The wily agent of the Confederacy smiled, though he felt that this would be a most appropriate occasion for him to sink through the floor, and out of sight forever. But he was partially consoled by the reflection that no papers, which could be of service to the enemy, were on his person; and the only eventuality which he really feared, was that the wife who had trusted him so implicitly and whose confidence he had rewarded by systematic and unblushing infidelity, would now discover what a villain he was. Although he had grown callous to remorse, the prospect of a punishment under the lash of her scorn and hate was not without real terror for him. He tried to say something cheering to Hagar, who clung wildly to him, before he was led away, but she was completely overcome by the shock, and was carried into the drawing room just in time to save her from falling unconscious on the floor.
The morning following the arrest of Charles Lamont, there was considerable stir and anxiety among the inmates of Madame Adamanti’s house, for that lady had fallen suddenly ill of an attack which the doctor pronounced brain fever. She was delirious when Miss Ross, who was the first to learn of her sickness, called in the doctor, sometime before daylight; and at about 9 A. M. Spencer met Dr. Cavin in the hall, who informed him that the fever was increasing with alarming rapidity; adding sorrowfully, that the symptoms had been so peculiar, he felt obliged to call in another physician.
“I have seen the poor kind-hearted creature brought very low by milder attacks of a similar character, but never so bad as this, and it really looks now as if the hand of Death had seized her. The excitement of last night was too severe a shock for her.” The little doctor was decidedly cast down, and went away without saying a word about Spencer’s bill.
Spencer also wore a long and solemn face. He justly thought that no other apostle ever found himself in exactly such a situation as that in which he was placed, and wound up the reflection with a corollary which habitually figured in his experience, to the effect that Providence had not subjected him to this trial without good and sufficient reasons. Though commonly prosaic enough, the young Elder was not without a tinge of real chivalrous feeling in his make up, beyond and above mere personal bravery. He had been thinking about Miss Taine (which was the name he always associated with Hagar) nearly all night, and trying to determine what, under the circumstances, he could do to serve her. It was evident to him that her betrayer had abandoned her to a fate which promised to be a hard and desperate one; but she had cruelly snubbed him, and would, he thought, probably tell him to go about his business if he should attempt a renewal of her acquaintance. The more he thought about the matter the less disposed he felt to interfere, or rather the more certain he was that his good intentions would be rewarded by further slights, if not by actual indignity. His mind was, therefore, confused by a variety of ideas which were more or less conflicting. He was anxious to help Miss Taine, but could not perceive what was to be done even if she would accept his assistance; he wanted to get away from Castle Adamant, but there were the bills for medical attendance and lodging unpaid, with the hostess too ill to talk business, the doctor decidedly opposed to a compromise, and available funds at an extremely low ebb. But one thing, at least, was perfectly clear. He must take some steps to prevent the aggravation of these difficulties, and he came to the sensible conclusion that that step should be across the threshold of the Castle. The rest he would leave to Providence, that infinite legatee of human misery that never sneers at the bequests of woe.
Having reached this decision he was much relieved, and at once hunted up his friend Jerry, with whom he left his small parcel of effects, to be called for when he should secure a lodging more suited to his calling and his purse. Jerry liked the Mormon because he had amused and interested him with that pretty little story about the angels and the package of gold plates, which is the foundation of Mormon faith and history. The boy was, therefore, glad to serve him, and said he was sorry he was going away. Spencer put out his hand to say ‘good bye,’ and the negro looked at him with astonishment; but when the Mormon assured him that he really meant to shake hands with him, he extended his hand timidly, and just as Spencer grasped it tightly in his own, Miss Benner came into the hall from the drawing room. Jerry suddenly remembered that he had a duty to perform downstairs, and made a bee line in that direction.
His surprise at Mars’ Spencer’s sociability was of a very mild type as compared with that now portrayed on Ida’s face.
“Well! I’m dashed!” she exclaimed “if I don’t believe you’re a Rad. and Abolitioner. The way you was fraterizin’ with that nigger would a’ shocked Abe Lincom hisself!”
“Good morning, Miss Benner,” said the Mormon politely, “I am sorry to have caused you so much annoyance. Of course, I understand that it is not customary among white people to shake hands with the negroes; but I like Jerry, and for that matter I don’t see that I need fear that the black will rub off his hands, more than he that the white will rub off mine. It’s only a matter of prejudice, after all.”
“Oh, everybody to their own taste. But what’s it all about, anyhow? Goin’ away, be you?”
“Yes; I am able to move about now, and must return to my duty. I am very sorry that your aunt’s illness will prevent my seeing her to express my gratitude.”
“Well, why don’t you wait till she’s better then,” interrupted Ida.
“I dare not lose any more time. But I will come and see her when she recovers, to thank her and make her such returns as I am able for her great kindness to me. If she had known who and what I am, it is not likely she would have brought me into her house.”
“Just think of that, now!” cried Ida, clasping her hands together. “That Bella must be a witch, for she can read characters like a book. Are you a Catholic Priest?”
“No, Miss Benner, I belong to a new religion, or at least a new revelation of the old one.”
“And what is that?”
“I am a ‘Latter-Day Saint.’”
“Oh! a Saint?—a real Saint! Any relation to Saint Valentine? Ha! ha!—A Latter Day Saint, eh? Is that anything like a Seventh-day Baptist?”
“We are usually called by our enemies, ‘the Mormons.’”
“Mormons! Ugh!” cried she, stepping back. “Are you one of them awful polygamy savages?”
“Yes,” said Spencer, shrugging his shoulders, “you have it, exactly. That is one of our pet names among our Christian friends.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing for you that Aunt Clare didn’t know it, or she’d a left you to freeze, you can bet. She knows all about your kind o’ saints, I can tell you. She’s been there—What’s the name of the place? Salt Creek?”
“Salt Lake?”
“Yes; I knew it was Salt something. Well, she’s been there, and used to be one of the wives of a very good saint, who kept six others, an’ had about forty children, an’ he fed ’em all on carrots an’ dressed ’em in rags; an’ the only houses they had was mud shanties, with the ground for floor. Oh! I’ve heard Aunt Clare tell about it dozens of times. An’ you’re one o’ their priests, eh? Well, I never!” With this she stood back several paces from the Elder, and surveyed him curiously. It was his turn now to experience surprise of a very peculiar kind.
From the moment when he had first conversed with Madame Adamanti he was conscious of something familiar about her face, and on several subsequent occasions he found himself studying her features and trying to determine of whom it was that she always reminded him. Miss Benner’s garrulity had disclosed the secret. He instantly guessed that this remarkable woman who had saved his life and was now, in all probability, upon her own death-bed, was none other than the runaway wife of a Mormon Bishop, who, for years, had been his father’s neighbor and friend in the Mormon capital. It had all happened when he was a small boy, but he remembered the leading incidents perfectly, and knew that the face that had caused him so much study, was but the elder stage of one with which he had been well acquainted,—that of the Bishop’s beautiful wife, Hope, who was called the ‘prettiest woman in the church.’
