"I can do it, Archie; I often went up and down there when a child,"
exclaimed Gipsy; and ere Archie could restrain her, the fearless girl had caught hold of a stunted spruce tree and swung herself over the edge of the appalling gorge.
Archie Rivers scarcely breathed; he felt as though he scarcely lived while she rapidly descended by catching the matted shrubs growing along its sides. She was down at last, and bending over the mangled form below.
"Gipsy! Gipsy! do you recognize him?" cried Archie.
She looked up, and he saw a face from which every trace of life seemed to have fled.
"Yes," she replied, hoa.r.s.ely. "_It is Danvers!_ Ride--ride for your life to Sunset Hall, and bring men and ropes to take him up!"
In an instant he was in the saddle, and off. In less than an hour he returned, with half the population in the village after him, whom the news of the catastrophe had brought together.
Ropes were lowered to Gipsy, who still remained where Archie had left her, and the lifeless form of the young man drawn up. Gipsy, refusing all aid, clambered up the side, and the mournful cavalcade set out for Sunset Hall.
He was quite dead. It was evident he had fallen, in the darkness, into the gorge, and been instantly killed. His fair hair hung, clotted with blood, round his forehead: and a fearful gash in the temple showed the wound whence his young life had flowed away. And Gipsy, feeling as though she were his murderess, sat by his side, and, gazing on the still, cold form, shed the first bitter tears that had ever fallen from her eyes. By some strange coincidence, it was in that self-same spot the dead body of Barry Oranmore had been found.
Poor Gipsy! The sunshine was fast fading out of her sky, and the clouds of fate gathering thick and fast around her. She wept now for another--knowing not how soon she was to weep for herself.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE SPIDER WEAVES HIS WEB.
"A fearful sign stands in thy house of life-- An enemy--a fiend lurks close behind The radiance of thy planet. Oh, be warned!"
--COLERIDGE.
"And now a darker hour ascends."--MARMION.
A week after the event recorded in the last chapter Archie went back to the city. Before he went, he had obtained a promise from Gipsy--who had grown strangely still and gentle since the death of Danvers--to become his wife immediately upon his return; but, with her usual eccentricity, she refused to allow him to make their engagement public.
"Time enough by and by," was still her answer; and Archie was forced to be content.
Gipsy was, for a while, sad and quiet, but both were foreign to her character; and, with the natural buoyancy of youth, she shook off her gloom, and soon once more her merry laugh made music through the old house.
Doctor Nicholas Wiseman sometimes made his appearance at Sunset Hall of late. Lizzie was suffering from a low fever; and as he was the only physician in St. Mark"s, he was called in.
As he sat one day in the parlor at luncheon with the squire, Gipsy came tripping along with her usual elastic step, and touching her hat gallantly to the gentlemen, ran up to her own room. The squire"s eyes followed her with a look of fond pride.
"Did you ever see such another charming little vixen?" he asked, turning to the doctor.
"Miss Gower"s certainly an extraordinary young lady," said the doctor, dryly. "I have often been surprised, Squire Erliston, that you should treat your housekeeper"s niece as one of your own family."
"She"s not my housekeeper"s niece," blurted out the squire; "she was----"
He paused, suddenly recollecting that the discovery of Gipsy was a secret.
"She was what?" said the doctor, fixing his keen eyes on the old man"s face.
"Well, hang it, Wiseman, I suppose it makes no difference whether I tell _you_ or not. Gipsy is not Mrs. Gower"s niece: she is a foundling."
"Yes," said the doctor, p.r.i.c.king up his ears.
"Yes, last Christmas Eve, just seventeen years ago, Mrs. Gower, returning from A----, found Gipsy lying on the beach, near the south end of the city."
Long habit had given Dr. Wiseman full control over his emotions, but now the blood rushed in a purple tide to his sallow face, as he leaped from his chair and fairly shouted:
"_What!_"
"Eh? Lord bless the man!--what"s the matter?" said the squire, staring at him until his little fat eyes seemed ready to burst from their sockets.
"What did you say?--found her on the beach on Christmas Eve, seventeen years ago?" said the doctor, seizing him fiercely by the arm, and glaring upon him with his yellow eyes.
"Yes, I said so. What in the name of all the demons is the matter with you?" roared the squire, shaking him off. "What do _you_ know about it?"
