Miriam Monfort by Catherine A. Warfield (page 6)

All further dialogue was cut short by the wild shout that rose from the crowd, the delusive cry of “A sail, a sail!” and Dunmore rushed with the rest to descry its myth-like form, if possible. It was some moments before hope again died down to a flat level of despair.

Too remote for signal or trumpet was that distant, white-winged vessel gliding securely on its path of peace, unconscious of the extremity of the mighty steamer it distinguished dimly, no doubt, by the aid of telescopes.

However this might have been, for the second time on that day of direst exigency, a ship went by, observed yet unobserving.

Fainter and fainter grew the accents of the fierce, fanatical preacher; his excitement forsook him as the danger became more and more imminent.

The crowd broke into groups. Pale, stern men, with rigid features, who had been employed aiding in the construction of the rafts, returned now to the sides of their wives and children.

Through a vista on the deck I discerned Miss Lamarque, sitting quietly with her youngest nursling in her arms, beside her brother. His children and slaves were gathered around her knees. Dunmore was giving her my message, I could not doubt, from the glances she cast in my direction, as he stood near by. I knew that he would soon turn to come again, but my resolution was fixed.

Captain Ambrose, with a face grown old in half a day, gray, abstracted, wretched, passed and repassed me several times, telescope in hand.

Ralph Maxwell on the round-house kept constant watch, his attitude dauntless, his face uplifted and keen, field-glass in hand. His West-Point training stood him in good stead now. Captain Falconer, a naval officer, had returned to the side of Miss Oscanyan, the woman he had loved hopelessly for years, and, before the scene closed between us forever, I saw him clasp her to his bosom; so that trying hour had for some high spirits its crowning consolations, its solace and reward, and, whatever else was in store, the martyrdom of love was over.

An eager hand caught my shawl. “He is coming back, coming to persuade you to leave us,” said the young girl; “but you have promised not to part from us, and I feel that God will remember us if we remain together firm and fast, we three.”

Then the pale widow spoke in turn: “Let me stay beside you too,” she entreated; “it makes me feel stronger, I am so desolate–” and she bowed her head and wept.

I would have said in the strange, calm bitterness that possessed my soul: “What value has life to you and your deformed one? Poor, widowed, sickly, and despised, why should you wish to live? Why encumber me?”

But thoughts like these were not for human utterance now, and we sat together, hand locked in hand for a time, waiting for the end, as men may wait in years to come, when the earth is gray with sin, for the coming of the fiery comet that they know is destined to consume them.

For was not this ship our world, penned in as we were on every side, and separated from all else by an ocean inexorable and illimitable as space, and were not we likewise looking forward to a fiery doom–our finite, perhaps final, day of judgment?

I could understand then, for the first time, how condemned criminals feel–well, strong, yet dying! I knew how Walter La Vigne, the self-doomed, had felt, and some passages of Madame Roland’s appeal rose visibly before me, as if written on the air rather than in my memory. I had read the book at Beauseincourt, and it had powerfully impressed me; and this, I remember, was the passage that swept across my brain:

“And thou whom I dare not name, wouldst thou mourn to see me preceding thee to a place where we can love one another without wrong–where nothing will prevent our union–where all pernicious prejudices, all arbitrary exclusions, all hateful passions, and all tyranny, are silent? I shall wait for thee, then, and rest!”

So centred were my dying thoughts on Wentworth–so calmly did I await the great change that men call sudden death!

All this time–a time much briefer than that I have taken in recounting my sensations–the glorious summer’s sun, the sun of morning, was bathing the sea; the ship, with beauty, and a soft, fresh breeze, was fanning every pallid brow with a caressing, silken wing, that seemed to mock its wretchedness.

I thought not once of Christian Garth. I had ceased to strain my eyes for a distant sail, to seek to compromise with my fate or make conditions with my Creator. Dunmore was forgotten. I was composed to die–not resigned. These things are different; a bitter patience possessed me that I felt would sustain me to the end, but I was not satisfied that my doom was just or opportune.

“Farewell, sweet, young, vigorous life!” I moaned aloud. “Farewell, Miriam! It will not be thou, but a phantom, that shall arise from dead ashes! Farewell, dear hand, that hast served me long and well!” and I kissed my own right hand. I had not known until that moment how truly I loved myself. “Sister, lover, farewell! Mother, father, receive me! Gentle Constance, reach forth thy guiding hand and lead me to my parents! Wentworth, remember me! Saviour, my soul is thine!”

I bowed my head. I had no more to say. Unwilling I was to die–afraid I was not; for, as I sat there, my whole life swept before me, as it is said to do before the eyes of the drowning, and rapidly as one may sweep the gamut on a piano with one introverted finger, and I saw myself as though I had been another. I had done nothing to make me afraid to meet my God; so, with closed eyes, I lingered in the shadow, conscious of nothing save exceeding calm, when the grasp of my gentle friend of the moment aroused me to a sense of what was occurring, and I saw, with horror indescribable, the fierce flames leaping from the deck, heard the hoarse shouts, beheld the lurid surging of an agonized and despairing multitude! But above all rang the clear, trumpet-tones of Captain Ambrose, soon to sink in death:

“To the boats–to the boats! but save the women first–the children–as ye are Christian men! So help ye, mighty God!”

I heard later how signally this noble charge was disregarded; how utterly self triumphed over generosity and duty; and how, in enforcing the example all should have followed. Captain Ambrose lost his valiant, valuable life. But this was thought nothing of then, and I sat patiently down to perish!

CHAPTER IV.

It was sunset when I first felt able to sit up beneath the awning of sails which provident hands had stretched above the central platform reserved for the occupancy of the women and children, spread thick with mattresses on the raft, and look about me understandingly.

We were riding smoothly over the long, low, level billows of that summer sea, sustained beyond their reach on what seemed a rude barn-floor, composed as this was of the masts, booms, and yards, roughly lashed together by tarred ropes, no longer needed on the destined ship, and which had been assigned by the captain for that purpose to Christian Garth.

A mast was erected in the front of this hastily-constructed raft, on three sides of which were breastworks, with strong, loose ropes attached, so that those who clung to this refuge might support themselves with comparative safety, or rather have a chance for life, when our “floating grave” should hang suspended perpendicularly on the steep side of a mountain-billow, or drift beneath it.

Just below, and surrounding the small, elevated platform on which I found myself when I revived, stretched on a slender mattress by the side of my feeble widow and her moaning child, were rows of barrels, firmly fastened by cleats, so as insure, to some degree, not only the preservation of our food and water, but to form a sort of bulwark of protection for those who occupied the central portion of the raft.

The young girl, of whom I have spoken as having attached herself to me during the last moments of my stay on shipboard, and an old negro woman, whose crooning hymns made a strange accompaniment to the dashing waters, and whose stolid tranquillity seemed to reproach my anguish, were our only companions on the sort of dais assigned to his female passengers by Christian Garth.

The man himself, to whom we owed our deliverance, stood near his primitive mast, trimming his sail carefully, and looking out with his far-reaching, sagacious ken over the waste of waters, into which the blood-red, full-orbed sun seemed dipping, suddenly, as for his night-bath.

A few of the common passengers of the Kosciusko, and a knot of the seamen, comprising not more than twenty souls, composed the groups, scattered about the roughly yet securely lashed raft, silent and observant all, as men who face their doom are apt to be.

I looked in vain for one familiar face, and for a moment regretted that I had been withheld, as by some spell, for whose weird influence I could never sufficiently account, from having cast my destiny with theirs, who were so much nearer to me in station and congeniality of spirit than those around me. With Miss Lamarque’s hand locked in mine, I should have vied with her, I felt, in cheerful courage; and the knightly calmness of Dunmore might have sustained my drooping, fainting soul. These were my peers, and, _with_ them, I should have been better content to be tried.

But the white squall, which had in no way affected us (so small and partial was the sphere of its influence), had sufficed to separate ours irretrievably from our companion-raft, and the squadron of boats that had promised not to forsake us. And now the eye of agony was strained in vain over the weltering waste, for a vestige of those refugees from the Kosciusko–buried, perhaps, a thousand fathoms deep, by their sudden visitors, beneath the waves of that deadly Atlantic sea.

Tears rained over my face as I thought of this probability, and, hopeless as I was of rescue, the almost certain fate of my companion-voyagers fell over me like a pall. “Better, perhaps–far better had it been”–I thought so then–“had we all perished together in that terrific sheet of flame that rose up like a dividing barrier between us at the last. Fit emblem of the final day of doom. Our trials were but begun. What more remained? God in heaven only knew!”

And rapidly, and in panoramic succession, all the fearful adventures of raft and boat that I had ever read of, or heard related, passed across my mind, ending with that latest, and perhaps the most fearful of all–the wreck of the Medusa!

The night came down serene and beautiful. As the sun disappeared in ocean, up rose the full-orbed moon–crimson and magnified by surrounding vapors–that to the practised eye portended future tempest, calm as the ocean and the heavens then seemed.

The constellations, singularly distinct and splendid, had the power to fix and fascinate my vision–never felt before–as they shone above me, clear and crystalline as enthroned in space–judges, and spectators, cold and pitiless as it seemed to me, in the strangeness and forlornness of my condition–Arcturus, and the Ursas, great and little, and Lyra, and the Corona Borealis, Berenice, and Hydra, and Cassiopea’s chair; these and many more. I marked them all with a calm scrutiny that belongs to terror in some phases. The stars seemed mocking eyes that night–smiling and safe in heaven–the moon, a cold and cruel enemy with her vapory train, so grandly sailing across the cloudless heaven–so careless of our fate–the wreck of a ruined world as many deem her–veiling in light her inward desolation.

A faint and vapory comet lurked on the horizon–like a ghastly messenger–scarcely discernible to the human eyes, yet vaguely ominous and suggestive–a spirit-ship it might be–watching in silence to bear away the souls of those lost at sea!

There was deep stillness–unbroken, save by the lapping and plashing waters. Even the crooning hymns of the old negro woman had died away; and the moans of the suffering child, and the sobs of the weary mother, and the eager exclamations of Ada Greene (for such I learned was the name of my young companion), were, for a season, lost alike in sleep.

Food had been distributed–prayer had been offered–all seemed favorable so far to our preservation. We were on the track of voyage–the pathway of ships–and the sea was tranquil as a summer lake; up to this point, the arm of God had been extended over us almost visibly. Would He forsake us now? I questioned thus, and yet I could not, dare not, hope as others hoped!

The morning came; I woke, aroused by Salva’s song, from troubled sleep; and, as I rose to a sitting posture, a troop of sea-birds that had been swooping overhead, fled with a fiend-like screaming.

The mother and child were already consuming their scant allowance of food. Ada Greene was standing self-poised, swaying like a slender reed with the motion of the raft, so as never to lose her balance, like a young acrobat, with her folded arms, her floating hair, and fair Aurora face, uplifted to the day.