But Ida seemed disturbed after she had said all this, and, quickly changing her voice from a tone of banter to one of supplication, she went on:
“But, say, Mr. Spencer, you won’t tell Aunt Clare, or anybody else, will you? She’d never forgive me if she found out that I’d spoken of it. You won’t tell her, will you?”
“Certainly not. I shall tell nobody.”
The negro Tom came quietly towards them, his eyes filling with tears.
“For de Lor‘, Miss Ida an’ Mars‘ Spencer,” said he, “pore missus ‘ll be done gone ‘fore dem doctors gits here. She’s jes’ sinkin’ lower an’ lower, an’ Miss Belle’s jes skeered outen her life, too—”
Spencer turned impulsively, saying that he would go out and endeavor to hurry them a little. And without a moment’s hesitation, he drew on his overcoat, and sallied forth into the frosty air.
It was the first time he had been out of the house since the night he was picked up by Lady Clare half frozen. He enjoyed the sense of freedom which came back to him as he left that rich but ill-omened mansion, and having caught sight of Dr. Cavin coming with another man as he passed out at the gate, he faced the other way and increased his speed, as much as his lame foot would permit, determined that as he was well out of the place, he would not go in again.
The ugly suspicions which had lately filled his mind respecting the Castle and its occupants, were quickly crystallized into firm convictions when he came in contact with the outer air; and however seriously he was occupied with his own immediate condition and prospects, he could not for one moment ignore the peril into which poor Hagar was thrown. He must procure a lodging at once, and set to work to inform her friends of her situation.
With these and many other like reflections he wandered on through several streets, occasionally enquiring the prices at boarding houses that were beyond his means, until about the middle of the afternoon, when he came across a neat looking inn situated in a narrow street near the river front. On introducing himself to the landlord and making known something about his character, he was surprised and delighted to find that his host had been a member of the Mormon church in the palmy days of Kirtland, and still felt a friendly interest concerning the cause. He acknowledged in due form to Spencer that he believed Joseph Smith, the martyr, to have been a true prophet, and greeted the Elder as a true apostle.
To give a practical turn to his faith and friendship the landlord said:
“Why, we aint hed a ‘postle in these yer parts fer a long time, an’ I kin tell ye ye’r welcome. My father, ole Si Brown of Concord (he lived to 93), was a half-cousin to the Simon pure prophet, Joe Smith, and he used to know Brigham like a book, too. He’d a went over to the prophet hisself but for the old lady’s inflooence, who was a hard-shell Baptist. An’ do you tell me that you’re a reg’ler Brig Young Mormon, bigamy an’ all?”
Spencer assured him that he was a saint of the true stamp, and offered to show him his credentials, whereupon he opened his heart in these terms:
“Then shake! An’ I’ll say to you as the old man said to both your prophets when they was along our way, ‘you’re welcome to what I’ve got, free of charge.’”
Within a few days Spencer found his mission prospering beyond his most sanguine hopes. The landlord introduced him to many sympathizers, both male and female, and he found a number among them whose minds were prepared for the move to Zion. Meetings were held in their private houses, shops and factories, and so great an interest was manifested that the newspapers took up the matter.
The young saint was naturally elated by the favorable turn in his fortunes, and began to picture to himself the wholesale conversion of numberless sinners which was to result from the landlord’s friendship and bounty. What a triumph it would be, he thought, if he should be enabled to join the next transcontinental caravan at the Missouri River with a company of converts from that ungodly State of Ohio, which had so cruelly persecuted the prophets and the saints.
Finally the supporters of the Elder hired the Free Chapel and held a grand public demonstration, which they called a “conference.” This meeting was attended by some of the leading ministers of the city, and the following Sunday they answered the Mormon from their pulpits to the general satisfaction of their congregations.
But in the height of his prosperity and success, Spencer did not forget Hagar; in fact she was never absent from his thoughts. A few days after he quitted the castle he called there after dark to get his bundle from Jerry, and was gratified to learn that Madame had ordered that no visitors should be admitted to the house, and that the young girl they called Kitty, seemed to be pretty happy. Jerry reported further that Lady Clare was expected to die at almost any moment. Several doctors had agreed that her recovery was impossible.
One Sunday soon after Lamont’s arrest, Hagar expressed a wish to go to church, and was taken by Ida to the Free Chapel, where Dr. Bruce, a popular lecturer, who had a considerable following among free thinkers and others who were not connected with any regular church, gave an interesting discourse on Mormonism. The subject had been suggested by the presence of Elder Spencer in Cincinnati, and Dr. Bruce’s attendance at one of his meetings.
The Doctor denounced the Mormon pretentions judiciously, and a somewhat exciting scene was caused by Spencer’s making an attempt to reply to him. The Elder saw Hagar when leaving the hall, but she avoided him and hurried to the carriage.
When Hagar and Ida returned to Castle Adamant, after the service at Dr. Bruce’s chapel, they were met in the hall by Miss Ross, who, in reply to Ida’s enquiries about the condition of Aunt Clare, said that she had been in her right mind for two or three hours, and asked to see “Kitty.”
“She seems so anxious to see you, Kitty; but the new doctor says it is only a fancy, and she must not be allowed to see anybody at present.”
“I am very glad to hear that Madame Adamanti is better,” Hagar said mechanically. And then, with a wistful look at Miss Ross, and about the room, she added: “Is there no news, nothing from my husband?” There was unsteadiness in her voice as she spoke, and she sat down and wept bitterly when Miss Ross replied indifferently, “No.”
Hagar retired to her room, where Ida presently joined her. She had brushed away her tears, and was making an effort to be cheerful.
“I must really go to our lodgings to-morrow,” she said, her sweet voice still muffled with tears. “There may be letters there for me from my father. I have not heard a word from him, though I have written several times. The world seems dark and hopeless to me, Ida; what would you do if you were in my place? Don’t you think they would let me see my husband?”
“Gracious, no! These are war times, you know, and Dr. Cavin says the hebbus carcass act has been suspended, so they can arrest and put in jail whoever they like. But there’s no use o’ your fretting about Char—about your husband, cos, he’s already got another wife, and you’re in the fix of one of them girls Dr. Bruce was telling about. You’re only a ‘Hagar,’ like the rest of us.”
Hagar was startled by these strange words, and quite unable to understand them. She remembered that Dr. Bruce had spoken of the Biblical Hagar, and had a faint idea of the drift of his remarks. But her mind had been so preoccupied with her troubles, that she had not been able to follow the Doctor’s thoughts. Ida spoke in a tone of heartless raillery which indicated that she was far more callous than was really the case. She knelt in an easy chair, resting her elbows on the cushioned back and her chin in her palms. There she crouched watching her frightened companion grow pale. An amused smile of spiteful satisfaction was playing about her mouth. She was wondering what “Kitty” would say.
“My husband has another wife?” Hagar asked with some effort, after a moment’s pause. Ida nodded maliciously.
“How do you know that? What is the meaning of all this strange acting that is going on here? Where have you known my husband?”
“At New Orleans. He was always the handsomest Knight of the Carnival.”
