University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
A CATASTROPHE.

Charles Anson stood a moment supporting himself by the door, gazing
from one to the other of the parties. The mulatto released the hand of his
wife, who sprung back from him with a countenance glowing with resentment.
Clow smiled with cool derision at her angry emotion, and then saying
in a low tone, `Remember! be faithful!' he crossed to the door in which
the husband stood, to go out. Happening to lift his eyes to the face of
Charles Anson, he recoiled a step from its expression. Instead of the vacant
stare of the inebriate, he encountered a look of the sternest indignation
and fiercest revenge. The sight the husband had witnessed had sobered
him in an instant. He removed his hand from the door, and stood erect
and defying in the path of Clow.

`Back! you pass not forth till I avenge this foul dishonor in your black
blood!' he cried, in a tone as determined as it was unlooked for by Clow.
`I saw thee, slave, and what thou wouldst have done, but that she, whom my
vices have left exposed to such degrading insults as this from thee, spurned
thee! Down upon your knees, dog, and ask that woman's pardon for the
wrong you meditated!'

The mulatto stood calm, firm, and with a derisive smile curling his thin
lips. He had scarcely ever seen Charles Anson only under the influence of
wine, and aware that when he opened the door he could not stand without
clinging to it, he regarded this only as a sudden outbreak of the phrenzy of
drunkenness. He therefore laughed in his face, and said, in a tone of authority,

`Give way, Anson, and let me pass. You are tipsy!'

`Villain! slave! infamous black! This is not wine, but sense of wrong.
What I have seen has sobered me! So beware! for I am a lion roused.
Down on your knees to her, and ask her forgiveness!'

As he commanded him to do this he advanced a step towards Clow with
his hand clenched.

`Do you dare me?' cried the mulatto, pale with rage, and thrusting his
hand quickly into his bosom.

`Dare and defy you! I thank thee, Clow, for this hour! To you I owe
much! We have a long account to settle! Through your hellish temptations
I became what I am! but what I shall be no longer! You degraded
me, and you are now become the instrument of saving me!'

`This shall be the instrument of your destruction, Charles Anson,' cried
Clow, drawing a pistol forth and leveling it at his breast. `You know not
the man you have dared to menace!'

`I know you, Philip Clow, but I do not fear you! You shall kneel as I
have bid you, before you quit this room!'

As he spoke he dashed his cap in Clow's face, and springing upon him,
caught his arm and wrested the pistol from his grasp. With the same act
he flung him from him, and then confronted him with the weapon in his
hand. The mulatto stood trembling with rage. His eyes fairly blazed with
the intensity of his fury. His white teeth shone like those of a hyena when
about to bound upon its prey.

`Now, Clow, the scale is turned,' said Charles Anson, in a deliberate
tone. `This moment is the happiest in my life. There is my wife, and
there is the floor! Down dog!'

`Charles — oh, Charles!' cried his wife, who had stood till now almost
paralyzed with fear at the rapid progress of events, but fearing the most
dreadful results if he continued to persist, she now clung to his arm.

`Not one word, Anna! not a movement of the lip. It is my honor I
would have atonement for! The villain would not have dared to venture
this outrage if he had not believed I was too low and degraded to resent it!
I am no longer so, Anna! From this hour — from this scene I am a man!
He shall kneel to you!'

`Never!' repeated the mulatto in an under tone that seemed to come from
the very depths of his chest. And with folded arms he stood erect and defying,
a smile of contempt mantling his lip.

Charles Anson advanced a step towards him, and cocking the pistol, spoke
but one word and pointed to the ground — `Obey!'

`Never!'

`Charles!' shrieked his wife, and flung herself upon him.

`The pistol went off, and the ball entered the bosom of his wife! With
a cry of suffering the unhappy woman sunk to the floor, the crimson tide
gushing from the wound!

`Charles — my husband, you have killed me!'

The hapless husband stood gazing upon her, petrified with horror at the
accidental deed he had done. Her words rung in his ears, and maddened
him. He dashed the pistol to the floor, and glared through the smoke that
filled the apartment, for the mulatto. He had disappeared! He was about
to rush forth in pursuit when the voice of his wife arrested him.

`Charles, leave me not! I am dying!'

`Dying?' he cried, returning and taking her head from the chair on
which it had fallen, and placing it tenderly on his knee; `dying! oh say not
so, Anna! Live now for me! I have my reason once more restored! I will
be a true and kind husband to you! Dying?' he repeated, gazing frantically
upon her fast clouding eyes, and watching the gathering paleness of death
pass upon her countenance; `dying? oh, say not so! See! I have checked
the flow of blood with your handkerchief! The wound is above the heart!
You will live! Let some one go for a surgeon! You will not die! You
shall not die! Oh God, she is dying!'

`Yes — yes, Charles! I am — I am dying! I shall be with you but a
few — few minutes! Be — beware of that man!'

`Yes, if you die he lives not an hour longer,' he cried, with fearful energy.
`What did he here?'

`The rent — the —'

`Yes, I am accursed! I understand it all now! I robbed you, like a
villain, as I was, and thus placed you in his power! Speak to me, Anna!
Do love me now that I have awakened to my sense of duty and love!'

`Too — too late, Charles!'

`No, oh no! Forgive my conduct! Dying? Oh, leave me not, Anna!
She is dying! Forgive! say you forgive me! By my hand too! Oh, this
is indeed Divine retribution! It is too fearful, too terrible, too just for mere
accident! Anna! one word — speak to me — say that — Her eyes
close heavily — her lips move not! Oh, God, her heart has ceased to beat!
Her pulse is still! She is dead!'

