In the meanwhile, Edith sat in the tent abandoned to despair, her mind
not yet recovered from the stunning effect of her calamity, struggling
confusedly with images of blood and phantasms of fear, the dreary
recollections of the past mingling with the scarce less dreadful
anticipations of the future. Of the battle on the hill-side she
remembered nothing save the fall of her kinsman, shot down at her
feet,--all she had herself witnessed, and all she could believe; for
Telie Doe's assurances, contradicted in effect by her constant tears and
agitation, that he had been carried off to captivity like herself,
conveyed no conviction to her mind: from that moment, events were
pictured on her memory as the records of a feverish dream, including all
the incidents of her wild and hurried journey to the Indian village. But
with these broken and dream-like reminiscences, there were associated
recollections, vague, yet not the less terrifying, of a visage that had
haunted her presence by day and by night, throughout the whole journey,
watching, over her with the pertinacity of an evil genius; and which, as
her faculties woke slowly from their trance, assumed every moment a more
distinct and dreaded appearance in her imagination.
It was upon these hated features, seen side by side with the
blood-stained aspect of her kinsman, she now pondered in mingled grief
and terror; starting occasionally from the horror of her thoughts only to
be driven back to them again by the scowling eyes of the old crone; who,
still crouching over the fire, as if its warmth could never strike deep
enough into her frozen veins, watched every movement and every look with
the vigilance, and as it seemed, the viciousness of a serpent. No ray of
pity shone even for a moment from her forbidding, and even hideous
countenance; she offered no words, she made no signs, of sympathy; and,
as if to prove her hearty disregard, or profound contempt for the
prisoner's manifest distress, she by and by, to while the time, began to
drone out a succession of grunting sounds, such as make up a red-man's
melody, and such indeed as any village urchin can drum with his heels out
of an empty hogshead. The song, thus barbarously chanted, at first
startled and affrighted the captive; but its monotony had at last an
effect which the beldam was far from designing. It diverted the maiden's
mind in a measure from its own harassing thoughts, and thus introduced a
kind of composure where all had been before painful agitation. Nay, as
the sounds, which were at no time very loud, mingled with the piping of
the gale without and the rustling of the old elm at the door, they lost
their harshness, and were softened into a descant that was lulling to the
senses, and might, like a gentler nepenthe, have, in time, cheated the
over-weary mind to repose. Such, perhaps, was beginning to be its effect.
Edith ceased to bend upon the hag the wild, terrified looks that at first
rewarded the music; she sunk her head upon her bosom, and sat as if
gradually giving way to a lethargy of spirit, which, if not sleep, was
sleep's most beneficent substitute.
From this state of calm she was roused by the sudden cessation of the
music; and looking up, she beheld, with a renewal of all her alarms, a
tall man, standing before her, his face and figure both enveloped in the
folds of a huge blanket, from which, however, a pair of gleaming eyes
were seen riveted upon her own countenance. At the same time, she
observed that the old Indian woman had risen, and was stealing softly
from the apartment. Filled with terror, she would have rushed after the
hag, to claim her protection: but she was immediately arrested by the
visitor, who, seizing her by the arm firmly, yet with an air of respect,
and suffering his blanket to drop to the ground, displayed to her gaze
features that had long dwelt, its darkest phantoms, upon her mind. As he
seized her, he muttered, and still with an accent of the most earnest
respect,--"Fear me not, Edith; I am not yet an enemy."
His voice, though one of gentleness, and even of music, completed the
terrors of the captive, who trembled in his hand like a quail in the
clutches of a kite, and would, but for his grasp, as powerful to sustain
as to oppose, have fallen to the floor. Her lips quivered, but they gave
forth no sound; and her eyes were fastened upon his with a wildness and
intensity of glare that showed the fascination, the temporary
self-abandonment of her spirit.
"Fear me not, Edith Forrester," he repeated, with a voice even more
soothing than before: "You know me;--I am no savage;--I will do you no
harm."
"Yes,--yes,--yes," muttered Edith at last, but in the tones of an
automaton, they were, at first, so broken and inarticulate, though they
gathered force and vehemence as she spoke--"I know you,--yes, yes, I do
know you, and know you well. You are Richard Braxley,--the robber, and
now the persecutor of the orphan; and this hand that holds me is red with
the blood of my cousin. Oh, villain! villain! are you not yet content?"
"The prize is not yet won," replied the other, with a smile that seemed
intended to express his contempt of the maiden's invectives, and his
ability to forgive them: "I am indeed Richard Braxley,--the friend of
Edith Forrester, though she will not believe it,--a rough and self-willed
one, it may be, but still her true and unchangeable friend. Where will
she look for a better? Anger has not alienated, contempt has not
estranged me: injury and injustice still find me the same. I am still
Edith Forrester's friend; and such, in the sturdiness of my affection, I
will remain, whether my fair mistress will or no. But you are feeble and
agitated: sit down and listen to me. I have that to say which will
convince my thoughtless fair the day of disdain is now over."
