Various - Stories of Mystery

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"I always suspected who _he_ was," said Mike, "but he's got no hold
on me,--no claim to a bond signed with _my_ blood. See, there he goes!"

I looked, and saw a boat shooting across the stream with a swiftness
that argued some optical delusion. That unmistakable figure stood in
the stern, urging it with a single scull, and as it disappeared in the
confusion of boats and the darkness, a superstitious suspicion crept
over me that he might be the person Mike suggested. Soon the captain
came on board, and on learning the absence of the boat and its occupant,
he expressed considerable anxiety and impatience. A breeze sprang up
and began to curl the surface of the water, and clouds obscured the
moon. Then the wind freshened to a storm, and lifted the waves on the
channel, and roared in the cypress forests above Pera and Scutari.
Under the light sails already set, the ship tugged hard at her cable.
Yet the boat did not return. The captain walked the deck nervously,
and finally gave orders to weigh anchor, when just as our bark, freed
to the wind and the current, sprang forward on her long voyage, the
boat for which we were looking shot suddenly under the prow, and in
an instant our mysterious comrade stepped in upon the deck from the
bow-chains. As he did so, the light of the mate's lantern fell full
upon him, and the scene it revealed will certainly never be forgotten
by anyone who witnessed it.

There he stood, looming out from the tempestuous darkness more gigantic
and terrible than ever, with the form of a beautiful girl, gorgeously
clad and flashing with jewels, held easily and firmly by one encircling
arm. His disengaged right hand was stained as if with blood, and spots
of the same sanguinary hue were on his brow and his garments. The
expression of his face was unmoved as usual.

For a moment he permitted the slippered feet of the trembling girl to
rest upon the deck, though his arm still encompassed her shrinking form,
and, while her great dark eyes, dilated with horror, like those of a
captured bird, threw wild, eager glances to left and right, as if in
search of any desperate refuge from the terrors that possessed her,
he said in his usual quiet tones to the captain,--

"This is the passenger for whom I engaged the cabin. She will, by your
leave, take possession of it at once." So saying, he led her gently
forward and disappeared at the companion-way, conducted by the captain.

Every face on deck had grown pale, and every heart throbbed with the
conviction that we had just beheld the consummation of a most desperate
and bloody deed. It was evident the girl had been snatched suddenly
from the harem of some palace, probably from the royal seraglio itself,
off which we had been lying. And the horror depicted on her face, as
well as the stains of blood on her abductor, told with what ruthless
violence. Here then, I thought, in all human probability, was the royal
maiden I had summoned; here was the wildest vagary of my imagination
realized. But how different from the bright fancy was the woful
reality!

Soon the captain returned on deck, pale and excited like the rest of
us, and ordered a rash amount of sail to be set. The mate, a bluff,
powerful man, swore an oath that we should first understand the meaning
of what had just transpired.

"I know no more about it than you do," avowed the captain, "except that
it's a piece of business very likely to bring all our heads to the block
unless we show a clean pair of heels for it. So now avast jawing, and
obey orders!"

"Never! boys," I said, "till we are assured of that girl's safety.
What's done cannot be helped; but if she suffers further wrong in our
midst, we ought all to be hanged as cowardly accessories to it."

"Dismiss your uneasiness in that regard," said a voice behind us, at
whose sound there was a general start. "To keep her safe and inviolate
is more my right and interest than yours, and it must therefore be my
especial duty to do so; but if I fail in it, I care not though you make
my life the forfeit, nor by what mode you exact it."

So saying, he took his place at the helm, a press of sail was set, and
the ship fairly rent her way through the sea of Marmora before the
tempest. But the ship, like all around, seemed to acknowledge his
controlling power; and when I turned in with my watch, my sleep was
undisturbed by any fear of wind or water, though it was full of troubled
dreams. Now a lovely form in royal vesture beckoned to me from a
lattice; anon the gleam of a lantern flickered across the terribly
familiar face of a gnome, bearing out of a dark cavern an armful of
the most precious jewels, which had a wild appealing in their light
that puzzled me; while the roaring of the sea pervaded it all with a
kind of dream harmony.

After a time, the fury of the tempest abated; but the ship still fled
onward before strong gales, through those famous seas we had cruised
so often in youthful fancy with the Greek and the Trojan, and the fear
of pursuit ceased to haunt us.

