The noise of the bird scared the steed. He dashed headlong forward, and saved the life of his rider!
Yet Ralph Colleton never dreamed of his danger--never once conjectured how special was his obligations to the interposing hand of Providence!
And so, daily, with the best of us--and the least fortunate. How few of us ever dream of the narrow escapes we make, at moments when a breath might kill us, when the pressure of a "bare bodkin" is all that is necessary to send us to sudden judgment!
And the outlaw was again defeated. He had not, perhaps, been scared. He had only been surprised--been confounded. In the first cry of the bird, the first rush of his wings, flapping through the trees, it seemed as if they had swept across his eyes. He lowered the pistol involuntarily--he forgot to pull the trigger, and when he recovered himself, steed and rider had gone beyond his reach.
"Is there a devil," he involuntarily murmured, "that stands between me and my victim? am I to be baffled always? Is there, indeed, a G.o.d?"
He paused in stupor and vexation. He could hear the distant tramp of the horse, sinking faintly out of hearing.
"That I, who have lived in the woods all my life, should have been startled by an owl, and at such a moment!"
Cursing the youth"s good fortune, not less than his own weakness, the fierce disappointment of Guy Rivers was such that he fairly gnashed his teeth with vexation. At first, he thought to dash after his victim, but his own steed had been fastened near the cottage, several hundred yards distant, and he was winded too much for a further pursuit that night.
Colleton was, meanwhile, a mile ahead, going forward swimmingly, never once dreaming of danger. He was thus far safe. So frequently and completely had his enemy been baffled in the brief progress of a single night, that he was almost led to believe--for, like most criminals, he was not without his superst.i.tion--that his foe was under some special guardianship. With ill-concealed anger, and a stern impatience, he turned.
CHAPTER XXV.
SUBDUED AGONIES.
The entrance of Guy Rivers awakened no emotion among the inmates of the dwelling; indeed, at the moment, it was almost unperceived. The young woman happened to be in close attendance upon her parent, for such the invalid was, and did not observe his approach, while he stood at some little distance from the couch, surveying the scene. The old lady was endeavoring, though with a feebleness that grew more apparent with every breath, to articulate something, to which she seemed to attach much importance, in the ears of the kneeling girl, who, with breathless attention, seemed desirous of making it out, but in vain; and, signifying by her countenance the disappointment which she felt, the speaker, with something like anger, shook her skinny finger feebly in her face, and the broken and incoherent words, with rapid effort but like success, endeavored to find their way through the half-closed aperture between her teeth. The tears fell fast and full from the eyes of the kneeling girl, who neither sobbed nor spoke, but, with continued and yet despairing attention, endeavored earnestly to catch the few words of one who was on the eve of departure, and the words of whom, at such a moment, almost invariably acquire a value never attached to them before: as the sounds of a harp, when the chords are breaking, are said to articulate a sweet sorrow, as if in mourning for their own fate.
The outlaw, all this while, stood apart and in silence. Although perhaps but little impressed with the native solemnity of the scene before him, he was not so ignorant of what was due to humanity, and not so unfeeling in reference to the parties here interested, as to seek to disturb its progress or propriety with tone, look, or gesture, which might make either of them regret his presence. Becoming impatient, however, of a colloquy which, as he saw that it had not its use, and was only productive of mortification to one of the parties, he thought only prudent to terminate, he advanced toward them; and his tread, for the first time, warned them of his presence.
With an effort which seemed supernatural, the dying woman raised herself with a sudden start in the bed, and her eyes glared upon him with a threatening horror, and her lips parting, disclosed the broken and decayed teeth beneath, ineffectually gnashing, while her long, skinny fingers warned him away. All this time she appeared to speak, but the words were unarticulated, though, from the expression of every feature, it was evident that indignation and reproach made up the entire amount of everything she had to express. The outlaw was not easily influenced by anger so impotent as this; and, from his manner of receiving it, it appeared that he had been for some time accustomed to a reception of a like kind from the same person. He approached the young girl, who had now risen from her knees, and spoke to her in words of comparative kindness:--
"Well, Ellen, you have had an alarm, but I am glad to see you have suffered no injury. How happened the fire?"
