The Missing Bride Part 44

"Miriam, you evade my questions. Will you promise me one thing?"

"What is that?"

"Promise me to do nothing with those letters until you have further evidence."

"I promise you that."

Then Paul took up a candle and left the room, as if to go to his sleeping apartment; but on reaching the hall, he threw down and extinguished the light and rushed as if for breath out into the open air.

The night was keen and frosty, the cold, slaty sky was thickly studded with sparkling stars, the snow was crusted over--it was a fine, fresh, clear, wintry night; at another time it would have invigorated and inspired him; now the air seemed stifling, the scene hateful.

The horrible suspicion of his brother's criminality had entered his heart for the first time, and it had come with the shock of certainty.

The sudden recognition of the handwriting, the strange revelations of the foreign letters, had not only in themselves been a terrible disclosure, but had struck the whole "electric chain" of memory and a.s.sociation, and called up in living force many an incident and circ.u.mstance heretofore strange and incomprehensible; but now only too plain and indicative. The whole of Thurston's manner the fatal day of the a.s.sa.s.sination--his abstraction, his anxious haste to get away on the plea of most urgent business in Baltimore--business that never was afterward heard of; his mysterious absence of the whole night from his grandfather's deathbed--provoking conjecture at the time, and unaccounted for to this day; his haggard and distracted looks upon returning late the next morning; his incurable sorrow; his habit of secluding himself upon the anniversary of that crime--and now the d.a.m.ning evidence in these letters! Among them, and the first he looked at, was the letter Thurston had written Marian to persuade her to accompany him to France, in the course of which his marriage with her was repeatedly acknowledged, being incidentally introduced as an argument in favor of her compliance with his wishes.

Yet Paul could not believe the crime ever premeditated--it was sudden, unintentional, consummated in a lover's quarrel, in a fit of jealousy, rage, disappointment, madness! Stumbling upon half the truth, he said to himself:

"Perhaps failing to persuade her to fly with him to France, he had attempted to carry her off, and being foiled, had temporarily lost his self-control, his very sanity. That would account for all that had seemed so strange in his conduct the day and night of the a.s.sa.s.sination and the morning after."

There was agony--there was madness in the pursuit of the investigation.

Oh, pitying Heaven! how thought and grief surged and seethed in aching heart and burning brain!

And Miriam's promise to her dying mother--Miriam's promise to bring the criminal to justice! Would she--could she now abide by its obligations?

Could she prosecute her benefactor, her adopted brother, for murder?

Could her hand be raised to hurl him down from his pride of place to shame and death? No, no, no, no! the vow must be broken, must be evaded; the right, even if it were the right, must be transgressed, heaven offended--anything! anything! anything but the exposure and sacrifice of their brother! If he had sinned, had he not repented? Did he not suffer?

What right had she, his ward, his _protege_, his child, to punish him?

"Vengeance is mine--I will repay, saith the Lord." No, Miriam must not keep her vow! She must! she must! she must, responded the moral sense, slow, measured, dispa.s.sionate, as the regular fall of a clock's hammer.

"I will myself prevent her; I will find means, arguments and persuasions to act upon her. I will so appeal to her affections, her grat.i.tude, her compa.s.sion, her pride, her fears, her love for me--I will so work upon her heart that she will not find courage to keep her vow." She will! she will! responded the deliberate conscience.

And so he walked up and down; vainly the fresh wind fanned his fevered brow; vainly the sparkling stars glanced down from holy heights upon him; he found no coolness for his fever in the air, no sedative for his anxiety in the stillness, no comfort for his soul in the heavens; he knew not whether he were indoors or out, whether it were night or day, summer or winter, he knew not, wrapped as he was in the mantle of his own sad thoughts, suffering as he was in the purgatory of his inner life.

While Paul walked up and down, like a maniac, Miriam returned to her room to pace the floor until nearly morning, when she threw herself, exhausted, upon the bed, fell into a heavy sleep, and a third time, doubtless from nervous excitement or prostration, suffered a repet.i.tion of her singular vision, and awoke late in the morning, with the words, "perform thy vow," ringing in her ears.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE AVENGER.

Several days pa.s.sed in the gloomy mansion misnamed Dell-Delight. Miriam and Paul avoided each other like death. Both dreaded like death any illusion to the awful subject that lay so heavy upon the heart of each.

Paul, unacquainted with her thoughts, and relying upon her promise to do nothing with the letters without further evidence, contented himself with watching her motions, feeling comparatively at ease as long as she should remain in the house; and being resolved to prevent her from going forth, or to accompany her if she persisted in leaving home.