Meanwhile we saw no more of our lovely passenger. Her strange guardian
kept a watch beside her cabin door as vigilant as that of a sentinel
at his post, or a saint before his shrine. His eye never swept the
horizon behind us with an anxious gaze, as ours did, while we looked
for the smoke of a pursuing steamer. Neither did it kindle at sight
of the famous landmarks that measured our rapid course, each of which
we hailed with delight as another harbinger of safety. He had ceased
to perform the duties of a seaman, and devoted himself entirely to the
care of the INVISIBLE PRINCESS, as we grew to call her. But though
invisible to our eyes, hers was the pervading presence of our thoughts.
Not a wave rocked the ship, not a cloud overshadowed it, not a morning
breeze came fresh from the sea, or an evening breeze brought fragrance
from the shore, but was thought of in some relation with her. There
was none like her, we said, in the broad continents to right of us,
to left of us, or before us; and we doubted if there was her like in
the lands of enchantment we had left behind. Her wondrous beauty, the
flashing of the jewels that encrusted her belt, and that seemed to gleam
and sparkle all over her picturesque attire, the haunting look of those
great, lustrous eyes, all the reminiscence of that eventful
night,--how fondly we recurred to them again and again in the
forecastle or the night-watch, and with what pleasure we recognized
the first indications that her trance of terror had passed, and that
she had resumed a living interest in the strange world around her.

First the open window of the cabin gave evidence that the balmy air
and the pleasant shores we skirted were no longer indifferent to her;
then came flitting glimpses of bright garments and brighter eyes
quickly withdrawn from observation into the depths of the fairy grotto
she inhabited; and finally, one beautiful moonlight evening, while
most of the crew were on deck watching the lurid peak of Etna and the
pavement of golden waves stretching toward it, and listening not to
premonitions of Scylla or Charybdis, but to the song of the
nightingales from the dim shore, or to tales of Enceladus and the
Cyclops from Fred, and whimsical comments from Mike, she came
hesitatingly forth, arousing an excitement and curiosity among us as
intense as if she were a ghost arising from the tomb. Her dress was
the same in which she had been brought among us, without addition of
yashmak or veil of any kind,--excepting the mistiness of the
moonlight,--to conceal her face, though there was a shy drawing down
of the tasselled cap or turban she wore, that shadowed it somewhat.

I need hardly say how soon the glories of earth, sea, and sky, which
we had been contemplating, shrank into mere accessories around that
one central figure, as she stood gazing upon them through the shrouds
and spars from our deck. But, notwithstanding the beauty of the scene
and the hour, she did not hold her position long to enjoy them. She
had, in appearing thus before strange men, evidently by a great effort,
done that which she shrank from doing; but whether in obedience to her
own will or to that of another, we could not guess. The ice thus broken,
however, she was the INVISIBLE PRINCESS no longer. Emboldened by two
or three subsequent moonlight and twilight ventures, she at length came
out in the sunset, and I doubt if the setting sun ever revealed a
lovelier sight than greeted our eyes on that evening. A glance in the
clear light satisfied us that the superhuman beauty we almost
worshipped, and the splendor that seemed too lavish to be real, were
no mere glamor of lamplight or moonlight, but surpassed in the reality
all that our stunted, sceptical, Western imaginations, even stimulated
as they were, had dared to anticipate.

I might attempt to describe her. I might tell you that her every limb
and every feature seemed perfect in its form and its harmony with the
others; that her complexion was a fresh, delicate bloom, without spot
or blemish; that the innumerable braids of her long, black hair were
ravishingly glossy and soft; that her great, dark eyes were
bewilderingly bright and wise, and expressive of everything enchanting
and good that eyes can express; that her smile,--but no! her smile was
an expression of her individuality too subtle for words to catch; and
without any power of revealing this individuality, this all that
distinguished her from merely mortal woman and made her angelic, where
is the use of attempting to describe her? Of her garments, by a
recurrence to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu for the names of them, I could
give you a description, from the golden-flowered, diamond-studded
kerchief wreathed in her hair, to the yellow Cinderella slippers that
covered her fairy feet. But the gauzy fabric that enfolded though it
scarcely concealed her bosom, the vest of white damask stuff inwoven
and fringed with gold and silver, the caftan, and the trousers of
crimson embossed and embroidered with flowers of the same gorgeous
materials, all were buttoned and guarded and overstrewn with jewels,
while the broad belt that confined them was literally encrusted with
diamonds and clasped by a magnificent bouquet of flowers wrought by the
lapidary from diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and pearls, so
exquisitely that the artist showed a skill in them almost worthy of his
materials.

