University of Virginia Library

46. CHAPTER XLVI.
CAPTIVITY — FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

And thus, at length, successfully, did Sinclair penetrate the
secret domain of Muddicoat Castle. But at what a price! Poor
Nelly Floyd was mortally wounded by the last shot that Dick
of Tophet ever fired. She had feared this man especially.
Him only! She seems to have had some prescience of her danger
at his hands. It is possible that this, too, was among her
visions — this scene — the passage of the cypress — the grim,
spectral Death that watched the portal — the one shot from the
ambush — the final catastrophe, to herself and her destroyer!
Following Sinclair, and but a few paces behind him, when he
made the misstep which saved his life, she received the bullet
in her breast. She would have fallen into the creek, but for
the ready grasp taken about her person by the dragoon immediately
behind her.

Sinclair heard her scream, at the moment that he rushed upon
the man who shot. It smoke him to the heart to hear, for he
readily conceived the extent of the disaster. Nelly was not the
person to cry aloud unhurt. But our dragoon could not stop to
look behind him at such a moment. The passionate impulse
which carried him forward, was quickened, rather than disarmed,
by that spasmodic shriek. In fact, it added somewhat
to the terrible weight of his sabre, when he struck. He did
not — as we have seen — strike in vain! He soon saw that the
enemy could strike and strive no more — he readily identified
him, as he lay quivering, no longer conscious, at his feet; a
single glance sufficed for this — and he then turned to the
wounded girl, who had been sustained and brought to the firm
land in the arms of the soldier.

She was conscious. Her eyes opened upon him sweetly, with
a smile, and she said faintly:—

“Take me to that house. There is one just there,” — and
she tried to point. “Leave me there — leave me anywhere —
but push on now — quick as you can! You have no time to
lose. That pistol-shot will alarm the camp.”

“My poor, poor girl!” was the involuntary exclamation of
Sinclair, the tears dropping from his eyes the while, as he took
her into his arms and bore her to the wigwam of Blodgit. One
of the soldiers kicked open the door suddenly, and the mother
and her hopeful son were discovered in an apprehensive conference
— alarmed by the pistol-shot — dubious of what was
going on — not knowing where to turn, and fearing everything
in the oppressive consciousness of guilt. Both cowered as they
beheld Sinclair. He hardly saw them — did not recognise them,
as he cried out:—

“Here, my good people, your help. Be quick — a bed!”

“And what's the help that a poor old rheumatic woman kin
give, I wants to know!”

Sinclair knew the voice, looked at mother and son, and said
sternly:—

“Do what you can for this poor girl — get her a bed — be
quick about it; be attentive, and you shall be well rewarded.
Do not stop, and purr — or I will punish you — both! I know
you now! Be quick!”

His glance was enough for Pete Blodgit. The bed was found
in a moment — the wounded girl laid upon it gently. Poor
Nelly, suppressed every moan. She hardly seemed to suffer —
did not certainly think of herself.

“Now go,” she said to Sinclair, “I shall soon be better!”
She said this with a smile.

“Is there any surgeon here?” Sinclair asked of Pete, “any
doctor?”

“Well, major, I reckon—”

“Reckon not with me, fellow. Say, yes or no!”

There was no trifling in the mood and eye of the dragoon.

“No, major! I don't know of none.”

“Do not mind me, Colonel Sinclair, unless you would lose
everything! No surgeon can do me good. I feel that! Go!

See to the others. Oh! believe me, you will have no time to
lose. You will all be butchered — your friends, perhaps! Go!
go!”

And the calm, patient smile, seen in the light of the chimney
torchwood, was as encouraging as it was earnest. Sinclair felt
that she had counselled wisely. He could do nothing for her,
at the moment. He pressed her hand, with a gripe of genuine
anguish. Then he went out to his dragoons, who waited at
the entrance.

“Chiffale,” he said to one of them, “find your way back.
You can mount your horse, and push for our camp. See if you
can get a surgeon to come hither, at wing-speed. Go to the
widow Avinger's, and get my father's carriage, or that of Mrs.
Travis. Put a feather-bed in it, and bring it on as close to our
halting-place as you can; and as rapidly as you can. Away
now — do not lose a moment”

The dragoon disappeared. Sinclair had done all that might
be done. He had helped to stanch Nelly's wound, which was
on the side. There was little external flow of blood, but this
made it more serious. The lungs were probably hurt. The
girl breathed with effort — spoke gaspingly.

