 | CHAPTER XXIX.
DREEME HIS OWN INTERPRETER. Cecil Dreeme |  |
29. CHAPTER XXIX.
DREEME HIS OWN INTERPRETER.
We left the dead, dead.
“Where is Huffmire?” Churm asked.
A sound of galloping hoofs answered. We
saw him from the window, flying on Densdeth's
horse. Death in his house by violence meant
investigation, and that he did not dare encounter.
He was off, and so escaped justice for a time.
The villanous-looking porter came cringing up
to Churm.
“You was asking about a lady,” said he.
“Yes. What of her?”
“With a pale face, large eyes, and short, crisp
black hair, what that dead man brought here at
daybreak yesterday?”
“The same.”
“Murdoch 's got her locked up and tied.”
“Murdoch!” cried Raleigh. “That 's the hell-cat
I saw in the carriage.”
“Quick,” said Churm, “take us there!”
I picked up my dagger, and wiped off the
blood; but the new stain had thickened the
ancient rust.
The porter led the way up-stairs, and knocked
at a closed door.
“Who is there?” said a voice.
“Me, Patrick, the porter. Open!”
“What do you want?”
“To come in.”
“Go about your business!”
“I will,” said the man, turning to us, with a
grin. He felt that we were the persons to be
propitiated. He put his knee against the door,
and, after a struggle and a thrust, the bolt gave
way.
A large, gipsy-like woman stood holding back
the door. We pushed her aside, and sprang in.
“Cecil Dreeme!” I cried. “God be thanked!”
And there, indeed, was my friend. He was
sitting bound in a great chair, — bound and
helpless, but still steady and self-possessed. He
was covered with some confining drapery.
He gave an eager cry as he saw me.
I leaped forward and cut him free with my
dagger. Better business for the blade than murder!
He rose and clung to me, with a womanish
gesture, weeping on my shoulder.
“My child!” cried Churm, shaking off the
Murdoch creature, and leaving her to claw the
porter.
I felt a strange thrill and a new suspicion go
How blind I had been!
Cecil Dreeme still clung to me, and murmured,
“Save me from them, Robert! Save me from
them all!”
“Clara, my daughter,” said Churm, “you
need not turn from me. I have been belied to
you. Could I change? They forged the letters
that made you distrust me.”
“Is it so, Robert?” said the figure by my
heart.
“Yes, Cecil, Churm is true as faith.”
There needed no further interpretation. Clara
Denman and Cecil Dreeme were one. This
strange mystery was clear as day.
She withdrew from me, and as her eyes met
mine, a woman's blush signalled the change in
our relations. Yes; this friend closer than a
brother was a woman.
“My daughter!” said Churm, embracing her
tenderly, like a father.
I perceived that this womanish drapery had
been flung upon her by her captors, to restore her
to her sex and its responsibilities.
“Densdeth?” she asked, with a shudder.
“Dead! God forgive him!” answered Churm.
“Let us go,” she said. “Another hour in this
place with that foul woman would have maddened
me.”
She passed from the room with Churm.
Raleigh stepped forward. “You have found
a friend,” said he to me; “you will both go
with her. Leave me to see to this business of
the dead men and this prison-house.”
“Thank you, Raleigh,” said I; “we will go
with her, and relieve you as soon as she is safe,
after all these terrors.”
“A brave woman!” he said. “I am happy
that I have had some slight share in her rescue.”
“The whole, Raleigh.”
“There he lies!” whispered Churm, as we
passed the door where the dead men were.
Cecil Dreeme glanced uneasily at me and at
the dagger I still carried.
“No,” said I, interpreting the look; “not by
me! not by any of us! An old vengeance has
overtaken him. Towner killed him, and also lies
there dead.”
“Towner!” said Dreeme, “he was another
bad spirit of the baser sort to my father. Both
dead! Densdeth dead! May he be forgiven for
all the cruel harm he has done to me and mine!”
Cecil and I took the back seat of the carriage.
I wrapped her up in Towner's great cloak, and
drew the hood over her head.
She smiled as I did these little offices, and
shrank away a little.
