Crossing the room, Aubrey gazed steadfastly at the open book. It was the old family Bible, and the heavy clasps had grown stiff and rusty. It was familiar to him, and intimately associated with his life-history. There on the open page were ink lines underscoring the twelfth chapter of Luke: “For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.” At the end of this passage was written the one word “Nina.”
Without a comment, but with anxious brows, Aubrey returned to his wife’s couch, stooped and impressed several kisses on her impassive face. Then he left the room.
Dianthe lay in long and silent meditation. Servants came and went noiselessly. She would have no candles. The storm ceased; the moon came forth and flooding the landscape, shone through the windows upon the lonely watcher. Dianthe’s restlessness was soothed, and she began tracing the shadows on the carpet and weaving them into fantastic images of imagination. What breaks her reverie? The moonlight gleams on something white and square; it is a letter. She left the couch and picked it up. Just then a maid entered with a light, and she glanced at the envelope. It bore the African postmark! She paused. Then as the girl left the room, she slipped the letter from the envelope and read:
Master Aubrey,—I write to inform you that I have not been able to comply with your wishes. Twice I have trapped Dr. Briggs, but he has escaped miraculously from my hands. I shall not fail the third time. The expedition will leave for Meroe next week, and then something will surely happen. I have suppressed all letters, according to your orders, and both men are feeling exceedingly blue. Kindly put that first payment on the five thousand dollars to my sister’s credit in a Baltimore bank, and let her have the bank book. Next mail you may expect something definite.
Yours faithfully,
Jim Titus.
Aubrey Livingston had gone to an adjoining city on business, and would be absent three or four days.
That night Dianthe spent in his library behind locked doors, and all about her lay open letters—letters addressed to her, and full of love and tenderness, detailing Reuel’s travels and minutely describing every part of his work.
Still daylight found her at her work. Then she quitted it, closed up the desk, tied up the letters, replaced them, left the room, and returned to her boudoir to think. Her brain was in a giddy whirl, and but one thought stood out clearly in her burning brain. Her thoughts took shape in the one word “Reuel,” and by her side stood again the form of the pale, lovely mulattress, her long black curls enveloping her like a veil. One moment—the next the room was vacant save for herself.
Reuel was living, and she a bigamist—another’s wife!—made so by fraud and deceit. The poor overwraught brain was working like a machine now—throbbing, throbbing, throbbing. To see him, hear his voice—this would be enough. Then came the thought—lost to her, or rather she to him—and how? By the plans of his would-be murderer. O, horrible, inhuman wretch! He had stolen her by false tales, and then had polluted her existence by the breath of murder. Murder! What was murder? She paused and gasped for breath; then come the trembling thought, “Would he were dead!”
He would return and discover the opening of the letters. “O, that he were dead!”
She wandered about the grounds in the cold sunshine, burning with fever, and wild with a brain distraught She wished the trees were living creatures and would fall and crush him. The winds in their fury, would they but kill him! O, would not something aid her? At last she sat down, out of breath with her wanderings and wearied by the tumult within her breast. So it went all day; the very heavens beckoned her to commit a deed of horror. She slept and dreamed of shapeless, nameless things that lurked and skulked in hidden chambers, waiting the signal to come forth. She woke and slept no more. She turned and turned the remainder of the night; her poor warped faculties recalled the stories she had read of Cenci, the Borgias, and even the Hebrew Judith. And then she thought of Reuel, and the things he had told her on many an idle day, of the properties of medicine, and how in curiosity she had fingered his retorts used in experiments. And he had told her she was apt, and he would teach her many things of his mysterious profession. And as she thought and speculated, suddenly something whispered, as it were, a name—heard but once—in her ear. It was the name of a poison so subtle in its action as to defy detection save by one versed in its use. With a shudder she threw the thought from her, and rose from her couch.
We know we’re tempted. The world is full of precedents, the air with impulses, society with men and spirit tempters. But what invites sin? Is it not a something within ourselves? Are we not placed here with a sinful nature which the plan of salvation commands us to overcome? If we offer the excuse that we were tempted, where is the merit of victory if we do not resist the tempter? God does not abandon us to evil prompters without a white-robed angel, stretching out a warning hand and pointing out the better way as strongly as the other. When we conquer sin, we say we are virtuous, triumphant, and when we fall, we excuse our sins by saying, “It is fate.”
