University of Virginia Library

50. L.
HOW FALCONBRIDGE RECOVERED HIS MOTHER'S RING.

ON the day after the events which have just been
narrated, Falconbridge set out from the Ordinary
to visit Miss Argal for the last time.

We know the design of his visit. All was
over—there was no longer any hope—the drama was played
—he had fallen in the contest: but he must look upon her
face once more for a moment; he must recover the plain
gold ring which had belonged to his mother, and remained
in the possession of the young lady.

As he thus drew near to the secluded dwelling in which he
had spent so many happy hours, a painful and cruel shadow
swept across the broad brow of the young man. His shoulders
drooped; his lip quivered; and the heavy-looking eyes
were half veiled by the long lashes which almost reposed
upon the pallid cheeks. Falconbridge was passing through
that baptism of silent agony which sprinkles the hair of
youth with gray.

As if to mock him, the face of nature was serene and benignant.
The chill winds had passed away—and that season
which is called the “Indian Summer” had arrived. The
landscape was still, and bathed in imperceptible floods of
vapor—every outline was rounded, every angle had disappeared—the
soft mellow haze rested like a veil of gauze on
the distant mountains, the prairie and the forest. A dreamy
and mild influence seemed to pervade the whole scene, and
the genius of silence and repose was enthroned, where
lately the fresh breezes of October careered onward, rustling
the dry leaves.

But the young man scarcely observed the change. His
own thoughts made the world in which he moved. An
irresistible sadness invaded, and took possession of him; and
he went along, unconscious of the landscape around him,
dead to all but his own sombre meditations.

When Sir John stopped at the door, now so well known
and familiar, his master looked up with a vague, absent
wonder. Then slowly dismounting, he affixed his bridle to
a bough, and approached.

He knocked at the door—no one answered. But hearing
the sound of voices in the apartment to the right, which
was used as a sitting-room, he turned the knob, and entered.

The sight which greeted him sent the blood violently to
his heart, and an irresistible shudder ran through his frame.
He leaned against the frame-work of the door for support,
as though his limbs were about to fail him.

In the middle of the apartment Mr. Argal was holding,
with a vigorous grasp, both wrists of his daughter, and endeavoring
to soothe her. It was the appearance of the
young lady, however, which made Falconbridge recoil,
shuddering. She was scarcely recognizable. Her dress
was in rude disorder—her black hair was hanging down on
her naked shoulders in tangled masses, and the fiery dark
eyes which burned beneath her knit brows, were filled with
an expression of rage and wildness which was terrible. The
small pearly teeth had bit the writhing lip until the blood
flowed—and in every muscle of her body, as in her face, the
visitor discerned an awful distortion.

It was evidently as much as Mr. Argal could do to hold
her. The nervous force which she displayed was wonderful.
The soft round arms seemed endowed with the strength
of a giant—and in spite of his most powerful exertions, the
writhing form almost escaped from her father's grasp.

“I tell you!” she cried hoarsely, and in a voice which the
young man did not recognize as her own; “I tell you I saw

him last night! He was lying in his blood! His eyes
called to me—I will go to him!”

“There, daughter, you are unwell,” muttered the heavyhearted
father, in a voice of deep anguish; “don't talk so,
and sit down.”

“I will not! I will go! There, the eyes again!”

“It is your fancy, my poor child.”

“My fancy! It is false! I tell you there he is looking
at me—there is blood on his bosom—blood for me to wipe
away!”

“My poor child”——

“Let me go!”

The words were followed by a superhuman effort to disengage
herself; but the iron grasp was not relaxed.

“I loved him! I never loved any one before! I loved
him with my whole heart—and he is dead! That man killed
him—he is gone!”

“No, my child,” murmured the poor father, who had taken
no notice of the young man's entrance, “he is not dead
—there he stands.”

“Yes, I see him—it is his spirit! He is coming like
Charles Austin to call me; Edmund! Edmund! I am coming!”

And again the terrible struggle commenced. The sharp,
white teeth caught the crimson lip and gnawed it cruelly—
the round, supple form writhed violently in the grasp of
Mr. Argal. The paroxysm was succeeded by an interval of
comparative quiet, and the frame of the young lady exhibited
evidences of exhaustion. A few more struggles ensued,
and then they ceased. Her features relaxed; the burning
eyes filled with leaden langour; the form drooped slowly,
and murmuring, “I loved him only!” the girl fainted in
the arms of her father.