Covered with the hood and draped with the
of us felt the awkwardness of our position.
“We shall not be friends the less, Mr. Byng,”
said she.
“Friends, Cecil!”
I took the hand she offered, and kept it. For
a moment I forgot old sorrows and present anxieties
in this strange new joy.
Churm had now got his bays into their pace.
He turned and looked with his large benignancy
of expression upon his daughter. Then tears
came into his eyes.
“I have missed you, longed for you, yearned
after you, sought you bitterly,” he said.
“Not more bitterly than I sorrowed when I
saw in your own hand that you had taken the
side of that base man, and abandoned me.”
“My brave child! My poor, forlorn girl!”
“Never forlorn after Mr. Byng found me,”
said Cecil. And when I looked at her she flushed
again. “He has been a brother, — yes, closer
than a brother to me. I should have died, body
and soul, starved and worn out for lack of affection
and sympathy, unless he had come, sent by
God.”
“And I, Cecil, — all my better nature would
have perished utterly in the strange temptations
of these weeks, except for your sweet influence.
You have saved me.”
“We have much to tell each other, my child,”
said Churm.
“Much. But I owe it to Mr. Byng to describe
at once how I came to be under false
colors, unsexed.”
“Never unsexed, Cecil! I could not explain
to myself in what your society differed from
every other. It was in this. In the guise of
man, you were thorough woman still. I talked
to you and thought of you, although I was not
conscious of it, as man does to woman only. I
opened my heart to you as one does to — a sister,
a sweet sister.”
“Well,” said Dreeme, “I must tell you my
little history briefly, to justify myself. I cannot
make it a merry one. Much of it you know;
more perhaps you infer. You can understand
the struggle in my heart when my father said to
me, `Marry this man, or I am brought to shame.'
How could I so desecrate my womanhood? Here
was one whom for himself I disliked and distrusted,
and who was so base, having failed to
gain my love, as to use force — moral force —
and degrade my father to be the accomplice of
his tyranny.”
Dreeme — for so I must call him — spoke with
a passionate indignation. I could comprehend
the impression these ardent moods had made
upon Densdeth's intellect. It was, indeed, splendid
tragedy had not been all too real, and yet unfinished.
“Dislike and distrust, repugnance against him
for his plot, — had you no other feeling toward
Densdeth?” Churm asked.
“These and the instinctive recoil of a pure
being from a foul being. Only these at first.
Then came the insurrection of all my woman's
heart against his corruption of my father's nature
and compulsion of me through him. Mr. Densdeth
treated me with personal respect. He left
the ugly work to my father, his slave. Ah, my
poor father!”
“And your sister, — what part did she take?”
“My sister!” said Cecil Dreeme, with burning
cheeks, and as she spoke her hand grasped mine
convulsively. “My sister kept aloof. She offered
me no sympathy. She repelled my confidence,
as she had long done. I had no friend to whom
I could say, `Save me from him who should love
me dearest, who should brave whatever pang
there is in public shame, rather than degrade
his daughter to such ignominy.' Ah me! that
Heaven should have so heaped misery upon me!
And the worst to come! — the worst — the worst
to come!”
“And I was across seas!” said Churm, bitterly.
“I had said to my father at the beginning, `If
Mr. Churm were here, you would not dare sacrifice
me.' `Mr. Churm,' he replied, `would have
no sympathy for this freak of rejecting a man
so distinguished and unexceptionable as Mr.
Densdeth.' And, indeed, there came presently
a letter from you to that effect. It was you, —
style, hand, everything, even to the most delicate
characteristic expressions. How could I suspect
my own father of so base a forgery? Then came
another, sterner; and then another, in which you
disowned and cast me off finally, unless I should
consent. That crushed my heart. That almost
broke down my power of resistance.”
“My poor child! my dear child!” Churm almost
moaned; “and I was not here to help!”
“I might have yielded for pure forlornness
and despair,” Dreeme went on, “when there was
suddenly revealed to me, by a flash of insight, a
crime, a treason, and a sin, which changed my
repugnance for that guilty man, now dead, into
utter abhorrence and loathing. Do not ask me
what!”
