Sea and Shore Part 21

"I am prepared for your objections--prepared, too, to overcome them," he said, coolly. "Take time to consider all this. I do not expect an answer to-day, did not when I came, nor will I accept one signature without the whole. There is no compromise possible. As to your marriage--it must be accomplished before you leave this room. I, as a magistrate, can tie the knot--fast enough to bind all the other agreements to certain fulfillments, for Gregory is a friend of mine, and a man of honor, and will see them carried out to the letter. He loves you, too, and proves it, for he takes you penniless. Afterward a priest may complete the ceremony if you have any scruples. Then, of course, it rests between you and Gregory, whether you remain together or separate as wide as the poles--I shall wash my hands of the whole affair thereafter, having secured my good name and yours."

I stood with bowed head and moving lips before him--mutely, indignantly.

"I shall, however, make all this," he continued, "appear as well as possible to your friends and mine, especially, believe me, Miriam! I shall state, for your sake, that, after being rescued from the raft, you were partially insane, but still sufficiently mistress of yourself to coincide with me and your sisters in the wish to let your death as Miss Harz pa.s.s current with the world, until you should redeem your errors"

(what errors?), "and be restored to health and perfect reason. You will see that your acknowledgment of the last paper includes these extenuating facts, when you have leisure to re-read it (for I saw how hastily you glanced over that one in particular); you must do me the favor to peruse it much more carefully," drawing on his gloves coolly, "before you make your final decision. You are very comfortable here, my dear girl," glancing around benignly, "but you have no conception of the frame of mind, bare walls, utter solitude, a tireless hearth and a frugal table, would bring about in a very few days or weeks, or even in one as resolute and defiant as yourself. I should be loath to try such an experiment _or deprive you, of your child_--but _necessitas non habet legem_, the school-book says. I think you, too, studied a little Latin, Miriam?"

"Monster!"

"Not a very relevant or polite remark, I must confess. By-the-by, Miriam, as you stand before me with your well-poised figure--your blazing eyes--your quivering nostrils--your curling, compressed lip--your heaving chest (always a splendid feature in your _physique_), your folded arms, and the color coming and going in your pale-olive cheek, in the old flame-like way I used to admire so much in your girlhood--you are a splendid creature, by Jove! I could find it in my heart to love you still--there, it is out at last--if it were not for Mrs. Raymond--" glancing, as he spoke, in the direction of Mrs. Clayton, with a knowing smile. "It was your magnificent disdain that kindled the torch before. Beware how you revive that fanaticism of mine!"

I turned for one moment with an involuntary feeling of appeal to Mrs.

Clayton, but her cold, green eyes were quivering in accordance with the smile that stretched her thin lips to a line of mocking mirth. One glimpse of sympathy would have carried me to her arms for refuge--distasteful as she was to me in every way save one. She, like myself, was a woman. But such perversion of all natural feeling estranged me from her irreconcilably and forever.

I was alone; shame, humiliation, despair, possessed me; indignation, for the insult I was forced to bear in her presence, filled my soul--I stood with my head cast down, tears raining on my bosom, my arms dropped nervelessly beside me, my hands clinched, my whole frame trembling with excitement.

Slowly and one by one came those convulsive sobs--that rend and wrench the physical frame as earthquakes do the earth. Then rose the sudden resolve--born of volcanic impulse, irresistible to mind as is the lava-flood to matter, sweeping before it all obstructions of reason, habit, expediency.

If it cost me my life I would avenge myself on this tiger, thirsting for my blood; I would antic.i.p.ate him in his work of destruction, and the strength of Samson seemed to permeate my frame.

It was strange that at that moment of cold, impetuous energy I forgot the steel I carried in my bosom, and thought only of the power I bore in my own hands. I determined to strangle him with my strong, elastic fingers, of which I knew full well the powerful grasp.

The consequences were as cobwebs in my estimate--compared to the ecstasy of such revenge--for all this flashed through my brain with the swift vividness of lightning, and in less than thirty seconds after his last remark this matter was matured. The woman prevailed over the lady.

I raised my eyes slowly and dashed away my tears, preparatory to the onset. He was looking at me wonder-struck, and, perhaps, with something like compunction in his face as I met his gaze. He must have read an expression that appalled him in those dilated eyes of mine that confronted his, for, as I sprang toward him, he bounded backward and escaped through the door of Mrs. Clayton's chamber, which he shot after him with undignified alertness. I stood smiling, and strangely cold, leaning against the mantel-shelf, while my heart beat as though, it would have leaped from my throat, and I could feel the pallor of my face as chill as marble.

