Fashion and Famine Part 42

"They will not meet; she has been years searching for them, and in vain; besides, I shall be back in a month or two. If that girl is obstinate and won't die, let her stay behind--that will settle it probably--the hectic is on her cheek now. But I must see this proud witch to-night.

Poor Ada, how much trouble she takes to prove her love--I see it all; this grand display was for me--I was to be astonished, braved, taunted awhile, and after a tragic scene or two, my lady is meek as a lamb once more. The handsome wretch--she did outwit me with those lines; I thought they would have touched her to the heart. It was our first love quarrel.

How the creature did go on then! Now I shall find her more difficult to bring under; but the same heart is at the bottom. I didn't think she could have read those lines aloud--so dauntlessly too. Jove! I almost loved her as she did it. Fool that I was, to make this trip across the ocean necessary. But for that, I might take possession now. Ada Wilc.o.x--my pretty rustic Ada, reigning here like a queen! Mrs.

Gordon--Mrs. Gordon! Faith, it's a capital joke. She's managed it splendidly--out-generaled Mrs. Nash and Mrs. Sykes both. More than that, she has half out-generaled Leicester too."

CHAPTER XX.

THE LAST INTERVIEW.

Thy race is run--thy fate is sealed, Trust not the ties that bound thee; A thousand snares, still unrevealed, Are woven close around thee.

Nor strength, nor craft availeth now; Thy stubborn will is riven; The death drops hang upon thy brow, There's justice yet in Heaven.

It was over at last. The saloon, the banquet hall, the conservatory, sleeping in the moonlight shed from many a sculptured vase--all were deserted; wax candles flared and went out in their silver sockets; garlands grew dim and shadowy in the diminished light; half a dozen yawning footmen glided about extinguishing wax lights, and turning off gas, but they seemed ghost-like and dreary, wandering through the vast mansion.

But Ada Leicester felt no fatigue; she saw nothing of the gloom that was so rapidly spreading over the splendor of her mansion. Her boudoir was still lighted by those two pearl-like lamps. It was a dim, luxurious twilight, that seemed hazy with the perfume stealing up from a dozen snowy vases scattered through the dressing-room, the bed-chamber, and the boudoir. The doors connecting these apartments were ajar, but closed enough to conceal one room from the other.

Ada entered the boudoir. Her step was imperious; her cheek burning.

Pride, anger and haughty scorn swelled in her bosom, as she seated herself to wait. One of those mysterious revulsions of feeling that are so frequent to a pa.s.sionate and ill-disciplined nature, had swept over her heart. For the first time in her life she felt disposed to sting the foot that had trampled so ruthlessly upon her. In that moment, all the strong love of a lifetime seemed kindling into a fiery hate.

It was one of those hours when we defy destiny--defy our own souls. A few hours earlier and she could not have met him thus with scorn on her brow, rebellion in her heart. A few hours after she might repent in tears, but now she waited his approach without a thrill of pleasure or of fear. The very memory of former tenderness filled her with self-contempt. The marble Flora stood over her--crimson roses and heliotrope had been mingled with the sculptured lilies in its hand. A few hours before she had stolen away from her guests, to place these blossoms among the marble counterfeits, for they breathed his favorite perfume; now, she sickened as the fragrance floated over her, and tearing them from the statue, tossed them amid a bed of coals still burning in the silver grate.

She did not go back to the couch, but remained upon the ermine rug, with one arm resting upon the jetty marble of the mantel-piece. No footstep could be heard in that sumptuously carpeted house, but the proud spirit within her seemed to know when he stole softly forth from the conservatory, and approached the room where she was waiting.

Leicester was self-possessed; he had a game to play, more intricate, more difficult than his experience had yet coped with, but this only excited his intellect. With a heart of stone the nerves hold no sympathy, and are obedient to the will alone: what or who had ever resisted Leicester's will!

But she also was self-possessed, and this took him by surprise. He moved toward the grate and leaned his elbow on the mantel-piece, directly opposite her. She held a superb fan, half open, against her bosom: it was fringed deep with the gorgeous plumage of some tropical bird, but no tumult of the heart stirred a feather. She held it there, as she had often done that evening, when homage floated around her, gracefully and quietly waiting to be addressed. This mood was one he had not expected; it deranged all his premeditated plan of attack. Instead of reproaching him, with that pa.s.sionate anger that pants for reconciliation, she was silent.

"Ada!" The name was uttered in a voice that no heart that had loved the speaker could entirely resist. A faint shiver and an irregular breath were perceptibly ruffling, as it were, the plumage of her fan, but the proud woman only bent her head.

"Was it delicate--was it honorable to deceive your husband thus?" he said, "to grant him one interview after so many years, and then conceal yourself from his search under this disguise? I have sought for you, Ada, Heaven only knows how anxiously."

She smiled a cold incredulous smile, for well she knew how he had searched for her.

"You do not believe me," said Leicester, attempting to take her hand; but she drew back, pressing the fan harder to her bosom, till the delicately wrought ivory broke. The demon of pride grew strong within her. For the first time in her life she felt a knowledge of power over the man who had been her fate.

"Was I to seek you that your foot might be planted on my heart once more? Was I to offer my bosom to the serpent fang again and again? Have you forgotten our interview in the chamber overhead?--that chamber where I had h.o.a.rded every thing connected with the only happy months you ever permitted me to know--so full of precious memories? I thought they would touch even your heart."

