University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

In the meanwhile, Edith sat in the tent abandoned
to despair, her mind not yet recovered
from the stunning effect of her calamity, struggling
confusedly with images of blood and phantasms
of fear, the dreary recollections of the past
mingling with the scarce less dreadful anticipations
of the future. Of the battle on the hill-side
she remembered nothing save the fall of her kinsman,
shot down at her feet,—all she had herself
witnessed, and all she could believe; for Telie
Doe's assurances, contradicted in effect by her
constant tears and agitation, that he had been carried
off to captivity like herself, conveyed no conviction
to her mind: from that moment, events
were pictured on her memory as the records of a
feverish dream, including all the incidents of her
wild and hurried journey to the Indian village.
But with these broken and dream-like reminiscences,
there were associated recollections, vague,
yet not the less terrifying, of a visage that had
haunted her presence by day and night, throughout
the whole journey, watching over her with the
pertinacity of an evil genius; and which, as her
faculties woke slowly from their trance, assumed
every moment a more distinct and dreaded appearance
in her imagination.

It was upon these hated features, seen side by
side with the blood-stained aspect of her kinsman,

she now pondered in mingled grief and terror;
starting occasionally from the horror of her
thoughts only to be driven back to them again by
the scowling eyes of the old crone; who, still
crouching over the fire, as if its warmth could
never strike deep enough into her frozen veins,
watched every movement and every look with the
vigilance, and, as it seemed, the viciousness of a
serpent. No ray of pity shone even for a moment
from her forbidding, and even hideous countenance;
she offered no words, she made no signs,
of sympathy; and, as if to prove her hearty disregard,
or profound contempt for the prisoner's manifest
distress, she by and by, to while the time,
began to drone out a succession of grunting
sounds, such as make up a red-man's melody, and
such indeed as any village urchin can drum with
his heels out of an empty hogshead. The song,
thus barbarously chanted, at first startled and affrighted
the captive; but its monotony had at last
an affect which the beldam was far from designing.
It diverted the maiden's mind in a measure
from its own harassing thoughts, and thus introduced
a kind of composure where all had been before
painful agitation. Nay, as the sounds, which
were at no time very loud, mingled with the piping
of the gale without, and the rustling of the old elm
at the door, they lost their harshness, and were
softened into a descant that was lulling to the
senses, and might, like a gentler nepenthe, have, in
time, cheated the over-weary mind to repose.
Such, perhaps, was beginning to be its effect.
Edith ceased to bend upon the hag the wild, terrified
looks that at first rewarded the music; she
sunk her head upon her bosom, and sat as if gradually
giving way to a lethargy of spirit, which,
if not sleep, was sleep's most beneficent substitute.

From this state of calm she was roused by the
sudden cessation of the music; and looking up,
she beheld, with a renewal of all her alarms, a tall
man, standing before her, his face and figure both
enveloped in the folds of a huge blanket, from
which, however, a pair of gleaming eyes were
seen riveted upon her own countenance. At the
same time, she observed that the old Indian woman
had risen, and was stealing softly from the
apartment. Filled with terror, she would have
rushed after the hag, to claim her protection: but
she was immediately arrested by the visiter, who,
seizing her by the arm firmly, yet with an air of
respect, and suffering his blanket to drop to the
ground, displayed to her gaze features that had
long dwelt, its darkest phantoms, upon her mind.
As he seized her, he muttered, and still with an
accent of the most earnest respect,—“Fear me
not, Edith; I am not yet an enemy.”

His voice, though one of gentleness, and even of
music, completed the terrors of the captive, who
trembled in his hand like a quail in the clutches of
a kite, and would, but for his grasp, as powerful
to sustain as to oppose, have fallen to the floor.
Her lips quivered, but they gave forth no sound;
and her eyes were fastened upon his with a wildness
and intensity of glare that showed the fascination,
the temporary self-abandonment, of her
spirit.

“Fear me not, Edith Forrester,” he repeated,
with a voice even more soothing than before:
“You know me;—I am no savage;—I will do you
no harm.”