The days sped on. To the on-looker life jogged along as monotonously at Livingston Hall as in any other quiet home. The couple dined and rode, and received friends in the conventional way. Many festivities were planned in honor of the beautiful bride. But, alas! These days but goaded her to madness. The uncertainty of Reuel’s fate, her own wrongs as a wife yet not a wife, her husband’s agency in all this woe, the frailness of her health, weighed more and more upon a mind weakened by hypnotic experiments. Her better angel whispered still, and she listened until one day there was a happening that turned the scale, and she pronounced her own dreadful doom—“For me there’s no retreat.”
25 From “The Lady of Shalott,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1833).
CHAPTER XXI
IT was past midday about two weeks later that Dianthe wandered about the silent woods, flitting through the mazes of unfamiliar forest paths. Buried in sad thoughts she was at length conscious that her surroundings were strange, and that she had lost her way. Every now and then the air was thick and misty with powdery flakes of snow which fell, or swept down, rather, upon the brown leaf-beds and withered grass. The buffeting winds which kissed her glowing hair into waving tendrils brought no color to her white cheeks and no light to her eyes. For days she had been like this, thinking only of getting away from the busy house with its trained servants and its loathsome luxury which stifled her. How to escape the chains which bound her to this man was now her only thought. If Reuel lived, each day that found her still beneath the roof of this man whose wife she was in the eyes of the world, was a crime. Away, away, looking forward to she knew not what, only to get away from the sight of his hated face.
Presently she paused and looked about her. Where was she? The spot was wild and unfamiliar. There was no sight or sound of human being to question as to the right direction to take, not that it mattered much, she told herself in bitterness of spirit. She walked on more slowly now, scanning the woods for signs of a human habitation. An opening in the trees gave a glimpse of cultivated ground in a small clearing, and a few steps farther revealed a typical Southern Negro cabin, from which a woman stepped out and faced her as if expecting her coming. She was very aged, but still erect and noble in form. The patched figure was neat to scrupulousness, the eye still keen and searching.
As the woman advanced slowly toward her, Dianthe was conscious of a thrill of fear, which quickly passed as she dimly remembered having heard the servants jesting over old Aunt Hannah, the most noted “voodoo” doctor or witch in the country.
“Come in, honey, and res’,” were her first words after her keen eyes had traveled over the woman before her. Dianthe obeyed without a murmur; in truth, she seemed again to have lost her own will in another’s.
The one-roomed cabin was faultlessly neat, and the tired girl was grateful for the warmth of the glowing brands upon the wide hearth. Very soon a cup of stimulating coffee warmed
her tired frame and brought more animation to her tired face.
“What may your name be, Auntie?” she asked at length, uneasy at the furtive glances cast by the eyes of the silent figure seated in the distant shadow of the chimney-corner. The eyes never wavered, but no answer was vouchsafed her by the woman in the corner. Somewhere she had read a description of an African princess which fitted the woman before her.
“I knew a princess; she was old,
Crisp-haired, flat-featured, with a look
Such as no dainty pen of gold
Would write of in a fairy book.
…Her face was like a Sphinx’s face, to me,
Touched with vast patience, desert grace,
And lonesome, brooding mystery.”26
Suddenly a low sound, growing gradually louder, fell upon Dianthe’s ear; it was the voice of the old woman crooning a mournful minor cadence, but for an instant it sent a chill about the girl’s heart. It was a funeral chant commonly sung by the Negroes over the dead. It chimed in with her gloomy, despairing mood and startled her. She arose hastily to her feet to leave the place.
“How can I reach the road to Livingston Place?” she asked with a shudder of apprehension as she glanced at her entertainer.
“Don’t be ’feared, child; Aunt Hannah won’t hurt a ha’r of that purty head. Hain’t it these arms done mussed ev’ry Livingston? I knowed your mother, child; for all you’re married to Marse Aubrey, you isn’t a white ’ooman.”
“I do not deny what you say, Auntie; I have no desire so to do,” replied Dianthe gently.