We need not ask. All divined. And now,
in the presence of these two who had warned
me, their neglected cautions rushed back upon
my mind. All were silent a moment, while
Churm's bays bowled us merrily over the frost-stiffened
road, — merrily as if we were driving
honor.
“When this sad sin and shame flashed upon
me,” said Dreeme, “I did not wait one moment
to let the edge of my horror dull. I sent for
Densdeth. Was that unwomanly, my father?”
“Unwomanly, my child! It was heroic!”
“I sent for him. I faced him there under my
father's roof, which he had so dishonored. For
that moment my fear of him was vanished. I
said to him but a few words. God's angel in
my breast spoke for me.”
God's angel was speaking now in Dreeme's
words. With the remembrance of that terrible
interview, — that battle of purity against foulness,
— his low deep voice rang like a prophet's,
that curses for God.
“But the man was not touched,” continued
the same solemn voice. “Strange power of sin
to deaden the soul! He was not touched. No
shudder at his sacrilege! No great heart-breaking
pang of self-loathing! He answered my
giant agony with compliments. `A wonderful
actress,' he said, `I was. It was sublime,' he
said, `to see me so wrought up. The sight of
such emotion would be cheaply bought with any
villany'; and he bowed and smiled and played
with his watch-chain.”
Dreeme's voice, as he repeated these phrases,
of their speaker. It was as if Densdeth were
called back, and sitting by our side.
“Forget that man, if man he were, Cecil,”
I breathed, with a shiver. “Let his harm to us
die with him! Let his memory be an unopened
coffin in a ruined and abandoned vault!”
“Ah Robert! his harm is not yet wholly dead;
nor are the souls he poisoned cured. The days
of all a lifetime cannot heap up forgetfulness
enough to bury the thought of him. He must
lie in our hearts and breed nightshade.”
“It was after this interview, I suppose,” said
Churm, “that the thought of flight came to
you.”
“The passion — the frenzy — of those terrible
moments flung me into a fever. I went to my
room, fell upon my bed, and passed into a half-unconscious
state. I was aware of my father's
coming in, and muttering to himself: `Illness
will do her good. This wicked obstinacy must
break down, — yes, must break down.' I was
aware of my sister looking at me from the door,
with a pale, hard face, and then turning and
leaving me to myself. While I lay there in
a half-trance, with old fancies drifting through
my mind, I remembered how but yesterday, in
passing Chrysalis, I had marked the notice of
studios to let, and how I had longed that I were
for my bread.”
“They never told me, Cecil,” said I, “that
you had been an artist.”
“I had not been, in any ripe sense, an artist.
No amateur can be. I was a diligent observer,
a conscientious student, a laborious plodder. I
had not been baptized by sorrow and necessity.
Power, if I have it, came to me with pangs.”
“That is the old story,” said I. “Genius is
quickened, if not created, by throes of anguish in
the soul.”
“Such is the history of my force. Well, as I
said, that fancy of an artist's life in Chrysalis
came back to me. It grew all day, and as my
fever heightened, — for they left me alone, except
that the family physician came in, and said,
`Slight fever, — let her sleep it off!' — as the
fever heightened, and I became light-headed, the
fancy developed in my mind. It was a mad
scheme. In a sane moment I should not have
ventured it. But all the while something was
whispering me, `Fly this house: its air is pollution!'
Night came. I rose cautiously. How
well I remember it all! — my tremors at every
sound, my groping in the dark, my confidence
in my purpose, my throbs of delirious joy at
the hope of escape, — how I laughed to myself,
when I found I had money enough for many
clothes I had worn as the lover in a little domestic
drama we played at home in happier days!
Do not think me unwomanly for this disguise.”
“Unwomanly, my child!” said Churm. “It
was the triumph of womanhood over womanishness!”
“I wrapped myself,” Dreeme continued, “in
a cloak, part of that forgotten costume; I stole
down the great staircase, half timorous, half
bold, all desperate. I looked into the parlors.
They were brilliantly lighted. In the distant
mirror, at the rear, I could see the image of my
sister, sitting alone, and, as I thought, drooping
and weary. Ah, how I longed to fling myself
into her arms, and pray her to weep with me!
