University of Virginia Library

5. V.

He left me at these words, and left me more perplexed, if not
more apprehensive, than ever. My meditations were neither
clear nor pleasant. Indeed, I knew not what to think, and,
perhaps naturally enough, ended by distrusting my counsellor.
The change in his deportment and language had been no less
marvellous than was the reception which I had met with from
the baroness. The inference seems usually justified that where
there is mystery, there is guilt also; and Bruno had evidently
been more mysterious and inscrutable than the baroness. She,
indeed, had spoken plainly enough. Looks, words, and actions,
had equally denounced and driven me from her presence; and,
ignorant and innocent of any wrong, performed or contemplated,
I necessarily regarded my benefactress as the victim of sudden
lunacy. Still, it was impossible to reconcile the conduct of
Bruno, however strange and unaccountable it might seem, with
the idea of his unfaithfulness. He certainly, so far as I knew,
had ever been true to my interests. He had been something
more. He had shown himself deeply attentive to all my feelings.
Never had father bestowed more tender care on a beloved
son, and shown more of parental favor in his attachments,
than had been displayed toward me from the first by this person.

It was not easy now to distrust him; and, racked by conflicting
conjectures, I passed two weary hours before anything
happened to divert my thoughts from speculations which brought
me no nigher to the truth. In the meanwhile, I had made sundry
attempts, by looking around me, to lessen the influence of
my thoughts upon my feelings. I examined by chamber with
the appearance, if not the feeling, of curiosity. I mounted to
the window, and for a little while was soothed by the soft, silvery
light of the moon, as it seemed to trickle down the brown,
discolored sides of the rocks that rose in the distance, hill upon
hill, until the last was swallowed up in the gloomy immensity
beyond. The moon herself, in the zenith, was beyond my
glance. But this prospect did not relieve the anxiety which
it failed to divert. I turned from the pleasing picture, and,
resuming my seat beside the table in my gloomy apartment,
again surrendered myself up to those meditations which, however,
were soon to be disturbed. My attention was called to
the door through which Bruno had taken his departure, and
which — though I did not then know the fact — led through a
long, dismal corridor, to a suite of rooms beyond. A distinct
tap, twice or thrice repeated, was made upon the door. I was
on the eve of forgetting the solemn injunctions of my companion,
and had nearly risen from my seat for the purpose of opening it.
I recollected myself, however, before doing so, and maintained
an inflexible silence. But I could not stifle the beatings of my
heart, which, on a sudden, seemed to have acquired fourfold
powers of pulsation. I almost tottered under my emotion; and
nothing but a resolution of the most stern character, and the
feeling of shame that came to my relief and reproached me with
my weakness, enabled me to preserve a tolerable degree of composure.
I kept silence and my seat; suppressed my breathings
as well as I could; and, with ears scarcely less keen than those
of the watch-dog when the wolf-drove trots about the enclosure,
did I listen to the mysterious summons from without. Again
and again, though still in moderate force, as if some caution was
necessary to prevent the sounds from reaching other senses than
my own, were the taps repeated upon the door; and, after a
full quarter of an hour, passed in a condition of suspense the
most trying and oppressive, I was at length relieved by hearing
the tread of retiring footsteps, preceded by the murmurs of a
voice which I had never heard before, and none of the words
of which could I distinguish.

I breathed more freely for a while, but for a while only. Perhaps
an hour elapsed — it might have been less — it certainly
could not have been more; I had fallen into a sort of stupor,
akin to sleep, for nature was not to be denied her rights, even
though care had begun to insist on hers; when the summons was
renewed upon the entrance, and, this time, with a considerable
increase of earnestness. Still, I followed the counsel of Bruno,
returned no answer, and strove to retain my position in the most
perfect silence. The knocking was repeated after a little interval,
but with the same want of success. Then I heard voices.
A whispering dialogue was evidently carried on between two
persons. How acute will the ears of anxiety become when
sharpened by apprehension. I heard whispers, evidently meant
to be suppressed, through a stone wall nearly three feet in
thickness. The whispering was succeeded by a third summons,
to which I paid as little attention as before, and then the whispers
were exchanged for murmurs — sharp, quick murmurs —
in the tones of that voice, which, once heard, could never have
been forgotten. It was the voice of the baroness. I could now
distinguish her words; for, in her passion, she lost all her prudence.
“Said you not that you saw them enter together?”
The reply was not audible, though the whisper which conveyed
it was sufficiently so.

“And you saw Bruno go forth alone?”

Again the whisper, which must have been affirmative.

“And he took the way to the convent?”

