Matilda Montgomerie Or The Prophecy Fulfilled Part 27

"I confess," said Gerald, again coloring, "that excessive pain made me wild, and I should have been tempted to have had recourse to any means to thwart him in his diabolical purpose. As you have said, however, the past night has effected a change in my feelings towards the man, and death from my hand, under any circ.u.mstances, is the last thing he has now to apprehend." Gerald sank his head upon his chest, and sighed bitterly.

"Well," said Jackson, "all this is queer enough; but what were you doing standing over the man just now with that knife, if it was not to harm him? And as for your countenance, it scowled so savage and pa.s.sionate, I was almost afraid to look at it myself."

"My motive for the action I must beg you to excuse my entering upon,"

replied Gerald. "Of this, however, be a.s.sured, Captain Jackson, that I had no intention to injure yon sleeping villain. On the word of an officer and a gentleman, and by the kindness you have shown me on all occasions since our journey commenced, do I solemnly a.s.sure you this is the fact."

"And on the word of an officer, and a true Tennessee man, bred and born I am bound to believe you," returned the American, much affected. "A man that could fight so wickedly in the field would never find heart, I reckon, to stick an enemy in the dark. No, Liftenant Grantham, you were not born to be an a.s.sa.s.sin. And now let's be starting--the day has already broke."

"And yet," returned Gerald, with a smile of bitter melancholy, as they hurried towards the spot where they had left their horses, "if any man ever had reason to act so as to merit the imputation of being such, I have. In that savage woodsman, Captain Jackson, you have beheld the murderer--the self-acknowledged murderer of my father."

"G.o.d bless my soul!" cried Jackson dropping the saddle which he carried and standing still with very amazement. "A pretty fix I've got into, to be sure. Here's one man accuses another of murdering his son, and t'other, by way of quits accuses him, in his turn, of murdering his father. Why, which am I to believe?"

"Which you please, Captain Jackson," said the sailor coolly, yet painedly; and he moved forward in pursuit of his horse.

"Nay, Liftenant Grantham," said the Aid-de-camp, who had again resumed his burden, and was speedily at the side of his companion, "don't be offended. I've no doubt the thing's as you say; but you must make allowance for my ideas, never too much of the brightest, being conglomerated, after a fas.h.i.+on, by what I have seen and heard, since we let loose our horses last night upon this prairie."

"I am not offended, only hurt," replied Gerald, shaking the hand that was cordially tendered to him, "hurt, that you should doubt my word, or attach anything to the a.s.sertion of that man beyond the mere ravings of a savage and diseased spirit. Justice to myself demands that I should explain everything in detail."

"Now, that's what I call all right and proper," returned the Aide-de-camp, "and should be done, both for your sake and mine; but we will leave it till we get once more upon the road and in sight of a tavern, for it's dry work talking and listening without even so much as a gum tickler of the Wabash to moisten one's clay."

They found their horses not far from the spot where they had been left on the preceding night, and these being speedily untethered and saddled, the travellers again pursued their route towards the capital of the state in which they found themselves. As they pa.s.sed the hut which had been the scene of so much excitement to both, the voice of Desborough, whom they had left fast asleep, was heard venting curses and imprecations upon them both, for having left him there to starve, bound and incapable of aiding himself. Wretch as the settler was, Gerald could not reconcile to himself the thought of his being left to perish thus miserably, and he entreated the Aid-de-camp to enter and divide the cords. But Jackson declared this to be impolitic, urging as a powerful reason for declining, the probability of his having fire-arms in the hut, with which (if released) he might follow and overtake them in their route, and sacrifice one or the other to his vengeance--an object which it would be easy to accomplish without his ever being detected. However, that the villain might have sustenance until some chance traveller should come later to his a.s.sistance, or he could manage to get rid of his bonds himself, he consented to place within his reach all the dried meat that had been left of his Indian foes, together with a pail of water--the latter by way of punishment for having swilled away at his Wabash in the ungracious manner he had.