Over the raft were scattered groups of men taking their morning meal; but, as before, the stalwart form of Christian Garth was at the helm, or rather, mast and rudder merged in one, which he controlled with calm, sagacious power.

“Is there a ship in the distance, that you gaze so earnestly?” I asked of the young girl as I put back my hair that had clustered thickly over my face in my uneasy slumber, and followed eagerly the direction of her eyes.

“Oh! no; only a school of dolphins; but it is so pretty! Some came quite near just now; the men were harpooning them; but if we had them we could not cook them, you know, on this miserable contrivance.”

“One we should be very grateful for, Ada, since it is all that lies between us and destruction!” I answered, sorrowfully, for the levity of her spirit grieved and shocked me.

“I don’t know about that; I think we might as well have gone down at once as stay here, and be roasted and starved. How hot it is to-day! What would I not give for a good glass of ice-water! Don’t look so shocked; we shall be saved, of course. I am not the least afraid about that, for Mr. Garth says we _must_ see a ship before evening. Don’t you mark the flag flying at the mast-head? He brought it on board on purpose, so that they might not mistake our country (the packets, I mean), and give us the go-by as that Spanish vessel did! But they do say that was a pirate; and that, instead of sitting on a plank, we should have been walking a plank by this time, had they rescued us. I’m rather glad they didn’t, though, after all–things couldn’t be much worse than they are, could they, now?–There, I came very near falling, I declare!”

The moans of the sick woman at my side became almost constant toward noon; and she was obliged to surrender her infant wholly to my charge, for the haemorrhage of the day before had returned, and she was fast drifting into unconsciousness. “Water, water!” was the only intelligible cry that left her lips, and that we had to give was warm and brackish, from the occasional lapping of the sea against the barrels, into which it oozed insensibly.

The sun shone down hot and brazen, from the lurid heavens, covered with filmy clouds, so equally overspreading it that a thin, gray veil seemed to interpose between us and its scorching rays, scarcely tempering them by its diaphanous medium.

Beneath it lay the sea, like a copper shield, smooth and glowing, seething like a boiling caldron, with its level foam, for the long, low-rolling billows lifted themselves but lazily from Ocean’s breast, and assumed no distinctness of form or motion. Not the faintest breeze came to relieve the stifling closeness of the atmosphere, or lift the collapsed sail, or furled flag, that clung around our mast. The air shimmered visibly around us, as though undergoing some transformation from the heat, some culinary process, through which it was to be rendered unfit for human lips to breathe. Birds flew low and heavily around the raft, as though their wings met such resistance as fish find in water, alighting occasionally to pick up languidly morsels of rejected food.

Still the old negro’s crooning hymns went on, recommenced with morning light. To my sad heart, the refrain bore a mournful significance:

“In the land of the New Jerusalem
There shall be no more sea.”

She sat, a wrinkled hag, with a leering, repulsive face, with her feet planted firmly on her mattress, her knees elevated, her long, ape-like arms closely embracing these–her fingers, strung with brass and silver rings, intertwined with snake-like flexibility.

On her head was the inevitable bright-colored handkerchief, the badge of her race, or rather of her condition in those days, and she wore the decent, blue-cotton frock, which marked her for a plantation-negro. Large hoops were in her flat, enormous ears, that seemed to suspend her shoulders as they touched them, drawn up and narrowed as these were, even beyond their natural hideousness, by her attitude, one which she maintained as stolidly as a dervish.

“You must help us,” I said, at last, when the crisis came, and affairs waxed desperate. “You must take the child, at least, and care for him. See, it requires two persons to sustain his dying mother–one to wet her lips, one–“

“‘Deed, honey,” she interrupted, coolly, “you must ‘scuse me dis oncst; I has jus’ as much to do as I kin posomply ‘complish, in keepin’ of myself dry, comfable, and singin’ ob my hyme-toones. We has all to take our chances dis time, an’ do for our own selves, black and white; an’ I don’t see none ob my own white folks on dis raf’, wich I is mighty proud of. Dar, now! I does b’leve dat is a ship sail way off dar. Does you see it, honey?”

And she pointed to a large white gull, skimming the main at some distance. Disgusted with her selfishness, I vouchsafed her no further notice at the time, and her crooning went on during the whole period of the bitter death-struggle of that poor sufferer, whose name I never knew, but whose little, deformed waif, the orphan of the raft, remained my heritage.

“You will take care of him,” she had said to me, in her last conscious moments, “my baby-boy, my little–” the name died on her lips, and she never spoke again.

When she was dead, Christian Garth caused her to be wrapped in sail-cloth, weighted with chains, and, with a brief prayer, consigned to the deep. His superstitious sailor’s fears rebelled against the idea of keeping a corpse on board one moment longer than necessary, so the rites of sepulture were speedily accomplished.

When I remonstrated, feebly enough it is true, for exhaustion was supervening on long-sustained effort, at his haste, which, even under the circumstances, seemed to me indecent, he coolly spoke of it as a measure essential to the good of all.

Talismanic as were these words on such occasion, mine were the lips that murmured the brief prayer, a portion of the solemn Episcopal grave-service that I chanced to remember, above the poor, pale corpse, even while my weary arms inclosed the struggling child, who, understanding nothing of the truth, would fain have plunged after his mother into depths unknown.

A low, long roll of thunder smote on the ear, like a message to the ocean, from the heavens above, as we saw the waters close greedily over the form of our dead passenger. The men who had launched the body from the raft looked up and listened fearfully, and Christian Garth hastened to trim his sail.

It was sunset now, and the clouds gathered so rapidly about the sun, that he sank empalled in purple to his watery bed, leaving no trace behind to mark his faded splendor.

A sudden breeze sprang up, infinitely refreshing at first to soul and sense, and again the thunder lumbered and crashed about us. The billows heaved and leaped like steeds just freed from harness, tossing their white manes; the raft shuddered and reeled with a deadly, sickly motion, like a creature in strong throes, plunging with frantic suddenness into the troughs of the waves at one moment, as if impelled by fear, then rallying to their summits, only to cast itself wildly down again.

All was confusion, dire and terrible. Then burst the storm upon us–rain, wind!

I was conscious of clutching, with one hand, a rope which strained and swayed desperately, while with the other I grasped the affrighted baby to my breast.

Ada Greene and the old negro woman clung together, hanging to the same cord of safety, flung to them, to all of us, by the hand of Christian Garth.

The barrels strained and groaned, and broke from their fastenings; the awning was wrenched from its mooring, and swept away; the bitter brine broke over us and choked our cries; the anguish of death was upon us without its submission. We struggled instinctively to breathe, to live; we grappled desperately with circumstances; we fought against our doom.

Suddenly the sea dropped to rest–the storm was spent; a low, sighing, soughing gale swept around our nucleus of despair, and the surging of the sea was like a bitter funeral-wail. The air grew cold and chill; one vast, pall-like cloud enveloped the whole face of the unpitying heavens, that seemed literally “to press down upon our very faces like a roof of black marble.”

No moon, no stars, were visible; we had no light of any kind, nor could we ascertain the damage done until the cold, gray morning broke in gloom and rain upon us. Then it was made plain to us that our food had all been swept overboard–together with six seamen and five of the passengers. There remained on the raft only three shuddering women and a little child–and a handful of weary and discouraged men, sustained and led to a sense of duty by the dauntless master-spirit of one alone–the presence of Christian Garth, indomitable through all hardships. So it had fared with us for six-and-thirty hours of our experience on “our floating grave.”

We had been washed from our little platform, which ordinarily lifted us above the lapping of the sea during the prevalence of the storm–and we regained it now, glad to repose even on the sea-soaked mattresses bereft of awning. By the mercy of God some glutinous sea-zoophytes had been tangled among them, and by the help of the brine-soaked biscuit in my pocket (crammed there, it may be remembered, as a precious hoard for a time of dire necessity, on the morning of the fire, by the small, cunning fingers of the sickly child), we breakfasted, or rather broke our fast–we four, the child, the negress, Ada Greene, and I–and life was aroused again in every breast by means of a briny morsel.

“A cup of coffee would not be amiss just now,” said the girl, laughing, “but the Lord knows we can wait.”

There was a strange, bright light in the eyes of the young girl as she spoke these words, and she was arraying her hair coquettishly with some bunches of sea-weed, which had been cast up by the storm, and from which the eager, famishing lips of the little boy had been permitted to suck the gluten before discarding the skeleton stems.

That hair was in itself a grace and glory–rippling from crown to waist in sheeny, golden splendor, fine as silk, and glossy as the yellow floss threads of pale, ripe Indian-corn–beautiful, even in its dishevelled and drenched condition, as an artist’s dream. Devoid as it was of regular beauty, the face beneath, with its clear blue eyes, red lips, and pure complexion, the pink and white that reminds one of a sweet-pea or ocean-shell, had struck me as very lovely from the first; nothing to support this groundwork of excellence had I discovered, however, either in the form of the head, which was ignoble, or the expression of the face, which was both timid and defiant, or the tones of the voice, which were shrill and harsh by turns–yet, as my fellow-voyager and sufferer, I was interested in this young creature, not forgetting, either, her attention during my pending swoon, of which mention has been made.

“I am going to the party, whatever the preacher may say, and whether Captain Ambrose wills it or no. I am under his care and protection, you see, to go to New York to my aunt, Madame Du Vert, the famous milliner, and I am to learn her trade. Her name is Greene, so they call her Du Vert, to make out that she is French–_vert_ is _green_, in French, you see; or so they tell me. Now, Captain Ambrose is a church-member, too, and he does not want dancing on his ship, and so he made the calkers pitch the deck–that was to break up the ball, you know; but don’t tell any one this for the ‘land’s sake,'” drawing near to me and whispering strangely, with her forefinger raised–“or all those proud Southern people would pitch into me–pitch, you understand?” and she laughed merrily–“their white satin slippers and all!”

“You must not talk so, Ada;” and I took her hand, which was burning.

“Why not? Who are you, to prevent me? I am as good as you any day–or Miss Lamarque either, or any of those haughty ones–though my father was a negro-trader. Well, whose business was that but God’s? If He don’t care, who need care?–An’t I right, old mammy?” appealing to the ancient negress, who had suspended her croon to listen.

“Yes, indeed–that you is, honey; right to upholden your own dad–nebber min’ what he did to serbe the debble. But you looks mighty strange, chile, outen your eyes. Wat dat you sees ober dar–is it a ship, gal?–or must we–” and her voice sank to a mutter–“must we fall back on dis picaninny, to keep from starvation?–“

I understood her dreadful suggestion even before the words fully left her cannibal lips, exposing her yellow fangs; from the glance of her cruel eye in the direction of the child, and the working of her long, crooked talons, rather than fingers, writhed like knotted serpents; I understood them with an instinct that made me clutch him closely to my breast, and narrowly watch his enemy from that hour until the time when my brain failed and my eyes closed in unconsciousness, and with the determination to plunge with him into the sea rather than devote him to such a fate or yield to such an alternative as this wretch in human form had more than hinted–even should the animal instinct, underlying every nature, presume to dictate to reason at the last!