The response was immediate, and, I suppose, affirmative also,
though still in a whisper too soft for me to hear.

“Then he must be here!”

The remark was followed by a louder knocking, in the intervals
of which my name was called three several times in the
voice of the baroness; each time with increased emphasis, and
evidently under the influence of a temper, roused from the first,
and growing momently more and more angry, under disappointment.
I began to reproach myself with my conduct. How
could I justify this treatment of my benefactress? By what

right did I exclude her, and what reason could I give to myself
or others for such disrespectful treatment? The discussion
of this question in my own mind led to various and conflicting
resolves. My reflections all required that I should answer the
summons, and open the door to the mistress of the castle; but
my feelings, swayed equally by the mystery of my situation,
and the singular influence which Bruno had acquired over me,
were opposed to any compliance. While I debated, however,
with myself, I heard another voice without — the voice of Bruno
— which seemed to produce as much annoyance and fluttering
among my nocturnal visiters, as their summons had occasioned
in my own excited heart. His tones were loud, and he seemed
to be under as much excitement as the baroness. The words
of his first address were clearly audible.

“Ah, madam,” he exclaimed, “it is as I apprehended; you
have then violated your promise — you have dared!”—

“Dared — dared!” was the almost fierce exclamation in reply.

“Ay, madam, dared. You knew the penalty of faithlessness
when you complied with the conditions; can it be that you
would defy it. How is it then —”

“Stand from my way, insolent!” cried the baroness, interrupting
him in haughty accents, and evidently moving forward.

“Willingly,” was the answer; “willingly, but I go with you
for awhile. Dismiss the girl.”

Strange to say, this command, for command it was, was instantly
obeyed. I heard the baroness clearly address a third
person, of whom I knew nothing, but whom I conceived to be
the person meant by Bruno, in terms which despatched her from
the presence. The dialogue between the two was then resumed,
but the sounds gradually died away from my ears, as it seemed
in consequence of the parties retiring to some more distant spot.
My agitation may be fancied all the while. So long as the interlocutors
were within hearing, I was more composed and quiet.
When I ceased to hear them and to be conscious of their neighborhood,
my anxiety became utterly unrestrainable. I defied
the fears which oppressed me, the warning which had been
given me, the nice scruples of propriety and delicacy, which, at
another time, I should have insisted upon as paramount to every

other law. I lifted the bar from the door, which I opened, and
emerged into the long and gloomy gallery, of which I have already
briefly spoken. I was resolved to pursue the parties,
and satisfy that intense curiosity — a curiosity which was strictly
justified by my own entire dependence upon the circumstances
in progress — possibly, for life and death, weal and wo, bondage
and freedom — which was preying upon me like a fever. With
many misgivings, some momentary scruples, and a few fears,
all of which I contrived to keep in subjection, I pursued this
gallery with the most cautious footstep, resolved to hear the
dreadful truth, for such I now esteemed it to be, upon which
turned the mysterious history of my birth and fortunes. I
groped my way, almost in entire darkness, along a ruinous part
of the castle. The gallery seemed to be winding, and there
were openings in the wall, which I felt on either hand at intervals,
and which seemed to indicate other chambers and apartments.
Through these a chill wind passed, confirming me in
the belief that they were ruinous and deserted, and satisfying
me that the parties I pursued were not to be found in either of
them. At the end of the gallery I was stopped by a door, and
beyond it the voices were again heard, sometimes low, at other
times in angry emphasis, but seemingly with little or no cessation
either of one or of the other. The words were seldom sufficiently
audible to be syllabled clearly, and my curiosity would
not suffer me to remain satisfied. I tried the door, which, to my
great joy, was unfastened, and advanced with increased caution
into a second and small apartment which seemed a dressing-room.
A faint light gliding through a chink in the opposite
wall, together with the distinct voices of the persons I sought,
guided me to a spot where I could see them with tolerable ease,
and hear all their words distinctly. The chamber into which I
looked was similarly furnished with my own. It seemed to
have been equally unoccupied. An ancient ottoman received
the form of the baroness, who, as she spoke, alternately rose
from, or sunk back upon its cushions. She scarcely uttered a
sentence without accompanying it with great and corresponding
action; now rising from her seat and advancing passionately
upon her companion with hand uplifted as if to strike, her eye
flashing fury and resolution while her lips poured forth a torrent
of impetuous indignation and rage; — then suddenly receding
at the close of her words, she would sink back as if exhausted
upon the ottoman, burying her face within her hands
and sobbing with disappointed anger. Bruno, meanwhile,
looked the very embodiment of coolness and resolution.

