,
the person he addressed could not have been more transfixed than at this
speech. She started--an inquiring and tearful doubt rose into her eyes,
as they settled piercingly upon his own; but the information they met
with there needed no further word of assurance from his lips. He was a
stern tyrant--one, however, who did not trifle.
"I feared as much, Guy--I have had thoughts which as good as told me
this long before. The silent form before me has said to me, over and
over again, you would never wed her whom you have dishonored. Oh, fool
that I was!--spite of her forebodings and my own, I thought--I still
think, and oh, Guy, let me not think in vain--that there would be a time
when you would take away the reproach from my name and the sin from my
soul, by making me your wife, as you have so often promised."
"You have indeed thought like a child, Ellen, if you suppose that,
situated as I am, I could ever marry simply because I loved."
"And will you not love her whom you are now about to wed?"
"Not as much as I have loved you--not half so much as I love you now--if
it be that I have such a feeling at this moment in my bosom."
"And wherefore then would you wed, Guy, with one whom you do not, whom
you can not love? In what have I offended--have I ever reproached or
looked unkindly on you, Guy, even when you came to me, stern and full of
reproaches, chafed with all things and with everybody?"
"There are motives, Ellen, governing my actions into which you must not
inquire--"
"What, not inquire, when on these actions depend all my hope--all my
life! Now indeed you are the tyrant which my old mother said, and all
people say, you are."
The girl for a moment forgot her submissiveness, and her words were
tremulous, less with sorrow than the somewhat strange spirit which her
wrongs had impressed upon her. But sue soon felt the sinking of the
momentary inspiration, and quickly sought to remove the angry scowl
which she perceived coming over the brow of her companion.
"Nay, nay--forgive me, Guy--let me not reproach--let me not accuse you.
I have not done so before: I would not do so now. Do with me as you
please; and yet, if you are bent to wed with another, and forget and
overlook your wrongs to me, there is one kindness which would become
your hands, and which I would joy to receive from them. Will you do for
me this kindness, Guy? Nay, now be not harsh, but say that you will do
it."
She seized his hand appealingly as she spoke, and her moist but
untearful eyes were fixed pleadingly upon his own. The outlaw hesitated
for a moment before he replied.
"I propose, Ellen, to do for you all that may be necessary--to provide
you with additional comforts, and carry you to a place of additional
security, where you shall live to yourself, and have good attendance."
"This is kind--this is much, Guy; but not much more than you have been
accustomed to do for me. That which I seek from you now is something
more than this; promise me that it shall be as I say."
"If it breaks not into my arrangements--if it makes me not go aside from
my path, I will certainly do it, Ellen. Speak, therefore; what is it I
can do for you?"
"It will interfere with none of your arrangements, Guy, I am sure; it
can not take you from your path, for you could not have provided for
that of which you knew not. I have your pledge, therefore--have I not?"
"You have," was the reply, while the manner of Rivers was tinctured with
something like curiosity.
"That is kind--that is as you ought to be. Hear me now, then," and her
voice sunk into a whisper, as if she feared the utterance of her own
words; "take your knife, Guy--pause not, do it quickly, lest I fear and
tremble--strike it deep into the bosom of the poor Ellen, and lay her
beside the cold parent, whose counsels she despised, and all of whose
predictions are now come true. Strike--strike quickly, Guy Rivers; I
have your promise--you can not recede; if you have honor, if you have
truth, you must do as I ask. Give me death--give me peace."
"Foolish girl, would you trifle with me--would you have me spurn and
hate you? Beware!"
The outlaw well knew the yielding and sensitive material out of which
his victim had been made. His stern rebuke was well calculated to effect
in her bosom that revulsion of feeling which he knew would follow any
threat of a withdrawal, even of the lingering and frail fibres of that
affection, few and feeble as they were, which he might have once
persuaded her to believe had bound him to her. The consequence was
immediate, and her subdued tone and resigned action evinced the now
entire supremacy of her natural temperament.
