NEWS OF THE MISSING MAN.
The next morning, while Aaron Rockharrt slept the sleep of the dead-in-selfishness, his wife arose and crept into the bedroom of her granddaughter.
Cora was awake, but not yet up.
"Oh, grandma, you will get your death of cold! walking about the house in your night gown. What is it? What do you want? Can I do anything for you?" cried the girl, springing out of bed to turn on the heat of the register, and then wrapping a large shawl around the old lady, and putting her into the cushioned easy chair.
"Now what is it, dear grandma? What can I do for you?" she inquired, as she drew on her own wadded dressing gown and sat on the side of the bed near the old lady.
"You can do something to set my mind at ease, my dear; but it will be painful for you, and I do not know whether you will do it," said the old lady with timid hesitation.
"I can do this, dear? Then, of course, I will do it," replied the girl.
"It is almost too much to ask of you, my child."
"There is nothing, nothing that I would not do to give you peace—you, poor dear, who have so little peace," said Cora, tenderly, smoothing the silver hair away from the wrinkled brow of the old lady, who began to drop a few weak tears of self-pity, excited by Cora's sympathy.
"Well, my child," she said, "your grandfather is going to have a little talk with you soon—on the subject of your self-seclusion. Oh! my poor child, do not resist him, do not provoke, do not disobey him. Oh! for my sake, Cora, for my sake, do not!"
"Dearest dear, I will leave undone anything in the world you wish me not to do. I will no longer rebel against my grandfather's authority, even when he exercises it in such a despotic manner," said Cora, raising the clasped hands of the old lady and pressing them to her lips.
Mrs. Rockharrt gathered the girl in her arms and kissed her, with a few more weak tears, but with no more words.
She did not tell Cora of the cruel threat made by the tyrant to turn her out of doors if she failed to obey him, and she hoped that the girl might never hear of it, lest in her wounded pride she might forestall the threat and leave the house of her own accord.
"Now be at ease, dear," said Cora, soothingly. "No more trouble—"
A bell rang sharply and cut off the girl's speech.
"Oh, there he is awake! I must go to him," exclaimed the timid old creature.
Cora made her toilet, and then went down to the breakfast parlor, where she found the two old people about to sit down to the table. She bade her grandfather good morning and then took her place.
During breakfast Aaron Rockharrt said:
"Mrs. Rothsay, you will come to me in the library as soon as we leave the table. I have something to say to you that must be said at once and for the last time."
"Very well, sir," replied the girl.
Half an hour later she was closeted with her grandfather.
"Madam, I do not intend to waste much time over you this morning. I merely mean to put a test question, whose answer shall decide my future course in regard to you."
"Very well."
"I must preface my question by reminding you that you have constantly disregarded my wishes and disobeyed my orders by refusing to see my guests or to go out in company with me."
"Yes."
"When honored with an invitation to the state dinner at the executive mansion you declined to go, even though I expressed my will that you should accompany me."
"But for the future I intend to be master of my own house and of every living soul within it. Now, then, for my test question. You have received cards to the ball to be given at the house of the chief justice to-morrow evening. I wish you to attend it, and my wish should be a command."
"Of course."
"What is your answer? Think before you speak, for on your answer must depend your future position in my house."
Cora was silent for a few moments.
"Sir," she began at length, "you are a just man, at least, and you will not refuse to hear and consider my reasons for seclusion."
"I will consider nothing! I know them as well as you do. Morbid sensitiveness about your peculiar position; morbid dread of facing the world; morbid love of indulging in melancholy. And I will have none of it! None of it! I will be obeyed, and you shall go out into society, or else—"
"'Or else' what will be the alternative, sir?"
"You leave my house! I will have no rebel in my family!"
Had Cora followed the impulse of her proud and outraged spirit, she would have walked out of the library, gone to her room, put on her bonnet and cloak, and left the house, leaving all her goods to be sent after her; but the girl thought of her poor, gentle, suffering grandmother, and bore the insult.
"Sir," she said, with patient dignity, "do you think that it would have been decorous, under the peculiar circumstances, for me to appear in public, and especially at a state dinner at the executive mansion?"
"Madam, I instructed you to accept that invitation and to attend that dinner! Do you dare to hint that I would counsel you to any indecorous act?"
"No, sir; certainly not, if you had stopped to think of it; but weightier matters occupied your mind, no doubt."
"Let that go. But in the question of this ball? Do you mean to obey me?"
"Grandfather, please consider! How can I mix with gay scenes while the fate of my husband is still an awful mystery?"
"You must conquer your feelings, and go, or—take the consequences!"
