“I know it,” replied I, remembering what misery of my heart it had beheld, in its marble calm.
“In my fevered imagination it took ghostly life. It seemed to become the shadow of myself, and I paused an instant to charge it to watch over those who drove me forth,—to be a holy monitor in that ill-doing house. It was marble, and they could not harm it.”
“That statue has seemed to me your presence there,” I said, “and a sorrowful watcher.”
I could not continue, and describe that fatal interview of last night. I was silent, and in a moment Cecil Dreeme went on.
“The rest you mostly know. You know how my rash venture succeeded from its very rashness. I won Locksley. The poor fellow had had troubles of his own, and I felt that I was safe with him, even if he discovered my secret. He gossiped to me innocently of my own disappearance, and how they were searching for me far and wide; but never within a stone’s throw of my home.”
“It was an inspiration,” said I, “your concealment there,—such a plan as only genius devises.”
“A mad scheme!” Dreeme said, musingly. “I hardly deem myself responsible for it. And who can yet say whether it was well and wisely done?”
“Well and wisely!” said Churm. “You are saved, and the tempter is dead.”
“Ah!” Dreeme sighed, “what desolate days I passed in my prison in Chrysalis! I felt like one dead, as the world supposed me,—like one murdered,—one walled up in a living grave; and I gave myself no thought of ever emerging into life again. Why should I love daylight? What was there for me there? Only treachery. Who? Only traitors. I had no one in the world to trust. I dwelt alone with God.”
Dreeme paused. The tears stood in those brave, steady eyes. How utterly desolate indeed had been the fate of this noble soul! How dark in the chill days of winter! How lonely in his bleak den in Chrysalis! Stern lessons befall the strong.
“Painting my Lear kept me alive, with a morbid life. It was my own tragedy, Robert. I am the Cordelia. When you did not recognize my father and sister on that canvas, I felt that myself was safe from your detection.”
“How blind I have been!” I exclaimed; “and now that I recall the picture, I perceive those veiled likenesses, and wonder at my dulness.”
“Not veiled from me,” said Churm. “You saw me recognize them, Byng. Ah, my child! how bitter it is to think of you there pining away alone, and I under the same roof, saddening my heart with sorrow for your loss!”
“Yes, my father; but how much bitterer for me, who had loved and trusted you like a daughter, to believe that you were as cruel a traitor as the rest,—that you too would betray me in a moment. So I lived there alone, putting my agony into my picture. There was a strange relief in so punishing, as it were, the guilty. And when I had punished them, I forgave them. The rancor, if rancor there were, had gone out of me. I was ready for kindlier influences. They did not come. I could not seek them. I was no longer sustained by the vigor of my revolt. My days grew inexpressibly dreary. The life was wearing. And then I was starving for all that my dear friend and preserver, Mr. Byng, has given me,—starving to death, Robert; and there I should have died alone but for you. I knew you as my old playmate from the first moment.”
I pressed her hand. “It is a touching history,” I said, “but strange to me still,—strange as a dream.”
“Yes, and my name, when I abandon it, will make the whole seem dreamier. My name was a sudden fancy, in reply to Locksley’s query, what he should call me. Cecil; I did not quite give up my womanhood, as Cecil. And Dreeme,—it occurred to me that, if ever in life I should escape danger and be at peace, my present episode of disguise and concealment would be recalled by me only as a dream. And from such a fancy, half metaphysical, half mere girlishness, I named myself. My danger must excuse the alias.”
A girlish fancy! Every moment it came to me more distinctly that Cecil Dreeme and I could never be Damon and Pythias again. Ignorantly I had loved my friend as one loves a woman only. This was love,—unforced, self-created, undoubting, complete. And now that the friend proved a woman, a great gulf opened between us. And as in my first interview with Emma Denman, I had fancied that form in the mirror the spirit of her sister regarding us, now again I seemed to see, projected against a lurid future, a slight, elegant figure in deep mourning, watching me, now with a baleful, now with a pleading look.
