STELLA made excuses to John Graham for not being able to see him before their appointment to meet at Inwood, and on the afternoon of the day fixed rode out of town at four o’clock alone.
Her unconventional ways had ceased to excite comment in Independence since her extraordinary conduct in refusing to wear mourning for her father. There could be no graver breach of the traditions of good society than this in the eyes of her neighbours, and so long as she remained within the pale of respectability any other feat she might perform would be of minor interest.
She rode rapidly, her mind in a tumult of excitement over the daring act of revenge she meant to wreak to-night on the man who had wronged her beyond the power of human forgiveness. Singlehanded and alone she had mastered his will and brought him to her feet. Single-handed and alone she had decided the question of his life and death. And this afternoon she wished to ride alone to the place appointed for his judgment.
In spite of her resolution to mete out the sternest justice to John Graham, the memory of his passionate words of love, the deep tenderness with which he had hovered about her, and the utter trust he had shown during their last meeting, began to torment her.
Had they met under fair conditions she could have loved him. She began to see it clearly now. His sincerity, his fiery emotions, his romantic extravagances, the old-fashioned chivalry with which he worshipped her were very sweet. The complete and generous surrender he had made, placing his life absolutely in her hands, began to glow with poetry in her imagination.
He had always possessed the faculty of drawing out the best that was in her. Somehow she had never been able to hate him as she ought in his presence. There was something contagious in the spirit of love with which his whole personality seemed to radiate. She had begun to feel at home with him as with no other man she had ever met.
“Oh, dear, I’m sorry!” she sighed, as she entered the deep woods. Unconsciously she reined her horse to a stand, and was startled from her reverie by a tear rolling down her cheek and falling on her glove. “What a fool I am!” she cried in anger. “I’d better turn back now. I’m a chicken-hearted coward when put to the test. I’m scared out of my senses at the size of the task I’ve undertaken—that’s what’s the matter—I, who have boasted of my strength and shouted my triumph over a strong man’s conquest.”
Another tear rolled down her cheek. She brushed it away with an angry stroke.
“Suppose I find too late that I’m in love with him!” she exclaimed, helplessly.
Her horse moved on without her urging or recognising it, so absorbed had she become in the battle raging within her heart.
“What is love?” she mused aloud. “I wonder how it feels to really love?—Love him?—nonsense—I hate the very ground he walks on—the self-centered, proud, bigoted, narrow-minded fanatic! I’ve sworn to avenge my father’s death. I’ll do it. Let him come to-night to the judgment hall of his own making. I’ll prove myself a woman, and do my country a service when I hand him over to justice.”
She touched her horse with the whip, and he bounded forward in a swift gallop, and in a few minutes she passed into the old lawn and saw the flash of the white ghost-like columns among the dark firs.
Again she found herself recalling the silly extravagances of his talk as they entered the grounds two days before.
“What was it he said about angels?” she mused with a smile. “Yes, I remember. Somehow I seem to remember them all!—‘When I stand by your side, in every silent space I hear the beating of the wings of angels’—and I liked it! what a fool a woman is! and tried to convince myself that I didn’t like it by adding, ‘the wings of the angel of death,’ only because I felt my hate grow weak under a silly compliment—well, I’m done with his maudlin love-making. It’s judgment day.”
She dismounted, tied her horse, and wandered down the little crooked pathway to the famous spring at the foot of the hill where many a lover had lingered in days long past and poured out the old story that remains eternal in its youth. She wondered at the mad resolution of her mother, taken perhaps on this very spot twenty-five years ago, that had led her to break the bonds of blood, throw to the winds every tie of tenderness that bound her to the earth, and brave the scorn of her own proud world, all for the sake of the son of a poor white man—because she loved him!
Why did people do such idiotic things? Why should a woman thus sink her soul and body in the fortunes of a man? She couldn’t understand it.
“Surely this is the miracle of miracles of human life!” she murmured. “I wonder if John Graham was crazy when he said that night on the lawn: ‘If you should send me from your presence now, I’d laugh at Death, for I have tasted Life!’ Why do I keep thinking of what he has said?—Perhaps because he may die to-night!”
She sprang to her feet, clasped her hands nervously and began to cry—softly at first, and then with utter abandonment, sinking again to the ground and burying her face in her arm.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! I’m lonely and heartsick and afraid!” she sobbed. “I wish I had a friend to share my secret, advise and help me—yes, such a friend as he would be!—he’d know what I ought to do—and I know what he’d say, too—that I’m proud and cruel and selfish—that I’m doing a hideous, unnatural thing—well I’m not! the impulse for vengeance is God’s first law—I know it because I feel it, deep, instinctive, resistless!—and I’m going to do it! I’m going to do it!—I hate him! I hate him!”
She rose and returned to the ruins, and sat down on the steps between the white columns. The sun was sinking through an ocean of filmy clouds, reflecting in rapid changes every colour ever dreamed in the soul of the artist. She watched in deep breathless reverence, until the sense of loneliness again overpowered her and she sprang up with restless energy exclaiming:
“I meant to explore that room before he comes—I must do it.”
She descended the steps and stopped before the dark entrance. It hadn’t seemed so dark the other day with him. It was earlier in the day of course. Why had she paused? The question angered her. She was afraid to go through the long dark corridor alone—that was the disgusting truth.
She turned back to await his coming. What a foolish contradiction. She would wait for the protection of the wretch she meant to deliver to-night to—death!
She returned with quick angry strides to the columns, and leaned against one of their friendly sides. In the gathering twilight they seemed human and sheltering in their protection. She wished he would come. A dozen times she looked toward the gate and thought she heard the beat of his horse’s hoof in the distance.
Dusk settled into darkness and still he did not come. The moon rose and touched the tall pillars above with a magic glow of mellow light, and a whip-poor-will struck the first note of his thrilling song beneath the bush at her feet.
With a shudder, she moved to the outer column and waited with increasing impatience and alarm. The wildest fears began to fill her fancy. Why had she dared this mad task alone? For some unaccountable reason she had not reckoned on being alone.
Was it possible that she had been so illogical, so utterly bereft of reason that the idea of his companionship had filled her imagination? Surely she had not been such a fool! She knew Steve Hoyle would accompany those men, beyond a doubt, and join her after the affair was over, but she had not given Steve a thought. He had been but a cog in the wheel of things that had swiftly moved to the tragic crisis which she now faced for the first time. She looked at her watch in the bright moonlight and it was half past eight. What if he failed to come! Would she be glad or angry? The tumult of feeling had reached a point of intensity that paralysed her powers of reasoning—she didn’t know. A single sense remained, the consciousness of chilling loneliness.
With a throb of joy she caught at last the quick hoof-beat of John’s horse sweeping through the gateway in a furious gallop.
He leaped to the ground, and hurried to her side.
“I’m awfully sorry!” he cried, seizing both her hands with eager tenderness. “A most unexpected thing occurred which delayed me thirty minutes. I’ll explain to you later. Come, I’m hungry to see your dear face in the light of these lanterns in that gloomy old room below. I’ve a thousand things to tell you. Life will be too short a time in which to tell it all. I hope you’ve been very lonely and hungry for me to come?”
“I must confess, my heart began to fail me once or twice,” she said seriously, while he felt her hand trembling.
He stooped to light a lantern, and she caught his arm.
“Wait, not yet—the moon is shining brightly—we don’t need it.”
“But you’ll stumble on those dark stairs in the corridor.”
“No matter, wait,” she urged nervously; “I’ll hold your arm—you know th............