All these expressions, though uttered with seeming blandness, were yet
accompanied by an air of decision and even command, as if the speaker
were conscious the maiden was fully in his power, and not unwilling she
should know it. But his attempt to make her resume her seat upon the pile
of skins from which she had so wildly started at his entrance, was
resisted by Edith; who, gathering courage from desperation, and shaking
his hand from her arm, as if snatching it from the embraces of a serpent,
replied with even energy,--"I will not sit down,--I will not listen to
you. Approach me not--touch me not. You are a villain and murderer, and
I loathe, oh! unspeakably loathe, your presence. Away from me, or--"
"Or," interrupted Braxley with the sneer of a naturally mean and
vindictive spirit, "you will cry for assistance! From whom do you expect
it? From wild, murderous, besotted Indians, who, if roused from their
drunken slumbers, would be more like to assail you with their hatchets
than to weep for your sorrows? Know, fair Edith, that you are now in
their hands;--that there is not one of them, who would not rather see
those golden tresses hung blackening in the smoke from the rafters of his
wigwam, than floating over the brows they adorn--Look aloft: there are
ringlets of young and fair, the innocent and tender, swinging above
you!--Learn, moreover, that from these dangerous friends there is none
who can protect you, save _me_. Ay, my beauteous Edith," he added, as the
captive, overcome by the representation of her perils so unscrupulously,
nay, so sternly made, sank almost fainting upon the pile, "it is even so;
and you must know it. It is needful you should know what you have to
expect, if you reject my protection. But that you will not reject; in
faith, you _cannot!_ The time has come, as I told you it would, when your
disdainful scruples--I speak plainly, fair Edith!--are to be at an end. I
swore to you--and it was when your scorn and unbelief were at the
highest--that you should yet smile upon the man you disdained, and smile
upon no other. It was a rough and uncouth threat for a lover; but my
mistress would have it so. It was a vow breathed in anger: but it was a
vow not meant to be broken. You tremble! I am cruel in my wooing; but
this is not the moment for compliment and deception. You are _mine_,
Edith: I swore it to myself--ay, and to you. You cannot escape. You have
driven me to extremities; but they have succeeded. You are mine; or you
are--nothing."
"Nothing let it be," said Edith, over whose mind, prone to agitation and
terror, it was evident the fierce and domineering temper of the
individual could exercise an irresistible control, and who, though yet
striving to resist, was visibly sinking before his stern looks and
menacing words;--"let it be nothing! Kill me, if you will, as you have
already killed my cousin. Oh! mockery of passion, of humanity, of
decency, to speak to me thus;--to _me_, the relative, the more than
sister of him you have so basely and cruelly murdered!"
"I have murdered no one," said Braxley, with stony composure: "and if you
will but listen patiently, you will find I am stained by no crime save
that of loving a woman who forces me to woo her like a master, rather
than a slave. Your cousin is living and in safety."
"It is false," cried Edith, wringing her hands; "with my own eyes I saw
him fall, and fall covered with blood!"
"And from that moment you saw nothing more," rejoined Braxley. "The blood
came from the veins of others; he was carried away alive, and almost
unhurt. He is a captive,--a captive like yourself. And why? Shall I
remind my fair Edith how much of her hostility and scorn I owed to her
hot and foolish kinsman? how he persuaded her the love she so naturally
bore so near a relative was reason enough to reject the affection of a
suitor? how impossible she should listen to the dictates of her own
heart, or the calls of her interest, while misled by a counsellor so
indiscreet, and yet so trusted? Before that unlucky young man stepped
between me and my love, Edith Forrester could listen,--ay, and could
smile. Nay, deny it if you will; but hearken. Your cousin is safe; rely
upon that; but, rely, also, he will never again see the home of his
birth, or the kinswoman whose fortunes he has so opposed, until she is
the wife of the man he misjudges and hates. He is removed from my path:
it was necessary to my hopes. His life is, at all events, safe; his
deliverance rests with his kinswoman. When she has plighted her troth,
and surely she _will_ plight it--"
"Never! never!" cried Edith, starting up, her indignation for a moment
getting the better of her fears: "with one so false and treacherous, so
unprincipled and ungrateful, so base and revengeful,--with such a man,
with such a villain, never! no, never!"
"I _am_ a villain indeed, Edith," said Braxley, but with exemplary
coolness; "all men are so. Good and evil are sown together in our
natures, and each has its season and its harvest. In this breast, as in
the breast of the worst and the noblest, Nature set, at birth, an angel
and a devil, either to be the governor of my actions, as either should be
best encouraged. If the devil be now at work, and have been for months,
it was because your scorn called him from his slumbers. Before that time
Edith, I was under the domination of my angel; who then called, or who
deemed me, a villain? Was I then a robber and persecutor of the orphan?
Am I _now_? Perhaps so,--but it is yourself that have made me so. For
you, I called up my evil genius to my aid; and my evil-genius aided me.
He bade me woo no longer like the turtle but strike like the falcon.
Through plots and stratagems, through storms and perils, through battle
and blood, I have pursued you, and I have conquered at last. The captive
of my sword and spear, you will spurn my love no longer; for, in truth,
you cannot. I came to the wilderness to seek an heiress for your uncle's
wealth; I have found her. But she returns to her inheritance the wife of
the seeker! In a word, my Edith,--for why should I, who am now the master
of your fate, forbear the style of a conqueror? why should I longer sue,
who have the power to command?--you are _mine_,--mine beyond the
influence of caprice or change,--mine beyond the hope of escape. This
village you will never leave but as a bride."
