University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
THE INTERVIEW.

Velasco, by Epes Sargent.

—Willis.

The ruffian Valtmeyer had not, as we have hinted,
been wholly unmindful of the comfort of his
captive when dragging her from the light of day
to become the tenant of this dungeon-like abode.
Whether this considerateness arose from motives
utterly selfish, or whether the outlaw had really
some latent sparks of kindness in his rude bosom,
it is impossible to say. But certainly he had been
at much pains in preparing “the Chapel” for its occupant
before he ever brought her to the cave.

The spot which he had selected for her tent or
wigwam of birchen bark had been smoothed by filling
up its inequalities with dry leaves; and these,
when covered by a piece of Indian matting, afforded
an elastic and comfortable carpet. Hither he
had, too, with much trouble—from the difficulty of
transporting articles of any bulk through these sinuous
vaults—conveyed bedding, a chair or two, a
table—which he was obliged to take to pieces, and

which cost him many an oath in reconstructing
—and other household articles. Nor had he forgotten
even the ordinary kitchen utensils when preparing
one corner of the Chapel for the accommodation
of the two coloured women who were to attend
upon Alida.

It was probably owing to these arrangements
chiefly that the health of Miss De Roos was not
utterly prostrated by the long weeks she was compelled
to pass in the gloomy vaults of Waneonda.
For though the air of this remarkable cavern is said
to be perfectly pure, and the temperature mild and
equable, yet such utter exclusion from the light of
day must always be more or less prejudicial, especially
to one whose anxious spirit is so worn by
emotion that the frame needs all fostering care to
prevent its giving way and releasing the throbbing
tenant.

But the thought of Death, which, to most characters
in her situation, would often have suggested
itself as a refuge, had perhaps never once occurred
to Alida de Roos. She neither wished for it nor
feared it. But she did fear that her bodily strength
might give way; her mind become enfeebled with
the decay of her health; that mind, upon whose inborn
and conscious energies she so haughtily relied
in the last emergency to which she might be driven.
She did fear that the greatest trial of its ascendency
and its powers—for she knew that she was
in Bradshawe's hands—might be deferred till her
faculties were impaired by suffering and her hitherto
indomitable spirit overborne.

The thought that those faculties might fail their
mistress, and that she might fall irretrievably into the
power of Bradshawe, was maddening to her. She
revolted from it whenever it swept athwart her
brain. She tried to forget her sorrows; she refused

to entertain her griefs; she endeavoured to postpone,
as it were, reflecting upon the full horrors of her
situation; and she caught at every object within her
reach that could occupy her attention, if it did not
amuse her mind. She divided their duties with her
attendants, and assumed all those which appertained
immediately to the care of her own person; she borrowed
her needle of the mulatto, who was glad of
an excuse for remaining unemployed, and sleeping
away the indolent and monotonous hours; and, listening
for hours to her dotard prating, she drew
from the elder negress all the superstitious lore
which formed the only furniture wherewith the mind
of the decrepit crone was supplied.

Alida unwittingly thus attached these humble
companions to her; and as their simple-hearted affection
more and more manifested itself, she began
at last to derive a certain solace from their sympathy
which actually approached to pleasure in their
society. The dungeon-doomed captive, who, in
his solitary misery, has made friends of animals
that belong to the very lowest and most loathsome
orders of created beings, can alone, perhaps, appreciate
this growth of friendship between a mind the
most gifted and refined, and those the least tutored
and liberalized.

On the day—if the phrase be allowable in regions
where night alone hath, since creation, reigned—
on the day that Bradshawe came on his stern errand
to the Lady's Chapel, Alida had, from some slight
indisposition, remained withdrawn in her tent; and
the two blacks, for the purpose of washing some
household articles, had kindled a fire upon the brink
of the stream, within a few yards of its door, where
they sat watching a boiling kettle, and chattering
together after the manner of their loquacious race.
The sound of their voices prevented their hearing

Bradshawe's approach; and as he extinguished his
torch the moment he came within the guiding light
of their fire, he was wholly unobserved till he stood
suddenly before them.