While Jackson was busied in this office of questionable charity, the rage and disappointment of the settler surpa.s.sed what it had hitherto been. Each vein of his dark brow rose distinctly and swelling from its surface, and he kicked and stamped with a fury that proclaimed the bitter tempest raging in his soul. When the Aide-de-camp had again mounted, his shrieks and execrations became piercing, and for many minutes after they had entered into the heart of the forest in which the hut was situated, the shrill sounds continued to ring upon their ears in accents so fearful, that each felt a sensible relief when they were heard no more.

On the evening of the third day after this event, Jackson and our hero, between whom a long explanation on the subject of the settler had taken place, alighted at the door of the princ.i.p.al inn in Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky, which was their ultimate destination. To mine host Gerald was introduced by his escort with the formality usual on such occasions in America, and with the earnest recommendation to that most respectable personage, that, as his own friend, as well as that of Captain Forrester, every indulgence should be shown to the prisoner that was not inconsistent with his position.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Few situations in life are less enviable than that of the isolated prisoner of war. Far from the home of his affections, and compelled by the absence of all other companions.h.i.+p, to mix with those who, in manners, feelings, and national characteristics, form, as it were, a race apart from himself, his recollections, already sufficiently embittered by the depressing sense of captivity, are hourly awakened by some rude contrast wounding to his sensibilities, and even though no source of graver irritation should exist, a thousand petty annoyances, incident to the position, are magnified by chagrin from mole-hills into mountains. Such, however, would be the effect produced on one only, who, thrown by the accident of war into the situation of a captive, should have no grief more profound, no sorrow deeper seated, than what arose from the being severed from old, and a.s.sociated with new and undesired ties--one to whom life was full of the fairest buds of promise, and whose impatience of the present was only a burning desire to enter upon the future. Not so with Gerald Grantham. Time, place, circ.u.mstance, condition, were alike the same--alike indifferent to him. In the recollection of the scenes he had so lately quitted, and in which his fairer and unruffled boyhood had been pa.s.sed, he took no pleasure--while the future was so enshrouded in gloom, that he shrank from its very contemplation. So far from trying to wring consolation from circ.u.mstances, his object was to stupify recollection to the uttermost.

He would fain have shut out both the past and the future, contenting himself as he might with the present; but the thing was impossible. The worm had eaten into his heart, and its gnawings were too painful, not poignantly to remind him of the manner in which it had been engendered.

Upwards of a fortnight had elapsed since his arrival, and yet, although Captain Jackson, prior to his return to Sandusky, had personally introduced him to many highly respectable families in Frankfort, he uniformly abstained from cultivating their acquaintance, until at length he was, naturally enough, p.r.o.nounced to be a most disagreeable specimen of a British officer. Even with the inmates of the hotel, many of whom were officers of his own age, and with whom he constantly sat down to the ordinary, he avoided everything approaching to intimacy--satisfying himself merely with discharging his share of the commonest courtesies of life. They thought it pride--it was but an effect--an irremediable effect--of the utter sinking of his sad and broken spirit. The only distraction in which he eventually took pleasure, or sought to indulge, was rambling through the wild pa.s.ses of the chain of wooded hills which almost encircles the capital of Kentucky, and extends to a considerable distance in a westerly direction. The dense gloom of these narrow valleys he had remarked on his entrance by the same route, and feeling them more in unison with his sick mind than the hum and bustle of a city, which offered nothing in common with his sympathies, he now frequently pa.s.sed a great portion of the day in threading their mazes--returning, however, at a certain hour to his hotel, conformably with the terms of his parole.

