Helen and Arthur Part 27

"A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon Than love that would seem hid."

So thought Helen, while shrinking from the glance that gleamed upon her, like blue steel flashing in the sunbeams. Yes! Arthur Hazleton _was_ cold compared to Clinton. He loved her even as he did Alice, with a calm, brotherly affection, and that was all. He had never praised her beauty or attractions--never offered the slightest incense to her vanity or pride. Sometimes he had uttered indirect expressions, which had made her bosom throb wildly with hope, but humility soon chastened the emotion which delicacy taught her to conceal. Cold indeed sounded the warmest phrase he had ever addressed her, "G.o.d bless you, dear, good, brave Helen," to Clinton's romantic and impa.s.sioned language, though, when it fell from his lips, it pa.s.sed with such melting warmth into her heart. Swift as a swallow's flight these thoughts darted through Helen's mind, and gave an indecision and embarra.s.sment to her manner, which emboldened Clinton with hopes of success. All at once her countenance changed. The strangeness of her situation, the lateness of the hour, the impropriety of receiving such a visitor in that little dark, narrow pa.s.sage--the dread of Arthur's coming in, and finding her alone with her dreaded though splendid companion--the fear that Miss Thusa might waken and require her a.s.sistance--the vision of her father's displeasure and Mittie's jealous wrath--all swept in a stormy gust before her, driving away every consideration but one--the desire for escape, and the determination to effect it. The apprehension of awaking Miss Thusa, by rushing into her room, died in the grasp of a greater terror.

"Let me go," she exclaimed, wrenching her hand from his tightening hold.

"Let me go. You madden me."

In her haste to open the door the latch rattled, and the door swung to with a violence that called forth a groan from the awakening sleeper.

Turning the wooden b.u.t.ton that fastened it on the inside, she sunk down into the first seat in her reach, and a dark shadow, flecked with sparks of fire, floated before her eyes. Chill and dizzy, she thought she was going to faint, when her name, p.r.o.nounced distinctly by Miss Thusa, recalled her bewildered senses. She rose, and it seemed as if the bed came to her, for she was not conscious of walking to it, but she found herself bending over the patient and looking steadfastly into her clouded eyes.

"Helen, my dear," said she, "I feel a great deal better. I must have slept a long time. Have I not? Give me a little water. There, now sit down close by my bed and listen. If that knife cuts my breath again, I shall have to give up talking. Just raise my head a little, and hand me my spectacles off the big Bible. I can't talk without them. But how dim the gla.s.ses are. Wipe them for me, child. There's dust settled on them."

Helen took the gla.s.ses and wiped them with her soft linen handkerchief, but she sighed as she did so, well knowing that it was the eyes that were growing dim instead of the crystal that covered them.

"A little better--a little better," said the spinster, looking wistfully towards the candle. "Now, Helen, my dear, just step into the other room and bring here my wheel. It is heavy, but not beyond your strength. I always bring it in here at night, but I can't do it now. I was taken sick so sudden, I forgot it. It's my stay-by and stand-by--you know."

Helen looked so startled and wild, that Miss Thusa imagined her struck with superst.i.tious terror at the thought of going alone into another room.

"I'm sorry to see you've not outgrown your weaknesses," said she. "It's my fault, I'm afraid, but I hope the Lord will forgive me for it."

Helen was not afraid of the lonely room, so near and so lately occupied, but she was afraid of encountering Clinton, who might be lingering by the open door. But Miss Thusa's request, sick and helpless as she was, had the authority of a command, and she rose to obey her. She barred the outer door without catching the gleam of Clinton's dark, shining hair, and having brought the wheel, with panting breath, for it was indeed very heavy, sat down with a feeling of security and relief, since the enemy was now shut out by double barriers. One window was partly raised to admit the air to Miss Thusa's oppressed lungs, but they were both fastened above.

"You had better not exert yourself, Miss Thusa," said Helen, after giving her the medicine which the doctor had prescribed. "You are not strong enough to talk much now."