Without speaking, he bore her to the sofa, and placed
her unresisting figure on the cushioned seat. In a moment
she revived, but it was only to burst into tears, and sob

hopelessly—she was plainly unconscious of any one's presence.
Mr. Argal gazed at her for a few moments, with an
expression of wretchedness, mixed with tenderness unutterable:
then he turned and approached the young man.

“You are shocked at this terrible scene, I see plainly,
sir,” he said in a low, collected voice; “and there is little
cause for wonder in the fact. Pray retire with me—I have
a few words to say to you.”

As he spoke, Mr. Argal summoned a maid, who went
quietly to the side of her mistress with the air of one who
was quite familiar with such scenes, and then the two men
went out into the small porch. The youth walked in a
dream as it were—his mind was struggling—he could not
think connectedly. Mr. Argal placed his hand, by an unconscious
movement, upon his heart, and mastering his agitation,
said in a low voice, full of gloomy sorrow:

“Mr. Falconbridge, you have become the depositary of a
terrible secret of my family. Do you understand what
you have just witnessed, sir?”

“No,” came from the white lips, in a tone almost inaudible,
“I do not, sir.”

“I will explain it. My daughter is mad.”

The words sent a shudder through the frame of Falconbridge,
and his face turned paler than that of a corpse, but
he said nothing.

“The fit seized her to-day, sir,” continued Mr. Argal,
suppressing a groan; “it was probably occasioned by the
affair between yourself and Lord Fairfax, which the servants
repeated.”

The young man drew a long, deep breath, but was still
silent.

“And now, sir,” continued Mr. Argal, slowly recovering
his calmness, but speaking in a voice of heart-broken woe;
“and now, sir, I owe you a few words of explanation, if
only to vindicate my own character in this affair, from the
imputations which must otherwise rest upon me. I will be

plain, I will conceal nothing—for I speak to a gentleman,
and a man of honor. I will keep back no particular. My
daughter has been subject to attacks of insanity, sir, from
her childhood. It was not a defect of her birth, but occasioned
by a dangerous fall from a fruit-tree, which inflicted
a deep wound upon her head, and affected the brain. Soon
after this incident, I observed the indications of mental
disease. Her character, which had before been as open
and ingenuous as the day, became secretive and subtile.
She would look sidewise and watch the persons with whom
she conversed, and store away in hidden places little objects
which she had taken. Then, as the years passed on, she
changed more and more—she became cruel and pitiless, she,
my own child! who had been a very angel of goodness and
tenderness—whose heart would have bled at the suffering of
the least insect—she grew hard and unpitying?”

A low moan accompanied the words of the poor father;
he controlled his agony with difficulty, but resumed:

“The strange lustre you must have seen in my child's
eyes, sir, then appeared. They glittered with a morbid
light—an unnatural, insane light! It was the misfortune
of a poor youth to be attracted by their brightness—he
loved her, and when she dismissed him, at the moment
when one of her paroxysms was approaching, he put an
end to himself!”

Again the speaker paused, and a woful contraction of the
lip showed the struggle which he had passed through before
revealing these things.

“Well, to go on, sir. When she heard of the youth's
death, she was seized with a fit of madness. I passed
through a scene like that which you have witnessed to-day;
it made me twenty years older. But it ended: and my
child returned to herself again; to wring her hands and
weep, and exclaim that his death was caused by her act.
She wrote to the youth's brother and rival, a full history of
her mental aberration, and requested him to never approach

her again. So that terminated, and soon afterward I removed
hither. I now come to the scenes connected with
yourself, sir; and I acknowledge in advance that I have
been guilty of a criminal weakness. I saw your attentions
to my daughter, and feared the result. But I could not
speak! I should have done so, as a man of common honesty—that
is true, sir—but I could not! Look at my face,
Mr. Falconbridge! See the vulture that is gnawing me! I
have been false to you—but I could not speak! Oh, sir!
may you never know what it is to feel this awful shame!—
to be drawn one way by your honor, and another way by
love for a poor insane child! I could not reveal her awful
secret, degrade her in all eyes, make her name the laughing
stock or the horror of every one! I could not brand
my own child in your eyes with the stigma of madness! So
I paltered, sir, with my terrible responsibility. I said to
myself that you were only a youth, in the region for a short
time; that you would soon go, and our existence be forgotten.
My poor child denied any engagement between you—
I know not with what truth—I do not ask, sir. Then Lord
Fairfax appeared: she attracted his attention, and his admiration.
This very day I had intended to go and tell him
what I have told you, sir, if it killed me. That is all. I
have spoken, Mr. Falconbridge, with an effort, and laboring
under an agony of feeling which no words can describe! It
is little to declare to you that my heart is broken—but that
is beside the question. I know not whether I should ever
have found courage to tell you all, if you had not chanced
to come when you did. But you know all now. I have
striven to show you that in concealing my child's condition I
did not act with deliberate dishonor, to entrap you. Before
my Maker, sir, I solemnly declare that I am guiltless at
least in this. I was weak, my heart was torn with shame
and anguish—I could not speak! I should have fled from
the country with my daughter on the eve of her nuptials—
that is all!”