Unable to help her, Sinclair prepared to withdraw from a
spectacle which wrung his heart. Besides, as she had properly
counselled, he was needed elsewhere — he knew not what necessities
to encounter! He left the girl in charge of the old woman,
who had, as we have seen, a vicious knowledge of the
sinful; she might, by possibility, know something of the good.
We, too, must leave the scene, in which we can make no report
of progress — nothing grateful or favorable, at least. We must
anticipate the approach of Sinclair to other quarters, and narrate
the previous proceedings of the tory chieftain, in his designs
upon the peace and happiness of our favorites.

We have seen in what mood Inglehardt left the field of battle.
We know the desperation of his fortunes. We have every
reason to apprehend a corresponding desperation in his performances.
Nor shall we be disappointed. There is a ferocity
of soul, the natural results from the defeat of long-entertained
desires, which, where the heart is callous, and there are no
human sympathies to relieve the intense pressure of one selfish

passion, will work, finally, into a sort of madness. If mere
recklessness of mood — a desperate resolve to attain the objects
of a despotic will — and an utter freedom from all the ties of
society, and all the restraints of conscience, can madden a man
to the execution of the wildest and most brutal of actions, then
Inglehardt is about to commit the worst! There is, it is true,
a lingering social policy to restrain him for awhile; and if he
can be suffered the indulgence of this policy, he will prove mild
and forbearing enough. Otherwise nothing can restrain him
but the prompt application of a power superior to his own. He
anticipates the presence, or approach, of no such power now;
and his despotic nature exults in the belief, that he will at
length compel the submission of his victims — will now gloat
over the triumph of his long-baffled passions, and he is prepared
to secure this triumph by any agency, whether of Hell or
Heaven!

He has called Brunson to private counsel. He has shown
him what to do. The Trailer is a willing tool and creature.
He will scruple at no baseness — falter at no cruelty — when he
can be made secure from danger, and sure of reward. He has
shown a handful of guineas to Dick of Tophet — as the sufficient
reasons for his obedience to the will of Inglehardt, no
matter what shall be his commands: and Dick of Tophet,
knowing the Trailer well, is satisfied that no argument of his,
which does not take the same shape and color, can, in any
degree, avail to persuade Brunson to pause or forbear in carrying
out the evil purposes of his superior. Dick, monster as he
is, feels that there are arguments, which even he would acknowledge,
which can in no way affect the Trailer.

And the latter sped as promptly and cheerfully to do the
cruel work of Inglehardt, as he would have sped in the performance
of any angelic mission to humanity. Let us observe
his movements and those of his superior.

Lights are kindled in the prison of Captain Travis. Torches
of pine blaze upon the hearth; but there are tallow candles,
also, lighted, and placed upon the little pine-table, the only one
in the cabin. This was an unwonted luxury of light in that
region. An old chair, a rude bench — these, with the table,
constitute the only furniture of the apartment. A fresh

sprinkling of pine straw over the floor takes place; and the
Trailer retires locking the door carefully behind him.

Travis sees, but does not show surprise at these proceedings.
In truth, the period has gone by when he should show surprise
at anything. His prisoner-life, limited or bad food, terrible
anxieties, have worked a more terrible change in him. His
whole moral constitution is overthrown. The mental change is
even as great as the physical. His hair, which had been thinly
mottled with gray before, is now uniformly white as snow. His
beard, white also, spreads down over his breast like that of a
Jewish patriarch or prophet. Hair and beard are matted: the
one stands up almost erect, though massed, in great bristles
above the eyes and temples; the other grows thick in pointed
sections, and spreads out over cheek, and chin, and mouth, in
separate peaks, as we sometimes behold it in the grotesque
wood-carvings of a Gothic frieze. He is emaciated, but hardly
so much so as we might expect. And there is a color in his
cheeks, the consequence of a more exciting tendency of the
blood brainward than would be altogether safe in the case of a
very plethoric person. In the person of a sanguine-plethoric
temperament, such a tendency would conduct to apoplexy; in
the bilious nature, or nervo-bilious — that of Travis — it is only
— insanity!

Wild, half-savage, grotesque — in consequence of the strange
mingling of vivacity in his eye and of haggard and squalid
wretchedness of hair and visage — Travis sits upon a rude
bench, directly beneath the little aperture which has been cut
through the log-partition; and through this aperture, only large
enough to admit a hand — scarcely a head — he communes with
his daughter. There, in that one seat, he keeps almost all the
time, except when, in the exhaustion of nature, he lapses away
upon the rushes, and delivers himself up to sleep. There he
sits, his wrists still manacled, and Bertha's hands, passed through
the opening, play with his hair and beard — smooth them out —
and occasionally she takes the comb from her own hair, and
labors, after an awkward fashion, to work the twines and tangles
out of his!