"I shall never be stronger, my child. My day is almost spent, and the night cometh, wherein no man can work. I always thought I should have a sudden call, and when I was struck with that sharp pain, I knew my Master was knocking at the door. The Lord be praised, I don't want to bar him out. I'm ready and willing to go, willing to close my long and lonely life. I have had few to love, and few to care for me, but, thank G.o.d, the one I love best of all does not forsake me in my last hour.

Helen, darling, G.o.d bless you--G.o.d bless you, my blessed child."

The voice of the aged spinster faltered, and tear after tear trickled like wintry rain down her furrowed cheeks. All the affections of a naturally warm and generous heart lingered round the young girl, who was still to her the little child whom she had cradled in her arms, and hushed into the stillness of awe by her ghostly legends. Helen, inexpressibly affected, leaned her head on Miss Thusa's pillow, and wept and sobbed audibly. She did not know, till this moment, how strong and deep-rooted was her attachment for this singular and isolated being.

There was an individuality, a grandeur in her character, to which Helen's timid, upward-looking spirit paid spontaneous homage. The wild sweep of her imagination, always kept within the limits of the purest morality, her stern sense of justice, tempered by sympathy and compa.s.sion, and the tenderness and sensibility that so often softened her harsh and severe lineaments, commanded her respect and admiration.

Even her person, which was generally deemed ungainly and unattractive, was invested with majesty and a certain grace in Helen's partial eyes.

She was old--but hers was the sublimity of age without its infirmity, the h.o.a.riness of winter without its chillness. It seemed impossible to a.s.sociate with her the idea of dissolution. Yet there she lay, helpless as an infant, with no more strength to resist the Almighty's will, than a feather to hurl back the force of the whirlwind.

"You see that wheel, Helen," said she, recovering her usual calmness--"I told you that I should bequeath it, as a legacy, to you. Don't despise the homely gift. You see those bra.s.s bands, with grooves in them--just screw them to the right as hard as you can--a little harder."

Helen screwed and twisted till her slender wrists ached, when the bra.s.s suddenly parted, and a number of gold pieces rolled upon the floor.

"Pick them up, and put them back," said Miss Thusa, "and screw it up again--all the joints will open in that way. The wood is hollowed out and filled with gold, which I bequeath to you. My will is in there, too, made by the lawyers where I found the money. You remember when that advertis.e.m.e.nt was put in the papers, and I went on that journey, part of the way with you. Well, I must tell you the shortest way, though it's a long story. It was written by a lady, on her death-bed, a widow lady, who had no children, and a large property of her own. You don't remember my brother, but your father does. He was a hater of the world, and almost made me one. Well, it seemed he had a cause for his misanthropy which I never knew of, for when he was a young man he went away from home, and we didn't hear from him for years. When he came back, he was sad and sickly, and wanted to get into some little quiet place, where n.o.body would molest him. Then it was we came to this little cabin, where he died, in this very room, and this very bed, too."

Miss Thusa paused, and the room and the bed seemed all at once clothed with supernatural solemnity, by the sad consecration of death. Death had been there--death was waiting there.

"Oh! Miss Thusa, you are faint and weary. Do stop and rest, I pray you,"

cried Helen, bathing her forehead with camphor, and holding a gla.s.s of water to her lips.

But the unnatural strength which opium gives, sustained her, and she continued her narrative.

"This lady, when young, had loved and been betrothed to my brother, and then forsook him for a wealthier man. It was that which ruined him, and I never knew it. He had one of those still natures, where the waters of sorrow lie deep as a well. They never overflow. She told me that she never had had one happy moment from the time she married, and that her conscience gnawed her for her broken faith. Her husband died, and left her a rich widow, without a child to leave her property to. After a while she fell sick of a long and lingering disease, for which there is no cure. Then she thought if she could leave her money to my brother, or he being dead, to some of his kin, she could die with more comfort. So, she put the advertis.e.m.e.nt in the paper, which you all saw. I didn't want the money, and wanted to come away without it, but she sent for a lawyer, and had it all fastened upon me by deeds and writings, whether I was willing or not. She didn't live but a few days after I got there.

