Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

“ But I know you, Marcellus! Any needy woman, any single woman, I mean, young or old, plain or pretty, shut up in the same house with you, would marry you out of hand!”
“You must think me a very weak man,” said the colonel.
“I do,” said Miss Grip.
“Thank you,” said De Crespigney, with an air of chagrin.
“Weak where your sympathies are concerned, Marcel, and that is no discredit to you, my dear! But I’ll not have any wandering woman making her market at your expense! No, sir! no resident governess, if you please!” ”

“ Of course, Madame de Crespigney did not set the matter before her son in that light. She knew Marcel too well. She adroitly directed his attention to the delicate girl, and enlisted his sympathies for her, so that he soon perceived how the pale cheeks would flush, and the dim eyes fire, and the whole plain face grow radiant and beautiful in the love-light of his presence. His heart was free, and so he became interested in her. He thought she was the first who had ever loved him, and so he grew to believe that he loved her. ”

“ And David Lindsay, my old playmate and my preserver, who loves me so unselfishly—David Lindsay, as he knelt beside my bed, on the morning after he had saved my life, only lifted a curl of my hair and pressed it to his face, and when he saw me wake and look at him, he laid the tress down reverently, as if it were something almost too sacred to be touched. And he is a poor, uncultivated man. And to think that this gentleman, this officer, this Colonel de Crespigney, should have so forgotten his honor! ”

“ At other times she would not wake so soon, but would dream on of being married to her uncle, and horrified by her position and trying to run away to hide herself, to drown herself, to do anything rather than to fall into his hands, or be compelled to live with him as her husband, and so she would moan and sigh in her troubled sleep throughout the night, and wake at last prostrated, depressed and miserable, with the thought that all too probably, in some weak moment when pity should be in the ascendant, this hideous dream might become a more hideous reality. ”

“ And the soft voice sunk into silence, and when he started up and opened the window-shutters, letting in the rays of the rising sun, there was nothing to be seen but the great bare walls and floor of the room, with its scant and rude furniture.
David Lindsay sat down on one of the rough chairs, and took his head between his hands to think it over. He could make nothing of it. The voice had said: “It is I, your mother.” But the voice was not at all like that of his mother, as he remembered hers. ”

“ When they had ascended some considerable distance, David Lindsay put his head out to peer through the shadows and survey the scene.
He found that they were climbing a steep, narrow road on the face of the mountain, with a towering precipice on their right and a falling one on their left, and no room for any vehicle to pass that should chance to meet the wagon.
He drew in his head and was careful to say nothing to his companion of what he had seen. A single start of the mules—a misstep—a balk—would be destruction to man and beast—for over and down the face of the precipice they would go. ”

“ She caught up her candle from the hall table, flew up stairs to her own chamber, shut the door, and flung herself down on the bed in a passion of tears.
“Oh-h-h! what a hard, cold, proud wretch I am! What a cruel, wicked, unnatural monster! But I cannot help it! I cannot! I don’t want to be married—I do not. I love David Lindsay! I do love him, dearly, dearly, dearly; I always did love him better than anybody else in the whole world. Ah! who is so good and grand as he is, within himself? No one that I ever saw in this world. ”

“ Yes, I am too impulsive. I must learn self-control, and not worry others because I cannot understand them. I have hurt my good uncle, who means me nothing but good, and I must try to make amends to him,” she said to herself.
But—she called him her “good uncle,” and not her “dee-ar Marcel,” and even in her tender compunction she felt a latent misgiving, a vague fear of some wrong or woe into which this sweet penitence might lead her.
“If I only had a mother,” she sighed.
Meanwhile, in the library, Marcel de Crespigney held an interview with himself full of bitter self-reproach and lamentations. ”

“ Oh, David Lindsay, if you ever loved me, have pity on me now and leave me! If you have a spark of mercy in your soul, grant my prayer, and leave me. If you have the least instinct of honor, do not insist on keeping the position that my act has given you. If you are a man and not a monster, and not a maniac, leave me and never let me see your face again.”
He gazed on her in anguish and amazement. Then he arose from his chair, crossed over to the fireplace, and stood upon the corner of the hearth, with his elbow leaning on the mantel-shelf, and his hand supporting his forehead. ”

