University of Virginia Library

35. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIFTH.
“MY SISTER!”

“Her prayers, her tears, even the memory of her murdered mother—
all were in vain! Nothing could deter you, from that cowardly outrage.
You had palsied her mind, fevered her blood with a poisonous drug. And
to this bed, Sir—or rather—my Lord—where poor and friendless, but
innocent, she was sleeping—to this bed, with your hellish purpose gleaming
in your blood-shot eye, you crept, at the dead of night, and—ha, ha!
Fell back, frightened and cold, when you saw this Medal glimmering on
her bosom.”

“I knew it not,” said Reginald, in a choking voice,—“I knew not that
she was my — Fiend! You will drive me mad!”

“You knew it not,” whispered Rolof, bending forward, while a withering
sneer crept over his pale face. “That cannot excuse your purpose,
nor in the slightest degree palliate your crime. For the woman, who is
at once poor, friendless, and innocent, is the Sister of every Man, who has
one throb of honor in his breast. His Sister, not indeed by ties of blood,
but by a loftier and more touching relationship; by that Poverty, which,
while it makes her Virtue shine only the brighter, as the diamond gleams
more beautiful when in the dust, invokes protection from honest Manhood,
in a voice that a devil alone could disobey.”

His large eyes dilated and gleamed with a calm deep light, while his
voice, rising as he went on, rang upon the ears of the guilty man, like the
tones of an accusing angel.

“Do not shelter yourself behind that petty plea, my Lord! The man
who wrongs a poor Poor maiden, and uses his wealth as an excuse for his
fraud, in plain words, wrongs his own Sister.”

Reginald fell back from the tone, the deep steady gaze of Rolof Sener,
and stood like a convicted culprit before his Judge, his hands hanging by
his side, his head sunken on his breast.

He did not raise his eyes until many moments were passed.

“Come, my Lord,” said Rolof, in a changed voice, “How do you know
that your mother was murdered in this room?”

“From the day when my father saw her embark for England, not a
word was ever heard of my mother, nor of the ship in which she sailed,
until three years ago. Then, in a letter, without a signature, my father
was informed, that the ship had been taken by a Pirate vessel, and that
my mother, Alice of Lyndulfe, had been brought to Philadelphia, by one
of the pirates, soon after the capture of the ship.”

“With what object, pray?” asked Rolof.

“The anonymous letter gave me no motive,” said Reginald—“It merely
stated that she was brought to Philadelphia, in secresy, and concealed in
the house of a good citizen, who was a confederate of the pirate crew.”

“One of those good merchants who go to church on Sunday, and fit
out a slave-ship on Monday morning?” suggested Rolof—“When the
cargo of slaves die off, or prove unprofitable, what so easy,—so mercantile
—as to transform the Slaver into the Pirate. Go on, my child.”

“It was this information, that induced my father to send me to Philadelphia,
three years ago. While here, in fact on the morning of January
First, '75, a London paper was handed to me, which contained “the last
speech and confession of one Greiley a Pirate” who had been executed
at Tyburn in the fall of '74. This “speech” stated distinctly that on the
23d of November, 1756, a woman was murdered, on the Wissahikon, near
Philadelphia, by a man named Torfen or Dorfner, the confederate of a
band of pirates, robbers, or—slave-dealers.”

“You put the slave-dealer, who is a very respectable person and a
Christian withal, in very dubious company,” said Rolof Sener, with a
smile—“Well, the motive of the deed?”

“The husband of the woman was supposed to have a large amount of
plate and coin—all gold—concealed on some Island, in the West Indies,”
resumed Reginald. “This confederate Torfen or Dorfner, attempted to
wring from her lips, the secret of this place of concealment. She was
seized with the pains of child-birth, while the ruffian's hand was at her
throat. She died `and her body was concealed in a closet, near a window
which looks out upon a chesnut tree' so the Confession ran, `and the child
was taken away.”'

“And you came here to-day, in order to search that closet?” asked
Rolof.

“That was my purpose. The merchant Hopkins, to whom my Father
entrusted the matter, has never written, since the hour when I left Philadelphia,
more than two years ago. Therefore I conjecture that all traces
of the deed have long since been removed, or that Hopkins has been unable
to obtain access to this room, on account of Dorfner's repulsive and
ferocious character.”