"Even if I could forget the tragedy of my wedding day, and mix with the gay world again, what would people say?"
"What would people say, indeed? What would they dare to say of my granddaughter?"
"But, sir, it would be contrary to all the laws of etiquette and conventionality."
"My granddaughter, madam, should give the law to fashion and society, not receive it from them!" said the Iron King, throwing himself back in his arm chair as if it had been his throne.
Cora smiled faintly at this egotism, but made no reply in words.
"To come to the point!" he suddenly exclaimed—"Will you obey me and attend this ball, or will you take the other alternative?"
Cora's heart swelled; her eyes flashed; she longed to defy the despot, but she thought of her meek, patient, long-suffering grandmother, and answered coldly:
"I will go to the ball, sir, since you wish it."
"Very well. That will do. Now leave the room. I wish to read the morning papers."
Cora went out to find her grandmother and to relieve the lady's anxiety; old Aaron Rockharrt threw himself back in his arm chair with grim satisfaction at having conquered Cora and set his iron heel upon her neck. Yes; he had conquered Cora through her love for her poor, timid, abused grandmother. But now Fate was to conquer him.
But Fate had decided that Cora should not attend that ball, or any other place of amusement, for a long time. And he was just on the brink of discovering the impertinent interference of Fate in human affairs, and especially those of the Iron King.
He took up a Washington paper—a government organ—and read, opening his eyes to their widest extent as he read the following head-lines:
A MYSTERY CLEARED UP.
THE FATE OF GOVERNOR REGULAS ROTHSAY.
Killed by the Comanches on November 1st.
A dispatch from Fort Security to the Indian Bureau, received this morning, announces another inroad of the Comanches upon the new settlement of Terrepeur, in which the inhabitants were massacred and their dwellings burned. Among the victims who perished in the flames in their own huts was Regulas Rothsay, late Governor-elect of ——, and at the time of his death a volunteer missionary to this treacherous and bloodthirsty tribe.
Another man, under the circumstances, might have been unnerved by such sudden and awful news, and let fall the paper, but not the Iron King. He grasped it only with a firmer hand, and read it again with keener eyes.
"What under the heavens took that man out there? Had he gone suddenly mad? That seems to be the only possible explanation of his conduct. To abandon his bride on the day of his marriage—to abandon his high official position as governor of this State on the day of his inauguration, and without giving any living creature a hint of his intention, to fly off at a tangent and go to the Indian country and become a missionary to those red devils, and be massacred for his pains—it was the work of a raving maniac. But what drove him mad? Surely it was not his high elevation that turned his head, for if it had been, his madness would never have taken this particular direction of flying from his honors. No! it is as I have always suspected. He heard, in some way, of the girl's English lover, and he, with his besotted devotion to her, was just the man to be morbidly, madly jealous, and to do some such idiotic thing as he has done, and get himself murdered and burned to ashes for his pains! Yes; and it serves him right!—it serves him—right!"
He sat glowering at the paragraph, and growling over his news for some time longer, but at length he took it up and walked over to the back parlor, where he felt sure he should find his two women.
Mrs. Rockharrt and Cora, who sat at a table before the gloomy coal fire, and were engaged in some fancy needlework, looked up uneasily as he entered; not that they expected bad news, but that they feared bad temper.
"Cora," he began, "I shall not insist on your going to the ball to-morrow."
She looked up in surprise, and a grateful exclamation was on her lips, but he forestalled it by saying:
"I suppose the news is all over the city by this time. I am going out to hear what the people are saying about it, and to see if the government house and the public offices are to be hung in mourning. There—there it is told in the first column of this paper."
And with cruel abruptness he laid the newspaper on the table between the two women, and pointed out the fatal paragraph.
Then he stalked out of the room, and called his man-servant to help him on with his heavy overcoat.
That house, on the previous night, had been one blaze of light in honor of the State dinner. Now, as well as he could see dimly through the falling snow, it was all closed up, and men on ladders were festooning every row of windows with black goods.
"Yes, of course. It is as I expected. The news has gone all over the town already," said old Aaron Rockharrt, as he strode through the snowstorm to the business center of the city.
Every acquaintance whom he met stopped him with the same question in slightly different words.
"Have you heard?" and so forth.
Every intimate friend he encountered asked:
"How does Mrs. Rothsay bear it?" or—
"What on earth ever took the governor out there?"
To all questions the Iron King gave curt answers that discouraged discussion of the subject. He walked on, noticing that the stores and offices of the city were being festooned with mourning, and that notwithstanding the severity of the storm the street corners were occupied by groups talking excitedly of the fatal news.