With heaving bosom and quivering lips, Mr. Argal was
silent for some moments. Then he added:

“I have now told you everything, sir, and I feel less
shame than before. In a few weeks I go with my poor child
from this region—in some distant land we may bury our
shame and suffering. Without her, I should have no life—
she is dearer to me than all the world. Speak well of her,
Mr. Falconbridge—she is weak, not sinful!—or if that is
impossible, say nothing! God has heavily stricken her,
and her lot has ben a terrible one—do not add to its darkness
by your enmity or contempt! After all, sir, however
much she may have wronged you, she is a woman, a mere
girl, and should excite your pity! You heard her broken
words—in her madness—she loved you—I pray you, sir, to
forgive my poor child and me.”

The broken and agitated voice died away, and no sound
was heard but the flutter of a single leaf, which parted from
a bough of the oak above, and pattered down. The young
man remembered that sound afterwards, and shuddered at
it. To the struggling words of the sorrowful speaker he
made no immediate reply; his eyes were full of tears, his
lips refused their office. At last he mastered his emotion
in a partial degree, and in a tone almost inaudible, said:

“Thanks for your confidence, Mr. Argal. I am so far
from blaming you for not revealing all before, that I honor
and respect your deep love and tenderness, and think I
would have acted as you did. You know me well enough
to believe me when I say that all this shall be locked up
forever in my breast. I need scarcely add that no word
against you or your daughter shall ever pass my lips. From
my heart, from my soul, from the depths of my soul, sir, I
pity and sympathize with you! Your daughter is sacred to
me—it is as a child that I shall regard her—my heart is
broken like yours, but I blame no one. In the presence of
that God, sir, who afflicted your child, I swear to guard her

name from reproach or wrong. I have nothing to forgive;
if I had, I should forgive her.”

He held out his hand as he spoke, and a long pressure
was exchanged. As the two hands were thus clasped, a low
sob at the elbow of the young man made him start and
tremble. He turned and saw Miss Argal standing motionless
in the doorway, and holding toward him his mother's
ring. Her face was wet with tears—her eyes swam as she
gazed at him; she murmured, rather than said:

“This is your ring, sir—I have deceived you. Will you
forgive me?”

The words were followed by a quiver of the bleeding lip,
and bursting into tears, the young lady placed her handkerchief
to her eyes, and went hastily to her chamber.

Falconbridge stood looking after her, with the ring in his
hand, and never did the countenance of a human being express
more unutterable anguish. He leaned against the
pillar of the portico for support, and uttered a groan of such
despairing wretchedness, that it seemed to tear its way from
the very depths of his being, and compress the woe of years
into a second.

Then, making a slight movement with his head toward
Mr. Argal, he slowly went and mounted his horse. The
bridle lay untouched upon the neck of the animal, and Falconbridge
did not speak to or direct him.

Sir John took the road at a gallop toward the Ordinary.
The rider seemed to be dreaming. His shoulders bent forward;
his chin rested on his breast; from time to time he
passed his hand wearily across his forehead, and gazed absently
around him.

The animal continued his headlong gallop.

Half a mile from the Ordinary, the young man reeled in
the saddle. Overcome by vertigo, he would have fallen the
next moment from his flying animal, when the bridle was
suddenly seized, the horse thrown on his haunches, and the
arms of Captain Wagner caught the drooping form.

“So it ends!” cried the gloomy and sneering voice of the
soldier, “all is over!”

Two words replied to him, as Falconbridge fainted—two
words, in an accent of unspeakable pity:

“Poor child!”