And there and thus he sits the while, the livelong day, prattling
incessantly of home, and happy and childish things, without

saying one word of his present situation, or seeming to be
conscious of its cares.

And she answers all his prattle, just as he seems to desire;
and sometimes she sings to him, but only when he calls for it;
and she tries to keep up the appearance of cheerfulness, in what
she says or does, in spite of a constant, terrible sinking of the
heart. To school her own griefs to silence and submission,
while she beholds his crushed and humiliating aspect, needs a
powerful effort; and no more mournful picture of despair could
be painted than that which she exhibits, at that little hole in
the wall, as, hour by hour, she stands on one side of the partition,
he on the other, and ministers with gentle offices, and tender
words, and pathetic ballads, to the wayward frivolity of the
old man's moods. Terrible indeed, and terribly sudden, has
been the change in him. But two months ago, a healthy, vigorous,
keen-witted, eager, selfish, impatient, grasping worldling;
and now, an utter imbecile! What must have been the torturous
process, which, in that little space of time, could effect
such a shocking transformation!

Such is the picture before us at this moment. He sits
beneath the hole in the wall, through which we see the mournful
and wan visage of Bertha Travis. One of her hands, passed
through the aperture, is even now paddling in the old man's
tangled hair. He sits placidly, as if he liked the situation and
sensation; and his eye glitters, with a bright, humid light, somewhat
glassily, but surely with a singular intensity. Yet there
is nothing intense in his mood. He laughs at moments merrily,
as if he beheld some amusing spectacle — laughs out suddenly,
stops as suddenly, and, a minute after, you perhaps see
his eyes fill with tears. But only for a minute. The changes
are as quick and uncertain as the flittings of the shadows upon
the wall cast by the flame from the hearth; and, like these,
they declare for light rather than for life! It is a touching
picture, for, while he laughs, you see the iron cuffs about his
wrists, his hands resting in his lap!

The unusual light in the cabin from torches and candles
amuses the imbecile old man. He says:—

“That's right, Bertha. When the sun goes out, make a good
fire, and get candles. That's wisdom. Why we have no sun

now-a-days, I don't exactly see. There's some change going
on in the climate that I can't account for. And this is the
longest winter I've ever known. It's high time it was over.
We shall have spring now, very soon, I'm sure. I heard the
frogs singing last night. There's a whip-poor-will that cried
for two nights just under the eaves — a certain sign of spring.
But that don't secure us against a frost now and then. I have
known frosts in June even. We must provide a good fire
against them. When we have warm fires, there's nothing to
fear from the birds and the cold weather.”

“Nothing to fear from the birds and cold weather!” — what
a confusion of ideas! Bertha repeated the words, unconscious
that she did so.

“Yes,” said the old man, “let us keep clear of them. And
they will soon be gone. There is quite a feeling of spring in
this fire and these lights. But oughtn't these to come off, now
that we are getting warm weather? Why do I wear them,
Bertha? They fetter me!”

And he lifted up his manacled wrists. The fetters, by-the-way,
had been taken from his legs some weeks before, as they
had worn into the flesh. It was with a bitter feeling — which,
armed with a dagger, and favored by the opportunity, would
have been fatal to their petty tyrant — that she replied:—

“They were meant to fetter you, my father. It is the policy
of Captain Inglehardt to fetter you.”

“But not now, when the spring is at hand. I will speak to
Inglehardt when he comes. I know him well. Hark, Bertha,
in your ear — it is a secret — Inglehardt is — I think — a very
doubtful person.”

“He is a monster!”

He whispered in reply:—

“Exactly! That is just what I think. But I must not say
so just yet. Softly, softly! I must feel my way out first. Oh!
don't I know him? I knew his father. He was my overseer
— my grazier — and I found him out. It was something about
steers — about the hands — young calves, too, and in the season
— of course, young calves know when the spring comes, just as
we do, and they like it as well or better. Well, what would
the young calves be doing now? Frisking in the old fields.

They'd never let the grass grow. And I must go out into the
old fields too. This feeling of spring, Bertha, puts me all in a
glow.”

And so he ran on, his whispers rising into the loudest tones.
All this prattle, poured forth with the most satisfied complacency,
fell drearily upon the senses of poor Bertha. She had
no response. She could only sigh, and let fall great, swelling
tears, that it half-choked her, the effort to restrain.

At length, Inglehardt made his appearance, looking the
haughty exultation which he felt, mingled with the savage
ferocity of mood which he owed to his recent humiliations.