On one occasion, tempted by the mellow beauty of the season--it was now the beginning of October--he had strayed so far, and through pa.s.ses so unknown to him, that when the fast advancing evening warned him of the necessity of returning, he found he had utterly lost his way. Abstracted as he usually was, he had yet reflection enough to understand that his parole of honor required he should be at his hotel at an hour which it would put his speed to the proof to accomplish. Despairing of finding his way by the circuitous route he had originally taken, and the proper clue to which he had moreover lost, he determined, familiar as he was with the general bearings of the capital, to effect his return in a direct line across the chain of hills already alluded to. The deepening shadows of the wild scene, as he proposed to ascend that immediately before him, told that the sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and when he gained its summit, the last faint corruscations of light were pa.s.sing rapidly away in the west. Still, by the indistinct twilight, he could perceive that at his feet lay a small valley, completely hemmed in by the circular ridge on which he stood. This traversed, it was but to ascend the opposite section of the ridge, and his destination would be gained. Unlike the narrow, rocky pa.s.ses which divided the hills in every other direction in which he had previously wandered, this valley was covered with a luxuriant verdure, and upon this the feet of Gerald moved inaudibly even to himself. As he advanced more into the centre of the little plain, he thought he could perceive, at its extremity on the right, the dark outline of a building--apparently a dwelling-house; and while he yet hesitated whether he should approach it and inquire his most direct way to the town, a light suddenly appeared at that point of the valley for which he was already making. A few minutes sufficed to bring him to the spot whence the light had issued. It was a small, circular building, possibly intended for a summer-house, but more resembling a temple in its construction, and so closely bordering upon the forest ridge, by a portion of the foliage by which it had previously been concealed, as to be almost confounded with it. It was furnished with a single window, the same through which the light now issued, and this, narrow, elongated, and studded with iron bars, was so placed as to prevent one even taller than our hero from gazing into the interior, without the aid of some elevation. But Gerald, independently of his anxiety to reach the town in time to prevent comment upon his absence, had no desire to occupy himself with subjects foreign to his object.

Curiosity was a feeling dead within his bosom, and he was preparing, without once staying his course, to ascend the ridge at the side of the temple, when he fancied he heard a suppressed groan, as of one suffering from intense agony. Not the groan, but the peculiar tone in which it was uttered, arrested his attention, and excited a vague yet stirring interest in his breast. On approaching closer to the temple, he found that at its immediate bas.e.m.e.nt the earth had been thrown up into a sort of mound, which so elevated the footing as to admit of his reaching the bars of the window with his hands. Active as we have elsewhere shown him to be, he was not long in obtaining a full view of the interior, when a scene met his eye which riveted him, as well it might, in utter astonishment. Upon the rude, uncarpeted floor knelt a female, who, with clasped and uplifted hands, had her eyes fixed upon a portrait that hung suspended from the opposite wall--her figure, clad in a loose robe of black, developing by its att.i.tude a contour of such rich and symmetrical proportion as might be difficult for the imagination to embody. And who was the being upon whom his each excited sense now lingered with an admiration little short of idolatry? One whom, a moment before, he believed to be still far distant, whom he had only a few months previously fled from as from a pestilence, and whom he had solemnly sworn never to behold again--yet whom he continued to love with a pa.s.sion that defied every effort of his judgment to subdue, making his life a wilderness--Matilda Montgomerie! and if her beauty had _then_ had such surpa.s.sing influence over his soul, what was not its effect when he beheld her _now_, every grace of womanhood exhibited in a manner to excite admiration the most intense!

It would be vain to describe all that pa.s.sed through the mind of Gerald Grantham, while he thus gazed upon her whose beauty was the rock on which his happiness had been wrecked. His first impulse had been to fly, but the fascination which riveted him to the window deprived him of all power, until eventually, of all the host of feelings that had crowded tumultuously upon his heart, pa.s.sion alone remained triumphant. Unable longer to control his impatience, he was on the point of quitting his station, for the purpose of knocking and obtaining admission by a door which he saw opposite to him, when a sudden change in the att.i.tude of Matilda arrested the movement.

She had risen, and with her long and dark hair floating over her white shoulders, now advanced towards the portrait, on which her gaze had hitherto been so repeatedly turned. This was so placed that Gerald had not previously an opportunity of remarking more than the indistinct outline, which proved it to represent a human figure; but as she for a moment raised the light with one hand, while with the other she covered it with a veil which had been drawn aside, he distinctly saw that it was the portrait of an officer dressed in the American uniform; and it even occurred to him that he had before seen the face, although, in his then excited state he could not recollect where. Even had he been inclined to tax his memory, the effort would have been impracticable, for another direction was now given to his interest.