“ This chamber shall be your sanctuary. I will occupy the parlor. But I cannot leave you alone and unprotected in a strange city, dear. I must be on hand to take care of you, if needful. You are frightened now, Gloria. There is no need to be. I will not intrude. But we must have time to think what we shall next do.”
He spoke very gently.
And now she was weeping aloud.
He left the room at once.
“Oh! what a selfish and cruel wretch I am! What a change has come over me! I have turned into a demon! I must be a demon to hate those who love me! To hate them for loving me! Oh, I wish I were dead! ”

“ Do not compel me to think of it—even negatively—after this!”
“Gloria!” he cried, in a tone of pain and reproach.
“Hear me out, dear Marcel! for indeed I mean to reassure you! Listen, then! Since you love me so well that you would even marry me—ugh!—rather than lose me, hear me promise, Marcel, that you shall never lose me. I will never, never, never leave you to marry any one at all! I will stay with you and be your own faithful, affectionate, devoted niece, loving you as if I were your daughter—loving and serving you as my dear uncle, and even as if you were my own father! ”

“ I have heard that he came back in the middle of a January night—a bitter cold, freezing night. His face, they say, was as black as a thunder cloud, and his eyes flashed like lightning. Without deigning a word to one of the servants, who came to attend him, he strode at once to the chamber of his poor young victim and ordered her to get up and dress herself, for she should leave his house that night!”
“What an unheard-of monster!” exclaimed David Lindsay.
“Oh, what a wretched maniac! for no man in his senses would have acted with such causeless cruelty. ”

“ She loved him now as well as ever—as her uncle, her Marcel—but she loathed him as a suitor for her hand.
And withal she pitied him deeply.
“Poor Marcel!” she murmured to herself when she had grown a little calmer. “Poor Marcel! He has always sacrificed himself for the happiness of other people—even for auntie—and he has never had any happiness himself. And now he is losing his reason. He certainly is losing his reason, or he would never dream of such a mad act as marrying—Ugh! ”

“ The waiter nodded and went out.
“Now, what have I done!” exclaimed Gloria, as she tore off her gloves, her hat, and her sack, and threw them angrily on the bed. “Now, what have I done! Oh, Marcel! I will never, never, no, NEVER forgive you for driving me to this pass! Oh! how I hate you! How I hate you for this, Marcel! And I hate David Lindsay! And I hate myself worse than all! My odious self! I hate everybody! And I wish everybody was dead! I do!” she cried, flinging herself down on the floor, and rolling and crying like a passionate child. ”

“ As his niece and child, she loved and pitied her uncle, with all her young, compassionate heart, even as she had loved and pitied him from her earliest infancy up to present girlhood. But with her Christian faith and training she believed his suit to her to be most sinful and sacrilegious, and she shrank from it in horror and loathing unspeakable and indescribable. Yet, whenever she betrayed these emotions of fear and abhorrence, the look of utter misery they would call up on his face would cause a momentary revulsion of feeling in her, melting her heart to tenderness and sympathy. ”

“ From that marriage sprang the race of Gryphyns—a proud, surly, ferocious race of men, the bane of each other, and the terror of their neighborhood.”
“It is to be devoutly hoped that they were not a very numerous tribe,” said David Lindsay.
“No. I have heard Aunt Agrippina say that there was never more than one child born of any marriage, and that was always a son. Strange, wasn’t it, from generation to generation, only one son to succeed his father?” ”

“ The sight of big joints takes away my appetite,” said Gloria, as she arose and followed her conductress into the room from which the latter had emerged.
It was the front room on the left-hand side of the hall—a large room, with an oak floor uncarpeted, stone walls unplastered, two tall front windows, uncurtained, and a broad fireplace, where blazed a rousing, fragrant fire of pine and cedar wood.
An oaken table, covered with a coarse, clean white cloth, stood in the middle of the room, set for dinner; two oaken chairs were placed for the master and mistress of the house. ”

“ Oh, my angel, my angel, no word suits you but this—‘angel.’ I have this much of you, at least, and I will never part with it while I live—while I live—and then, afterwards, beyond this world, may there not be some realms of bliss where we may meet, as we met in guileless childhood and love, without a thought of any barrier of rank between us? ”