“Why, Ida, how can you talk so? My husband resides at Boston, and is a minister of the Gospel. You are cruel to talk like this to me,” said poor Hagar, her heart already half mistrustful.
“You’re a little fool, Kitty. Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Ida, with palpable artifice, and going to Hagar to embrace her. “Do you mean to tell me seriously that you believe you are Charley Lamont’s wife?”
“‘Charley Lamont?’ I do not know such a person—my husband’s name is Smiles—the Reverend Benjamin T. Smiles.”
Ida laughed so uproariously in response to this that Hagar could not help smiling as she said innocently:—
“You think the name so funny, then?”
“I was wondering if the ‘T’ was for tears, for Charley always was the most terrific sport, and I reckon he’s had more tears shed over him than any man out of jail, an’ now he’s in, too. But, see here, Kitty, let’s understand each other.”
“I wish I could understand you, Ida; but indeed, I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Well, look here; ye didn’t run away from your real husband, Smiles, to come here with Charley Lamont, did ye?”
“You know I came here with my husband. Whom do you mean by Charley Lamont?” Hagar was struggling between impatience, uncertainty, and dread. She scarcely knew what to say, but looked as puzzled as she felt.
“That was him you came here with, who was taken away by old Abe’s soldiers. So you see I’m right, he’s the Knight of the Carnival, and the husband of one of the richest and prettiest women in New Orleans, and what’s more, he’s got two children.”
The words of the officer who arrested Lamont now rung in Hagar’s ears, and her first sense of the truth oppressed her.
“There must be some mistake!” she said, trying to control her emotion, and seizing Ida by the arm. “You are trying to deceive and alarm me, Ida. Confess that it is so. Even if my husband is a rebel spy, and if he bears a different name from that I knew him by, he has no other wife. Come, Ida, tell me you are only joking—”
“Well, you can ask Aunt Clare when she is well enough. I’ve only told you the truth for your own good.”
Hagar did not weep. Clasping her hands over her face, she said, faintly, “Oh, what shall I do!” She reeled for an instant, but by an effort kept her feet and went unsteadily towards the door, near which, on a table, were her bonnet and wraps just as she had left them on entering. The sight of them seemed to revive her. Hurriedly reassuming them, she rushed down the stairs and out into the street before Ida could give an alarm. The latter called Miss Ross, and after a consultation, they decided, as there was no doctor in the house, they ought to tell Aunt Clare.
The courtesan was but little better than on the day she was so suddenly stricken down by her old malady. In her delirium she had said nothing in relation to Hagar to create distrust in the suspicious minds about her; but as soon as she recovered consciousness she had asked about the girl “Kitty,” with business-like solicitude, and given orders that she must not be introduced to any of the frequenters of the house. She had afterwards fallen into a stupor from which it was not supposed she would rally; but to-day she was better again, and had been saying that she was anxious to see Kitty, so that her attendants had reason to dread the shock the girl’s escape might give her.
Miss Ross undertook the delicate mission, however. She was a woman of a type that is considered beautiful in some parts of the Orient. Of a dark, opaque complexion, with short blue-black curls clustered about her head, she might have been taken by a casual observer, for a mulatto. She was, however, pure Creole, and possessed of personal graces and accomplishments which might have rendered her acceptable in any society.
She softly approached the bedside of Lady Clare, whose illness had already produced a significant change in her appearance, and, taking up the thin hand that lay out on the silk counterpane, said,
“You have had a nice nap, Aunt Clare? I hope you feel a little better?”
“No, Belle,” replied Madame Adamanti in a whisper.
“But I am a little stronger, I think, and while I am so I want to arrange my affairs as well as possible, for I am going to die.”
“Don’t talk like that; it’s foolish. You will be as well as ever in a day or two, I’m sure.”
Miss Ross was studying how to broach the subject of the run-away girl when Lady Clare continued:—
“You remember, Belle, I once told you that I had a child, a daughter.”
“Yes, the one you abandoned at Cleveland, when you ran away with the Mormons.”
“Well, I have seen her: she is still alive.”
Belle was so surprised that she sprang to her feet in the firm conviction that her mistress was drifting away again into the dreary realms of delirium.
“You needn’t be afraid, I was never more sound in my reason than at the present moment. The girl brought here the other night by Charles Lamont is my daughter.”
“Impossible! He told me he got her in Canada.”
“His treachery has brought her to me, but no matter about that, it shall not bring her to any further harm if I can prevent it. To leave no doubt in the matter I want you to go at once and see Lamont. I have a pass to the military prison. Tell him that for special reasons, valuable to him as well as to me, I want to know all the facts he can give about the girl’s history, her parentage, age and every detail he can supply. Tell him I am ill or I should have come myself. In the pocket of the dress I had on the night he was here you will find a card he gave me. On it is the address of the lodgings where all the girl’s luggage and some property belonging to Lamont, were left. Oh! What would I give, Belle, for an hour’s conversation this day with some honest man, who would think nothing of what I am, but hear my confession, and only regard me as what I might have been. I must find somebody to take care of that poor girl. And I suppose some conceited hypocrite of a lawyer is my only alternative.”
“Why don’t you send for a priest? That’s what I’d do if I were in your frame of mind,” said Miss Ross rather absently, dreading more than ever the shock to her mistress when she should learn of Kitty’s flight.
“No, no; I don’t want one of those gentry with their sanctimonious deceit. He would probably offer me absolution if I would leave him my fortune. When we approach death, no matter what our lives have been, we crave for the presence of some one whose record is such as our better conscience approves. Ours is the bitterest fate of all, Belle; the most vile, the most repulsive. We may get beyond shame, but we sink deeper and deeper into the miseries of a living death, and go about as mere moving corpses for years before we reach the grave. I am not sorry I am nearing the end. I am just thirty-seven years old, but I am treble that in suffering and sin. As the last act in my tragedy, I was conniving at the shame of my own child!... But there, I must let you go. And yet, something tells me I should send for somebody to whose care I can leave the girl. There is not one among the mass of men I know whom I would trust with such a commission. I must see the poor child, too, and talk with her before I die. She can never know who or what I was. For whom shall I send, Belle? I may not feel so well another day. I have not a moment to lose.”
“I think you ought to send for a priest; no better man than my confessor, Father O’Rouke, could be found in Cincinnati; or else for a sister of charity.”
“That my child may be robbed, and forced into a nunnery? I may as well consign her to the Mormons at once!”
“You are prejudiced, Aunt Clare,” said Miss Ross, who was brought up in the Roman faith, educated in a convent, and now counted among her friends a handsome young priest of Erin, who often gave her absolution.
“I confess I am so, but not without good reason, as you know. No priests or nuns for me. I know what I’ll do, I will send for one who is despised by the priests as I despise them. Bring my portfolio and write me a note to that Dr. Bruce of the Free Chapel. I believe that he is a man of more merit than pretence. He has a wife and children whom he loves and honors, and all the Churchmen accuse him of being too partial to publicans and sinners. The other day the priests of all sects wanted to mob him because he prayed beside the grave of a poor wretch who died in a house like this. He will neither be afraid to come here, nor to undertake my commission.”
