"I shall answer no questions, Mrs. Clayton--this right, at least, I reserve--but, the fact is, I doubt every thing lately, except this child and G.o.d. I do not believe my Creator will forsake me utterly--I shall not, till the end." And tears rolled down my face, the first I had shed for days. I had been petrified, of late, by the resolution I was making, and the effort of mind it had cost me. I had felt, until now, that I was hardening into atone.
"You desire to see Mr. Bainrothe, I suppose," she remarked, after a long silence, daring which she had again betaken herself to her occupation, without lifting her eyes as she asked the question.
"I desire to look my fate in the face at once, and understand his conditions," I replied, sullenly.
"But what if he is not here--what if Dr. Englehart--" lifting her eyes to mine.
"I cannot be mistaken," I interrupted, with impetuosity, "I have heard his step; he eats in the room below; I am convinced, for I know of old that bronchial cough of his--the effect of gormandism--"
Then suddenly, Ernie, looking up, made a revelation, irrelevant, yet to my ear terrible and astounding, but fortunately incomprehensible to my companion. What did that little vigilant creature ever fail to remark?
"Mirry make tea," he said, or seemed to say, and my face paled and flushed alternately, until my brain swam.
"Make tea?" sail the voice of Mrs. Clayton, apparently at a great distance. "No, I will make the tea, Ernie, as long as we stay together.
Mirry does not know how to draw tea like an Englishwoman."
Oh, fortunate misunderstanding! how great was the reaction it occasioned! From an almost fainting condition I rallied to vivacity, and, for long, weary hours, sat pointing out pictures to the boy, to win him to oblivion, and persuade him to silence. Singularly enough, but not unusual with him, he never resumed the topic. I had taken pains to hide my work from his observing eyes; and how he knew it, unless he lay silently and watched me from his little bed, when I worked at early dawn in mine, I never could conjecture. A few days later Mrs. Clayton announced to me that Mr. Bainrothe would call very shortly.
It was early morning, I remember, when she laid before me the card of "Basil Bainrothe," with its elaborate German characters, on which was written, in pencil, the addendum, "Will call at ten o"clock;" and, punctual as the hand to the hour, he knocked at the dressing-room door at the appointed time, and was admitted.
He entered with that light, jaunty step peculiar to him, and which I have consequently ever a.s.sociated in others with impudence and guile.
Hat and cane in the left hand, he entered; two fingers of the right raised to his lips, by way of salutation (he clinched his glove in the remainder), to be offered to me later, and ignored completely, then waved carelessly, as if condoning the offense.
He was quite a picture as he came in--a fashion-plate, and as such I coolly regarded him--fresh, fair, and smiling, looking younger, if possible, than when we parted a year before, and handsome, as that much-abused word goes, in his debonair, off-hand style of appearance.
He was dressed with even more than his usual care and trimness (wore patent-leather boots, my aversion from that hour, for these were the first I had ever seen), and lavender-colored pantaloons, very tightly strapped down over them; a glossy black coat and vest, and linen of unimpeachable quality and whiteness; while a chain of fine Venetian gold held his watch, or eye-gla.s.s, or both, in suspension from his neck.
Yet no beggar in rags ever appeared to me half so loathly as did this speckless dandy!
"You have come," I said, grimly, as he settled his shirt-collar to speak to me, after formally depositing his hat and cane, and a roll of paper he drew from his pocket, on the centre-table, and wiping his face carefully with his cambric, musk-scented handkerchief, unspeakably odious and unclean to my olfactories--"you have come at last; yet the greatest wonder to me is, how you dare appear at all before me," and I looked upon him right lionly, I believe.
"You were always inclined to a.s.sume the offensive with me, Miriam. Yet I confess you have a little shadow of reason this time, or seem to have, and I am here to-day for purposes of explanation or compromise" (bowing gracefully), and he rubbed his palms together very gently and complacently, looking around as he did so for a chair, which perceiving, and drawing to the table so as to face me where I eat on the sofa, he deposited himself upon, a.s.suming at once his usual graceful pose.
It was _fauteuil_, and he threw one arm over that of the chair, suffering his well-preserved white hand--always suggestive of poultices to me--with its signet ring, to droop in front of it--a hand which he moved up and down habitually, as he conversed, in a singularly soothing and mechanical fashion--his "pendulum" we used to call it in old times, Evelyn and I, when it was one of our chief resources for amus.e.m.e.nt to laugh at "Cagliostro," our _sobriquet_ for this _ci-devant jeune homme_, it may be remembered.
