Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

cajoled, and fawned, and played your traitor's part, a little longer, and grown richer. You purchase your voluptuous retirement dear!"

"Sit

"Edith!" he retorted, menacing her with his hand. down! Have done with this! What devil possesses you?" "Their name is Legion," she replied, uprearing her proud form as if she would have crushed him; 66 you and your master have raised them in a fruitful house, and they shall tear you both. False to him, false to his innocent child, false every way and everywhere, go forth and boast of me, and gnash your teeth, for once, to know that you are lying!"

He stood before her, muttering and menacing, and scowling round, as if for something that would help him to conquer her; but with the same indomitable spirit she opposed him without faltering.

"In every vaunt you make," she said, "I have my triumph. I single out in you the meanest man I know, the parasite and tool of the proud tyrant, that his wound may go the deeper, and may rankle more. Boast, and revenge me on him! You know how you came here to-night; you know how you stand cowering there; you see yourself in colors quite as despicable, if not as odious, as those in which I see you. Boast then, and revenge me

on yourself."

The foam was on his lips; the wet stood on his forehead. If she would have faltered once, for only one half moment, he would have pinioned her; but she was as firm as rock, and her searching eyes never left him.

"We don't part so," he said. "Do you think I am drivelling, to let you go in your mad temper ?"

"Do you think," she answered, "that I am to be stayed?” "I'll try, my dear," he said, with a ferocious gesture of his head.

"God's mercy on you, if you try by coming near me!" she replied.

"And what," he said, "if there are none of these same boasts and vaunts on my part? what if I were to turn too? Come!" and his teeth faintly shone again. "We must make a treaty of

this, or I may take some unexpected course. down!"

Sit down, sit

"Too late!" she cried, with eyes that seemed to sparkle fire. "I have thrown my fame and good name to the winds! I have resolved to bear the shame that will attach to me-resolved to know that it attaches falsely-that you know it too—and that he does not, never can, and never shall. I'll die, and make no sign. For this, I am here alone with you, at the dead of night. For this, I have met you here, in a false name, as your wife. For this, I have been seen here by those men, and left here. Nothing can save you now."

He would have sold his soul to root her, in her beauty, to the floor, and make her arms drop at her sides, and have her at his mercy. But he could not look at her, and not be afraid of her. He saw a strength within her that was resistless. He saw that she was desperate, and that her unquenchable hatred of him would stop at nothing. His eyes followed the hand that was put with such rugged uncongenial purpose into her white bosom, and he thought that if it struck at him, and failed, it would strike there, just as soon.

He did not venture, therefore, to advance towards her; but the door by which he had entered was behind him, and he stepped back to lock it.

"Lastly, take my warning! look to yourself!" she said, and smiled again. "You have been betrayed, as all betrayers are. It has been made known that you are in this place, or were to be, or have been. If I live, I saw my husband in a carriage in the street to-night!"

"Strumpet, it's false!" cried Carker.

At the moment, the bell rang loudly in the hall. He turned white, as she held her hand up like an enchantress, at whose invocation the sound had come.

"Hark! do you hear it?

He set his back against the door; for he saw a change in her, and fancied she was coming on, to pass him. But, in a moment, she was gone through the opposite doors communicating with the bedchamber, and they shut upon her.

Once turned, once changed in her inflexible unyielding look,

he felt that he could cope with her. He thought a sudden terror, occasioned by this night-alarm, had subdued her; not the less readily, for her overwrought condition. Throwing open the doors, he followed, almost instantly.

But the room was dark; and as she made no answer to his call, he was fain to go back for the lamp. He held it up, and looked round, everywhere, expecting to see her crouching in some corner; but the room was empty. So, into the drawing-room and dining-room he went, in succession, with the uncertain steps of a man in a strange place; looking fearfully about, and prying behind screens and couches; but she was not there. No, nor in the hall, which was so bare that he could see that, at a glance.

All this time, the ringing of the bell was constantly renewed, and those without were beating at the door. He put his lamp down at a distance, and going near it, listened. There were several voices talking together; at least two of them in English; and though the door was thick, and there was great confusion, he knew one of these too well to doubt whose voice it was.

He took up his lamp again, and came back quickly through all the rooms, stopping as he quitted each, and looking round for her, with the light raised above his head. He was standing thus in the bedchamber, when the door, leading to the little passage in the wall, caught his eye. He went to it, and found it fastened on the other side; but she had dropped a veil in going through, and shut it in the door.

All this time the people on the stairs were ringing at the bell, and knocking with their hands and feet.

He was not a coward: but these sounds; what had gone before; the strangeness of the place, which had confused him, even in his return from the hall; the frustration of his schemes (for, strange to say, he would have been much bolder if they had succeeded); the unseasonable time; the recollection of having no one near to whom he could appeal for any friendly office; above all, the sudden sense, which made even his heart beat like lead, that the man whose confidence he had outraged, and whom he had so treacherously deceived, was there to recognise and challenge him with his mask plucked off his face; struck a panic through him. He tried the door in which the veil was shut, but couldn't

force it. He opened one of the windows, and looked down through the lattice of the blind, into the courtyard; but it was a high leap, and the stones were pitiless.

The ringing and knocking still continuing-his panic too-he went back to the door in the bedchamber, and with some new ef. forts, each more stubborn than the last, wrenched it open. Seeing he little staircase not far off, and feeling the night-air coming up, ne stole back for his hat and coat, made the door as secure after him as he could, crept down lamp in hand, extinguished it on seeing the street, and having put it in a corner, went out where the stars were shining.

CHAPTER LV.

Rob the Grinder loses his Place.

THE porter at the iron gate which shut the court-yard from the street, had left the little wicket of his house open, and was gone away; no doubt to mingle in the distant noise at the door on the great staircase. Lifting the latch softly, Carker crept out, and shutting the jangling gate after him with as little noise as possible, hurried off.

the panic

In the fever of his mortification and unavailing rage, that had seized upon him mastered him completely. It rose to such a height that he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather than meet the man of whom, two hours ago, he had been utterly regardless. His fierce arrival, which he had never expected; the sound of his voice; their having been so near a meeting, face to face; he would have braved out this, after the first momentary shock of alarm, and would have put as bold a front upon his guilt as any villain. But the springing of his mine upon himself, seemed to have rent and shivered all his hardihood and self-reliance. Spurned like any reptile; entrapped and mocked; turned upon, and trodden down by the proud woman whose mind he had slowly poisoned, as he thought, until she had sunk into the mere creature of his pleasure; undeceived in his deceit, and with his fox's hide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded, and afraid.

Some other terror came upon him quite removed from this of being pursued, suddenly, like an electric shock, as he was creeping through the streets. Some visionary terror, unintelligible and inexplicable, associated with a trembling of the ground,—a rush and sweep of something through the air, like Death upon the wing. He shrank, as if to let the thing go by. It was not gone, it never had been there, yet what a startling horror it had left behind.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »