CHAPTER XXXIV.
The Girl in Her Melancholy Home.—The Prison House.—A Dungeon’s Gloom.—Unavailing Sorrow.
When Jacob Gray pitched upon the lone house at Battersea as his place of abode, he could not have resolved upon a house less likely to be visited by the curious, although seen from the river at a considerable distance: it was always pointed out by the watermen to their customers, as “Forest’s haunted house.”
The fact was, that a most awful and cold-blooded murder had been committed in the house, since which it had been allowed to fall into decay, and the land around it, which had been at one time well drained, had subsided into its old character of a marsh. The fall of a stack of chimnies had impressed every one with a belief of the extreme danger of venturing within its crazy walls, lest they should fall and engulf the rash intruder in their ruins.
It was with great caution that Gray first visited this place, that he was long in discovering that the signs of decay were more superficial than otherwise, and, inquiring diligently and cautiously concerning it, he heard the character of the deserted house, which induced him mentally to resolve upon making it his next abode, should he be hunted out of his miserable residence in the ruined street at Lambeth.
The only risk he considered he ran of discovery was in conveying Ada there by daylight; but, after that, he resolved upon never leaving or approaching his gloomy abode except by night, or early in the morning, when he was quite sure no one was observing him, save upon special occasions, such as his recent visit to Learmont, whom he was anxious to see after the stormy meeting in his former residence.
When Ada recovered consciousness, she at first felt all that sensation of relief which comes over any one awakening from a horrible dream; but this feeling of satisfaction lingered but for a few fleeting moments in the breast of the persecuted, betrayed girl. The gloom that surrounded her—the damp air that imparted a chill to her very heart—the dim ray of light that proceeded from a candle, the wick of which showed that it had been some hours unattended, all convinced her that she was a prisoner.
With a cry of despair she started to her feet: she clasped her hands, and called on Heaven to protect her, as she hastily glanced round the gloomy place in which she found herself.
The dismal echo of her own voice only answered her wild and incoherent appeal.
“Oh! Heaven,” she cried, “I shall be murdered here. No one to hear my cries! No one to aid me! I am lost—lost! Oh!—Albert, Albert!”
She sank upon the ground, and wept long and bitterly as the thoughts of how foolishly she had allowed herself to be deceived by Gray crowded upon her oppressed mind.
“No hope!—No hope!—Now there is no hope!” she cried, bitterly. “Oh! Why was I preserved for this dreadful fate! I thought it hard to endure the cold air from the river, while crouching on the bridge. O God! O God! What would I not give now to be as free beneath the canopy of Heaven as I was then!”
After a time the native energy of Ada’s character overcame her first bursts of bitter grief; and raising her head she strove to pierce, with her tear-filled eyes, the dim obscurity by which she was surrounded.
“What can this place be?” she asked herself. “Let me recollect. He brought me across swampy fields to a ruined house, and there, at that point, recollection ceases—memory fades away in a confused whirl, none of which are sufficiently distinct for the mind to grasp and reason upon.”
She now approached the light, and, carefully trimming it, she held it as high as she could, and, turning slowly round, took a long and anxious survey of as much as she could see of her dungeon, for such she considered it.
The floor was of earth merely, and the walls seemed to be composed of the same material, mingled with stones and broken bricks, to give them some degree of solidity and strength. The place altogether appeared to be of considerable extent, and, by the various refuse matter that lay about, it would seem to have been a cellar for strong vegetables, wood, &c. during the winter season. A quantity of rough sacks and baskets lay in different corners mouldy and moist, with the accumulated damp of many years, and the air, too, was loaded with unwholesome moisture, and pernicious exhalations.
With a slow and cautious step Ada traversed the whole of this gloomy place, and what surprised her much was that she could see no means of ingress or egress from it.
“How have I been placed here?” she asked herself. “There is no food. Good Heaven! Am I doomed to starve in this wretched place? Alas! Is this the awful mode which the fears of Jacob Gray have suggested to him as the easiest and safest of compassing my death?”
So terrible did the dread of death in that damp, gloomy dungeon become to the imagination of Ada that she could scarcely hold the light for trembling, and she placed it on one of the mouldy baskets, while with clasped hands, and upon her knees, she breathed a prayer to Heaven for protection and safety in her extreme peril.