Mrs. Clayton approached me, but I put her away with waving hands, "Go, wretch!" I said, "woman no more, you have uns.e.xed yourself. Leave me in peace--your touch is poisonous."

She shrank away silently, and I stood for a while like one frozen; then cast myself down on a chair and gave way to bitter weeping. The flood-gates were open, and the "waters" had indeed "come in over my soul." I had restrained my pa.s.sionate inclinations until now, not only from a sense of personal dignity, but from a determination not to play into the hands of my enemies and captors, and all the more from such long self-control was the revulsion potent and overwhelming.

The consciousness that Ernie was at my knee at last aroused me from the indulgence of my grief, and I looked down to meet his corn pa.s.sionate and inquiring eyes fixed upon me with a masterful expression I have never seen in any other childish face. It thrilled me to the heart.

"What Mirry cry for--is G.o.d mad with Mirry?" he asked at length.

"It seems so, Ernie--yet oh, no, no! I cannot, will not believe in such injustice on the part of the Most High!" I pursued in sad soliloquy, with folded hands, and shaking head, and musing eyes fixed on the fire before me: "My G.o.d will not forsake me!"

"Did the bad man hurt Mirry?" he asked, leaning with both arms on my lap and putting up his hand to touch my face.

"Yes, very cruelly, Ernie."

"Big giant will come and kill him, and fayways put him in the river, and the old wolf wat eat Red Riding Hood eat him, and then the devil will roast him for his dinner."

I could but smile, albeit through my tears, at the climax of these threats which seemed to delight and stir the inmost soul of Ernie. His eyes flashed, his cheek crimsoned, his wide red mouth curled with disdainful ire, disclosing the small, pointed pearls within; he seemed transfigured.

"And Ernie! what will Ernie do for Mirry?" I asked, as I watched the workings of his expressive face. "Will Ernie let the wicked man kill Mirry?"

He looked at his small hands and arms, then extended them wistfully.

"Ernie will tell good Jesus," he said, "and he will make Ernie grow big--ever so big--to tie the man and put him in a bag like Clayton's cat."

The burlesque was irresistible, and none the less so that the child was so direfully in earnest. To his infant imagination no worse disaster than had befallen Clayton's cat could be devised. This animal, adored by him, had been bagged and exiled, perhaps drowned for aught I know, for stealing cheese from the cupboard sacred to Clayton, by that vengeful potentate, to the despair of Ernie. The idolized kittens, too, which had followed her, had disappeared with their mother, and days of infant melancholy ensued, during which the canaries before referred to were brought as subst.i.tutes. The faithful heart still clung to its feline pa.s.sion, it was evident, though for weeks the memory of that hapless cat had been ignored and its name unmentioned.

I believe, after my momentary wrath was over, I should have been content with the punishment suggested by the child, as sufficient even for Basil Bainrothe.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: The raft on which Miss Lamarque and her family had found refuge had been swept by the tempest of nearly every soul that clung to it, after a terrible night of storm and rain, during which that courageous lady--that Sybarite of society--sustained the fainting souls of her companions by singing the grand anthems of her Church, in a voice loud, clear, and sweet as that of a dying swan. One child was saved of the nine little ones, and the brother and sister remained almost alone on the raft. Let it be here mentioned that, at no period of her subsequent life, a long and apparently prosperous one, could Miss Lamarque bear to hear the circ.u.mstances of the wreck alluded to. Mr.

Dunmore and his companions found a watery grave.]

CHAPTER IX.

A nervous headache, that confined me to my bed for several days, succeeded the degrading and exciting scene through which I had pa.s.sed, and, as Mrs. Clayton had at the same time one of her prostrating neuralgic attacks, the services of Dinah were in active requisition.

During my own peculiar phase of suffering, the small racket of Ernie, unnoticed in hours of health, grated painfully on my ear, and I caught eagerly at the proposition of the negress to take him down-stairs for a walk and hours of play in the sunshine, privileges he did not very often obtain in these latter days.

I was much the better for having lain silently for a time, when he returned with his hands filled with flowers, his lips smelling of peppermint-drops, and his eyes, always his finest feature, dancing with delight.

