University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ALTERNATIVE.

Caroline Kent felt perfectly convinced that the words of the lawyer
were true. All her self-possession seemed ready to desert her. She
felt that she was indeed in his power, now that her uncle was
again. For him she felt the deepest sorrow and alarm. She pictured
his joy and happy relief after burning the papers, and remembered
how light-hearted he felt now that he was free. Yet it was
all a deception! He was still in the same danger, though ignorant
of it; the papers were still in Satchell's hands; at any moment the
storm might burst and overwhelm him with infamy.

Such were her painful reflections as she stood there before Satchell,
who steadily watched her countenance with an expression on
his face of quiet exultation. He seemed to divine her thoughts.

“Miss Kent,” he said, “you have you perceive censured my
want of tact without good foundation. I am not a man likely to
throw up the cards with the game in my own hand. What I have
told you is the truth. Colonel Harwood is as much in my power
to-day as he was yesterday. I see you feel for him; you have it
in your power to save him. He is now happy; he believes that he
is safe. Are you willing to destroy this peace? are you willing
that he should be once more made a wretched slave to his fears?
are you willing to tell him the dreadful truth, and witness his anguish
and despair?”

“No, no,” she answered quickly and nervously; “he must never
know how he has been deceived,” and she wrung her hands.

“Yet he must know it; if you refuse to save him, he shall know
it. And more than this, neither money nor any thing else earthly
shall get these papers. Tomorrow they shall be on their way to
the Government. No power shall save him.”

“Oh, most dreadful!”

“I am glad you feel his danger and sympathize with his situation;
it is in your power to keep the truth from him.”

“How?” she cried almost fiercely.

“How! By becoming mine. I offer you my hand.”

“Demon!”

“Very well; demon or angel, it is the same to me. Words are
but words, mere circles in the water made by a pebble thrown in.
It is true it is a great sacrifice. I am near fifty; I am rather ugly
of visage, and ungainly in person; I have not the best reputation
in the world, and have been in prison for forgery; indeed I am
known among men as the Rogues' Attorney. You see I have attractions
for a young and blooming girl, and withal a high-spirited
one. I name over my merits, that you may have less repugnance
to me.”

She gazed upon him with amazement visible in her beautiful but
angry face.

“Sir,” she said, “you do but jest with me; your words show it.
If you wished me to wed you, you would not thus seek to make
yourself more hideous than you are. Tell me plainly, what is the
price at which these papers are to be purchased, and my poor uncle
freed from your power?”

“The price of your hand—none less.”

“You surely do not seek to render a young girl who has never
injured you miserable for life. You cannot desire to make me your
wife,” she cried, earnestly. “Say that it is but a jest.”

“I never jest, lady. You know the terms at which your uncle's
life and honor are to be purchased. These papers, and believe me
I speak the truth, are sufficient to hang him; if they are placed by
me in the hands of the Government, he will be executed for treason
within three months; he knows it as well as I do. There remains
but little more to be said. You know the terms; if you regard his
life and honor, these papers shall be yours the very moment you
consent to become mine.”

“Consent?”

“At the altar, I mean.”

“O God!” she cried, covering her face, “this is fearful.”

All at once she threw herself at his feet. She raised her face to
his streaming with tears; she supplicated him with clasped hands.

“Save, oh! save my uncle, and spare, spare me.”

“Only on the condition already named,” he answered, coldly.
“Be mine and the papers are yours.”

“Marry you?” she repeated with infinite scorn, rising to her
feet; “no, never. I will perish first.”

“Very well,” said Satchell, taking up his hat. “Tomorrow the
fate of your uncle is sealed.”

“Stay—stay!” she cried, springing towards him and catching
him by the arm; “come, co—com—come back, sir,” she stuttered
out, in the most painful state of agitation.

“Well, what do you say? You know that to be Satchell's
wife you will be honored with the appellation of the Rogues' Bride.
You will share my infamy; all my crimes and sins will serve as a
lens for people to look at you through. You will be Satchell's wife.
What an honor! can't you realize it? Then you will live in such
style! I shall perhaps purchase another chair, and another cup
and saucer and tea-spoon, for my dingy office in — alley; for
there you are to live with me. I keep no servant as I have but one
room, and you will be servant-maid, housekeeper and every thing
at which you can make yourself useful. You see that I make you
great offers.”

“I will not consent; I will die first!” she exclaimed, filled with
terror at the picture he had drawn.

“You forget your uncle's danger.”

“He must bear it, then. I cannot save him at a price like this.
Sir, rather than be your wife I would take my own life.”

“Then the question is settled. His fate also.”

“Is there no other condition?”

“None. You are in one scale, and his life in the other.”

She stood a moment, looking the very statue of irresolute despair.
Her eyes wandered upon the papers. He saw their direction, and
buttoned them up in his breast-pocket.

“I cannot save him,—I cannot; he would not ask it,” she cried,
in anguish.

“Then good evening, Miss Kent,” he said, stooping for the key
and going with it to the door; he placed it in the lock. She stood
trembling like a leaf following each movement. He turned towards
her; he approached her. “I will give you one moment more to
reverse your decision.”

“Sir, have you no heart—no humanity. Can you witness my
distress unmoved, when you have the power to remove it?”

“No, the power you have, not I. You have only to say `Yes,'
to save your uncle.”

“And sacrifice myself?”

