Sea and Shore Part 25

"No--no--do not flatter yourselves that I could be driven by you--by _any_ one to such G.o.d-offending," I hastened to say, for I felt the importance of keeping this barrier of disguise, of ice, between Gregory and myself as a means of safety for a season, and determined that he should not transcend it, if I could prevent an _expose_, such as his excited feelings made imminent. "My hopes are dead--say this to Mr.

Gregory--and I have reason to believe I should fare as well in his hands as in any other's, knowing him--as I know him to be--" and I hesitated here for a moment--"gentle, compa.s.sionate, faithful, where his feelings are fairly enlisted."

"He thanks you, through my lips, most lovely lady, for dis great proof of consideration; dis message,--which I shall truthfully deliver, will fill his heart with joy, long a stranger to his breast, for he has feared your hatred."

"Now go, Dr. Englehart, and let no one come to me without previous warning, for I need all my strength to bear me up in this emergency. Nor would I meet Mr. Gregory without due preparation--even of apparel," and I glanced at my dress of spotted lawn, faded and unseasonable as it seemed in the autumn weather. "I know his fastidiousness on this subject, and from this time it ought to, it must be my study to try to please him."

Why was not the fate of Ananias or Sapphira mine after that false utterance? Why did I triumph in the strength of guile that desperation gave me, rather than sink abashed and penitent beneath it? And this was the woman who had once lectured on duplicity and expediency, and deemed herself above them!

Bitter and nauseous as was this bowl to me, I drank it without a grimace; so much depended on the measure of deceit--hope, love, honor, life itself perhaps--for my terrors whispered that even such warnings as those Gregory had given were not to be disregarded where there was question of success or failure to Basil Bainrothe! But one alternative presented itself--escape! Delay, I scarce could hope for, and, even if granted, how could it avail me in the end? Those words--"He will make you dead!" rang in my ears, and seemed written on the wall. They confronted me everywhere. It was so easy to do this--easy to repeat what the papers had already told the world--so easy to confine me in a maniac's cell under an a.s.sumed name, and by the aid of my own gold, and say, "She perished at sea!"

It would be to the interest of all who knew it, to preserve the secret, except the poor s.h.i.+p's captain, and he had been a dupe, and would scarcely recognize his folly, or, if he did, be the first to boast of and publish it. Besides that, should the matter be inquired into, how easy for Bainrothe to allege that my own family had sanctioned his course to save my reputation! For innuendo was over on this disgraceful subject. He had declared openly his base design.

Years might elapse before the final exposition, years of utter ruin to my prospects and my hopes. Wentworth might be married by that time, or indifferent, or dead; Ernie too old to make the matter of a year or two of consequence in the carrying out of the nefarious scheme to sustain which it would be so easy to summon and suborn witnesses.

All these possibilities represented themselves to me with frightful distinctness; my mind became imbued with them to the exclusion of all else--of reason even, I was literally panic-stricken, and nothing but flight could satisfy my instinct, my impulse of self-preservation. I must go, even if blown like a leaf before the gales of heaven; must fly, if even to certainty of destruction. I had felt this necessity once before, be it remembered, but never so stringently, so morbidly as now.

I was yielding under the agony, the anxiety incident to my condition; my nervous system, too severely taxed, was breaking down, and it would succ.u.mb entirely, unless relief came to me (of this I felt convinced), before another weary month should roll away. Had I been imprisoned for a certain term of years as an expiation for crimes, I think I could have borne it better; but the injustice, the uncertainty of these proceedings were more than I could sustain.

I fell asleep, I remember, on the night of my interview with Gregory--_alias_ Englehart--to dream confusedly of Baron Trenck and his iron collar, and the Princess Amelia and her unmitigated grief, and it seemed to me that I was given to drink from a cup the poor prisoner had carved (as memoirs tell us he carved and sold many such), filled with a sort of bitter wine, by the man in the iron mask--so vividly did Fancy, mixing her ingredients, typify the anguish of my waking moments, and reproduce its anxieties, in dreams of night that could not be controlled.

When I awoke in the morning it was to lie quietly, and listen to the doleful voice of Sabra, for such had been Dinah's Congo name, uplifted in what site called a "speritual" as she cleaned the bra.s.s mountings of the grate and kindled its tardy fires. With very slight alteration and adjustment, this picturesque and dramatic Obi hymn is given in this place, just as I jotted it down in my diary, thus imprinting it on my memory from her own dolphin-like lips and bellows-like lungs. Her forefathers, she informed me with considerable pride, had been snake-wors.h.i.+pers, and she certainly inherited their tendency to treat the worst enemy of mankind with respectful adoration.

It served to divert my mind from its one fixed idea for a little time to arrange this singular hymn, which, together with those she had given voice to on the raft, proved her poetic powers. For Sabra a.s.sured me that this gift of sacred song had come to her one day when she was was.h.i.+ng her master's linen, and that she had felt it run cold streaks down her back and through her brain, and that from that time she was uplifted to sing "sperituals" by spells and seasons. This, her longest and most successful inspiration, I now lay before the reader:

SABRA'S SPERITUAL.

