She looked up, and caught his wild eye. There was a timid inquiry in her look, and he answered it.
"You may unwind your hair from my arm, but it is woven round and round my heart, and you cannot loose it thence."
She drew another strand away, and released that also from his arm.
There remained now but one red-gold band of hair fastening her to him.
He looked entreatingly at her, and then at the hair.
"It must indeed be so," she said, and released herself wholly.
Then she stood up, a little timidly, for she could not trust him in his pa.s.sion and his despair. But he did not stir; he looked at her with fixed, dreamy eyes. She left her place, and moved toward the door. She had gone forth from Mr. Menaida"s without hat or other cover for her head than the cloak with its hood, and that she had lost. She must return bare-headed. She had reached the door; and there she waved him a farewell.
"Goldfish!" he cried.
She halted.
"Goldfish, come here; one--one word only."
She hesitated whether to yield. The man was dangerous. But she considered that with a few strides he might overtake her if she tried to escape. Therefore she returned toward him, but came not near enough for him to touch her.
"Hearken to me," said he. "It may be as you say. It is as you say. You have your world; I have mine. You could not live in mine, nor I in yours." But his voice thrilled. "Swear to me--swear to me now--that while I live no other shall hold you, as I would have held you, to his side; that no other shall take your hair and wind it round him, as I have--I could not endure that. Will you swear to me that?--and you shall go."
"Indeed I will; indeed, indeed I will."
"Beware how you break this oath. Let him beware who dares to seek you." He was silent, looking on the ground, his arms folded. So he stood for some minutes, lost in thought. Then suddenly he cried out, "Goldfish!"
He had found a single hair, long--a yard long--of the most intense red-gold, l.u.s.trous as a cloud in the west over the sunken sun. It had been left about his arm and hand.
"Goldfish!"
But she was gone.
CHAPTER XX.
BOUGHT AND SOLD.
Cruel Coppinger remained brooding in the place where he had been standing, and as he stood there his face darkened. He was a man of imperious will and violent pa.s.sions; a man unwont to curb himself; accustomed to sweep out of his path whoever or whatever stood between him and the accomplishment of his purpose; a man who never asked himself whether that purpose were good or bad. He had succ.u.mbed, in a manner strange and surprising to himself, to the influence of Judith--a sort of witchery over him that subdued his violence and awed him into gentleness and modesty. But when her presence was withdrawn the revolt of the man"s lawless nature began. Who was this who had dared to oppose her will to his? a mere child of eighteen. Women were ever said to be a perverse generation, and loved to domineer over men; and man was weak to suffer it. So thinking, chafing, he had worked himself into a simmering rage when Miss Trevisa entered the hall, believing it to be empty. Seeing him, she was about to withdraw, when he shouted to her to stay.
"I beg your pardon for intruding, sir; I am in quest of my niece.
Those children keep me in a whirl like a teetotum."
"Your niece is gone."
"Gone! where to?"
"Back--I suppose to that old fool, Menaida. He is meet to be a companion for her and that idiot, her brother; not I--I am to be spurned from her presence."
Miss Trevisa was surprised, but she said nothing. She knew his moods.
"Stand there, Mother Dunes!" said Coppinger, in his anger and humiliation, glad to have some one on whom he could pour out the lava that boiled up in his burning breast. "Listen to me. She has told me that we belong to different worlds--she and I--and to different races, kinds of being, and that there can be no fellowship betwixt us. Where I am she will not be. Between me and you there is a great gulf fixed--see you? and I am as Dives tormented in my flame, and she stands yonder, serene, in cold and complacent blessedness, and will not cross to me with her finger dipped in cold water to cool my tongue; and as for my coming near to her"--he laughed fiercely--"that can never be."
"Did she say all that?" asked Miss Trevisa.
