University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

No sooner had Saxon disappeared from the apartment,
than it was entered by the emissary, Stillyards.
This indefatigable urchin had maintained
beneath the eaves his habitual practices, and his
keen senses had suffered nothing to escape him of
the scene which has been just described. Florence
beheld not his entrance. Her eyes were open, but,
like those of Lady Macbeth, “their sense was shut.”
He coolly proceeded across the room, and took up
the dagger. With a curious grin of equal scorn
and merriment, he examined the worthless instrument
which had so amusingly failed to serve the
purposes of vengeance. While thus engaged, the
returning consciousness of the woman apprised her
of his presence. She rapidly crossed the intervening
boards that separated them. She grasped his arm
with one hand, while with the other, she repossessed
herself of the ineffective, but handsome weapon.
This she hurled from the window, with a laugh of
bitterness that seemed a fitting and mocking commentary
upon her own unperforming endeavour.

“Ha! ha! ha! So—you have seen it all, Richard?

Weak hand, and worthless steel! Ha! ha!
ha! did it make you laugh? No! and why not?
He laughed? Did he not? Did you not see him
laugh? He laughs now—now! Well he may
laugh! What a fool am I—I that am wronged and
ruined—dishonoured, scorned, abused, and deserted.
What a fool am I to dream of justice—to think
that there could be vengeance for the lone and feeble
woman. To think that a weak arm like mine,
should avenge my weaker heart.”

And, as she uttered these wild and passionate
words, she cast the arm which she reproached,
heedless of the pain, with fearful violence down
upon the jamb of the window, the blood spirting as
she did so, from the ivory-white and soft flesh—a
sight to make even the rude, but devoted dwarf,
shudder, and to awaken in him a degree of sympathy
which lifted his nature and turned all his better
feelings into pity.

“'Twa'nt the arm—'twa'nt the arm, Ma'am Florence—'twas
the knife only that wa'nt fit for nothing,
with all its shine and silver about it. If it
had been this now, ma'am,” displaying his own
heavy bowie blade, as he spoke—“there's no curl
in this!—no mistake!”

“Give it me!” she cried—“this it shall be yet.
This feels like vengeance, Richard—there is strength
enough in my arm, and resolution still in my heart.
I cannot fail now—there is still something for which
Florence Marbois may live.”

She seized the weighty instrument as she spoke,
turned it beneath her eye, grasped with one hand
the massy blade, which she strove in vain to bend;
then, as if satisfied that it was now only necessary
to strike the blow, was about to hurry from the
apartment, as if in pursuit of her victim; but the
cooler dwarf threw himself between her and the

door. Significantly putting his fingers on his lips
as if in token of silence,—with an audacity which
was unusual, and which, at any earlier day, would
have found its immediate and unmeasured rebuke
from the lips of the haughty woman—he gently
grasped her wrist, and led her back into the darker
part of the room out of sight and hearing from the
window. Once there, he counselled her to the delay
of a few moments, while he left the house, and
stealthily examined all its approaches which might
conceal a lurking spy. His own practices had necessarily
made him properly suspicious of all others,
and had endowed him with the skill to provide
against all detection. Finding that the coast was
clear, and having ascertained that Saxon and Jones,
whom he most apprehended, were gone to some
distance in the encampment, he hastily returned to
his mistress, after the lapse of a few moments. He
found her as much excited as ever, and doubly impatient
to proceed in consequence of the unwonted
constraint which had been put upon her. The reasons
for this restraint he proceeded to declare in his
own rude language:

“Why, Ma'am Florence, it's no use for you to
go now—Saxon 'll never let you try it again. You
can't get nigh enough for a single dig at him; and
if you did, he'd be wide awake for you. He'd take
the knife from you, 'fore you could say Jack Robinson,
and laugh at you more than ever.”

A glance of fire—a fierce stare—rewarded the
speaker. There could be no enmity at that moment
more decided, in the estimation of her anguished
heart, than that which seemed to insist upon
the impracticability of its hope of vengeance.

“What then? Am I to submit? To bear his
scorn, his desertion? Is he to walk with booted
footstep across my heart? Wherefore do you stop

me? Speak, sir,—I command you! Tell me other
things than this, or be dumb for ever. I will not
hear you,—I will hear nothing that takes from me
the last hope of my heart—which baffles and denies
the only prayer which I am prepared to make
in life.”

The dwarf was not unwilling to comply. He
had no purpose of baffling her vengeance. A bitter
smile passed over his squalid cheeks. His mouth
widened into a grin, and at another time, the malignant
fires which darted from his eye, might have
awakened in the bosom of his fair companion, a
feeling of shuddering disgust. Her own roused and
embittered spirit, jaundiced by the passions which
inflamed it, sufficed to blind her to the unconcealed
malice of his. She saw not the gloating expression
of his features,—she heard only those accents which
promised her the vengeance she desired. He showed
her how vain would be her hope to succeed in any
renewal of her late attempts, to avenge her wrong
in person. He admitted, also, the great difficulty in
the way of his succeeding, unless with circumstances
greatly in his favour, of a conflict with a
man so powerful of frame and so practised in his
arms as Saxon; but there was another way, which,
while it demanded greater delay, promised to be
followed by better results.

