Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

"Nothing terrible, though something very strange," was the reply of Bell. "Nothing that you need fear."

"Oh, I am not afraid!" answered Joe, with an assumption of bravery that she probably felt to be a sham all the while. "I believe it is my turn now. Dear me, how heavy that thunder is! Try and amuse yourselves, good people, while I 'follow in the footsteps of my illustrious predecessor'!" and with an affectation of gaiety that was a little transparent, she obeyed the summons of the black girl who at that moment made her appearance again outside the curtain, and followed her within.

Bell Crawford dropped into one of the chairs that stood by the window, and leaned her head upon her hand, in an attitude of deep thought. Leslie did not attempt to speak to her at that moment, either aware that such a course could only be painful to her, or too much absorbed in the remembrance of the other who had just passed within the curtain, to wish to do so. He walked the floor, from one side to the other of the room, the sound of his heel falling somewhat heavily even on the carpeted floor, and his head thrown forward in such a position that when he threw his glance on a level with his line of vision it came out from under his bent brows. The rain seemed to beat heavier and heavier outside, and dashed against the windows with such force as to threaten to beat them in; and successive discharges of thunder, accompanied with constant flashes of fierce lightning, crashed and rumbled among the house-tops and seemed to be at times actually booming through the room, immediately over their heads.

In this way some fifteen minutes passed, seeming almost so many hours to the young man, whatever they may have appeared to the young girl who sat by the window, so absorbed by her own thoughts that she scarcely heard the muttering thunder or saw the blinding flashes of the lightning.

Suddenly there was a louder and fiercer crash of thunder than any that had preceded it—a crash of that peculiar sharpness indicating that it must have struck the very house in which they heard it; and this accompanied by one of those terribly intense flashes of lightning which seemed to sear the eyeballs and play in blue flame through the air of the room,—then followed by a heavy dull rumbling shock and boom like that of a thousand pieces of artillery fired at once, rocking the building to its foundation and threatening to send it tumbling in ruins on their heads. Tom Leslie involuntarily put his hands to his eyes, to shut out the flash, and Bell Crawford, at last startled, sprung from her chair; but both were worse startled, the very second after, by a long, loud, piercing shriek, in the voice of Josephine Harris, that burst from the inner room and seemed like some cry extorted by mortal pain or unendurable terror.

Both rushed towards the curtain, at once, but Leslie in advance—both with the impression that some dreadful catastrophe connected with the lightning must have occurred. But just as Leslie laid his hand upon the curtain to draw it aside, it was dashed open from within, and Josephine Harris literally flung herself through it, still shrieking and in that deadly mortal terror which threatens the reason. She seemed about to fall, and Tom Leslie stretched out his arms to receive her. She half fell into them, then rolled, nearer than described any other motion, into those of Bell Crawford; and almost before Leslie could quite realize what had occurred, she lay with her head in Bell's lap, the extremity of her terror over, uttering no word, but sobbing and moaning like a little child that had been too severely dealt with and broken down under the blow.

Tom Leslie's hand, it has been said, was on the curtain, to remove it. He released it for the instant, to look after the welfare of the frightened girl; but when he saw her lying in Bell's lap another feeling became paramount even to his anxiety for her safety, and he grasped the curtain again and dashed through into the inner room.

As he had expected, the red woman of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard stood before him, presenting the same magnificent outline of face and the same ghastly redness of complexion that she had shown at such a distance of time and place. In her hand was a white wand, glittering like silver, with some bright and flashing colorless stone at the end. Her dress, as he then remembered, had been red when he saw her in Paris, and no relief to her ghastly color had been shown, except in the mass of dark hair sweeping down her shoulders. Now her tall and stately form was wrapped in black, against which her cloud of dark hair was unnoticed. Leslie had not observed, at any time during the absence of either of the two girls, any odor of smoke or any appearance of it creeping out from the curtain into the room; but now, as he looked, he saw white wreaths of vapor circling near the ceiling and fading away there; and he realized at once, with the memory of the past in mind, what had been the form in which the images were presented, producing so startling an effect on both.

At the moment when he entered, the black girl was just disappearing through what appeared to be a small door opening out of the room upon the landing of the stairs, and ordinarily concealed by the sweeping drapery of dark cloth that was looped around the entire apartment. Whether the attendant was carrying away any of the properties that might have been used in the late jugglery, he had, of course, no means of judging. The sorceress herself, at the moment when he broke in upon her, was apparently advancing from the little table at which she had been standing, partially within the sweep of the hangings, towards the dividing curtain. At sight of the intruder she stopped suddenly and drew her tall form to its full height, while such a flash of anger appeared to dart from her keen eyes as would have produced a sensible effect on any man less used to varying sensations than the cosmopolitan journalist.

"What do you want?" she asked, and the words came from her lips with the same short hissing tone that he so well remembered, creating the impression that there must be a serpent hidden somewhere in the throat and hissing through what would otherwise be the voice.