"But I never did, Rule. Oh, Heaven knows I never did. It was all self-delusion," broke in Corona.
"No; you never did. I saw that in the first instant that I met your eyes in the log cabin up yonder. You never did! It was a self-delusion. Yet you were under the influence of that self-delusion when I found you on our wedding evening in such a paroxysm of grief and despair that I--astonished and amazed at what I saw--shared your delusion and imagined that you loved this duke when you married me. What could I do, my own dear Cora, for whom I would have lived or died at bidding--what could I do but efface myself from your life?"
"Oh! you could have given me time--time to recover from my mental illness, since I had done no evil willingly. Since I had kept my troth as well as I could. Since I had vowed to love and serve you all the days of my life. You should have given me time, Rule, to recover my senses and keep my vow."
"Yes; I should have done so! But, you see, I did not know. How could I know? Oh, my dear Cora! It cost me little to lay down all the honors I had won, for they were worthless to me if not shared by you, for whom they were won. But it cost my life almost to resign you. Mine was "not the flight of a felon" or a coward, but the retirement of one sick, sick unto death of the world and of all the glory of the world. Some men in my case might have sought relief in death, but I--I knew I must live until the Lord of life should himself relieve me of duty. So I left the city on the night of my wedding day, the night also before my inauguration day."
"Oh, Rule! and as if it required that supreme act of renunciation to tear the veil from my eyes and let me see you as you were, and see my own heart as it was--from that hour I knew how much, how deeply, how eternally I loved you!" said Corona.
Rothsay raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. Then he resumed:
"I wrote two letters--one to you, explaining my motives for leaving, and advising you not to repeat to any one the subject or substance of our last interview, lest it should be misunderstood or misrepresented, and should do you unmerited injury with an evil-thinking world--"
"Yes, Rule. See! See! I have that letter yet!" exclaimed Corona, hastily unb.u.t.toning the front of her bodice and pulling up the little black silk bag which she wore next her heart, suspended from the silken cord around her neck, and taking from it the old, yellow, broken paper which contained the last lines he had written to her.
"You kept that all this time, dear?" he inquired, gently taking the paper and looking at it.
"Yes. Why not? It was the last relic I possessed of you. And it has never left me. I never showed it to a human being, because you did not wish me to do so. But you said you had written two letters. To whom was the other? We never heard of it."
Rothsay looked at her in surprise for a moment and answered:
"The other letter? Why, of course it was my letter of resignation."
"Then it was never found! Never! If it had been, it would have saved much trouble. No one knew what had become of you, Rule. Not even I, except that you had left me on account of that last conversation between us, which you adjured me never to divulge. And oh! what amazement your disappearance caused! and what conjectures as to your fate! Many thought that you had been a.s.sa.s.sinated and your body sunk in the river. Oh, Rule! Many others thought that you had been abducted by some political enemy--as if any force could have carried you off, Rule!"
Rothsay laughed for the first time during the interview. Corona continued:
"Advertis.e.m.e.nts were placed in all the papers, offering large rewards for information that should lead to the discovery of your fate or whereabouts, living or dead. And, oh! how many impostors came forward to claim the money, with information that led to nothing at all. A sailor returning from Rio de Janeiro swore that you had shipped as a man before the mast and gone out with him, and that he had left you in the capital of Brazil. A fur trader from Alaska reported you killing seals in that territory. A returned miner swore that he had left you gold digging in California. A New Bedford sailor made his affidavit that he had seen you embark on a whaling ship for Baffin"s Bay. These were the most hopeful reports. But there were others. There was never the body of an unknown man found anywhere that was not reported to be yours. Oh, Rule!
think of the anguish all these rumors cost your friends!"
"Cost you, my poor Corona! I doubt if they cost any other human being a single pang."
"But all these rumors proved to be false, and your fate remained a mystery until it was apparently cleared up by the report of your murder by the Comanches in the ma.s.sacre of La Terrepeur."
"A report as false as any of the others, as you see, yet with a better foundation in probability than any of those, as I have explained. But how my letter of resignation should have been lost I cannot conjecture.
I posted it with my own hand," said Rothsay, reflectively.
"Why, letters are occasionally lost in the mail! But, Rule, how was it that you never heard of all the amazement and confusion that followed your flight, for the want of your letter to explain it?"
"Because, dear, from the time I left the State capital to this day I have never seen a newspaper or spoken to a civilized being."
"Rule!"
"It is true, dear! Look at me. Have I not degenerated into a savage?"
"No, no, no, Regulas Rothsay! you could never do that! Ah! how much n.o.bler you look to me in that rude forest garb than ever in the fine dress of the drawing room! But tell me about your journey from the city into the wilderness, and of your life since."
"I have been trying to do so, Cora, but every time I try to begin my narrative by reverting to the hour of my flight, I seem spellbound to that hour and cannot escape from it. But I will try again," he said, and he began his story.