“Ulrica,” I heard him say, as I approached the aperture,
“these are follies from which you should be now freed. They
are frenzies which must only destroy you, while they do no
good to your purpose, enfeeble you in my sight and humble
you in your own. Of what avail is all this violence — of what
avail your further struggles to prevent that consummation which
is, at length, at hand: let me implore you to be wise ere it be
too late. Welcome with a smile the necessity which you can
baffle no longer.”

“Welcome it with a curse — welcome it with death, rather.
Well do you call it a necessity; it is a necessity like death, and
as such, and such only, shall it have my welcome.”

“And the wise welcome death with a smile, if only because
it is a necessity,” replied Bruno. “You can not now escape me,
you can not longer evade compliance with my wishes. Long,
long, and wearisome indeed, have been my labors. I have at
length triumphed! I have succeeded in my purpose, and am,
at length the master of your fate! I witness your struggles
with sorrow, as they only drive you on the more certainly to
humiliation — perhaps to madness. It is pity, Ulrica, genuine
pity, and no other feeling, which would move me to implore of
you a willing concession of that which you can no longer avoid
to make. The necessity is now inevitable, and I would spare
you those further struggles which tend only to your exhaustion.
You are so completely in my power, that your hatred and fury
no longer awaken my indignation.”

“Do you exult, wretch — do you then exult? Beware!
You are not yet secure of your triumph.”

“I am. Let this night pass only without harm to the boy,
and all is well, and our triumph is complete. I am then your
master.”

“Master! master! Away, insolent, and leave me. You are
still my slave.”

“No, Ulrica, you know better than this. The epithet is no

longer applicable. I am your master, and the master of your
fate.”

“Slave! slave! slave!” was the oft-repeated and bitter exclamation,
which came forth from her lips in foamed impotence.

“If to conquer is to acquire the rights of a master, then are
these rights mine. Still I say not `Wo to the conquered.'
No, Ulrica, again and again, I conjure you to seek favor and to
find it. It is still in your power — it is in your power while this
night lasts — to receive indulgence. Be merciful to yourself as
well as to him, the youth, who now, for the first time, from that
awful hour of storm and meditated crime, the hour of his birth,
enters the dwelling of —”

“Say it not, man — wretch, fiend! Hell's curses and consuming
fire be upon that hour, and the vile thing of which you
speak. Slave! Hence! hence and leave me! and hear from
my lips — lips which have seldom spoken the language of vengeance
and of hate in vain, that the night is not yet over, and
he who shouts at the close of one day may howl ere the beginning
of another.”

“I do not despise your threats, Ulrica — I fear them; — but I
guard against them also. Did you fancy that you could penetrate
to that chamber undiscovered by the watchful eyes that
for the last seventeen years have been busy in penetrating
every movement of your mind and soul?”

“Accursed period! Fiend, wherefore will you torment me
with the recollections of that time?”

“Curse not the time, Ulrica, but the deed which it witnessed,
and the worse deeds to which it led — your deeds, Ulrica, not
mine — your free and voluntary deeds, to which neither the
counsels of wisdom, nor of others, but your appetites and evil
passions impelled you. You have called me slave repeatedly
to-night — it is your favorite epithet when you deign to speak
of, and to me. It is now time that I should relieve myself from
the epithet, as I am now able to prove myself your master, and
the master of your fate. If, seventeen years ago, I was the
bondman of your father, annexed to the soil, his serf — your
slave — I have been emancipated from all such relationships by
your crime. You asserted the power which was transmitted
you, to command my obedience. You required of me a service,

as a slave, which released me from all obligations of that condition;
and though I wore the aspect, the demeanor, the burden
of the slave, from that moment I resolved to be one no longer.
When that boy —”

“Curse him! — Hell's curses be upon him and you!” was the
fiendish exclamation, accompanied by looks equally fiendish.