From our ardent gaze the beautiful vision was soon withdrawn,--often
to reappear, however, in the bright, calm weather that followed, each
time with less of blushing and confusion in the beautiful face; and
at length, some of us began to flatter ourselves, with a shy glance
of interest and recognition for us in the luminous eyes.

On her strange companion, also, her presence shed a beam that lightened
the darkness of our thoughts toward him. We marked the long, dark lashes
of her eyes rising and falling, now trustingly, now fearingly, before
that inscrutable countenance, as if her spirit wavered between a dream
of terror and a contentful awaking. And many imagined that, as those
dark eyes began to turn more lovingly and more longingly toward him,
the strange brilliance of his own became imbued with their softness,
while a faint auroral tinge seemed just ready to change his countenance
from marble to flesh and blood.

Thus day after day we crept along the European coast, enjoying a dream
of romance in which we could have gone on sailing contentedly forever,
our only cause of uneasiness being that, at some of the numerous ports
we touched, the magic presence on which the spell depended might go
from us, as it came to us, without ceremony or warning, and leave us
to cross the great ocean in the world of intolerable loneliness that
would settle on the ship when she was gone. There was something like
a patriotic aspiration in our desire to transplant this brightest of
Eastern blossoms to diffuse its supreme beauty and sweetness in the
West. And though we feared for her the stormy autumn passage of the
Atlantic, a load was taken from every spirit when we left the Pillars
of Hercules behind us and pointed our prow straight out across the
cloud-bound ocean.

Just as we lost sight of land, we were attacked by a most violent storm,
that buffeted us for many a day, during which we saw nothing of our
fair passenger, and we learned that she was seriously ill. But never
had invalid such a nurse as she. No one knew if he slept or ate, and
no one was allowed to share his office, and no one obtruded on him the
sorrow or sympathy which all felt in spite of our engrossing battle
for life against the tempest. For though there was no change in his
appearance or demeanor, all were conscious that a deep feeling stirred
his heart. Even when we doubted if all our energies could preserve the
vessel from being dashed back upon the coast we had just left, he gave
us neither help nor heed, till in the final moment when we had given
up all for lost, he seized the helm and shot us into shelter and safety
behind the reef whereon we expected to go to pieces, through a channel
which, in the calm that followed the storm, we found it difficult to
retrace to the deep water, towing the ship with boats.

Again we got well out to sea, and were becalmed. For nearly a week,
not a breeze had broken the surface of the ocean. Then another of those
enchanting scenes we had feared to behold no more was presented to us.
The beautiful invalid, assisted by her now inseparable companion, came
upon the deck to watch the sunset. From her cheek the bloom of health
was gone; but the look of wild dread with which hitherto she had never
quite ceased to regard him who supported her was gone also, and in its
place the large, dark eyes were filled by a glance of such indescribable
gratitude and trust as only her eyes could express. He, for the first
time, looked neither more nor less than a man. Her shrinking from our
presence, too, had disappeared, and her look of recognition now was
unmistakable and cordial. She had resumed her original garb, long
disused as if to avoid remark at the ports we visited, and its glowing
colors seemed to heighten the contrast between the pallid cheek and
the long, dark lashes that drooped languidly over them, as, wearied
at length by the unusual exertion, she sank heavily on her companion,
and was rather borne than assisted back to the cabin.

During another week of breezeless autumn calm, this strange drama was
re-enacted many times before us, with each time a deepening of the
tragic shades that were gathering above it. But even after it became
evident that the sweet evening air had no balm for the drooping girl,
she loved to look out on the glories of the sunset, as if conscious
that soon she should behold them no more forever. And when her strength
no longer enabled her to walk, her nurse carried her out like a child
in his arms.