We's on de road to Zion, We's on de paf' to Zion, But dar's a roarin' lion, For Satan stops de way.

Oh! lef' us pa.s.s, ole Masta, Oh! lef' us pa.s.s, strong Masta, Oh! lef' us pa.s.s, rich Masta-- 'T am near de break ob day!

We's on de road to Zion, We's on de paf' to Zion, But wid his red-hot iron He bars de hebbenly gate Oh! lef' us pa.s.s, ole Masta, Oh! lef' us pa.s.s, kin' Masta, Oh! lef' us pa.s.s, sweet Masta, For we is mighty late!

Does you hear de rain a-fallin'?

Does you hear de prophets callin'?

Does you hear de cherubs squallin'

Wat's settin' on de gate?

Oh! lef' us pa.s.s, ole Masta, Oh! step dis side, kin' Masta, Unbar de do', dear Masta, We _dar_' no longer wait!

Does you hear de win' a blowin'?

Does you hear de chickens crowin'?

Does you see da n.i.g.g.ars hoein'?

It am de break ob day!

Oh! lef' us by, good Masta, Oh! stan' aside, ole Masta, Oh! light your lamp, sweet Sabiour, For we done los' our way!

We'll gib you all our money.

We'll fotch you yams and honey, We'll fill your pipe wid 'baccer, An' twiss your tail wid hay!

We'll shod your hoofs wid copper, We'll k.n.o.b your horns wid silber, We'll cook you rice and gopher, Ef you will clar de way!

He's gwine away, my bredderin, He's stepped aside, my sisterin, He's clared de track, my chillun, Now make do trumpets bray!

We tanks you kindly, Masta, We gibs you tanks, ole Masta, You is a buckra Masta, Whateber white folks say!

CHAPTER XII.

During these last days of my captivity, Mrs. Clayton was truly a piteous sight to see--swathed in flannel and helpless as an infant, yet still perversely vigilant as she had been in her hours of health, and determined on the subject of opiates as before. I sometimes think she feared to place herself wholly in my hands, as she must have been under the influence of a powerful anodyne, and that, in spite of her professions of confidence, and even affection, she feared me as her foe.

G.o.d knows that, had it been to save my own life, I would not have harmed one hair of her viperish head, as flat on top as if the stone of the Indian had been bound upon its crown from babyhood, yet full of brains to bursting around the base of the skull.

It was necessary for Dinah to be in constant attendance on my Argus, and even to feed her, so helpless were her hands, with the mucilages which now formed her princ.i.p.al diet, by the order of some celebrated physician, who wrote his prescriptions without seeing his patient, after the form of the ancients, sending them daily through the hands of Mrs.

Raymond. Still those vigilant green eyes never faltered in their task, and lying where--with the door opened between our chambers (as she tyrannically required it to be most of the time) she could command a view of almost every act of my life--I found her scrutiny more unendurable than when she had at least feigned to be absorbed with her stocking-basket. Ernie's noise, too, disturbed her, and I was obliged to keep him constantly amused, for fear that her wrath might culminate in eternal banishment.

The days slid on--November had pa.s.sed through that exquisite phase of existence (which almost redeems it from the reproach cast upon it through all time, of being _par excellence the_ gloomy month of the year), the sweet and balmy influences of which had reached us, even through the walls of our prison-house, in the shape of smoky suns.h.i.+ne, and balmy, odorous, and lingering blossoms, and was now a.s.serting its traditional character with much angry bl.u.s.ter of sleet, and storm, and cutting wind. It was Herod lamenting his Marianne slain by his own hand, and making others suffer the consequences of his regretted cruelty, his remorseful anguish. It was the fierce Viking making wild wail over his dead Oriana.

No more to come until another year had done its work of resurrection and decay, the lovely Indian Summer slumbered under her mound of withered flowers and heaps of gorgeous leaves, unheeding all, or unconscious of the grief of her stern bridegroom.

Cold and bitter and bleak howled the November blast, and ruthlessly drove the fleet against the s.h.i.+vering panes, exposed without, though s.h.i.+elded within by Venetian folding shutters, on that gray morning, when a pa.s.sing whisper from most unlovely and altogether unfaithful lips nerved me paradoxically to sudden resolution.

False as I knew old Dinah to be--almost on principle--still, I could not disregard the possible truth of her pa.s.sing warning, given in broken whisper first as she poured out my tea and afterward prepared my bath.

"Honey, don't you touch no tea nor coffee dis evening after Dinah goes oat ob here an' de bolt am fetched home; jus' make 'tence to drene it down, like, but don't swaller one mortal drop, for dey is gwine to give you a dose of laudamy"--nodding sagaciously and peering into the teapot as she interpolated aloud; "sure enough, it is full ob grounds, honey!