"Let me premise, Miriam," he began, "by congratulating you on your improved appearance"--another benign bow. "You were so burned and blackened by exposure, and so--in short, so very wild-looking when I last saw you, that I began to fear for the result; but perfect rest and retirement, and good nursing, have effected wonders. I have never seen you so fair, so refined-looking, and yet so calm, as you are now (calmness, my child, is aristocratic--cultivate it!); even if a little thin and delicate from confinement, yet perfectly healthy, I cannot doubt, from what I see. Do a.s.sure me of your health, my dear girl. You are as dumb to-day as Grey"s celebrated prophetess."
"All personal remarks as coming from you are offensive to me, Mr.
Bainrothe," I rejoined; "proceed to your business at once, whatever that may be--a truce to preamble and compliments."
"You shall be obeyed," he remarked, bowing low and derisively. "Yet, believe me, nothing but my care for your fair fame and my own have led me to confine you in such narrow limits for a season which, I trust, is almost over. As to my persecutions, which, I am told, you allege as a reason for leaving your house and friends so precipitately, these are out of the question henceforth forever, I a.s.sure you"--with a wave of the velvet hand--"since I am privately married to a lady of rank and fortune, who will soon be openly proclaimed "my wife," and who will be found, on close acquaintance, worthy of your friendship."
While giving utterance to this tirade, Mr. Bainrothe was slowly unwinding a string from around the roll of papers he had laid on the table, and which he now proceeded to spread somewhat ostentatiously before me, still mute and impa.s.sive to all his advances as I continued to be.
"There are several," he said. "Your signature to each will be required, which, now that you are in your right mind again, and of age, will be binding, as you know. My witnesses shall be called in when the time comes. Dr. Englehart and Mrs. Clayton will suffice as proofs of these solemnities--these and others likely to occur."
"Solemnities! Levities, mockeries rather!" I could not help rejoining.
He felt the sarcasm. His florid cheek paled with anger, his yellow-speckled eyes glowed with lurid fire, he compressed his lips bitterly as he said:
"Marriage is usually considered a solemnity, Miss Monfort; and, let me a.s.sure you, it is only as a married woman I can conscientiously release you from confinement. You have shown yourself too erratic to be intrusted in future with your own liberties."
"Possibly," I rejoined. "Yet I mean to have the selection, let me a.s.sure you, in return, of the controller of my liberties--nay, have already selected him, for aught you know!"
My cool audacity seemed for a moment to paralyze even his own. He paused and surveyed me, as if in doubt of his own senses.
"_Impayable_!" I heard him murmur, softly, and, turning to the book-shelves, he left me for a time to master the contents of the three doc.u.ments over which I was bending.
I read them in order as they were numbered, and became more and more indignant as their meaning opened upon my brain, and culminated at last in a sharp, sudden exclamation of utter disdain.
I started from my chair and approached him, paper in hand. I think for a few moments the idea of personal danger possessed him, and the vision of a concealed dirk or pistol swam before his eyes, which he shielded with his hand, while he placed a chair between us; and, truth to say, there was murder in my heart, and in my eyes as well, I suppose, even if the mistrust went no further.
I could have obliterated him from the face of the earth at that moment as remorselessly as if he had been a viper in my path striking to sting me. Yet I advanced toward him with no demonstration or intentions of this kind, having the habits of lady-like breeding and usual innocence of weapons, and ignorance of the use thereof as well, to restrain me.
I forget. Close to my heart lay one of the sharp, shining chisels I had taken from the glazier in the bath-room.
"What is it you object to, Miriam?" he asked, in faltering tones, as his hand fell and his glimmering eyes encountered mine.
From that day I have believed the legend which tells that, when the Roman, helpless in his dungeon, thundered forth, "Slave! darest thou kill Caius Marius?" the armed minion of murder turned and fled, dropping the knife he held, in his panic, at the feet of the man he came to slay.
Almost such effect was for a time observable in Basil Bainrothe.
It made me smile bitterly. "All, every thing," I answered. "The whole requisition, from first to last, is base, dastardly--crime-confessing, too--if seen with discriminating eyes. Why, if innocent of fraud toward me and mine, should you ask a formal acknowledgment on my part as to your just administration of my affairs, and a recantation of all I have said to the contrary, both with regard to yourself and Evelyn Erle?
Such are the contents of this first paper, the only one that I could, under any possible circ.u.mstances, be induced to sign as a compromise with your villainy; for, not to gain my own life or liberty, will I ever put hand to the others, infamous as they are on the very surface."