On the left and close under the window, stood a rude sofa and ruder table, the only pieces of furniture which Gerald could observe within the temple. Upon the former Matilda had now reclined herself, and placing the candle upon the table at her side, proceeded to unfold and peruse a letter which she had previously taken from her pocket book. The same unconsciousness of observation inducing the same unstudiedness of action, the whole disposition of the form bore a character of voluptuousness, which the presumed isolation of her who thus exhibited herself, a model of living grace, alone could justify. But although the form was full of the eloquence of pa.s.sion, one had but to turn to the pale and severe face, to find there was no corresponding expression in the heart. As heretofore, the brow of the American wore a cast of thought--only deeper, more decided--and even while her dark eyes flashed fire, as if in disappointment and anger at sundry pa.s.sages in the letter over which she lingered, not once did the slightest color tinge her cheek, or the gloom dissipate itself from that cold brow. Emotion she felt, for this her heaving bosom and occasionally compressed lip betokened. Yet never was contrast more marked than that between the person and the face of Matilda Montgomerie, as Gerald Grantham then beheld her.

On one who had seen her thus for the first time, the cold, calm countenance of the singular girl, would have acted as a chastener to the emotions called up by the glowing expression of her faultless form, but although there was now a character of severity on her features, which must have checked and chilled the ardent admiration produced by that form on a mere stranger, Gerald but too well remembered occasions when the harmony of both had been complete, and when the countenance, rich in all those fascinations, which, even in her hours of utmost collectedness, never ceased to attach to the person, had beamed upon him in a manner to stir his very soul into madness. There were other and later recollections too, that forced themselves upon his memory; but these, even though they recalled scenes in which the voluptuous beauty of Matilda shone paramount, were as blots upon the fair picture of the past, and he fain would have banished them from his mind for ever.

The letter on which the American was now engaged, Grantham had recognised, from its fold and seal, to be one he had written prior to parting with her, as he had supposed for ever. While he was yet dwelling on this singularity, Matilda threw the letter upon the table at her side, and leaning her head upon her hand, seemed as if musing deeply upon its contents. The contraction of her brow became deeper, and there was a convulsed pressure of her lips as of one forming some determination, requiring at once strong moral and physical energy to accomplish. A cold shudder crept through the veins of Gerald, for too well did he fancy he could divine what was pa.s.sing in the soul of that strange yet fascinating woman. For a moment a feeling of almost loathing came over his heart, but when, in the next moment, he saw her rise from the sofa, revealing the most inimitable grace, he burned with impatience to throw himself, reckless of consequences, at her feet, and to confess his idolatry.

After pacing to and fro for some moments, her dark and kindling eye alone betraying the excitement which her colorless cheek denied, Matilda again took up the light, and having once more approached the portrait, was in the act of raising the veil, when a slight noise made by Gerald, who in his anxiety to obtain a better view of her, had made a change in his position, arrested her ear; and she turned and fixed her eye upon the window, not with the disturbed manner of a person who fears observation, but with the threatening air of one who would punish an intrusion.

Holding the light above her head, she advanced firmly across the room, and stopping beneath the window, fixed her eye steadily and unshrinkingly upon it. The mind of Gerald had become a chaos of conflicting and opposite feelings. Only an instant before and he would have coveted recognition, now his anxiety was to avoid it; but cramped in his att.i.tude, and clinging as he was compelled, with his face close to the bars, his only means of doing so was by quitting his position altogether. He therefore loosened his hold, and dropped himself on the mound of earth from which he had contrived to ascend, but not so noiselessly, in the unbroken stillness of the night, as to escape the keen ear of the American. In the next moment Gerald heard a door open, and a well known voice demand, in tones which betrayed neither alarm nor indecision.

"Who is there?"

The question was repeated in echo from the surrounding woods, and then died away in distance.

"Who of my people," again demanded Matilda, "has dared to follow me here in defiance of my orders?"

Another echo of indistinct sounds, and all again was still.

"Whoever you are, speak," resumed the courageous girl. "Nay," she pursued more decidedly, as having moved a pace or two from the door, she observed a human form standing motionless beneath the window. "Think not to escape me. Come hither slave that I may know you. This curiosity shall cost you dear."