With Miriam, the shock, the anguish, the struggle had well-nigh pa.s.sed; she was at once subdued and resolved, like one into whom some spirit had entered and bound her own spirit, and acted through her. So strange did all appear to her, so strange the impa.s.siveness of her own will, of her habits and affections, that should have rebelled and warred against her purpose that she sometimes thought herself not herself, or insane, or the subject of a monomania, or some strange hallucination, a dreamer, a somnambulist, perhaps. And yet with matchless tact and discretion, she went about her deadly work. She had prepared her plan of action, and now waited only for a day very near at hand, the fourth of April, the anniversary of Marian's a.s.sa.s.sination, to put Thurston to a final test before proceeding further.

The day came at last--it was cold and wintry for the season. Toward evening the sky became overcast with leaden clouds, and the chill dampness penetrated into all the rooms of the old mansion. Poor f.a.n.n.y was muttering and moaning to herself and her "spirits" over the wood fire in her distant room.

Mr. Willc.o.xen had not appeared since breakfast time. Miriam remained in her own chamber; and Paul wandered restlessly from place to place through all the rooms of the house, or threw himself wearily into his chair before the parlor fire. Inclement as the weather was, he would have gone forth, but that he too remembered the anniversary, and a nameless anxiety connected with Miriam confined him to the house.

In the kitchen, the colored folk gathered around the fire, grumbling at the unseasonable coldness of the weather, and predicting a hail-storm, and telling each other that they never "'sperienced" such weather this time o' year, 'cept 'twas that spring Old Ma.r.s.e died--when no wonder, "'siderin' how he lived long o' Sam all his life."

Only old Jenny went in and out from house to kitchen, Old Jenny had enough to do to carry wood to the various fires. She had never "seed it so cold for de season nyther, 'cept 'twas de spring Miss Marian went to hebben, and not a bit o' wonder de yeth was cole arter she war gone--de dear, lovin' heart warm angel; 'deed I wondered how it ever come summer again, an' thought it was right down onsensible in her morning-glories to bloom out jest de same as ever, arter she was gone! An' what minds me to speak o' Miss Marian now, it war jes' seven years this night, since she 'parted dis life," said Jenny, as she stood leaning her head upon the mantel-piece, and toasting her toes at the kitchen fire, previous to carrying another armful of wood into the parlor.

Night and the storm descended together--such a tempest! such a wild outbreaking of the elements! rain and hail, and snow and wind, all warring upon the earth together! The old house shook, the doors and windows rattled, the timbers cracked, the shingles were torn off and whirled aloft, the trees were swayed and snapped; and as the storm increased in violence and roused to fury, the forest beat before its might, and the waves rose and overflowed the low land.

Still old Jenny went in and out of the house to kitchen and kitchen to house, carrying wood, water, meat, bread, sauce, sweetmeats, arranging the table for supper, replenishing the fire, lighting the candles, letting down the curtains--and trying to make everything cozy and comfortable for the rea.s.sembling of the fireside circle. Poor old Jenny had pa.s.sed so much of her life in the family with "the white folks,"

that all her sympathies went with them--and on the state of their spiritual atmosphere depended all her cheerfulness and comfort; and now the cool, distant, sorrowful condition of the members of the little family circle--"ebery single mudder's son and darter ob 'em, superamblated off to derself like pris'ners in a jailhouse"--as she said--depressed her spirits very much. Jenny's reaction from depression was always quite querulous. And toward the height of the storm, there was a reaction and she grew very quarrelsome.

"Sam's waystin'[A] roun' in dere," said Jenny, as she thrust her feet into the kitchen fire, before carrying in the urn; "Sam's waystin', I tells you all good! all werry quiet dough--no noise, no fallin' out, no 'sputin' nor nothin'--all quiet as de yeth jest afore a debbil ob a storm--n.o.body in de parlor 'cept 'tis Ma.r.s.e Paul, settin' right afore de parlor fire, wid one long leg poked east and toder west, wid the boots on de andirons like a spread-eagle! lookin' as glum as if I owed him a year's sarvice, an' nebber so much as a-sayin', 'Jenny, you poor old debbil, ain't you a-cold?' an' me coming in ebery minnit wid the icicles a-jinglin' 'roun' my linsey-woolsey skurts, like de diamonds on de Wirgin Mary's Sunday gown. But Sam's waystin' now, I tells you all good.