Belle had brought the portfolio and was waiting at the bedside.
“What shall I say?”
The invalid dictated the following brief note, which Belle wrote in a graceful hand.
To DOCTOR BRUCE,
The Free Chapel, Cincinnati:
Sir: You will pardon a poor outcast for taking the liberty to send for you. She does so because she sorely needs a friend. You will know who I am by the name at the bottom of this. It is, of course, not my real name. I am dying. Shall I see you at once?
CLARE ADAMANTI.
At the bottom Belle added the address, and the words “written by her friend Belle.”
The excitement caused by the unusual activity of her mind had considerably exhausted Lady Clare. But her resolution conquered, and after a brief spell of coughing, she directed Belle to go at once on her errand and to send “Kitty” to her. Belle only said “Yes dear,” and was gone, deeming explanations inexpedient.
It was now about the middle of the afternoon, and Belle knew it would require the rest of the day to make the circuit marked out for her. The carriage was waiting, so she only tarried long enough to tell Ida not to let Aunt Clare know about Kitty’s absence.
Various projects had begun to form in Belle’s mind even before she quitted her mistress’ room. Was it really likely that Lady Clare would die soon? She remembered a former promise of the courtesan’s, to leave her a handsome competence. Would that promise ever be fulfilled, or was she now determined to leave all to her own child?
“In this life,” she mused, “trickery is my only weapon. If I have wit I must use it. The girl, no matter who she is, must take care of herself. It is certain she is Clare’s child, for she is too shrewd to blunder there. A very good reason, then, why she must never see her again. A week. She said she could not live a week. Well, Mike and I can do much in a week. If the girl has disappeared, and nothing is heard of her, she will easily believe that she has gone back to her friends. She’s got at least $150,000, and it should all be mine. But the first thing I must do is to see Mike.”
She told the coachman to stop at her drug store.
“Yes,” she said, continuing her cogitations, “Mike will know just what to do. He has often said that Lady Clare ought to do something handsome by me. I think I’ll destroy this now.” Here she took the note directed to Dr. Bruce, from her pocket. “But perhaps I better let Mike see it,” she went on after she had torn the envelope slightly, “for it may be best to send it after all.” She put it back into her pocket, and told the coachman to drive faster.
The drug store at which the carriage presently stopped was not in the business portion of the city.
The only other place of business in the vicinity was a grocery, which was closed. The wind was blowing bleakly so that most people were in-doors. The next building but one on the south side of the drug store was a Romish church built of grey-stone, in a mixed and ornate style of architecture, at that time one of the most solid looking places of worship in the city.
The owner of the drug store, being a good Catholic, was allowed to use the alley which ran through from the rear of the church to the other street for bringing in goods, and had a door at the side of his building for that purpose. It was, moreover, used as an entrance to the parochial school and was convenient for women who did not wish their husbands to know they went to confession, and others who wanted to seek priestly society or counsel without exciting suspicion.
Belle passed through the drug store and out at the side door. As she approached the door of the parsonage she was met by a man who glanced at her and hurried on. Father O’Rouke was alone and unfeignedly glad to see her. He bestowed rather more than a fatherly kiss on her pouting lips, and clasped her in an embrace that suggested the lover rather than the anchorite. Father O’Rouke was, no doubt, a bad specimen of his kind, if it is to be accounted bad to do and be exactly the opposite of all that one pretends, all that he vows, and all that is commonly accepted as right. To the eye he was a typical priest, about thirty-five.
Belle was too much occupied with her business projects to waste much time with his endearments, and told him at once what had brought her.
“Let me see the note,” said O’Rouke, “of course it can’t go to the heretic: that won’t do, but in case we want to send it—well, what’s the matter?”
“I’ve lost the note!” cried the woman.
“Nonsense! look again.”
She looked in vain, in her pocket, and her muff; and finally the florid Michael O’Rouke, priest and teacher, went out and searched along the alley and in the drug store, and asked Mr. Cresser, the clerk, to be good enough to look in the carriage and see if the lady had dropped it there, telling him it was a most important document.
When Belle alighted from the carriage the letter had dropped under her feet and had been blown against the curbstone on the other side of the street. It was picked up by the man she met in the alley, who, on reading the address, decided to deliver the stray missive, as he had to pass the Free Chapel on his way home.
O’Rouke confessed that there was a bare possibility that, if she had dropped the note in the street, somebody might pick it up and take it to its destination. But he thought the chance very remote, and said that he would himself undertake to intercept the heretic even though he should receive it. Belle then set out for the military prison where quite a number of the “boys in grey” were already in durance vile. Her last words to the priest were:
“For goodness sake, Mike, don’t let that man go to Castle Adamant, even if you have to throttle him.”
“He’ll not go there, darling. Lave that to me. It’s my duty to protect the innocent, and I’ll do it, darling, I’ll do it ivery toime.”
Moved by a righteous indignation, he was promptly on his way to Dr. Bruce’s house, having arranged with Belle to call at the parsonage on her way home to compare notes.
The Free Chapel was only a few squares away, and the Doctor’s home was situated in the lot adjoining. The priest’s adamantine assurance wavered slightly as he approached the door of this cottage, where dwelt a man whom he regarded with the utmost repugnance. But he walked deliberately up the steps wondering if his visit was observed by any of his own flock, knocked gently, and in a moment the door was opened by a bright sunny-headed little boy of probably six years.
“Is Dr. Bruce at home, little man?” asked O’Rouke.
“Yes, sir,” the child replied, and then, running to the open door of an adjoining room, he said, “It’s a gentleman to see you father.”
Dr. Bruce was just going out. He had on his overcoat, and carried his hat and walking stick in his hand.
“You will pardon me, doctor,” said O’Rouke blandly, “I have called on very important private business.”
“Will you walk in, I am at your service,” replied Dr. Bruce, throwing open a door on the opposite side of the hall, and beckoning him to enter.
They were alone in a neat and warm little drawing room, and O’Rouke spoke to the point at once. The priest, being on his good behavior, had unconsciously dropped his brogue.
“My name is O’Rouke, I’m a Catholic priest. A parishioner of mine tells me that a note was sent to you to-day, merely to annoy you, by a woman of the town (in view, no doubt, of your late condescension in the case of one of her class), and the matter coming to my notice, I thought it no more than justice to you that I should warn you of the trick.”
The doctor was puzzled. The priest’s ready invention had every appearance of being genuine. He took a few seconds to reflect before he answered.
“Yes, I have received such a note, and was just going in answer to the summons.”
“Then I’m heartily glad, Doctor, that I’m in time to save you from the imposition.”
“I am grateful to you Mr. O’Rouke, so far, but I must not decide too suddenly; the woman says she’s dying.”
“All trash and make-believe. With a foul gang of wretches in a drunken orgie they mean to laugh you to scorn on the holy Sabbath day. But,” he continued in a haughty voice, and rising to go, “I have performed what I considered a duty, though an unpleasant one. It is for you to do as you see fit. Forewarned is forearmed. Good day, sir.”