But this also ceased after a time, and the hope that our transplanted
blossom would ever flourish on a new soil had already faded from the
bosom of the most sanguine among us, when one evening the guardian
genius of the cabin beckoned to me from its portal. My entrance seemed
to arouse the fair invalid, who was reclined upon a couch. The
enchanting halo of her perfect beauty was unabated by disease; and she
was surrounded by articles so rare, so costly, and in such profusion,
as to force themselves upon my attention even in that first glance.
A faint smile, and a recognition from those now too bright eyes, were
my welcome. But they did not rest upon me long; for, as if by some
fascination, those eyes seemed always turned toward him, or, if by
chance he was beyond their reach, to the spot where they could first
behold his return.

So this nursling of a palace, evidently dying out on the wide sea, with
only rough men about her, had neither a word nor a look of reproach
for the one who had dragged her forth to so wretched a fate. Even in
her mind's wanderings, she seldom went back to former pomps or
pleasures, and her tongue preferred rather to stumble through the rough
and unfamiliar language in which of late she had been so terribly
schooled, than to speak that of her youth. Once, when after a short
absence her attendant returned to her side, she said,--

"My heart was trying to cross the waves that were between us, and oh!
how it was tossed upon them--and it ached, and--and--" Then, giving
a sigh of relief, she sank back, closed her eyes, and slumbered
restfully.

He disposed of the lamp he had just lighted, and then, with an
expression as inscrutable as ever, he stood looking down upon her.

While this scene was being enacted, I marked through the open portal
of the cabin--in one of those strange distractions that occur to us
amidst the most intense feelings of our lives--the stars above us
growing brighter and brighter as the shades of the twilight deepened.
Suddenly turning from the couch, he also, at a stride, stood in full
view of those bright revelations of the darkness; but his eye sought
them with no such abstracted regard as mine. Fixedly and sternly he
seemed to be watching among them some portentous index of fate. Soon
a change came over his countenance, and he resumed his place beside
the scarcely breathing form. Then the fountains of the great deep
within him were broken up, and the rushing torrent of its emotions shook
his whole frame and convulsed his features. Stooping, he kissed the
insensible girl passionately, again and again, and he would, I believe,
have clasped her to his bosom if I, fearing for her the effects of his
stormy transports, had not caught his arm. He needed no explanation
of my interruption, neither was he startled or incensed by it, and he
seemed more like one reluctantly obeying some sudden restraining
impulse of his own than yielding to that of another.

"No," he said, "I must not cut short a single flicker of that bright
spirit; the wondrously beautiful vessel that it glorifies will be cold
clay soon enough! ashes from which no future Phoenix shall arise. O,"
he exclaimed, "this sacrifice is too great, too great! and for nothing!
Even had she perished on the destined altar, an accepted sacrifice,
it were too great! But I tore her from home and friends, and life itself,
for this,--for nothing! O Destiny, thou art a subtle adversary, and
infinite are thy devices for our overthrow! But I never reckoned on
such an impediment as this heart-weakness."

Then approaching me, he laid a hand upon my shoulder, and said: "As
the representative of the young, hopeful, living world she is about
to leave, I called you here that you and she might look your last upon
each other. Go now, and though your present emotion accords duly with
the part I have assigned you, see that you do not play false to it
hereafter by letting this woful event impress you with too deep or too
lasting a sorrow."

Then to my Ideal, so strangely found and lost, I looked and murmured
an adieu, and returned among my companions, reverenced as one who had
been in a hallowed place.

It was the third evening after this, to me, memorable visit. Streaks
of sable, with golden edges, barred the face of the setting sun, and
promised to our hopes a change of weather. But this indication,
important as it was after the long calm, was evidently not that which
the whole ship's crew, officers and men, were now discussing,--as the
converged attention of the scattered groups on the closed entrance of
that silent, mysterious cabin testified.

"I know," said O'Hanlon, answering to an objection from some one in
the group where he stood, "it would be like invading a sanctuary to
intrude there; but the conviction sometimes comes over me that we have,
all hands of us, from the captain down, acted in regard to this matter
with the incapacity of men in a nightmare. Fear is a condition under
which a true man should not breathe a moment without contest; and yet
I know we have been all, more or less consciously, under its influence
since this man came on board. Out upon us! I will, for myself at least,
break through this dream of terror at once, by a tap at yonder door."

