University of Virginia Library

2. II.

When the room had been quite cleared of the
weeping and wailing throng there, — weeping and
wailing, not only from the loss of a dear companion
and kind master, but from the suddenness,
the horror, and a hundred hysterical
emotions, — Major Gaston still retained his position
beside the pillow, now half in the shadow
of a fallen curtain, and still looked down upon
the face that was turned toward the portrait, as
if that pictured eye it was that had frozen the
man to stone. His own glance followed that
dead stare, and rested on the beautiful breathing
canvas where the painted woman seemed to lean
from the frame and command both dead and
living to her worship. To her worship? Worship
her who, finding her husband as she had
found him, still keeps her powers about her, rings
up the house, and neither shrieks nor raves in
maniac fashion? Strong nerves were hers.

Strong nerves were needed for this work last
night. Worship her who — in his soul he believed
it — loved another man, that man himself,
Gaston; loved with all her passionate nature, —
nature as proud as passionate, able to lend itself
to crime, never to shame; who was beloved
again; who knew she was beloved again, — for
had not Gaston's every pulse, every breath, every
glance, this three months past, assured her? —
whose husband had seen the whole; who by all
her hopes in life had reason to wish him where he
lay; who was the first to find him where he lay?
They who hide can find. Worship her who —
once before he had seen it — failed to blanch at
the sight of blood, when, without a tremor, she
held McRoy's May in her arms, as the child died
amidst the red torrents spurting under the surgeon's
steel; who had lopped the garden roses,
not a week ago, with that little knife of hers,
and had whetted it on the edge-stone of the lake
till it glittered in its haft, — the haft in the likeness
of an ivory hand and arm: what a red stain
there was on that tiny hand now! And on the
other hand — her hand?

Major Gaston could not have gazed on that
canvas before him, on that face with its enchanting

sweetness, and have thought such thoughts:
they were not thoughts of his thinking at all, but
phantasms that thronged over him as if he were
walking through a dark, dank cavern, and all its
flitting bats and vampires flapped their wet wings
in his face. He remembered Dr. Ruthven's declaration,
when he entered ten minutes since, like
some apocryphal thing he had read and half forgotten
a score of years ago, nor did he notice
what the man was about there now with the
sweat on his forehead. Not he to himself, but
something far outside, seemed to say that however
much in friendship or in zeal the family
physician strove to keep an ancient name from
shame, yet murder had been done, — something
far outside, a thousand leagues outside; for as
for him, gazing at the picture of that woman's
face, the currents of his heart, mounting higher
and higher, kindled their flame on his sallow
cheek; all his blood beat toward her: in spite
of sin, or shame, or life, or death, he loved her!
But Gaston could not have declared himself conscious
even of this: he stood like an automaton,
with every spring of his being played on by this
moment's cruel hand. The only thing of which
he was distinctly aware while he looked on the
lovely face, and the dead man lay beneath, was
the burden of a rude ballad that once the little
May sung to the three together, — a song that
could have naught to do with such a scene as
this: —

When the physician had tried vainly all his
usual methods of resuscitation, and had despatched
his assistants on the last resort, he came
and laid his hand on Gaston's arm. “You did
not believe me when I said this was no night
attack of an assassin?” said he, — for the presence
of death did not so much awe the man who
dealt in it, and who knew it only as a kind event
that loosed the indefinable bond between soul and
body. “You did not believe me, sir?”

“God forbid that I should doubt you!” shuddered
Gaston.

“My friend,” said the Doctor, taking his hand,
and wringing it till it ached, “since I have often
spoken with you plainly for your soul's health,
let me tell you that there are different ways of
committing the same crime: this is one with

accessories. Whosesoever deed it was, — whosesoever,
— this hand I clasp, this hand of Arnold
Gaston's, is just as guilty as if it had driven
home the knife!” Then, at the sound of his
horse's feet, Dr. Ruthven went out hurriedly
and left Gaston alone.