University of Virginia Library

29. CHAPTER XXIX.
THE MYSTERY FORCED.

I FULLY expected, on coming down next morning,
to find that our Catiline had stolen away. It would
waste two or three pages to attempt to express all the
astonishment and indignation which I felt at seeing him enter
the breakfast room as calm, unembarrassed, elegant, and fluent
as usual. The impudence seems incredible; but he thought
that he had us in his power.

He turned a little pale, indeed, as he took his seat at table
and nodded to one after another; but not so pale by any
means as those whom he thus braved and insulted. Even
Mrs. Van Leer looked shy and frightened now, coloring
scarlet as he came in and then whitening, with a painful consciousness
of the rancorous, silent mystery which was taking
shape before her, and perhaps with some pungent apprehensions
on her own account. Mrs. Westervelt had up to this
instant seemed utterly sick, broken and faint unto death, in
soul and body; but Somerville's presence and a few words
from him, though but of ordinary salutation, filled her with an
excitement as of wine, painting a crimson spot in her white
cheek and shaking her with starts, tremors, and unseemly
laughter. The sleepless anguish of the past night had
snapped her nerves and tided her on appreciably toward insanity.
One moment her lips twitched and her blood-shot
eyes brimmed with rebellious tears; and the next she burst

into a convulsive giggle over some frivolous word or trifling
accident. We scarcely touched the food, but swallowed our
coffee eagerly, as if hoping some strength from it, and then
pushed away from the table, following each other, a sullen
chain-gang, into the library. Somerville alone sat out the
usual time and ate with seeming appetite.

Mr. Westervelt took the family Bible in his lap, and said
in a shaking voice, “We will have prayers.” This was his
custom, and these were his customary words, but uttered now
as if he spoke them for the first time, and never before knew
what it was to approach the eternal throne in utter feebleness
and humiliation and anguish. I hoped that the human fiend
who had destroyed our peace might feel some contrition, or
at least shame, when he saw the Bible opened and the sorrowful,
prayerful faces around it, and so would leave us to
ourselves for that solemn moment, or perhaps be impelled to
quit the house instantly and forever. But that was not in his
policy, and he was unflinchingly himself to the end. He
came in presently, and murmuring a word of regret at having
detained us, took place in our circle with an air of genteel
solemnity. Perhaps he did not look upon himself with
horror; perhaps he did not see himself as others saw him;
for sin throws strange enchantments around its votaries; it
plays tricks on them like those of Ariosto's magicians; it
makes them see men and things as they are not. It may be
that Somerville thought it a fine jest or a clever feat thus to
brave this wretched family and to profane its moments of most
intimate sanctity; it may be that he hoped to face me down
and to lie himself clear of the charges which had been brought
against him; it may be that he was driven to this extremity
of insolence by mere wrath and revenge.

Mr. Westervelt read only a few verses, and those in a tone
so full of tremors that the words were hardly distinguishable.
Somerville listened with an amazing command of muscle,
eye and feature, never once changing position, nor lifting his
gaze from the carpet, nor expressing aught in his face but

attentive seriousness. No stranger, looking in upon us,
would have dared to say, even in his heart, `One of you is a
devil!' When we knelt, he also knelt, not ostentatiously, but
quietly, and bending his wicked head like a true penitent.
The prayer was as the prayer of a dying man, so humble
and anxious and troubled was it, so formless and chaotic in
expression, yet so passionately strong in emotion, so full of
unuttered longings for pity and of grief that could not be
spoken. When we rose and looked in each other's faces,
there were tears in all eyes except mine and Somerville's. I
was full of fury, and he was still a model of graceful composure.
No one stirred; there was a moment of suspense,
of expectation; every one seemed to know instinctively that
now something all important to us was to be said or done;
and Somerville awaited it like the others, watching principally
me, through a self-possession which was like the iron
bars of a visor.

“That will do, you scoundrel!” I said loudly and hoarsely,
walking close up to him. “Now, off! Out of the house!”

It was not the best manner of dismissing even a blackguard;
but I used blunt and coarse words because I could
not call up keen ones.