“Yes,—yes,—yes,” muttered Edith at last, but
in the tones of an automaton, they were so broken
and inarticulate, yet so unnaturally calm and unimpassioned—“I
know you,—yes, yes, I do know

you, and know you well. You are Richard Braxley,—the
robber, and now the persecutor, of the
orphan; and this hand that holds me, is red with
the blood of my cousin. Oh, villain! villain! are
you not yet content?”

“The prize is not yet won,” replied the other,
with a smile that seemed intended to express his
contempt of the maiden's invectives, and his ability
to forgive them: “I am indeed Richard Braxley,
—the friend of Edith Forrester, though she will
not believe it,—a rough and self-willed one, it may
be, but still her true and unchangeable friend.
Where will she look for a better? Anger has not
alienated, contempt has not estranged me: injury
and injustice still find me the same. I am still
Edith Forrester's friend; and such, in the sturdiness
of my affection, I will remain, whether my
fair mistress will or no.—But you are feeble and
agitated: sit down and listen to me. I have that
to say which will convince my thoughtless fair
the day of disdain is now over.”

All these expressions, though uttered with seeming
blandness, were yet accompanied by an air of
decision and even command, as if the speaker
were conscious the maiden was fully in his power,
and not unwilling she should know it. But his attempt
to make her resume her seat upon the pile
of skins from which she had so wildly started at
his entrance, was resisted by Edith; who, gathering
courage from desperation, and shaking his
hand from her arm, as if snatching it from the embraces
of a serpent, replied, with even energy,—
“I will not sit down,—I will not listen to you.
Approach me not—touch me not. You are a villain
and murderer, and I loathe, oh! unspeakably
loathe, your presence. Away from me, or—”

“Or,” interrupted Braxley, with the sneer of a

naturally mean and vindictive spirit, “you will
cry for assistance! From whom do you expect
it? From wild, murderous, besotted Indians, who,
if roused from their drunken slumbers, would be
more like to assail you with their hatchets, than to
weep for your sorrows? Know, fair Edith, that
you are now in their hands;—that there is not one
of them who would not rather see those golden tresses
hung blackening in the smoke from the rafters
of his wigwam, than floating over the brows they
adorn—Look aloft: there are ringlets of the young
and fair, the innocent and tender, swinging above
you!—Learn, moreover, that from these dangerous
friends there is none who can protect you, save
me. Ay, my beauteous Edith,” he added, as the
captive, overcome by the representation of her
perils so unscrupulously, nay, so sternly made,
sank almost fainting upon the pile, “it is even so;
and you must know it. It is needful you should
know what you have to expect, if you reject my
protection. But that you will not reject; in faith,
you cannot! The time has come, as I told you it
would, when your disdainful scruples—I speak
plainly, fair Edith!—are to be at an end. I swore
to you,—and it was when your scorn and unbelief
were at the highest—that you should yet smile
upon the man you disdained, and smile upon no
other. It was a rough and uncouth threat for a
lover; but my mistress would have it so. It was
a vow breathed in anger: but it was a vow not
meant to be broken. You tremble! I am cruel in
my wooing; but this is not the moment for compliment
and deception. You are mine, Edith: I
swore it to myself,—ay, and to you. You cannot
escape. You have driven me to extremities; but
they have succeeded. You are mine; or you are
—nothing.”

“Nothing let it be,” said Edith, over whose
mind, prone to agitation and terror, it was evident
the fierce and domineering temper of the individual
could exercise an irresistible control,—and
who, though yet striving to resist, was visibly
sinking before his stern looks and menacing words,
—“let it be nothing! Kill me, if you will, as you
have already killed my cousin.—Oh! mockery of
passion, of humanity, of decency, to speak to me
thus;—to me, the relative, the more than sister of
him you have so basely and cruelly murdered!”