We could but die–that was the very worst that Fate had in store for us–_but_ die in the body! How infinitely worse that the soul should perish through the selfish sensuousness of cannibalism, which would degrade life itself below dissolution, even if preserved by such means!

“I am ready now to go to Captain Ambrose for assistance,” said Ada Greene, poising herself before me, and having surrendered or forgotten her first idea, evidently, in the new mania of the moment. “Of course, he does not intend to leave us here to perish, and he is in the next cabin–but a step; see how easily I can get to him, and I shall be back before you can say ‘Presto!'”

As nimbly as a sea-gull runs upon the sand, the young creature flew across the now level raft toward the sea, but a strong hand clutched her as she was about to step overboard, and compelled her back to her place on the platform, where, bound with cords, she lay raving, until sleep or unconsciousness mercifully supervened to spare me the spectacle of her agony, which no human power could alleviate.

Hours passed before this “consummation devoutly to be wished” took effect, and, at the end of that time, my reeling brain, my fainting energies, warned me that I, too, was probably approaching some dreadful crisis. With a view to the refreshment its waters could possibly afford my head, I crept quietly from the platform on which the old negro woman held enforced guard over the insensible form of Ada Greene, and, still clasping the poor helpless one, so mysteriously thrust upon my tender mercies, to my bosom, I gained the edge of the raft, unnoticed by Christian Garth, who might otherwise have apprehended me in turn, and borne me back to my allotted precincts, and hung above the ocean, so as to suffer its cooling spray to fall unceasingly across my burning forehead.

From some instinctive prompting I had lashed the poor, frail baby to my girdle with the scarf of knotted silk I wore about my neck, and, wan and exhausted, he lay upon my shoulder tranquilly as any Indian papoose might do on its mother’s breast. A branch of sea-weed floated past as I looked down–some gracious mermaid’s gift, perhaps, extended by her invisible fingers to greet our famishing lips–and I caught it eagerly, dividing the welcome nutriment with the perishing child, now patient from weakness and instinctive consciousness, perhaps, of the entire uselessness of cries and tears.

Whether the weed was a sort of ocean-hasheesh, or wholesome aliment, I never knew, but certain it is that, from the moment its juices passed my lips, a strange and delightful quietude stole over my weary senses, fast lapsing, as these had seemed, into, unconsciousness when I left my place to seek the ocean’s brink.

The rays of the declining sun seemed for a moment centred on one spot, immediately before my impending face, supported as this was on one hand, and my sight followed their lance-like rays to the very floor of ocean!

As the waters of the Red Sea divided for the passage of Moses and the Israelites, so seemed these to part for my mental eyes, sundered as they were by a golden sword of infinite splendor.

That power which neither pain nor peril can subdue had possession of me now, and, above all, the bitter circumstances that surrounded me, and, in the face of danger and of death, imagination asserted her supremacy. My dream was not of passing ship or harbor gained, or rich repast, or festival, or clustered grapes and sparkling wines, like other sufferers from shipwreck, fevered with famine, frenzied with despair; but hasheesh or opium never bestowed so fair, so strange a vision as that which, in my extremity, was mercifully accorded to me.

My eyes pursued the sea-shaft to its base, as a telescope conducts the mortal gaze to revel in the stars. Merman and mermaid, nereid and triton, were there, rejoicing in the sunbeams thus poured upon them through this subtle conduit of ocean, as do the motes of summer in her rays; but soon these disappeared, a motley crowd, confused and joyous, leaving the vision free to pierce the depths, glowing with golden light, in search of still greater marvels.

Then I saw outspread before me the streets, the fanes, the towers, the dwellings, of a vast, deserted city, one of those, I could not doubt, that had existed before the flood, and which had lain submerged for thousands of centuries; the fretwork of the coral-insect was over all (that worker against time, so slow, so certain), in one monotonous web of solid snow.

Statues of colossal size, and arches of Titanic strength and power, adorned the portals, the pass-ways, the temples of this metropolis of ocean, guarded as were these last by the effigies of griffin and dragon, and winged elephant and lion, and stately mastodon and monstrous ichthyosaurus, all white as gleaming spar.

Gods and demi-gods of gigantic proportions and majestic aspect were carved on the external walls of the windowless abodes and fanes; and, from the yawning portal of one of these, a temple vast as Dendera’s self, came forth, fold after fold, even as I seemed to gaze, the monstrous sea-serpent of which mariners dream, more huge, more loathly, than fancy or experience ever yet portrayed him. I still behold in memory the stately, fearful head, with its eyes of emerald fire and sweeping, sea-green mane, as it reared its neck for a moment as if to scale the ladder the sunbeams had thrown down when first emerging from its temple-cavern; and, later, the mottled, monstrous body, as coil after coil was gradually unwound, until it seemed at last to lie in all its loathsome length for roods along the silent, shell-paved streets–the scaly monarch, of that scene of human desolation!

I recall the feeling of security that upheld me to look and to observe every motion of the reptile of my dream.

“He cannot come to me here,” I thought. “The ark is sacred, and God’s hand is over it; besides, I hear the singing of the priests, and the dove is about to be cast forth! Will the raven never come back? Oh, the sweet olive-branch! It falls so lightly! We are nearing the mountain now, and we shall soon cast anchor!”

Then, among choral chants of joy and thanksgiving, I seemed to sleep. How long this slumber lasted, or whether it came at all, I never knew. It is a loving and tender thing in our Creator to decree to us this curtain of unconsciousness when nerve and strength would otherwise give way beneath the intensity of suffering–a holy and gentle thing for which we are not half thankful enough in our estimate of blessings.

My sleep, or swoon, shielded me from long hours of agony, mental and physical, that must have become unendurable ere the close. As it was, I knew no more after the sea-shaft closed with its wondrous and mysterious revelations (which I yet recall with marveling and admiration, as we are wont to do a pageant of the past), until aroused from lethargy by the hand and voice of Christian Garth.

It was night. I saw the glimmer of the moonlight on the seas, a tranquil, balmy night; but some dark object was interposed between me and the stars which, I knew, were shining above, and the raft lay motionless upon the waters. I was aware, when my senses returned temporarily, that the bow of a mighty vessel was projected above our frail place of refuge, and that we were saved. The dove had come at last!

When or how we were lifted to the deck of the ship I knew not, for, having partially revived, I soon drifted away again into profound lethargy and entire unconsciousness, which for a time seemed death.

CHAPTER V.

A woman sat sewing near my berth in the state-room in which I found myself; a fan, lying on a small table at her side, betokened in what manner she had divided her attentions–between her needle and her helpless charge. I thought; indeed, that I had felt its soft plumes glide gently across my face in the very moment of my awakening in the first amazement of which I but dimly comprehended the circumstances that surrounded me.

“What brought this stranger to my pillow! Who and what was she? Where was I!” These were my mental queries at the first. Then, as the truth gradually dawned over my sluggish and bewildered brain, I lay quietly revolving matters, and noticed my self-constituted nurse, and my surroundings, with the close yet careless observation of a child.

The woman, on whom my gaze was earliest fixed (while her own seemed riveted on the work upon her knee), was of middle age or beyond it, of medium size, of square and sturdy make, and homely to the very verge of ugliness. She was dressed plainly if not commonly in black, but there was a general air of decency about her that seemed to place her beyond the sphere of servitude. She wore spectacles set in tortoise-shell frames, and she wore her iron-gray hair straight back behind small, funnel-shaped ears, and gathered into the tightest knot behind. Her head was flat and narrow at the summit, though broad at and above the base of the brain. Her forehead, wide yet low, was ignoble in expression. The mouth, shaped like a horseshoe, was curved down at the corners, and was full of sullen resolution. The nose, pinched, yet not pointed, showed scarcely any nostril, and might as well have been made of wood, for any meaning it betrayed. Her eyebrows were short, wide, rugged, and irregular, though very black; the cast-down eyes, of course, so far inscrutable.

She was shaping a flimsy, black-silk dress, and doing it deftly, though it was a marvel to me how hands so stiff and cramped as hers appeared to be could handle a needle at all.

On one of these gnarled and unlovely fingers she wore a ring which, in the idleness of the mood that possessed me, I examined listlessly. It was an old-fashioned and slender circle of gold, so pale that it looked silvery, such as in times long past had commonly been used either for troth-plight or marriage-vows, surmounted by two small united hearts of the same dull metal by way of ornament. Mrs. Austin, I remembered, possessed one, the aversion of my childhood, that seemed its counterpart.

My weary eyes wandered from her at last, to take in the accessories of my chamber, tiny as this was, and I saw that against the wall were hanging a gentleman’s greatcoat and hand-satchel. Cigars and books were piled on the same table which held the spool and scissors of my companion, and a pair of cloth slippers, embroidered with colored chenilles and quilted lining, of masculine size and shape, reposed upon the floor. A cane and umbrella were secured neatly in a small corner rack. There were no traces, I saw, of feminine occupancy beyond the transient implements of industry alluded to.

Suddenly, in their languid, listless roving, my eyes encountered those of my attendant fixed full upon me, while a smile distorted the homely, sallow face, disclosing a set of yellow teeth, sound, short, and strong, like regular grains of corn.

In those eyes, in that mouth and saffron teeth, lay the whole power and character of this repulsive and disagreeable physiognomy.

Those feline orbs of mingled gray and green, with their small, pointed pupils, were keen, vigilant, and observing beyond all eyes it had ever before or since been my lot to encounter. After meeting their penetrating glance I was not surprised to hear their possessor accost me in clear, metallic tones, that seemed only the result of her gift of insight, and consistent with it.

“You are awake and yourself again, young lady, I am glad to see! You have slept very quietly for the last few hours, and your fever is wellnigh broken. Will you have some food now? You need it; you must be weak.”

“Yes, very weak; but not hungry at all. I do not want to eat. Just let me lie quietly awhile. It is such enjoyment.”

She complied silently and judiciously with my request.

After a satisfactory pause, during which I had gradually collected my ideas, I inquired, suddenly:

“How long is it since we were lifted from the raft, and where are the other survivors?”

“All safe, I believe, and onboard, well cared for, like yourself. It has been nearly two days since your raft was overhauled. This was what the captain called it,” and she smiled.

“The baby–where is he? I hope he lived.”

“Yes, he is at last out of danger, and we have obtained a nurse for him. He would only trouble you now; but it is very natural you should be anxious about him.”

“Yes, he was my principal care on the raft, and I do not wish to lose sight of him. When I am better, you must let him share my room until we reach our friends.”

“Oh, certainly!” and again she smiled her evil smile. “No one, so far as I know of, has any right or wish to separate you; but, for the present, you are better alone.”