Mrs. Westervelt fell back feebly on a lounge and covered
her face with her hands, while the other ladies all stared at
us, fascinated by that mixture of terror and interest which is
excited in most women by the spectacle of masculine anger
and conflict. Somerville had physical courage evidently, for
his blood flowed outward instead of inward, flushing his face
crimson. He drew a long strangling breath and turned coolly
to Mr. Westervelt.

“Sir,” said he, “can't you protect your family and your
guests from this youngster's insolence?”

I was about to lay hands on him, but Mr. Westervelt
cheeked me with an imploring gesture.

“I—I think, Mr. Somerville,” stammered the frail, timid
man, as white-faced now as any of the women;—“perhaps

you had better go. I really think you had. Yes, you ought
to go,” he continued, gathering energy as he saw Somerville
glance imperiously at Mrs. Westervelt. “You must go; and
—and you shall go, sir!”

Meanwhile the desperado glared at his victim as if commanding
her to speak and reverse this decision. She would
have obeyed him perhaps, but that words were beyond her
power; her lips parted, as in a dream, and closed without
other sound than such a gasp as comes from deathbeds.

“Will you go, sir?” demanded Mr. Westervelt more
firmly. “I say, will you go? You shall not stay in this house
another hour. I will not have it. I will not bear it any
longer. I say, will you go?” he repeated, his voice rising
until it was almost a scream. “You—you are a liar; you
are a villain, sir! Be off!”

Somerville's calmness gave way all at once, and he burst
into a paroxysm of fury, his form seeming to dilate like that
of an enraged adder, and his two long teeth showing as if
they were fangs filled with poison. A laugh came from him
which sounded to me like that of a hyena exulting over a
grave.

“I will not go,” he thundered. “I will stay here as long
as I choose; and what is more, I will make you glad to keep
me. I hold you in my hand. I can destroy the honor of
your family. Aha?”

“Do you mean to say anything against my daughters?”
asked Mr. Westervelt, choking and shaking his feeble fist.

“Better than that!” retorted Somerville, his tusks visible
all the while now, although he was not laughing. “You
know very well what I mean. There is my victim.”

He turned and pointed at Mrs. Westervelt, who gave a
faint shriek and hid her head in the sofa cushions.

“Touch me, or drive me out of here, and I will gibbet
your wife's reputation,” he continued. “I have letters of
hers that will damn her. Ask her if it is not so. Ask her!
I will step out and leave you at liberty. If she does not tell

the truth, and nothing but the truth, I will show you her letters.
So be frank, Madam,” said he, facing her. “Aha! this
troubles you, does it? You should have prevented it. I told
you how. You should have prevented it.”

Glaring around on us all, he bowed, stepped lightly into
the hall, seized his hat and was gone, before we could open
our lips to plead with him or curse him. In the veranda the
Van Leer brothers passed him as they entered.

“What's the row, Somerville? What the devil's to pay?”
they exclaimed, and, getting no answer, pushed on eagerly
into the library.

I had started to follow the hyena, but Mr. Westervelt had
called to me, “Don't strike him! don't provoke him! Consider
us, Mr. Fitz Hugh.”

Accordingly I halted on the steps, only shaking my fist and
growling a menace.

“You are on the safe side, my lad,” he replied with his
hideous laugh. “I can't fight four men and four women. I
shall not try to force your castle. But hearken to this. Before
the day is out you will be writing me to come back,—
bribing me to come back. I shall be at Rockford; you can
direct to me there.”

He walked on to the garden gate, opened it, looked back
at me and added, “By the way, Fitz Hugh, I am out of
money. When you come over for me, you had better bring a
hundred dollars. That is all I shall want at present.”

I presume that Somerville had intended to conduct this
whole scene with better taste as well as better success, but his
self-command had given way more easily and more completely
than he expected, and the result was a ruffianism of manner
and language, which, I dare say, the dandified brute afterward
thought of with bland regret and vexation. To ordinary
mortals, sober-minded and respectable people, such conduct
as his seems like lunacy. So does murder, when you fully
realize it, seem thus; and yet men have learned to take life
almost without excitement. Somerville had perfectly habituated

himself to his chosen path of wickedness, and he walked
in it as a matter of course, only vaguely conscious that it was
unnatural and infamous. There are few such creatures as he
in the reputable classes of American society, but there are
many in the disreputable. The New York police, at least,
will understand me, when I say that he was simply a “fancy
man,” who had been tempted and enabled by circumstances
to carry his robberies and brutalities into an unaccustomed
circle. Doubtless it was to his gambling habits that he owed
much of his wicked coolness, for no other human experience,
not even battle, ices a man like the vicissitudes of the gaming-table.

