33. CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE SECRET STAIRWAY.
“GOD bless you!” said Andrew as he handed
her a gourd of water to revive her. “You are
as faithful as Hero. You are another Heloise.
You are as brave as the Maid of Orleans. I will
never say that women are unfaithful again. God
bless you, my daughter! You have given me faith in your sex.
I have been a lonely man; a boughless, leafless trunk, shaken by
the winter winds. But you are my niece. You know how to
be faithful. I am proud of you! Henceforth I call you my
daughter. If you were my daughter, you would be to me all
that Margaret Roper was to Sir Thomas More.” And the shaggy
man of egotistic and pedantic speech, but of womanly sensibilities,
was weeping.
The reviving Julia begged to know how August was.
“Ah, constant heart! And he is constant as you are. Noble
fellow! I will not deceive you. The doctors think that he will
not live more than twenty-four hours. But he is only dying to
see you, now. Your coming may revive him. We sent for
you this morning by Jonas, hoping you might escape and come
in some way. But Jonas could not get his message to you.
Some angel must have brought you. It is an augury of good.”
The hopefulness of Andrew sprang out of his faith in an
ideal, right outcome. Julia could not conceal from herself the
fact that his opinion had no ground. But in such a strait as
hers, she could not help clinging even to this support.
Andrew was a little perplexed. How to take Julia up-stairs?
Mrs. Wehle and Wilhelmina and the doctor went in regularly,
not by the rope-ladder, but by a more secure wooden one which
he had planted against the outside of the house. But Andrew
had suddenly conceived so exalted an opinion of his niece's
virtues that he was unwilling to lead her into the upper story in
that fashion. His imagination had invested her with all the glories
of all the heroines, from Penelope to Beatrice, and from
Beatrice to Scott's Rebecca. At last a sudden impulse seized
him.
“My dear daughter, they say that genius is to madness close
allied. When I built this house I was in a state bordering on
insanity, I suppose. I pleased my whims—my whims were my
only company—I pleased my whims in building an American
castle. These whims begin to seem childish to me now. I put
in a secret stairway. No human foot but my own has ever trodden
it. August, whom I love more than any other, and who
is one of the few admitted to my library, has always ascended
by the rope-ladder. But you are my niece; I would you were
my daughter. I will signalize my reverence for you by showing
up the stairway the woman who knows how to love and be faithful,
the feet that would be worthy of golden steps if I had them.
Come.”
Spite of her grief and anxiety, Julia was impressed and oppressed
with the reverence shown her by her uncle. She had a
veneration almost superstitious for the Philosopher's learning.
She was not accustomed to even respectful treatment, and to be
worshiped in this awful way by such a man was something
almost as painful as it was pleasant.
The entrance to the stairway, if that could be called a stairway
which was as difficult of ascent as a ladder, was through a closet
by the side of the donjon chimney, and the logs had been so arranged
without and within that the space occupied by the narrow
and zigzag stairs was not apparent. Up these stairs he took
Julia, leaving her in a closet above. As this closet was situated
alongside the chimney, it opened, of course, into the small corner
room which I have before described, and in which August was
now lying. Andrew descended the stairs and entered the upper
story again by the outside ladder. He thought best to prepare
August for the coming of Julia, lest joy should destroy a life
that was so far wasted.