He went into the editorial rooms of all the city newspapers and wished and attempted to dictate to the proprietors the manner in which they should write of the tragic event which was then in the minds and on the tongues of all persons.
As he spent an hour on the average at each office, it was late in the winter afternoon when he got home. It was not yet dark, however, and he was surprised to see a man servant engaged in closing the shutters.
He entered and demanded severely why the servant shut the windows before night.
The old man looked nervous and distressed, and answered vaguely:
"It is the missus, sah."
The idea that his wife should take the liberty of ordering the house to be closed for the night at this unusual hour of the afternoon, without his authority, enraged him:
"Help me off with my ulster," he said.
When the servant had performed this office the master said:
"Serve dinner at once."
And then he strode into the back parlor, which was the usual sitting room of his wife and granddaughter. The room was empty and darkened. More than ever infuriated by fatigue, hunger, and the supposed disregard of his authority, he came out and walked up stairs to look for his wife in her own room. He pushed open the door and entered. That room was also dark, only for the faint red light that came from the coal fire in the grate. By this he dimly perceived a female form sitting near the bed, and whom he supposed to be his wife.
"Why, in the fiend's name, is the whole house as dark as pitch?" he roughly demanded, as he went to a front window and threw open the shutters, letting in the white light of the snow storm.
"Grandfather!"
It was the voice of Cora that spoke, and there was a something in its tone that struck and almost awed even the Iron King.
He turned abruptly.
Cora had risen from her chair and was now standing by the bed. But on the bed lay a little, still, fair form, with hands folded over its breast, with the eyes shut down forever, and all over the fair, wan, placid face was "the peace of God which passeth all understanding."
"What is this?" demanded Old Aaron Rockharrt, as he came up to the bed.
"Look at her. She rests at last. I have been with her twenty years, and this is the first time I have ever seen her rest in peace."
Old Aaron Rockharrt stood like a stone beside the bed, gazing down on the dead.
"She is safe now, never more to be startled, or frightened, or tortured by any one. 'Safe, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest,'" continued Cora.
Still Old Aaron stood like a stone beside the bed and gazed down on the dead.
Suddenly, without moving or withdrawing his gaze from where it rested, he asked in a low, gruff tone:
"How did this happen?"
"She fainted in her chair, and died in that faint."
"When? where? from what?"
"Within an hour after you had left us together in the back parlor, with the paper containing the news of my husband's death," answered Cora, speaking in a tone of most unnatural calmness.
"Had that excitement anything to do with her swoon?"
"I do not know."
"Give me the particulars."
"We—or, rather, she—first took up the paper, and without knowing what the news was that you told us to look at, gave it to me, and asked me to read it. I, as soon as I saw what it was—I lost all control over myself. I do not know how I behaved. But she took the paper, to see what it was that had so disturbed me, and then, she, too, became very much agitated; but she tried to console me, tried for a long while to comfort me, standing over my chair, and caressing and talking. At last she left me, and sat down and leaned back in her own chair. I was trying to be quiet, and at last succeeded, and then I arose and went to her, meaning to tell her that I would be calm and not distress her any more. When I looked at her, I found that she had fainted. I rang and sent off for a doctor instantly, and while waiting for him did all that was possible to revive her, but without effect. When the doctor came and examined her condition he pronounced her quite dead."
"This must have occurred four or five hours ago. Why was I not sent for?"
"You were sent for immediately. Messengers were dispatched in every direction. But you could nowhere be found. They did not, indeed, know where to look for you."
"Now close the window again, and then go and leave me alone; and do not let any one disturb me on any account," said the old man, who had not once moved from the bedside, or even lifted his gaze from the face of the dead.
"I have telegraphed to North End for Uncle Fabian and Clarence, also to West Point for Sylvanus. Sylvan cannot reach here before to-morrow, but my uncles will be here this evening. Shall I send you word when they arrive?"
"No. Let no one come to me to-night."
"Shall I send you up anything, grandfather?"
"No, no. If I require anything I will ring for it. Go now, Cora, and leave me to myself."
The girl went away, closing the door behind her. As she descended the stairs she heard the key turned, and knew that her grandfather had so shut out all intruders.
He who had come home hungry and furious as a famished wolf never appeared at the dinner that he had so peremptorily ordered to be served at once, but shut himself up fasting with his dead. If his eyes were now opened to see how much he had made her suffer through his selfishness, cruelty, and despotism all her married life—if his late remorse awoke—if he grieved for her—no one ever knew it. He never gave expression to it.