Without answering his last bravado, I returned to the library,
where all now was running and confusion, Mrs.
Westervelt and Mrs. Van Leer having both fainted. As
soon as the latter came fairly to her senses, she began to
sob and whimper unappeasably, clinging close to her bewildered
husband, after her usual fashion when in trouble.
“Oh, that hateful, lying Somerville!” she gasped. “Oh,
what a liar he is! Don't you believe a word he says,
Henry. Don't let him say anything against me. He'll
come and lie about me now. Don't listen to him, Henry.”

“He sha'nt say a word against you. What can he say,
though?” demanded the puzzled and excited man. “What
is all this about? What the devil does it mean, Jule?”

“Oh, Henry! you scare me. Oh! you shan't speak to
me so. Let's go away from here; come, let's go back to
New York,” she whined. “I'm afraid of that hateful Somerville.
Oh! I'm afraid to stay here.”

“Come, come, don't tremble so, Jule; keep a stiff upper
lip, Jule,” he replied soothingly. “But what is it all?
What is the meaning of this infernal row?”

“Mr. Somerville has been slandering Mrs. Westervelt,”
I whispered, seeing that there was no way of quieting him
except by an explanation. “He has slandered her and insulted
the whole family.”

Both Henry and Robert leaned eagerly toward me, their
broad faces reddening as the sense of insult crept through
their heavy intellects; and had Somerville been there then,
it is likely that he would not have escaped without maltreatment
that would have been next to murder. They
had no time to speak, however, and scarcely time to comprehend
what I said, before their wretched cousin opened
her languid, anxious eyes upon us.

“Do you feel better, Ellen?” asked her husband tenderly,
lifting her head and putting water to her lips. “Don't be
frightened. That rascal is gone.”

“Oh! is he?” she moaned hopelessly. “Oh, but he'll
come back again. I know him. He'll be sure to come
back. He'll tell you everything—worse than it is. I would
rather tell it all myself.”

“What! there is something then?” he exclaimed. “Oh!
nothing wrong, Ellen? Oh, Ellen! you swore to me last
night that there was nothing wrong.”

“We had better step out,” said I to the Van Leers, at the
same time retreating toward the door.

With a decision which was so extraordinary in him, so out
of character, that it seemed like a start of insanity, Mr. Westervelt
immediately closed and locked the door. “No, no!”
said he. “Stay here, all of you. I wish you to hear everything,—everything!
This mystery is worse than the truth
can possibly be.”

Staring at the pale miserable woman on the sofa, we stood
there, a silent, embarrassed group, only less disquieted and
distressed than she.

“Oh! wait a minute,” she said, crying. “Give me time
to think. Oh! where shall I begin? I don't know what
I'm about.”

“What did you write to him in those letters?” asked her
husband.

“Oh, yes—that was the beginning of it, I remember now.
That was the way he first got me in his power,—by my letters,”

she replied, talking straight on through her sobs and
tears. “I really don't know why I ever came to write to
him; I can't imagine how I could have been so imprudent;
it has all been like a wild infatuation. But, stop; I do know
very well what first made me write; it is strange that I
should forget it. He was my lawyer, you know; and so we
had to correspond. They were all business letters for a long
time; but at last I wrote something, I hardly know what,
which he said placed me in his power; and since then I
never have been able to get free from him. Oh! don't
leave me; don't turn away from me; you will kill me if
you do. It is not what you think; no, not so bad as that;
oh! do try to believe me. I have never, never, never forgotten
that I loved my husband better than any one else in
the world. You believe that, don't you, my dear?” And
she clasped at his nerveless hands with a humble, piteous
eagerness, and kissed them. “Do believe it, I beg of you,
if you don't wish to kill me outright. Do you think that I
could ever forget you, or our little boy? Oh, never, never!
But I have been so very wretched; oh! so very helpless and
frightened almost all the while for the last four or five years.
This man has persecuted me continually, and followed me
everywhere, threatening and tormenting me so that I have
wished a great many times that I could die. I am sure that
he ought to be punished, either in this world or some other,
for hunting down the very life of a poor weak woman, never
giving her an hour of peace, always threatening and abusing
her, although she never did him any harm. And it was all
to extort money from me. Oh! I hate him, I loathe him,
and I have hated him for years, although he made me treat
him so politely, and made me invite him here as if he was
one of my best friends. I cannot be happy as long as I think
that I shall ever see his face again. Oh! I can never be
happy any more.”