He knelt beside her, bending over her in a sort of stupefaction of grief
and wonder, his eyes fixed upon her rigid countenance, and gazing upon it
as if he did not realize what had occurred. His own visage was scarcely
less pale than that of the dead. At intervals his lips would part, and he
would murmur indistinctly the word `Dead!' Footsteps and voices below
stairs reached his ear, yet he moved not. The door opened and many persons
came in, yet he lifted not his sad gaze from the face of his wife, whom he
felt, with an anguish that was darkening his soul with horror and remorse,
that his vices had slain. A watchman laid his hand heavily upon his shoulder.

`Who has done this?' he asked him in a tone of horror.

`I!' was the deep response.

`Murdered his wife!' repeated several voices in the room; for faces were
thickly gathered around the scene.

`Yes,' answered the unhappy man, rising to his feet and looking round
upon them, while with his hand he pointed to the body. `Yes, I murdered
her!' and then he laughed.

Those he addressed shuddered at his words and fearful laugh, and the
words, `he is mad,' was whispered among them.

`No, I am not mad! I am sane and I am sober!' he answered, in a tone
strangely calm. `Watchman, I did this deed! Do with me what you do
with murderers!'

He spoke with a degree of reckless despair that awakened a degree of
pity and sympathy for him, even in the minds of those who were horror-stricken
at the deed. He stretched forth his hands to be bound.

`Did you do this, in truth?' asked one of the watchmen, who began to
doubt, from his manner, whether he was really the murderer.

`Dost thou need more confirmation? There is the pistol with which I
did it!'

The watchman picked it up, and exhibited it to all eyes. There was now
no further hesitation on his part.

`Come with me!' he said, sternly.

`Willingly, oh how willingly!' he said, in accents that were inconceivably
touching. `But do not take me away yet! Let me kneel and kiss her!
The grave will soon hide her from me! Let me embrace, once and forever,
those lips that never spoke to me but in kindness! One moment, watchman,
and I will go with you!'

He knelt down and gazed an instant upon the face of her for whom his
early love had returned all too late; a face still lovely, though wasted by
care and sorrow. The tears dropped from his eyes thick and fast, like an
April rain, upon her marble cheek. He laid his hand upon her forehead.
`Cold! cold! how cold! Those eyes are sealed! Death has sealed them!
She will never open them to look upon me again! Their light is hid from
me forever! In one moment, good watchman!' He pressed his lips to her
eye-lids, and then upon her lips. His heart seemed bursting with suppressed
sobs, and his whole frame shook till the floor vibrated beneath his knees.

Suddenly he rose up. His face was rigid with a forced calmness. `Come,
I go with thee whither thou wilt.'

The crowd made way, and he was led forth between two strong men, to
be lodged in prison. There, for the present, we leave him.

On reaching the street, after the fatal catastrophe in which he had been
an actor, Philip Clow walked rapidly away up the street, leaving behind him

a scene of alarm and confusion; for the shriek of the slain woman, following
the report of the pistol, had been heard in the streets and neighborhood,
and, as we have seen, had soon collected together, even at that late hour, a
concourse of people. Finding that he was not pursued, and yet ignorant that
the wound had caused the death of her over whom he held the arm of a
tyrannical and evil power, he paused to deliberate what plan he should pursue
to bring about his ends with reference to the lovely object of his passion.
Mrs. Anson, if only wounded, he was aware, would not now be able to aid
him, and vexed at the failure of what he conceived would have been an
effectual means of seeing Frederica, where he could declare his passion to
her, he walked slowly on, meditating upon some other way of achieving his
object.

In this manner he insensibly moved homeward, and ere he was aware,
found himself on the threshold of the inn or rather tap-room which he kept
only nominally; for he was seldom visible in the bar himself; and when he
was there, it was in the coarse garb and appearance of a mulatto in an humble
station; than which, as we have already said, nothing could be more opposite
to that he now assumed.

He stood for a moment upon the steps of the door, which was by the side
of that leading into the tap, and which, through an entry, conducted to his
private and elegantly furnished rooms above, open and known to but few
besides himself.

`I have it,' he said, `I will be my own agent. I am glad that this woman is
wounded, and should be rejoiced to know that she is dead. I was a fool to
make a confidant of her, and open to her all my hopes, and fears, and views,
as I have done. But I was in a confiding mood, and as she seemed to listen
with sympathy, I laid bare before her my soul. It was a weakness, but it
is as if I had not spoken with her, if that ball sped as fatally as I believe it
did! So! it served him right! What demon could have got into him all
at once? I trembled before him at one moment! He was roused like a
lion! That man will continue to be sober, and in him I have a deadly enemy!
But he shall do me no harm! If she dies, it shall not be my fault
that he isn't hung for it! I am not known in the affair! Yet it was my
pistol that did the deed!' he cried, with a sudden start, and deep execration
at his carelessness in omitting to take it away. `I will at once hasten back
to see if I can recover it.'

`Brother!' said a voice quickly, close at his side.

He had heard no footsteph, and turned with a start at the sudden surprise.

`Isabel! what do you here?'

`There has been murder in the house!' she said, in a low, deep whisper,
as if trembling.

`She is dead, then?'

`Yes, and he — the husband has been taken to prison.'

`Did you bring my pistol?'

`Your pistol! He said he did the deed!'

`Yes — yes,' he answered, quickly; `but it was with my pistol! Say you
he confessed to the murder?'

`He did, Philip.'

`It is strange. And my pistol?'

`The pistol was taken away by the watchman.'

`And my name upon the silver plate!' he cried, with a tone of personal
alarm.

`And her blood upon thy hand!'

`No. I swear I killed her not, Isabel!'

`Thou shouldst have thy pistol then, ere the morning reveal thy name
upon it!'

`I must abide it! You say he has confessed. I then shall not be accused.
I am glad thou art here! Come in! I have much concerning thyself
to say to thee!'