“Yes, I am strangely weak–confused, even,” and I passed my hand over my blistered face and dishevelled hair with something of the feeling of the little woman in the story who doubted her own identity. Alas! there was not even a familiar dog to bark and determine the vexed question, “Is this I?”

Helpless as an infant, flaccid as the sea-weed when taken from its native element, feeble in mind from recent suffering, broken in body, I was cast on the mercies of strangers, ignorant, until they saw me, of my existence, yet not indifferent to it, as their care testified.

“You will take some food now,” said the woman, kindly, “Your weakness is not unfavorable, since it proves the fierce fever broken; but you must hasten to gather strength for what lies before you. We shall be in port to-morrow.”

I put away the spoon with an impatient gesture. “I cannot; it nauseates me but to see it, to think of it. Strength will come of itself.”

“Oh, no; that is impossible. Besides, the doctor has ordered panada, and I am responsible to him for your safety. Come, now, be reasonable. This is very nice, seasoned with madeira and nutmeg.”

Making a strong effort to overcome my repugnance, I received one spoonful of the proffered aliment, then sank back on my pillow, soothed and comforted, not more by the unexpectedly good effects of the compound, than the associations it conjured up, of my sick childhood, of Mrs. Austin, and of Dr. Pemberton.

“Ah! you smile; that is a good sign,” said the woman; “favorable every way. We shall have no more delirium now, I hope; no more ‘bears and serpents’ about the berth; no more calls for ‘Bertie’ and ‘Captain Wentworth,’ and you will soon be able to tell us all about yourself and your people–all we want to know.”

I must have lapsed again into reverie rather than slumber, from which I was partly aroused by whispering voices at the door, one of which seemed familiar to me. Yet this fact or fancy made little impression on me at the moment, feeble and wretched as was my will, undiscriminating as were my faculties.

And when the door opened, and a lady entered, I did not seek to inquire about her interlocutor. Respectfully rising from her seat beside me, my companion left it vacant for her, to whom she introduced me as her mistress, and stood, work in hand, sewing beneath the skylight, while the new-comer remained in the state-room.

A handsome woman, tall and fashionably attired, apparently between thirty and forty years of age, square face, dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked, and with curling hair, approached me with uplifted hands and eyebrows as I lay gazing calmly upon her; for my food and slumber together had strengthened and revived me wonderfully in the last few hours, and my senses were again collected.

“Awake, and herself again, as I live, even if we cannot say yet truthfully ‘clothed and in her right mind.’–Eh, Clayton?” with a sneering simper; “and what eyes, what teeth, to be sure! Then the dreadful redness is going away, though the skin will scale, of course; but no matter for that; all the fairer in the end. And what a special mercy that her hair is saved!–You have to thank _me_ for that, young lady. I would not let the ship’s doctor touch a strand of it–not a strand. ‘One does not grow a yard and a half of hair in a month, or a year, doctor,’ I observed, ‘and a woman might as well be dead at once, or mad, or a man, as have cropped hair during all the days of her youth.’ I had a fellow-feeling, you see! I have magnificent hair myself, child, as Clayton well knows, for it is her chief trouble on earth, and I would almost as lief die as lose it.”

“Yes, indeed, Lady Anastasia’s hair is one of her chief attractions,” observed the sympathizing Clayton, behind her chair.

“So Sir Harry Raymond thought, my dear “–addressing me–“when I married him, ten years ago; and so somebody else thinks just now, for I am tired of my widowhood, and intend taking on the conjugal yoke again as soon as I reach–“

“New York,” interpolated Mrs. Clayton, hastily and emphatically; clearing her throat slightly, by way of apology, perhaps, for her officiousness.

“And you shall stand bridesmaid, my dear. Yes, I am determined on it; so never make great eyes at me. There is a little bit of romance about me that will strike out in spite of all my worldliness; and it will be so pretty to have an ‘ocean-waif for an attendant–it will read so well in the papers! I suppose, when you reach your friends, there will be no difficulty about a dress, and all that sort of thing, meet for the occasion–a very splendid one, I assure you–conducted without regard to expense; for my _fiance_ is very rich, I hear, and my own jointure was a liberal one.”

“You do me a great honor,” I murmured, conventionally rebelling inwardly at the suggestion.

“Oh, not at all!” was the gracious rejoinder. “I see at a glance, in spite of your misfortunes, that you are one of us, which is not what I say to everybody. True blood will show under all circumstances, though there is such an improvement. Did any one ever see the like before? Why, my dear, you were blistered and black when we picked you up, and afterward sienna-colored; now you are almost a beauty!”

“I am better–much better, and have a great deal to be thankful for, I feel,” I contented myself with murmuring.

“Of course you have. It was just a chance with you between our ship and death, you know. By-the-by, what name shall we give our ‘treasure-trove?'”

“Miriam for the present, if you please. This is no time nor place for ceremony.”

“Well, Miriam it shall be,” she repeated with laughing eyes (hers were of that sort which close and grow Chinese under the pressure of merriment and high cheekbones combined). “Miriam, I like the name–there is something grand about it.”

“But how shall we know where to find your friends when we get to port?” asked my first attendant. “We _must_ know more than your Christian name for such a purpose. You must place confidence in us, you must indeed!”

“Be patient with me,” I entreated. “I am much too feeble yet to give you the details that may be necessary. When we reach New York, you shall know every thing: or is it, indeed, to that place this ship is bound?”

“I thought you knew all about your destination by this time,” replied Lady Anastasia Raymond. “Yes, yes, New York of course!” and again she laughed. “Didn’t you hear Clayton say so?”

Just then a sharp tap at the door was answered by Lady Anastasia, who went quickly from beneath the curtain hung across it (in consideration, no doubt, of the privacy my illness enjoined), but not before I had caught once, and this time clearly, the tones of a voice that thrilled to my life, the same that had haunted my delirious fancy, I now remembered, through the last four-and-twenty hours.

I rose to my elbow impulsively, only to fall back again utterly exhausted.

“Who was that speaking?” I asked, feebly; “can it be possible–” and I wrung my hands.

“It was the ship’s doctor,” interrupted the woman I had heard called Clayton by her mistress. “He had not time to do more than inquire about you, I suppose, there are so many ill in the steerage; but he has been very kind and will probably return.”

“I hope so,” I rejoined; “I should like to realize that voice as _his_. It has haunted me very disagreeably in my dreams, and the tones are those of an old, old acquaintance, one I should be sorry to see here.”

“I do not believe you have an acquaintance on the ship,” she said, simply. “Under the circumstances any such person would certainly have discovered himself; your situation would have moved a heart of stone.”

“But it is sometimes wise for the wicked to lie _perdu_,” I murmured, and conjecture was busy in my brain. “I should be glad, too, to see the captain of this vessel at his earliest convenience,” I added, after a pause. “Will you be so good as to apprise him in person of my earnest wish? It would be a real charity.”

“Oh, certainly; but I am afraid he cannot come to-night. It is nearly evening now, and he never leaves the deck at this hour, nor until very late.”

“To-morrow, then, I must insist on this interview, since I reflect about it, for several reasons.”

“To-morrow he shall come,” she said, sententiously; “and now try and sleep again. It is very necessary you should gather strength, for we shall be in port shortly, when all will be confusion.”

I went to sleep, I remember, murmuring to myself: “The hands were the hands of Jacob, but the voice was the voice of Esau;” and my bewildered faculties found rest until the morning’s dawn.

After a hasty toilet made by the careful hands of Mrs. Clayton, a matutinal visit made by Mrs. or Lady Raymond, who always rose early as she informed me, and a cup of tea, very soothing to my prostrated nerves, the potentate of the Latona was duly announced.

Our ship’s master was a tall, gaunt, sandy-haired man, with steady gray eyes, hard features, and enormous hands and feet, the first freckled and awkward, the last so long as very nearly to span the space between his seat (a small Spanish-leather trunk) and the berth I reposed in. He entered without his hat; and the swoop of the head he made to avoid the entanglement of the curtain was supposed to do double duty, and serve as a bow to the inmate of his state-room as well, for his I supposed it to be at the time, and he did not contradict me.

“I hope you find yourself comfortable, marm, on board of my ship.”

“And in your state-room, captain?” I interrupted promptly.

“Wall, you see it all belongs to me, kinder,” he said, after seating himself, as he rubbed his huge, projecting knees, plainly indicated through his nankeen trousers, with his capacious, horny hands. “I’m not very particular, though, where I sleep on shipboard, but at home there’s few more so.”

“I thought a captain was more at home on shipboard than anywhere else,” I pursued mechanically; “such is the theory at least.”

“Oh, not at all, not at all; when he has a snug nest on land, with a wife and children waiting to receive him. You might as well talk of a man in the new settlements bein’ more at home in his wagon than in his neat, hewn-log cabin.”

“A very good simile, captain, and one that kills the ancient theory outright. Let me thank you, however, before we proceed further, for all the kindness and attention I have received in this floating castle of yours, both from you and others. I hope and believe that my companions in misfortune have fared as well.”

“Wall, they have not wanted for nothing as far as I knew–the poor baby in particular;” and, as he spoke, he roughed his hair with one hand and smiled into my face a huge, honest, gummy smile, inexpressibly reassuring.

“The man is hideous and repulsive,” I thought; “but infinitely preferable, somehow, to the specimen of English aristocracy and her maid who have constituted themselves so far my guardian angels”–a twinge of ingratitude here, which I resented instantly by settling my patriotic prejudices to be at the root of the thing, and rebuking my mistrust sternly though silently. “Yet that voice–how could I be mistaken?” and again I addressed myself to the task before me, having gotten through all preliminaries.

While I sat hesitating as to what I should say, so as to both guard against and conceal my suspicions from the captain’s scrutiny, if, indeed, he might be supposed to possess such a quality, I observed that he drew from his pocket a long slip of newspaper, in which he appeared to bury himself for a time, when not glancing furtively at me, as if waiting impatiently for the coming revelation.

“I have sent for you, Captain Van Dorne,” I said, at last, in very low and even tones, not calculated to reach outside ears, however vigilant, and yet not suppressed by any means to whispers–“I have sent for you,” and my heart beat quickly as I spoke, “not merely to thank you for your hospitable kindness, but because I wish, for reasons that I cannot now explain, to place myself under your especial care until I reach my friends.”

“Certainly, certainly; but you _air_ among your friends already if you could only think so,” he answered, evasively, still caressing his potato knees with large and outspread hands.

“Do not for one moment deem me unmindful of much kindness, or ungrateful to those who have bestowed it,” I hastened to explain. “Yet I cannot deny that a fear possesses me that among your passengers may be found one whom I esteem, not without sufficient cause, my greatest enemy.”

“Poor thing! poor thing! what put such a strange fancy into your head? An enemy in my ship! Why, there is not a man on board who would not cut off his right hand rather than harm one hair of your poor, witless, defenseless head! There was not a dry eye on the deck when you and the rest wuz lifted from the raft!”