“Those curses, Ulrica, will cling to your neck and strangle
you for ever!” was the stern and indignant answer of Bruno to
this interruption. “Of one thing be certain, they neither vex
me nor baffle me in my purpose. They have never hitherto
done so, nor shall they now, when my labors are on the eve of
successful completion. But I resume: When that boy was born,
I resolved to secure him from the fate of the others! Did it
not prove my fitness for freedom when my mind was successful
in the struggle with my master? How long has that struggle
continued — what has been its history — what now is its termination?
My triumph — my continued triumphs — my perfect
mastery over you! I have baffled you in your purposes — prevented
many — would I could have prevented all — of your evil
deeds and desires; protected the innocent from your hate — preserved
the feeble from your malice, and secured, to this moment,
the proofs equally of your crime and my superiority. Did
these achievements seem like the performances of a slave? Did
these betray the imbecility, the ignorance, or the pliability of
the slave? No, Ulrica, no! He who can rank with his master
has gained a sufficient, perhaps the only sufficient title to his
freedom! But that title was already gained when you descended
to the level, and contented yourself with sharing the
pleasures of the slave; when you were willing—”

A torrent of the most terrific imprecation, in a voice more like
the bursting of a thunderbolt, drowned the narrative of the
speaker, and prevented me from hearing the conclusion of a
speech, the tenor of which equally surprised and confused me.
What Bruno said was just enough to advance me to a mental
eminence whence I could survey only a sea of fog, and haze,
and mystery, much deeper than before. When his words again
became intelligible, he had discontinued his reminiscences.

“Hear me, Ulrica. You know not yet the extent of my
knowledge. You dream not that I am familiar with your secrets

even beyond the time when I was called to share them.
Till now I have kept the knowledge from you, but when I
name to you the young but unhappy Siegfried! His fate—”

“Ha! Can it be! Speak, man, monster, devil! How
know you this? Hath that vile negress betrayed me?”

“It needs not that you should learn whence my knowledge
comes. Enough that I know the fate of the unhappy Siegfried
— unhappy because of your preference, and too vain of his elevation
from the lowly condition of his birth, to anticipate the
fearful doom which in the end awaited him; and to which I,
too, was destined. But the kind Providence which has preserved
me, did not suffer me to be blinded and deceived by the
miserable lures which beguiled him to his ruin, and which you
vainly fancied should mislead me. You would have released
my limbs from fetters to lay them the more effectually upon my
soul. You commanded my submission, you enforced it, but you
never once deceived me. I saw through you from the first, and
prayed for the strength to baffle and overcome you. I obtained
it through prayer and diligence; and more than once it was my
resolution, as it long has been in my power, to destroy you, and
deliver you without time for repentance, to the fearful agent of
evil which has so long had possession of your heart. That boy
has saved you more than once. The thought of him, and the
thought of what he was, and should be, to you, has come between
me and my purpose. You have been spared thus long,
and it is with you to declare, in this place, and at this moment,
whether you will be wise in season, whether you will forego
the insane hatred which has filled your bosom from the hour of
his birth, and accept the terms of peace and safety which I now
offer you for the last time. Hear me through, Ulrica, and know
that I do not heed your curses. I am too strong, too secure in
my position, to be moved by the idle language of wrathful impotence.
This night must determine equally for him and yourself.
To-morrow, which witnesses his public triumph, will be
too late for you unless to share it. I have already seen his holiness,
who will be here at noon, armed with plenary powers to
search and examine; and it needs only that I should point my
finger, and your doom is written, here and eternally. You are
not in the temper to die; and you may escape for repentance.

Nor is the condition a hard one. The youth is noble, intelligent,
and handsome; he will do honor to any house. It is only to
acknowledge—”

“Say no more, slave! Base, blackhearted, bitter slave! Say
no more to me on this hateful subject. You have deceived me
long; but you have not yet baffled me, as you insolently boast.
Still less are you the master of my fate! — The master of my
fate! Ha! ha! ha! That were, indeed, to be humbled to the
dust. Away, fool, and know that my foot shall yet be upon
your neck, while your false tongue licks the ground in which
you grovel. Away! I defy you now, and spit upon you with
disgust and scorn. Give me way, that I may lose sight of your
false and hateful aspect.”

The words of the man were full of a calm, but bitter sorrow,
as he stood before her.

“For your own sake and safety, Ulrica, I implore you. Be
not rash; yield to the necessity which must go forward; yield
to it with grace, and all may yet be well. There is still time
for safety and for repentance. On my knees, Ulrica, I supplicate
you to be more merciful to yourself, to me, to him!”

“Never, never!” she exclaimed, as, with violent hand and
sudden blow, she struck the speaker, who had knelt before her,
over the yet unclosed lips, and rapidly passed toward an opposite
entrance. He did not rise, but continued to implore her.

“This, too, I forgive, Ulrica. Once more I pray you!”

“Slave! Slave! Slave! Do your foulest — base traitor, I
defy you!”

She disappeared in the same instant, and Bruno rose slowly
and sorrowfully to his feet; while, trembling with equal wonder
and apprehension, I stole back with hurried but uncertain footsteps
to my chamber, and hastily fastened the door behind me.