27. CHAPTER XXVII.
CHLOE'S SECRET.
“So disasters come not singly,” murmured Neria, as she rose from the
couch, upon which she had thrown herself on returning from Cragness, and prepared
to obey a summons to the bedside of Chloe, the negress, whose health
had been rapidly failing ever since her nocturnal excursion, and who now, as she
felt her last moments approach, sent an urgent message to her young mistress,
imploring an interview without delay. Wan and trembling from her late vigils
and the terrible doubts filling her mind with regard to Mrs. Luttrell's death,
Neria came, and seated herself beside Chloe's pillow, looking like a waiting
spirit sent to conduct the almost enfranchised soul to its eternal home. The
violence of the disease was past, as was its suffering; and death, in his grisliest,
most unrelenting form, had laid his hand upon the poor distorted body, soon to
be all his own. “You do not suffer now, Chloe?” asked Neria, finding that the
sufferer did not speak.
“No, mist'ss, I's struck wid def,” said Chloe, simply. “But I's got suffin
to tell you fust, mist'ss. I's hated you awful bad, fust and last, but 'pears like,
now I's goin' to die, as if I see things diff'ent. Miss 'Nita was de one dat put
'im in my head. Mas'r's fust wife was her darter, you see, missy—”
“Mrs. Vaughn was Mrs. Rhee's daughter!” exclaimed Neria, in amazement.
“Yes, missy, and dey was bof slaves, jes' like me,” replied the negress, with
a diabolic grin on her pinched features.
Neria looked at her in silent dismay.
“You see, missy, w'en mas'r was a young fellow, he went travellin' down
Souf, an' one day he see Miss 'Nita put up for sell on de auction block cause
our ole mas'r was dead berry sudden, and his wife was mad wid 'Nita, cause ole
mas'r like her de bes'. So Mas'r Vaughn buy her an' gib her her freedom, an'
den he bought me 'cause I'd alluz nussed Miss 'Nita, an' she was drefful fond
ob me. Well, we stayed long a' Mas'r Vaughn, an' went trabellin in Europe a
while. You see, mist'ss, he was so kin' he couldn' say no w'en she axed to go;
an' she couldn' bear to part from him nohow, she was dat fon' ob him. Den we
come home, and Miss 'Nita's darter, dat had been at de Norf at a boardin'-school,
was growed up, an' Mas'r Vaughn bought her, so's not to let her young mas'r
get holt of her, as he meant to, an' den she was dat pooty, an' arter a w'ile he
married her, an' den lily Missy Franc was borned, but as pooty as she is, she
got de black drop in her, same as ole Clo'. An' 'twor Miss 'Nita put me up to
pizonin' you in de choc'late, an' now I's tole all. Not quite dough—hol' on a
minute, Miss Neria. W'en your mammy was fotch in here dat night dat Miss
Gabrielle died, I was tole to lay her out, 'cause she was stone dead w'en dey
foun' her, an' so I did. She'd got on a braceret dat I gib to Miss 'Nita, an' she
gib it to mas'r, but 'sides dat, dere was a book full ob writin,' wid shiny hooks to
it, an' a picter of a gen'l'man inside ob it, in her pocket, an' a ring on her finger,
an' dem I kep' for mysef.”
“The book with writing in it! O, Chloe, where is that?” asked Neria,
breathlessly.
A capricious gleam of the hunchback's constitutional malice shot from her
eyes. “I didn' t'out, missy, dat I'd eber tell you dat,” said she.
“But you will, Chloe—O, Chloe, I do not know my father's name. I never
saw my mother's face.”
“Dere's lots ob pooty gals down Souf just as bad off as dat, an' wusser,
too, cause dey is sold roun' from one mas'r to anodder just as it happens,” said
Chloe, sullenly.
“Chloe, the Lord is waiting for your soul. Will you go to him and say, `I
might have made one of your creatures happy, and I would not, I did not?”'
asked Neria, with solemn earnestness. A spasm of sudden pain contorted the
whole body of the negress, and she threw herself into a horrible grotesque attitude.
“Obi's a comin' arter me ag'in,” shrieked she, writhing to and fro upon her
bed.
Neria laid a firm cool hand upon her forehead. “It is the truth that tortures
you thus,” said she. “Speak it out, for your own sake.”
But a fiercer convulsion of pain seized upon the unhappy wretch, even as
she spoke. She grasped at Neria's hands, and wrenched them within her own
until the pain forced a deep flush over the pale face of the young woman, who
yet made no effort to release them, who even forgot to pity the suffering before
her in the devouring anxiety that had seized upon her. A sudden and terrible
strength surged through her will, and inspired her whole soul. Fixing her
dilated eyes upon the dying woman, bending her face until her pure breath
mingled with Chloe's expiring sigh, she issued her irresistible mandate.