So spoke the bold wooer, elated by the consciousness of successful
villany, and perhaps convinced from long experience of the timorous, and
doubtless, feeble, character of the maid, that a haughty and overbearing
tone would produce an impression, however painful it might be to her,
more favourable to his hopes than the soft hypocrisy of sueing. He was
manifestly resolved to wring from her fears the consent not to be
obtained from her love. Nor had he miscalculated the power of such a
display of bold, unflinching energetic determination in awing, if not
bending, her youthful spirit. She seemed indeed, stunned, wholly
overpowered by his resolved and violent manner; and she had scarcely
strength to mutter the answer that rose to her lips:
"If it be so," she faltered out, "this village, then, I must never leave;
for here I will die, die even by the hands of barbarians, and die a
thousand times, ere I look upon you, base and cruel man, with any but the
eyes of detestation. I hated you ever,--I hate you yet."
"My fair mistress," said Braxley, with a sneer that might have well
become the lip of the devil he had pronounced the then ruler of his
breast, "knows not all the alternative. Death is a boon the savages may
bestow, when the whim takes them. But before that, they must show their
affection for their prisoner. There are many that can admire the bright
eyes and ruddy cheeks of the white maiden; and some one, doubtless, will
admit the stranger to a corner of his wigwam and his bosom! Ay, madam, I
will speak plainly,--it is as the wife of Richard Braxley or of a pagan
savage you go out of the tent of Wenonga. Or why go out of the tent of
Wenonga at all? Is Wenonga insensible to the beauty of his guest? The hag
that I drove from the fire, seemed already to see in her prisoner the
maid that was to rob her of her husband."
"Heaven help me!" exclaimed Edith, sinking again to her seat, wholly
overcome by the horrors it was the object of the wooer to accumulate on
her mind. He noted the effect of his threat, and stealing up, he took her
trembling, almost lifeless hand, adding, but in a softer voice,--
"Why will Edith drive one who adores her to these extremities? Let her
smile but as she smiled of yore, and all will yet be well. One smile
secures her deliverance from all that she dreads, her restoration to her
home and to happiness. With that smile, the angel again awakes in my
bosom, and all is love and tenderness."
"Heaven help me!" iterated the trembling girl, struggling to shake off
Braxley's hand. But she struggled feebly and in vain; and Braxley, in the
audacity of his belief that he had frightened her into a more reasonable
mood, proceeded the length of throwing an arm around his almost
insensible victim.
But heaven was not unmindful of the prayer of the desolate and helpless
maid. Scarce had his arm encircled the waist of the captive, when a pair
of arms, long and brawny, infolded his body as in the hug of an angry
bear, and in an instant he lay upon his back on the floor, a knee upon
his breast, a hand at his throat, and a knife, glittering blood-red in
the light of the fire, flourished within an inch of his eyes: while a
voice, subdued to a whisper, yet distinct as if uttered in tones of
thunder, muttered in his ear,--"Speak, and thee dies!"
The attack, so wholly unexpected, so sudden and so violent, was as
irresistible as astounding; and Braxley, unnerved by the surprise and by
fear, succumbing as to the stroke of an avenging angel, the protector of
innocence, whom his villany had conjured from the air, lay gasping upon
the earth without attempting the slightest resistance, while the
assailant, dropping his knife and producing a long cord of twisted
leather, proceeded, with inexpressible dexterity and speed, to bind his
limbs, which he did in a manner none the less effectual for being so
hasty. An instant sufficed to secure him hand and foot; in another, a gag
was clapped in his mouth and secured by a turn of the rope round his
neck; at the third, the conqueror, thrusting his hand into his bosom,
tore from it the stolen will, which he immediately after buried in his
own. Then, spurning the baffled villain into a corner, and flinging over
his body a pile of skins and blankets, until he was entirely hidden from
sight, he left him to the combined agonies of fear, darkness, and
suffocation.
Such was the rapidity, indeed, with which the whole affair was conducted,
that Braxley had scarce time to catch a glimpse of his assailant's
countenance; and that glimpse, without abating his terror, took but
little from his amazement. It was the countenance of an Indian,--or such
it seemed,--grimly and hideously painted over with figures of snakes,
lizards, skulls, and other savage devices, which were repeated upon the
arms, the half-naked bosom, and even the squalid shirt of the victor. One
glance, in the confusion and terror of the moment, Braxley gave to his
extraordinary foe; and then the mantles piled upon his body concealed all
objects from his eyes.
In the meanwhile, Edith, not less confounded, sat cowering with terror,
until the victor, having completed his task, sprang to her side,--a
movement, however, that only increased her dismay,--crying, with warning
gestures, "Fear not and speak not;--up and away!" when, perceiving she
recoiled from him with all her feeble strength, and was indeed unable to
rise, he caught her in his arms, muttering, "Thee is safe--thee friends
is nigh!" and bore her swiftly, yet noiselessly, from the tent.