The Redemption of David Corson Part 25

Once more that hideous smile of cunning lit up the face which in these few moments had undergone a mysterious deterioration. He hastily removed the heap of rubbish, shuddered as he saw the loathsome thing once more exposed to view, but seized it, dragged it back, and placed it with consummate art in the position which his criminal prescience had suggested.

As it lay there in the road nothing could have seemed more natural than that it had fallen from the horse; he felt another momentary relief from terror, in which he cunningly conceived a still more sagacious plan, on noticing Romeo. They were the best of friends; it was easy to catch him.

He did so, removed the saddle, broke the girth and placed it near the prostrate figure of the quack. Nothing could have more perfectly resembled an accident. An adept in crime could not have performed this task with finer skill, and he was free now to turn to the rest of the work that he must do to conceal this ghastly deed.

Approaching the buggy, he found to his immense relief that Pepeeta was still unconscious. With swift and silent movements he freed the mare, led her out into the road and drove hurriedly away.

The wood through which they were pa.s.sing was wide and somber. The shadows of the evening had already begun to creep up the tree-trunks and lurk gloomily among the branches. Plaintive bird songs were heard from the treetops, and among them those of the mourning dove, whose solemn, funereal note sent shudders through the heart of the trembling fugitive.

But all had gone successfully so far, and he actually began to cherish hope that he would escape detection. There still remained, however, the uneasy fear that Pepeeta herself had been a witness of the deed.

Horrible as was his own consciousness of his crime, he dared to hope that he could stand it, if only she did not know! He dreaded to have her waken, and yet it seemed as if he could not endure the suspense until he found whether she had seen the deed or not.

Without trying to rouse her, he drove rapidly forward, and just as he emerged from the wood came to another brook, so similar to the one by the side of which the struggle had occurred, that he conceived the idea of stopping by its side and awakening Pepeeta from her stupor there.

"She will not notice the difference," he said to himself; "and if she did not witness the fatal blow I can persuade her that I overpowered the doctor and forced him to return while she was in her swoon."

Stopping the horse, he lifted her inanimate form from the carriage, bore it to the side of the brook, laid it gently upon the bank and dashed a handful of the cold water into her white face. She gasped, opened her eyes, and, sitting up, looked about her with an expression of terror.

"Where am I?" she asked.

"Do you not remember? You are here in the wood where the doctor overtook us," he replied.

"And where is he?"

"He has returned."

"Has something dreadful happened?"

"Nothing."

"But I saw you clench with each other, and it was awful! What happened then? I must have fainted. Did I?"

"Yes, you fainted. Were you so frightened?"

"Oh, terribly! I thought that you would kill each other! It was horrible, horrible! But where is he now?"

"He has returned."

"Returned? Do you mean that he has gone back without me? How did you persuade him to do that?"

"How did I persuade him? Ha! ha! I persuaded him with my fists. You should have seen me, Pepeeta! Are you quite sure that you did not see me? I should like you to know what a coward he was at last, and how he went home like a whipped puppy."

"But did he acknowledge that he had deceived me?"

"He did indeed, upon his knees."

"And do you think he has gone, never to return?"

"Yes, he has gone, never to return," he answered, shuddering at the double meaning of his words. "He made his confession and relinquished his claim, and I made him swear that he would renounce you forever. And so we have nothing to do but forget him and be happy. Are you feeling better now?"

"Yes, I am better; but I am not well; I cannot shake it off. It seems too dreadful to have been real. And yet how much better it is than if one of you had been killed! Oh! I wish I could stop seeing it" (putting her hands over her eyes). "Let us go! Let us leave this gloomy wood. Let us get out into the sunshine. See! It is getting dark. We must not stay here any longer."

"Yes, let us go," he said, rising, lifting her gently from the ground and leading her back to the buggy in which they took their seats and drove rapidly forward.

In a few moments they emerged from the forest. The sun was still a little way above the horizon; its cheerful beams partially restored Pepeeta's spirits, and David felt a momentary pleasure as he saw a slight smile upon her pale countenance.

"Do you feel happier now?" he said.

"Yes, a little," she answered, looking into his face with eyes suffused with tears. "And I am so thankful that you are safe!"

"And so you fainted before we fell?" he asked, compelled to rea.s.sure himself.

"Did you fall?" she said, trembling again and laying her hand upon his arm.

"There, there," he answered gently; "I ought not to have asked you. We must never allude to it again. We must forget it. Will you try?"

"Yes, I will try, but it is hard. It belongs to the past, and we must live in the present and in the future. I will try. I love you so, and I am so thankful that you are safe." As she said this, she took his hand in both of hers and pressed it to her breast.

This tender caress produced a revulsion in his heart and he shuddered.

Pepeeta observed it. "What makes you tremble so?" she asked.

"Nothing," he answered, regaining his self-control. "It is only that I have been very angry, and I cannot recover from it at once."

"No wonder," she said, taking his hand again and kissing it.

In the distance they saw the steeple of a church. "Look," said David, "there must be a village near. We will top and rest here to-night, and in the morning we will push on toward New Orleans and forget the past."

They rode in silence. Pepeeta's thoughts were full of gladness; and David's full of agony--they rushed tumultuously back and forth through his mind like contrary winds through a forest.

"Was it not enough that I should be an Adam, and fall? Must I also become a Cain and go forth with the brand of a murderer on my forehead?"

he kept saying to himself.

His life seemed destined to reproduce that whole series of archetypal experiences, whose records make the Hebrew Scriptures the inspired mirror of human life.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A FUGITIVE AND A VAGABOND

"That is the bitterest of all,--to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing!"--Daniel Deronda.

The morning after the fight David and Pepeeta hurried on to Louisville, and from there took a steamer to New Orleans.

However hard it is to find stepping-stones when one wishes to rise, those by which he can descend have been skilfully planted at every stage of life's journey, and Satanic ingenuity could not have devised an instrument better fitted to complete the destruction of the young mystic's moral nature than a Mississippi steamboat, such as he found lying at the wharf. He had been subjected to the fascination of love, now he was to be tried by that of money. It is by a series of such consecutive a.s.saults upon every avenue of approach to the soul that it is at last reduced to ruin.

Pepeeta was radiant with joy as they embarked. "How happy I am!" she cried. "It seems as if I had left my old life and the old world behind me!"

"And I am happy to see you glad," answered the wretched youth, whose heart lay in his bosom like lead and whose conscience was writhing with a torture of whose like he had never even dreamed. They embarked unknown and un.o.bserved; but as soon as the first confusion had pa.s.sed, their singular beauty and unusual appearance made them the cynosure of every eye.