He attempted to speak, but she would not permit him. "I did not know you, notwithstanding past experience. Your heart has blacker shades than I imagined! Not up there--not among objects holy from a.s.sociation with my child, should I have taken you, but here! here! do not these things betoken great wealth?" A scornful smile curved her lips, and she glanced around the boudoir.

There was one word in this speech that Leicester seized upon. "_Your_ child, Ada. Great Heaven! would you exclude me from all share even in the love of our child!"

Even this did not soften her, though she was fearfully moved at the mention of her lost infant. He saw this, and his manner instantly changed.

"Why should I plead with you--why waste words thus?" he said, casting aside all affectation of tenderness:--"you are my wife--lawfully married--the mother of my child. If you have property, by the laws of this land that property is mine! I plead no longer, madam! Being the master of this house, if it is yours, my province is to command. Tell me, then! this wealth--for which people give their idol, _Mrs. Gordon_, so much credit--this mansion; are they real?--are they yours?--and therefore mine?"

The scorn that broke over Ada's face was absolutely sublime.

"Yes," she said, "this wealth is mine, yours, if the law makes it so; but listen--then say if you will use it!"

She bent forward; her lips and cheek were pale as death, but across the snow of her forehead a crimson flush came and went, like an arrow shooting back and again.

"You asked me that night in the room above, if I had lived in Europe as the governess of that man's daughter--the governess only--I answered yes; a governess only. It was false! Every dollar of the millions I possess comes from this man; he bequeathed them on his death-bed, that I might not again become your slave!" The haughty air gave way as she uttered this confession; her limbs trembled so violently that she was obliged to lean on the mantel-piece to keep from sinking to the floor.

Pride, that treacherous demon, left her then, helpless as a child.

"This," said Leicester, with a stern, clear enunciation, "this in no way interferes with my claim on the property. Were it double, that would be poor atonement for the outrage to my affections--the disgrace brought upon my name."

She did not speak, but listened in breathless silence, trying to comprehend the moral enormity before her, with a confused sense that even yet she had not fathomed the black depths of his heart.

Leicester had paused, thinking that she would answer; but as she remained silent he spoke again, still calmly, and with measured intonation.

"But that which you have confessed becomes important in another sense.

If the law gives me your property, it also enables me to divest it of the only inc.u.mbrance that would be unpleasant. Your confession, madam, ent.i.tles me to a divorce."

"You would not--oh, Heavens, no!" gasped the wretched woman.

"Now you seem natural--now you are meek again," he said with a laugh that cut to the heart. "So, you thought to dazzle me with your wealth--wither me with haughty pride--fool! miserable fool!"

"Mercy, mercy! Will no one save me from this man?" shrieked the wretched woman, flinging her clasped hands wildly upward.

Leicester was about to speak again, something fearfully bitter--you could see it in the curve of his lip--but her cry had reached other ears, and while the taunt was yet unspoken, Jacob Strong entered the boudoir. Leicester gazed upon him in utter amazement, for he advanced directly toward Ada, and taking the clasped hands she held out in both his, led her to the couch, trembling, and so faint that she was incapable of uttering a word.

"What is this? how came you here, fellow?" said Leicester, the moment he could break from the astonishment occasioned by Jacob's presence.

"My mistress called for help, and I came," was the steady answer.

"Your mistress! where--who?"

"This lady--your _first_ wife! the other----"

"Villain! who are you?"

Jacob looked into his master's eyes with a calm stare: "Look at me, Mr.

Leicester! I have grown since you saw me at old Mr. Wilc.o.x's! No doubt you have forgotten the awkward boy, who tended your horse, and pointed out the best trout streams for you? But I--I shall never forget! No angry looks--no frowns, sir! The rocks we climbed together would feel them more than I do."

"Go on--go on--I would learn more," said Leicester, paling fearfully about the mouth. "You have been a spy in my service!"

"Yes--a spy--a keeper of your most dangerous secrets! I read the letter from Georgia--I have that old copy-book, which was to have sent Robert Otis, my own nephew, to state prison. There is a check of ten thousand, which I can lay my hand on at any moment--you comprehend! I saw it written--I saw it pa.s.s from your hand to his. I was in the back room.

Villain! I am your master."

The palor spread up from Leicester's mouth to his temples, leaving a dusky ring around his eyes. For the first time in his life, this man of evil and stern will was terrified. Yet wrath was stronger in his heart than fear, even then. His white lips curled in fierce disdain. He turned towards Ada, who lay with her face buried in the silken pillows, conscious of nothing but her own unutterable wretchedness. She did not feel the fiendish glance that he cast upon her; but Jacob saw it, and his grey eyes kindled, till they seemed black as midnight: "If you wish to see another, come in here--come, I say! Victims are plenty about you; come in."

Jacob looked terribly imposing in this burst of indignation. His awkward form dilated into rude grandeur--his wrath, ponderous and intense, rolled forth like some fathomless stream, whose very tranquillity is terrible. He flung his powerful arm around Leicester, and drew him forward as if he had been a child.

Through the dressing-room, still flooded with soft light and redolent of flowers, and into the bed-chamber beyond, Jacob strode, grasping his companion firmly with one arm. He paused close by the bed. With an upward motion of his arms, he flung aside the cloud of lace that fell over it, and pointed to a form that lay underneath, pillowed, as it were, upon a snow drift. "Look! here is another!" said Jacob, towering above the man who had been his master--for there was no stoop in his shoulders then--"look! it is your last victim--to all eternity, the last!"