But I knew that she would turn away lightly
and with scorn. I shrank back for fear of detection.
You know that draped statue in the
hall?”
“I know it,” replied I, remembering what
misery of my heart it had beheld, in its marble
calm.
“In my fevered imagination it took ghostly
life. It seemed to become the shadow of myself,
and I paused an instant to charge it to watch
over those who drove me forth, — to be a holy
monitor in that ill-doing house. It was marble,
and they could not harm it.”
“That statue has seemed to me your presence
there,” I said, “and a sorrowful watcher.”
I could not continue, and describe that fatal
interview of last night. I was silent, and in a
moment Cecil Dreeme went on.
“The rest you mostly know. You know how
my rash venture succeeded from its very rashness.
I won Locksley. The poor fellow had had
troubles of his own, and I felt that I was safe
with him, even if he discovered my secret. He
gossiped to me innocently of my own disappearance,
and how they were searching for me far
and wide; but never within a stone's throw of
my home.”
“It was an inspiration,” said I, “your concealment
there, — such a plan as only genius
devises.”
“A mad scheme!” Dreeme said, musingly.
“I hardly deem myself responsible for it. And
who can yet say whether it was well and wisely
done?”
“Well and wisely!” said Churm. “You are
saved, and the tempter is dead.”
“Ah!” Dreeme sighed, “what desolate days
I passed in my prison in Chrysalis! I felt like
one dead, as the world supposed me, — like one
murdered, — one walled up in a living grave;
and I gave myself no thought of ever emerging
into life again. Why should I love daylight?
Who? Only traitors. I had no one in the world
to trust. I dwelt alone with God.”
Dreeme paused. The tears stood in those
brave, steady eyes. How utterly desolate indeed
had been the fate of this noble soul! How dark
in the chill days of winter! How lonely in his
bleak den in Chrysalis! Stern lessons befall the
strong.
“Painting my Lear kept me alive, with a morbid
life. It was my own tragedy, Robert. I am
the Cordelia. When you did not recognize my
father and sister on that canvas, I felt that myself
was safe from your detection.”
“How blind I have been!” I exclaimed;
“and now that I recall the picture, I perceive
those veiled likenesses, and wonder at my dulness.”
“Not veiled from me,” said Churm. “You
saw me recognize them, Byng. Ah, my child!
how bitter it is to think of you there pining away
alone, and I under the same roof, saddening my
heart with sorrow for your loss!”
“Yes, my father; but how much bitterer for
me, who had loved and trusted you like a
daughter, to believe that you were as cruel a
traitor as the rest, — that you too would betray
me in a moment. So I lived there alone, putting
my agony into my picture. There was a strange
when I had punished them, I forgave them. The
rancor, if rancor there were, had gone out of me.
I was ready for kindlier influences. They did
not come. I could not seek them. I was no
longer sustained by the vigor of my revolt. My
days grew inexpressibly dreary. The life was
wearing. And then I was starving for all that
my dear friend and preserver, Mr. Byng, has
given me, — starving to death, Robert; and there
I should have died alone but for you. I knew
you as my old playmate from the first moment.”
I pressed her hand. “It is a touching history,”
I said, “but strange to me still, — strange
as a dream.”
“Yes, and my name, when I abandon it, will
make the whole seem dreamier. My name was
a sudden fancy, in reply to Locksley's query,
what he should call me. Cecil; I did not
quite give up my womanhood, as Cecil. And
Dreeme, — it occurred to me that, if ever in life
I should escape danger and be at peace, my present
episode of disguise and concealment would
be recalled by me only as a dream. And from
such a fancy, half metaphysical, half mere girlishness,
I named myself. My danger must excuse
the alias.”
A girlish fancy! Every moment it came to me
more distinctly that Cecil Dreeme and I could
I had loved my friend as one loves a woman
only. This was love, — unforced, self-created,
undoubting, complete. And now that the friend
proved a woman, a great gulf opened between us.