“ Thus it happened that Eusebie and Marcel were brought daily together, and united by their common interest in the beautiful child, Gloria.
So Eusebie, the pale, agueish girl, fell in love with the handsome young Marcel—fell in love with him, not after the manner of the soft-hearted girl, who sighed in secret and slipped out of sight, but after the manner of the woman who says to herself, “Love or death,” and thinks towards her victim, “Your love or your life!”
Marcel de Crespigney being of a tender, affectionate, sympathetic nature, had been more or less in love all the days of his youth. ”

“ The whole house is awful gloomy. One does not need to see a ghost here. One feels that it is haunted,” said Gloria, shuddering, as she completed her inspection of the upper rooms.
“Yes, honey, even in the daytime, with the blessed sun shining in at all the open windows, and people going up and down. Then just think what it must have been at night with no one but my lone self up here and an old colored man and woman in the kitchen down stairs—after what I had seen and heard, too,” muttered the old lady, turning pale. ”

“ Never, even in my thoughts, have I blamed you.”
“Oh, you are so good and great-hearted, David Lindsay! And I have, in my impulsive selfishness, so spoiled your life! Married you and then refused to be your wife, and put it out of your power to wed any other woman!” she cried, weeping bitterly.
“No, Gloria, no, dear, do not reproach yourself with that last consequence, for it is not true. I love you only, and have loved you only all the days of my life. I could not, and cannot change. So even if I had not married you I could never have married any other woman. ”

“ After tea she left him sitting in his old leathern arm-chair by the small wood fire that the chill air rendered necessary even in June, and she went up to her own room and crept into bed.
The next morning Madame de Crespigney appeared at the breakfast table as if nothing had happened. These stormy days are followed by calm mornings in the moral as well as in the physical atmosphere.
Gloria knew from experience that after such a tempestuous misunderstanding as they had had on the previous day, her uncle and aunt would have to be left alone to come to a reconciliation. ”

“ Well might the young fisherman be struck dumb with amazement and terror; well might his half palsied tongue refuse to utter any word but her own name, and that in a tone of unbounded consternation; for must not the lovely girl and wealthy heiress have lost her reason before making a proposal of marriage to any man, least of all to him—the poor, uncultivated young laborer? ”

“ All that you can do now is to atone in the future for what you have done amiss in the past. She has left you no child of her own; but she has left a little niece whom she loved. Be a good father to that orphan.”
“I will do so,” answered De Crespigney, very meekly.
“And now, Marcel, take my advice: Whatever else you do, don’t make a fool of yourself again by getting married. Such a bookworm as you has no business with a wife. So, don’t be a fool.”
“I will not,” sighed the colonel, obediently. ”

“ But, oh dear! there is not the slightest probability of interviewing a spirit, good or evil, now. These commonplace, unimaginative sweepers, and dusters, and moppers, and scrubbers have exorcised them all—unless—— Come with me, Madame Gloria. I will show you a place that they haven’t invaded yet, and if that place is not consecrated or cursed to the use of ghosts, I’ll give them up,” said Philippa, suddenly rising. ”

“ But, oh, David Lindsay, if I am mad, so much the more need have I of your protection! If I am mad, oh, my old playmate, marry the poor mad girl to take care of her, to save her from herself, to save her from something worse than madness! ”

“ Indeed, little Gloria desired nothing better. She loved her young uncle with all the devotion of a grateful, loyal, fervent heart, and was perfectly satisfied with his companionship, and only his, in all their summer wanderings and sojournings. She had no one else to love, poor child; her Aunt Agrippina she had only feared; and her childhood’s playmate, David Lindsay, she only remembered tenderly, like one lost long ago, or like the dead. Marcel was all in all to her. ”

“ He it is whose spirit cannot rest in the grave, or tarry even with his fellow-devils in the pit, but walks continually up and down through house and thicket in the darkness of the darkest hours in the night!”
“And you have seen him?” questioned Gloria, with incredulous astonishment.
“I was the first to see and hear him after his being killed in the duel. It was no dream, ma’am, it was no delusion, though you look as if you thought so! It was late at night—the night after that poor young creature had been torn from her bed and turned out to die of cold on the mountain. ”

