Guy Rivers a tale of Georgia |
| 1. |
| 2. |
| 3. |
| 4. |
| 5. |
| 6. |
| 7. | CHAPTER VII. |
| 8. |
| 9. |
| 10. |
| 11. |
| 12. |
| 13. |
| 14. |
| 15. |
| 16. |
| 17. |
| 18. |
| 19. |
| 20. |
| 21. |
| 22. |
| 23. |
 |
 | CHAPTER VII. Guy Rivers |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
willow—willow.
Shakspeare.
His entrance awakened no emotion among the
inmates of the dwelling; indeed, at the moment,
it was almost unperceived. The young woman
happened to be in close attendance upon her parent,
for such the person was, and did not observe his
approach, while he stood at some little distance
from the couch surveying the scene. The old lady
was endeavouring, though with a feebleness that
grew more apparent with every breath, to articulate
something, to which she appeared to attach
much importance, in the ears of the kneeling girl,
who with breathless attention seemed desirous of
making it out, but in vain; and signifying by her
the speaker, with something like anger, shook
her skinny finger feebly in her face, and the broken
and incoherent words, with rapid effort but like
success, endeavoured to find their way through
the half closed aperture between her teeth. The
tears fell fast and full from the eyes of the kneeling
girl, who neither sobbed nor spoke, but, with
continued and yet despairing attention, endeavoured
earnestly to catch the few words of one
who was on the eve of departure, and the words of
whom, at such a moment, almost invariably acquire
a value never attached to them before; as the
sound of a harp, when the chords are breaking, are
said to articulate a sweet sorrow, as if in mourning
for their own fate. The outlaw, all this while,
stood apart and in silence. Although perhaps but
little impressed with the native solemnity of the
scene before him, he was not so ignorant of what
was due to humanity, and not so unfeeling in reference
to the parties here interested, as to seek to disturb
its progress or propriety with tone, look, or
gesture, which might make either of them regret
his presence. Becoming impatient, however, of a
colloquy, which, as he saw that it had not its use, and
was only productive of mortification to one of the
parties, he thought only prudent to terminate; he
advanced towards them, and his tread, for the first
time, warned the parties of his presence. With an
effort which seemed supernatural, the dying woman
raised herself with a sudden start in the bed, and
her eyes glared upon him with a threatening horror,
and her lips parting, disclosed the broken and
decayed teeth beneath, ineffectually gnashing, while
her long skinny fingers warned him away. All
this time she appeared to speak, but the words
were unarticulated, though from the expression of
every feature, it was evident that indignation and
she had to express. The outlaw was not easily
influenced by anger so impotent as this; and from
his manner of receiving it, it appeared that he had
been for some time accustomed to a reception of a
like kind from the same origin. He approached the
young girl, who had now risen from her knees, and
spoke to her in words of comparative kindness.
“Well, Ellen, you have had an alarm, but I am
glad to see you have suffered no injury. How
happened the fire, which I see has been nigh burning
you all up?”
The young woman explained the cause of conflagration,
and narrated in brief the assistance
which had been received from the stranger.
“But I was so terrified, Guy,” she added “that
I had not presence of mind enough to thank him.”
“And what should be the value of your spoken
thanks, Ellen. The stranger, if he have sense,
must feel that he has them, and the utterance of
such things had better be let alone. But, how is
the old lady now? I see she loves me no better
than formerly.”
“She is sinking fast, Guy, and is now incapable
of speech. Before you came, she seemed desirous
of saying something to me, but she tried in vain to
speak, and now I scarcely think her conscious.”
“Believe it not, Ellen—she is conscious of all
that is going on, though her voice may fail her.
Her eye is even now fixed upon me, and with the
old expression. She would tear me if she could.”
“Oh, think not thus of the dying, Guy; of her
who has never harmed, and would never harm
you, if she had the power. And yet, heaven
knows, and we both know she has had reason
enough to hate, and if she could, to destroy you.
But she has no such feeling now.”
“You mistake, Ellen, or would keep the truth
and, indeed, as you say, she has had cause enough
to hate and destroy me. Had another done to me
as I have done to her, I should not sleep till my
hand was in his heart.”