And as in my first interview with Emma Denman,
I had fancied that form in the mirror the
spirit of her sister regarding us, now again I
seemed to see, projected against a lurid future,
a slight, elegant figure in deep mourning, watching
me, now with a baleful, now with a pleading
look.
Thinking thus, I let fall Cecil's hand, and drew
apart a little. Meantime Churm's bays whirled
us merrily over the frozen turnpike, through the
brisk air of that March evening. We might, for
all the passers knew, have left a warm and kindly
fireside, and now were speeding back to our own
cheerful homes, talking as we went of rural hospitality,
and how wealthy with content was life
in a calm old country-house.
But thinking of what might start up between
Cecil Dreeme and me, and part us, I let fall
the hand I held.
“No, Robert!” said Cecil, reaching out that
slight hand again, and taking mine. “I cannot
let my friend go. You were dear and
true to me when I was alone. Do not punish
me, that I was acting an unwilling deceit with
But how could I?”
How could she, indeed? To me, of all other
men, how could she? To me, the friend of her
father, the comrade of Densdeth, the disciple
of Churm, perhaps the lover of her sister, the
ally of all whose perfidy had wronged her, —
how could she offer to me the confidence that
would compel me to choose between her and
them? How could she, alone in that solitude
of Chrysalis, cover her face with her hands and
whisper, — “Robert, I am a woman!”
“Now, my child,” said Churm, “we strike the
pavements in a few moments. The bays will
give me my hands full in the crowded streets,
and across the ferry. Tell us how you came
at last into Densdeth's power.”
“You remember my terror, Robert, when at
last I encountered that evil spirit again. He
knew me. He must have watched Chrysalis,
and seen me enter with you. Last night you
did not come. I went out alone, not without
some trepidation, to take my walk. By and by
I perceived a carriage following me. I turned
into a side street. It drove up. Densdeth's
black servant — that Afreet creature — sprang
out with another person. They dragged me
into the carriage, and smothered my screams.”
“O Cecil,” I cried, “if I could have saved
you this!”
No wonder that Densdeth smiled triumphant
in the corridor of the opera, — smiled in double
triumph over me!
“I had no fears, Robert. I felt that you
would miss me. I hoped that you would trace
me. At the ferry Densdeth got into the carriage.
He treated me simply as an insane person, and
was gentle enough. I do not think he had given
up the thought that he could master my mind,
— that he could weary out my moral force, and
triumph over me by dint of sheer devilishness.
He left me in peace last night. He had but
just entered to-day, and began to address me
quietly, as if I were in my father's parlor, and
he were again my allowed suitor, when the
woman burst in with the news of a hostile arrival.
He ran out, and presently I heard that dreadful
scream of exultation and despair. There seemed
to me two voices mingled, — the cry of a mocking
fiend baffled, and the shout of a rebel slave.”
“It was so,” said Churm. “How calmly you
speak of all this, my child!”
“It is the life of Cecil Dreeme, and fast becoming
merely historic to me, passing away into
my dark ages. These will be scenes never to
be forgotten, but never recalled. And now,
a word of my father. Will the shame he feared
come upon him at last?”
“It may not. Only Densdeth knew the crime.
of all his ambitious schemes must befall him.”
“Better so! Poverty, shame even, are better
for the soul than a life that is a lie. Only
harsh treatment will teach a nature like my
father's the sin of sin. Poor and ashamed, he
will learn to prize my love.”
“You can love him still, Cecil, — so cruel,
so base?” I asked.
“Love does not alter for any error of its
object.”
“Error? I name it guilt, sacrilege!”
“Justice tells me that he must suffer. To
every sin is appointed its own misery. An inevitable
penalty announces the broken law. The
misery is the atonement for the sin. I sorrow
for the sufferer. Not that he suffers, — but
that he should have sinned. The fiery pangs
will burn away the taint, and leave the soul
as white and pure as any most unsullied.”
“Cecil,” said I, after a silence, “you do not
ask of your sister.”
“No,” she said, turning from me. She would
have withdrawn her hand. I held it closer than
before.
| CHAPTER XXIX.
DREEME HIS OWN INTERPRETER. Cecil Dreeme | |