He told her, in brief, that on leaving the Rockhold house and going out upon the sidewalk, he found the streets still alight with illuminated houses and alive with the orgies of revelers who had come to the inauguration.
In moving through the crowd he was unrecognized, for who could suspect the black-coated figure pa.s.sing alone along the street at midnight to be the governor-elect of the State, in whose honor the a.s.sembled mult.i.tudes were getting drunk?
His first intention had been to take a hack, drive to the railway depot, and board the first train going West. But the hacks were all engaged as sleeping berths by men who could not get accommodations in any of the houses of the overcrowded city.
So he set off to walk, and almost immediately came face to face with old Scythia, the friend of his childhood.
"Old Scythia!" exclaimed Corona, interrupting the narrative.
"Yes, dear; the old seeress of Raven Roost, as they used to call her. Of course, I never, even as a boy, believed in the supernatural powers of divination ascribed to her, but I must credit her with wonderful intuitions. She had divined the very crisis that had come, and in that hour of my agony and humiliation she exercised a strange power over me,"
said Rothsay; and then he took up the thread of his narrative again.
He told her that on leaving the State capital he had taken neither railway carriage nor river steamboat, but had tramped, with old Scythia by his side, all the way from the c.u.mberland Mountains to the Southwestern frontier.
The journey had taken them all the summer, for they traveled very slowly--sometimes walking no more than ten miles a day, sometimes sleeping on pallets made of leaves under the trees of the forest, sometimes reaching a pioneer"s log hut, where they could get a hot supper and a night"s lodging. Sometimes stopping over Sunday in some settlement where there was no church, and where Rule, though not an ordained minister, would on Christian principles hold a service and preach a sermon.
So they journeyed over the mountains, and through the valleys and forests, until at length, in the end of October, they arrived at the poorest, loneliest, and most forlorn of all the pioneer settlements they had seen.
This was La Terrepeur, on the borders of the Indian Reserve. It was a settlement of about twenty log huts, in a small valley shut in by densely wooded hills, and watered by a narrow brook. It was too near the country of the Comanches for safety, and too far from the nearest fort for protection. There was neither church nor school house within a hundred miles.
The travelers were hospitably received by the pioneers, and here, as the autumn was far advanced, and travel difficult, they determined to halt for the winter, at least, and in the spring to go farther south in search of Scythia"s tribe, the Nez Percees, who had been moved away from their former hunting grounds.
They were feasted and lodged by the hutters that night. The next morning the men turned out in a body, felled trees and cleared a spot on the slope of a wooded hill, sawed logs and built two huts, one for Rothsay, and one for old Scythia. They were finished before night. And then the settlers had a house-warming, which was a breakdown dance to the music of the one fiddle in the settlement, and a supper of such eatables and drinkables as the place could afford.
But there was no furniture in these two primitive dwellings. So once more these wayfarers had each to sleep on a bed of leaves.
On the second day the man who owned the only mule and cart, and was the only expressman and carrier to the settlement, offered to go to the nearest post trader"s station--a distance of fifty miles--and purchase anything that the strangers might need, if said strangers had the money to buy.
Rothsay had money in notes, hardly thought of, and never looked at, except when, on their long journey, he had to take out his pocket book to pay for accommodations at some log cabin, or to purchase a change of under clothing at some post trader"s.
Also old Scythia had a pouch of silver and gold coin, saved from the money that had been regularly sent to her by Rule from the time when he first began to earn wages to the time when they set out for the wilderness in company.
Of this money they gave the frontier expressman all that he required to purchase the plainest furniture for the log cabins--bedding, cooking utensils, crockery ware, and some groceries.
"Yer can"t buy bed or mattresses at the post trader"s; but yer can buy ticking, and we can sew it up for yer, and the men will stuff with straw. There"s plenty of straw," said one of the kindly women, speaking for all her neighbors.
And the expressman set out with his list.
In three days he was back again with a satisfactory supply. The women made the straw beds and pillows and hemmed the sheets. The men filled the ticks and "knocked together" a pine table and a few rude, three-legged stools. And so Rothsay and old Scythia were settled for the winter.
Rothsay took upon himself the office of teacher and preacher. Among the articles brought from the post trader"s were a few Bibles, hymn books, and elementary school books, slates and pencils.
He began his labors by holding a religious service in his own cabin on the first Sabbath of his sojourn at La Terrepeur, which--perhaps for its rarity--was attended by the whole of the little community. And on the next day he opened his little school in his hut, where he taught the children all day, and where he slept at night. Old Scythia"s cabin was kitchen and dining room.
All that autumn, winter and spring Rule labored among the pioneers of La Terrepeur. It was not true, as had been reported, that he was a missionary and schoolmaster to the Indians; for no one of the savages who occasionally came into the settlement could be induced to approach the "school."
It was in June that old Scythia became restless and anxious to find her tribe--the wandering Nez Percees.