“One moment, Mr. O’Rouke,” said Dr. Bruce with gentle dignity. O’Rouke had missed his play. With a man like Dr. Bruce, common honesty might always win, whereas either bluff or finesse would be sure to fail, for he could readily fathom them. He guessed at once that the priest had some hidden motive in seeking to prevent his going to the address mentioned in the note.
“It seems the note was lost in the road—did your informant say who was the bearer of it?”
“Now yer afther cross-questioning me, so I’ve done wid ye,” said the priest impetuously and with full brogue. “Its plain you think there’s something wrong about my story!”
“Not in the least, Mr. O’Rouke, I was merely guarding against what might possibly be inaccuracy on the part of your informant, for I should rather risk the assault you say is in store for me, than fail in my duty to a fellow creature.”
Smelling defeat the priest moderated his petulance, and answered calmly:—“Well, then, the bearer was a servant in the house of Clara Adamanti who heard the contents of the note and the plot in connection with it, and came to me for my advice. She lost the note, but I suspected it might find its way to you and came here to warn you of the trap, thinking you would at least thank me for my trouble, and yourself be saved from an outrage.”
“I thank you most heartily, Mr. O’Rouke, and shall certainly not expose myself to such a danger after your friendly notice.”
As there was nothing more to be said O’Rouke withdrew, thoroughly appreciating the equivocal nature of the doctor’s final words.
It was after nightfall when Belle again alighted at the parsonage. O’Rouke was ready to receive her. But she was so much troubled by the fact that the letter had been delivered that she considered all else as useless, and merely said that Lamont’s account of the girl was exactly what Lady Clare had told her years ago, and that the girl was not and had not been at the lodgings in Vine street.
“I suspect,” said O’Rouke, “that Bruce has gone to Lady Clare’s. Your dropping that note has spoiled everything! If you had only had time to get a few dare-devils there to receive him! But it’s too late for that now; the mischief’s done. Niver mind, Belle, darlin’. You can generally count on the plans of the heretical divils goin’ awry. And take note that while there’s only one thing in your way, all else is in your favor. Be off now, child, be off, an’ moind you, don’t forget your bades!”
By the time Miss Ross arrived at Castle Adamant, Dr. Bruce had been there fully an hour.
“You are already aware,” said Mme. Adamanti, plunging at last into those terrible confidences which she had summoned him to hear,—“that the name by which I am known is a fictitious one. I adopted it in the hope that it might help me to become as hard as a fiendish desire for vengeance made me wish to be. I find we cannot readily transform ourselves into definitions of words. Indeed, I have designed more hard deeds than I have performed, though often the performance lay easily within my reach. I was named “Hope,” and a poor blighted hope I have proved myself indeed! What fatality there is in names....Our family name was Vincent. We had a small farm in Ohio southeast from Cleveland, and my father was deacon of the church in the village near by the farm. From my earliest recollection I was not happy or contented with my life there. As I grew older, the weary monotony of existence seemed to crush my spirit; I longed to see what the rest of the world was like, for I felt that if it were anything like the copy before me, it must be a sorry affair. The long sermons twice each Sunday, and at least two prayer meetings I was obliged to attend during the week, caused me to regard religion as the greatest curse on earth, and I early began to invent all sorts of excuses for staying away from them. My elder sister (we were the only children of our parents, and she was three years my senior) was perfectly satisfied with her lot, and the minister said she was the pattern for all the other young people to copy after. I began to dislike her and call her a hypocrite; and by pretending sickness, or purposely hurting myself, I would manage to stay at home, and while the others were away I would read all the books and papers I could find. Sometimes I could only get hold of some old almanac, a catalogue of patent medicines, a treatise in pamphlet form on hog cholera, or the price list of a lightning-rod factory (how vividly I recall them all now!) but I would read every word of them several times over. I seemed to have an insatiable craving for knowledge, and by the time I was thirteen I was thoroughly miserable.
“That same summer I formed a resolution. A daughter of the village doctor, who had been my playfellow, came home from Cleveland, where she had just finished her first year in a girl’s seminary, to pass the summer vacation. The account she gave me of her companions at school, the library of books, and the interesting studies seemed to set my brain on fire, and when she had gone I went to my father and asked him to let me go to the same school. But he said it would cost more than he could earn, and after scolding me for such foolishness, told me to go about my knitting. He was a rough, kind-hearted man, but never seemed to like me because of my waywardness. Unable to comprehend me he divined a latent force which unconsciously he feared. A few days afterwards I was talking to the doctor’s daughter and asked her if they would let me come to the school if I would work for them. I would scrub, wash dishes, or do anything they wished, if they would only let me come there. I had got the notion from something she had said about poor girls working for their education, and she said she thought they would take me. The resolution I formed was to go to Cleveland without saying a word to those at home, as I knew they would prevent me. It was my duty to drive the cow to pasture in the morning, after she was milked, and I had to take her along the very road which I had always known as the “Cleveland Road.”
“One morning instead of coming back from the pasture I kept straight on, and shunning everybody that came along, did not stop or turn aside until I reached the city at about four o’clock in the afternoon. I was amazed at the great crowded streets, as they seemed to me, and for some time I wandered about in a dreamy state, scarcely knowing where I was, or what I was there for; I was not tired, for I had always been used to taking long walks; nor hungry, because I had eaten some pieces of bread and cheese I stored in my pocket before starting for the pasture. But as it began to get dark I felt afraid and bethought myself of the school which I must try at once to find. I had never been more than a few miles from home before, and had no idea how I was to find the school. As I remembered the name, however, I soon enquired my way, and the mistress gave me supper and lodging with some reluctance, telling me that she would send word to my father in the morning and I must go directly home. The next day but one my father came with his wagon and took me back. When he got me home he flogged me with a raw-hide whip, and from that day it seems that my doom was sealed.
“I grew more miserable and dissatisfied as I grew older and my distasteful surroundings became more loathsome to me every day. I had some wild birds in cages and I let them all go because I thought they must feel as I did. I will not attempt to describe the anguish I suffered during the next three years. We seemed to get poorer all the time, and all I heard was long prayers morning and evening, and long blessings at each scanty meal, and fault-finding and grumbling the rest of the day. My father called me a “lazy burden,” my mother said resignedly that her cross was a very heavy one and I was a sharp thorn in her side; and my sister told me religiously that there was no doubt I was possessed of a devil, and that I might at any time be turned into a cat or a pig if I did not give up my foolish ways and try and listen to the Gospel. I tried several times to tell both father and mother of the longing which enthralled my heart and brain, a longing which I could not then, in my ignorance and innocence, define, but which I know now was wholly and solely for knowledge, advancement. Even then I used to think, and enraged my sister by telling her, that less time spent at prayer-meetings and love feasts, as they called some of their inane gatherings, and more in gaining useful knowledge, and making useful effort, might improve our situation. But thinking this a reference to my father’s shiftlessness, as I admit it was, she merely said that he was a good and religious man, and everything was secondary to that. I often thought when this remark recurred to me, that it was a pity I was not constituted to share their holy satisfaction and self-sufficiency, and that in the very midst of so much “saving grace” a phrase forever on their tongues, I was slowly but inevitably to be damned!”
