“Go long wid your tape-worms,” cried Aunt Chloe, “de blessed dinner’s all gettin’ cold, while you’se shootin’ off dat trap o’ your’n. Spect I want ter stan’ all day cookin’ tings fer yer ter leave ston’ cold, yer soft headed nigger? Start yer stumps now.” She emphasized her remarks by vigorous whacks with the wet dish cloth in her hand, and Pete started on a trot, rattling the dishes together, while Aunt Chloe followed him with anxious eyes, expecting every moment to see a grand tumble of viands from their lofty perch; but a mysterious providence guarded his footsteps, and brought the tray safely to the study door, which was opened by the grave doctor, who took the tray from Pete, saying kindly: “You need not enter, my boy. I can arrange things myself very well without you.”
Pete, not to be outdone in courtesy, bobbed his head and made an elaborate gesture with his arms, thereby causing the doctor to nearly lose his grasp of the tray. As it was, a cup and saucer balanced perilously near the edge, and the doctor loosened his hold of the door to catch it. The door slowly swung open, and to Pete’s utter astonishment he saw standing near the window, a tall, powerful mulatto whom he had never seen before, and who looked at him curiously. The doctor saw the whites of Pete’s eyes grow until the pupils disappeared, and divining the cause he said, nodding at Adam: “You have not seen my new body servant before, Pete? He has just come to bring me some fresh linen,” and a moment later Pete found himself in the hall looking at the closed door.
“Huh!” he grunted, “de docta tinks heself might cute, he do, but I tinks I knows a heap. I’ll jes watch for massa body servant w’en he comes out, and scrap’ quaintance with him. I’se had my ’spicions dat de docta nebber eat all dat stuff. I recon de body servant done help. Ya, ya.”
But Pete, although he sat on the top stair and kept his eyes on the study door, never saw the body servant again much to his chagrin, for in some way he had begun to suspect that all was not as it should be behind the closed door.
CHAPTER V.
Andrew’s illness was of long duration, and Victoria had worn herself almost to a shadow in her efforts to nurse him without any help, except what the doctor and Adam, who was not always at liberty, could give her. She had plenty of time for serious thought while in the sick room. In fact she thought too much, and brought upon herself that most dreadful of all maladies, insomnia. Sometimes, after being all night beside Andrew, attending to the many wants which an invalid requires, she would seek her couch almost dead for the want of sleep, only to find as her head touched the pillow, that all desire for sleep had left her, and that her eyes would not remain closed; while strange fancies and wild thoughts ran riot in her brain; and she often rose from her pillow unrefreshed by not so much as a half hour’s sleep. She did not tell the doctor, for every day, she thought, would be the last of her miserable feelings, and she would then find rest. She did not neglect the poor invalid in the Western gable. Many hours when she should have been resting were spent by her in trying to bring light to the darkened mind. Her bitterest tears were shed in that room where Adam was the only witness. She acknowledged to herself with sorrow and shame, that her wifely love for Roger was forever dead. That the man who ruined her life, held her heart by a cord which she would not break if she could. With every feeble throb of his pulse she felt her love grow stronger, and she knew that if he died her soul would follow his. Her love for Roger was in a great measure the same which she felt for Mary, a brooding motherly love, tender in the extreme, yet so different from the fiery flame which burned her whenever she heard Andrew calling her in tones of passionate entreaty, though the tongue which uttered them was inflamed by fever, and the man knew not what he said.
He had been ill three weeks, and in all that time not a gleam of consciousness had shown in the fever-lighted eyes. No ray of light had come to the clouded brain. Victoria hung over him, watching his every motion, praying for returning reason, while in those three weeks he lived over the ten years of his sin-laden life. Victoria listened, sometimes in tears, and again in keenest pity, while the tongue which had so faithfully guarded the stricken man’s secret was now loosened, and ran on, and on unceasingly, babbling into the ears of the woman he had loved and wronged, all those things which he had so jealously kept from her.
He told of how in the early days of their meeting he had not cared for her, but after a time her loveliness dawned upon him, and grew, and grew, until from a trifling friendship it had developed into a passion which only death could quench. At such times he would clasp Victoria around the neck with almost the light of reason in his eyes, and calling her “mother,” would tell her of the sweet fair English girl who had stolen his heart only to break it. Victoria’s tears fell like rain on the hot purple lips of the sick man, as she listened to his ravings, but not a tear dimmed the brilliancy of the burning eyes fixed upon her’s. He seemed to know that she wept, for he would say: “Don’t cry, mother. You are too young and beautiful to weep, although your hair is white, and you love Roger better than you do me. I have become used to that, but mother,” and here his voice would become shrill and discordant, and his features fierce and repellant, “Roger must not steal everything from me; he must leave my beautiful angel with the pure white wings for me to love. I will kill him else.”
Then, perhaps, for a few moments, the burning eyes would droop only to be raised again, with a fiercer light gleaming in them, while he fought with imaginary demons, all bearing the form of Roger, who wanted to take from him his beautiful angel with the pure white wings, whose earthly name had been Victoria. Then for a time he lived over again that dreadful railroad accident, whereby Roger was supposed to have lost his life. With the cunningness of insanity, he would look up into Victoria’s face and laughingly ask her “if she knew who Roger Willing was, and where he was buried. How I have longed to tell Victoria something,” he would say. “What a mockery her flowers seemed when laid upon the grave of an unknown, while Roger was sleeping—ah, where was he sleeping? If I tell you, you will tell her, and then I shall lose you, for you will go to Roger whom you always loved better than you did me, and who stole my angel, my beautiful angel with the pure white wings, but he has paid for it, paid for it dearly.”
Victoria, who longed to know the real facts relating to Roger’s escape from death, questioned the sick man all that she dared to, but his lips remained sealed until one day, as she was bending over him bathing his face, he caught her hands, and, holding them with a grip of iron, he shouted: “Ah! I know you at last. I have been trying to remember you for centuries. You are the shade of that beautiful bride from whose arms I tore the mangled remains of her husband, while not so much as a bruise was on her lovely face. Ah, ha! You have found me at last. Well, now that you have what are you going to do about it? He received Christian burial. I will take you to his grave, all covered with daisies, and you may find there, most any day, a fair woman—Oh, yes, far lovelier than you, beg pardon—who weeps and mourns for him who lies beneath. She thinks it is her husband. Only I know differently. You will never tell; you can’t, because you are a shade, and shades never return to bother us; but then, if they don’t, how the deuce did you get here? Ah! I see. I have become a shade; that explains it. Oh, of course, very considerate of you to meet me to ask after the welfare of your beloved. Did I not tell you he was well taken care of, while you were given a pauper’s burial? Nobody ever took the pains to hunt you up. Now go away and don’t bother me. I’ve got no more to tell you.” Then, exhausted, he would sink back upon the pillow, gasping for breath.