The shriek they simultaneously uttered at the
apparition startled Alida from her couch, and she
sprang to her feet, lifting, at the same time, the curtain
of her tent, so that the light of a lamp suspended
from within fell brokenly across her loosely arrayed
person.

Bradshawe, motioning with the back of his hand
as if he would cuff the negroes aside, pushed his
way at once rudely between them. “Shut up, you
squalling black brutes,” cried the ruffian, in a characteristic
tone, which changed on the instant, as if
belonging to another voice, as, bowing low, he saluted
Alida when he had approached a few paces
toward her.

“I have come,” said he, pausing in his advance,
and casting his eyes, as in respect to her, upon the
ground, “I have come, unheralded and unannounced,
I fear, no welcome visiter.”

“Unheralded? Who but the savage Valtmeyer
is your fitting herald? Unannounced? What better
than the terrors of this hideous dungeon could
announce its proper jailer! Waste not the soft
speeches that sit so idly on your lips, and are
thrown away in my ears. But tell me, tell me,
Walter Bradshawe, whence come you, why come
you? Tell me why I am here; for what monstrous
wickedness have I been kidnapped, kept for months
aloof from my friends and family, and brought to
this spot? and why do you stand there blasting
my eyes with your presence? Speak out, man;
out with it all, if words can syllable the foul contrivings
of your heart!”

Thus haughtily did Alida confront her spoiler;

and as she thus, in look as well as words, gave
vent to her outraged feelings, while Bradshawe,
standing on the declivity below her, seemed to stoop
and cower before her presence, she looked—half
emerging from the drapery of the tent, with the
pale light from within brightening the outlines of
her features and person, and leaving the rest in
deep shadow—she looked like some indignant spirit,
who, descending from a brighter world, had pierced
its way into these black realms to rebuke their unhallowed
master.

“By Jove, she'll unhitch lightning against me
next,” said Bradshawe, mentally. “She's a great
girl, and no mistake, this same Mistress Bradshawe;”
and then, still preserving his obsequious and
almost reverential bearing toward her, he rejoined
aloud, “I can bear this from you; this, and more,
Alida. My heart has not now, for the first time,
to be schooled in your unkindness. If you call it
kidnapping to rescue you from the horrors of Indian
captivity; if you call it outrage to provide a secluded
and safe home for you, when the havoc of
civil war has made thousands shelterless, and your
own friends are either scattered or slain; if you
call it wickedness to snatch you from the neighbourhood
of these scenes of horror as they thicken
through the land, and provide you here a retreat
which, rude and gloomy as I confess it is, still is
not without its comforts and advantages; if these
humble, but zealous and unwearying efforts of one
who has long since waived his right as a husband
to win your regard as a friend, can make no amends
for the one rash but well-meant act by which I
would have made you mine—then—then, Alida—
then—”

“Then, sir!” said the lady, scornfully, as he

paused a moment for a word; “well, sir, and what
then?”

“I'm d—d if I know,” said Bradshawe to himself.
“The jade looks so cursed cool that my
stump eloquence fails me. I must go it on some
other touch.”

“Why don't you finish your speech, sir?” repeated
Alida, noticing his hesitation. “Why stop you
so short in your pleadings and specifications? Even
Mr. Bradshawe's enemies allow him the glibness, as
well as the guile, of a county-court attorney.”

He did not reply, and the lady went on. “Bradshawe,
you are a skilful actor, a most specious
hypocrite, though your selfish passions are too fitful
and stormy to make you a consummate one.
But you must deem me credulous indeed when you
claim for yourself motives of disinterested kindness
which would give the lie to all I have known of
your character in long years gone by. The very
attachment with whose declaration this cruel persecution
began, was—”

“Was true, pure, disinterested, by Heaven!” exclaimed
Bradshawe, now really speaking from his
heart; “was earnest and devoted as ever mortal
man bore toward your sex. No, no, Alida, chafe
me not with that. Had you but accepted my honourable
proposals when first I dared to press my suit,
you might have made me what you would. Wild
and reckless as men called me, my mother's gentleness
seemed born anew in my spirit whenever
it turned to you.”

