University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

The sound of his voice at once lifted
the scales from her eyes—she knew him,
and the vague consciousness of his presence,
which had agitated her for the past
few moments, became certainty. She
knew that in Father Luke, who knelt
before her, she beheld Ernest Walworth,
her plighted husband. Sad and terrible,
indeed, must have been the change
which had fallen upon his countenance,
that she did not know him, when he first
sat before her in the shadow.

Trembling in every nerve, and yet
strong with the energy of a soul that
had taken its farewell of this life, she
gave utterance to her feelings in a single
word—his own name—pronounced in
the soft low tones of other days.

“Ernest!”

“O, Frank, Frank, is it thus we
meet?” he cried in wild agony, as he
raised his face. “You—you—the only
woman that I ever loved—you, whose
very memory has torn my heart since
that fatal hour when I met you in the
accursed haunt of death.”

“Ernest, you will sit by me as I die,
you will press your hand in forgiveness
on my forehead, my last look shall encounter
yours—”

She opened her dark robe, and disclosed
the snow-white dress which she
wore beneath it. That dress was a
shroud. Yes, the beautiful form, the
bosom which had once been the home
of a pure and stainless love, and which
had beat with the throb of sensual passion,
were now attired in a shroud.

“Behold me, attired for the grave!”
she said—and the tears started to her
eyes! “This morning, resolved to quit
this life, which for me has been a life of
unutterable shame and despair, I prepared
for my departure. Everything is
ready. Come, Ernest, and behold the
preparations for my bridal.” She pointed
to the couch; he rose and followed
her. “I am in love with death, and will
wed him ere an hour is gone.”

She drew aside the curtains, and upon
the white coverlet Ernest beheld a dark
object—a coffin covered with black cloth,
and glittering with a silver plate.

“Everything is ready, Ernest, and I
am going. Nay, do not weep, do not attempt
to touch my hand. I am but a
poor, polluted thing, a wreck, a miserable,
miserable wreck! My touch would
pollute you. I am not worthy your
tears.”

Ernest hid his face in the hangings of
the couch. He writhed in agony.

“You shall not die! you must be
saved!” he wildly exclaimed.

She walked across the floor with an
even step, and in a moment she was
seated in the rocking-chair, with Ernest
before her, his face hidden in his hands.
Her face grew paler every moment; her
eyes brightened; and the shroud which
enveloped her bosom began to quiver
with the last pulsations of her dying
heart. As the veil mingled its fleecy
folds with her raven hair, she looked
very beautiful; yes, beautiful with the
touch of death.

And as Ernest, choked with his agony,
sat before her, hiding his face, she talked
in a calm, even tone:

“Oh, life! life! you have been a
bitter draught to me, and now I'm about
to leave you! All day I have been
thinking of my shame, of my crimes—I
have summoned up every act of my life,
the images of the past have walked before
me, in a sad funeral procession. O,
Thou who didst forgive the Magdalene?
Thou who hadst compassion on the poor
wretch whose cross arose beside thine
own—Thou who dost know all my life,
my temptations and my crimes—forgive!
forgive! It is a wandering child, sick of
wandering, who now, O Thou All-merciful!
gathers up the wreck of a miserable
life, and lays it, with all its sins and
shames, at Thy feet!”

As she uttered this simple, yet awful
prayer, Ernest did not raise his face.

The agony which shook him was too
deep for words.

Her voice grew faint and fainter, as
she went on in a vague and rambling
way—

“And I was so innocent once, and did
not know what sorrow was, and felt such
gladness at the sight of the sky, of the
stars, of the flowers—at the very breath
of spring upon my cheek! O, I wonder
if the old home stands there yet; and
the nook in the forest; don't you remember
it, Ernest? I was so happy,
so happy, then! And now I am dying
—dying! but you are near. You forgive
me, Ernest, do you not?”

“Forgive you!” he echoed, raising his
face, and spreading forth his clasped
hands; God's blessing and His consolation
be upon you now and forever. And
His curse,” a look of hatred, which
stamped every lineament of his face, revealed
the intensity of his soul, “and
His curse be upon those who brought
you to this!”

As he spoke, the death-damps began
to glisten on her forehead; a glassy look
began to veil the intense brightness of
her eyes.

“Your hand—sit by me”—she said
faintly, I shall sleep soon.”

He drew his chair to her side, and
softly put his hand upon her forehead—
it was cold as marble.

“It is good to go thus—with Ernest
by me—and in token of forgiveness, too,
with his hand upon my forehead—”

Her words were here interrupted by
a footstep and a voice—

“Frank! Frank! where are you? I
have triumphed—triumphed! The one
child is out of my way, and the other is
in my power!”