The young woman explained the cause of the conflagration, and narrated in brief the a.s.sistance which had been received from the stranger.
"But I was so terrified, Guy," she added, "that I had not presence of mind enough to thank him."
"And what should be the value of your spoken thanks, Ellen? The stranger, if he have sense, must feel that he has them, and the utterance of such things had better be let alone. But, how is the old lady now? I see she loves me no better than formerly."
"She is sinking fast, Guy, and is now incapable of speech. Before you came, she seemed desirous of saying something to me, but she tried in vain to speak, and now I scarcely think her conscious."
"Believe it not, Ellen: she is conscious of all that is going on, though her voice may fail her. Her eye is even now fixed upon me, and with the old expression. She would tear me if she could."
"Oh, think not thus of the dying, Guy--of her who has never harmed, and would never harm you, if she had the power. And yet, Heaven knows, and we both know, she has had reason enough to hate, and, if she could, to destroy you. But she has no such feeling now."
"You mistake, Ellen, or would keep the truth from me. You know she has always hated me; and, indeed, as you say, she has had cause enough to hate and destroy me. Had another done to me as I have done to her, I should not have slept till my hand was in his heart."
"She forgives you all, Guy, I know she does, and G.o.d knows I forgive you--I, who, above all others, have most reason to curse you for ever.
Think not that she can hate upon the brink of the grave. Her mind wanders, and no wonder that the wrongs of earth press upon her memory, her reason being gone. She knows not herself of the mood which her features express. Look not upon her, Guy, I pray you, or let me turn away my eyes."
"Your spirit, Ellen, is more gentle and shrinking than hers. Had you felt like her, I verily believe that many a night, when I have been at rest within your arms, you would have driven a knife into my heart."
"Horrible, Guy! how can you imagine such a thing? Base and worthless as you have made me, I am too much in your power, I fear--I love you still too much; and, though like a poison or a firebrand you have clung to my bosom, I could not have felt for you a single thought of resentment. You say well when you call me shrinking. I am a creature of a thousand fears; I am all weakness and worthlessness."
"Well, well--let us not talk further of this. When was the doctor here last?"
"In the evening he came, and left some directions, but told us plainly what we had to expect. He said she could not survive longer than the night; and she looks like it, for within the last few hours she has sunk surprisingly. But have you brought the medicine?"
"I have, and some drops which are said to stimulate and strengthen."
"I fear they are now of little use, and may only serve to keep up life in misery. But they may enable her to speak, and I should like to hear what she seems so desirous to impart."
Ellen took the cordial, and hastily preparing a portion in a wine-gla.s.s, according to the directions, proceeded to administer it to the gasping patient; but, while the gla.s.s was at her lips, the last paroxysm of death came on, and with it something more of that consciousness now fleeting for ever. Dashing aside the nostrum with one hand, with the other she drew the shrinking and half-fainting girl to her side, and, pressing her down beside her, appeared to give utterance to that which, from the action, and the few and audible words she made out to articulate, would seem to have been a benediction.
Rivers, seeing the motion, and remarking the almost supernatural strength with which the last spasms had endued her, would have taken the girl from her embrace; but his design was antic.i.p.ated by the dying woman, whose eyes glared upon him with an expression rather demoniac than human, while her paralytic hand, shaking with ineffectual effort, waved him off. A broken word escaped her lips here and there, and--"sin"--"forgiveness"--was all that reached the ears of her grandchild, when her head sank back upon the pillow, and she expired without a groan.