"She looked it; she implied it, if she did not say it in these naked words. And, what is more," shouted he, coming before Aunt Dionysia, threateningly, so that she recoiled, "it is true. When she sat there in yonder chair, and I stood here by this hearthstone, and she spoke, I knew it was true; I saw it all--the great gulf unspanned by any bridge. I knew that none could ever bridge it, and there we were, apart for ever, I in my fire burning, she in Blessedness--indifferent."
"I am very sorry," said Miss Trevisa, "that Judith should so have misconducted herself. My brother brought her up in a manner to my mind, most improper for a young girl. He made her read Rollin"s "Ancient History," and Blair"s "Chronological Tables," and really upon my word, I cannot say what else."
"I do not care how it was," said Coppinger. "But here stands the gulf."
"Rollin is in sixteen octavo volumes," said Aunt Dionysia; "and they are thick also."
Coppinger strode about the room, with his hands in his deep coat pockets, his head down.
"My dear brother," continued Miss Trevisa, apologetically, "made of Judith his daily companion, told her all he thought, asked her opinion, as though she were a full-grown woman, and one whose opinion was worth having, whereas he never consulted me, never cared to talk to me about anything, and the consequence is the child has grown up without that respect for her elders and betters, and that deference for the male s.e.x which the male s.e.x expects. I am sure when I was a girl, and of her age, I was very different, very different indeed."
"Of that I have not the smallest doubt," sneered Coppinger. "But never mind about yourself. It is of her I am speaking. She is gone, has left me, and I cannot endure it. I cannot endure it," he repeated.
"I beg your pardon," said Aunt Dionysia, "you must excuse me saying it, Captain Coppinger, but you place me in a difficult position. I am the guardian of my niece, though, goodness knows, I never desired it, and I don"t know what to think. It is very flattering and kind, and I esteem it great goodness in you to speak of Judith with such warmth, but----"
"Goodness! kindness!" exclaimed Coppinger. "I am good and kind to her!
She forced me to it. I can be nothing else, and she throws me at her feet and tramples on me."
"I am sure your sentiments, sir, are--are estimable; but, feeling as you seem to imply toward Judith, I hardly know what to say. Bless me!
what a scourge to my shoulders these children are: nettles stinging and blistering my skin, and not allowing me a moment"s peace!"
"I imply nothing," said Coppinger. "I speak out direct and plain what I mean. I love her. She has taken me, she turns me about, she gets my heart between her little hands and tortures it."
"Then surely, Captain, you cannot ask me to let her be here. You are most kind to express yourself in this manner about the pert hussy, but, as she is my niece, and I am responsible for her, I must do my duty by her, and not expose her to be--talked about. Bless me!" gasped Aunt Dunes, "when I was her age I never would have put myself into such a position as to worry my aunt out of her seven senses, and bring her nigh to distraction."
"I will marry her, and make her mistress of my house and all I have,"
said Coppinger.
Miss Trevisa slightly courtesied, then said, "I am sure you are over-indulgent, but what is to become of me? I have no doubt it will be very comfortable and acceptable to Judith to hear this, but--what is to become of me? It would not be very delightful for me to be housekeeper here under my own niece, a pert, insolent, capricious hussy. You can see at once, Captain Coppinger, that I cannot consent to that."
The woman had the shrewdness to know that she could be useful to Coppinger, and the selfishness that induced her to make terms with him to secure her own future, and to show him that she could stand in his way till he yielded to them.
"I never asked to have these children thrust down my throat, like the fish-bone that strangled Lady G.o.diva--no, who was it? Earl G.o.diva; but I thank my stars I never waded through Rollin, and most certainly kept my hands off Blair. Of course, Captain Coppinger, it is right and proper of you to address yourself to me, as the guardian of my niece, before speaking to her."
"I have spoken to her and she spurns me."
"Naturally, because you spoke to her before addressing me on the subject. My dear brother--I will do him this justice--was very emphatic on this point. But you see, sir, my consent can never be given."
"I do not ask your consent."
"Judith will never take you without it."