“She forgives you all, Guy, I know she does,
and God knows I forgive you; I, who, above all
others, have most reason to curse you for ever.
Think not that she can hate, upon the brink of the
grave. Her mind wanders, and no wonder that
the wrongs of earth press upon her memory, her
reason being gone. She knows not herself of the
mood which her features express. Look not upon
her, Guy, I pray you, or let me turn away my
eyes.”
“Your spirit, Ellen, is more gentle and shrinking
than hers. Had you felt like her, I verily believe
that many a night when I have been at rest within
your arms, you would have driven a knife into my
heart.”
“Horrible, Guy! how can you imagine such a
thing. Base and worthless as you have made me,
I am too much in your power; I fear—I love you
too much; though like a poison or a firebrand you
have clung to my bosom, I could not have felt for
you a single thought of resentment. You say
well when you call me shrinking. I am a creature
of a thousand fears—I am all weakness and
worthlessness.”
“Well, well—let us not talk further of this.
When was the doctor here last?”
“In the evening he came, and left some directions,
but told us plainly what we had to expect.
He said she could not survive longer than the night;
and she looks like it, for within the last few hours
she has sunk surprisingly. But have you brought
the medicine?”
“I have, and some drops which are said to
stimulate and strengthen.”
“I fear me they are now of little use, and may
only serve to keep up life in misery. But they
may enable her to speak, and I should like to hear
what she seems so desirous to impart.”
Ellen took the cordial, and hastily preparing a
portion in a wineglass according to the directions,
proceeded to administer it to the gasping patient;
but while the glass was at her lips, the last paroxysm
of death came on, and with it something more
of that consciousness now fleeting for ever. Dashing
aside the nostrum with one hand, with the other
she drew the shrinking and half-fainting girl to
her side, and pressing her down beside her, appeared
to give utterance to that, which, from the
action, and the few and audible words she made
out to articulate, would seem to have been a benediction.
Rivers, seeing the motion, and remarking
the almost supernatural strength with which the
last spasms had endued her, would have taken the
girl from her embrace; but his design was anticipated
by the dying woman, whose eyes glared
upon him with an expression rather demoniac than
human, while her paralytic hand, shaking with ineffectual
effort, waved him off. A broken word
escaped her lips here and there, and—“sin”—“forgiveness”—was
all that reached the ears of her
grandchild, when her head sank back upon the
pillow, and she expired without a groan.
A dead silence followed this event. The girl
had no uttered anguish—she spoke not her sorrows
aloud; yet there was that in the wo-begone countenance,
and the dumb grief, that left no doubt of
the deep, though suppressed and half-subdued
agony of soul within. She seemed one to whom
the worst of life had been long since familiar, and
not find it difficult herself to die. She had certainly
outlived pride and hope, if not love; and if
the latter feeling had its place in her bosom, as
without doubt it had, then was it a hopeless lingerer,
long after the sunshine and zephyr had gone
which first awakened it into bloom and flower. She
knelt beside the inanimate form of her old parent,
shedding no tear, and uttering no sigh. Tears
would have poorly expressed the wo which at that
moment she felt; and the outlaw, growing impatient
of the dumb spectacle, now ventured to approach
and interrupt her. She rose, meekly, and without
reluctance as he spoke; with a manner which said
as plainly as words could have said—`command,
and I obey. Bid me go, even now, at midnight, on a
perilous journey, over and into foreign lands, and I
go without murmur and repining.' She was a heart-stricken—a
heart-broken and abused woman—and
yet she loved still, and loved her destroyer.
“Ellen—” said he, taking her hand—“your
mother was a Christian—a strict worshipper—one
who, for the last few years of her life, seldom put
the Bible out of her hands—and yet, she cursed
me in her very soul as she went out of the world.”
“Guy, Guy, speak not so, I pray you. Spare
me this cruelty, and say not for the departed spirit
what it surely never would have said of itself.”
“But it did so say, Ellen, and of this I am satisfied.
Hark ye, girl. I know something of mankind,
and womankind too, and I am not often
mistaken in the expression of human faces, and
certainly was not mistaken in hers. When, in the
last paroxysm, you knelt beside her with your head
down upon her hand and in her grasp, and as I
approached her, her eyes, which feebly threw up
the film then rapidly closing over them, shot out a
lips parted—I could see, though she could articulate
no word—with involutions which indicated the
curse that she could not speak.”