With a cry of anguish the floodgates of feeling were unloosed, and the old Negress flung her arms about the delicate form. “Gawd-a-mercy! My Mira’s gal! My Mira’s gal!” Then followed a harrowing scene.
Dianthe listened to the old story of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind. A horrible, paralyzing dread was upon her. Was she never to cease from suffering and be at rest? Rocking herself to and fro, and moaning as though in physical pain, the old woman told her story.
“I was born on de Livingston place, an’ bein’ a purty likely gal, was taken to de big house when I was a tot. I was trained by ol’ Miss’. As soon as I was growed up, my mistress changed in her treatment of me, for she soon knowed of my relations with massa, an’ she was hurt to de heart, po’ ’ooman. Mira was de onlies’ child of ten that my massa lef’ me for my comfort; all de res’ were sold away to raise de mor’gage off de prop’rty.
“Ol’ marse had only one chil’, a son; he was eddicated for a doctor, and of all the limb o’ de devil, he was de worst. After ol’ marse an’ ol’ miss’ was dead he took a shine to Mira, and for years he stuck to her in great shape. Her fust child was Reuel—”
“What!” shrieked Dianthe. “Tell me—quick, for God’s sake! Is he alive, and by what name is he known?” She was deathly white, and spread out her hands as if seeking support.
“Yes, he’s living, or was a year ago. He’s called Dr. Reuel Briggs, an’ many a dollar he has sent his ol’ granny, may the good Marster bless him!”
“Tell me all—tell me the rest,” came from the lips of the trembling girl.
“Her second child was a girl,—a beautiful, delicate child, an’ de Doctor fairly worshipped her. Dat leetle gal was yourself, an’ I’m your granny.”
“Then Reuel Briggs is my brother!”
“Certain; but let me tell you de res’, honey. Dese things jes’ got to happen in slavery, but I isn’t gwine to wink at de debbil’s wurk wif both eyes open. An’ I doesn’t want you to keep on livin’ with Marse Aubrey Livingston. It’s too wicked; it’s flyin’ in de face ob Almighty God. I’se wanted to tell you eber sense I knowed who he’d married. After a while de Doctor got to thinkin’ ’bout keepin’ up de family name, an’ de fus’ thing we knows he up an’ marries a white lady down to Charleston, an’ brings her home. Well! When she found out all de family secrets she made de house too hot to hol’ Mira, and it was ordered that she mus’ be sold away. I got on my knees to Marse an’ I prayed to him not to do it, but to give Mira a house on de place where she could be alone an’ bring up de childrun, an’ he would a done it but for his wife.”
The old woman paused to moan and rock and weep over the sad memories of the past. Dianthe sat like a stone woman.
“Den I believe de debbil took possession of me body and soul. A week before my po’ gal was to be sol’, Misses’ child was born, and died in about an hour; at about de same time Mira gave birth to a son, too. In de ’citemen’ de idea come to me to change de babies, fer no one would know it, I being alone when de chil’ died, an’ de house wil’ fer fear misses would die. So I changed de babies, an’ tol’ Marse Livingston dat Mira’s boy was de dead one. So, honey, Aubrey is your own blood brother an’ you got to quit dat house mejuntly.”
“My brother!”
Dianthe stood over the old woman and shook her by the arm, with a look of utter horror that froze her blood. “My brothers! Both those men!”
The old woman mumbled and groaned, then started up.
Aunt Hannah breathed hard once or twice. Minute after minute passed. From time to time she glanced at Dianthe, her hard, toil-worn hands strained at the arms of her chair as if to break them. Her mind seemed wavering as she crooned:
“My Mira’s children; by de lotus-lily on each leetle breast I claim them for de great Osiris, mighty god. Honey, hain’t you a flower on your breast?”
Dianthe bowed her head in assent, for speech had deserted her. Then old Aunt Hannah undid her snowy kerchief and her dress, and displayed to the terrified girl the perfect semblance of a lily cut, as it were, in shining ebony.
“Did each of Mira’s children have this mark?”
“Yes, honey; all of one blood!”
Dianthe staggered as though buffeted in the face. Blindly, as if in some hideous trance, reeling and stumbling, she fell. Cold and white as marble, she lay in the old woman’s arms, who thought her dead. “Better so,” she cried, and then laughed aloud, then kissed the poor, drawn face. But she was not dead.
