 | XXII. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
22. XXII.
Mrs. Brothertoft sat in the parlor of the deserted
mansion, bound, helpless, and alone.
She was exhausted and weak after her furious
struggle with her captors. Mental frenzy had
wearied her mind.
As Major Skerrett closed the door, and she was
left solitary, a little brief sleep, like a faint, fell
upon her.
It could have lasted but a moment, for when
she suddenly awoke, the final footsteps of the retiring
party were still sounding upon the gravel
road.
She listened intently. The sound ceased.
Human presence had departed. Silence about
her, — except that the fire on the hearth hissed
and muttered, as fire imprisoned is wont to do,
in feeble protest against its powerlessness.
This moment of sleep seemed to draw a line
sharp as death between two eras in Mrs. Brothertoft's
history. From the hither side of this emphatic
interval of oblivion she could survey her
past life apart from the present. Violence, Force,
their mark sharp as the sudden cleft of an earthquake
in a plain.
She had now the opportunity, as she sat bound,
strictly but not harshly, before a comfortable fire,
to review her conduct and approve or condemn.
She could now ask herself why Force had come
in to baffle her plans, — what laws she had broken
to merit this inevitable penalty of failure and
insulting punishment.
There was a pause in her life, such as is given
to all erring and guilty lives many times in life,
and to all souls in death, to look at past ruin
quietly, and plan, if they will, with larger wisdom
for the time to come.
She rapidly put together her facts, and without
much difficulty comprehended the plot of Kerr's
capture and Lucy's evasion. It angered her to
be defeated by a “silly child,” as she had named
her. But she put this aside for the moment.
A graver matter was to be considered.
She thought of her husband, lying in the
dining-room, slain, as she supposed, by her hand.
Then, in her soul, began a great and terrible
battle. “You are free!” her old companion
Furies whispered her. “Free of that incubus,
your husband. Such triumph well repays you
for the insult of a few hours' bondage.”
But then a low voice within her seemed to ask,
have trampled on your womanhood, and done
murder to a man who gave you only love and
only pity when you wronged him?”
“Be proud of yourself, beautiful creature!”
whispered the Furies. “You are an imperial
woman, rich, masterly, and skilful, with a brilliant
career before you.”
“Humble yourself before God and your own
soul, miserable woman!” the inner voice replied.
“Repent, or that murdered man will
take his stand at your side forever.”
“He owed you this vengeance,” her evil spirits
hinted, “for your great disappointment. If
he had not been a nerveless dreamer, full of
feeble scruples and sham ambitions, you would
have had all your heart desired. He basely
cheated you. He promised everything, and performed
nothing. He was the pride of the Province;
he let himself sink into insignificance.
Poor-spirited nobody! It was a kindness to
snuff out his mean and paltry life.”
“Did you see his gentle face as he fell?” the
counter influence made answer. “How gray
and old he was! Do you remember him? — it
seems but yesterday — a fair youth, kindling
with the hopes that to him were holy. You
loved him sometimes, — do you not recognize
those moments as your noblest? Have not
dreams? Is not all this misery and failure the
result of your first trifling with sin, and then
choosing it? Disloyal woman, — if you are a
woman, and not a fiend, — your cruelty has
brought defeat and shame upon you! Profit by
this moment of quiet reflection! see how the
broken law revenges itself!”
“Yes, madam,” the other voices here interrupted,
“you cannot escape what your weakness
calls shame. You will never live down scandal.
The untempted people will never admit you to
their ranks. Scorn them. Do not yield to
feeble regrets. Be yourself, — your brave, defiant
self!”
The Furies were getting the better. The
virago was more and more overpowering the
woman. Sometimes she sat patient. Sometimes
she raged and struggled impotently with
her bonds. It was terrible in the dim parlor to
watch her face, and mark the tokens of that mad
war within.
The fire in the chimney had been slowly heating
the logs all this time. They were ripe to
blaze. Suddenly they burst into a bright flame.
Mrs. Brothertoft looked up and saw herself in
the mirror over the fireplace. There was hardly
time for a thrill of self-admiration. The same
flash that showed her her own face revealed also
saw the heads of Colonel Brothertoft and his
white horse looking through the torn curtain.
She had not glanced that way since her scene of
yesterday evening with the picture. She had
evaded a sight that recalled her treason. Now it
forced itself upon her. Here she was bound;
and there, over her own head in the mirror, was
a ghostly shadow of what?
What! was this the ghostlier image of her
husband's very ghost? Was he there in the canvas?
Had he stolen away out of that dead
thing once his body, lying only a few steps and
two doors off? Was he there watching her?
Why did he wear that triumphant smile? He
was not used to smile much in the dreary old
times; — never to sneer as this semblance was
doing. Even that beast, the white horse, shared
in his master's exultation over her captivity, —
his nostrils swelled, and he seemed to pant for
breath enough to neigh over a victory.