“I understand this prevalence of sympathy for misfortune perfectly, and honor it; yet I have heard a voice since my immurement in this cabin which must belong”–and I whispered the dreaded name–“to Mr. Basil Bainrothe!”

As I spoke I eyed him steadily, and I fancied that his cheek flushed and his eye wavered–that clear and honest eye which had given him a high place in my consideration from the moment I met its’ gaze.

“You must have been delirious-like when you conceited you heerd that strange voice,” he said, presently.

“I’ll send you my passenger-list if you choose, and you can read it over keerfully. I don’t think you’ll find _that_ name, though, in its kolyums,” shaking his head sagaciously.

“Captain Van Dome, do you mean to say there is no such passenger in your ship’s list as Basil Bainrothe?” I asked, desperately.

“That’s what I mean to say.”

“Give me your honor on this point. It is a vital one to me. Your honor!”

He hesitated and looked around. Just at this moment of apparent uncertainty, a slight tap was heard on the ground-glass eye above us that threw a sullen and unwilling light upon the scene of our interview. It seemed to nerve him strangely.

“On my word of honor, as an American seaman, I assure you that the name of Basil Bainrothe is not on the ship’s list at this present speaking;” and, as he spoke, he held up his right hand, adding, as he dropped it, doggedly, “Ef the man’s on board I don’t know it!”

“It is enough–I believe you, Captain Van Dorne. And now I want to ask you, as a parting grace, to convey me yourself to the Astor House, and place my watch” (detaching it from my neck as I spoke) “in the hands of the proprietors as a proof of my honest intentions. For yourself, I shall seek another opportunity.”

“Not at all–not at all!” he interrupted. “Keep your watch, young lady. No such pledge will be required by them proprietors; and, as to myself, if it had not been for this paper,” drawing from his pocket, and flattening on his knees as he spoke, the slip I had before observed, then glancing at me sharply, “I could never have believed that such a pretty-spoken, pretty-behaved young creetur could have been _non com_. But pshaw! what am I talking about? This paper is as old as last year’s krout! You don’t keer nothing about seeing of it, do you, now?” and he crumpled it in his hand.

“Not unless it concerns me in some way, Captain Van Dorne,” I said, coldly. His manner had suddenly become offensive to me, and I longed to see him depart, having ‘transacted my affairs, as far, at least, as I deemed it prudent to insist on such transaction.

“It may be,” I added, “that, on reaching the port of New York, a friend or friends who expected me on the Kosciusko may be in waiting to receive me; that is, if the fate of that vessel be not already known. In that case, I shall not be obliged to avail myself of your services, and will acquaint you; but, otherwise, promise that you will conduct me from the ship yourself, either to the hotel or to your wife, as you prefer.”

“Wall, I promise you,” he said, doggedly, as he prepared literally to undouble his long frame before executing another dive beneath my door-guarding drapery, and with this brief assurance I was fain to rest content.

At all events, I was reassured on one subject–those honest eyes, that frank if ugly mouth had no acquaintance with lies, or the father of them, I saw at once; and the voice of the ship’s doctor had for the nonce deceived my practised ear, overstrung by suspicion–enfeebled by suffering.

So I rested calmly until the afternoon, with Mrs. Clayton sewing silently by my side, when with a little tap Lady Anastasia (or Mrs. Raymond, as she declared she preferred to be called by “Americans”) entered, bearing a basket in her hand, and wearing on her head a Dunstable bonnet simply trimmed, which she came, she said, to place, along with other articles of dress, at my disposal.

It had not occurred to me before that, in order to go on shore respectably clad, some attire very different from a bed-gown would be essential, and I could but feel grateful for such proofs of unselfish consideration on the part of strangers, pitying both my indigence and imbecility, and so expressed myself.

In accordance with their generous intentions, I submitted myself to be arrayed by Mrs. Clayton and her mistress: first, in the flimsy black-silk gown now completed, on which I had seen my attendant working when I first unclosed my eyes after long unconsciousness, and the measure which she had taken, while I lay in this condition, as coolly in all probability as an undertaker measures a corpse for its shroud; secondly, in a cardinal of the same material, a wrapping cut in the shape in vogue at that period; thirdly, in certain loosely-fitting boots and gloves with which I was fain to cover up my naked feet and blistered hands _in forma pauperis_ and, lastly, in the collarette and cuffs provided by the economic and considerate Lady Anastasia, composed of cotton lace! The Dunstable bonnet was hung upon a peg in readiness, and I was kindly counseled to lie still, “accoutred as I was,” and exhausted by means of such accoutrement as I felt, until evening should find us riding in our harbor.

Then there was a little, low consulting at the door with the renowned “ship’s doctor,” who positively refused to approach me because he had just come from a case of ship-fever in the steerage, which he feared to communicate to one in my precarious state, but who sent in his imperative orders that I should have soup and sherry-cobbler forthwith, and try and build up my strength for the time of debarkation–speaking in a low, growling voice divested of its former clearness, but still strangely resembling that of Basil Bainrothe!

“The poor man is so fagged out,” said Mrs. Clayton, as she brought in my broth and wine, “that his very voice is changed. He is a good soul, and has shown you great interest. Some day you must send him a present, that is, if you are able; but just now all you have to think of is getting safe ashore. Lady Anastasia will go to her friends, probably, or to those of the gentleman she is engaged to; but I do not mean to forsake you until I see you better, and in good hands.”

I know not how it was that my heart sank so strangely at this announcement. The woman was kind–tender, even–and had probably saved my life, and yet her presence to me was a punishment worse than pain, a positive evil greater than any other.

“I shall go to the Astor House,” I faltered. “The captain has promised me his escort thither.”

“Yes, yes, I know, he has told me all about it; but your friends may not be in waiting, and it is simply our duty to see you in their hands. And now drink your sangaree. See, I have broken a biscuit in the glass, and it is well seasoned with lemon and nutmeg. There, now, that is right; a few spoonfuls of soup, and you will feel strengthened for your undertaking. I will sit quietly in the corner until you have your rest.”

“No, I prefer to see Christian Garth before I try to sleep–the man who steered our raft–and the young girl he saved, and the baby–let them all come to me, and we will go on shore together.”

I spoke these words with a sort of desperation, as though they contained my last hope of justice or protection from a fate which, however obscurely, seemed to threaten me, as we feel the thunder-storm brooding in the tranquil atmosphere of summer.

“Christian Garth!” she repeated, looking at me over her tortoise-shell spectacles, and, quietly drawing out a snuffbox of the same material, she proceeded to fill her narrow nostrils therewith. “Why, that shaggy-looking old sailor, and the girl, and the old negro woman and child, went on shore at daylight this morning. He hailed a Jersey craft, and they all left together. It is perfectly understood, though, that the child is to be returned to you if you desire its company, but, if I were situated as you are, and sure of its safety, I would never want to see it again. It would be better off dead than living anyhow, under the circumstances, poor, deformed creature–better for both of you.”

The words came to me distinctly, yet as if from an immense distance, and I seemed to see the small chamber lengthening as if it had been a telescope unfolding, and the sallow woman with her hateful smile and tightly-knotted, brindled hair seated in diminished size and distinctness at its farthest extremity.

So had I felt on that fearful night when Evelyn had made her revelation and received mine, and I did not doubt, even in my sinking state, that I was under the influence of a powerful anodyne.

“Call the ship’s doctor–I am dying!” were the last words I remember to have articulated; then all was dark, and hours went by, of deep, unconscious sleep.

It was night when I felt myself drawn to my feet, and roused to life by the repeated applications of cold water to my face. “The anodyne was over-powerful,” I heard Mrs. Raymond say. “It is a shame to tamper with such strong medicines.”

“Oh, she has strength for any thing!” was Clayton’s rejoinder. “I never saw such a constitution–and he knew what he was doing.”

“No doubt of that.–But, dear Miss Miriam, do speak to me. I am so frightened at your lethargic condition.–I declare I am sorry I ever consented to have any thing to do with this matter! See how she stands. I cannot think it was right, Clayton, I cannot, indeed; I dislike the whole drama.”

“Do be quiet! She is coming to herself fast, and what will she think of such expressions? You never had any self-control in your life, and you are playing for great stakes now.” These last words in a hoarse whisper.

“Nonsense! mother.”

“Again! How often must I warn you?”

“Well, Clayton, then, now and forever.”

“Here! rouse up, little one! We are fast anchored in port, and the captain is waiting for us, for we go part of the way together, and our escorts have all failed us–yours and mine. Nice fellows, are they not?”

I sat up and looked about me bewildered; yet I had heard distinctly every word spoken in the last few minutes, and remembered them for future observance, without having had the power to move or articulate a remonstrance.

“Now, drink this strong coffee, and all will be well again,” said Clayton, putting a cup of the smoking beverage to my lips, which I swallowed eagerly, instinctively. The effect was instantaneous, and I was able to speak and stand, as well as hear and comprehend, while my bonnet was being tied on, and my throat muffled in a veil, by the dexterous fingers of Lady Anastasia.

When this process was completed, she stooped down and kissed me, and I felt a hot tear fall upon my cheek as she rose again. In the next moment I was clinging to the captain’s arm, with a spasmodic feeling of relief for which I could ill account. We passed across the plank which connected the ship with the shore in utter darkness, guided by a twinkling light far ahead, borne by a seaman, reached the dusky quay, with its few flaring lamps, made dim by drizzling rain and summer mist, and before many minutes we paused before one of a long line of coaches.

The captain handed me in, then, standing before the open door, seemed to await the coming of some other person before taking his own place–the dreaded Clayton, I knew; but I could not remonstrate against what seemed an ordinary courtesy, and perhaps a step suggested by his innate notions of propriety.

At any other time I might have agreed with him; but, feeble as I was, and still bewildered, my whole object seemed to be to escape from the sphere and power of those women, who had been most kind to me, yet whom I instinctively dreaded and abhorred.

They came together, the mother and daughter, in their travesty of mistress and maid–enough of itself to excite suspicion of foul play–and climbed up the rickety steps of the hackney-coach, rejoicing over their victim. It mattered not; the captain would make the fourth passenger, and in his shadow I felt there were strength and security.

“What are you waiting for, Captain Van Dorne?” I had just feebly asked, as the door snapped-to, and the driver mounted his box. A hand was thrust through the window for all reply, and a card dropped upon my lap, which I hastened to secure in the depths of my pocket. By the merest chance, I found it there on the morrow, and later I comprehended its import, so mysterious to me at the moment of perusal.

“My poor young lady, you must forgive me for disappointing you, and hidin’ the truth, for your own sake. May God bless and restore you, and bring you to a proper sense of his mercies, is the prayer of your servant to command, JOSEPH VAN DORNE.”