The blood of Gerald insensibly chilled at the harsh tone in which these words were uttered, and had he followed a first impulse he would at once have retired from the influence of a command, which under all the circ.u.mstances, occurred to him as being of prophetic import. But he had gazed on the witching beauty of the syren, until judgment and reason had yielded the rein to pa.s.sion, and filled with an ungovernable desire to behold and touch that form once more--even although he should the next moment tear himself from it for ever--he approached and stood at the entrance of the temple, the threshold of which Matilda had again ascended.

No exclamation of surprise escaped the lips of the ever-collected American; and yet, for the first time that night, her cheek was suffused with a deep glow, the effect of which was to give to her whole style of beauty a character of radiancy.

"Gerald Grantham!"

"Yes, Matilda," exclaimed the youth, madly, heedless of the past, while he riveted his gaze upon her dazzling loveliness with such strong excitement of expression as to cause her own to sink beneath it, "your own Gerald--your slave kneels before you," and he threw himself at her feet.

"And what punishment does not that slave merit?" she asked in a tone so different from that in which she had addressed her supposed domestic, that Gerald could scarcely believe it to be the same. "What reparation can he make for having caused so much misery to one who loved and cherished him so well. Oh! Gerald, what days, what nights of misery have I not pa.s.sed since you so unkindly left me." As she uttered the last sentence, she bent herself over the still kneeling form of her lover, while her long dark hair, falling forward, completely enveloped him in its luxuriant and waving folds.

"You will be mine, Matilda," at length murmured the youth, as he sat at her side on the sofa, to which on rising he had conducted her.

"Yours, only yours," returned the American, while she bent her face upon his shoulder. "But you know the terms of our union."

Had a viper stung him, Gerald could not have recoiled with more dismay and horror from her embrace. Again the features of Matilda became colorless, and her brow a.s.sumed an expression of care and severity.

"Then, if not to fulfil that compact, wherefore are you here?" and the question was put half querulously, half contemptuously.

"Chance, Destiny, Fate,--call it what you will," cried Gerald, obeying the stronger impulse of his feelings, and clasping her once more to his beating heart. "Oh! Matilda, if you knew how the idea of that fearful condition has haunted me in my thoughts by day, and my dreams by night, you would only wonder that at this moment I retain my senses, filled as my soul is with maddening--with inextinguishable love for you."

"And do you really entertain for me that deep, that excessive pa.s.sion you have just expressed," at length observed Matilda, after some moments of silence, and with renewed tenderness of voice and manner, "and yet refuse the means by which you may secure me to you for ever?"

"Matilda," said Gerald, with vehemence, "my pa.s.sion for you is one which no effort of my reason can control; but let me not deceive you--it is _now_ one of the senses."

An expression of triumph, not wholly unmingled with scorn, animated the features of Matilda. It was succeeded by one of ineffable tenderness.

"We will talk of this no more to-night, Gerald, but to-morrow evening, at the same hour, be here: and our mutual hopes, and fears, and doubts shall be then realized or disappointed, as the event may show. To-morrow will determine if, as I cannot but believe, Destiny has sent you to me at this important hour. It is very singular," she added, as if to herself, her features again becoming deadly pale, "very singular indeed!"

"What is singular, Matilda?" asked Gerald.

"You shall know all to-morrow," she replied; "but mind," and her dark eye rested on his with an expression of much tenderness, "that you come prepared to yield me all I ask."

Gerald promised that he would, and Matilda expressing a desire to hear what had so unexpectedly restored him to her presence, he entered into a detail of all that had befallen him from the moment of their separation.

She appeared to be much touched by the relation, and in return, gave him a history of what she too had felt and suffered. She moreover informed him that Major Montgomerie had died of his wounds shortly after their parting, and that she had now been nearly two months returned to her uncle's estate at Frankfort, where she lived wholly secluded from society, and with a domestic establishment consisting of slaves. These short explanations having been entered into they parted--Matilda to enter her dwelling, the same which Gerald had marked in outline, in which numerous lights were now visible, and her lover to make the best of his way to the town.