University of Virginia Library

24. XXIV.
THE JUDGMENT.

That evening, Hector and Charlotte sat conversing in the
parlor; Mrs. Longman had withdrawn, and they were left alone.
The clock struck nine.

“How the hours fly!” said Hector. “The door-bell takes up
the echo, — unwelcome sound! — but, as there can be no persons
for us, we will forestall an interruption.”

He led the way to a small side-room communicating with the
parlor. Scarce had they passed the door, when a servant
announced “A gentleman to see Miss Woods.” Both started,
and murmured, simultaneously, a hated name.

“Shall I see him?” asked Charlotte.

“As well now as ever,” replied Hector.

A brief delay was necessary for Charlotte to collect her
thoughts, and summon strength for the interview. Then, calm,
composed, filled with a deep, unruffled happiness, which she had
drawn from Hector's presence and sympathy, she entered the parlor
and stood before the visitor, waiting for him to speak.

“You will not take my hand?”

No word or motion in reply; but she looked down upon him
from her serene height, as if he had been a worm.

“Nor speak to me?” added the visitor, with a struggling desperation
in his tone.

The recoiling disgust, the unutterable scorn and pride, with
which she regarded him, was her sole response.

“My God!” groaned Robert, in a burst of passion, “I am the
most wretched of men! If you would do me a kindness, strike
that into my heart!”

He threw himself upon his knees, and, springing open the long,
bright blade of a dirk-knife, placed its handle in her hand. A
wild impulse seized Charlotte; she grasped the weapon. Robert
saw the fire kindle in her eye. Her features darkened and contracted;
and the next moment, the point was at his breast.

“Do not hesitate! It is the least cruel thing you have done to
me, — strike!”

Charlotte flung the weapon behind her, on the floor.

“Arise!” she commanded; “I pity you!”

Robert fell upon his face, and ground his teeth. Suddenly he
started up, and, with looks of fury, rushed to clutch the knife.
But it had disappeared.

“Give it me! — I will end myself!”

“Poor wretch!” said Charlotte, “you know not what you do!
— Why are you here?”

“Because it is my destiny! because I am condemned, and
driven, lashed and chained, to this torment! Mrs. Sperkley
told me of you, and made me promise not to come; you see how
easily I broke my word! It is not because I am apt at perjury;
but my love is overwhelming, I am no more my own master. I
knew you would scorn me. You have seen in me — you see in
me — only the villain; and villain enough I was, and am, God
knows! But my love for you has been my greatest fault. It has
prompted me to seize you, to hold you, to make you mine forever,
at all hazards! Had Hector's possessed half the intensity of
mine, he could never have deserted you; he would be now at your
feet.”

“O — shameful!” exclaimed Charlotte, — “to call your baseness
love, to compare yourself with him! — a reptile to an eagle! —
when no one act of yours, in all your dealings with me, has been
prompted by aught but the most utter and eager selfishness! And
now, to speak of LOVE!”

Robert's frame shook. “The conviction that I have brought
all this upon myself fills me with red-hot rage! I might have
made you my wife, — but a cursed pride restrained me; — and so
I appeared all unworthy, as indeed I was! But, since I would
now repair that error —”

“Speak not of what you might have done, or of what you would
do now! If ever I felt gratitude towards you, I now feel only
abhorrence and pity! If this is what you came to hear, it is said,
— I can say no more. — Go!”

Robert's face was tortured and dark, his teeth and lips were
closed, and his impure eyes burned redly, as he turned and looked
around him. Half-stunned, struggling with some inward fury, he
seemed to know not what to do. Charlotte left him so, and
returned towards the side-room; but, seeing her form about to
disappear, he sprang after her, and clasped her hand. With an
exclamation of loathing, she flung him off, in the strength of her
roused spirit, as if he had been a viper.

“No! no!” he muttered, with fierce determination, pressing
towards her again. “I will sooner kill you, and die myself, than
leave you so!”

But his arm suddenly fell from her, as if it had been paralyzed.
His face grew white.

“Here is your silly toy,” said Hector, displaying the dirk;
“and thus do I defeat your villany!” snapping the blade in twain.
“But that I shrink from soiling my hands, I could not resist the
impulse to hurl you from the window.”

Charlotte trembled with a sort of fearful pride in Hector's power.
His address was princely; calm and gracious, yet in its meaning
terrible. Still Robert shrank; even his characteristic audacity
failed him then.

“Your prophecy has come true,” he said, with a pallid smile.
“We have met.”

“But we have not parted!” answered Hector. “We have an
account together, which may as well be settled now.”