“Think not so, I pray you. She had much
cause to curse, and often would she have done so,
but for my sake she did not. She would call me a
poor fool, that so loved the one who had brought
misery and shame to all of us; but her malediction
was arrested, and she said it not. Oh, no! she forgave
you, I know she did—heard you not the
words which she uttered at the last?”
“Yes, yes—but no matter. We must now talk
of other things, Ellen, and first of all, you must
know, then, I am about to be married.”
Had a bolt from the crossbow at that moment
penetrated into her heart, the person he addressed
could not have been more transfixed at this speech.
She started—an inquiring and tearful doubt rose
into her eyes, as they settled piercingly upon his
own; but the information they met with there
needed no further word of assurance from his lips.
He was a stern tyrant,—one, however, who did not
trifle.
“I feared as much, Guy—I have had thoughts
which as good as told me this long before. The
silent form before me has said to me over and
over again, he will never wed her whom he has
dishonoured. Oh, fool that I was—spite of her
forebodings and my own, I thought—I still think,
and oh, Guy, let me not think in vain—that there
would be a time when you would take away the
reproach from my name and the sin from my soul,
by making me your wife, as you have so often
promised.”
“You have indeed thought like a child, Ellen,
marry simply because I loved.”
“And will you not love her whom you are now
about to wed?”
“Not as much as I have loved you—not half so
much as I love you now—if it be that I have such
a feeling at this moment in my bosom.”
“And wherefore then would you wed, Guy,
with one whom you do not, whom you cannot love?
In what have I offended—have I ever reproached
or looked unkindly on you, Guy, even when you
came to me, stern and full of reproaches, chafed
with all things and with everybody?”
“There are motives, Ellen, governing my actions
into which you must not inquire—”
“What, not inquire, when on these actions depend
all my hope—all my life! Now indeed you
are the tyrant which my old mother said, and all
people say, you are.”
The girl for a moment forgot her submissiveness,
and her words were tremulous, less with sorrow
than the somewhat strange spirit which her wrongs
had impressed upon her. But she soon felt the
sinking of the momentary inspiration, and quickly
sought to remove the angry scowl which she perceived
coming over the brow of her companion.
“Nay, nay—forgive me, Guy—let me not reproach—let
me not accuse you. I have not done
so before; I would not do so now. Do with me
as you please; and yet, if you are bent to wed
with another, and forget and overlook your wrongs
to me, there is one kindness which would become
your hands, and which I would joy to receive from
them. Will you do for me this kindness, Guy?—
nay, now be not harsh, but say that you will do it.”
She seized his hand appealingly as she spoke,
and her moist but untearful eyes were fixed pleadingly
moment before he replied.
“I propose, Ellen, to do for you all that may be
necessary—to provide you with additional comforts,
and carry you to a place of additional security,
where you shall live to yourself, and have good
attendance.”
“This is kind—this is much, Guy; but not much
more than you have been accustomed to do for me.
That which I seek from you now is something more
than this—promise me that it shall be as I say.”
“If it breaks not into my arrangements—if it
makes me not go aside from my path, I will certainly
do it, Ellen. Speak therefore; what is it I
can do for you.”
“It will interfere with none of your arrangements,
Guy, I am sure; it cannot take you from
your path, for you could not have provided for
that of which you knew not. I have your pledge,
therefore—have I not.”
“You have,” was the reply, while the manner of
Rivers was tinctured with something like curiosity.
“That is kind—that is as you ought to be. Hear
me now, then,” and her voice sunk into a whisper,
as if she feared the utterance of her own words—
“take your knife, Guy—pause not, do it quickly,
lest I fear and tremble—strike it deep into the
bosom of the poor Ellen, and lay her beside the
cold parent, whose counsels she despised, and all
of whose predictions are now come true. Strike—
strike quickly, Guy Rivers—I have your promise—
you cannot recede—if you have honour, if you have
truth, you must do as I ask. Give me death—
give me peace.”