My frame of mind was a very different one when I read this scrawl, from that which bewildered and oppressed me on that never-to-be-forgotten night of suffering and distress, both mental and physical. Formed of those elements which readily react, courage and calmness had returned to me before I read the oracle of our worthy shipmaster; for, in spite of his disastrous dealing with me on that occasion, misguided as he was by others, I have reason to so consider him.

But now the influence of the drug that had been given me so recently, doubtless through want of judgment, by the ship’s doctor, was felt in every nerve; and, as the carriage rolled up the stony quay, I clung convulsively to Mrs. Raymond, and buried my face and aching forehead in her shoulder, with a strange revulsion of feeling.

“You dread the darkness,” she said, kindly, putting her arm around me as she spoke; “but it is only for a time; we shall soon come out into the open lamp-light of–“

“Broadway, New York,” interrupted Clayton, sententiously; “a very poor sight to see, to one who has lived abroad. Have you ever crossed the waters, Miss Miriam? But I see you are quite faint and overcome. Here, smell this ether, that the ship’s doctor put up expressly for your use, and recommended highly as a new restorative much in fashion in Paris.”

Had the ship’s doctor no name, then, that they never mentioned it, and that he spoke in a demon’s voice? His doses I had proved, and was resolved to take no more of them, and I pushed away the phial, whose cold glass nose was thrust obtrusively against my own–pushed it away with all my strength, fast ebbing away as this was, even as I made the effort.

The cruel potion had possession of me, and entered into every fibre of my brain through the avenues prepared for it by the treacherous anodyne; so that, enervated and intoxicated, I yielded passively, after a brief struggle, to the power of the then newly-invented sedative, called chloroform.

When the carriage stopped, or whither it transported me, or who lifted my insensible form to the chamber prepared for me, I know not–never knew. There was a faint reviving, I remember; a process of disrobing gone through by the aid of foreign assistance (whose, I recognized not), then I slumbered profoundly and securely through the entire night, to recover no clearness of perception until a late hour on the following morning.

CHAPTER VI.

I awoke, as I had done of old, after one of my lethargic seizures, from a deep, unrefreshing slumber, with a lingering sense about me of drowsiness and even fatigue.

I found myself lying on a broad, canopied bedstead, the massive posts of which were of wrought rosewood, bare of draperies, as became the season, save at the head-board, behind which a heavy curtain was dropped of rose-colored damask satin.

Of the same rich material were composed the tester and the lightly-quilted coverlet, thrown across the foot of the bed, over a fine white Marseilles counterpane.

The chimney immediately opposite to me, as I lay, was of black marble, and, instead of graceful Greek _caryatides_, bandaged mummies, or Egyptian figures, supported the heavy shelf that surmounted the polished grate. In the centre of this massive mantel-slab was placed a huge bronze clock, and candelabra of the same material graced its corners.

In either recess of this chimney rosewood doors were situated, one of which stood invitingly ajar, disclosing the bath-room, into which it opened, with its accessories of white marble.

The other, firmly closed, seemed to be the outlet of the chamber–its only one–with the exception of the four large Venetian windows, two on either side of me as I lay, the sashes of which, warm as the season was, were drawn closely down.

The furniture of this spacious chamber to which, as if by the touch of a magician’s wand, I found myself transported, was throughout solid and of elegant forms, consisting as it did of _armoire_, toilet-table, bookcase, _etagere_, writing and flower stands, tables and chairs, of the richest rosewood.

At the foot of my bed was placed a console, supporting a huge Bible and Prayer-book, bound alike in purple velvet, emblazoned with central suns of gold–an arch-hypocrisy that was not lost on its object. Freshly-gathered flowers were heaped in the vases of the floral stands, filling the close, cool room with an overpowering fragrance. The carpet of crimson and white seemed to the eye what it afterward proved to the foot–thick, soft, and elastic; and harmonized well with the rich, antique, and consistent furniture.

The sort of microscopic scrutiny that children manifest seemed mine–in my unreasoning, half-convalescent state; and for a time I observed all that I have described with a listless pleasure, difficult to analyze, a sort of dreamy acceptance of my condition, the very memory of which exasperated me, later, almost to self-contempt.

A crimson cord hung at one side of my bed, continued from a bell-wire at some distance, the tassel of which I touched lightly, and, at the very first signal, Mrs. Clayton appeared through the hitherto only unopened door, to know and do my bidding.

The clock on the mantel-shelf struck nine as she stood beside me, and made respectful inquiries concerning my wants and condition; understanding which, she disappeared, to return a few minutes later, followed by an ancient negress, bearing a silver waiter.

I recognized in this sable assistant (or thought I recognized at a glance) my companion in shipwreck; but, upon making known my convictions, was met with a prompt denial by the sable dame herself, who, shaking her head, gave me to understand, in a few broken words, that she “no understood English–only Spanish tongue!”

Her dress–handsome and Frenchified–her creole coiffure, and the long gray locks that escaped from her crimson kerchief bound over her ears, as well as her more refined deportment, did indeed seem to discredit my first idea, which came at last (notwithstanding these discrepancies) to be fixed, and proved one link in the long chain of duplicity I untangled later.

At the time, however, I gave it little thought, but partook with what appetite I might of the choice and delicate repast provided for me, in this truly princely hotel, whose fame I discovered had not been over-trumpeted. On my previous visits to New York, the Astor House had been unfinished, and had made in its completion a new era certainly in the “tavern-life” of that inhospitable city of publicans. When the delicious coffee and snowy bread, the eggs of milky freshness, the golden butter, the savory rice-birds, the appetizing fish, had each and all been merely tasted and dismissed, and the exquisite China, in which the breakfast was served, duly marveled at as an unprecedented extravagance on the part even of John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Clayton came to me with kindly offers of assistance in the performance of my toilet, still a matter of difficulty in my feeble hands.

My long hair, yet tangled and clogged with sea-water, was to be at last unbound and thoroughly combed, cleansed, and oiled, so that the black and glossy braids, that had been my chief personal pride, might again be wound about my head in the old classic fashion.

Then came the bath, with its reviving, rehabilitating process, and lastly I assumed with the docility of a baby or a pauper the clean and fragrant linen and simple wrapper that had been mysteriously provided for me by the Lady Anastasia again, I could not doubt.

“All this must end to-day,” I said, “when really clothed and in my right mind.” I requested writing-materials and more light to work by, and composed myself to write to Dr. Pemberton (once again, I knew, in Philadelphia), and request his assistance and protection in getting home safely, and, if need be, in tracing Captain Wentworth.

“I suppose Captain Van Dorne has been too busy to call,” I observed, carelessly, as I prepared to commence my letter, “and Mrs. Raymond too happy, probably, in getting safe to shore and her lover, to think of me.”

“They have both inquired for you,” said Mrs. Clayton, as she arranged pen, ink, and paper, before me, with her usual precision, while a grim, sardonic smile lingered about her features; “several have called, but none have been admitted.”

“Who have called, Mrs. Clayton? Give me the cards immediately. I must, must know,” I rejoined, eagerly, pausing with extended hand to receive them.

“Oh, there were no cards, and such as want to see you can come again. There, now! write away, and never trouble your mind about strange people. Have you sufficient light?”

And, as she spoke, she touched a cord which set at right angles with the lower one the upper inside shutter of another window as she had adjusted the first.

I wrote, two hasty notes, one on further consideration to Captain Wentworth himself, who might, after all, be at that very time in that same hotel–“_Quien sabe_?” as Favraud used to say with his significant shrug, which no Frenchman ever excelled or Spaniard equalled (albeit they shrug severally).

My spirits rose with every word I wrote, and, when I got up from my chair after sealing and directing my letters, a new and subtle energy seemed to have infused itself through my frame. “There, I have finished, Mrs. Clayton,” I said, putting aside the implements I had been using. “Now go, if you please, and bring to me the proprietor of this hotel. I will give him my letters myself, since I have other business to transact with him,” and I laid my watch and chain on the table before me, ready for his hand, not having lost sight of my early resolution. “But, stay–before you go, be good enough to open the lower shutters and throw up the windows. Cool as the weather is in this climate, I stifle for air, and this close atmosphere, laden with fragrance, grows oppressive. Who sent these flowers, by-the-by, Mrs. Clayton? or do they belong to the magnificence of this idealized hotel?” She made no reply to any thing I had been saying.

By this time, however, she had lowered the upper sashes of the windows about a foot, and the fresh air of morning was pouring in, curling the paper on the centre table and dispersing the noisome fragrance of the flowers, in which I detected the morbid supremacy of the tuberose and jasmine.

“I want to see the streets, the people,” I said, approaching one of the windows; “this artistic light is not at all the thing I need. I have no picture to paint, not even my own face;” and, finding her unmoved, I undertook to do the requisite work myself.

The sashes were shut away below by inside shutters, which resisted all my efforts to stir them. After a moment’s inspection, I perceived that they were secured by iron screws of great strength and size; not, in short, meant to be moved or opened at all. Again I essayed to shake them convulsively one after the other–as you may sometimes see a tiger, made desperate by confinement, grapple with the inexorable bars of his cage, though certain of failure and defeat.

Overpowered by a sudden dismay that took entire possession of me, I sank into one of the deep _fauteuils_ that extended its arms very opportunely to receive me, and sat mutely for a moment, while anguish unutterable, and conjecture too wild to be hazarded in speech, were surging through my brain.

“I am too weak, I suppose, to open these shutters,” I said at last, feebly. “Be good enough to do it for me, Mrs. Clayton, or cause it to be done immediately.”

Was it not strange that up to this very moment no suspicion had clouded my horizon since I woke in that sumptuous room?

“I cannot transcend my orders by doing any thing of the kind,” she said quietly, yet resolutely, as she pursued her avocation, that of dusting with a bunch of colored plumes the delicate ornaments of the _etagere_ carefully one by one.

“Your authority! Who has dared to delegate to you what has no existence as far as I am concerned?” I asked indignantly. “I will go instantly.”

“You cannot leave this chamber until you receive outside permission,” she interrupted, firmly planting herself at once between me and the door through which I had seen her enter. “You must not think to pass through my chamber, Miss Miriam. It is locked without, and there is no other outlet.”

“Woman!” I said, grasping her feebly yet fiercely, by the arm. “Look at me! Raise those feline eyes to mine, if you dare, and answer me truthfully: What means this mockery? Why have you been forced on me at all? Where is Captain Van Dorne? What becomes of his promises? What house is this in which I find myself a prisoner? Speak!”

“You can do nothing to make me angry,” she rejoined, calmly. “I know your condition, and pity and respect it, but I shall certainly fulfill my part of this undertaking. Captain Van Dorne recognized you as Miss Monfort by the description in the newspaper, as did my mistress, and for your own welfare we determined to secure you and keep you safe until the return of Mr. Bainrothe and your sisters from Europe. They will be here shortly, and all you have to do is to be patient and behave as well as you can until the time comes for your trial;” and she cast on me a menacing look from her green and quivering pupils, indescribably feline.