“Speak; speak out! Where is this paper? Tell me, or you shall not
die!”
“The tree—the old oak tree”—a horrible sound closed the sentence; it was
the death-rattle, and with it the stiffening fingers slid from their grasp of Neria's
hands, the painful struggle ceased, and the sufferings of the unfortunate creature
were at an end.
It was not till night, and in the seclusion of her own chamber, that Neria
unfolded the little canvas-covered package she had found in the cavity of the
oak, where it had lain for months guarded by Chloe's loathsome familiar. A
small, thick note-book, clasped with silver, lay within, and as Neria carefully
opened it, the pages, glued together by mould and time, tore apart as reluctantly
as if they knew that the secret of a lifetime was about to be snatched from out
their keeping. Within the cover lay a miniature, painted on ivory, the picture
of a young man, handsome, proud, noble; the face not of a stranger, but as familiar
to Neria as her own, and yet she knew that she had never seen it in the
flesh. Where then? Her mind wandered to Mrs. Luttrell and her death-chamber,
and chiding itself for the wandering, came back to study every lineament
of the face already beloved, for nature told her that it was her father's. And
still the vision of that great gloomy chamber, with its mournful bed, and the pale
figure lying so motionless upon it, came floating between her and the picture,
enveloped, blurred, effaced it, clamored, “turn to me, I am the solution, this the
puzzle.”
Beneath the picture lay a bit of folded paper. Neria opened it, and found
a little plain ring, small enough for her own slender finger, and engraved with
the initials G. de V. from E. V. This, Neria laid aside with the picture, and
turned impatiently to the little book which was, she hoped, to explain everything.
It was a journal, and the first date was that of twenty-two years before:
Here am I at Venice, and here I will stay for a while, at least, for in truth I am tired
of rambling. Besides, where are eyes like those of Giovanna Vascetti, and where such
clustering locks of gold? The real Venetian style so rare out of Titian. Heigho! What
more is there of life? I believe I have seen it all, and une vie réchauffée must be the
tamest of all feasts. Love! Bah, I have loved a hundred women, and twenty of them
had hair as bright and eyes as blue as those of Donna Giovanna. What do I care? I
wonder if one mightn't drop lazily to the bottom of these canals and lie there very comfortably.
It would save such a deal of bore, as they say in England. England? Well,
home I may as well call it, for I believe I was born there. Stop, I will begin by registering
myself duly at the commencement of this my journal, that the Austrian mouchard
who, doubtless, will read it, may find no trouble in identifying its writer, and bringing him
to justice for whatever treasonable expressions he may see fit to insert. First, then, I am
Edward Vaughn, five-and-twenty years of age, six feet high, with brown curled hair, hazel
eyes, etc., etc. My father was Alfred Vaughn, a gentleman of America, State and town
unknown, to me at least. He left home on account of fami y differences, and not as an
emissary of the American Government to spy out the secrets of that of Austria—(that's
for you, mon mouchard.) My mother was a Spanish gypsy, with whom my father chose
to fall in love, and I suppose, to marry. I never saw her, or heard much more than is
here set down. I have lived at English schools and college until three years ago, when
my father appeared, from the Lord only knows where, said to me, “Come, my friend, let
us be comrades. Forget that there is a tie of blood between us, as I shall; otherwise we
shall hate each other.” I saw that he had reason in his decree, and I assented. We lived
in Paris, Petersburg, in Vienna, at Baden, Rome, London, wherever the world lives. We
saw it, and Vaughn père showed its secrets to Vaughn fils; until when, a year ago,
Vaughn
père went to
flaneur in another world, Vaughn
fils was quite competent to protect
himself in this.
Voila tout!
So finished the first entry. Those that followed it were more fragmentary
and interrupted, giving little information beyond memoranda of the writer's engagements,
and occasional aphorisms in the same spirit as the first page. But
under a date of two months later, came an entry, more carefully written, which
Neria devoured as fast as her eyes could decipher the blurred and faded script.
Giovanna is an angel, and I—well I am ashamed of my audacity in loving her. Here
is her little note before me—“my heart, my soul, my noble lord, my king and law,” so she
calls me—and I? When I look back through my life and count its stains—stains of which
the smallest and faintest puts me beyond the pale of her most daring conception of wickedness,
I feel such torture as Satan might, if bound at the foot of the Throne. And she
loves me! Yes, all her pure bright life is placed between my hands to cherish or to
crush. If I bid her forth, she will leave her father's palazzo to-night, and join me in wanderings
as wild as those from which my father rescued his gypsy bride. Ah, ha! I
wonder, after all, if that gypsy mother does not rule my blood, and if I might not be happier
as king of a tribe, with a bold-browed, black-eyed queen at my right hand, than with
this golden-haired maiden, who shrinks, if I do but bend my brow a little earnestly.
Pshaw! Heaven sends an angel to draw me out of the slough, when I sink deeper every
day of my life, and I hesitate to yield myself to her guidance. Let me not believe that
my taste is already too vitiated to appreciate a pure love, that caviare and not bread is my
staff of life. No, rather I will hope that it is conscience, which withholds me from too
eagerly accepting this affection; that it is because I feel too keenly the vast gulf between
this pure child and myself, which life—my life has set. If I marry her, can I assure myself
of her happiness, and without such assurance, should I not be the basest of mankind
to join her to my capricious life and uncertain fortunes? Have I the strength to make
myself what Giovanna's husband should be, and, failing in the effort, would not the humiliation
of failure sink me lower than I already am? Bah! It is too late to make Egbert
Vaughn into a saint, and he is yet too much of a man of honor to pretend to be other
than he is, or to sully the innocent life of the purest woman he ever knew by bringing it
into contact with his own. It is better, my Giovanna, that your blue eyes should weep a
few idle tears now, at what you will fancy my unkindness than that by-and-by your heart
should weep tears of blood at the certainty of my unworthiness. Go you your way, and I
mine—the one leads up, the other down.
Neria paused, and taking the picture from the table, looked at it long and
earnestly, seeking, in the noble cast of the features, the lofty bearing of the head,
a contradiction of the characteristics which the journal made no attempt to disguise.
But still the haunting remembrance of the chamber at Cragness, and
Mrs. Luttrell's death-bed swept between her and the pictured face. She kissed
it sadly, and laid it down, murmuring, “My father still! I know that you
were my father.”
The next date was three weeks later, and under it was written:
“L'homme propose, mais le Dieu dispose,” is as true a saying to-day as when it was first
spoken. Giovanna is my wife, and here we are hidden in the little village of Fieschi, as
happy and as loving as the ringdoves that coo all about our cottage. And it has all come
about in such an irresistible sort of fashion, that I take no shame to myself for inconsistency,
even when I read the last two or three pages of this journal. It was just after
writing them that I got Giovanna's little, teary, heart-broken note, saying that the old
dragon of a marchesa had discovered her daughter's tendresse for my unworthy self, a
foreigner, a herctic, and above all a mauvais sujet; and, that at the end of a terrible scolding,
had come the decree that my poor little girl was to return forthwith to her convent,
and there await the movements of her parents, who were already arranging a match between
their daughter and Count Montaldi, the ugliest, oldest, and richest man in Venice. She
did not say, this little Giovanna of mine, “Come and rescue me, for I love you,” but
she did say, “Good-by forever—unless I see you for a moment on the road to the convent.”
Of course I was on the road to the convent, and with the aid of one servant personated
so successfully a whole troop of banditti, that coachman and guard fled in terror
from the first glimpse of our excellent get-up, and the hideous old duenna, hiding herself
in the bottom of the carriage, shrieked dismally,
“O, Donna Giovanna, we are but lost maidens. These banditti respect neither youth
nor beauty.”
We left the ancient dame uncomforted, for her mistake was precisely the idea we
wished to inculcate; and, diving into the mountains, soon found the three horses hidden
there since morning, mounted, and in a few hours were safely housed at this place, recommended
by my valet, who was, I believe, born here. Before night we were married, and
already my wife has nearly done blushing when Paolo addresses her as signora.
The last words were nearly unintelligible, and Neria vainly tried to separate
the few succeeding leaves; the mould and damp had so firmly united them that
she found it impossible, and it was only with great difficulty that she was able
to decipher the following brief entry, under the date of nearly a year later:
The child is gone, stolen I have no doubt, Giovanna is inconsolable, and I am more
affected than I would have believed possible. Paolo must have played traitor and sold
the secret of our hiding place to the Vascetti, who, considering Giovanna irredeemably
lost, have snatched her infant as a brand from the burning, and will educate it to take its
mother's place in their house. I suspect all this, but cannot know, at least, not at present.
My immediate concern is to hide Giovanna where they will not get hold of her also.
We must leave the country I think. The old dragon would not flinch at poisoning her,
if she fancied it would wipe out the stain upon their name.
