He was not ashamed of the pang, but he was not willing that other eyes should behold it. Such was the nature of his pride--the pride of strength, moral strength, and superiority over those weaknesses, which, however natural they may be, are nevertheless not often held becoming in the man.
It was the pedler, Bunce, who made his appearance--choosing, with a feature of higher characteristic than would usually have been allotted him, rather to cheer the prison hours of the unfortunate, than to pursue his own individual advantages; which, at such a time, might not have been inconsiderable. The worthy pedler was dreadfully disappointed in the result of his late adventure. He had not given himself any trouble to inquire into the nature of those proofs which Lucy Munro had a.s.sured him were in her possession; but satisfied as much by his own hope as by her a.s.surance, that all would be as he wished it, he had been elevated to a pitch of almost indecorous joy which strongly contrasted with his present depression. He had little now to say in the way of consolation, and that little was coupled with so much that was unjust to the maiden, as to call forth, at length, the rebuke of Colleton.
"Forbear on this subject, my good sir--she did what she could, and what she might have said would not have served me much. It was well she said no more. Her willingness--her adventuring so much in my behalf--should alone be sufficient to protect her from everything like blame. But tell me, Bunce, what has become of her--where is she gone, and who is now attending her?"
"Why, they took her back to the old tavern. A great big woman took her there, and looked after her. I did go and had a sight on her, and there, to be sure, was Munro"s wife, though her I did see, I"ll be sworn, in among the rocks where they shut us up."
"And was Munro there?"
"Where--in the rocks?"
"No--in the tavern?--You say his wife had come back--did he trust himself there?"
"I rather guess not--seeing as how he"d stand a close chance of "quaintance with the rope. No, neither him, nor Rivers, nor any of the regulators--thank the powers--ain"t to be seen nowhere. They"re all off--up into the nation, I guess, or off, down in Alabam by this time, clear enough."
"And who did you see at the rocks, and what men were they that made you prisoners?"
"Men--if I said men, I was "nation out, I guess. Did I say men?"
"I understood you so."
""Twan"t men at all. Nothing better than women, and no small women neither. Didn"t see a man in the neighborhood, but Chub, and he ain"t no man neither."
"What is he?"
"Why, for that matter, he"s neither one thing nor another--nothing, no how. A pesky little creature! What they call a hobbe-de-hoy will suit for his name sooner than any other that I know on. For he ain"t a man and he ain"t a boy; but jest a short, half-grown up chunk of a fellow, with bunchy shoulders, and a big head, with a mouth like an oven, and long lap ears like saddle flaps."
In this manner the pedler informed Ralph of all those previous particulars with which he had not till then been made acquainted. This having been done, and the dialogue having fairly reached its termination--and the youth exhibiting some strong symptoms of weariness--Bunce took his departure for the present, not, however, without again proffering his services. These Ralph did not scruple to accept--giving him, at the same time, sundry little commissions, and among them a message of thanks and respectful consideration to Miss Munro.
She, in the meanwhile, had, upon fainting in the court-room, been borne off in a state of utter insensibility, to the former residence of Munro, to which place, as the pedler has already informed us, the wife of the landlord had that very morning returned, resuming, precisely as before, all the previous order of her domestic arrangements. The reason for this return may be readily a.s.signed. The escape of the pedler and of Lucy from their place of temporary confinement had completely upset all the prior arrangements of the outlaws. They now conceived it no longer safe as a retreat; and failing as they did to overtake the fugitives, it was determined that, in the disguises which had been originally suggested for their adoption, they should now venture into the village, as many of them as were willing, to obtain that degree of information which would enable them to judge what further plans to adopt.
As Rivers had conjectured, Chub Williams, so far from taking for the village, had plunged deeper into the woods, flying to former and well known haunts, and regarding the face of man as that of a natural enemy.
The pedler had seen none but women, or those so disguised as such as to seem none other than what they claimed to be--while Lucy had been permitted to see none but her uncle and aunt, and one or two persons she had never met before.
Under these circ.u.mstances, Rivers individually felt no apprehensions that his wild refuge would be searched; but Munro, something older, less sanguine, and somewhat more timid than his colleague, determined no longer to risk it; and having, as we have seen, effectually checked the utterance of that evidence which, in the unconscious excitation of his niece, must have involved him more deeply in the meshes of the law, besides indicating his immediate and near neighborhood, he made his way, un.o.bserved, from the village, having first provided for her safety, and as he had determined to keep out of the way himself, having brought his family back to their old place of abode.