My trial! Great Heaven! did they mean to turn the tables, then, and destroy me by anticipating my evidence? I staggered to a chair and again sat down silent confounded. “Where am I, then?” I feebly asked at length.

“In the establishment of Dr. Englehart,” she made answer, “a private madhouse.”

“God of heaven! has it come to this?” I covered my eyes with my hands and sobbed aloud, while tears of pride and passion rained hotly over my cheeks. This outburst was of short duration. “I will give them no advantage,” I considered. “My violence might be perverted. There are creatures too cold and crafty to conceive of such a thing as natural emotion, and passion with them means insanity. Thank God, the very power to feel bears with it the power of self-government, and is proof of reason. I will be calm, and if my life endures put them thus to shame.”–“You say that I am in the asylum of Dr. Englehart?” I asked after a pause, during which she had not ceased to dust the furniture and arrange the bed in its pristine order, speckless, with lace-trimmings, pillow-cases smooth as glass, and sheets of lawn, and counterpane of snow. “If so, call my physician hither; I, his patient, have surely a right to his prompt services.”–“It is just possible,” I thought, “that interest or compassion may, one or both, still enlist him in my cause–I can but try.”

A slight embarrassment was evidenced in her countenance as I made this request. It vanished speedily.

“He is absent just at this time,” she answered, quickly. “When he returns I will make known your wish to him, if, indeed, he does not call of his own accord.”

“Be done with this shallow farce,” I exclaimed, harshly. “It shames humanity. Acknowledge yourself at once the faithful agent of a tyrant and felon, or a pair of them, and I shall respect you more. Confess that it was the voice of Basil Bainrothe I heard at my cabin-door, and that Captain Van Dorne was imposed upon by that specious scoundrel, even to the point of being conscientiously compelled to falsehood.

“I deny nothing–I acknowledge nothing,” she said, deliberately. “You and your friends can settle this between yourselves when they arrive. Until then, you need not seek to tamper with me–it will be useless; and I hope you are too much of a lady to be insulting to a person who has no choice but to do her duty.”

She could not more effectually have silenced me, nor more utterly have crushed my hopes. Yet again I approached her with entreaties.

“I hope you will not refuse to mail my notes, even under these trying circumstances,”! said, extending them to her.

“You can ask Dr. Englehart to do so when he comes,” she answered, gently; “for myself, I am utterly powerless to serve you beyond the walls of this chamber.”

“And how long is this close immurement to continue?” I asked again, after another dreary pause. “Am I not permitted to breathe the external air–to exercise? Is my health to be unconsidered?”

“I know nothing more than I have told you,” she replied. “I am directed to furnish you with every means of comfort–with books, flowers, clothing, musical instrument, even, if you desire it; but, for the present, you will not leave these walls, and you will see no society. The doctor has decided that this is best.”

“And whence did he derive his authority?”

“Oh, it was all arranged between him and Mr. Bainrothe, your guardeen” (for thus she pronounced this word, ever hateful to me), “long ago; before he went to France, I suppose. Captain Van Dorne had nothing to do but hand you over.”

“Captain Van Dorne! To think those honest eyes could so deceive me!” and I shook my head wofully.

When I looked up again from reverie, Mrs. Clayton had settled herself to work with a basket of stockings on her knees, which she appeared to be assorting assiduously.

There she sat, spectacles on nose, thimble on twisted finger, ivory-egg in hand, in active preparation for that work, woman’s _par excellence_, that alone rivals Penelope’s. Surely that assortment of yellow, ill-mated, half-worn, and holey hose, was a treasure to her, that no gold could have replaced, in our dreary solitude (none the less dreary for being so luxurious). I envied her almost the power she seemed to have to merge her mind in things like these; and saw, for the first time in my life, what advantages might lie in being commonplace.

It was now nearly the end of July. My birthday occurred in the middle of September. I thought I knew that, as soon as possible after my majority, Mr. Bainrothe’s conditions would be laid before me.

I could not, dared not, believe that my captivity would be lengthened beyond that time. I resolved that I would condone the past, and go forth penniless, if this were exacted in exchange for liberty at the end of a month and a half from this time.

Six weeks to wait! Were they not, in the fullness of their power, to crush and baffle me? Six weary years! For, during all this time, I felt that the unexplained mystery that weighed upon my life would gather in force and inflexibility. Death would have seemed to have set its seal upon it, in the estimation of Captain Wentworth, as of all others. He would never know that the sea, which swallowed up the Kosciusko, had spared the woman he loved, nor receive the explanation that she alone could give him, of the mystery he deplored.

Before I emerged from my prison, he might be gone to the antipodes, for aught I knew, and a barrier of eternal silence and absence be interposed between us. So worked my fate! These reflections continued to haunt and oppress me, by night and day, and life itself seemed a bitter burden in that interval of rebellious agony, and in that terrible seclusion, where luxury itself became an additional engine of torture.

Days passed, alternately of leaden apathy and bitter gloom, varied by irrepressible paroxysms of despair. Whenever I found myself alone, even for a few moments, I paced my room and wept aloud, or prayed passionately. There were times when I felt that my Creator heard and pitied me; others when I persuaded myself his ear was closed inexorably against me.

I suffered fearfully–this could not last. The accusation brought against me by my enemies seemed almost ready to be realized, when my body magnanimously assumed the penalty the soul was perhaps about to pay, and drifted off to fever.

Then, for the first time, came the man I had until then believed a myth, and sat beside me in the shadow, and administered to me small, mystic pellets, that he assured me, in low, husky whispers, and foreign accent, would infallibly cure my malady–my physical one, at least; as for the mind, its forces, he regretted to add, were beyond such influence!

For a moment, the wild suspicion intruded on my fevered brain that this leech was no other than Basil Bainrothe himself, disguised for his own dark purposes; but the tall, square, high-shouldered form that rose before me to depart (taller, by half a head, than the man I suspected of this fresh deception), and the angular movements and large extremities of Dr. Englehart, dispelled this delusion forever. After all, might he not be honest, even if a tool of Bainrothe’s?

I took the sugared miniature pills–the novel medicine he had left for me–faithfully, through ministry of Mrs. Clayton’s, and was benefited by them; and, when he came again, as before, in the twilight, I was able to be installed in the great cushioned chair he had sent up for me, and to bear the light of a shaded lamp in one corner of the large apartment.

Dr. Englehart approached me deferentially, and, without divesting himself of the light-kid gloves which fitted his large hands so closely, he clasped my wrist with his finger and thumb, and seemed to count my pulses.

“Ver much bettair,” was his first remark, made in that disagreeable, harsh, and husky voice of his, while he bent so near me that the aroma of the tobacco he had been smoking caused me to cough and turn aside.

Still, I could not see his face, for the immense bushy whiskers he wore, nor his eyes, for the glasses that covered them, nor his teeth, even, for the long, fierce mustache that swept his lips; and when, after a brief visit, he rose and was gone again, there remained only in my mind the image of a huge and hairy horror–a sort of bear of the Blue Mountains, from the return of which or whom I fervently hoped to be delivered.

“Send him word I am better, Mrs. Clayton,” I entreated; “I cannot see him again, he is so repulsive; and, if you have a woman’s heart in your breast, never leave me alone with him, or with Mr. Bainrothe, when he calls, for one moment–they inspire me equally with terror, indescribable,” and I covered my face to hide its burning blushes.

“Look up, Miss Monfort, and listen to me,” said Mrs. Clayton, at last, regarding me keenly, with her warped forefinger uplifted in her usual admonitory fashion, but with an expression on her face of interest and sympathy such as I had never witnessed there before. “A new light has broken just now upon my understanding; I can’t tell how or whence it came, but here it is,” pressing her hand to her brow; “I believe you have been misrepresented to me–but that is neither here nor there. I shall watch you closely and faithfully until we part–all the more that I do not believe you any more crazy than I am; I half suspected this before, but I know it now.” She paused, then continued: “I should have to tell you my life’s secret if I were to explain to you why Mr. Bainrothe’s interests are so dear to me, so vital even, and I will not conceal from you that I knew your guardeen’s good name depends on your confinement here until you come of age. After that it will only be necessary for you to sign a few papers, and all will be straight again–no harm or insult is designed. To these I would never have lent myself in any way–ill as you think of me. And as long as we continue together I will guard your good name as I would do that of my own dear daughter–that is, if I had one. You shall receive no visitor alone.”

She spoke with a feeling and dignity of which I had scarcely believed her capable, shrewd and sensible as I knew her to be, and far above the woman she called her mistress, in a certain _retenu_ of manner and delicacy of deportment, usually inseparable from good-breeding.

I could not then guess how acceptable, to her and the person she was chiefly interested in, were these signs of my aversion for Basil Bainrothe, and what sure means they were of access to the only tender spot in the obdurate heart of Rachel Clayton.

Certain it is that, from these expressions, I derived the first consolation that had come to me in my immurement, and from that hour the solemn farce of keeper and lunatic ceased to be played between us two.

From such freedom of communication on my jailer’s part, I began to hope for additional information, which never came. It was in vain that I conjured her to tell me where my prison was situated, whether at the edge of the city, or far away in the country, or to suffer me to have a glimpse from a window of my vicinity. To all such entreaties she was pitiless, and I was left to that vague and vain conjecture which so wears the intellect.

In the absence of all possibility of escape, it became a morbid and haunting wish with me to know my exact locality. That it could be no great distance from the city of New York, if not within its limits, I felt assured, from the expedition with which my transit from the ship had been effected.

During the first three weeks of my confinement the deep silence that prevailed about me had led me to adopt the opinion that I was the occupant of a _maison de sante_. I had once driven past one on Staten Island, where a friend of my father’s–about whose condition he came to inquire personally–had been immured for years. I did not alight with him when he left the carriage to make these inquiries, but I perfectly remembered the old gray stone building, with its ancient elms, and the impression of gloom and awe it had left on my mind. But this idea was presently dispelled.

I was awakened one morning, in the fourth week of my sojourn in captivity, by the sound of chimes long familiar to my ear, the duplicate of which I had not supposed to be in existence. At first I feared it was some mirage of the ear, so to speak, instead of eye, that reflected back that fairy melody, which had rung its accompaniment to my whole childhood and youth; but, when, after the lapse of seven days, it was repeated, I became convinced that its reality was unquestionable, and that neither impatience nor indignation had so impaired my senses as to reproduce those sounds through the medium of a fevered imagination.

Were these delicious bells, a recent addition to the cupola of our grim asylum, bestowed by some benevolent hand that sought to mark and lend enchantment to the holy Sabbath-day–even for the sake of the irresponsible ones within its walls–or was I indeed–? But of this there could be no question–I dared not hazard such conjecture lest it drive me mad in reality–I must not!

I groped in thick darkness, and time itself was only measured now by those sweet chimes, so like our own, and yet so far away. My very clock one morning was found to have stopped, and was not again repaired or set in motion. Papers I never saw, had never seen since I came to dwell in shadow, save that single one so ostentatiously spread before me, announcing the loss of the Kosciusko and her passengers–a refinement of cruelty, on the part of those who sent it, worthy of a Japanese.