“I have murdered no one,” said Braxley, with
stony composure; “and, if you will but listen patiently,
you will find I am stained by no crime
save that of loving a woman who forces me to
woo her like a master, rather than a slave. Your
cousin is living and in safety.”

“It is false,” cried Edith, wringing her hands;
“with my own eyes I saw him fall, and fall, covered
with blood!”

“And, from that moment, you saw nothing
more,” rejoined Braxley. “The blood came from
the veins of others: he was carried away alive,
and almost unhurt. He is a captive,—a captive
like yourself. And why? Shall I remind my
fair Edith how much of her hostility and scorn I
owed to her hot and foolish kinsman? how he
persuaded her the love she so naturally bore so
near a relative was reason enough to reject the
affection of a suitor? how impossible she should
listen to the dictates of her own heart, or the calls
of her interest, while misled by a counsellor so
indiscreet, yet so trusted? Before that unlucky
young man stepped between me and my love,
Edith Forrester could listen,—nay, and could
smile.—Nay, deny it, if you will; but hearken.
Your cousin is safe; rely upon that; but, rely

he will never again see the home of his birth, or
the kinswoman whose fortunes he has so opposed,
until she is the wife of the man he misjudges and
hates. He is removed from my path: it was necessary
to my hopes. His life is, at all events,
safe: his deliverance rests with his kinswoman.
When she has plighted her troth, and surely she
will plight it—”

“Never! never!” cried Edith, starting up, her
indignation for a moment getting the better of her
fears; “with one so false and treacherous, so unprincipled
and ungrateful, so base and revengeful,—with
such a man, with such a villain, never!
no, never!”

“I am a villain indeed, Edith,” said Braxley, but
with exemplary coolness: “all men are so. Good
and evil are sown together in our natures, and
each has its season and its harvest. In this breast,
as in the breast of the worst and the noblest, Nature
set, at birth, an angel and a devil, either to
be the governor of my actions, as either should
be best encouraged. If the devil be now at work,
and have been for months, it was because your
scorn called him from his slumbers. Before that
time, Edith, I was under the domination of my
angel: who then called, or who deemed me, a
villain? Was I then a robber and persecutor of
the orphan? Am I now? Perhaps so,—but it is
yourself that have made me so. For you, I called
up my evil-genius to my aid; and my evil-genius
aided me. He bade me woo no longer like the
turtle, but strike like the falcon. Through plots
and stratagems, through storms and perils, through
battle and blood, I have pursued you, and I have
conquered at last. The captive of my sword and
my spear, you will spurn my love no longer; for,
in truth, you cannot. I came to the wilderness to

seek an heiress for your uncle's wealth: I have
found her. But she returns to her inheritance the
wife of the seeker! In a word, my Edith—for
why should I, who am now the master of your
fate, forbear the style of a conqueror? why
should I longer sue, who have the power to command?—you
are mine,—mine beyond the influence
of caprice, or change,—mine beyond the
hope of escape. This village you will never leave,
but as a bride.”

So spoke the bold wooer, elated by the consciousness
of successful villany, and perhaps convinced
from long experience of the timorous, and
doubtless, feeble, character of the maid, that a
haughty and overbearing tone would produce an
impression, however painful it might be to her,
more favourable to his hopes, than the soft hypocrisy
of sueing. He was manifestly resolved to
wring from her fears the consent not to be obtained
from her love. Nor had he miscalculated
the power of such a display of bold, unflinching,
energetic determination to consummate all his
schemes, in awing, if not bending, her youthful
spirit. She seemed indeed stunned, wholly over-powered
by his resolved and violent manner: and
she had scarcely strength to mutter the answer
that rose to her lips:

“If it be so,” she faltered out, “this village
then I must never leave; for here I will die, die
even by the hands of barbarians, and die a thousand
times, ere I look upon you, base and cruel
man, with any but the eyes of detestation. I
hated you ever,—I hate you yet.”

“My fair mistress,” said Braxley, with a sneer
that might have well become the lip of the devil
he had pronounced the then ruler of his breast,
“knows not all the alternative. Death is a boon

the savages may bestow, when the whim takes
them. But before that, they must show their affection
for their prisoner. There are many that
can admire the bright eyes and ruddy cheeks of
the white maiden; and some one, doubtless, will
admit the stranger to a corner of his wigwam
and his bosom! Ay, madam, I will speak plainly,
—it is as the wife of Richard Braxley or of a pagan
savage, you go out of the tent of Wenonga.
Or why go out of the tent of Wenonga at all? Is
Wenonga insensible to the beauty of his guest?
The hag that I drove from the fire, seemed already
to see in her prisoner the maid that was to
rob her of her husband.”

“Heaven help me!” exclaimed Edith, sinking
again to her seat, wholly overcome by the horrors
it was the object of the wooer to accumulate
on her mind. He noted the effect of his threat,
and stealing up, he took her trembling, almost lifeless
hand, adding, but in a softer voice,—

“Why will Edith drive one who adores her, to
these extremities? Let her smile but as she smiled
of yore, and all will yet be well. One smile
secures her deliverance from all that she dreads,
her restoration to her home and to happiness.
With that smile, the angel again awakes in my
bosom, and all is love and tenderness.”

“Heaven help me!” iterated the trembling girl,
struggling to shake off Braxley's hand. But she
struggled feebly and in vain; and Braxley, in the
audacity of his belief that he had frightened her
into a more reasonable mood, proceeded the
length of throwing an arm around his almost insensible
victim.

But heaven was not unmindful of the prayer of
the desolate and helpless maid. Scarce had his
arm encircled the waist of the captive, when a

pair of arms, long and brawny, infolded his body
as in the hug of an angry bear, and in an instant
he lay upon his back on the floor, a knee upon
his breast, a hand at his throat, and a knife, glittering
blood-red in the light of the fire, flourished
within an inch of his eyes; while a voice, subdued
to a whisper, yet distinct as if uttered in
tones of thunder, muttered in his ear,—“Speak,
and thee dies!”

The attack, so wholly unexpected, so sudden
and so violent, was as irresistible as astounding;
and Braxley, unnerved by the surprise and by
fear, succumbing as to the stroke of an avenging
angel, the protector of innocence, whom his villany
had conjured from the air, lay gasping on
the earth without attempting the slightest resistance,
while the assailant, dropping his knife and
producing a long cord of twisted leather, proceeded
with inexpressible dexterity and speed, to
bind his limbs, which he did in a manner none
the less effectual for being so hasty. An instant
sufficed to secure him hand and foot; in another,
a gag was clapped in his mouth and secured by
a turn of the rope round his neck: at the third,
the conqueror, thrusting his hand into his bosom,
tore from it the stolen will, which he immediately
after buried in his own. Then, spurning the baffled
villain into a corner, and flinging over his body
a pile of skins and blankets, until he was entirely
hidden from sight, he left him to the combined
agonies of fear, darkness, and suffocation.

Such was the rapidity indeed, with which the
whole affair was conducted, that Braxley had scarce
time to catch a glimpse of his assailant's countenance;
and that glimpse, without abating his terror,
took but little from his amazement. It was
the countenance of an Indian,—or such it seemed,—grimly

and hideously painted over with
figures of snakes, lizards, skulls, and other savage
devices, which were repeated upon the arms, the
half naked bosom, and even the squalid shirt, of
the victor. One glance, in the confusion and terror
of the moment, Braxley gave to his extraordinary
foe; and then the mantles piled upon his
body concealed all objects from his eyes.

In the meanwhile, Edith, not less confounded,
sat cowering with terror, until the victor, having
completed his task, sprang to her side,—a movement,
however, that only increased her dismay,—
crying, with warning gestures, “Fear not and
speak not;—up and away!” when, perceiving
she recoiled from him with all her feeble strength,
and was indeed unable to rise, he caught her in
his arms, muttering, “Thee is safe—thee friends
is nigh!” and bore her swiftly, yet noiselessly, from
the tent.