“Why not invoke the aid of the law?”

“Do you not perceive that this would foil all my father's plans? He
is by no means certain that the murdered woman and my mother, are the
same. Then the confession of the dying pirate, strong enough to warrant
a suspicion, is still by no means sufficient, to ensure a successful prosecution.”

“And yet there is the medal, found by yourself, on the breast of Madeline,
on Orphan Girl, whose parentage no one could trace. The very
coin, which your father placed around the neck of his wife, twenty-one

years ago, while I sat by his side, and you—a very babe—laughed in his
eyes.”

“Could I speak to my father of this medal? Could I tell him that—”
Reginald paused; the blood rushed to his face, and after a moment he
continued, in a hollow whisper—“Beside, what need was there to prosecute
the inquiry? Madeline was dead—I dare not tell my father so—but
she was dead, before I left Philadelphia, on that fatal morning.”

“There is the closet,” said Rolof again turning his chair, and bending
over the table, “You had better search it. If there's any truth in the
confession of the pirate, you may discover some traces of the murdered
woman.”

Reginald gazed for a moment upon the singular being, who sat with
downcast head, and eyes fixed upon the manuscripts which covered the
table, and then slowly advancing toward the closet, `near the window
which looked out upon the chenut tree,' he laid his hand upon its single
panel reaching from the ceiling to the floor.

The western window was shaded, as we have said before, by a cloak
or some other garment, which only permitted a few wandering gleams of
light, to tremble over the floor.

His hand upon the panel, Reginald felt an unknown terror steal through
his veins; he dared not open the closet door.

“It is dark and gloomy in this corner of the room,” he muttered, and
tore the dust-covered garment from the window. A flood of light, rushed
through the narrow panes, and revealed the face of Reginald, distorted by
a new emotion, surprise mingled with Remorse.

It was the dress of Madeline, which lay at his feet. Yes dingy and
moth-eaten, as it was, that garment had enveloped her young limbs, on the
fatal night, when she clasped Gilbert Morgan by the hands, and kindled
into blushes at his kiss. It was her wedding dress.

Reginald was a man of the world; that is, he had whiled away, a year
or more at a sound Orthodox College, made some advances toward Latin
and Greek, whirled through Europe in search of the picturesque, learned
all the manners of a gentleman, from drinking his third bottle of Champagne,
without staggering, to killing his man in a duel without a tremor,
or crushing the honor of some unprotected woman, without a blush—he
was a man of the world. He was an officer in the service of his Majesty;
he was heir to a Dukedom; he was a finished specimen of British
Chivalry, in its transition state it may be, yet still British Chivalry.

But now he trembled and shook, and grew pale like any common man.

One of the rude `blackguard people' could not have manifested more
ungentlemanly feeling. Tears started to his eyes, tears such as every-day
people weep, only somewhat more bitter and scalding. Could Jacopo
have seen him, at this moment, he would have been ashamed of his pupil

for Reginald was no longer a man of the world, nor a gentleman, but simply—a
man.

All the manhood, that the world had left in his breast, was now roused
into spasmodic life.

The wedding dress of the murdered girl, lay at his feet—his hand was
on the panel of the closet, which was supposed to conceal the skeleton
of her murdered mother.

And the girl, who had been murdered in that room two years before,
and the woman who twenty-one years gone by, had died by violent hands,
in the anguish of a mother's pains, also in that room, were joined in the
holiest relationship, Mother and Daughter. And the blood which coursed
in Reginald's veins, was also their blood; two words started to his lips,
as he thought of them, words that crushed him into abject misery, with
their meaning—Mother! Sister!

Unable to speak, he bent down, and raised the dress of Madeline, and
laid it gently on the bed. Then gazing from the window, he saw the glad
sunshine, resting upon the garden and its flowers—sleeping upon the broad
field, strown with heaps of new-mown hay—and gilding with living light
the tops of the distant forest trees. All was calm and peaceful there, yes
all without breathed of day and sunshine, but within was darkness, the
night of Remorse, with the memory of Madeline written upon its very
gloom.