"Nothing! nothing! nothing!" replied the doctor, remembering himself, and sinking back in his chair. "Pray, go on."
The squire eyed him suspiciously.
"My dear sir," said the doctor, every trace of emotion now pa.s.sed away, "forgive my violence. But, really, the story seemed so improbable----"
"Improbable or not, sir," interrupted the squire, angry at being doubted, "it"s true as Gospel. It was a snowy, unpleasant night. Mrs.
Gower and Jupiter were returning from the city, and took the sh.o.r.e road in preference to going over the hills. As they went along, Mrs. Gower was forced to get out on account of the dangerous road; and hearing a child cry, she stooped down, and found Gipsy lying wrapped up in a shawl, in the sand. Well, sir, _my_ housekeeper, as a matter of course--being a humane woman--brought the child (which could not have been a week old) home, and gave it her name. And _that_, sir, is the history of Gipsy Gower, let it seem ever so improbable."
Like lightning there flashed across the mind of the doctor the recollection of the advancing sleigh-bells which had startled him from the beach. This, then, was the secret of her disappearance! This, then, was the child of Esther Erliston and Alfred Oranmore! This wild, untamed, daring elf was the heiress, in her mother"s right, of all the broad lands of the Erlistons. She had been brought up as a dependent in the house of which she was the rightful heiress: and the squire dreamed not that his "monkey" was his grandchild!
Thoughts like these flashed like lightning through the mind of Dr.
Wiseman. The sudden, startling discovery bewildered him; he felt unequal to the task of conversing. And making some excuse, he arose abruptly, entered his gig, and letting the reins fall on his horse"s neck, allowed him to make the best of his way home; while, with his head dropped on his breast, he pondered on the strange disclosure he had just heard.
No one living, it was evident, knew who she was, save himself. What would old Dame Oranmore say when she heard it? Wretch as he was, he found himself forced to acknowledge the hand of a ruling Providence in all this. The child who had been cast out to die had been nurtured in the home that was hers by right. By _his_ hand the mother had perished; yet the heroism of the daughter had preserved his worthless life.
"What use shall I make of this discovery?" he mused, as he rode along.
"How can I turn it to my own advantage? If I wish it, I can find little difficulty in convincing the world that she is the rightful heiress of Mount Sunset, instead of Louis Oranmore. But how to do it, without implicating myself--that"s the question. There was no witness to the death-bed scene of Esther Erliston; and I can a.s.sert that Madam Oranmore caused me to remove the child, without mentioning the mother at all. I can also easily feign some excuse for leaving her in the snow--talk about my remorse and anguish at finding her gone, and all that. Now, if I could only get this hare-brained girl securely in my power, in such a way as to make her money the price of her freedom, I would not hesitate one moment about proclaiming it all. But how to get her in my power--she is keen and wide-awake, with all her madness, and not half so easily duped as most girls of her age. Let me think!"
His head fell lower, his claw-like hands opened and shut as though clutching some one, his brows knit in a hard knot, and his eyes seemed burning holes in the ground, with their wicked, immovable gaze.
At last, his mind seemed to be made up. Lifting his head, he said, with calm, grim determination:
"Yes, my mind is made up; that--girl--shall--be--my--WIFE!"
Again he paused. His project, when repeated aloud, seemed so impossible to accomplish that it almost startled him.
"It may be difficult to bring about," he said, as if in answer to his momentary hesitation. "No doubt it will; but, nevertheless, it shall, it will, it _must_ be done! Once her husband, and I shall have a legal right to everything she possesses. The world need not know I have made the discovery until after our marriage; it shall think it is for love I marry her. Love!--ha, ha, ha! Just fancy Dr. Wiseman, at the age of fifty-nine, falling in love with a chit of a girl of seventeen! Well, I shall set my wits to work; and if I fail to accomplish it, it will be the first time I have ever failed in aught I have undertaken. She calls me a spider; let her take care lest she be caught--lest her bright wings are imprisoned in the web I will weave. Her opposition will be fierce and firm; and, if I have studied her aright, she can only be conquered through those she loves. That she loves that whipper-snapper of a nephew of mine, I have long known; and yet that very love shall make her become my wife. And so my bright little Gipsy Gower--or Gipsy Oranmore--from this day forth you are mine!"