CHAPTER XXI.
AN ENEMY’S TRIUMPH.
A week passed away, more quickly and pleasantly than Robert could have imagined, and he daily had secret interviews with the fair Vivien, and her sweet presence soothed him to bear with something of calmness and patience his torturing imprisonment and suspense.
Robert told his fair sister, as he called her, of Dora, and of all her enchanting ways, her beauty and accomplishments, painting her in the most glowing colors, until Vivien said that she already loved her, and longed to see one whom she knew must be good and beautiful, to win so noble and true a heart as his own.
Strange though it may seem, her own heart was not touched by the many engaging qualities which Robert possessed, other than with a pure sisterly affection. She never dreamed of loving him, herself, which many a girl of less mind and character would surely have done. Their intercourse was pure, free, and ennobling, such as two delicate, accomplished, and high-minded persons could not help enjoying to the uttermost.
Notwithstanding all this, there were many hours of weariness and impatience which our hero spent by himself. It chafed him almost beyond endurance to be thus shut off from all communication with the outer world; to be so confined that he could do nothing for himself, or demand or secure redress from others for his wrongs; and most of all, cut off from all possibility of rescuing his darling from the fate which he had been told awaited her.
He would have felt tenfold more miserable had he even dreamed that not a dozen yards from his own chamber, which hour after hour he paced in such an angry and discontented mood, his father lay in a dark and dismal cell, a close and unhappy prisoner.
Poor Mr. Ellerton was unhappy indeed, for he felt that he had almost willfully thrown himself into his present situation, by so utterly disregarding the warning he had received. A week had passed since his abduction, and as he sat brooding over his situation, a slight rustling outside his door caused him to look quickly up, with a faint hope at his heart that some friend might be at hand.
His hope was quickly crushed, however, as he caught sight of the ugly face, with its cruel and sinister expression, which peered eagerly at him from between the iron bars of his prison door.
Ugh! what a horrible face it was! with its wolfish grin and snaky red-black eyes. Despite its ugliness it had a familiar look; but where or when he had ever seen it he could not recall to mind.
“Ha! my friend,” said the stranger, in a disagreeable voice, and with intense irony. “You don’t seem to remember me, do you?”
“No, sir, I do not,” was the reply. “And yet there is something about your face that seems familiar.”
“Um!—it’s a pleasant face to you, no doubt,” was the sneering rejoinder.
Mr. Ellerton made no answer. He loathed the very sight of this man, but resolved not to gain his ill-will by making any incautious remark.
The stranger eyed him balefully, while he kept hopping uneasily first upon one foot and then upon the other; at length he said, grimly:
“Um! I presume if you don’t remember me you do Jessie Almyr! Ha! that touches you in a tender spot, doesn’t it?” said the villain, with a horrible grin, as the other started violently, and flushed to his very brows with a deep crimson, at hearing one whom he had tenderly loved and reverenced spoken thus lightly of, and by such a monster, too.
At last, raising himself to his full height, he replied, proudly:
“Of course I remember one who was my wife. But I do not know who you are that dare mention her name to me in that tone.”
“Oh, no! But you probably know who it was that dared to steal her from her rightful lover; curse you!”
“Ha! I know you now, Ralph Moulton!” replied the unhappy man, again closely scrutinizing his enemy’s face, going nearer to the grating for that purpose. “Yes, I know you now,” he continued; “but I cannot understand what has brought you here, unless you are a prisoner like myself. However that may be, I wish no conversation with you, under any circumstances, with regard to my marriage. I will say this, though, as the subject has been mentioned: Miss Almyr probably accepted me for her husband because she loved me and considered me worthy to fill that place; and Heaven knows that I loved and cherished her as the apple of my eye; and life has been dark and dreary enough to me since she left me for her happy home above.”
As Mr. Ellerton finished speaking, he turned away from the intruder at his door, as if to put an end to any further conversation, and again seating himself, buried his sad face in his hands.
