Chapter XXII.
Mrs. Brothertoft sat in the parlor of the deserted mansion, bound, helpless, and alone.
She was exhausted and weak after her furious struggle with her captors. Mental frenzy had wearied her mind.
As Major Skerrett closed the door, and she was left solitary, a little brief sleep, like a faint, fell upon her.
It could have lasted but a moment, for when she suddenly awoke, the final footsteps of the retiring party were still sounding upon the gravel road.
She listened intently. The sound ceased. Human presence had departed. Silence about her, — except that the fire on the hearth hissed and muttered, as fire imprisoned is wont to do, in feeble protest against its powerlessness.
This moment of sleep seemed to draw a line sharp as death between two eras in Mrs. Brothertoft’s history. From the hither side of this emphatic interval of oblivion she could survey her past life apart from the present. Violence, Force, had at last intervened in her career, and made their mark sharp as the sudden cleft of an earthquake in a plain.
She had now the opportunity, as she sat bound, strictly but not harshly, before a comfortable fire, to review her conduct and approve or condemn. She could now ask herself why Force had come in to baffle her plans, — what laws she had broken to merit this inevitable penalty of failure and insulting punishment.
There was a pause in her life, such as is given to. all erring and guilty lives many times in life, and to all souls in death, to look at past ruin quietly, and plan, if they will, with larger wisdom for the time to come.
She rapidly put together her facts, and without much difficulty comprehended the plot of Kerr’s capture and Lucy’s evasion. It angered her to be defeated by a “silly child,” as she had named her. But she put this aside for the moment. A graver matter was to be considered.
She thought of her husband, lying in the dining-room, slain, as she supposed, by her hand.
Then, in her soul, began a great and terrible battle. “You are free!” her old companion Furies whispered her. “Free of that incubus, your husband. Such triumph well repays you for the insult of a few hours’ bondage.”
But then a low voice within her seemed to ask, “Triumph! Can you name it triumph that you have trampled on your womanhood, and done murder to a man who gave you only love and only pity when you wronged him?”
“Be proud of yourself, beautiful creature!” whispered the Furies. “You are an imperial woman, rich, masterly, and skilful, with a brilliant career before you.”
“Humble yourself before God and your own soul, miserable woman!” the inner voice replied. “Repent, or that murdered man will take his stand at your side forever.”
“He owed you this vengeance,” her evil spirits hinted, “for your great disappointment. If he had not been a nerveless dreamer, full of feeble scruples and sham ambitions, you would have had all your heart desired. He basely cheated you. He promised everything, and performed nothing. He was the pride of the Province; he let himself sink into insignificance. Poor-spirited nobody! It was a kindness to snuff out his mean and paltry life.”
“Did you see his gentle face as he fell?” the counter influence made answer. “How gray and old he was! Do you remember him? — it seems but yesterday — a fair youth, kindling with the hopes that to him were holy. You loved him sometimes, — do you not recognize those moments as your noblest? Have not yours been the false ambitions and the idle dreams? Is not all this misery and failure the result of your first trifling with sin, and then choosing it? Disloyal woman, — if you are a woman, and not a fiend, — your cruelty has brought defeat and shame upon you! Profit by this moment of quiet reflection! see how the broken law revenges itself!”
“Yes, madam,” the other voices here interrupted, “you cannot escape what your weakness calls shame. You will never live down scandal. The untempted people will never admit you to their ranks. Scorn them. Do not yield to feeble regrets. Be yourself, — your brave, defiant self!”
The Furies were getting the better. The virago was more and more overpowering the woman. Sometimes she sat patient. Sometimes she raged and struggled impotently with her bonds. It was terrible in the dim parlor to watch her face, and mark the tokens of that mad war within.
The fire in the chimney had been slowly heating the logs all this time. They were ripe to blaze. Suddenly they burst into a bright flame.
Mrs. Brothertoft looked up and saw herself in the mirror over the fireplace. There was hardly time for a thrill of self-admiration. The same flash that showed her her own face revealed also the reflection of the portrait behind her. She saw the heads of Colonel Brothertoft and his white horse looking through the torn curtain. She had not glanced that way since her scene of yesterday evening with the picture. She had evaded a sight that recalled her treason. Now it forced itself upon her. Here she was bound; and there, over her own head in the mirror, was a ghostly shadow of what?
What! was this the ghostlier image of her husband’s very ghost? Was he there in the canvas? Had he stolen away out of that dead thing once his body, lying only a few steps and two doors off? Was he there watching her? Why did he wear that triumphant smile? He was not used to smile much in the dreary old times; — never to sneer as this semblance was doing. Even that beast, the white horse, shared in his master’s exultation over her captivity, — his nostrils swelled, and he seemed to pant for breath enough to neigh over a victory.