The lawyer was very kind, and a.s.sisted me in my plans, though he thought them very odd. There is no need of wasting my breath in telling how I had the money changed into gold, and the wheel fixed in the way you see it, after a fashion of my own. I would not have touched one cent of it, had it not been for you, and next to you, that poor boy, Louis. I didn't want any one to know it, and be dinning in my ears about money from morning to night. I had no use for it myself, for habits don't change when the winter of life is begun. There is no use for it in the dark grave to which I am hastening. There is no use for it near the great white throne of G.o.d, where I shall shortly stand. When I am dead and gone, Helen, take that wheel home, and give it a place wherever you are, for old Miss Thusa's sake. I really think--I'm a strange, foolish old woman--but I really think I should like to have its likeness painted on my coffin lid. A kind of coat-of-arms, you know, child."

Miss Thusa did not relate all this without pausing many times for breath, and when she concluded she closed her eyes, exhausted by the effort she had made. In a short time she again slept, and Helen sat pondering in mute amazement over the disclosure made by one whom she had imagined so very indigent. The gold weighed heavy on her mind. It did not seem real, so strangely acquired, so mysteriously concealed. It reminded her of the tales of the genii, more than of the actualities of every day life. She prayed that Miss Thusa might live and take care of it herself for long years to come.

Several times during the recital, she thought she heard a sound at the window, but when she turned her head to ascertain the cause, she saw nothing but the curtain slightly fluttering in the wind that crept in at the opening, with a soft, sighing sound.

It was the first time she had ever watched with the sick, and she found it a very solemn thing. Yet with all the solemnity and gloom brooding over her, she felt inexpressible grat.i.tude that she was not haunted by the spectral illusions of her childhood. Reason was no longer the va.s.sal, but the monarch of imagination, and though the latter often proved a restless and wayward subject, it acknowledged the former as its legitimate sovereign.

Miss Thusa, lying so rigid and immovable on her back, with her hands crossed on her breast, a white linen handkerchief folded over her head and fastened under the chin, looked so resembling death, that it was difficult to think of her as a living, breathing thing. Helen gazed upon her with indescribable awe, sometimes believing it was nothing but soulless clay before her, but even then she gazed without horror. Her exceeding terror of death was gone, without her being conscious of its departure. It was like the closing of a dark abyss--there was _terra firma_, where an awful chasm had been. There was more terror to her in the vitality burning in her own heart, than in that poor, enfeebled form. How strong were its pulsations! how loud they sounded in the midnight stillness!--louder than the death-watch that ticked by the hearth. To escape from the beatings of "this m.u.f.fled drum" of life, she went to the window, and partly drawing aside the curtain, breathed on a pane of gla.s.s, so that the gauzy web the frost had woven might melt away and admit the vertical rays of the midnight moon. How beautiful, how resplendent was the scene that was spread out before her! She had not thought before of looking abroad, and it was the first time the solemn glories of the noon of night had unfolded to her view. In the morning a drizzling rain had fallen, which had frozen as it fell on the branches of the leafless trees, and now on every little twig hung pendant diamonds, glittering in the moonbeams. The ground was partially covered with snow, but where it lay bare, it was powdered with diamond dust. A silvery net-work was drawn over the windows, save one clear spot, which her melting breath had made. She looked up to the moon, shining so high, so lone on the pale azure of a wintry heaven, and felt an impulse to kneel down and worship it, as the loveliest, holiest image of the Creator's goodness and love. How tranquil, how serene, how soft, yet glorious it shone forth from the still depths of ether! What a divine melancholy it diffused over the sleeping earth! Helen felt as she often did when looking up into the eyes of Arthur Hazleton. So tranquil, so serene, yet so glorious were their beams to her, and so silently and holily did they sink into the soul.

In the morning the young doctor found his patient in the same feeble, slumberous state. There was no apparent change either for better or worse, and he thought it probable she might linger days and even weeks, gradually sinking, till she slept the last great sleep.

"You look weary and languid, Helen," said he, anxiously regarding the young watcher, "I hope nothing disturbed your lonely vigils. I endeavored to return, that I might relieve you, in some measure, of your fatiguing duty, but was detained the whole night."

Helen thought of the terror she had suffered from Clinton's intrusion, but she did not like to speak of it. Perhaps he had already left the neighborhood, and it seemed ungenerous and useless to betray him.

"I certainly had no ghostly visitors," said she, "and what is more, I did not fear them. All unreal phantasies fled before that sad reality,"

looking on the wan features of Miss Thusa.

"I see you have profited by the discipline of the last twelve hours,"

cried Arthur, "and it was most severe, for one of your temperament and early habits. I have heard it said," he added, thoughtfully, "that those who follow my profession, become callous and indifferent to human suffering--that their nerves are steeled, and their hearts indurated--but I do not find it the case with me; I never approach the bedside of the sick and the dying without deep and solemn emotion. I feel nearer the grave, nearer to Heaven and G.o.d."

"No--I am sure it cannot be said of you," said Helen, earnestly, "you are always kind and sympathizing--quick to relieve, and slow to inflict pain."

"Ah, Helen, you forget how cruel I was in forcing you back, where the deadly viper had been coiled; in making you take that dark, solitary walk in search of the sleeping Alice; and even last night I might have spared you your lonely night watch, if I would. Had I told you that you were too inexperienced and inefficient to be a good nurse, you would have believed me and yielded your place, or at least shared it with another. Do you still think me kind?"

"Most kind, even when most exacting," she replied. Whenever her feelings were excited, her deep feelings of joy as well as sorrow, Helen's eyes always glistened. This peculiarity gave a soft, pensive expression to her countenance that was indescribably winning, and made her smile from the effect of contrast enchantingly sweet.

The glistening eye and the enchanting smile that followed these words, or rather accompanied them, were not altogether lost on Arthur.

Mrs. Gleason came to relieve Helen from the care of nursing, and insisted upon her immediate return home. Helen obeyed with reluctance, claiming the privilege of resuming her watch again at night. She wanted to be with Miss Thusa in her last moments. She had a sublime curiosity to witness the last strife of body and soul, the separation of the visible and the invisible; but when night came on, exhausted nature sought renovation in the deepest slumbers that had ever wrapped her.

Arthur, perceiving some change in his patient, resolved to remain with her himself, having hired a woman to act as subordinate nurse during Miss Thusa's sickness. She occupied the kitchen as bed-room--an apartment running directly back of the sick chamber.

Miss Thusa's strength was slowly, gently wasting. Disease had struck her at first like a sharp poignard, but life flowed away from the wound without much after suffering. The greater part of the time she lay in a comatose state, from which it was difficult to rouse her.

Arthur sat by the fire, with a book in his hand, which at times seemed deeply to interest him, and at others, he dropped it in his lap, and gazing intently into the glowing coals, appeared absorbed in the mysteries of thought.

About midnight, when reverie had deepened into slumber, he was startled by a low knock at the door. He had not fastened it as elaborately as Helen had done, and quickly and noiselessly opening it, he demanded who was there. It was a young boy, bearing him a note from the family he had visited the preceding night. His patient was attacked with some very alarming symptoms, and begged his immediate attendance. Having wakened the woman and commissioned her to watch during his absence, Arthur departed, surprised at the unexpected summons, as he had seen the patient at twilight, who then appeared in a fair way of recovery. His surprise was still greater, when arriving at the house he found that no summons had been sent for him, no note written, but the whole household were wrapped in peaceful slumbers. The note, which he carried in his pocket, was p.r.o.nounced a forgery, and must have been written with some dark and evil design. But what could it be? Who could wish to draw him away from that poor, lone cottage, that poor sick, dying woman? It was strange, inexplicable.

