"You have the means of safety and release in your own hands--a single condition complied with, and, so far as I am concerned, they are yours.
Where is he gone--where secreted! What is the route which you have advised him to take? Speak, and to the point, Lucy Munro, for I may not longer be trifled with."
"He is safe, and by this time, I hope, beyond your reach. I tell you thus much, because I feel that it can not yield you more satisfaction than it yields to me."
"It is in vain, woman, that you would trifle with and delay me; he can not escape me in the end. All these woods are familiar to me, in night as in day, as the apartment in which we stand; and towards this boy I entertain a feeling which will endue me with an activity and energy as unshrinking in the pursuit as the appet.i.te for revenge is keen which gives them birth and impulse. I hate him with a sleepless, an unforgiving hate, that can not be quieted. He has dishonored me in the presence of these men--he has been the instrument through which I bear this badge, this brand-stamp on my cheek--he has come between my pa.s.sion and its object--nay, droop not--I have no reference now to you, though you, too, have been won by his insidious attractions, while he gives you no thought in return--he has done more than this, occasioned more than this, and wonder not that I had it in my heart at one moment to-night to put my dagger into your bosom, since through you it had been defrauded of its object. But why tremble--do you not tell me he is safe?"
"I do! and for this reason I tremble. I tremble with joy, not fear. I rejoice that through my poor help he is safe. I did it all. I sought him--hear me, Guy Rivers, for in his safety I feel strong to speak--I sought him even in his chamber, and felt no shame--I led the way--I guided him through all the avenues of the house--when you ascended the stairs we stood over it in the closet which is at its head. We beheld your progress--saw, and counted every step you took; heard every word you uttered; and more than once, when your fiend soul spoke through your lips, in horrible threatenings, my hand arrested the weapon with which the youth whom you now seek would have sent you to your long account, with all your sins upon your head. I saved you from his blow; not because you deserved to live, but because, at that moment, you were too little prepared to die."
It would be difficult to imagine--certainly impossible to describe, the rage of Rivers, as, with an excited spirit, the young girl, still trembling, as she expressed it, from joy, not fear, avowed all the particulars of Colleton"s escape. She proceeded with much of the fervor and manner of one roused into all the inspiration of a holy defiance of danger:--
"Wonder not, therefore, that I tremble--my soul is full of joy at his escape. I heed not the sneer and the sarcasm which is upon your lips and in your eyes. I went boldly and confidently even into the chamber of the youth--I aroused him from his slumbers--I defied, at that moment of peril, what were far worse to me than your suspicions--I defied such as might have been his. I was conscious of no sin--no improper thought--and I called upon G.o.d to protect and to sanction me in what I had undertaken. He has done so, and I bless him for the sanction."
She sunk upon her knees as she spoke, and her lips murmured and parted as if in prayer, while the tears--tears of gladness--streamed warmly and abundantly from her eyes. The rage of the outlaw grew momently darker and less governable. The white foam collected about his mouth--while his hands, though still retaining their gripe upon hers, trembled almost as much as her own. He spoke in broken and bitter words.
"And may G.o.d curse you for it! You have dared much, Lucy Munro, this hour. You have bearded a worse fury than the tiger thirsting after blood. What madness prompts you to this folly? You have heard me avow my utter, uncontrollable hatred of this man--my determination, if possible, to destroy him, and yet you interpose. You dare to save him in my defiance. You teach him our designs, and labor to thwart them yourself.
Hear me, girl! you know me well--you know I never threaten without execution. I can understand how it is that a spirit, feeling at this moment as does your own, should defy death. But, bethink you--is there nothing in your thought which is worse than death, from the terrors of which, the pure mind, however fortified by heroic resolution, must still shrink and tremble? Beware, then, how you chafe me. Say where the youth has gone, and in this way retrieve, if you can, the error which taught you to connive at his escape."
"I know not what you mean, and have no fears of anything you can do. On this point I feel secure, and bid you defiance. To think now, that, having chiefly effected the escape of the youth, I would place him again within your power, argues a degree of stupidity in me that is wantonly insulting. I tell you he has fled, by this time, beyond your reach. I say no more. It is enough that he is in safety; before a word of mine puts him in danger, I"ll perish by your hands, or any hands."
"Then shall you perish, fool!" cried the ruffian; and his hand, hurried by the ferocious impulse of his rage, was again uplifted, when, in her struggles at freedom, a new object met his sight in the chain and portrait which Ralph had flung about her neck, and which, now falling from her bosom, arrested his attention, and seemed to awaken some recognition in his mind. His hold relaxed upon her arm, and with eager haste he seized the portrait, tearing it away with a single wrench from the rich chain to which it was appended, and which now in broken fragments was strewed upon the floor.
Lucy sprang towards him convulsively, and vainly endeavored at its recovery. Rivers broke the spring, and his eyes gazed with serpent-like fixedness upon the exquisitely beautiful features which it developed.
His whole appearance underwent a change. The sternness had departed from his face which now put on an air of abstraction and wandering, not usually a habit with it. He gazed long and fixedly upon the portrait, unheeding the efforts of the girl to obtain it, and muttering at frequent intervals detached sentences, having little dependence upon one another:--
"Ay--it is she," he exclaimed--"true to the life--bright, beautiful, young, innocent--and I--But let me not think!"--
Then turning to the maid--
"Fond fool--see you the object of adoration with him whom you so unprofitably adore. He loves _her_, girl--she, whom I--but why should I tell it you? is it not enough that we have both loved and loved in vain; and, in my revenge, you too shall enjoy yours."