She pressed her hands against her eyes, and laid her head
back against the wall, sobbing as if her bosom would burst
with its heavings.

“Is that the way your watches and laces and money
went, Ellen? Did Somerville take them?” asked Henry
Van Leer.

“Yes, he took them. He took my laces in New York.
Then he took my watch and more laces about the time Mr.
Fitz Hugh came here. After that he took the emerald
which I gave to Genevieve, but lost it, and Johnny Treat
found it. My miniature,—he stole that, and sold the setting.
He has taken a great many other things, before and since;
and I never dared resist him, but only to beg for some of
them. I have had to give him money too,—a great deal of
it. He would have it, and made me sell my trinkets and
clothes and sometimes bank-stocks to get it for him.”

How could we believe all this, and yet not believe that she
was terribly culpable? How could an innocent wife, such
as she asserted herself to be, come so completely under the
power of a man who was not her relative, whose mere society
was danger and whose intimacy was pollution? Judging her
by her own story, it seemed certain that she must have fallen
from the heaven of woman's purity. This woful conclusion
was present, I believe, to all of us, and sunk deeper momently
into our minds, in spite of sorrow and sympathy and
love for this unfortunate one, in spite of pity for ourselves.
It did not, however, nerve any person to speak an angry or
accusing word, except Henry Van Leer. To his narrow,
fleshly, matter-of-fact nature the hard inference was a hard
truth, undisguised, unrelieved by any of that delicate drapery
of doubt and pity, which a more tender, imaginative mind
would have thrown around it. He was the near blood-relative
of Mrs. Westervelt, also; and thus naturally felt
her guilt as an insult to himself. Advancing close to his
miserable cousin, he laid one of his heavy hands on her
and pushed her head back so as to look in her face, saying
hoarsely, “Tell us the whole truth, Ellen. You have done
something. What is it? Don't go on lying to us. By
Heavens! you shall let us know the whole truth.”

“Oh, Henry!—Henry! have pity on me,” she gasped,
shrinking away from his stern face. “Oh! I can't,—I can't
tell you.”

“You shall! you shall!” he shouted. “Do you think we
have no right to know? we have a right, I tell you; and
you shall confess the whole, by Heavens! No more lies,
Ellen! You have lied to us enough about the laces and
jewels and those things.”

Mr. Westervelt tried to speak, in defence of his wife, I
believe; but the words died on his white lips, and he turned
away, groaning.

“Henry, have mercy on me!” she sobbed again. “I
cannot speak it—not before you all—but I will tell you—
I will tell it in writing—only give me time to think.”

“Time to think a lie!” responded Van Leer furiously.

“No, no,” she said. “I will let you know the whole truth.
I promise—I promise before God, that you shall know everything—only
give me an hour to try and remember.”

“That is enough, Ellen,” said Mr. Westervelt, putting out
one trembling hand as if to protect her. “You shall have
till to-morrow to think it all over. Be quiet, Mr. Van Leer.
This affair concerns me more nearly than any one else.”

He stepped to the door, unlocked it and walked unsteadily
into the garden. We followed him as far as the hall and
then separated, each one taking a different way, as if we felt
it impossible to exchange a word or even to endure each
other's presence. Henry Van Leer halted to mutter something
in the ear of Mrs. Westervelt. I could not hear it,
but it must have been cruel, for she turned upon him like a
creature driven to desperation, and made this bitter retort,
“You had better look after your own wife; I am not the
only woman who has been intimate with Mr. Somerville.”

“Liar! what do you mean?” he exclaimed, quite beside
himself with fury; but she rushed off without answering,
took refuge in her room and locked herself in.