“And where,” said Alida, not wholly untouched
by this natural burst of feeling, yet shuddering as
she spoke the words which followed, “where was
that spirit of gentleness when those horrid nuptials
were forced upon me; when, by your lawless instruments,
I was torn from my home, and my hand

to you in wedlock made the price by which alone
you consented to redeem me from the licentious
hands of that young barbarian with whom you, as
well as Valtmeyer, were colleagued? That fearful
night! oh God! oh God!” And the now agitated
Alida covered her face with her hands, as if shutting
out some hideous spectre which her imagination
had conjured up for the moment.

“You have never had reason,” said Bradshawe,
coldly, “to believe that I was privy to that deed of
violence; and though, for certain valuable political
services he has rendered, I have since taken Valtmeyer
into my confidence, no man has ever dared
to whisper audibly that I was at that time colleagued
with him. No, Alida, though you then disbelieved
the tale, I can now only repeat the same story I told
you then. And what are the circumstances? I
had been some weeks from home in a remote settlement,
and, returning by a short road through the
wilderness, I stop to bait my horse at the solitary
lodge of an Indian missionary. I find the timid
man in the utmost anxiety about a female prisoner
that, within an hour, had been brought to the house
by a ferocious young savage, whose band is hovering
near. His followers have called the spoiler
away for a few hasty moments, and left a white
desperado to stand guard over the captive. I ask
to see her, and, to my horror, discover that it is
Alida; she whom, a short month since, I had hoped
to call my Alida; she for whom still, as her rejected
lover, I cherished the deepest respect, the tenderest
affection. In my wrath I threaten Valtmeyer
for the part he has played in this forced abduction.
He derides my anger, and points to the smoke of
the Indian fires near by, as seen through the window.
I entreat, I conjure him. I add bribes to
my entreaties, and he consents to hear me, but rejects

the alternatives of flight or resistance as equally
hopeless in rescuing the prisoner. There is but
one resort remains. I am not personally unknown
to Au-neh-yesh; I must plead to him. But will he
hear me in such a cause? He has already avowed
to the Catholic missionary his intention to marry
the white woman; will he be dissuaded from his
course by words, when his deeds have just proved
the determination of his character. No! there is
no way of rescuing you from the ruthless hands of
that licentious son of Brant, but by convincing him
that you are already married; that, in a word, you
are my wife. Proofs are wanting; for, as you do
not bear my name, I must make it appear that the
espousals long since took place clandestinely. The
missionary is the only party at hand whose testimony
will be believed; but he refuses to give it falsely.
He will not swear that we are married unless the
rite be solemnized; but he consents, if we accept
his ministry at once, to leave a blank in the marriage
certificate, which I can antedate, so that Au-neh-yesh
shall have no suspicion of being over-reached.
What remains to be told? You startle
from a stupor as you hear the dreadful sound of his
voice approaching from a distance; there is not a
moment to be lost; the service is hurried through;
you faint at the last response, but the ceremony is
finished, and the demi-savage foiled in his claim
before he makes his appearance at the door.”

“God of mercy!” passionately exclaimed Alida,
clasping her hands together, “is Thy truth like human
truth? Not one word which that man has
spoken can I gainsay; yet, while the very scene
he describes passed before my eyes—my own eyes
—I feel, I know, that it was all false; false, fiendishly
false. A LIE; a living, breathing, moving
lie.'

She paused. “Yet I did see that stony-eyed priest;
I did hear Bradshawe pleading with Valtmeyer; I
do remember leaping forward when I heard the
voice of that red barbarian, whose naked arm had
been around my waist an hour before.—More I remember
not till they showed me that fatal certificate;
but even then I did not think that this was
all a cruel inveiglement, and Bradshawe a specious
villain, a most accursed.—When and whence, then,
came this firm conviction that I was foully dealt
with—that I was a blind victim in the toils of demons?”