"Miriam, this violence surprises me, is wholly unlooked for, and unnecessary," he remarked, mildly. "From what Mrs. Clayton has told me, I had supposed that my disinterested care and a.s.siduity with regard to your condition were about to meet their reward in your rational submission to the necessities of your case and mine. Resume your seat, I entreat you, and let us calmly discuss a matter that seems to agitate you so unduly. Perhaps I may be able to place it before you in a better light ere we have concluded our interview. You will sit down again, Miriam, will you not?"
"Oh, surely, if you are alarmed; but, really, I should suppose, with Mrs. Clayton and Dr. Englehart no doubt in call, you need not be so tremulous. There, you are quite safe, I a.s.sure you, in your old place, with the table between us;" and I pointed derisively to _fauteuil_ he had occupied so gracefully a few moments before, and into which he now slowly subsided.
"Contemptuous girl," he broke forth at last, "you may yet live to regret this behavior; so far, nothing has been denied you; no expense has been spared for your comfort; in a tribunal of justice you could say this, no more: "My guardian, thinking me mad from his experiences of my conduct and health, and regaining accidental possession of me at a time when, under a feigned name, I was thought to be drowned, deemed it best, before revealing my existence to the world, to try and restore me to sanity by private measures, rather than bring upon my malady the eyes of a mocking world. In doing this, he used all delicacy, all devotion, surrounding me with comforts, and many luxuries, and even humoring my insane whim to have the companionship of a year-old child found with me on the raft under circ.u.mstances suspicious--if no more--""
"Wretch!" I gasped, "dare only asperse me in thought, and"--the menace hung suspended on my tongue. What power had I to execute it, even if uttered?
"As to my name, I feigned none. It was my mother"s, is my own, and from her I inherited, or, from the race of which she sprang, the power to remember and avenge my wrongs; to hate, and curse--and blast, perhaps, as well--such as you and yours, granted to his chosen children through the power of Almighty G.o.d!" And again I rose and confronted him; then fiercely pointed down upon his ign.o.ble head, now bowed involuntarily, either from policy or nervous terror, I never knew, a finger quivering and keen with scorn and rage, an index of the mind that directed it.
"I wonder you are not afraid to behave to me in this manner," he said, at length, lifting his head with a spasmodic jerk, and raising to mine his mottled, angry eyes, now cold and hard as pebbles, "seeing that you are, so to speak, in the hollow of my hand;" and, suiting the action to the word, he extended his long, spongy, right hand, and closed it crushingly, as though it contained a worm, while he smiled and sneered--oh, such a sneer! it seemed to fill the room.
"True, true--I am very helpless," I said, sitting down with a sudden revulsion of feeling, and, clasping my hands above my eyes, I wept aloud, adding, a moment later, as I indignantly wiped my tears: "Yes, if the worst betide there will only be one more martyr; and, what is martyrdom, that any need shrink from it? The world is fall of it!"
"Nothing, if you are used to it," he said, carelessly, "as the old woman remarked of the eels she was skinning alive; I suppose you know all about it by this time. But come, you are rational again, now, and I don"t wish to be hard on you, Miriam; I don"t, upon my soul!"
"Your soul!" I murmured--"your soul!" I reiterated louder; and I smiled at the idea that suggested itself--"have reptiles souls?"
"The memory of your father alone, my old, confiding friend, one of the most perfect of men, as I always thought him, would incline me kindly to his daughter, even if no other tie existed between us," he said calmly, unmindful of my sarcasm. "But other ties do exist, mistaken girl! The world looks upon us as one family--since the marriage of Claude and Evelyn, that uncongenial union which, but for your caprice, would never have taken place, and which is at the root of all our misfortunes, all our fatal necessities."
"Necessities!" I muttered, between my clinched teeth, drumming with my fingers impatiently on the table before me, and smiling scornfully a moment later.
"You seem in a mood for iteration, to-day, Miss Monfort."
"I make my running commentaries in that way, Mr. Bainrothe. But a truce to recrimination and reminiscence both. Let us adhere strictly to the letter and verse of our affairs. These papers form the subject of your visit, I believe. Know, at once, that the first I will sign, on certain conditions, bitter and humiliating as I feel it to be obliged to do this; but, that I will ever consent to yield the guardianship of my sister wholly to Evelyn Erle and her husband, or divest myself of my house and furniture, or my wild lands in Georgia, to you, here first named to me, in consideration of expenses already incurred and to be incurred for Mabel"s education, and my own safe-keeping, during a long attack of lunacy; or that I will, to crown the whole iniquitous requisition, consent to give my hand in marriage to that scoundrel--Luke Gregory!--are visions as vain as those of the child who tried to grasp a comet or the moon--or, to descend in comparison, to catch a bird by putting salt on its tail! There, you have my ultimatum; now go and make the best of it!"