“Ellen! Ellen!” he shouted, following her close and
beating violently on the door.

No answer, except a silence which streamed into his present
mood like a breath of poison; and after raving under it
a minute, he went out to pace the veranda with slow step
and scowling brow. I presume that he had never before
coupled the two facts, first that Somerville was a dissolute
man, and second that he had been much with Mrs. Van
Leer; but now they presented themselves in cruel brotherhood,
inextricable to his mind, armed with sharp suspicions
which severed rapidly all the tendrils of faith which had
hitherto bound him to his wife. If one of these women has
fallen, he doubtless said to himself, how can I be sure of the
other? I believe that dull-minded, coarse-natured people
are rarely convinced by halves, or take up a new emotion
cautiously. Run your eye through the life of the less intelligent
classes, and you will be struck by the superior energy
of their prejudices, the extravagance of their likes and dislikes,
the lack of self-command in their expression of feeling.
Van Leer was a gentleman in position and dress, but a clodhopper
in mental and moral culture. When, five minutes
after Mrs. Westervelt had quitted him, he walked into the
parlor and stood face to face with me, he was savagely jealous
of that wife whom hitherto he had adored and trusted so unreservedly.

“Fitz Hugh,” said he, “what do you know about my wife
and Somerville?”

“Your wife and Somerville!” I returned, affecting to misunderstand;—“you
mean your cousin and Somerville.”

“I mean my wife,” he repeated loudly. “Have you seen
her flirting with that — scoundrel? Tell me that. Tell
me, for God's sake, Fitz Hugh, and put me out of my misery.”

“You are crazy, my dear friend,” I replied, with that charity
which any man's heart would have dictated. “What could
I see? I have seen nothing but what has passed under your
own eyes and in presence of the family.”

At that moment the butterfly came fluttering around the
flame that was ready to scorch her. Mrs. Van Leer appeared
in the doorway, glanced suspiciously at me, half
turned away, stole a side look at her husband, and finally
walked up to him with a forced smile which was truly
piteous. As he watched her timorous movements, his large,
brown eyes dilated, and he seemed to kindle within to a mass
of throbbing passion.

“Look here!” said he. “I have heard about your trifling
with that blackguard. What does it mean? What
have you been doing? Ha?”

She flinched before him, as well she might, and really
looked like a most guilty creature. He extended his solid
right hand and laid it on her yielding shoulder, crushing
his fingers deep into the gauzy boddice, while he never removed
his eyes from hers. She trembled from head to foot,
and seemed to be upheld only by his grasp.

“Oh Henry! don't believe it,” she begged, when he shook
her to make her speak. “I wouldn't—I wouldn't do wrong.
Oh! believe me. Don't believe him.”

“Him? Fitz Hugh hasn't said anything against you.
What have you got to say for yourself? Come along.”

Seizing her by the arm, he dragged her off as if she had
been a child.

“Oh! don't, Henry. I didn't do anything. I wish I
never had seen Mr. Somerville. I wish I never had got
married. Oh! I wish I was dead,” were the last whimpers
that I heard as he hurried her away.

How ill the poor frivolous flirt bore the natural results of
her coquetry! It was laughable, although I did not laugh,
to compare her pitiable fright with the gay boasts which she
had often made, as to how she would put her husband down
if he should ever dare to be jealous. For every flirtation
that he charged her with, she would acknowledge two, she
said, and thus make herself out so horribly guilty, that, for
the sake of his own peace of mind, he would drop the subject

like a hornet's nest. Well, at last the hour of trial had
come; and she would have given her entire wardrobe to
have it over.

Not knowing precisely how far Van Leer's blind jealousy
might carry him, I should have been anxious about the silly
woman, had I not soon heard her open her door and call, in
a voice of weeping desperation, to Mary Westervelt. My
little girl's dress rustled hastily along the hall; and I whispered
to myself, “Blessed are the peacemakers!”