How calming and sweet is the soothing influence of prayer! As the trembling words, wrung from the pure heart of the gentle and beautiful Ada in her deep anguish, ascended to that Heaven which never permits the wicked to prosper, but always interposes to protect the innocent and virtuous, a holy balm seemed to fall upon her blighted spirit, and the benign influence of some air from the regions of eternal bliss seemed to fill the gloomy dungeon with a brightness and a beauty that deprived it of its horrors.
For many minutes now Ada remained silent, and her fancy strayed to the last kind words of Albert Seyton. Then she pictured him and his father seeking her in the house at Lambeth. In her mind’s eye she saw his despair when he found her not, and she thought then that her heart must break to think that she should never see him more.
“Albert—Albert!” she cried.—“Oh save me—save—seek for me! Oh, could your eyes but cast themselves upon this gloomy abode and know that I was here, how happy might I be—far happier than before, for now I feel convinced this dreadful man Gray is not my father. No—no, he could not thus before Heaven have betrayed his child! Albert—Albert!”
She dropped her head upon her breast, and again the tears blinded those beautiful eyes, and rolled gently down her cheeks, thence falling upon a neck of snowy whiteness, and losing their gem-like lustre in the meshes of her raven hair. Suddenly she ceased to weep. She ceased to call on Albert, and a chill came over her heart, as she heard Gray’s voice, cry,—
“Ada—Ada!”
She looked up, and from a square opening in the wall far above her reach, she saw a streaming light enter the dungeon.
“Ada!” again cried Gray, and she saw him peering into the gloom below, and shading his eyes from the glare of the light he carried. “Ada!” he cried, impatiently.
“I am here,” said Ada.
Gray immediately disappeared from the opening, and all was again darkness whence the light had issued.
“What can he mean?” thought Ada. “Did he suppose that already my spirit had yielded to this gloomy prison, and is he disappointed to find that I still live?”
While Ada was pursuing these reflections, Gray suddenly re-appeared, and placing a ladder from the opening into the dungeon, he said, in a voice intended to be conciliatory,—
“Ascend, Ada—ascend.”
“I can meet death here,” said Ada.
“There is no death to meet,” said Gray. “I mean you no harm.”
“Because you have done me as much, short of taking my life,” said Ada, “as lies in your power. By what right—by what flimsy shadow of justice am I immured here?”
“Ascend I say,” cried Gray. “There is warmth and comfort above here.”
“I may as well,” thought Ada, with a shudder, “meet my death from his hands above as by starvation in this place.”
She placed her foot upon the ladder, and slowly ascended. When she neared the top, Gray reached out his hand, and assisted her into the room in which he was.
“You tremble, girl!” he said.
“And so do you,” replied Ada, fixing her eyes upon Jacob Gray’s pale face.
“You—you think I mean you harm,” he said, in a hesitating tone, and avoiding Ada’s gaze as much as possible.
“Think!” repeated Ada,—“think, Jacob Gray!”
“Jacob Gray?” he cried. “You speak strangely. I thought you now knew me.”
“I do—too well,” said Ada.
“I have told you I am your father, girl.”
“You have told me.”
“And you believe—”
“No,” said Ada, with sudden energy; “on my soul, no—as I hope for heaven, no!”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, Jacob Gray, for the honour of all fathers—for the credit of humanity, I cannot—will not believe myself your daughter. No, no, Jacob Gray, I am no longer scared by that dreadful thought—thank God!”
“Girl, you know not what you say.”
“My words may be incoherent—not aptly chosen—but the sense is the same. Jacob Gray, you are neither father, uncle, kith, nor kin of mine. No, no!”
“Who—who—told you so?” gasped Gray.
“There—there!” cried Ada. “Your fears speak the truth; you have confessed the cheat. Jacob Gray, I could forgive you all, now that that dreadful weight is removed from my heart.”
“Know you where you are, since you know so much?” said Gray, after a pause.
“I do not, save that I have been deceived by you, and lured by false promises to this dismal place.”
“You are in my power. Still, likewise, I assert you are my daughter.”
“In your power I grant myself, as far as Heaven will permit you; but you are no kindred to me, Jacob Gray.”