A dead silence followed this event. The girl had no uttered anguish--she spoke not her sorrows aloud; yet there was that in the wobegone countenance, and the dumb grief, that left no doubt of the deep though suppressed and half-subdued agony of soul within. She seemed one to whom the worst of life had been long since familiar, and who would not find it difficult herself to die. She had certainly outlived pride and hope, if not love; and if the latter feeling had its place in her bosom, as without doubt it had, then was it a hopeless lingerer, long after the sunshine and zephyr had gone which first awakened it into bloom and flower. She knelt beside the inanimate form of her old parent, shedding no tear, and uttering no sigh. Tears would have poorly expressed the wo which at that moment she felt; and the outlaw, growing impatient of the dumb spectacle, now ventured to approach and interrupt her. She rose, meekly and without reluctance, as he spoke; with a manner which said as plainly as words could have, said--"Command, and I obey. Bid me go even now, at midnight, on a perilous journey, over and into foreign lands, and I go without murmur or repining." She was a heart-stricken, a heart-broken, and abused woman--and yet she loved still, and loved her destroyer.
"Ellen," said he, taking her hand, "your mother was a Christian--a strict worshipper--one who, for the last few years of her life, seldom put the Bible out of her hands; and yet she cursed me in her very soul as she went out of the world."
"Guy, Guy, speak not so, I pray you. Spare me this cruelty, and say not for the departed spirit what it surely never would have said of itself."
"But it did so say, Ellen, and of this I am satisfied. Hear me, girl. I know something of mankind, and womankind too, and I am not often mistaken in the expression of human faces, and certainly was not mistaken in hers. When, in the last paroxysm, you knelt beside her with your head down upon her hand and in her grasp, and as I approached her, her eyes, which feebly threw up the film then rapidly closing over them, shot out a most angry glare of hatred and reproof; while her lips parted--I could see, though she could articulate no word--with involutions which indicated the curse that she could not speak."
"Think not so, I pray you. She had much cause to curse, and often would she have done so, but for my sake she did not. She would call me a poor fool, that so loved the one who had brought misery and shame to all of us; but her malediction was arrested, and she said it not. Oh, no! she forgave you--I know she did--heard you not the words which she uttered at the last?"
"Yes, yes--but no matter. We must now talk of other things, Ellen; and first of all, you must know, then, I am about to be married."
Had a bolt from the crossbow at that moment penetrated into her heart, the person he addressed could not have been more transfixed than at this speech. She started--an inquiring and tearful doubt rose into her eyes, as they settled piercingly upon his own; but the information they met with there needed no further word of a.s.surance from his lips. He was a stern tyrant--one, however, who did not trifle.
"I feared as much, Guy--I have had thoughts which as good as told me this long before. The silent form before me has said to me, over and over again, you would never wed her whom you have dishonored. Oh, fool that I was!--spite of her forebodings and my own, I thought--I still think, and oh, Guy, let me not think in vain--that there would be a time when you would take away the reproach from my name and the sin from my soul, by making me your wife, as you have so often promised."
"You have indeed thought like a child, Ellen, if you suppose that, situated as I am, I could ever marry simply because I loved."
"And will you not love her whom you are now about to wed?"
"Not as much as I have loved you--not half so much as I love you now--if it be that I have such a feeling at this moment in my bosom."
"And wherefore then would you wed, Guy, with one whom you do not, whom you can not love? In what have I offended--have I ever reproached or looked unkindly on you, Guy, even when you came to me, stern and full of reproaches, chafed with all things and with everybody?"
"There are motives, Ellen, governing my actions into which you must not inquire--"
"What, not inquire, when on these actions depend all my hope--all my life! Now indeed you are the tyrant which my old mother said, and all people say, you are."
The girl for a moment forgot her submissiveness, and her words were tremulous, less with sorrow than the somewhat strange spirit which her wrongs had impressed upon her. But sue soon felt the sinking of the momentary inspiration, and quickly sought to remove the angry scowl which she perceived coming over the brow of her companion.
"Nay, nay--forgive me, Guy--let me not reproach--let me not accuse you.
I have not done so before: I would not do so now. Do with me as you please; and yet, if you are bent to wed with another, and forget and overlook your wrongs to me, there is one kindness which would become your hands, and which I would joy to receive from them. Will you do for me this kindness, Guy? Nay, now be not harsh, but say that you will do it."