"Oh, forgive me, Guy, I know not what I ask or what I do. I am so worn
and weary, and my head is so heavy, that I think it were far better if I
were in my grave with the cold frame whom we shall soon put there. Heed
not what I say--I am sad and sick, and have not the spirit of reason, or
a healthy will to direct me. Do with me as you will--I will obey you--go
anywhere, and, worst of all, behold you wed another; ay, stand by, if
you desire it, and look on the ceremony, and try to forget that you once
promised me that I should be yours, and yours only."
"You speak more wisely, Ellen; and you will think more calmly upon it
when the present grief of your grandmother's death passes off."
"Oh, that is no grief, now, Guy," was the rather hasty reply. "That is
no grief now: should I regret that she has escaped these tidings--should
I regret that she has ceased to feel trouble, and to see and shed
tears--should I mourn, Guy, that she who loved me to the last, in spite
of my follies and vices, has ceased now to mourn over them? Oh, no! this
is no grief, now; it was grief but a little while ago, but now you have
made it matter of rejoicing."
"Think not of it,--speak no more in this strain, Ellen, lest you anger
me."
"I will not--chide me not--I have no farther reproaches. Yet, Guy, is
she, the lady you are about to wed--is she beautiful, is she young--has
she long raven tresses, as I had once, when your fingers used to play in
them?" and with a sickly smile, which had in it something of an old
vanity, she unbound the string which confined her own hair, and let it
roll down upon her back in thick and beautiful volumes, still black,
glossy and delicately soft as silk.
The outlaw was moved. For a moment his iron muscles relaxed--a gentler
expression overspread his countenance, and he took her in his arms. That
single, half-reluctant embrace was a boon not much bestowed in the
latter days of his victim, and it awakened a thousand tender
recollections in her heart, and unsealed a warm spring of gushing
waters. An infantile smile was in her eyes, while the tears were flowing
down her cheeks.
But, shrinking or yielding, at least to any great extent, made up very
little of the character of the dark man on whom she depended; and the
more than feminine weakness of the young girl who hung upon his bosom
like a dying flower, received its rebuke, after a few moments of
unwonted tenderness, when, coldly resuming his stern habit, he put her
from his arms, and announced to her his intention of immediately taking
his departure.
"What," she asked, "will you not stay with me through the night, and
situated as I am?"
"It is impossible; even now I am waited for, and should have been some
hours on my way to an appointment which I must not break. It is not with
me as with you; I have obligations to others who depend on me, and who
might suffer injury were I to deceive them."
"But this night, Guy--there is little of it left, and I am sure you will
not be expected before the daylight. I feel a new terror when I think I
shall be left by all, and here, too, alone with the dead."
"You will not be alone, and if you were, Ellen, you have been thus
lonely for many months past, and should be now accustomed to it."
"Why, so I should, for it has been a fearful and a weary time, and I
went not to my bed one night without dreading that I should never behold
another day."
"Why, what had you to alarm you? you suffered no affright--no injury? I
had taken care that throughout the forest your cottage should be
respected."
"So I had your assurance, and when I thought, I believed it. I knew you
had the power to do as you assured me you would, but still there were
moments when our own desolation came across my mind; and what with my
sorrows and my fears, I was sometimes persuaded, in my madness, to pray
that I might be relieved of them, were it even by the hands of death."
"You were ever thus foolish, Ellen, and you have as little reason now to
apprehend as then. Besides, it is only for the one night, and in the
morning I shall send those to you who will attend to your own removal to
another spot, and to the interment of the body."
"And where am I to go?"
"What matters it where, Ellen? You have my assurance that it shall be a
place of security and good attendance to which I shall send you."
"True, what matters it where I go--whether among the savage or the
civilized? They are to me all alike, since I may not look them in the
face, or take them by the hand, or hold communion with them, either at
the house of God or at the family fireside."