“Shall I pursue this search?” he said aloud, in a changed voice, and
with the desire of crushing his emotions—“Dorfner may come; and I do
not wish to meet him, at least, until I am certain of his guilt—”

Rolof Sener seated at the table did not reply; his head bent upon his
breast, he appeared lost in his studies.

Gazing through the window, Reginald saw the garden with the arbor
rising in its centre, and there, enshrined among the vines of the arbor,
appeared the round face of Peter Dorfner, its cheeks and beard and eyes,
bathed at once, in sunshine and in—sleep.

“Peter will not disturb you,” said Rolof without turning his head.
“I found him, not many moments since, in a position of some danger,—
sleeping with the knife of his blind Negro, poised over his head. I turned
the blow aside, and entered the house,—Peter will sleep until his time
comes.”

The last words were accompanied by a burst of half-suppressed laughter.

The door of the closet was unlocked; Reginald drew it open, and gazed
within.

“There is nothing here,” he cried with an accent of profound disappointment—“The
closet is sunken in the thickness of the wall. It is
empty. There is no sign nor mark of any secret recess.”

“Sound the wall with the hilt of your hunting knife,” the voice of
Rolof Sener was heard.

“It returns only a dull, leaden sound,” exclaimed Reginald sounding
the wall to the right and left. “This cannot be the place of concealment
mentioned in the Pirate's confession. Hold! What is this!”

The back wall of the closet, resembling in its dark hue and time-worn
appearance, the walls on the right and left, echoed the blow of the knife,
with a sharp, hollow sound. Reginald struck again, and again with the
hilt of a knife, and suddenly it receded from him, and separated from the
body of the closet, like a door swinging on its hinges.

The scene which Reginald beheld, deprived him for a moment of all
power of speech or motion. His face was bathed in a red and murky
light, which struggled through the aperture, and—contending with the
light of day—made his features assume a livid and spectral hue

He stood upon the threshold of a small room, whose doors and windows,
did not seem to have been unclosed for at least twenty years. It
was the room which intervened between the stairway and the chamber
of Madeline. Over a large table of smoke-darkened wood, a flickering
tallow candle, inserted in a rusty candlestick, shed its red and murky light,
while the rest of the apartment was enveloped in gloom. In one corner
the outlines of a bed, were dimly discernible, and near the feet of Reginald,
appeared a dark space in the floor. A plank had been torn away;
the dark space was the aperture, between the floor and the ceiling of the
lower room.

“Pah! It smells like a vault! Ah, I remember; it was in this room
I was to have slept two years ago. Can you tell me Sir, what it means?”
he continued, turning his head toward Rolof Sener, who was still seated
at the table in the Chamber of Madeline—“This light burning here, in
broad day?”

“The light itself may satisfy your curiosity. Look on the table, beneath
its rays.”

Reginald advanced to the table, carefully avoiding the cavity in the
floor. He discovered that a portion of the table was covered by a dingy
cloth, which bore some resemblance to the fragment of an old sail.

“There is nothing here,” he cried—“Nothing but a smoky candle and
piece of old sail. The room itself looks as though it might have been the
private study of a Sexton or Undertaker.”

“Lift the cloth, my Lord—” said a soft, low voice, and Rolof Sener
laid his hand upon the shoulder of the young man. Reginald felt an indescribable
sensation pervade him at the touch of that hand; he gazed
sidelong upon the pale face, and bold forehead of Rolof Sener—lighted by
the red rays of the candle—and a thought came over his mind that he had
seen that face before. Where?

“You seem to hesitate,” said Rolof—“are you afraid to lift that bit of
sackcloth?”

Reginald replied with a laugh, and placing his knife in the girdle of his
hunting shirt, raised the sackcloth from the table. The smile which hung
about his manly lips, the flush upon his cheek, the careless light in his
deep blue eyes—all passed away, and he fell back silent and wondering.

The skeleton of a human being was stretched upon the table; and the
light tinged with red lustre every bone, and glared as if in mockery, into
the hollow orbits of the skull.

“Your mother!” whispered Rolof Sener. He took the hand of Reginald
within his own, and pointed to the cavity in the floor. “Behold her
grave!”