The curse of gold

by Ann S. Stephens

Catharine was seized with sudden horror. Had the poor, demented one really committed some violence? Or was this talk merely the ravings of her diseased mind?

There was no more information to be obtained from Elsie. The storm, or perhaps some encounter in which she had been engaged, rendered her wild with excitement. She dared the lightning with her pale, clenched hand, and answered the thunder with shrieks of defiance. She danced with her shadowy-white feet through the wet meadow-grass, and laughed like a riotous child, as the rain swept in gusts through her hair.

When they neared the cottage, a change came upon her. She grew still and hushed, looking forward with breathless awe, and moving with the noiseless motion of a ghost.

“Hush, hush,” she said, “we may disturb him, and then he will follow her into the deep waters. Do you think she will stay there though? Who can keep her there? The monsters of the deep will hurl her back to land; she is too wicked for them. The serpents that coil and knot themselves among the rust, and gold, and scattered pearls that lie forever among the coral branches, down, down where the waters are calm like a baby’s dream—the serpents, I tell you, will uncoil and slink away into the black depths of the sea, rather than live with her, though she is their sister. Oh, if they would keep her. Do you think they can? I sent her down to them with my mark upon her throat—a hot mark, red as blood. They will understand it. The mermaids,—listen, my bird of Paradise,—the mermaids are my friends; I have lived with them years and years. They have strung pearls on my hair, and that’s what makes it so white. I wish you could see them floating, floating, floating, with pale green hair and emerald eyes. They sing, too. Oh, my bird, won’t they sing when she plunges downward headforemost in her rags, with my mark flaming on her throat? Hosanna! hallelujah! Roll, roll ye mighty thunders—roll, roll!”

Elsie had uttered the first portion of this wild speech in a hoarse whisper as she glided by the cottage, but her voice rose as she proceeded, and at last broke forth into a fierce, reckless chant, like that with which Rachael electrified an audience, when she raved and moaned through the liberty chant of France.

Catharine was impressed by the wild poetry that broke more from the eyes and action of the maniac than from her words. Still, she had an undercurrent of thought that led her to look wistfully at the cottage as she passed. The window where she had seen a light was now darkened and closed; everything was still, and she felt almost as if some fearful delusion were being practised upon her every way she turned.

The rain had somewhat abated when the two females reached the house; but even at its height the old people had evidently come forth in search of their child. Back and forth, among the shrubberies and beneath the old trees, they wandered, their hands nervously interlocked, and their feeble voices rising in anxious cries for their daughter.

Elsie heard them, and sprang forward triumphantly.

“Come,” she said, “come, you may breathe now; the air is pure; the earth may laugh with blossoms without fear of death-tramps from her cloven feet. Come now, let us sing together, we and the stars!”

She waved her hand toward the sky where a few stars were struggling through an embankment of clouds, very pale and languid after the vivid flashes of lightning they had just witnessed.