University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
THE THREADS OF DESTINY.

—Texan MSS.

At the same moment, on the opposite side of
the door, in the gloomy chamber, frowning
with the portaits of Castilian hidalgos, Don
Augustin maddened by blind rage, stood prepared
to plunge his sword into the heart of
his unknown enemy.

That enemy stood near the door, his arms
folded over his rifle, while a smile of cold
contempt played over his lips.

Kneeling by his side, the light held in her
extended arm—it seemed frozen into marble,
lsora wound the dark robe around her breast,
and looked with vacant terror into the face of
her betrothed husband. Her bosom now
stilled like death, now heaving suddenly under
the dark robe, her rich olive chek, chilled
into a dull, lifeless hue, her eyes gleamng
a light at once vivid and unnatural—all
betokened the violence of the emotions which
threatened her reason with utter annihilation.

Indeed she seemed sinking fast into a stupor,
a dull apathy worse than death.

Calm and sneering, John Grywin—his cold
smile rendered sinister, aye, Satanic, by the
upward direction of the light—looked into the
face of Don Augustin, as though he would
read his soul, through his small and restless
eyes.

`Heretic! never do you leave this room
alive! Yon have poisoned the mind of this
pure lady—pure! ha! ha! He laughed bitterly.
`You have outraged the honor of a
Mexican. Come,—I am hungry for your
blood!'

`You talk like a hero! Bravo! I really
begin to admire you, Don Augustin.'

Such was the reply of John Grywin, de
livered in a quiet tone, his arms still folded
about his rifle, Not a muscle of his face
moved—not one sign of agitation was visible
in his tall form or bold, white forehead.

`Dog! coward! I spit on you!'

Don Augustin grew grotesquely eloquent.

`I say you are afraid to measure swords
with me! I call you poltroom!—and scorn
you.'

`You are ungentlemanly, Don Augustin,'
quietly remarked the Texan. `Now I have
but one word to say, and that is to request the
loan of your coat for a few hours. I wish to
pass the guard at the Mole, and to pass in
your uniform; you understand? Will you
strip?'

There was a sneering consciousness of superior
power, not only physical but intellectual
force, in his look and tone, and yet Don
Augustin was not a man at all to be despised.

With an impetuous bound he hurled the
point of his sword at the unprotected beast of
the Texan.

It was a deadly lunge, a moment of quivering
suspense.

Then occurred a sudden and sublime sacrifice.

This woman, Isora, kneeling on the floor,
the light extended in her palsied hand, was
only clad in the solitary robe which trembled
on her heart. Yet she did not remember
this nor call to mind that modesty which is the
most sudden instinct of a pure woman.

There was a wilder instinct in her breast;
call it fascination, magnetism, love; and it
taught her that the sharp point was hurled
against the Texan's heart, that she must save
him at every hazard.

Quick as the tigress, maddened by the
slaughter of her young, she darted from the
floor, raised the light in one hand, and with
the other flung the robe from her breast and
hurled it upon the point of Don Augustin's
sword.

Then panting and glowing—her form brave
as the form of sinless Eve, she flung back her
head, and with the eye flashing, the nostril
quivering, she entangled the sword, and with
a sudden movement, hurled it and her robe
together, on the floor.

The light was still in her uplifted left arm,
and in its beams she stood revealed, glowing
from head to foot, on bosom, cheek and brow,
with the fiery impulse of that heroic deed.

Don Augustin started back and shrieked
her name, coupled with a word too foul for
manhood to repeat.

Maddened as the Texan was by the wrongs
which had goaded him for years, until his
very life became one brooding revenge he felt
his blood boil at that unmanly word. Look!
You see his clubbed rifle circle his head, you
see Don Augustin hurled senseless to the
floor.

Then the beautiful girl, roused once more
into her woman's modesty as the impulse of
her action passed away, blushed in every
pore, tossed her dark hair on her form; it fell
it waved, it streamed over her bosom and
down her limbs, and sinking on her knees
wept aloud.

Methinks I see some sensualist of the Pulpit
or the press read this passage, and as his
foul imagination, ineapable of anything but
that which is born of the kennel of his own
heart, covers this heroic deed with the atmosphere
of his sensualism, and gravely groans
`Immoral! Damnable!'

I write this scene, first of all because it is
true, and next, as a defiance to those poor
earth worms, who crawl over all that is pure
and beautiful in the earth of God, leaving
their slime wherever they writhe along.