“Foolish girl, would you trifle with me—would
you have me spurn and hate you? Beware!”
The outlaw well knew the yielding and sensitive
His stern rebuke was well calculated to effect in
her bosom that revulsion of feeling which he knew
would follow any threat of a withdrawal, even of
the lingering and frail fibres of that affection, few
and feeble as they were, which he might have once
persuaded her to believe had bound him to her.
The consequence was immediate, and her subdued
tone and resigned action evinced the now entire
supremacy of her natural temperament.
“Oh, forgive me, Guy, I know not what I ask or
what I do. I am so worn and weary, and my head
is so heavy, that I think it were far better if I were
in my grave, with the cold frame whom we shall
soon put there. Heed not what I say—I am sad
and sick, and have not the spirit of reason, or a
healthy will to direct me. Do with me as you
will—I will obey you—go anywhere, and, worst
of all, behold you wed another—ay, stand by, if
you desire it, and look on the ceremony, and try
to forget that you once promised me that I should
be a party to it, along with you.”
“You speak more wisely, Ellen—and you will
think more calmly upon it when the present grief
of your mother's death passes off.”
“Oh, that is no grief, now, Guy,” was the rather
hasty reply. “That is no grief now;—should I
regret that she has escaped these tidings—should
I regret that she has ceased to feel trouble, and to
see and shed tears—should I mourn, Guy, that she
who loved me to the last, in spite of my follies and
vices, has ceased now to mourn over them? Oh,
no! this is no grief, now; it was grief but a little
while ago, but now you have made it matter of
rejoicing.”
“Think not of it,—speak no more in this strain,
Ellen, lest you anger me.”
“I will not—chide me not—I have no farther
reproaches. Yet, Guy, is she, the lady you are
about to wed—is she beautiful,—is she young—has
she long raven tresses, as I had once, when your
fingers used to play in them?” and with a sickly
smile, which had in it something of an old vanity,
she unbound the string which confined her own
hair, and let it roll down upon her back in thick
and beautiful volumes, black, glossy, and delicately
soft as silk.
The outlaw was moved. For a moment his
iron muscles relaxed—a gentler expression overspread
his countenance, and he took her in his
arms. That single, half-reluctant embrace was a
boon not much bestowed in the latter days of his
victim, and it awakened a thousand tender recollections
in her heart, and unsealed a warm spring
of gushing waters. An infantine smile was in her
eyes, while the tears were flowing down her
cheeks.
But, shrinking or yielding—at least to any great
extent—made up very little of the character of
the dark man on whom she depended, and the
more than feminine weakness of the young girl
who hung upon his bosom like a dying flower,
received its rebuke, after a few moments of unwonted
tenderness, when coldly resuming his stern
habit, he put her from his arms, and announced to
her his intention of immediately taking his departure.
“What,” she asked—“will you not stay with
me through the night, and situated as I am?”
“It is impossible—even now I am waited for,
and should have been some hours on my way to
an appointment which I must not break. It is not
with me as with you—I have obligations to others
who depend on me, and who might suffer injury
were I to deceive them.”
“But this night, Guy—there is little of it left,
and I am sure you will not be expected before the
daylight. I feel a new terror when I think I shall
be left by all, and here, too, alone with the dead.”
“You will not be alone, and if you were, Ellen,
you have been thus lonely for many months past,
and should be now accustomed to it.”
“Why, so I should, for it has been a fearful and
a weary time, and I went not to my bed one night
without dreading that I should never behold another
day.”
“Why, what had you to alarm you—you suffered
no affright—no injury? I had taken care that
throughout the forest your cottage should be
respected.”
“So I had your assurance, and when I thought,
I believed it. I knew you had the power to do as
you assured me you would, but still there were
moments when our own desolation came across
my mind; and what with my sorrows and my fears,
I was sometimes persuaded, in my madness, to
pray that I might be relieved of them, were it
even by the hands of death.”
“You were ever thus foolish, Ellen, and you
have as little reason now to apprehend as then.
Besides, it is only for the one night, and in the morning
I shall send those to you who will attend to
your own removal to another spot, and to the interment
of the body.”
“And where am I to go?”
“What matters it where, Ellen? You have my
assurance that it shall be a place of security, and
good attendance to which I shall send you.”