Rafts had been launched and lost, the survivors stated (the men who had seized the long-boat, to the exclusion of the women and children); the sea had swallowed all the remainder. A later statement might refute the first, but even then none could know the truth with regard to my identity, for would not Basil Bainrothe control the publication as he pleased, and make me dead if he listed–dead even after the rescue?

Yet Hope would sometimes whisper in her daring moods: “All this shall pass away, and be as it had not been. Be of good heart, Miriam, and do not let them kill you; live for Mabel–live for Wentworth!”

Then, with bowed head, and silent, streaming tears, my soul would climb in prayer to the footstool of the Most High, and the grace, which had never come to me before, fell over me like a mantle in this sad extremity.

CHAPTER VI.

Unfaltering in her respectful demeanor toward me was Mrs. Clayton from the time of the little scene I have recently described. What new and sudden light had broken in upon her I never knew, but I supposed at the time that the flash of conviction had gone home to her mind with regard to the baseness of Bainrothe and the iniquity of his proceedings, founded on the fear I had expressed of his solitary presence, and the insight she had gained into my character.

Watching none the less strictly, she gradually relaxed that personal surveillance that is ever so intolerable to the proud and delicate-minded, and those suggestions that, however well intended, had been so irritating to me from such a source. She no longer urged me to read, or sew, or eat, or take exercise; but, retiring into her own work (whence she could observe me at her pleasure, for her door was always set wide open, and her face turned in my direction), she employed or feigned to employ herself in her inexhaustible stocking-basket or scollop-work, either one the last resource of idiocy, as it seemed to me.

Left thus to myself in some degree, I unclosed the leaves of the bookcase, and surveyed its grim array of “classics”–all new and unmarked by any name, or sign of having been read–and from them I selected a few worthies, through whose pages I delved drearily and industriously, and most unprofitably it must be confessed. The only living sensations I received from the contents of that bookcase were, I am ashamed to acknowledge, from a few odd volumes of memoirs, and collections of travels that I had happened to find stowed away behind the others. The rest seemed sermons from the stars.

Captain Cook’s voyages and Le Vaillant’s descriptions did stir me very slightly with their strong reality, and make me for a few hours forget myself and my captivity; but all the rest prated at me like parrots, from stately, pragmatical Johnson down to sentimental, maudlin Sterne.

I found them intolerable in the mood in which I was, nothing so exhausting as the abstract! and closed the book desperately to resume my diary, neglected since the awful events of Beauseincourt, but always to me a resource in time of trouble and of solitude. Of pens, ink, paper, there was no lack, and I wrote one day, Penelope-wise, what I destroyed the next. Yet this very “jotting down” impressed upon my brain the few incidents of my prison-house recorded here, that might otherwise have faded from my memory in the twilight of monotony.

I had no need to sew. Fair linen and a sufficiency of other plain wearing-apparel, including summer gowns, I found laid carefully in my drawers, and the Creole negress brought in my clothes well ironed and carefully mended, to be laid away by the orderly hands of Mrs. Clayton.

Once, during the temporary illness of this dragon (whose bed or lair was placed absolutely across the door of egress from her closet, so as to block the way or make it difficult of access), the Creole, in an unavoidable contingency like this, came with a pile of clothing in her arms to lay the pieces herself in the bureau, by direction of my jailer, and thus revealed herself.

By the merest accident I had found in the lining of my purse two pieces of gold (the rest of my money had been spirited away with the belt that contained it, or the leather had been destroyed by the action of the saltwater), and one of these I hastened to bestow on the attendant, signifying silence by a gesture as I did so.

I knew this wretch to be wholly selfish and mercenary, from my experience of her on the raft–for that she was the same negress I had long ceased to doubt–and I determined, while I had an opportunity of doing so, to enter a wedge of confidence between us in the only possible way.

“Sabra,” I whispered, “what became of the young girl, Ada Lee, and the deformed child? It surely can do no harm to tell me this, and I know you understand me perfectly.”

“No, honey, sartinly not; ‘sides, I is tired out of speakin’ Spanish,” in low, mumbling accents. “Well, den, dat young gal gone to ‘tend on Mrs. Raymond, and, as fur de chile, dey pays me to take kear of dat in dis very house ware you is disposed of. Dat boy gits me a heap of trouble and onrest of nights, dough, I tells you, honey; but I is well paid, and dey all has der reasons for letting him stay here, I spec'”–shaking her head sagaciously–“dough dey may be disappinted yit, when de time comes to testify and swar! De biggest price will carry de day den, chile; I tells you all,” eying the gold held closely in her palm.

I caught eagerly at the idea of the child’s presence, though the rest was Greek to my comprehension until long afterward, when, in untangling a chain of iniquity difficult to match, it formed one important but additional link.

“Poor little Ernie! I would give so much to see him,” I said. “Ask Dr. Englehart to let him come to see me, Sabra, and some day I will reward you”–all this in the faintest whisper. “But Mrs. Raymond–where is she? Does she never come here? I desire earnestly to speak with her. Can’t you let her know this? Try, Sabra, for humanity’s sake.”

At this juncture the head of Mrs. Clayton was thrust forth from its shell, turtle-wise, and appeared peering at the door-cheek.

“You have been there long enough to make these clothes instead of putting them away, old woman,” was the sharp rebuke that startled the pretended Dinah to a condition of bustling agitation, and induced her to shut up one of her own shrivelled hands in closing the drawer, with a force that made her cry aloud, and, when released, wring it with agony, that drew some words in the vernacular. “What makes you suppose Miss Monfort wants to hear your chattering, old magpie that you are?” continued Mrs. Clayton, throwing off her mask. “Now walk very straight, or the police shall have you next time you steal from a companion. Remember who rescued you on the Latona, and on what conditions, and take care how you conduct yourself in the future. Do you understand me?”

After this tirade, which sorely exhausted her, Mrs. Clayton relapsed into silence; and now it was my time to speak and even scold. I said:

“Now that the Spanish farce is thrown aside, it is hard indeed that I cannot even be allowed to exchange a few words with a laundress in my solitary condition–hard that I should be pressed to the wall in this fiendish fashion. This woman was telling me of the presence of a little child in the house, and I have desired permission to see it by way of diversion and occupation. I have asked her to apply to Dr. Englehart.”

“The child shall come to you, Miss Monfort, whenever you wish,” said Mrs. Clayton, with ill-disguised eagerness. “This woman is not the proper person to apply to, however, and it is natural you should feel concerned about it, now that you are able to think and feel again. You know, of course, it is the boy of the wreck.”

“Yes, very natural. Its mother died in my arms, if I am not mistaken in the identity of the child; and fortunately–” I paused here, arrested by some strange instinct of prudence, and decided not to show further interest in his fate.

He might be inquired for, and traced even, I reflected, and thus my own existence be brought to light. Selfishly, as well as charitably, would I cherish him. Little children had ever been a passion with me, but this poor, repulsive thing was the “_dernier ressort_ of desolation.”

That very evening I heard the husky and guttural voice of Dr. Englehart in the adjoining chamber, or rather in the closet of Mrs. Clayton, a mere anteroom originally, as it seemed, to the large apartment I occupied.

It was very natural that in her ill condition my dragon should seek medical aid, and I paid no further attention to the propinquity of this unpleasant visitor than I could help–sitting quietly by my shaded lamp, absorbed in the Psalter, in which I found nightly refuge.

He came in at last, after tapping very lightly on the door-panel, unsolicited and unexpected, to my presence–the same inscrutable, hirsute horror I had seen before, with his trudging, scraping walk, his square and stalwart frame, his gloved extremities, his light, blue-glasses, hat and cane in hand, a being as I felt to chill one’s very marrow.

“Is it true vat I hear,” he asked, pausing at some distance, “dat you vant to have dat leetle hompback chilt for a companion, Miss Monfort?”

“It is true, Dr. Englehart.”

“And vat can your motif be? Heh? I must study dat for a leetle before I can decide de question, or even trost him as a human being in your hands.”

“Lunatics are rarely governed by motives at all,” I replied, “only impulses. I want human companionship, however, that is all. I sicken in this solitude–I am dying of mental inanition.”

“It is true, you look delicate indeed, I am pained to see.” The accent was forgotten here for a moment, and an expression of real sympathy was perceivable in his low, husky voice. “Command me in any way dat accords wid my duty,” he continued, “yes! de boy shall come! To interest, to amuse you, is perhaps–to cure!”

“Thank you; I shall await his advent anxiously; be careful not to disappoint me.”

“Oh, not for vorlds!”

“You are very kind; I believe, though, that is all we have to say to one another, Dr. Englehart.”

“You are bettair, then?” he said, advancing steadily toward me in spite of this dismissal. “You need no more leetle pill? Are you quite sure of dat?”

“Not now, at least, Dr. Englehart.”

“Permit me, then, to feel your pulse vonce more. I shall determine den more perfectly dis vexing subject of your sanity.”

“Thank you; I decline your opinion on a matter so little open to difference. Be good enough to retire. Dr. Englehart. Let me at least breathe freely in the solitude to which I am consigned.”

“I mean no offence, yonge lady,” he said, meekly, falling back to the centre-table on which was burning my shaded astral lamp–for I had left it as he approached, instinctively to seek the protection of an interposing chair, on the back of which I stood leaning as I spoke.

He, too, remained standing, with one hand pressed firmly backward on the top of the table, in front of which he poised himself, gesticulating earnestly yet respectfully.

His position was an error of mistaken confidence in his own make-up, such as we see occur every day among those even long habituated to disguise.

As he stood I distinctly saw a line of light traced between his cheek and one of his bushy side-whiskers.

That line of light let in a flood of evidence. The man was an impostor, a tool, as criminal as his employer–not the footprint on the sand was more suggestive to Robinson Crusoe than that luminous streak to me, nor the cause of wilder conjecture.

Yet I betrayed nothing of my amazement I am convinced, for, after standing silently for a time and almost in a suppliant attitude before me, Dr. Englehart departed, and for many days I saw him not again.

An object that looked not unlike a small, solemn owl, stood in the middle of the floor, regarding me silently when I awoke very early on the following morning.

At a glance I recognized poor little Ernie, and singularly enough, he knew and remembered me at once.

“Ernie good boy now,” he said as he came toward me with his tiny claw extended. “Lady got cake in pocket, give Ernie some?” Not only did he recall me, it was plain, but the incident that saved his life, and the rebukes he had received on the raft for his refusal to partake of briny biscuit, which no persuasion, it may be remembered, had availed to make him taste–even when devoured by the pangs of hunger. I tried in vain, however, to recall him to some remembrance of his poor mother. On that point he was invulnerable; the abstract had no charm for him or meaning. He dealt only in realities and presences.