Time passed; the girl could not speak. The sacrilege of what had been done was too horrible. Such havoc is wrought by evil deeds. The first downward step of an individual or a nation, who can tell where it will end, through what dark and doleful shades of hell the soul must pass in travail?
“The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor and oppressed;
And close as sin and suffering joined,
We march to Fate abreast.”27
The slogan of the hour is “Keep the Negro down!” but who is clear enough in vision to decide who hath black blood and who hath it not? Can any one tell? No, not one; for in His own mysterious way He has united the white race and the black race in this new continent. By the transgression of the law He proves His own infallibility: “Of one blood have I made all nations of men to dwell upon the whole face of the earth,” is as true to-day as when given to the inspired writers to be recorded. No man can draw the dividing line between the two races, for they are both of one blood!
Bending a little, as though very weak, and leaning heavily upon her old grandmother’s arm, Dianthe at length set out for the Hall. Her face was lined and old with suffering. All hope was gone; despair was heavy on her young shoulders whose life was blasted in its bloom by the passions of others.
As she looked upward at the grey, leaden sky, tears slowly trickled down her cheeks. “God have mercy!” she whispered.
26 From a poem titled “The Black Princess” in A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles by Mrs. S.M.B. (Sarah Morgan Bryan) Piatt (1874).
27 From “Song of the Negro Boatman,” part of a greater poem called “At Port Royal” by John Greenleaf Whittier (1863).
CHAPTER XXII
FOR two days Mrs. Livingston brooded in her chamber. Fifty times a day Aubrey asked for her. The maid
told him she was ill, but not alarmingly so; no physician was called. She was simply indisposed, could not be seen.
Gazing in Dianthe’s face, the maid whispered, “She sleeps. I will not disturb her.”
Alone, she springs from her couch with all the energy of life and health. She paced the room. For two long hours she never ceased her dreary walk. Memories crowded around her, wreathing themselves in shapes which floated mistily through her brain. Her humble school days at Fisk; her little heart leaping at the well-won prize; the merry play with her joyous mates; in later years, the first triumphant throb when wondering critics praised the melting voice, and world-admiring crowds applauded. And, O, the glorious days of travel in Rome and Florence! the classic scenes of study; intimate companionship with Beethoven, Mozart and Hayden; the floods of inspiration poured in strains of self-made melody upon her soul. Then had followed the reaction, the fall into unscrupulous hands, and the ruin that had come upon her innocent head.
The third day Mrs. Livingston arose, dressed, and declaring herself quite well, went to walk. She returned late in the afternoon, dined with her husband, conversed and even laughed. After dinner they walked a while upon the broad piazzas, beneath the silent stars and gracious moon, inhaling the cold, bracing air. Then Aubrey begged her for a song. Once again she sang “Go down, Moses,” and all the house was hushed to drink in the melody of that exquisite voice.
To mortal eyes, this young pair and their surroundings marked them as darlings of the gods enjoying the world’s heaped-up felicity. Could these same eyes have looked deeper into their hearts, not the loathsome cell of the wretch condemned to death could have shown a sight more hideous. ’Twas late. Pausing at her chamber door, Aubrey raised her hand to his lips with courtly grace, and bade her good-night.
* * *
It was the first hours of the morning. From the deepest and most dreamless slumber that had ever sealed his eyes, Aubrey awoke just as the clock was striking two. ’Twas quite dark, and at first he felt that the striking clock had awakened him; yet sleep on the instant was as effectually banished from his eyes as if it were broad daylight. He could not distinguish the actual contact of any substance, and yet he could not rid himself of the feeling that a strong arm was holding him forcibly down, and a heavy hand was on his lips. He saw nothing, though the moon’s rays shone full into the room. He felt nothing sensuously, but everything sensationally; and thus it was that with eyes half-closed, and seemingly fixed as by an iron vice, he beheld the door of his dressing-room—the private means of communication with Dianthe’s rooms—very cautiously opened, and Dianthe herself, in a loose robe, crept into the room, and stealthily as a spirit glide to the side of his bed.
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