He had determined on this course from a variety of considerations.
Nothing, he well knew, could affect his family. He had always studiously kept them from any partic.i.p.ation in his offences. The laws had no terror for them; and, untroubled by any process against him, they could still remain and peaceably possess his property, of which he well knew, in the existing state of society in the South, no legal outlawry of himself would ever avail to deprive them. This could not have been his hope in their common flight. Such a measure, too, would only have impeded his progress, in the event of his pursuit, and have burdened him with enc.u.mbrances which would perpetually involve him in difficulty. He calculated differently his chances. His hope was to be able, when the first excitements had overblown, to return to the village, and at least quietly to effect such a disposition of his property, which was not inconsiderable, as to avoid the heavy and almost entire loss which would necessarily follow any other determination.
In all this, however, it may be remarked that the reasonings of Rivers, rather than his own, determined his conduct. That more adventurous ruffian had, from his superior boldness and greater capacities in general, acquired a singular and large influence over his companion: he governed him, too, as much by his desire of gain as by any distinct superiority which he himself possessed; he stimulated his avarice with the promised results of their future enterprises in the same region after the pa.s.sing events were over; and thus held him still in that fearful bondage of subordinate villany whose inevitable tendency is to make the agent the creature, and finally the victim. The gripe which, in a moral sense, and with a slight reference to character, Rivers had upon the landlord, was as tenacious as that of death--but with this difference, that it was death prolonged through a fearful, and, though not a protracted, yet much too long a life.
The determination of Munro was made accordingly; and, following hard upon the flight of Lucy from the rocks, we find the landlady quietly reinstated in her old home as if nothing had happened. Munro did not, however, return to the place of refuge; he had no such confidence in circ.u.mstances as Rivers; his fears had grown active in due proportion with his increase of years; and, with the increased familiarity with crime, had grown up in his mind a corresponding doubt of all persons, and an active suspicion which trusted nothing. His abode in all this time was uncertain: he now slept at one deserted lodge, and now at another; now in the disguise of one and now of another character; now on horseback, now on foot--but in no two situations taking the same feature or disguise. In the night-time he sometimes adventured, though with great caution, to the village, and made inquiries. On all hands, he heard of nothing but the preparations making against the clan of which he was certainly one of the prominent heads. The state was roused into activity, and a proclamation of the governor, offering a high reward for the discovery and detention of any persons having a hand in the murder of the guard, was on one occasion put into his own hands. All these things made caution necessary, and, though venturing still very considerably at times, he was yet seldom entirely off his guard.
Rivers kept close in the cover of his den. That den had numberless ramifications, however, known only to himself; and his calm indifference was the result of a conviction that it would require two hundred men, properly instructed, and all at the same moment, to trace him through its many sinuosities. He too, sometimes, carefully disguised, penetrated into the village, but never much in the sight of those who were not bound to him by a common danger. To Lucy he did not appear on such occasions, though he did to the old lady, and even at the family fireside.
Lucy, indeed, had eyes for few objects, and thoughts but for one. She sat as one stupified with danger, yet sufficiently conscious of it as to be conscious of nothing besides. She was bewildered with the throng of horrible circ.u.mstances which had been so crowded on her mind and memory in so brief a s.p.a.ce of time. At one moment she blamed her own weakness in suffering the trial of Ralph to progress to a consummation which she shuddered to reflect upon. Had she a right to withhold her testimony--testimony so important to the life and the honor of one person, because others might suffer in consequence--those others the real criminals, and he the innocent victim? and loving him as she did, and hating or fearing his enemies? Had she performed her duty in suffering his case to go to judgment? and such a judgment--so horrible a doom! Should she now suffer it to go to its dreadful execution, when a word from her would stay the hand of the officer, and save the life of the condemned? But would such be its effect? What credence would be given now to one who, in the hall of justice, had sunk down like a criminal herself--withholding the truth, and contradicting every word of her utterance? To whom, then, could she apply? who would hear her plea, even though she boldly narrated all the truth, in behalf of the prisoner? She maddened as she thought on all these difficulties; her blood grew fevered, a thick haze overspread her senses, and she raved at last in the most wild delirium.