The ill-starred lady, while speaking thus, with
eyes intensely fixed on vacancy, pushed back with
her fingers the long tresses from her brow, as if her
intellectual as well as physical vision could thus be
cleared. Then shaking her head, from which the
dishevelled hair again fell slowly to her shoulders,
she turned and fixed on Bradshawe a look so mournful
yet so piercing, that even his features of bronze
betrayed the uneasy and painful emotion it awakened.
But whether that emotion was one of alarm
for the future or of remorse for the past; whether
his guilty heart quailed beneath that penetrating
glance, or whether the grief-stricken mien of the
beautiful woman whom he had reduced to this condition
of forlornness touched some latent feeling
of pity and regret, it was impossible to say. The
slight agitation passed rapidly from his countenance,
and, folding his arms with a composed but
dejected air, in which something of dignity was not
unmingled, he said,

“Madam, it is in vain for me to attempt removing
these ungenerous, these monstrous suspicions. I
shall never attempt to combat with them more; nor
would I now have said what I have said, save that
I always attributed your horror of my legal claim

upon your hand to some painful impression upon
your mind, made during the fits of delirium which
marked the long illness that followed those unhappy
nuptials. I therefore suspended that claim till
years should intervene and efface these frightful
imaginings. I for years avoided molesting you with
my hateful presence, though, unseen by you, I was
often hovering near. I kept secret the bond of
union between us. I thought that time might soften
the bitterness of your aversion. I hoped to melt
at last that heart of obduracy. But I have reasoned
vainly. An opportunity such as I have recently
availed myself of to prove my watchful affection
and devotedness, may never again occur; and if it
does, what will be my reward if I embrace it?
Scorn and contempt—ay, those are my wages—
scorn for the feelings that prompted the service,
contempt for the claim I would thus purchase on
your regard.”

The lady bowed her head and wept. The borderer
saw he was gaining an advantage, and determined
to pursue it. She spoke not, and he thus
went on:

“Hear me, Alida: there was a time when, in the
full tide of youth, madly as I loved you, I would
never have taken you as a reluctant partner to my
bosom. But years of care and disappointment have
sobered this arrogance of all-exacting affection. I
am, alas! no longer young; and the freshness of both
our lives has passed away for ever. I never have
loved, I never can love, another than you; and you
—you can never belong to another until my death
shall set you free. Why, then, oh why shall we both
continue to be miserable for our remaining years?
Why will you not make it my privilege, as it is
my right, to minister to your happiness, by crowning
mine? Why not confide in the partner whom

Destiny has, for good or ill, allotted you, and permit
me to announce you to the world as my wife?
These wars must soon be over,” pursued the Tory
captain, gathering confidence as he proceeded; “the
rebels are even now splitting into factions among
themselves; and when the king's friends come in
for honour and offices, and the forfeited estates of
heavy-pursed and rich-landed traitors, Walter Bradshawe's
claims for the spoils that are won by loyalty
and valour will not be the feeblest among them.
Ay, and men do say that titles will not be withheld
when success shall finally entitle us to the full
meed of royal bounty and graciousness. Wilt be
my Lady Bradshawe, fair Alida?” And the wily
suiter, dropping not ungracefully on one knee, tried
that half frank, half humorous smile which had
made more than one village maiden pronounce him
positively handsome when his features wore it, and
which others of the sex, less innocent, had called
“the devil's own trick” when they had learned
to rue its influence upon their hearts. But Alida—
though she too might, in some sense, be numbered
among his victims—was made of different metal
from those whom Bradshawe had often moulded
to his purpose.