Lors Gemini, what a storm!

[Footnote A: Waysting--Going up and down.]

"I 'members of no sich since dat same storm as de debbil come in to fetch ole ma.r.s.e's soul--dis berry night seven year past, an' he carried of him off all in a suddint whiff! jist like a puff of win'. An' no wonder, seein' how he done traded his soul to him for money!

"An' Sam's here ag'in to-night! dunno who he's come arter! but he's here, now, I tells you all good!" said Jenny, as she took up the urn to carry it into the parlor.

When she got there she could scarcely get to the fire; Paul took up the front. His immobility and unconsciousness irritated Jenny beyond silent endurance.

"I tell you all what," she said, "I means to 'sign my sitewation! 'deed me! I can't kill myself for dem as wouldn't even care 'nough for me to have a ma.s.s said for de 'pose o' my soul."

"What do you mean?" asked Paul, angrily, for confinement, solitude, bad weather, and anxiety, had combined, to make him querulous, too.

"I means how ef yer doesn't have a kivered way made from de house to de kitchen an' back ag'in, I gwine give up waitin' on de table, now min' I tell yer, 'deed me! an' now ef you likes, yer may jes' go an' tell Ma.r.s.e Rooster."

"'Ma.r.s.e Rooster!' Will you ever give up that horrid nonsense. Why, you old--! Is my brother--is your master a barn-door chicken-c.o.c.k, that you call him 'Rooster?'" asked the young man, snappishly.

"Well, Shrooster, den, ef you wants me to wring my tongue in two. Ef people's sponsors in baptism will gib der chillun such heathen names, how de debbil any Christian 'oman gwine to twis' her tongue roun' it? I thanks my 'Vine Marster dat my sponsors in baptism named me arter de bressed an' holy S'int Jane--who has 'stained an' s'ported me all my days; an' 'ill detect now, dough you do try to break my poor ole heart long wid onkindness at my ole ages o' life! But what's de use o'

talkin'--Sam's waystin'!" And so saying, Jenny gave the finishing touches to the arrangement of the table, and then seized the bell, and rang it with rather needless vigor and violence, to bring the scattered members of the family together.

They came, slowly and singly, and drew around the table more like ghosts than living persons, a few remarks upon the storm, and then they sunk into silence--and as soon as the gloomy meal was over, one by one they dropped away from the room--first went poor f.a.n.n.y, then Mr. Willc.o.xen, then Miriam.

"Where are you going, Miriam?" asked Paul, as the latter was leaving the room.

"To my chamber."

And before he could farther question, or longer detain her, she pressed his hand and went out. And Paul, with a deep sigh and a strangely foreboding heart, sank back into his seat.

When Miriam reached her bedroom, she carefully closed and locked the door, went to her bureau, opened the top-drawer, and took from it a small oblong mahogany glove-box. She unlocked the latter, and took out a small parcel, which she unwrapped and laid before her upon the bureau.

It was the xyphias poniard.

The weapon had come into her possession some time before in the following manner: During the first winter of Paul Dougla.s.s' absence from home, Mr. Willc.o.xen had emanc.i.p.ated several of his slaves and provided means for their emigration to Liberia. They were to sail early in March.

Among the number was Melchisedek. A few days previous to their departure, this man had come to the house, and sought the presence of his youthful mistress, when he knew her to be alone in the parlor, and with a good deal of mystery and hesitation had laid before her a dagger which he said he should rather have given to "Marster Paul," if the latter had been at home. He had picked it up near the water's edge on the sands the night of Miss Mayfield's death, which "Marster" had taken so to heart, that he was afraid to harrow up his feelings by bringing it to him a second time--but that as it was an article of value, he did not like to take it away with him. And he begged Miss Miriam to take charge of it. And Miriam had taken it, and with surprise, but without the slightest suspicion, had read the name of "Thurston Willc.o.xen" carved upon its handle. To all her questions, Melchisedek had given evasive answers, or remained obstinately silent, being determined not to betray his master's confidence by revealing his share in the events of that fatal night. Miriam had taken the little instrument, wrapped it carefully in paper, and locked it in her old-fashioned long glove-box.

And from that day to this she had not opened it.

Now, however, she had taken it out with a fixed purpose, and she stood and gazed upon it. Presently she took it up, rolled it in the paper, took her lamp, and slowly left her room, and pa.s.sed along the pa.s.sages leading to Mr. Willc.o.xen's library.