Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/80

70 continued gesture of the light hand on his arm, and gazed over the bushes, the very incarnation of splendid fearlessness and defiance. Mr. St. George laughed.

"Is there nothing that excites your indignation?" she cried. "Could you not have throttled him?"

"A flash in the pan," said he, coolly. "However, it might have been worse. It has blown a breeze through my sombrero,"—taking off the hat, which the ball had partly twisted around. "It was meant for Marlboro', Miss Changarnier. I am in his place to-night, you see. You have misled the rascals. Listen!" he murmured, in a lower tone, beside her. "There is a freemasonry among these black devils,—doubtless the tide-bell signals some secret meeting. They are all about us. Here! you are the last person to be seen. Take this, and hurry on while I wait; you can walk fast. Go!"

And the handle of a knife, a great broad blade, produced from some hidden sheath, was between her fingers.

But Éloise did not stir.

"Go!" he repeated, in the same smothered murmur.

"Place you in such danger? Leave you so?" said Éloise. "Never!"

"Do as I bid you!" he replied, in a tone as full of cold, unsuppressed bitterness as a north wind, motioning her away, and moving back.

The moon behind him, as he stepped, was floating up from the horizon, a great bubble of glory, whitening the tops of the whole dark landscape, throwing out in glittering points, like frosted silver-work, the rimy, dewy tracery of budding boughs, studding each twig with gems, and pouring light into the high hollow heaven, like vast draughts shed crystal-clear from some shining drinking-horn. When, then, Mr. St. George mounted the stump by the way-side and stood there erect, weaponless and with folded arms, the moonlight upslanted full on face and form, and made him as distinctly and rigidly visible to all the low land on either side the road as if he had been some statue set up for a mile-stone. A little time he remained so. A night-hawk slowly wheeled from a distant grove, and came dreamily sailing high above his head. There was an instant's flare that revealed a group of dusky faces in the swamp below, a report, and the night-hawk plunged downwards and fell at his feet.

"Mas'r Sin George," cried a voice, grim with murder ten minutes since, "we lebe you our card. Good night!"

Mr. St. George stood there a moment and watched the group till it faded off from sight in the shadows of that distant cypress-grove, and then stepped down and found Éloise with clasped hands exactly where he had left her.

"Why didn't you obey?" he said,—but this time with what a different voice! "You could not feel your danger! You did not know your risk! Great God, Éloise"

Mr. St. George silenced himself abruptly.

"Well," he continued, after a few paces, "I convinced the wretches of my identity. It is quite like life in the Romagna, an hour with the brigands of the Marches, is it not? It is pleasant to play the hero for five minutes. But you! They know Marlboro' can be hurt through you. Truth runs in subtle channels here. Come, hasten! By God! if I had such people as Marlboro's, I would sell them, and that with a tan-toasting!—or I'd send them all to the North, that's so fond of them! Come, hasten!"—and, half dragging her on his arm, he strode forward, wordless and fierce, till they reached the house.

I do not know what thoughts whirled through Éloise's dreamless brain during the rest of that night, nor with what half-trembling resolutions she arose, nor how much pride she had drowned in a vaster flood. But when she descended, she found the house ablaze with fearful rumors that had risen like marsh-lights everywhere out of the ground. All was not right at Blue Bluffs, they said; some escaping slave—perhaps the compunctious Vane himself, who knew?—had