“True—what matters it where I go—whether
among the savage or the civilized. They are to
me all alike, since I may not look them in the face,
or take them by the hand, or hold communion with
fireside.”
The gloomy despondence of her spirit was
uppermost; and she went on, in a series of bitter
musings, denouncing herself as an outcast—a
worthless something, and, in the language of the
sacred text, calling on the rocks and mountains
cover her. The outlaw, who had none of those
fine feelings which permitted of even momentary
sympathy with that desolation of heart, the sublime
agonies of which are so well calculated to enlist
and awaken it, cut short the string of sorrow
and complaint by a fierce exclamation, which
seemed to stun every sense of her spirit.
“Will you never have done?” he demanded.
“Am I for ever to listen to this weakness—this unavailing
reproach of yourself and every thing
around you? Do I not know that all your complaints
and reproaches, though you address them
in so many words to yourself, are intended only
for my use and ear? Can I not see through the
poor hypocrisy of such a lamentation? Know I
not that when you curse and deplore the sin, you
only withhold the malediction from him who
tempted and partook of it, in the hope that his
own spirit will apply it all to himself? Away, girl
—I thought you had a nobler spirit—I thought you
felt the love that I now find existed only in expression.”
“I do feel that love—I would, Guy, that I felt it
not—that it did exist only in my words. I were
far happier then than I am now, since stern look and
language from you would then utterly fail to vex
and wound my spirit as it does now. I cannot
bear your reproaches—look not thus upon me and
speak not in those harsh sentences—not now—not
now, at least, and in this melancholy presence.”
Her looks turned upon the dead body of her
parent as she spoke, and with convulsive effort she
rushed towards and clasped it round. She threw
herself beside the corpse and remained inanimate,
while the outlaw, leaving the house for an instant,
called the negro servant and commanded her attendance.
He now approached the girl, and taking
up her hand, which lay supine upon the bosom
of the dead body, would have soothed her grief,
but though she did not repulse, she yet did not regard
him.
“Be calm, Ellen,” he said, “recover and be firm.
In the morning you shall have early and good attention,
and with this object, in part, am I disposed
to hurry now. Think not, girl, that I forget you.
Whatever may be my fortune, I shall always have
an eye to yours. I leave you now, but shall see
you before long, when I shall settle you permanently
and comfortably. Farewell.”
He left her in seeming unconsciousness of the
words whispered in her ears, yet she heard them
all, and duly estimated their value. To her, to
whom he had once pledged himself entirely, the
cold boon of his attention and sometime care was
painfully mortifying. She exhibited nothing,
however, beyond what we have already seen, of
the effect of this cold consolation upon her heart.
There is a period in human emotions, when feeling
itself becomes imperceptible—when the heart
(as it were) receives the coup de grace, and days,
and months, and years, before the body expires,
grows unconscious of the fire which is consuming
it. We would not have it understood to be altogether
the case with the young destitute before us;
but, at least, if she still continued to feel these still
occurring influences, there was little or no outward
indication of their power upon the hidden
but with a half-wandering sense, that may perhaps
have described something of the ruling passion
of an earlier day, she rose, shortly after he had
left the house, and placing herself before the small
mirror which surmounted the toilet in the apartment,
re-arranged with studious care, and with an
eye to its most attractive appearance, the long and
flowing tresses of that hair, which, as we have already
remarked, was of the most silky and ravenlike
description. Every ringlet was adjusted to
its place, as if nothing of sorrow was about
her—none of the badges and evidences of death
and decay in her thought. She next proceeded to
the re-adjustment of the dress she wore, taking care
that a string of pearl, probably the gift of her now
indifferent lover, should leave its place in the little
cabinet, where, with other trinkets of the kind, it
had been locked up carefully for a long season, and
once more adorned with it the neck which it failed
utterly to surpass in delicacy or in whiteness. Having
done this, she again took her place on the couch,
along with the corpse; and with a manner which
did not appear to indicate a doubt of the still
lingering spirit, she raised the lifeless head, with
the gentlest effort placing her arm beneath, then
laid her own quietly on the pillow beside it.
| CHAPTER VII. Guy Rivers | |