It was Colonel Tarleton, who rushed
to the light, his face lividly pale, and disfigured
with wounds, his right arm carried
in a sling. He had not seen his
daughter since the hour when he left
her home, before the break of day; and
now, faint with loss of blood, and yet
strong in the consciousness of his triumph,
he rushed into the death-room of
his child.

“I have had a hard time, Frank, but
the game is won! The estate is ours!
The other son of Gulian Van Huyden is
in my power—”

The words died on his lips. He be
held the dark form of the stranger, and
the face of his dying child. The young
form clad in a shroud, the countenance
pale with death, the large eyes, whose
brightness was veiled in a glassy film—
he saw this sad picture at a glance, but
could not believe the evidence of his
senses.

“Why, Frank, what's all this?” he
cried, as, with his pale face marked by
wounds, he stood before his daughter.

She slowly raised her eyes, and regarded
him with a sad smile:

“The poison, father—I drank it myself—
he went forth from this house, safe
from all harm—”

Her voice failed.

Tarleton uttered a frightful cry, and
fell like a dead man on the floor, his face
against the carpet. The reality of the
scene had burst upon him; in the hour
of his triumph he saw his schemes—the
plans woven through the long course of
twenty-one years, and darkened by hideous
crimes—leveled in a moment to the
dust.

Frank slowly turned her head, and
fixed her glassy eyes upon the face of
Ernest. O, the intensity of that long
and yearning gaze!

“I am weary and cold,” she gasped,
but it is light yonder.”

And that was all. Her eyes became
fixed—she laid her head gently on her
shoulder and fell asleep.

She was dead.

Ernest knelt beside her, and with his
eyes flashing from their sunken sockets,
he clasped his hands, and uttered a
prayer for the dead.

The prayer was said, and Ernest rose
—his face all fixed as marble his eyes
all tearless; and in an absent way placed
his hand upon the head of the dead woman,
smoothed her dark hair, put his
kiss upon her clammy forehead, and
closed those eyes which had looked
their last upon this world. And she
sat there, in her death-chair, cold and
dead, but very beautiful, this sad child
of shame. Ernest, resting his hands upon
the arm of the chair, hid his face from
the light. Was he praying—was he endeavoring
to pierce the shadows of the
other world, and follow the wrecked spirit
to that throne where justice is more
tender than the tenderest mercy of
man?

A voice broke the dead stillness, and
a livid face was uplifted from the floor—

“It's an infernal dream, Frank, all a
dream! The estate is ours! One heir
by this time is dead—the other in
my power! You could not, no! no!—
you could not have put the poison to
your lips, instead of to his for whom it
was designed; you could not have been
so mad. The estate is ours! This talk
about your dying is all a dream—all—.”

He saw, at the same glance, even as he
wildly raved, the bended head of Ernest,
and the pale dead face of the Midnight
Queen.

Baffled schemer! Of all the plots and
crimes of twenty-one years, behold the
end! The game which you have played
was a dark one, but altogether cunning
and full of wisdom, worldly wisdom—
but it was only cunning, only full of
worldly wisdom—and now, you see that
death and fate are triumphant. Bow
your head, baffled schemer! and hide
your livid face from the light, while your
dead daughter sits erect in the death-chair.

“Why thus sadly bring this story to
a close? Why not rather save your heroine
from temptation and crime—link
her hand in that of Ernest—crown them
with the joys of wedded love, shed upon
them the baptism of the holy light of
home?” Because, reader, it is not a sto

ry, but a narrative. Look around the
world. In how many cases do you find
virtue triumphant and vice defeated? It
is well, right well, that beyond the darkness
of this life there is mercy and justice,
and the songs of angels; that there,
for the trampled heart of the tempted
and the fallen, is—consolation.

On some Sabbath day, when the
smoke of the incense and the music of
high mass fill the cathedral of * * *
you may note among the faces which
encircle the altar—even as the host is
lifted over the heads of the kneeling
thousands—one face which strikes you,
not so much with its deathly pallor, its
hollow cheeks, and eyes burning feverishly
in their sunken sockets, as with its
look of utter and irrevocable despair.
It is the face of one who, when life, and
more than life, was blasted at the core,
still had that noblest courage of all—the
courage to live on—Father Luke, once
called Ernest Walworth.

And—

On some June day, if you will thread
the path that winds up among the Palisades—in
sight of Tappan Bay—you may
pick a summer flower from an obscure
grave, which rests in the shadows of a
forest-nook, its simple headstone bearing
no other record than the name—
“Frank.”