“You know what a high crime treason is. Picture to yourself
your uncle dragged from his home and cast into prison; see him
arraigned before a tribunal of his country; witness his anguish and
the wretchedness of his family; see the blush of shame upon the
cheek of his eldest boy; hear the sentence of death! Place before
your eyes the scene of execution; the crowd; the gallows; the
fatal cart; the coffin; the drooping form of your uncle bound and
clad in the habiliments of the scaffold; see the—”

“No more! no more! I consent!”

“When?”

“Now—at any time, only save him; this very night. No, tomorrow—tomorrow
I will be yours. Will you give me the papers then?”

“Yes, the moment the words pass your lips that make you mine.”

“Ha, ha, ha! Yes, I will be thine. You will not deceive me?”

“No.”

“You swear to give me the papers as soon as I have pronounced
the marriage vow?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, merry, merry marriage day! ha, ha, ha!”

“Miss Kent, be calm! Your reason is leaving you!”

“Calm?” she repeated, fixing her eyes wildly upon him. “Should
I not be calm when there is so much cause for joy?” and she sung
thrillingly the line—

She stopped full at the last word, and said sadly—

Satchell approached; his face assumed a look of sympathy.

“Miss Kent, be composed. I will save you.”

“Save me!” she shrieked, clasping him by the arm and looking
him intensely in the face.

“Yes, be calm. Do not give way to such excitement.”

“You say you can save me, and my uncle too,” cried the poor
girl, who had seemed for a moment about to lose her reason; but
who now appeared calm at the hope of safety held out.

“Yes, both of you. There is a condition upon which you can
have the papers; and I have no doubt, seeing that you loathe me
as you do, that it will suit you better.”

“Name it,—any thing but that!” she shuddered as she spoke;
“I can consent to any thing but that.”

“Even to become the mistress of Edward Manning!” he suggested,
in a cool, deliberate way, that showed how deeply laid had
been his plan to reach this point.”

“Sir?”

“Nay, do not take such quick fire. Remember all depends on
your self-possession; it is a great stake we are playing for! I
repeat then what I first said, and I wish you to hear me calmly.
There is no alternative to the question; you must either become
the wife of the detested Simmins Satchell, or the mistress of Edward
Manning.”

“Sir, I do not know what to say to such words—to such a proposal!
I cannot listen; you insult me!”

“I do not intend to. I speak plainly, because it is necessary we
should perfectly understand each other. The life and honor of your
uncle depended on your consent to become my wife. You treated
the proposition with as much contempt and horror as if it had been
proposed to you to wed Lucifer himself. Instead of forcing you to
this union with me, I take pity on you, and propose one that I
know will be far more agreeable to you. I know that you loved
Edward Manning before his marriage; I know that this event has
not diminished your passion; nay, I know that you would this
night, were he to come to you and swear undying fealty, that you
would fly with him to the world's end. This I know you would
do, for it is in your character. Love like yours for him can couple
therewith no dishonor, even though no altar hath consecrated it.”

“How is it that he reads my soul thus!” she said, half aloud.
“He has spoken aloud what has only been thought in the recesses
of my being. Oh! why has he mentioned this loved name to torture
me?”

“You are silent, lady.”

“Sir, I know not what to say.”

“I will teach you words. Listen: I present you these two alternatives,
viz: be mine legally or his freely.”

“His freely then, if choose I must! But, sir, strange man! I
know not what to term you, how is this to reward you for the surrender
of the papers? What are you to Edward Manning? How
can this strange compromise benefit you?”

“How can you tell but that Mr. Manning pays me a larger price
than I could realize otherwise? How can you say that when I find
that you will not be mine, that I choose to yield you to him, and
take much money instead of little or no love?”

“Has Mr. Manning sent you to me?” she cried, her whole manner
changing, and her looks full of love and the excitement of hope,
as if there was in the world none else but he whom she loved and
worshipped. “But no, no!” she answered herself, sadly. “You
do only mock me, trifling with the knowledge of my deep love for
him. He has no heart for me; he thinks not of me; he has a
lovely wife, and she holds that high sacred place in his affections,
for which I have sighed in vain. Yet I thought he once loved me;
nay, I think he did till he found how madly I loved, and that he
discovered in me, perhaps, a recklessness of passion that alarmed
his chaste bosom. Oh! how have I lamented that fatal hour when
I let him know to what perfect abandonment I was ready to give
myself to him. But, alas! he fled; he saw me no more; he loves
me not; he despises me and pities me.”

These words were uttered as if she had no listener. She seemed
to forget Satchell's presence, or heedless of it—perhaps indifferent,
in her grief, whether her words fell upon his ears or not. He heard
them all.

“Why do you speak to me of Edward Manning?” she demanded
aloud. “He is nothing to me.”

“Yet you are every thing to him.”

“I to him?” she repeated, half in joy, half with incredulity.

“Yes, maiden, he loves you with the deepest passion,—a passion
only equal to your own.”

“His wife?” she gasped.

“He loves her not. His heart is yours. He has found that her
heart is another's.”

“Is this true?”

“Yes. Outwardly he carries the fair show of love; but he cares
nothing for her; and if the truth be told, nor she for him. This
mutual discovery, although they have been married but a few
weeks, has destroyed their happiness. He now sighs for you.”

“Oh, that I could believe you!”

“I have proofs.”

“When did you see him? how did you learn this? has he sent
you to me? did he desire you to see me? Speak, for my heart is
bursting!” were her rapid interrogations.

“Listen and you shall know all; and I trust that you will yet
thank Simmins Satchell for this night's visit to you.”