“Kneel not to me,” she cried, “thou base and
sordid slave! thou wretched minion of power debauched
and misapplied! thou most fitting tool of
drunken tyranny! Share thy name! thy loyal name,
thy honours, thy titles, forsooth! Vile parricide, I
thank thee for reminding me of my bleeding country,
which even now is convulsed with the throe of
casting out such wretches as thou from her bosom.
By Heaven, Bradshawe, I would rather these rocks
should close together and crush me where I stand,
or that yon black stream should float my senseless
corse to an abyss still lower than that in which your

villany has already buried my living frame; I would,
I would, rather than bear the name of your wife
before men for a single day!”

“There may be a fate reserved for you in these
vaults worse than either,” said Bradshawe, in a voice
husky with passion, as he regained his feet and
stepped a pace or two backward. A sheathed poniard,
unnoticed by himself, slipped from his belt
as he rose, and lay upon the floor of the cavern
midway between him and Alida. Her quick eye
caught sight of the weapon in a moment; and, almost
ere the dreadful import of the last words had
reached her ears, she had sprung forward, plucked
the dirk from the ground, and recovered her former
position. Bradshawe, recoiling first at the impetuous
bound she had made toward him, now actually
turned pale when he saw her slowly draw the
weapon from its sheath, and gaze with a cold smile
upon its gleaming blade. He would have spoken,
but horror kept him tongue-tied; he would have
leaped forward to snatch the deadly steel from her
hand, but the least motion on his part would precipitate
the catastrophe which he verily believed
was impending. But the next movement of Alida
relieved the fearful suspense that agitated him.
She calmly, after feeling its point, passed the naked
dagger through her girdle, so as to secure it to her
person.

“It is small, but it will do,” she said, flinging the
sheath to the feet of Bradshawe. “Your power
over me from this moment has its limit. The instrument
of my deliverance is in my own hands;
and you can do no more than compel me to use it,”
she added, with an air of determination, so quiet as
sufficiently to speak her resolve, even if the words
had not been significant enough to reveal her purpose.

“I meant not—I did not mean—” stammered
Bradshawe.

“Our conference is over, sir; and it has a fitting
end,” interrupted Alida, haughtily, waving her hand.
“I would be alone, Mr. Bradshawe.”

“Another time, then, when my care for your
welfare, so far as I can study it in these dreary retreats,
shall have obliterated these ignominious suspicions,
this most ungenerous and unjust misinterpretation
of every word I utter, I will come, Alida,
and in a few days, perhaps, may venture to—”

“Come, sir, whenever you have made up your
mind to the moment my doom is sealed; but let
the victim be released from the presence of the executioner
for the few hours that may yet be allotted
her.”

The curtain of the tent dropped before her as she
pronounced these words; and Bradshawe, too much
stupified by the sudden turn which events had
taken, and confounded by the position in which he
had placed himself, withdrew sullenly to his boat,
without bestowing the least notice upon his gaping
slaves, who had been the mute and astonished witnesses
of this singular scene.

“What a cursed blockhead I was to threaten a
storm, when I had lots of time to circumvent, and
a thousand other ways to drive the garrison to surrender.
Wat Bradshawe, you are more of an ass
than most men believe you. You great boy you,
to let your blood get above your brain for a moment,
because a theatrical girl is mad enough to scoff at
you! She, too, wholly, at the moment, in your
power! Zounds! but my henhawk made a gallant
thing of it. That cursed dagger, too, slipping away
as it did. Well for me it was not a pistol, or the
Amazon had done for me at five paces. She's a
tall girl; a great piece of woman's flesh, that same

Mistress Bradshawe. I don't know whether it be
love or hatred that drives me on; but something
does drive me. If love, there's certainly a streak of
malice in it. If hatred, there must be some wishy-washy
drippings of tenderness in the bitter waters,
for my heart beat the devil's tattoo when she pointed
that infernal bodkin so near to her bosom. Hallo,
Charon! mongrel half-breed! bowknot of twisted
man's flesh! hither, I say! Ah! my good Charon, I
dreamed not you were so near at hand.”

And Bradshawe, terminating his amiable soliloquy
as his deformed follower joined him at the opening
in the rock where they had before separated,
the two soon afterward regained the Outlaws' Hall.