“The sooner the better!” said Robert, doggedly.

“A dark and heavy score is marked against your name, Robert
Greenwich! 'T would take too long to read you every item, but
the sum total is — Villany!”

“How have I wronged you?”

“How have you wronged me? O, outrage against reason!
How have you wronged right and truth? How have you wronged
her?” — and Hector brought Charlotte face to face with him,

and looked at both. It was like an angel standing before a fiend,
and accusing him only by the brightness of purity shining in her
face. A lurid vengeance gathered in Robert's visage.

“But that I disdain excuses, I could, by one word, acquit
myself towards her!”

Hector smiled: “By all means, speak that word; for, by the
same, we may restore lustre to the blackened characters of St. Judas
and St. Herod!”

“You are duped!” said Robert. “She has been careful not
to tell you what she was — and what I did for her. I will tell
you!” — and a devilish exultation gleamed in his eyes. “She
was — she is —”

A swift buffet from Hector's palm shattered the word upon his
lips. He reeled back against the marble chimney. Charlotte
grew pale; but Hector stood calm and smiling before his quivering
antagonist.

“Nay, do not clinch your fist, and bite your teeth! I could
trample you in the dust! O, villain! dolt! if, in your ignorance
of her and me, you imagined I had not heard, from her own
true lips, all you would have told me, and more, you rested your
purpose of revenge upon foundations false and rotten as your own
heart!”

“This blow,” uttered Robert, in accents thick and hoarse, the
slow blood trickling from his lips, — “'t will be revenged!”

“Revenge it now: I stand before you! But beware! there is
a mine of danger in my soul! Take heed how your rash feet
approach!”

Robert fumed and choked. “O, you can bluster! you can
boast! but —” he smiled a ghastly smile — “we shall meet
again!”

“If you desire the happiness, after we part, this night,” said
Hector, “amen! but we shall see.”

“Yes — we shall see! You know me!” said Robert. “I do
not forget; I do not sleep upon an injury. Indeed, we shall
see!”

He moved towards the door. Hector stepped before him.

“Not yet! — Charlotte, go out and lock us in! We can settle
this business best alone.”

“There is no key,” said Charlotte, pale with apprehension, —
“and there are persons in the hall!”

“You mean to stop me?” cried Robert.

“Touch but your hand to me, if you would know how well I
mean it! — Charlotte, stay! One word while we are together.
There was an affair of a letter. It was somewhat mysterious, and
Mr. Greenwich shall explain.”

“Stand from the door,” said Robert, “or I will not speak one
word.”

Smiling, and with folded arms, Hector stepped aside. But his
eye was alert, and fixed like an eagle's on Robert.

“If it is the letter troubles you so much,” faltered the latter,
“I pretended to have received one, it is true. She will tell you
that she gave me no opportunity to set her right upon that point;
else I should have done so.”

“Before her, then, you confess there was no letter?”

“I took an old one, by chance, from my pocket. It was the
caprice of a moment, — to try its effect, — not to deceive her.”

“An old one you took by chance from your pocket!” repeated
Hector. “A momentary caprice! The artifice was not preconceived!
Do I understand?”

“Is not my word enough?”

“No! Falsehood can go no further! Look you here!”

And the evidence of Robert's guilt was displayed, in faithful
black-and-white, before his astonished eyes. Hector struck the
paper.

“A momentary caprice! an unpremeditated artifice! an old
chance letter! There is my name, attached to an infamous slander!
To debase me in her sight, to drive her to despair, you
invented this device. Shift and turn now as you will, — you are
in my power, and at my mercy!”

Robert's face was of a cowardly hue; but a stubborn pride sustained
him, and he answered, sullenly,

“Well, sir, make the most of it!”

“For the truth's sake, I will! Now, go, if you wish; but I
shall go with you. In this house I am a visitor; I do not care
to make it the scene of further disturbance, and I know not what

may arrive. There is your hat, which you had forgotten, in your
recent haste.”

Hector stepped to the side-room. Charlotte followed him,
alarmed.

“Do not go out with him!” she pleaded.

“Where is your faith?” said Hector. “I have a solemn lesson
for that man, which can be taught only beneath the stars.
Fear nothing.”

It was easy to say, have faith, and do not fear! But when
Charlotte saw the despair and mortal hate in Robert's face, as he
went forth, she trembled. Hector pressed her hand at the door,
which she held open, and, flinging his cloak about him, walked on
by Robert's side. It was a dreary street. The night was dark,
and the wind whistled; they had soon passed from sight, and the
echo of their footsteps died away.