She stared an instant, fascinated by that faint image. There was a certain vague sense of relief in its presence. This shadow of her husband murdered might be a terror; but he intervened a third party in the hostile parley and the thickening war between her two selves. This memento of remorse came to the succor of the almost beaten relics of her better nature, and commanded them to turn and make head again against that reckless, triumphant, bedlam creature, who was fast gaining the final mastery and absorbing her total being.
Was it thus? Had this image of a ghost come to say, “My wife, the old tie cannot break. I come to plead with you not to annihilate the woman, not to repel the medicine of remorse, and make yourself an incurable, irreclaimable fiend,” — was this his errand of mercy?
Or did he stand there to hound on the Frenzies, spiritual essences, to her, to him visible beings, whom she felt seducing her? Was he smiling with delight to see her spirit zigzagging across the line between madness and sanity, and staggering farther, every turn, away from self-control? Which was this shadow’s office?
While she trembled between these questions, still staring at those two reflections in the mirror, — herself and that image of the portrait, — suddenly the flash of flame in the chimney went out. A downward draught sent clouds of white smoke drifting about the room.
Mrs. Brothertoft peered a moment into the darkness. Her own reflection in the mirror was just visible, as she stirred her head. She missed the other. But there were strange sounds suddenly awakened, — a strange whispering through the house.
So long as her seeming, ghostly companion was visible, she had kept down her terror. Now, as she fancied it still present but unseen, a great dread fell upon her. She writhed in her bonds to turn and face that portrait on the wall. She could, with all her pains, only move enough to see a little corner of the curtain.
Did it move? Would something unearthly presently put aside those dusky folds, and come rustling to her side?
She listened a moment, and then screamed aloud.
The sound of her own voice a little reassured her. She laughed harshly, and her soliloquy went on, but wilder, and without the mild entreaties of her better self.
“What a fool I am to disturb myself with mere paint and canvas! But I will have that picture burnt, — yes, burnt, — to-morrow morning. The man is gone, and every relic of him and his name shall perish from the earth. How plainly I seem to see him lying there dead, with his face upturned! What? Do dead men stir? I think he stirred. Do you dare to lift your finger and point at me? I had a right to shoot housebreakers. Put down your finger, sir! You will not? Bah! Do what you please, you cannot terrify me. You shall be burnt, burnt, — do you hear? I smell fire strangely. The smoke from that chimney, — yes, nothing else. I am afraid I shall be cold before morning; but now I am feverish. The air seems hot and dry. I suppose I have grown excited, tied here. What is that low rustling all the while? Sometimes it seems to come from the cellar, then it is here. Any one in this room? Speak! Dewitt, Sarah, is that you come home? No answer; and this whispering grows louder. Some other chimney must be smoking. I can hardly breathe. I must try to sleep, or I shall go mad before morning with that dead man in the house. Put down your finger, sir! Don’t point at me like a school-boy! What! Is he coming? Is that his step I hear in the hall? Let me see, he has only two steps to make to the door, five across the hall, then two more and he could lean over and whisper what he thought of me.”
She listened awhile to the strange sounds below, and then went on: “If you come in here, Edwin Brothertoft, and speak to me, I shall go crazy. I cannot hear any of your meek talk. Lie where you are till morning, and then, if you wish, you shall be buried. Perhaps burning was a little too harsh. Morning is not many hours away. It must be nearly ten o’clock. But if this smoke grows any thicker, I shall certainly smother. These ghastly noises get louder and louder. What can that crash be? Is the dead man coming? Help, help! Keep him away! Mr. Brothertoft, Edwin, if you love me, pray stop fumbling at that latch. You know how indulgent you always were to my little fancies; do not come in, if you please. I am afraid, Edwin, afraid. I am so fevered, tied here by those cursed brigands, that I shall go mad. I am suffocating with this smoke. Will some one bring me a little water? But when you come, do not look into that room across the hall. There is a gray-headed man lying there. He may say I murdered him. Do not take notice of him, he was always weak-minded. He will say I insulted, wronged, dishonored him, and made his life a burden and a shame. Do not listen to scandal against a woman; but bring me a drop, one drop of water to cool my throat, for I am burning with a horrible fever. If these strange noises underneath and all around do not cease, I shall certainly go mad. What can it mean? I hear sounds like an army. I would rather not receive your friends at present, Mr. Brothertoft, if it is their feet and voices I hear. This smoke makes my eyes red, and you always were proud of my beauty, you know. What! have they lighted their torches, those ghosts in the hall? Or is this glow through the room the moon? No. My God! Fire! I shall burn. O Lucy, Lucy! O Edwin, help!”