She stared an instant, fascinated by that faint
image. There was a certain vague sense of
relief in its presence. This shadow of her husband
murdered might be a terror; but he intervened
a third party in the hostile parley
and the thickening war between her two selves.
This memento of remorse came to the succor
of the almost beaten relics of her better nature,
again against that reckless, triumphant, bedlam
creature, who was fast gaining the final mastery
and absorbing her total being.
Was it thus? Had this image of a ghost
come to say, “My wife, the old tie cannot break.
I come to plead with you not to annihilate the
woman, not to repel the medicine of remorse,
and make yourself an incurable, irreclaimable
fiend,” — was this his errand of mercy?
Or did he stand there to hound on the Frenzies,
spiritual essences, to her, to him visible
beings, whom she felt seducing her? Was he
smiling with delight to see her spirit zigzagging
across the line between madness and sanity, and
staggering farther, every turn, away from self-control?
Which was this shadow's office?
While she trembled between these questions,
still staring at those two reflections in the mirror,
— herself and that image of the portrait, — suddenly
the flash of flame in the chimney went
out. A downward draught sent clouds of white
smoke drifting about the room.
Mrs. Brothertoft peered a moment into the
darkness. Her own reflection in the mirror was
just visible, as she stirred her head. She missed
the other. But there were strange sounds suddenly
awakened, — a strange whispering through
the house.
So long as her seeming, ghostly companion
was visible, she had kept down her terror. Now,
as she fancied it still present but unseen, a great
dread fell upon her. She writhed in her bonds
to turn and face that portrait on the wall. She
could, with all her pains, only move enough
to see a little corner of the curtain.
Did it move? Would something unearthly
presently put aside those dusky folds, and come
rustling to her side?
She listened a moment, and then screamed
aloud.
The sound of her own voice a little reassured
her. She laughed harshly, and her soliloquy
went on, but wilder, and without the mild entreaties
of her better self.
“What a fool I am to disturb myself with
mere paint and canvas! But I will have that
picture burnt, — yes, burnt, to-morrow morning.
The man is gone, and every relic of him and
his name shall perish from the earth. How
plainly I seem to see him lying there dead,
with his face upturned! What? Do dead men
stir? I think he stirred. Do you dare to lift
your finger and point at me? I had a right to
shoot housebreakers. Put down your finger,
sir! You will not? Bah! Do what you please,
you cannot terrify me. You shall be burnt,
burnt, — do you hear? I smell fire strangely.
else. I am afraid I shall be cold before morning;
but now I am feverish. The air seems hot
and dry. I suppose I have grown excited, tied
here. What is that low rustling all the while?
Sometimes it seems to come from the cellar,
then it is here. Any one in this room? Speak!
Dewitt, Sarah, is that you come home? No answer;
and this whispering grows louder. Some
other chimney must be smoking. I can hardly
breathe. I must try to sleep, or I shall go mad
before morning with that dead man in the house.
Put down your finger, sir! Don't point at me
like a school-boy! What! Is he coming? Is
that his step I hear in the hall? Let me see,
he has only two steps to make to the door, five
across the hall, then two more and he could lean
over and whisper what he thought of me.”
She listened awhile to the strange sounds
below, and then went on: “If you come in here,
Edwin Brothertoft, and speak to me, I shall go
crazy. I cannot hear any of your meek talk.
Lie where you are till morning, and then, if
you wish, you shall be buried. Perhaps burning
was a little too harsh. Morning is not many
hours away. It must be nearly ten o'clock.
But if this smoke grows any thicker, I shall certainly
smother. These ghastly noises get louder
and louder. What can that crash be? Is the
away! Mr. Brothertoft, Edwin, if you love me,
pray stop fumbling at that latch. You know
how indulgent you always were to my little
fancies; do not come in, if you please. I am
afraid, Edwin, afraid. I am so fevered, tied
here by those cursed brigands, that I shall go
mad. I am suffocating with this smoke. Will
some one bring me a little water? But when
you come, do not look into that room across
the hall. There is a gray-headed man lying
there. He may say I murdered him. Do not
take notice of him, he was always weak-minded.
He will say I insulted, wronged, dishonored him,
and made his life a burden and a shame. Do
not listen to scandal against a woman; but bring
me a drop, one drop of water to cool my throat,
for I am burning with a horrible fever. If these
strange noises underneath and all around do not
cease, I shall certainly go mad. What can it
mean? I hear sounds like an army. I would
rather not receive your friends at present, Mr.
Brothertoft, if it is their feet and voices I hear.
This smoke makes my eyes red, and you always
were proud of my beauty, you know. What!
have they lighted their torches, those ghosts in
the hall? Or is this glow through the room the
moon? No. My God! Fire! I shall burn.
O Lucy, Lucy! O Edwin, help!”
| XXII. Edwin Brothertoft | |