Squire Moulton, exasperated at his enemy’s calm dignity of manner, and at his inability to excite his anger, fairly gnashed his teeth, and in a frenzy of passion, exclaimed:
“It is a lie—a base lie! You know that you came with your flattery and honeyed words, your wealth and baby face, and won her from me—me, who had always loved her, and whose whole life had been one continual study for her happiness and the gratification of her every wish, in the hope that she would one day be mine. She would have been my wife, but for your coming. She had almost promised me, when you interposed your form between us, and blinded her eyes, and snatched her away from as true a heart as ever beat within a human breast. There was no more joy or sunshine in the dreary world for me. The very sun was black and the stars went out, and demons from the lowest depths of Hades possessed my soul, spurring me on to desperation and revenge. Yes, revenge; and I swore it then and there in my maddening agony. I vowed, and called upon Heaven to witness my oath, that you should yet writhe and suffer even as I did; that you should cry out in your misery for mercy, but that you should cry and plead in vain. I have followed and dogged you ever since, striving to wreak my vengeance upon you. But the Fates have been against me, with the exception of once or twice, until now. Now that you are in my power, my very soul pains me with the intense desire I have to see your torture and misery begin; to see you clasp your hands, and on your knees sue for mercy; to see you beat your breast, tear your hair, and plead and beg for death to release you from your torments!”
The villain had wrought himself to the highest pitch of excitement, and he fairly shrieked out his last words, as he shook his fist in the face of his astonished rival.
I say astonished, for Mr. Ellerton had never dreamed that any defeated lover would carry his disappointment to such an extent, and he gazed upon the furious man with a sort of stupid amazement, as he realized that this jealous and revengeful lover of so many years ago was the cause of his present suffering and imprisonment.
He knew that he had always hated him for being his successful rival, and for that reason always kept out of his way, thinking the less he had to do with him the better. He had never thought of such a thing as his attempting to revenge himself, until six years ago, when he married Robert and Dora.
He recognized the fact then, and cursed him for it, but supposed that would be the extent to which he would carry it.
Now that he found he had been hated, cursed, and pursued all his life-time, and for this one offense, he could not help regarding with wonder the man who had devoted his whole life to such an unworthy and dishonorable purpose.
“Ha! ha! ha!” wildly laughed the still intensely excited squire, when he had regained his breath. “You may well look surprised. Methinks I can astonish you still more. Listen! I followed you, years ago, when you made your trip after the death of your darling. I tried to steal your child—her child, and put my own nephew in his place. But that cursed nurse of yours was too quick for me, and I only got a sore and aching head for my pains. Yes, yes,” he hissed, as he saw the light beginning to break over Mr. Ellerton’s face. “It was probably the fright I gave her that caused her death. You possibly remember how hard she tried to tell you something when she was dying? Yes, well, that was it. And had you not suddenly disappeared from the place, I should have tried another grab at the youngster.”
“Villain, do you mean to tell me that you have allowed such a pitiful jealousy to lead you to such crimes? Beware, lest they descend with tenfold force upon your own vile head!” exclaimed Mr. Ellerton, his eye flashing with angry excitement.
“Ha! you are beginning to be touched, are you? Good! that is what I came here to-day for. I want to see you cringe beneath my power. It is very sweet to me to see you so; it quiets my nerves, and fills my heart with exultant joy, and I trust to see your proud head bowed still lower before I have done with you,” sneered the monster.
“Leave my presence, vile fiend! I will not be polluted by so evil a thing,” commanded Mr. Ellerton, angrily.
“Not quite so fast, my lord,” replied the squire, mockingly. “I have not yet finished my interesting narrative. I would like to give you a list of the things I have done, rather than of those I have tried to accomplish. I reckon I gave your pride a severe blow when I married your only child to a beggar. You may look as lofty and scornful as you choose, but for all that I knew it cut deep, as I meant it should, else you would not have separated them, and banished your boy from his home and his native land——”
“Hold, you scoundrel!” shouted the now thoroughly enraged man, but with a gleam of triumph in his eye. “Hold! and let me tell you for your benefit, that the girl is not a beggar, as you imagine, but the sole heiress of hundreds of thousands, and that, if my son chose to claim her to-day, he would have my full and free consent to do so. How does that compare with the heavy blow to my pride that you tell about?”
Squire Moulton threw back his grizzled head and laughed a long, loud, and scornful laugh, making the dull and unearthly echo ring again and again through the dim, low vaults. It was the utter abandonment of the most fiendish joy, and his captive, goaded almost to madness by its mocking tones, gazed upon him with a look in which perplexity, fear, and anger were mingled.
What did it mean—that taunting, derisive peal of laughter? Could it be possible that he had been so closely watched and followed that his rival knew of the signatures attached to that document lying so safely stowed away in his pocket?
Could it be that his son, like himself, had been enticed into captivity?
He began to think so, and his heart sank like a stone, as he marked the look of gloating triumph that gleamed upon him from the savage eye of the wicked squire.