The gloomy despondence of her spirit was uppermost; and she went on, in
a series of bitter musings, denouncing herself as an outcast, a
worthless something, and, in the language of the sacred text, calling on
the rocks and mountains to cover her. The outlaw, who had none of those
fine feelings which permitted of even momentary sympathy with that
desolation of heart, the sublime agonies of which are so well calculated
to enlist and awaken it, cut short the strain of sorrow and complaint by
a fierce exclamation, which seemed to stun every sense of her spirit.
"Will you never have done?" he demanded. "Am I for ever to listen to
this weakness--this unavailing reproach of yourself and everything
around you? Do I not know that all your complaints and reproaches,
though you address them in so many words to yourself, are intended only
for my use and ear? Can I not see through the poor hypocrisy of such a
lamentation? Know I not that when you curse and deplore the sin you only
withhold the malediction from him who tempted and partook of it, in the
hope that his own spirit will apply it all to himself? Away, girl; I
thought you had a nobler spirit--I thought you felt the love that I now
find existed only in expression."
"I do feel that love; I would, Guy that I felt it not--that it did exist
only in my words. I were then far happier than I am now, since stern
look or language from you would then utterly fail to vex and wound as it
does now. I can not bear your reproaches; look not thus upon me, and
speak not in those harsh sentences--not now--not now, at least, and in
this melancholy presence."
Her looks turned upon the dead body of her parent as she spoke, and with
convulsive effort she rushed toward and clasped it round. She threw
herself beside the corpse and remained inanimate, while the outlaw,
leaving the house for an instant, called the negro servant and commanded
her attendance. He now approached the girl, and taking up her hand,
which lay supine upon the bosom of the dead body, would have soothed her
grief; but though she did not repulse, she yet did not regard him.
"Be calm, Ellen," he said, "recover and be firm. In the morning you
shall have early and good attention, and with this object, in part, am I
disposed to hurry now. Think not, girl, that I forget you. Whatever may
be my fortune, I shall always have an eye to yours. I leave you now, but
shall see you before long, when I shall settle you permanently and
comfortably. Farewell."
He left her in seeming unconsciousness of the words whispered in her
ears, yet she heard them all, and duly estimated their value. To her, to
whom he had once pledged himself entirely, the cold boon of his
attention and sometime care was painfully mortifying. She exhibited
nothing, however, beyond what we have already seen, of the effect of
this consolation upon her heart. There is a period in human emotions,
when feeling itself becomes imperceptible--when the heart (as it were)
receives the _coup de grace_, and days, and months, and years, before
the body expires, shows nothing of the fire which is consuming it.
We would not have it understood to be altogether the case with the young
destitute before us; but, at least, if she still continued to feel these
still-occurring influences, there was little or no outward indication of
their power upon the hidden spirit. She said nothing to him on his
departure, but with a half-wandering sense, that may perhaps have
described something of the ruling passion of an earlier day, she rose
shortly after he had left the house, and placing herself before the
small mirror which surmounted the toilet in the apartment, rearranged
with studious care, and with an eye to its most attractive appearance,
the long and flowing tresses of that hair, which, as we have already
remarked, was of the most silky and raven-like description. Every
ringlet was adjusted to its place, as if nothing of sorrow was about
her--none of the badges and evidences of death and decay in her thought.
She next proceeded to the readjustment of the dress she wore, taking
care that a string of pearl, probably the gift of her now indifferent
lover, should leave its place in the little cabinet, where, with other
trinkets of the kind, it had been locked up carefully for a long season,
and once more adorned with it the neck which it failed utterly to
surpass in delicacy or in whiteness. Having done this, she again took
her place on the couch, along with the corpse; and with a manner which
did not appear to indicate a doubt of the still lingering spirit, she
raised the lifeless head, with the gentlest effort placing her arm
beneath, then laid her own quietly on the pillow beside it.