"I have nothing to revenge, Guy Rivers--nothing for you, above all others, to revenge. Give me the miniature; I have it in trust, and it must not go out of my possession."
She clung to him as she spoke, fruitlessly endeavoring at the recovery of that which he studiously kept from her reach. He parried her efforts for a while with something of forbearance; but ere long his original temper returned, and he exclaimed, with all the air of the demon:--
"Why will you tempt me, and why longer should I trifle? You cannot have the picture--it belongs, or should belong, as well as its original, to me. My concern is now with the robber from whom you obtained it. Will you not say upon what route he went? Will you not guide me--and, remember well--there are some terrors greater to your mind than any threat of death. Declare, for the last time--what road he took."
The maiden was still, and showed no sign of reply. Her eye wandered--her spirit was in prayer. She was alone with a ruffian, irresponsible and reckless, and she had many fears.
"Will you not speak?" he cried--"then you must hear. Disclose the fact, Lucy--say, what is the road, or what the course you have directed for this youth"s escape, or--mark me! I have you in my power--my fullest power--with nothing to restrain my pa.s.sion or my power, and--"
She struggled desperately to release herself from his grasp, but he renewed it with all his sinewy strength, enforcing, with a vicelike gripe, the consciousness, in her mind, of the futility of all her physical efforts.
"Do you not hear!" he said. "Do you comprehend me."
"Do your worst!" she cried. "Kill me! I defy your power and your malice!"
"Ha! but do you defy my pa.s.sions. Hark ye, if ye fear not death, there is something worse than death to so romantic a damsel, which shall teach ye fear. Obey me, girl--report the route taken by this fugitive, or by all that is black in h.e.l.l or bright in heaven, I--"
And with a whisper, he hissed the concluding and cruel threat in the ears of the shuddering and shrinking girl. With a husky horror in her voice, she cried out:--
"You dare not! monster as you are, you dare not!" then shrieking, at the full height of her voice--"Save me, uncle! save me! save me!"
"Save you! It is he that dooms you! He has given you up to any fate that I shall decree!"
"Liar! away! I defy you. You dare not, ruffian! Your foul threat is but meant to frighten me."
The creeping terrors of her voice, as she spoke, contradicted the tenor of her speech. Her fears--quite as extreme as he sought to make them--were fully evinced in her trembling accents.
"Frighten you!" answered the ruffian. "Frighten you! why, not so difficult a matter either! But it is as easy to do, as to threaten--to make you feel as to make you fear--and why not? why should you not become the thing at once for which you have been long destined? Once certainly mine, Lucy Munro, you will abandon the silly notion that you can be anything to Ralph Colleton! Come!--"
Her shrieks answered him. He clapped his handkerchief upon her mouth.
"Uncle! uncle! save me!"
She was half stifled--she felt breath and strength failing. Her brutal a.s.sailant was hauling her away, with a force to which she could no longer oppose resistance; and with a single half-e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed prayer--"Oh, G.o.d! be merciful!" she sunk senselessly at his feet, even as a falling corse.
CHAPTER XXI.
"THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER!"
Even at this moment, Munro entered the apartment. He came not a moment too soon. Rivers had abused his opportunity thus far; and it is not to be doubted that he would have forborne none of the advantages which his brute strength afforded him over the feeble innocent, were it not for the interposition of the uncle. He _had_ lied, when he had a.s.serted to the girl the sanction of the uncle for his threatened crime. Munro was willing that his niece should become the _wife_ of the outlaw, and barely willing to consent even to this; but for anything less than this--base as he was--he would sooner have braved every issue with the ruffian, and perished himself in defence of the girl"s virtue. He had his pride of family, strange to say, though nursed and nestled in a bosom which could boast no other virtue.
The moment he saw the condition of Lucy, with the grasp of Rivers still upon her, he tore her away with the strength of a giant.
"What have you been doing, Guy?"
His keen and suspicious glance of eye conveyed the question more significantly.
"Nothing! she is a fool only!"
"And you have been a brute! Beware! I tell you, Guy Rivers, if you but ruffle the hair of this child in violence, I will knife you, as soon as I would my worst enemy."
"Pshaw! I only threatened her to make her confess where she had sent Colleton or hidden him."
"Ay, but there are some threats, Guy, that call for throat-cutting. Look to it. We know each other; and you know that, though I"m willing you should _marry_ Lucy, I"ll not stand by and see you harm her; and, with my permission you lay no hands on her, until you are married."
"Very well!" answered the ruffian sullenly, and turning away, "see that you get the priest soon ready. I"ll wait upon neither man nor woman over long! You sha"n"t trifle with me much longer."
To this speech Munro made no answer. He devoted himself to his still insensible niece, whom he raised carefully from the floor, and laid her upon a rude settee that stood in the apartment. She meanwhile remained unconscious of his care, which was limited to fanning her face and sprinkling water upon it.
"Why not carry her to her chamber--put her in bed, and let us be off?"
said Rivers.
"Wait awhile!" was the answer.