Mr. Mason, the gentleman in whose name the note had been written, and who fortunately happened to be the sheriff of the county, insisted upon accompanying him back to the cottage, and aiding him to discover its mysterious purpose. It might be a silly plot of some silly boy, but that did not seem at all probable, as Arthur was so universally respected and beloved--and such was the dignity and affability of his character, that no one would think of playing upon him a foolish and insulting trick.

The distance was not great, and they walked with rapid footsteps over the crisp and frozen ground. Around the cabin, the snow formed a thick carpet, which, lying in shade, had not been glazed, like the general surface of the landscape. Their steps did not resound on this white covering, and instead of crossing the stile in front of the cabin, they vaulted over the fence and approached the door by a side path. The moment Arthur laid his hand upon the latch he knew some one had entered the house during his absence, for he had closed the door, and now it was ajar. With one bound he cleared the pa.s.sage, and Mr. Mason, who was a tall and strong man, was not left much in the rear. The inner door was not latched, and opened at the touch. The current of air which rushed in with their sudden entrance rolled into the chimney, and the fire flashed up and roared, illuminating every object within. Near the centre of the room stood a man, wrapped in a dark cloak that completely concealed his figure, a dark mask covering his face, and a fur cap pulled deep over his forehead. He stood by the side of Miss Thusa's wheel, which presented the appearance of a ruin, with its brazen bands wrenched asunder, and its fragments strewed upon the floor. He was evidently arrested in the act of destruction, for one hand grasped the distaff, the other clinched something which he sought to conceal in the folds of his cloak.

Miss Thusa, partly raised on her elbow, which shook and trembled from the weight it supported, was gazing with impotent despair on her dismembered wheel. A dim fire quivered in her sunken eyes, and her sharpened and prominent features were made still more ghastly by the opaque frame-work of white linen that surrounded them. She was uttering faint and broken e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns.

"Monster--robber!--my treasure! Take the gold--take it, but spare my wheel! Poor Helen! I gave it to her! Poor child! It's she you are robbing, not me! Oh, my G.o.d! my heart-strings are breaking! My wheel, that I loved like a human being! Lord, Lord, have mercy upon me!"

These piteous exclamations met the ear of Arthur as he entered the room, and roused all the latent wrath of his nature. He forgot every thing but the dark, masked figure which, gathering up its cloak, sprang towards the door, with the intention of escaping, but an iron grasp held it back. Seldom, indeed, were the strong but subdued pa.s.sions of Arthur Hazleton suffered to master him, but now they had the ascendency. He never thought of calling on Mr. Mason to a.s.sist him quietly in securing the robber, as he might have done, but yielding to an irresistible impulse of vengeance, he grappled fiercely with the mask, who writhed and struggled in his unclinching hold. Something fell rattling on the floor, and continued to rattle as the strife went on. Mr. Mason, knowing that by virtue of his authority he could arrest the offender at once, looked on with that strange pleasure which men feel in witnessing scenes of conflict. He was astonished at the transformation of the young doctor. He had always seen him so calm and gentle in the chamber of sickness, so peaceful in his intercourse with his fellow-men, that he did not know the lamb could be thus changed into the lion.

Arthur had now effected his object, in unmasking and uncloaking his antagonist, and he found himself face to face with--Bryant Clinton. The young men stood gazing at each other for a few moments in perfect silence. They were both of an ashy paleness, and their eyes glittered under the shadow of their darkened brows. But Clinton could not long sustain that steadfast, victor glance. His own wavered and fell, and the blood swept over his face in a reddening wave.

"Let me go," said he, in a low, husky voice, "I am in your power; but be magnanimous and release me. I throw myself on your generosity, not your justice."