I paint this woman, with the bared form,
and look upon her unveiled loveliness, blooming
in such roseate hues, flowing in such waving
outlines, as a type of all that is pure in
the wide earth, an incarnation of that love
which hallows a man's soul, when he thinks
of a mother or a sister, a love stainless as the
snow-flake trembling from the parent cloud,
and bathed as its floats in the ray of a setting
sun.

But the sensualist, whether he whines in the
pulpit, or croaks in the press, or howls in the
brothel, what message has the statue or the
picture, or the wood-painting, which embodies
a woman's unveiled form, what message has
this purity enshrined for him? Nothing but
earth, for he is of the earth, earthy; nothing
but filth, for he is born of filthy; nothing
but lust, for the impulses of his heart are like
the bubble on the Dead Sea, stagnant and
pestilent excretions fomenting on the very
dregs of rottenness and decay.

Such a sensualist have I seen, talk with
prim utterance, in his demure journal, about
immoral books; quoting garbled passages to
prove his point, claiming sympathy from the
moral public, because he had slimed over
some sentence or chapter that was pure before
he touched it; and all the while the victim

of this chaste editor's perjury—a brokenhearted
and wronged woman, lay mad and
howling in the cell of an insane hospital.—
This was a moral editor of a Moral Newspaper.

An expression of mingled character passed
over the Texan's face, as he gazed upon the
kneeling girl. His large eye dilated, and
flashed with unusual light, while a smile played
over his lip. Veiled in her luxuriant hair,
the snowy skin gleaming through the interval
of her tresses, she still grasped the light, as
her tears fell like rain on the half-revealed
bosom.

`Come, Isora,' said John of Prairie Eden
—and believe me, his voice was low and
deep, and thrilling with that music of passion
which always steals to the heart, and
makes it beat more tumultuously,—`we must
away! Assume this monkish gown and
wind the dark robe over it, while I put on the
handsome dress of Don Augustin. Or stay!
your purpose is changed; you will not fly
with me and share the fate of the outcast and
the stranger!'

Isora raised her eyes. John was standing
with his head drooped, his hands clasped, his
wild and singular face mellowed by a shade
of overwhelming sadness. The strong man
seemed melted into very womanhood as he
talked to himself—it was his manner when
wrung to the heart by sudden emotion.

`Outcast! Yes, I have no home, nor father,
brother, sister—not one friend on the
wide earth of God! Poor Harry! I see your
boyish face and clear blue eyes—your voice,
O Harry, how it comes back to my soul!—
And in cold blood they put you to death. I
saw you—yes, now I see your face dabbled
in blood, a smile quivering on your lips, and
they are cold forever! Isabel, dishonored—
dishonored! The father hanging before the
porch of his own home; his ashy face glowing
in morning sun! Isora deserts me
too! Isora—this dear flower which I found
blooming in her Mexican home, and wound to
my heart—Isora leaves the outcast to his
fate!'

No wonder that voice, whispering its wild
soliloquy, pierced the maiden's soul.

She rose from the floor, and winding the
robe once more upon her form, laid her right
hand upon his muscular chest, while her eyes,
shining through the intervals of her hair,
burned with emotion too deep for words.

Their eyes met; the maiden seemed to
grow into his heart, even as their glances
mingled in one; a rosy red stole over her
cheeks and bloomed in dewy freshness on her
parted lips.

`I have no home but with thee!'

She did not tell how he had won her heart,
how, appearing at first in her lonely home,
with an atmosphere of mystery and romance
about him—he had besought shelter from his
pursuers. This was many days ago. She
listened to his story, won by the melody of his
voice, the strange light of his eyes, but more
than all by that absorbing story, which spoke
of the dear Prairie Eden, cirled by the trees
of the Island Grove; the gentle brother
Harry, the dead father and the beautiful
Isabel.

From that hour she loved him, and many
a time, in the gloomy chambers of the mansion,
secluded from her brother's eye, and
from the gaze of the Argus-eyed Duenna,
this young and passionate woman suffered her
unknown lover to kneel at her feet, to thread
his fingers in the masses of her silken hair,
and looked the magnetism of his soul into her
eyes.

She did not tell him in words this story of
her love, but it shone in her eyes, it spoke
in the brief sentence, uttered with dewy lips
and panting bosom.

`I have no home but with thee!'

Let us pass once more into the shadows of
Isora's bed chamber, where the monk shrinks
back from the touch of a death-cold hand, as
he hears the well-remembered voice.