“ I feel more, much more than offended! I feel insulted, dishonored, humiliated! I do!” cried Gloria, vehemently.
But in all her indignation there was no scorn of David Lindsay, or of his humble calling; for in her innocent and loyal way she loved and respected her old playmate, even as she did his aged relative on the islet. It was the hypothesis of “an objectionable attachment” and “an improper marriage” at which she revolted. And if, instead of a poor, uncultivated young fisherman, the most accomplished prince on earth had been in question, she would have felt equally offended. ”

“ And this second night, poor, disappointed David Lindsay slept as soundly in his seat as did the willful beauty, Gloria, in hers.
Not even the stoppage of the coach to change horses, amid the flashing lights of the roadside post-houses, or the getting off of old passengers and climbing in of new ones succeeded in arousing them, for if disturbed they would draw a long breath, slightly change position, and drop asleep again. ”

“ All these were total strangers to Gloria and David; and as they lounged or sauntered, talking politics or smoking pipes, to and fro from stem to stern, on the deck, they scarcely bestowed a glance upon the young pair, seated behind the wheel-house, who, indeed, kept themselves aloof from all their fellow-passengers, until the ringing of the tea-bell brought them all down together into the ill-lighted saloon. ”

“ Fresh paint and new wall paper would utterly spoil it.”
“I think this inroad of mops and brooms and scrubbing-brushes has spoiled it already. Oh, the poor ghosts! I am so sorry for the ghosts. Yes, and for myself, too. I was so in hopes of seeing a ghost,” sighed Philippa, with a look of downright disappointment.
“Why should you wish to see a ghost, if such a being ever exists?” inquired Gloria.
“Why, oh, why? Because the apparition of a real ghost would be proof positive of the life after death,” said Philippa, quite seriously. ”

“ The ceremony of this morning must go for 251nothing, so far as I am concerned, but just this—to be a shield and defence about you, to protect you from your guardian’s suit and from your own heart’s weakness—that is all. When you are older and stronger, and able to do without it, the empty ceremony of this morning can be set aside, annulled—for, Gloria, the marriage rites, so sacred between souls that are already one, was but an idle and empty ceremony between you and me, and is good for nothing but a temporary defence to your helplessness. ”

“ But he was too honest, open and straightforward, and though his frame shook with emotion, and his voice was well-nigh suffocated, he answered firmly:
“No, Gloria. No, dearest. What you ask is beyond human nature; or, at least, beyond mine.”
She cried hard for a few minutes, and then suddenly clasped his head again as he knelt beside her, dropped her own upon it, and sobbed forth her submission:
“Well, then take me! Take me! I will keep my vow! I will be your wife, David Lindsay!” ”

“ A place that has been little better than a stronghold of godless revellers, gamblers, drunkards, duellists, murderers, if all be true that is told of them, is no proper home for any lady, not to say you. It is only fit to be turned into a smelting-furnace for the treasures of iron ore said to be hidden in the depths of these mountains,” gravely concluded the young man.
“Oh, then you don’t believe that the house is haunted,” said Gloria, good-humoredly. ”

“ Is she still at the cot on the isle? Is she as busy and active as ever?” inquired Gloria, with new interest in her tone.
“She is as well as she can be at seventy years of age, but more infirm than when you knew her last. She lives at the cot on the isle, and she is as busy, but not as active, as ever,” he answered, slowly and gravely.
“Oh, what happy, happy days we used to have at her house, David Lindsay! Such happy, happy days! ”

“ But Eusebie only sobbed the harder for all this.
“And uncle loves you, auntie, dear, indeed he does, although you do always tell him that he doesn’t care for you. I know he does, for when you are”—the child was about to say “cross,” but checked herself in time, and continued—“when you are unhappy he looks at you so pitifully.”
“Oh, Gloria, you don’t know anything about it, and I don’t want his pity. I am not a dog or a beggar,” exclaimed Eusebie, bitterly, as she put her niece from her lap and hurried from the parlor to her own room, to give unrestrained way to her grief. ”