“By hell, if you call me Jacob Gray again—”
“Jacob Gray,” shouted Ada, her face kindling with excitement, and her delicate form appearing to dilate as she pointed to the abashed and writhing countenance of the villain who trembled before her.
“Be it so,” said Gray; “we understand each other now. You defy me.”
“I ever defied you, Jacob Gray!”
“Be it so,” he repeated. “Follow me.”
“It is my heart that defies you, Jacob Gray,” said Ada. “You are a man, and I a weak girl. You are strong enough to enforce me to accompany you.”
“Come on!” cried Gray.
Ada slowly followed him from the room. Gray passed out at a large doorway into a smaller apartment, in which was a table, some baskets, similar to those Ada had seen in the cellar turned up for seats, and a small fire dimly burning on an ample hearth; before which a bullock might have been roasted, and perhaps had been in days gone by.
“Ada,” said Gray, “look around you.”
Ada did so, and Gray continued,—
“This is a place of discomfort; there is little to recommend it, but it is preferable to yon gloomy dungeon from whence you have but now emerged.”
“I grant it,” said Ada.
“Your secret existence here is necessary for me; nay, my very life depends upon it. It may be but for a very short time. You may imagine that I am not in love with this mode of life. I have gold—store of gold—but I want more, and each day shall add to the glittering mass. When it has reached the amount I wish, you shall be free.”
“Free?”
“Yes; free as air.”
“When you have the gold you wish?”
“Even so, Ada.”
“I have read that the love of gold is one of those passions that increase as they are fed.”
“Not with me; I have fixed in my imagination a sum which I must have. Then, Ada, I leave England for ever, and you are free!”
“But wherefore is my captivity essential?”
“Ask no questions,” interrupted Gray. “Circumstances make you valuable; but mark me, you are equally valuable, dead as alive. Nay, start not—I wish you to live, if possible. I do not want to take your life—because—because—”
“Because, what?”
“I can use you as such an implement of revenge that—that—but no matter, no matter, your fate is in your hands; you shall yourself decide your destiny.”
“Myself?”
“Yes; swear to me that without my permission you will not leave this place. Swear to me you will aid me in keeping you in silence and secrecy. Swear this, and you return no more to yon loathsome dungeon, and perhaps, in a short time, I may place you on a dazzling height of power, and wealth shall make all England ring with your name! You could be the admired of all; your beauty, your wit, your gold, would be the themes of every tongue, if you will but swear.”
“How can I believe you?” said Ada.
“If ever words of truth passed my lips,” said Gray, “these are such.”
“On what pretence was I lured hither?”
“Ada, by force or fraud I was compelled to bring you here. ’Twere better the latter than the former.”
“And now,” said Ada, “by force or fraud I am to be kept here. Jacob Gray, I will not swear faith to thee.”
“You will not?”
“I will not.”
“Girl, you are mad—you know not what you do. This is a device of mine to save your life—to place you above the reach of fortune’s malice.”
“Answer me one thing, and call on Heaven to witness your truth,” said Ada. “Are you father, uncle, or nothing else?”
“Will you swear as I bid you?”
“I cannot resign the dear hope of escape,” said Ada.
“Escape,” replied Gray, “is impossible. The dungeon from which I have even now brought you is inaccessible save by the means in my power. For my own safety, I must keep you a prisoner, or—or—”
“Or murder me, you would say. Jacob Gray, I think you dare not kill me.”
“Dare not?” said Gray, trembling.
“Yes; dare not were my words. Now, I will make to you a proposal. Trust me; tell me all, who and what I am. Tell me all, and I will forgive injuries, and perchance do your bidding.”
“No, no, I cannot tell you yet,” said Gray. “I wish you one day to know all—when I have my gold.”
“Am I to be the slave of your avarice?”
“Call it so, if you will.”
“Who am I?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Who were those men who sought your life? Was the name of one Andrew Britton.”
Gray absolutely shrieked as Ada pronounced the name of the smith, which it will be recollected she had heard from Mad Maud on Westminster-bridge.
“A—what is this—what do you mean? Who—what devil told you—speak—Ada—speak. Have the—the dead risen? Speak, or you will drive me mad!”