“My father made such threats that I was afraid to run away again, and I eked out my existence in constant misery as if I had been an outcast without parents, friends, or wits. As I would not go to the religious meetings, I could have no clothes, and when I was sixteen I had but one shabby calico dress I could wear outside the house; no beggar could have been in a worse plight. Books were denied me, partly because of my stubbornness, and partly because my father was of opinion that they all contained something against religion. Even if by any stratagem I procured one to read, it was sent back to the owner with an insulting message, if the owner’s name happened to be in it, or if not it was thrown into the fire. So that very soon the few friends I had were the best possible allies of my father, and I could not get a book on any pretext. The only newspaper I ever had a chance to see was a stupid weekly periodical called “Church Chimes,” I think, the sentiments of which were exactly in keeping with the readers it found in our house. It was a mere pander to the most brutal ignorance and superstition, which, instead of seeking to deliver its readers from their moral and intellectual obscurity, invented the most cunning devices, as I now remember, to perpetuate their conceited stolidity. There may be such publications still in circulation in Christendom, but the only journal I have seen since then which is an exact counterpart in spirit, of that pestilential sheet, is the official organ of the Mormon Church at Salt Lake City—”
“You have been there, then?” asked Doctor Bruce, with surprise. “You have been to Utah?”
“Oh, yes; I have been there: I was among the first to go. But I shall come to that presently. Can you bear with me a little longer, Doctor? I want you to know all, that you may see I came not willingly to what I am: that you may know a more awful phase of the “Greater Bondage,” than you touched upon in your lecture. For if sin in its common shape is a bondage worse than slavery, and far worse than death, what shall be said of a system which forces this bondage upon its votaries as a religion, and grinds their hearts to powder in the attempt to reconcile them to its filthy and unnatural demand!” She spoke with such vehemence that the Doctor rose from his chair and entreated her to be more calm.
“I was speaking of the paper,” she resumed, “but I have yet to tell you that it was the direct cause of my attempting to take my own life, a few days after my sixteenth birthday. In all my sufferings, such means of escape had never occurred to me until I read in our “religious” paper the most sentimental account of the suicide of a young girl who had drowned herself, as they said, in a fit of temporary insanity. But she was a church-going girl, and the account went on to say that her mind had been shattered by sickness, and closed with a conjecture that she might even have fallen into the river by accident. Both my mother and sister had told me so often that I was out of my mind, I sometimes thought it might be true; and now on reading this account the thought of destroying myself took a sudden hold on me and preyed upon my brain like a fever. I disputed with myself the advisability of the step for several days, but each day the determination grew stronger till at last the thought of vanishing entirely from the misery which I thought had shattered my mind, made me merry, and the chilly indifference of those about me became even more marked at the change in my demeanor. On the Sunday morning after my birthday (which was only remembered by the family circle with regret), I drove the cow to the pasture as usual, and came back to the house and put on my best clothes. As the others were starting for church I came into the room, I was so much amused at the solemn, church-going expression on their faces, that I laughed, and then asked them, with half comic audacity, to kiss me good-bye before they went. My father and mother had been quarreling for an hour, and were not in the best of humor, so that this unheard of demand from me caused the former to hastily cram his testament into his coat pocket and go outside, and provoked the latter to raise her best parasol as if to strike me. As they went away, I heard my father say to mother, that if she had not always been a religious woman, he would feel inclined to doubt that “Hoe” (as they always called me) was any relation to him. To which she replied that I was a dreadful trial for them both—but that I was not quite so bad as the burden of their poor pastor who had a son twenty-five years old, a helpless idiot, not even able to eat his food, or help himself in any way. This was said as they were getting into the wagon, and as I turned away from the window where I had heard it all, I wept bitterly, and decided at once that they should never see me alive again. Soon after my father’s wagon was out of sight, I went across the fields to another road leading into the village which crossed a deep and rapid stream about half a mile from our farm, and hurried along towards the bridge with the resolute intention of drowning myself. When I reached the stream I could see nobody coming from either direction, and felt my brain reeling as I staggered to the middle of the bridge and threw myself headlong from its side near the center of the current. I was almost unconscious when I fell, but as I struck the cold river, I felt a sharp pain in my right side. The cold shock restored my senses so that in an instant I fully realized my situation, and wondered why I was not dead—why I was still there close to the bridge suffering dreadfully, but only swung about by the seething current and not carried away to the doom I had sought. I instantly discovered that my clothes were caught on something below the surface of the water, and that I had scratched and bruised myself on the same obstacle when I fell. I uttered no cry though my head was kept above water by the snag or timber which held me. I only thought of breaking away, but I tried in vain. Of a sudden there was a dull roaring noise above me which startled me so that I screamed wildly two or three times, and struggled madly to break away. I heard voices. A wagon or carriage had stopped on the bridge, and a horseman rode to the middle, just above me and dismounted. A moment later I saw people looking down at me, and a young man climbing down the timbers towards me.
“I must have fainted, for I remember nothing that happened until the same night I awoke from my stupor and found myself in my own bed with mother and sister sitting beside me. They told me I had been saved by young Mr. Langley. I knew of him and his family merely as the very poor know of the very rich. It seems that one of their servants recognized me, and Mrs. Langley, having just returned from church in her carriage, sent me directly home without waiting to see whether I was alive or dead.
“Next morning the doctor, having heard of my rescue from the river, and knowing that my father would probably not call a doctor until too late, came in to inquire about me. He found me with a broken arm and rib, and in a consuming fever. As he was engaged in setting the bones, my father entered and told him in a surly manner that if he did anything for me he need n’t send a bill, for he had scarcely enough to live on, and anyway would not spend a cent on a hussy that tried to take her own life. The doctor merely replied, ‘I shall send you no bill, Mr. Vincent,’ and went on with his work, saying what he could to soothe and encourage me. I lay ill for some time, and was a great burden to my mother and sister, but the doctor took good care of me, and the young man who rescued me from the river called every day, to inquire how I was.
“When I was convalescent I was sitting one afternoon in a rocking chair under a large apple tree in front of the house. Young Langley rode up to the gate, and seeing me there, dismounted and came in. We were alone for some time, and he gave me to understand that he had taken a great fancy to me. Before he left he asked me to go for a drive with him next day, which I was refusing to do as I did not like his manner, when my mother came up and told him, ‘yes, I should certainly go.’ She and sister made me a new dress of some light material so that I looked neat, and was secretly proud of my sudden distinction though far from being comfortable in the enjoyment of it. That drive proved but the beginning of a series in which I was drawn deeper and deeper into the toils by his adroit flattery and dissimulation. He knew that I was at his mercy: my ignorance, commonly called innocence, fashioned me for his purpose, and the blind and criminal neglect of my people left me to my fate. The tragedy of the foolish maiden fascinated and betrayed, was at length enacted when he had led me to think that we were to be married in a few days. He kept up the deception for a time, and then told me flatly that he had never intended to marry me. He tore a ring from my finger which he had placed there as a part of his trick, and left me, as he hoped, no doubt, forever.