When Mrs. Van Leer came down stairs again, she had
been forgiven, although she was still a wonderfully anxious,
meek, and shamefaced creature. How had pertness departed
from her lips, and coquetry from her eyes, and brass
from her forehead! She was no rarity; we meet just such
people everywhere; heroic as Don Quixote, in galloping into
difficulties; unwarlike and helpless as Sancho Panza, when
the shock comes; perfect ideals in their own conceit of tact,
readiness, and administrative talent; but blown away like
foam by the passion-breath of a truly strong nature, whether
physical or moral. I do not suppose that they are downright
liars, when they boast of what they will and can do, but
rather that they are deceived by the vivacity of their animal
spirits or the warmth of their imaginations. Vanity, too, is
an incessant cajoler, who can make the deafest hear, and the
most skeptical believe. How often have the cleverest of us
been persuaded by her that we had really beaten our ploughshares
into swords, and our pruning-hooks into spears, only to
find, when the battle commenced, that they were still but
ploughshares and pruning-hooks, and that there was nothing
for us to do but to run for it!

Weeks after this unhappy day I discovered that Mrs. Van
Leer, with the usual meanness of a moral coward, had endeavored
to drag in the name of Mrs. Westervelt between
herself and her husband's anger. Necessarily our own peccadilloes
look like molehills when we can exaggerate the sins
of our neighbors to mountains. Mrs. Westervelt and Mr.

Somerville ought to be ashamed of themselves, she said.
Oh! it was a dreadful, dreadful affair to be sure, and they
both ought to be punished most severely; and the worst of
all was, how innocent they had seemed all the while, so as to
deceive the very elect of virtue. How could his poor little
wife know that Somerville was a bad man, when that woman
there, who pretended to be so knowing, and so good too, was
intimate with him? Oh! they had both been too deep for
everybody; and she, his unhappy Jule, had been taken in
like all the rest; and now her husband was angry with her
because she was not cleverer than he was. He had better
settle with the guilty ones first, before he turned upon her,
who was just as much astonished and horror-struck by the
exposure as anybody. She wished he had never brought
her to Scacliff to stay with his relatives. She wished he had
never introduced that hateful Somerville to her. She wished
she was dead and safe in her grave.

An hour or two of this whining and coaxing brought Van
Leer around so completely that he came out of the room
furious at his cousin for maligning his wife, as well as for
her other supposed iniquities. He laid wait for the unhappy
woman, and discovered her stealing into the library in search
of writing materials.

“Ellen!” he called in a brutal tone, “I've just one piece
of advice to give you. Make away with yourself and done
with it.”

The savage remark may have struck, not only on the woe
in her heart, but on some terrible purpose that was blindly
forming there, for she turned from him with a shriek and
rushed back to her room.

Who can tell of the agony that was enacted in that chamber?
What bloody sweat came from that poor soul in her
hopeless Gethsemane, suffering selfishly, thanklessly, for her
own sins, and not generously, supportably, for the sins of
others! Two or three times she called Willie in there and
held him in her lap, crying; but the child soon begged his

way out, dismayed by a grief so violent. On the rest of us
she kept the door locked all that day and the night following.
Whoever spoke to her, she would make no reply, except to
beg in a low voice, which sounded strangely unearthly
through the pannels, that she might be left alone a little
longer. All this time, of course, I did not once see her;
but I continually imagined her sitting at her table and bending
over her dreary task of confession; now covering her
face and trying to strangle her sobs with her trembling
hands; then again dipping the cruel pen into her heart and
writing on. Hours when all was innocence and happiness;
hours when temptation had come, but resistance was still
possible; one fatal hour in which the sin was stricken deep
into her soul like a barbed arrow; then amazement, shame,
terror, remorse, and all the first convulsive agony of crime;
then a weary wandering from sorrow to sorrow, driven on by
a demon in human form; all must be called up, must be
endured anew, must be told, if that were possible. Do you
remember the gloom and dismay which you felt the first time
it happened to you, then a little child, perhaps, to pass a day
in a house where laid the corpse of some one whom you well
knew? It was with nearly the same feeling that I thought
of that room and of the living death which was within it.

What a sullen and cheerless night it seemed to us, notwithstanding
the gay chirp of the crickets, the tender whisper
of the south wind, the great shimmer of the Sound, and
the lofty resurrection of the host of Heaven! Yet I believe
that all of us slept somewhat, for we were quite worn
out by twenty-four hours of fearful excitement; and slumber
will come to utter weariness, even though pain watches with
it and death stands knocking at the door.