He had seen Ady, he told me, with eagerness, and she had kissed him, and tied a string of beads about his neck--red ones--which he displayed; and "Ady had a comb in her head, and her toof was broke"--touching one of his own front teeth lightly, so that I knew he was not pointing out any deficiency in the afore-mentioned comb. From this description, vague as it was, I identified Ada Greene as the person intended to be described; for I too had observed the imperfection he made a point of--a broken tooth, impairing the beauty of otherwise faultless ones.

"And who gave you the flowers, Ernie?" I asked, receiving them from his generous hands as I spoke, and raising the white roses to my nostrils to inhale their delicate breath, "Did Ady give you these?"

"No--Angy!" he answered, solemnly.

"Tell me about Angy, Ernie--had she wings?"

"No wings! Poor Angy could not fly. She was walking in the garden with Adam and Eve, with their clothes on," he said, earnestly.

"Mr. and Mrs. Claude Bainrothe, no doubt," I thought, smiling at the strange mixture of the real and the ideal--the plates of the old Bible evidently supplied the latter, from which many of his impressions were derived--and the practical pair in question the former, quietly perambulating together.

But "Angy!" Could I doubt for one moment to whom he applied that celestial t.i.tle? The face of one of the angels in the transfiguration did, indeed, resemble Mabel's. I had often remarked and pondered over it.

"Tell me about Angy, Ernie," I entreated. "O Heaven! to think her hands have touched these flowers--her sweet face bent above him! Darling, darling! to be divided and yet so near! It breaks my heart!" and tears flowed freely while he tried to describe the vision that had so impressed him, in his earnest way.

"Poor Angy got no wings," he began again; "bu hair, and bu eyes, and bu dress"--every thing he admired was blue--"and she kissed Ernie and gave him peppermint-drops. Then Adam and Eve laughed just so"--grinning wonderfully--"and said, 'Go home, bad, ugly child, with a back on!' Then Angy pulled flowers and gave Ernie!"

"It is only the little gal next door--I means de young lady ob de 'stabishment, wut de poor, foolish, humped-shouldered baby talking about," Dinah explained. "He calls her 'Angy,' I s'pose, 'cause she's so purty like; and you tells him 'bout dem hebbenly kine of people, so de say, mos' ebbery night. Does you think dar is such tings, sure enough, Mirry?"

"Certainly, Dinah--the Bible tells us so; but what is the name of the pretty little girl of whom you speak? Tell me, if you know"--and I laid my hand upon her arm and whispered this inquiry, waiting impatiently for a confirmation of my almost certainty. For, that my darling _was_ Ernie's Angy, I could not doubt, and the thought moved me to tremulous emotion.

"Dar, now! you is going to hab one ob dem bad turns agin--I sees it in your eyes. You see," dropping her voice for a moment, "I darsn't dar to speak out plain and 'bove-board heah, as if I was at home in Georgy!

Ehbery ting is wat dey calls a 'mist'ry hereabouts; an' I has bin notified not to tell ob no secret doins ob deirn to any airthly creeter, onless I wants to be smacked into jail an' guv up to my wrong owners. My own folks went down on de 'Scewsko;' an' I means to wait till I see how dat 'state's gwine to be settled up afore I pursents myself as 'mong de live ones. We is all published as dead, you sees, honey, an' it would be no lie to preach our funeral, or eben put up our foot-board. He--he--he!

I wonder wat my ole man 'll say ef he ebber sees me comin' back agin wid a bag full ob money? I guess it 'll skeer de ole creeter out ob a year's growfe; but dis is de trufe! Ef Miss Polly Allen gits de 'state (she was my mistis's born full-sifter, an' a mity fine ole maid, I tells you, chile!), wy, den Sabra 'll he found to be no ghose; fur it's easier to lib wid good wite folks Souf dan Norf. We hab our own housen dar, an'

pigs, an' poultry, an' taturs, an' a heap besides, an' time to come an'

go, an' doctors won we's sick, an' our own preachin', an' de banjo an'

bones to dance by, an' de best ob funeral 'casions an' weddin's bofe, an' no cole wedder, an' nuffin to do but set by de light wood-fiah, an'

smoke a pipe wen we gits past work; an' we chooses our own time to lay by--some sooner, some later, 'cordin' as de jints holes out. But here it is work--work--work--all de time; good pay, but no holiday, no yams, no possum-meat, an' mity mean colored siety!"