Thinking thus, I let fall Cecil’s hand, and drew apart a little. Meantime Churm’s bays whirled us merrily over the frozen turnpike, through the brisk air of that March evening. We might, for all the passers knew, have left a warm and kindly fireside, and now were speeding back to our own cheerful homes, talking as we went of rural hospitality, and how wealthy with content was life in a calm old country-house.
But thinking of what might start up between Cecil Dreeme and me, and part us, I let fall the hand I held.
“No, Robert!” said Cecil, reaching out that slight hand again, and taking mine. “I cannot let my friend go. You were dear and true to me when I was alone. Do not punish me, that I was acting an unwilling deceit with you. I longed to give you all my confidence. But how could I?”
How could she, indeed? To me, of all other men, how could she? To me, the friend of her father, the comrade of Densdeth, the disciple of Churm, perhaps the lover of her sister, the ally of all whose perfidy had wronged her,—how could she offer to me the confidence that would compel me to choose between her and them? How could she, alone in that solitude of Chrysalis, cover her face with her hands and whisper,—“Robert, I am a woman!”
“Now, my child,” said Churm, “we strike the pavements in a few moments. The bays will give me my hands full in the crowded streets, and across the ferry. Tell us how you came at last into Densdeth’s power.”
“You remember my terror, Robert, when at last I encountered that evil spirit again. He knew me. He must have watched Chrysalis, and seen me enter with you. Last night you did not come. I went out alone, not without some trepidation, to take my walk. By and by I perceived a carriage following me. I turned into a side street. It drove up. Densdeth’s black servant—that Afreet creature—sprang out with another person. They dragged me into the carriage, and smothered my screams.”
“O Cecil,” I cried, “if I could have saved you this!”
No wonder that Densdeth smiled triumphant in the corridor of the opera,—smiled in double triumph over me!
“I had no fears, Robert. I felt that you would miss me. I hoped that you would trace me. At the ferry Densdeth got into the carriage. He treated me simply as an insane person, and was gentle enough. I do not think he had given up the thought that he could master my mind,—that he could weary out my moral force, and triumph over me by dint of sheer devilishness. He left me in peace last night. He had but just entered to-day, and began to address me quietly, as if I were in my father’s parlor, and he were again my allowed suitor, when the woman burst in with the news of a hostile arrival. He ran out, and presently I heard that dreadful scream of exultation and despair. There seemed to me two voices mingled,—the cry of a mocking fiend baffled, and the shout of a rebel slave.”
“It was so,” said Churm. “How calmly you speak of all this, my child!”
“It is the life of Cecil Dreeme, and fast becoming merely historic to me, passing away into my dark ages. These will be scenes never to be forgotten, but never recalled. And now, a word of my father. Will the shame he feared come upon him at last?”
“It may not. Only Densdeth knew the crime. But Densdeth gone, poverty and sudden defeat of all his ambitious schemes must befall him.”
“Better so! Poverty, shame even, are better for the soul than a life that is a lie. Only harsh treatment will teach a nature like my father’s the sin of sin. Poor and ashamed, he will learn to prize my love.”
“You can love him still, Cecil,—so cruel, so base?” I asked.
“Love does not alter for any error of its object.”
“Error? I name it guilt, sacrilege!”
“Cecil,” said I, after a silence, “you do not ask of your sister.”
“No,” she said, turning from me. She would have withdrawn her hand. I held it closer than before.
30
Densdeth’s Dark Room
We were now upon the pavements. Conversation ceased. The broad facts had been stated. The myriad details must wait for quieter hours. We were grave and expectant, for in the mind of each was an unspoken dread that all our sorrow was not over.
Churm drove hard. It was chilly sunset, a melancholy lurid twilight of March, when we turned out of Mannering Place and drew up in front of Chrysalis. Alternate thaw and freezing had fouled the snow in Ailanthus Square. It lay in patches, streaked with dirt of the city, and between was the sodden grass, all trampled uneven and stiffening now with the evening frost.