“The reg'lators are out, and it's how to hide is
the talk among the beagles. There's an old man,
a preaching Methodist, that's all bite, on t'other side
of the “Big Black,” at a place called Zion's Hill,—
he's been a mustering more than a week now, and
it's only because he don't know which way to set his
nose, that he aint on trail after the beagles afore
this. He's got a son that barks with us, and we
know from him how the cat jumps. Then there's a
lad, one Wat Rawlins, that's been a contriving again

us too. Jones is more afraid of him than t'other,
'cause he don't say much, and Badger always
preaches what he's guine to do; now, it's only to
show this here chap, Rawlins, how to find the
track for Cane Castle, and let him make a start on
a sudden, and its all mush with Saxon. There's two
dogs that barks between us and Rawlins, and its
only to send 'em off sarching for John Cole's mare;
then Rawlins can bring his men into the swamp
unbeknowing to all, and it's a better knife than yours
or mine, Ma'am Florence, that does the business.”

“I see! I see!—and you will go to these men,
Richard, you will bring the avenger into the swamp
—you will show them where he sleeps,—Ha!”

To these eager demands and exclamations the
answer of the dwarf was slow. He had his reasons
for deliberation—he had his own bargain to make;
and, with the policy of a more cunning tradesman,
his reluctance to answer the requisitions of the superior,
grew in proportion to the eagerness of her
demand. That she might be avenged amply by the
means he suggested, and by his means, he proceeded
to reiterate. The particular process was all
shown—his own consent to do the office, which
could evidently be done by no one so well as himself,
was the only point upon which he hesitated to
declare himself.

“I will reward you, Richard—you shall have all
—every thing—money, jewels—every thing, I repeat—for
why,” she added mournfully, as if to herself—“why
should I keep aught? I shall have little
need for gold or jewels when that is done—little
need, and oh! how much less desire,—speak, Richard,
tell me that I may rely on you for this last service.
Be faithful as you have been before, and take
what you will—take all that I have to bestow.”

“You say it, Ma'am Florence—you'll promise

me,” demanded the dwarf with an eagerness equalling
her own, while, in his gloating eyes an expression
of anxious desire, might have been easily read
by any observer less blinded than the woman to
whom it was addressed.

“Have I not said? Surely I promise. Why
should you doubt—why hesitate? Have I ever
failed where I promised, Richard? Have you not
ever had your reward from me? I repeat, you shall
have, when you have done me this service,—when
you have brought the officers of justice into this den
of thieves,—when the chief villain of the band is
a captive, and the hope from his heart, like that
from my own, is gone for ever—you shall have all
the wealth—the money and the jewels—which I
have! Nothing shall be withheld of value that you
may demand. You shall be my heir, Richard—you
shall inherit all!”

“All in your power to bestow!” slowly spoke the
dwarf, repeating a portion of her previous words.
“'Twas that you said, Ma'am Florence.”

“Yes—again I say it: you shall have all in my
power to bestow.”

“It's a promise, Ma'am Florence—good as Bible
oath.”

“As if I had sworn it!” solemnly replied the
woman.

He caught her wrist eagerly in his hand, drew
her towards him, and, rising on tip-toe, whispered
in her ear. As the communication, whatever it was,
reached her senses, she recoiled from his contact—
shook herself free from his grasp, and, receding a
step, regarded him with an expression of countenance
in which contempt and scorn were mingled
equally. The eye of the abashed dwarf sank beneath
the fire-flashing glances of hers; his frame
faltered, and an effort which, at the same moment,

he made to speak, died away in confused and feeble
accents, which were utterly unintelligible and almost
unheard. Meanwhile, various were the thoughts
which coursed rapidly through the mind of Florence
Marbois. Anger and vexation at first were
predominant feelings—so strong in the first moment
after his communication had been heard, as almost
to obliterate, during the same brief space, all memory
of the vengeance which she had sworn
against her seducer. But very soon these feelings
passed away.

“I must be proud no more,” were the words
which at length broke from her lips. “I mock myself
with these shadows. Richard,” she said, advancing
as she spoke, and extending her hand, “it
shall be as you say. All that is left me to bestow,
shall be yours, when you have accomplished my
vengeance.”

He grasped the extended hand, and carrying it
to his lips, covered it with such caresses as a she
bear might have lavished upon her last cub in licking
it into shape. Florence Marbois had sunk wofully
in her own estimation. Her pride was gone,
and she had nothing to live for; but she withdrew
the hand that suffered from the slaver of the deformed,
with a strong expression of disgust.

“Enough, Richard. And now to the prosecution
of these plans.”

It will not need that we follow the dialogue in all
its details. It is sufficient for us to say, that Stillyards,
being familiar, by reason of his espionage,
with all the circumstances of the chief robbers in the
swamp, and with all those more prominent sources
of danger which they feared, was better prepared
than Saxon or Jones could have believed, to devise
an effectual plan for their capture. It was not long
before he was despatched by his mistress from her

presence. There were new reasons added to old
ones, why she should desire to send him forth as
speedily as possible. He was not simply a means
of vengeance—he had become a creditor; and the
miserable debtor, who, though ruined, had still in
her soul some glimpses of the better nature from
which she had fallen, began to shudder at the
humiliating moral bondage which such a condition
always seems to imply. The instrument of her necessity
was an object of her disgust. Hitherto, she
had been able to reward him with money; now, he
felt the large increase of his power, and his demands
had grown in proportion. He was become ambitious—money
no longer answered his desires; and
he, who by reason of his low birth, vulgar life, and
deformed person, had never been able to attach the
affections of another, now aimed to secure the highest
and finest and sweetest of all human affections, as
the reward of his ministry.

“And wherefore should I scruple at this?” was
the demand which Florence Marbois made of herself,
as if in self-justification, when she was left
alone. “It is at best a word—a pledge which is
dissolved in the very hour which brings Edward
Saxon to his doom. She is a fool, a worse than
idiot, who survives life's purposes—and I have but
one purpose in life. That satisfied, and I may well
assure this vain and miserable game-make that all
shall then be his which is in the power of Florence
Marbois to bestow.”