After this, for many pages, Neria could distinguish only an occasional word
or sentence from which to infer that the writer, with his wife, had removed from
Italy to Switzerland, and that he had satisfied himself that his child was actually
in the hands of the family of his wife, from which he found it impossible to rescue
her. The next decipherable page was dated in England somewhat more
than a year after the last entry, and ran thus:
I have decided at last to go to America and look for my father's family. Giovanna
wishes it. She is haunted with terror lest this child should be stolen from her as was the
first. It is a pretty little creature and we call her Neria, because she was born upon the
sea. We shall take passage in a sailing vessel bound for Boston, in Massachusetts, within a
few weeks, our means not allowing us to indulge in the luxury of a steam-passage. Indeed
we have been obliged to sell some of our valuables already, to raise the necessary
funds. Giovanna has insisted upon disposing of her most important jewels, and would
even have sold the serpent-bracelet, the hereditary ornament of the daughters of her
house, would I have permitted it, but this must be kept, at any rate, to deck the arm of
little Neria, when it shall have attained mature proportions. I am sorry Giovanna could
not have possessed the goblet also. She says an ancestress, a second Lucretia as it
would seem, had these two golden serpents fashioned in precise similitude, except that between
the jaws of the one was set a tiny Venetian goblet, and in the head of the other,
intended to be worn as a bracelet, was placed a small quantity of a deadly poison, which
may be ejected by pressing the finger upon the jewel forming his crest, when a slender
spear shoots forward, pierces the finger and leaves death in the wound. Thus the possessor
of this brace of serpents commands, through them, both the lives of others and his
own safety. My gentle Giovanna will never be likely to use the weapon or need the defence,
but I like the idea of these hereditary jewels, and thank the sanguinary ancestress
for her idea, and also for leaving us her name, graven upon both serpents beneath the
crest of her house. Fiamma Vasetti, thou wast a woman of rare fancy and had a very
pretty idea of assassination! Well, well, what is all this to the present. I must set myself
to making the necessary arrangements for our passage. I wonder if any of the
Vaughns survive, and if they will own their errant kinsman. Not that I will ask more
than a welcome of them: I mean to earn my living for myself somehow, but just how I
cannot now say. Since I am husband of Giovanna, I dare not pursue the little occupations
by which my honored father accumulated the property his son has just spent. I
detest the sight of a green table and a pack of cards, and would as soon play with the
bones of my ancestors as with those my father so often tossed, and so invariably to his
own advantage.
Eh bien! I find by my father's papers that his family lived near a little
town called Carrick, and thither we first will betake us on arriving in America. If these
Vaughns repudiate me they cannot fail to welcome my lovely Giovanna, my innocent little
Neria, and if they will make them happy I ask nothing for myself.
This was the last. A few more pages had been partially written over, but
the disconnected words still legible gave no clue to the meaning of the whole,
and Neria was fain to finish the sad story for herself. She readily conceived
that the voyage had been accomplished, that her father had died either upon the
passage or soon after his arrival in America, and that the hapless wife thus
widowed had attempted to reach, with her infant, the unknown friends, of whom
her husband had doubtless told her. Reduced to absolute penury, she had
probably been obliged to perform the last part of her journey on foot, and before
reaching Carrick had sunk upon the spot where Mr. Vaughn had found her.
Neria covered her eyes and shuddered, as fancy, or it may be something which
is not fancy, pictured before her the black bitter night, the angry sea, the desolate
shore, and the poor young mother struggling on, her baby in her arms,
shrinking before the piercing blast which froze the tears upon her cheeks before
they had time to fall, while close behind her stalked Death's grim form, his
fleshless jaws grinning, his bony hand already outstretched to seize his unconscious
prey.
“My mother, my mother!” moaned Neria, and in the bitterness of her pain
felt a momentary resentment at Vaughn, that he had not arrived in time to
save mother as well as child.
She took up the journal again and strained her sight in the effort to distinguish
something more in the blurred pages at the end of the book. Here and
there a word was easily to be read, but nothing connected or intelligible, until in
the middle of the last page appeared the words: “secret cipher of the Vaughns,
formed by using our motto as an alphabet, it has been—” Neria dropped the
book, as a sudden conviction flashed across her mind. “The secret! Poor
Gillies's secret!” murmured she, and flying to her desk she found and opened
upon the table the letter of Reginald Vaughn confided to her keeping by the
musician. Her eyes ran hastily over the familiar sentences until she came to
the cipher, upon which she had so often and so vainly pondered:
Edaolu oe Oludluv.
The motto of the Vaughns was as familiar to her as her own name, and
hastily writing upon a bit of paper the words: “Dieu le roy et le foy du Vaughn,”
she placed the letters of the alphabet beneath the letters of those words, and
by assuming the upper letter as the name of the lower one, found herself possessed
of a new alphabet, by whose aid she translated the three words of cipher
into the phrase: “Father of Heralds.”
Here, however, was a fresh enigma; and Neria, utterly exhausted in body and
mind, put it aside for the consideration of a calmer moment, and locking the
journal, the picture, and letter in her desk, threw herself upon the bed with eyes
already closed, just as the earliest bird uttered his warning note of the coming
morn.