“The world never looked so dreary,” said I.
“This is the very end of bitter winter,” said Cecil; “let us hope now for brighter spring at hand. We will create it in ourselves.”
“Yes,” said Churm, whistling for his groom. “We must not let forlornness come upon us now, after this great mercy of my child’s return. Byng, you had better take your friend Cecil Dreeme up to your palace-chamber, while I go round to the Minedurt, with Locksley, and have dinner brought. We all need it, after the drive and the day.”
Dreeme and I climbed the broad staircase. We walked those few steps along the corridor to my door. It was almost dusk. As we passed the door of Densdeth’s dark room, each was conscious anew how death had freed the world from that demon influence. We seemed to breathe freer.
We entered my great chamber. It was already sombre with the shades of evening. Only a dim light came through the mullioned and trefoiled windows. I established my guest in an arm-chair. She dropped the hood of her cloak. I smiled to notice the masculine effect of her crisp curling black hair. She perceived my feeling, and smiled also. A quiet domestic feeling seemed to grow up between us. I busied myself in reviving the fire from its ashes.
Cecil sat silent. Neither was yet at home in our new relation. I made occupation, to fill a silence I shrank from breaking with words, by examining the letter-box at my door.
There was the evening paper in the box. To-morrow it would be filled with staring capitals, and all this sorry business of the execution of Densdeth and the exposing of Huffmire.
There were sundry cards in the box; cards of lounging men about town, who had come to kill a half-hour at my expense; a card from a friend of Stillfleet’s from Boston, asking permission to recover his dress coat and waistcoat, deposited in some drawer of Rubbish Palace when he came last a-wooing; a card from Madame de Nigaud, with—“Oysters and Frezzaniga at ten. Come, or I cut you!”—cards to the balls after Lent; a tailor’s bill; a club notice; a ticket for a private view of Sion’s new statue of Purity.
There was also a billet addressed to me in a hand I seemed to know.
“There is what the world had to say to me this afternoon,” I said, handing the cards to Cecil Dreeme.
I walked toward the window for more light to read my billet; also to hide my face while I read. For I knew the hand of the address.
It was Emma Denman’s.
It cost me a strong effort to tear open that slight missive. I knew not what I dreaded; but I was aware of a miserable terror, lest the sister should come between me and Cecil Dreeme, blighting both.
So I opened the letter, and began to read it, with hasty intentness, by that dim light through the narrow windows. Presently, as I divined its inner meaning, and anticipated some sorrowful, some pitiful confession at the close, I read more slowly, not to lose the significance of a word. The light faded rapidly, and each syllable was harder to decipher; and yet each, as I comprehended it, seemed to trail away and write itself anew on the dimness before me, in ineffaceable letters of fire.
This was the letter.
“Robert, good-bye! I could not see you face to face again,—I that have almost betrayed you with my sin.
“But you shall be safe from any further treachery of mine, and for the deep dread I have of myself, lest I again become a traitor to some trusting soul, I shall put any further evil work in this world out of my power.
“I tried—God knows I tried for myself and you—to keep away from between us any other sentiment than liking and simple good-will. But I could not withhold myself from loving you. It was my destiny first to be taught what love meant through you, and so to learn that I must never hope for love—for true love—in this waste misery of my ruined earthly life. I could not check you from loving me with that hesitating love you have given. I knew, O Robert! I knew why you could not love me with frank abandonment. I felt the want in myself you dimly and far away perceived. I was conscious in my whole being of the taint that repelled you.
“And yet sometimes—forgive me, for I hate myself, I loathe myself—I was willing to accept the success of my lie, my acted lie. I knew my power over you, and saw that it was greater because you had a doubt to overcome. Alas for me for such dishonor! But I yielded to the sweet delusion that I could repair the past, that by future truth to you I could annihilate the falsehood in me, upon which any love of yours must be based.