Some days went by in her unconsciousness, and when she at length grew calm--when the fever of her mind had somewhat subsided--she opened her eyes and found, to her great surprise, her uncle sitting beside her couch. It was midnight; and this was the hour he had usually chosen when making his visits to his family. In these stolen moments, his attendance was chiefly given to that hapless orphan, whose present sufferings he well knew were in great part attributable to himself.
The thought smote him, for, in reference to her, all feeling had not yet departed from his soul. There was still a lurking sensibility--a lingering weakness of humanity--one of those pledges which nature gives of her old affiliation, and which she never entirely takes away from the human heart. There are still some strings, feeble and wanting in energy though they be, which bind even the most reckless outcast in some little particular to humanity; and, however time, and the world"s variety of circ.u.mstance, may have worn them and impaired their firm hold, they still sometimes, at unlooked-for hours, regrapple the long-rebellious subject, and make themselves felt and understood as in the first moments of their creation.
Such now was their resumed sway with Munro. While his niece--the young, the beautiful, the virtuous--so endowed by nature--so improved by education--so full of those fine graces, beyond the reach of any art--lay before him insensible--her fine mind spent in incoherent ravings--her gentle form racked with convulsive shudderings--the still, small, monitorial voice, unheard so long, spoke out to him in terrible rebukings. He felt in those moments how deeply he had been a criminal; how much, not of his own, he had appropriated to himself and sacrificed; and how sacred a trust he had abused, in the person of the delicate creature before him, by a determination the most cruel and perhaps unnecessary.
Days had elapsed in her delirium; and such were his newly-awakened feelings, that each night brought him, though at considerable risk, an attendant by her bed. His hand administered--his eyes watched over; and, in the new duties of the parent, he acquired a new feeling of duty and domestic love, the pleasures of which he had never felt before. But she grew conscious at last, and her restoration relieved his mind of one apprehension which had sorely troubled it. Her condition, during her illness, was freely described to her. But she thought not of herself--she had no thought for any other than the one for whom thoughts and prayers promised now to avail but little.
"Uncle--" she spoke at last--"you are here, and I rejoice to see you. I have much to say, much to beg at your hands: oh, let me not beg in vain!
Let me not find you stubborn to that which may not make me happy--I say not that, for happy I never look to be again--but make me as much so as human power can make me. When--" and she spoke hurriedly, while a strong and aguish shiver went through her whole frame--"when is it said that he must die?"
He knew perfectly of whom she spoke, but felt reluctant to indulge her mind in a reference to the subject which had already exercised so large an influence over it. But he knew little of the distempered heart, and fell into an error by no means uncommon with society. She soon convinced him of this, when his prolonged silence left it doubtful whether he contemplated an answer.
"Why are you silent? do you fear to speak? Have no fears now. We have no time for fear. We must be active--ready--bold. Feel my hand: it trembles no longer. I am no longer a weak-hearted woman."
He again doubted her sanity, and spoke to her soothingly, seeking to divert her mind to indifferent subjects; but she smiled on the endeavor, which she readily understood, and putting aside her aunt, who began to prattle in a like strain, and with a like object, she again addressed her uncle.
"Doubt me not, uncle: I rave no longer. I am now calm--calm as it is possible for me to be, having such a sorrow as mine struggling at my heart. Why should I hide it from you? It will not be hidden. I love him--love him as woman never loved man before--with a soul and spirit all unreservedly his, and with no thought in which he is not always the princ.i.p.al. I know that he loves another; I know that the pa.s.sion which I feel I must feel and cherish alone; that it must burn itself away, though it burn away its dwelling-place. I am resigned to such a fate; but I am not prepared for more. I can not bear that he too should die--and such a death! He must not die--he must not die, my uncle; though we save him--ay, save him--for another."
"Shame on you, my daughter!--how can you confess so much? Think on your s.e.x--you are a woman--think on your youth!" Such was the somewhat strongly-worded rebuke of the old lady.
"I have thought on all--on everything. I feel all that you have said, and the thought and the feeling have been my madness. I must speak, or I shall again go mad. I am not the tame and cold creature that the world calls woman. I have been differently made. I can love in the world"s despite. I can feel through the world"s freeze. I can dare all, when my soul is in it, though the world sneer in scorn and contempt. But what I have said, is said to _you_. I would not--no, not for worlds, that he should know I said it--not for worlds!" and her cheeks were tinged slightly, while her head rested for a single instant upon the pillow.