“ You must make your uncle take you to Washington for the season, my dear. It is not right that you should be buried in your youth in this remote and solitary home. You are the Countess de la Vera, and should be brought in society suited to your rank. My sister-in-law, Madame de Crespigney, will be in Washington this winter. She has no unmarried daughters of her own, and I am sure she would feel honored to chaperone the Countess Gloria. ”

“ You were right in calling him a maniac, Gloria, for such he certainly must have been. You said that he was the last owner of Gryphynshold, therefore he must be dead. How did he die?”
“Ah, like nearly all his fierce race! A violent death! On the very day after he had thrust his poor little white slave out into the winter night, he himself fell in a duel with one of the reckless companions of his demoniac orgies of that terrible night when he commanded the hidden beauty to come into their abhorrent presence.”
“Killed in a duel at last,” muttered David Lindsay to himself. ”

“ The air is full of maledictions! Haunted by these, Mrs. Brent. Spirits terrible enough to daunt the bravest, yet not visible ghosts,” said the young lady.
“That which I saw and heard, I saw and heard,” solemnly answered the housekeeper, sinking down in an old, green chintz covered arm-chair on one side of the fire that had been kindled in one of the bedrooms.
“What was it, Mrs. Brent?” inquired Gloria, her curiosity getting the better of her discretion, as she drew a chair to the side of the old lady and seated herself. ”

“ And I am glad it is so, for now I can marry David Lindsay, and enrich dear Dame Lindsay, and let them take me to one of my own fine houses and live with me in comfort. Or David might go to Harvard or Yale, and get the college training he has so long aspired to, and leave Dame Lindsay to take care of me. I will do it at once!”
It is wonderful how swiftly the mind acts under excitement. This whole plan swept through the mind of Gloria in a few minutes succeeding the first inspiration of the idea. ”

“ Gloria’s bright eyes were full of tears. She slipped her hand in that of the boy and said:
“But maybe she would have died all the same. My mother had everything in the world, and she died. But you know neither of them really died; they went to heaven.”
“Yes,” said the boy, in a low tone.
“Now, ain’t grown people queer, David Lindsay?”
“How?”
“The way they talk. They will say one minute a man has died and gone to heaven, and the next minute they will say he is buried in such a church-yard. Now, how can he be in heaven and in the ground at the same time?” ”

“ But quick Miss Grip had already turned to her nephew to shake hands with him, and left Gloria free to receive the welcome of her colored friends.
“How you has growed! My patience alibe, how you has growed, honey!” was the greeting of ’Phia.
“’Deed I is mighty proud to see you, Miss Glo’, ’deed is I!” was the cordial exclamation of Lamia.
“You had better prove your feelings in a more practical manner by showing your mistress up to her room,” said prompt Miss Grip. ”

“ Gloria was the first to rise.
“Good-night, David Lindsay,” she said as she took one of the tallow candles from the chimney shelf to light her steps.
“Good-night,” he answered, in gentle tones.
“Your room,” she resumed, and then she hesitated, holding the candle in her hand and looking down on the floor—“your room is the one over the dining-room. You will find everything prepared there for your comfort.” ”

“ Madame Gloria, I would rather have seen the blackest evil spirit from the abyss, all alone at midnight, than that horrid——Ugh-h-h!”
318“Philippa! for Heaven’s sake, don’t speak of it now, or evermore! You are a brave girl——”
“I will never say so after this. I’m conquered quite!” shuddered the willful creature.
“You have seen what would have shaken the nerves of the boldest man; it is no wonder that you are overcome as well as myself. But, Philippa, I beg you, for my sake, never mention to a human being what we have seen below. ”

“ But you must not walk, indeed, David Lindsay! Get in here and sit beside me, if you please. Yes, but I insist upon it now!” she added, seeing that he did not comply with her request.
“You had better do so, Lindsay,” coldly added Colonel de Crespigney, as he left his own seat and sat down beside Gloria, leaving the front cushion free for the young man.
“I thank you very much, Miss de la Vera, and you also, sir; but I can easily walk the way before the road will be covered,” replied young Lindsay, as he bowed and retreated from the carriage.
“‘A willful man must have his way,’” said the colonel. ”