(I heerd 'um say dat wid my own two blessed yers), for de purpose of movin' you soun' asleep up to dat bell-tower (belfry, b'leves dey call it sometimes)--he! he! he! next door, in dat big house, war de res' on 'em libs, de little angel gal too. You see, honey, der was an ossifer to sarve a process writ about somebody here dis mornin', but dar was something wrong about it, so dey all said, an' he is comin' to sarch de house for you, I spec', to-morrow; for de hue an' cry is out somehow--or mebbe it's me--he! he! he! (very faintly) an' dey is gwine to move you, so dey says, to keep all dark, after you gets soun' asleep. But de ossifer is 'bleeged to wait till mornin' (court-time, as I heerd 'em say) comes roun' agin to git de _haby-corpy_ fixed up right, an' dat'a how he spounded hisself. Wat does dat mean, honey?"

"I can scarcely make you understand now, Dinah" (aside). "Don't ask me--just go on, low, very low; how did you hear all this?" (Aloud) "More cream, Dinah."

"Wid my ear to de key-hole, in de study, war dey axed de osaifer. My 'spicions was roused by de words he 'dressed to me wen I opened de front do', for, you see, dat ole n.i.g.g.e.r watch-dog ob dern, dat has nebber a good word for n.o.body, was gone to market, an' Madame Raymond she hel' de watch, an' she sont me from de kitchen to mine de front-do' bell.

"'Old dame,' says the ossifer (for so dey calls him), as pleasant as a mornin' in May, 'has you a young gal locked up here as you knows ob? Now tell what you choose, and don't be afraid of dese folks. Dis is a free country for bofe black and white.'

"Den I answered him straightforward like de trufe: 'Dar's n.o.body in de house heah but wat you kin see for axin' for 'em, as far as I knows on.

Wat young gal do you 'lude to, masta?--Bridget Maloney, I spose, dat Irish heifer wat does de chambers ebery mornin' and goes home ob ebenin's, Ef you means her, she's off to church to-day, an' sleeps at her mammy's house.'

"'Does you feel willin' to swar to de trufe of your insertion, ole dame?' he disclaims. 'I shall resist on dat'--fierce as a buck-rabbit, holdin' up his right hand, an' blinkin' his little 'cute eyes.

"Sartin an' sure I does when de right time is come,' I sez. 'Jes' take me to de court-hous' ef you doubt Dinah's word compunctionable. I neber hab bin in dat place yit since I was sold in Georgy on de block befo' de high, wooden steps; but I knows it in more solemn to lie dar dan in Methody meetin'-house.'

"Den Mr. Bainrofe he c.u.m out, hearin' de talk, in dat long-tailed, satin-flowered gownd ob his'n, wid a silk rope tied roun' his waist, an'

gole tossels hangin' in front, jes' like a Catholic Roman or a king, an'

he sez, 'Walk in here, my fren, an' don't tamper wid my servants--dat ain't gentlem'ly;' den he puts his han' on de ossifer's shoulder, an'

dey walked in together, an' I listened at de do', in duty boun', an' I heerd him say,' Plant a guard if you choose--do wateber you like--but, till dat writ am rectified, you can't sarch through my house, for a man's house is his castle here, as in de Great Britain, till de law reaches out a long arm an' a strong arm.' Dat was wat Mr. Bainrofe spounded to de ossifer, an' he 'peared fused-like an' fl.u.s.tertied, for I peeped fru de key-hole at 'em wen dey wus talkin'.' An,' sez he, 'dis heah paper does want de secon' seal, sure enough, since I 'xamine it, wat you is so 'tickiler 'bout; but dat can easily be reconstructified, an' I'll be sartin sure to be here airly to-morrow morning. In de mean while, my man, McDermot, shall keep de house in his eye, an' mus' hab de liberty of lodgment.'

"Den Mr. Bainrofe he say, 'Oh, sartinly--your man, McDermot, am welcome to his bite an' sup, an' all he kin fine out'--an' he laughed, an' dey parted, mighty pleasant-like, and den he called Mrs. Raymun' and Ma.s.s'

Gregory, an' I listened again. Dat's our colored way for reformation, child. An' I heerd 'em--"

"Dinah! Dinah! what are you muttering about--don't you hear Mrs. Raymond knocking? Miss Monfort must be tired out of your nonsense. What keeps you there so long?"

"I'se spounding another speritual to Miss Miramy, an', wen I gits 'gaged in dat way, I disregards airthly knockin'. I'se listenin' to de angels hammerin' overhead, an' Mrs. Raymun' will hab to wait a spell--he! he!

he!"

"Oh, go at once, Dinah, and open the door for Mrs. Raymond. I can write your song down just as well another time," I remonstrated, taking up and laying down my note-book as I spoke, so as to display my ostensible occupation to the peering eyes of Mrs. Clayton (now sitting bolt upright in her bed, looking like a Chinese bonze), for the purpose of sweeping in my position definitively.