"But all this is nothing!" she started up, and again addressed herself to the landlord. "Speak, uncle! tell me, is there yet time--yet time to save him I When is it they say he must die?"
"On Friday next, at noon."
"And this--?"
"Is Monday."
"He must not die--no, not die, then, my uncle! _You_ must save him--you _must_ save him! You have been the cause of his doom: you must preserve him from its execution. You owe it him as a debt--you owe it me--you owe it to yourself. Believe not, my uncle, that there is no other day than this--no other world--no other penalties than belong to this. You read no bible, but you have a thought which must tell you that there are worlds--there is a life yet to come. I know you can not doubt--you must not doubt--you must believe. Have a fear of its punishments, have a hope of its rewards, and listen to my prayer. You must save Ralph Colleton; ask me not how--talk not of difficulties. You must save him--you must--you must!"
"Why, you forget, Lucy, my dear child--you forget that I too am in danger. This is midnight: it is only at this hour that I can steal into the village; and how, and in what manner, shall I be able to do as you require?"
"Oh, man!--man!--forgive me, dear uncle, I would not vex you! But if there were gold in that dungeon--broad bars of gold, or shining silver, or a prize that would make you rich, would you ask me the how and the where? Would that clumsy block, and those slight bars, and that dull jailer, be an obstacle that would keep you back? Would you need a poor girl like me to tell you that the blocks might be pierced--that the bars might be broken--that the jailer might be won to the mercy which would save? You have strength--you have skill--you have the capacity, the power--there is but one thing wanting to my prayer--the will, the disposition!"
"You do me wrong, Lucy--great wrong, believe me. I feel for this young man, and the thought has been no less painful to me than to you, that my agency has contributed in great measure to his danger. But what if I were to have the will, as you say--what if I went forward to the jailer and offered a bribe--would not the bribe which the state has offered for my arrest be a greater attraction than any in my gift? To scale the walls and break the bars, or in any forcible manner to effect the purpose, I must have confederates, and in whom could I venture to confide? The few to whom I could intrust such a design are like myself, afraid to adventure or be seen, and such a design would be defeated by Rivers himself, who so much hates the youth, and is bent on his destruction."
"Speak not of _him_--_say to him nothing_--you must do it _yourself_ if you do it all. You can effect much if you seriously determine. You can design, and execute all, and find ready and able a.s.sistance, if you once willingly set about it. I am not able to advise, nor will you need my counsel. a.s.sure me that you will make the effort--that you will put your whole heart in it--and I have no fears--I feel confident of his escape."
"You think too highly of my ability in this respect. There was a time, Lucy, when such a design had not been so desperate, but now--"
"Oh, not so desperate now, uncle, uncle--I could not live--not a moment--were he to perish in that dreadful manner. Have I no claim upon your mercy--will you not do for me what you would do for money--what you have done at the bidding of that dreadful wretch, Rivers? Nay, look not away, I know it all--I know that you had the dagger of Colleton--that you put it into the hands of the wretch who struck the man--that you saw him strike--that you strove not to stop his hand. Fear you not I shall reveal it? Fear you not?--but I will not--I can not! Yet this should be enough to make you strive in this service. Heard you not, too, when lie spoke and stopped my evidence, knowing that my word would have saved him--rather than see me brought to the dreadful trial of telling what I knew of that night--that awful night--when you both sought his life? Oh, I could love him for this--for this one thing--were there nothing else besides worthy of my love!"
The incident to which she referred had not been unregarded by the individual she addressed, and while she spoke, his looks a.s.sumed a meditative expression, and he replied as in soliloquy, and in broken sentences:--
"Could I pa.s.s to the jail unperceived--gain admittance--then--but who would grapple with the jailer--how manage that?--let me see--but no--no--that is impossible!"
"What is impossible?--nothing is impossible in this work, if you will but try. Do not hesitate, dear uncle--it will look easier if you will reflect upon it. You will see many ways of bringing it about. You can get aid if you want it. There"s the pedler, who is quite willing, and Chub--Chub will do much, if you can only find him out."
The landlord smiled as she named these two accessaries "Bunce--why, what could the fellow do?--he"s not the man for such service; now Chub might be of value, if he"d only follow orders: but that he won"t do. I don"t see how we"re to work it, Lucy--it looks more difficult the more I think on it."