“It was soon after reported that he had been converted to Mormonism by some missionaries who had been quietly working in the neighborhood, and that he had gone to their City of Nauvoo on the Mississippi. Who shall tell the forlorn agony of spirit which then beset me! I should have made another attempt to destroy myself, had I not been held back by the existence of my child, which I could no longer conceal.
“When my father became aware of my situation he drove me out of the house and warned me never to show myself there again. But this seemed to me only a just punishment, though of all that then concerned me I only fully realized that I had been betrayed. My poor mother begged him to have pity on me, and my sister added her entreaties, but he would not listen, and I wandered slowly away scarce knowing what I was about. The instinct of self-preservation seemed at last to arouse me, and I made my way to Cleveland where I found employment as a domestic servant. The woman with whom I lived was very kind to me in my desolation. She was bearing the cross of a faithless husband and entered into my sorrow. I told her my story, and after my child came she advised me to write to its father. He was then at Nauvoo, and in reply to my letter said I might come to him if I came alone. My employer helped me to devise a plan for the temporary abandonment of my baby, leading me to hope that I might recover it whenever I was ready. At last I adopted her plan as the only escape from my miseries short of suicide. What bitter anguish it caused me to leave my child! But I mustered up my resolution, and the tragedy of my life went on. Early one morning I left the little dainty creature near the house of a good old minister,—the same Dr. Taine who died recently at Cleveland from a shock caused by the flight of his daughter with the rebel spy, Lamont.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“That was my daughter—the foundling, Hagar!”
For a time she could not speak.
“All these years,” she continued, at length, “I had supposed her dead, and now she is here, under this roof, brought and delivered to me by my friend, her betrayer!”
Her form quivered with emotion, and for a time it seemed that she would not be able to continue. But by a desperate effort she controled her emotion, and went on.
“Hoping to secure kind treatment for the child, I left a note with her intimating that I had drowned myself in a pond near by; and after I had seen a workman pick up my baby and carry her to the house, I went back to the city and joined a party of Mormon emigrants who were starting that day for Nauvoo. I took my place in one of their wagons. They were all heavily laden with house-furniture, agricultural implements and provisions. By seven o’clock we were moving slowly out of the city to begin that gloomy pilgrimage. By what seemed to me a fatality, we traveled the same road I had already been that morning, and were soon passing the very house where I was leaving my soul. It was only by the most determined effort that I could restrain myself from leaping from the wagon and going to claim my deserted baby. The workmen, the minister, and some women and children were about the pond searching for the poor desperate wretch who had deceived them so shamefully, and when I thought of what I was doing my face burned with remorse till I almost relented. My companions thought I wept for the friends I was leaving behind, and paid very little attention to me; and as we rumbled along the hard roads, the scene was constantly shifting, so that by an effort I at last became more cheerful.
“We were on the road almost a month, and on our arrival at Nauvoo, Langley gave me a very luke-warm reception, and instead of taking me to his own house, placed me in the prophet Smith’s family where my position was that of a servant. The prophet himself undertook my conversion to the new faith, and I was soon satisfied with the whole Mormon pretense, the golden-plates, the revelations, the miracles, and all else they taught me.
“I had learned with great facility, because the prophet had said that I could not become Brother Langley’s wife for time and eternity under the ‘new and everlasting covenant,’ until I entered heartily into the religion that had saved him. I was willing to do anything to attain the end that brought me to the edge of the wilderness, and acquiesced in it all without half understanding what was meant. They appealed to my sympathies also with great effect, telling me of the dreadful persecutions they had suffered in Ohio and Missouri, and I only heard at Nauvoo what the gentiles did against the saints, and never a word about the aggression and misconduct of the latter. The prophet’s wife and one or two of his concubines coached me sedulously for some secret and mysterious ceremony that I must pass through in the Temple to become the celestial wife of Brother Langley, as they said; and by that time I had imbibed so much of their prejudice against the world in general that I regarded them almost at their own estimation.
“I had been in Nauvoo a year when I was finally told I was to be married to Bishop Langley. In the interval I had received letters regularly from Mrs. Benjamin my employer in Cleveland until the last two months, during which I had three or four brief notes dictated by her and written by another hand. These informed me that Mrs. Benjamin was prostrated by a severe illness. My letters were always brought to me opened by Langley, who took my replies to the post-office. I was never allowed money enough even to pay postage on a letter. The last one I ever received was apparently in the same hand as the others, and stated that the baby I had abandoned had died of croup, and that Mrs. Benjamin was not expected to live more than a few days. That letter was a forgery which Langley had procured to deceive me. The information he had received was to the effect that Mrs. Benjamin had died suddenly, and he believed that all clue to the child perished with her. In the crushing grief which seized me at the news of my baby’s death, Langley made some weak efforts to cheer me, and so desolate was my life that I tried to fancy, though painfully conscious of his lack of proper feeling, that his attentions were all that my heart craved. The ‘celestial’ ceremony was deferred for a short time in consequence of my sorrow, which they called ‘sickness.’ At length the fatal day arrived, and I was made a ‘celestial’ wife to Langley, given a name by which I was to be known to the saints in heaven, and overcome by the avalanche of mystery and mummery which the new priesthood had at its command; the borrowed rubbish of all systems supplemented by inventions of its own.
“I had not quite understood the covert reference I had heard made in the prophet’s family as to the meaning of ‘celestial’ marriage, and was horrified on my arrival at Langley’s house to be introduced to another woman as his wife, whom I was commanded to honor and obey as himself. The sophistries of that woman, who was related to the prophet and had been a pupil of his visionary and ignorant mother, gradually caused me to accept the situation, though my nature continually revolted against what I felt to be an ignominious and contemptible relation. In spite of the ‘celestial’ poems of one of the prophet’s concubines; the most polygamous passages from Scripture; the prophet’s undoubted inspiration from on high, and the quiet but insinuating canvass of the doctrine that was then being made, I could not help thinking myself wronged; could not silence the still, small voice that nature had established in my soul, and that cried out against this sanctified outrage.
“But a crisis was approaching, and in the midst of alarms more or less real; I gradually became so indifferent that I could not tell myself from the fanatics about me. In the winter of 1845, Langley was among the most influential of those who stood by Brigham Young, and favored the project of moving in a body to the far West, there to establish an empire of their own. Their prophet and his brother had been killed some time before, by a mob in Carthage Jail, where they were confined on charges the Mormons considered to be false, and the people were now obliged to fly before the dangers that threatened, unless they were willing to live like other citizens according to the customary laws of order and decency.”
Very thrilling was her narrative of the journey of the pioneer Mormon train, of which she was a member, in the spring and summer of 1847, from the Missouri River to the Great Salt Lake. The region had only been explored a short time before by General Fremont, and that entire country extending two thousand miles from East to West and over a thousand from North to South was a trackless wilderness. The memory of the fatigues and dangers of that dreadful pilgrimage came back like a nightmare to the poor invalid, and she hastened on to the later scenes.