"It's the captain's place, not ours," said Smith, "to investigate this
affair. Don't be too impulsive; you will get yourself into serious
trouble."

"This is no matter of ordinary discipline," said the other; "the
captain has a more substantial awe of this man than you or I,--and for
more substantial reasons. He was aware of his wealth and power when
we were not. How, without his knowledge, could the treasures worth a
king's ransom, that adorn yonder coop, have been smuggled in or
arranged there? But I am resolved, right or wrong, to do as I said."

I was questioning within myself whether to second him, when the door
toward which he was advancing slowly opened, and once more the object
of our discussion issued from it, and again in his arms was the
beautiful form to which they had proved such a fatal resting-place.
But none of the emotions of terror, trustfulness, or affection, which
had alternately thrilled it in that position, did it now exhibit. The
bright eyes were closed, the beautiful features settled in lasting
repose. The glossy hair was daintily braided. The spotless garments
were gracefully disposed. The jewels glittered conspicuously, as if
relieved from the outvying lustre of her eyes. All, as in life, was
pure and perfect; and as in life, so in death, she was still a revelation
of transcendent beauty. A snowy winding-sheet, fringed with heavy
coins, alternately of gold and of silver, and looped with silken cords
on which bunches of the same precious metals hung as tassels, was so
disposed that he could enfold her in it without laying her from his
arms.

Stepping to the side of the vessel, he stood holding her thus in our
view for a few moments; then, deftly and deliberately as usual, he
wrapped the preciously weighted linen around her, stepped easily upon
the bulwark, and with that perfect and deliberate poise so peculiar
to him, and with his burden clasped firmly to his breast, he flung
himself far clear of the ship, into the ocean, and was seen no more.

Thus vanished like a dream the romance of my life. Indeed, but for the
lurid gleam of this strange jewel, a true type and testimony of it,
I might yet grow to persuade myself it was a dream, so wondrous it
becomes to me in memory.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

THE ADVOCATE'S WEDDING-DAY.

BY CATHERINE CROWE.

Antoine de Chaulieu was the son of a poor gentleman of Normandy, with
a long genealogy, a short rent-roll, and a large family. Jacques Rollet
was the son of a brewer, who did not know who his grandfather was; but
he had a long purse, and only two children. As these youths flourished
in the early days of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and were near
neighbors, they naturally hated each other. Their enmity commenced at
school, where the delicate and refined De Chaulieu, being the only
_gentilhomme_ amongst the scholars, was the favorite of the master (who
was a bit of an aristocrat in his heart), although he was about the
worst dressed boy in the establishment, and never had a sou to spend;
whilst Jacques Rollet, sturdy and rough, with smart clothes and plenty
of money, got flogged six days in the week, ostensibly for being stupid
and not learning his lessons,--which he did not,--but in reality for
constantly quarrelling with and insulting De Chaulieu, who had not
strength to cope with him.

When they left the academy, the feud continued in all its vigor, and
was fostered by a thousand little circumstances, arising out of the
state of the times, till a separation ensued, in consequence of an aunt
of Antoine de Chaulieu's undertaking the expense of sending him to
Paris to study the law, and of maintaining him there during the
necessary period.

With the progress of events came some degree of reaction in favor of
birth and nobility; and then Antoine, who had passed for the bar, began
to hold up his head, and endeavor to push his fortunes; but fate seemed
against him. He felt certain that if he possessed any gift in the world,
it was that of eloquence, but he could get no cause to plead; and his
aunt dying inopportunely, first his resources failed, and then his
health. He had no sooner returned to his home than, to complicate his
difficulties completely, he fell in love with Miss Natalie de
Bellefonds, who had just returned from Paris, where she had been
completing her education. To expatiate on the perfections of
Mademoiselle Natalie would be a waste of ink and paper; it is sufficient
to say that she really was a very charming girl, with a fortune which,
though not large, would have been a most desirable addition to De
Chaulieu, who had nothing. Neither was the fair Natalie indisposed to
listen to his addresses; but her father could not be expected to
countenance the suit of a gentleman, however well-born, who had not
a ten-sous piece in the world, and whose prospects were a blank.

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