“And then, too, Robert,—for such is the cruel despotism of deceit,—I have found a base joy in my power to charm you, so that you forgot everything in my society. I have even felt a baser pleasure in keeping higher and holier aspirations away from your soul, lest you should become too sensitive, and so know me too well. Ah, how terrible is this corruption of a hidden sin! It has made me the foe of purity, eager to drag others down to my level.
“And yet I have agonized against it. More steadily, Robert, since you came. Why did you not come years ago? Why were you ever away? I do not feel my nature wholly base. It seems to me that I might have been noble, if I had been guarded better in the innocent days. But I will be guarded, self-guarded, when this life I loathe is past, and that other life begun, with all my stern experience.
“You will not despise me. I know that it is braver to speak than to be silent; and then this struggle to be true with you helps me in the greater struggle to be true with God. Do not despise me, Robert! I saw what was in your mind when we parted. It is so. I might deceive you now. I might trifle away your suspicions; I might repel them with indignation. I will not. They are just.
“It is said. I shall die happier. I must die. I cannot trust myself. I cannot bear to act my daily lie before the world. I might again deceive, and again see the same misery in another I have seen in you,—again see a look of love grow cold,—again see doubt creep in and murder faith. I cannot trust myself. I might love you with all my heart, and yet go miserably yielding to a temptation. And so good-bye to my life, and all my womanly hopes!
“Ah Robert, if I could but have escaped that prying spirit of evil,—that one fatal being who mastered me with the first look, who saw the small germ of a bad tendency in me, and nurtured it!
“But do not believe that I was to be so base as it may seem to my sister. I did not love her ever. Her nature was a constant reproach to mine. But I should have saved her from the infamy of her marriage. I should,—O yes! I thank God that I had emancipated myself enough for that. I should have saved her; but while I was struggling with my dread of shame, my pride, and all the misery of an avowal,—while I was weeping and praying, and gaining strength to be as sisterly as I could be so late,—she was drowning! And so her sweet, innocent life perished, and the fault was mine,—the fault was mine, that I had not long before told her such a marriage would be sacrilege.
“I have had a bitter burden to bear since then,—a wearing weight of
repentance. Ah! if my sister could have lived, I might have shown her that I was worthy of her love. I might have wrought her to forget those years of alienation,—all my fault, and never fault of hers,—my noble, hapless sister! A heavy burden of shame and self-disgust! And heavier, heavier, since you came;—heavier, because, as I have learned to know what true love means, and to despair of ever being worthy of it, the reaction of hopelessness has almost driven me to utter self-abandonment, and that miserable comfort of recklessness. And so I die, lest I might fail my nobler nature, and pass into the ranks of the tempters.
“My father will not miss me. You will think pityingly of me, Robert. It is not for a dread of a lonely and sorrowful life that I die, but to save others from the contamination of my sin.
“I shall not sully this innocent roof with my death. I die in a place where I have the right to enter. My death there shall atone for my crime there. It is near you, Robert, and I could wish, if you can forgive and pity me, that you first would find me, in the dark room next to yours, and be a little tender with the corpse my purified spirit will have abandoned. Good-bye!
“Emma Denman.”
“Oh, Cecil!” I cried, “your sister!”
I sprang toward the door of my lumber-room. Beside it stood a suit of ancient armor, staring with eyeless eyes, and in its iron fingers it held a heavy mace of steel,—a terrible weapon, with its head studded with spikes, and rusty with old stains, perhaps of Paynim blood. I snatched it, drew my bolts, and smote with all my force at the inner lock of the door of Densdeth’s dark room.
A few such blows, the fastenings tore away, and the door flung open. I entered, and Cecil Dreeme was at my side.
It was a small room, but lofty as mine. By that faint light of impeded twilight, coming through my narrow windows, I could see that its furniture was a very dream of luxury.
But it was not the place that we noticed,—for there in the dimness we could discern the figure of a woman, seated in an arm-chair, gazing at us with a pale, dead face.
Cecil Dreeme Page 24