“As the colony at Salt Lake grew in numbers, and agriculture was the only productive industry then possible, mere necessaries of life were produced in quantities far exceeding the needs of the community; and Edwin Langley was the first, having some good teams and wagons at his disposal, to turn a cargo of such commodities into gold, among the rich placers that had riveted the attention of the world on California. The first adventure of the kind having succeeded far beyond his hopes, he repeated it again and again with such results that he was recognized as the richest and most enterprising saint in Zion. He gave his support to all schemes set on foot by Brigham Young for the general welfare of the ‘Saints,’ and was soon only second to the new prophet himself, in his wealth of lands, flocks and herds, and wives and children.
“After several years of untold humiliation, during which I had struggled in vain against my unquenchable aversion to the system, I resolved if possible to escape to California. The fact that I bore no children was made a subject of ugly comment about me, both by my saintly lord and his more fortunate concubines, two of whom were vulgar factory hands from Coventry, who found the saintly life entirely satisfactory and laughed at me for my crazy notions. At length my opportunity arrived. A handsome young man with whom Langley had become acquainted in California, stopped at Salt Lake on his way to the States, and was invited by Langley to visit at his house, which was one of the few good ones in the Mormon Capital. I often met him, and he sought me constantly, uttering words of sympathy, and finally obtaining not only a complete confession of my miserable lot, but an influence over me which was irresistible. We were aware of the danger of our secret conferences, and as the stranger had already overstayed his time, were conscious that something desperate must be done, and that parting from each other was not to be one of the alternatives. He was a cool and deliberate man. He successfully planned our flight, and we went together to New Orleans, arriving in the gay season of the Carnival.
“I had noticed on the steamboat that my husband, as I called him, sat up late every night to gamble, and that he inevitably won. My life became a kind of delirium, the dazzle and whirl of which increased immensely after our arrival at the Crescent City, where we were surrounded by sporting men and the beauties of the town who were old and familiar friends of my lover. I soon became intoxicated by the life of this gay society, so strangely in contrast with the rest of my experience, and went on and on in the maddening round of pleasure until it became as indispensable to me as to the rest.
“We had only been in New Orleans a few months when my lover was shot dead at a gambling table. I was again left to battle with life. All the world outside the constellation where Fate had cast me was closed against me forever, but I did not realize this fact until I had proved it by bitter experience. It then became clear to me that I must remain where I was and make the best or the worst of my lot. Possessed of a certain shrewdness and tact I sold the costly lace and diamonds my lover had given me, and with the proceeds, added to some timely loans from his friends, opened a sumptuous palace, which soon eclipsed in splendor and patronage everything of the kind that had been known in the Paris of the Southern States, I speculated on the Exchange, and in the slave market, was lucky, and found I was rapidly amassing a fortune. Finally, about four years ago I came to Cincinnati with several ambitious designs; but my chief object was health: I could not longer endure the climate of New Orleans.
“Now, Dr. Bruce, you have heard my story. My money and my poor child are here—can you undertake my commission?” She spoke with strong emotion, and for the first time during the narration, wept bitterly.
“Yes, madam,” said the Doctor “if I can serve you and the young girl of whom you speak, I will do so. What do you require from me?”
“To become executor and administrator of my estate, to which she is the only heir. I should prefer that you sell all real-estate and turn it into ready money. Nothing that I shall leave for her is the fruit of my vicious life; I made it all on the Stock Exchange by a series of lucky speculations. Whatever I realized otherwise I shall leave to those like myself who are now in possession, and as a fund to help young women who are in peril because of their poverty and ignorance.”
An ominous tremor shook her frame and for some time she remained silent. Then she said feebly:
“Would it be possible, Doctor Bruce, to have the papers made out now this evening? I feel that I must not delay.”
“Yes, it could be done to-night but, perhaps, if you were patient until to-morrow——?”
“There will be no to-morrow for me, Doctor. I beg you do it now.”
She raised herself quickly to a sitting posture and, glancing about with a wild apprehensive gaze, brushed the back of her hand across her eyes as if to wipe away a mist that suddenly came before her.
“Quick! Doctor, quick! Don’t let me die till this is done!”
The Doctor was holding her hand and supporting her.
“Feel no alarm;—it shall be done at once. Lie down and be patient. I have a legal friend who lives near by. I can bring him in a moment, and everything shall be done as you wish.”
His words calmed her, and she sank back upon the pillow with a faint smile and a pathetic look of gratitude.
As the Doctor passed through the hall he said to Miss Ross and Ida who came to him for news of the patient:
“Keep her very quiet until I return. One of you should stay by her and give the medicine as her doctor directed. It is a powerful stimulant and she will require it.”
He had just gone out the front door when Mme. Adamanti’s bell was heard and Miss Ross hastened to her.
A kindly smile lit up her grief-marked face when Belle approached and asked in a voice of genuine feeling how she was.
“I am better now, and will soon be well.”
Her voice sounded strange, and made Belle feel uneasy. She continued:—
“I wanted to see you, Belle, to tell you that I am going to make my will. My promise to you, Ida, and the others is not forgotten. But the rest of my estate I shall leave to this girl, ‘Kitty,’ who is my own and only child. I want you to tell her, at once, that a gentleman has been here who has her fortune in trust, and that he is coming back presently to show her the papers. At a signal from me you will bring her here, and after I have embraced her she will go with Dr. Bruce,—ignorant of what or who I am.”
Miss Ross kept her counsel about the girl’s flight, hoping there still might be a turn to her own advantage. As Mme. Adamanti continued to talk about her child with a strange, embittered curiosity, Doctor Bruce came in with the lawyer, and Belle retired.
The will was soon prepared, but Mme. Adamanti experienced great difficulty in signing her name. When all was ready she summoned Miss Ross to bring ‘Kitty.’
“She must know you as her benefactor, Dr. Bruce, without a hint that the bounty comes from me.—Well where is Kitty?” she demanded when Miss Ross entered alone.
Bell was half abashed, half defiant.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Simply that the girl is not in the house. She has run away.”
Again Lady Clare raised herself to a sitting posture and glared wildly about, wringing her hands.
“Gone? Gone! You have fooled me, then? Begone yourself and never let me see your face again. But you will find her, Dr. Bruce? Go now and look for her—go at once;—find her if you hope for mercy! Oh, devils! vipers! to betray the innocent. Find her or the curse of God shall pursue——”
She gasped and sank back. At that moment her doctor entered. Surprised by the unwonted scene he hurried to the bedside and involuntarily seized the wrist of his patient. A gesture from Doctor Bruce reassured him and the silence was only broken by the death-moan of the sufferer.
Suddenly the watchers were startled by a ring at the front door bell. Jerry knew that his mistress was dying and opened the door noiselessly.
“I have a warrant to search this house for one Hagar Taine, and to arrest the keeper, Clare Adamanti.”
It was a Captain of the Military police who spoke, and a squad of armed men were with him.