CHAPTER XI. A GATE OF FLAME AND A GATE OF FLOOD.
Toward noon of the third day after the baby died,
Madame Ponsard came to Elizabeth, and asked her to
go for a moment into her sitting-room. With a shiver
running through every limb, Elizabeth got up and
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crossed the hall. She found herself face to face with
Elliott Le Roy. She waited for him to speak.
The soulless gallantry which had stung her so often
was gone in this crisis, from his manner; replaced,
indeed, by a half-brutal hardness, which yet hurt her
less than his mocking courtesy would have done.
“I came to see my child,” he said.
It never entered Elizabeth's mind to spare him any
shock, — she had always thought of him as without the
capacity for feeling one. So she silently led the way
to her own room, and pointed to the bed.
He looked for an instant at the little bit of pulseless
marble lying there, with the white rose of peace in the
sculptured fingers. Then she saw him grow white to
the lips, and heard his cry, full of an awful passion of
longing, —
“Dead! dead! Oh, God! my little child!”
She understood then, that even this heart of stone
held the instinct of fatherhood. He could have loved
his child.
She stole away noiselessly.
Whether he wept or cursed she never knew. When
he came out, half an hour afterward, he was his hard,
cold, mocking self again.
He asked a few questions regarding the time and
manner of the baby's death; then went away to make
the arrangements for its burial, which he communicated
to Elizabeth in a brief note.
She did not see him again till he came next day to
go with her to Pére la Chaise. They took the casket
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which held the little Marian with themselves, in the
carriage which headed the short funeral cortége. They
two, — alone at last with each other and the dead.
But during all the drive neither of them spoke. Elizabeth
was calm. It seemed to her that a mortal chill
had hushed all the unrest and passion of her nature, —
that she should never cry again, or smile, or care for
any thing which went on around her.
But just at the last, when they were lowering her
darling into the grave, when she heard the English
minister say, solemnly, — “Earth to earth, dust to
dust, ashes to ashes,” she felt all this impassive coldness
break up suddenly, and heedless of every thing but the
little lump of clay, which she could never, never see
again, she sank down beside the grave, and sobbed till
she could sob no longer, and they lifted her up and put
her into the second carriage of the small procession,
where Madame Ponsard received her in her kind
arms, and supported her all the way home, comforting
and soothing her as only one kind woman can soothe
and comfort another.
Le Roy went back in his own carriage, vis-a-vis with
Monsieur Ponsard, who had left his wife to make
room for Elizabeth, — went back, as he had come, in
grim silence.
The next morning he came early to the old house
in the Rue Jacob, and went into Elizabeth's sitting-room.
He spoke to her with quiet decision.
“You will have to pack to-day; for we must leave at
six this evening for Havre. A steamer sails to-morrow,
and I have telegraphed to secure our places.”
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Elizabeth looked at him in blank wonder.
“Am I going back with you?” she asked.
“It appears to me to be the only thing for you to do,
Mrs. Le Roy. Remember our marriage has not been
dissolved. It binds us still, though its sole fruit is dust
and ashes.”
Elizabeth had made up her mind, beforehand, to
submit herself to his judgment. She had found that
for her freedom was not safety, even though she prayed
every night not to be led into temptation. But now
that the crisis had come, the struggle to submit was
harder than she had expected. Every pulse was in
mutiny. Still she offered no resistance; except that
once she asked him if it would not embarrass him to
take her back among his friends.
“Not in the least,” he answered, coolly. “Not one
of them suspects that your absence was without my
knowledge and consent; or supposes me ignorant of
any of your movements.”
The man's cool mastery over circumstances astonished
Elizabeth into another question.
“What did you tell them?”
“That an excellent opportunity presented itself during
my absence for you to travel with some friends of
your own, and as your health was not good, I had
written to you to accept it.”
“But the servants?”
“Thanks to your silence, they knew nothing, and I
think they would scarcely have cared to retail their
conjectures at the expense of my displeasure.”
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“But you did not know that you could ever find me,”
she said at last, amazed at his audacity.
Le Roy smiled the cold, glittering, cynical smile she
remembered so well. An evil gleam of triumph shot
from his pitiless eyes.
“I traced Madame Nugent without difficulty as soon
as I returned from Cuba. I should have come for
you, in any case, when I thought it time for you to
return.”
She had called this man the Mephistopheles of her
life before; but never with such good reason as now,
when he stood in front of her, smiling his mocking smile,
exulting scornfully in his easy triumph. He had said
once that he should hold on to her like fate, — and now
she knew that she had never yet been entirely out of
his power. Why should she engage in any vain struggle
against his will?
From the very beginning of their homeward journey,
destiny seemed to oppose itself to them, bringing to its
aid all the perversity of inanimate things. A railroad
accident, not serious, but most annoying, made their
journey to Havre fifteen hours long, instead of six, so
that when they reached their destination, towards noon
on the fifteenth, the American steamer had been gone
three hours.
Le Roy took Elizabeth to a hotel, where a freshcolored
maid, wearing a high Norman cap, brought
her coffee, and went out himself to reconnoitre. He
came in, half an hour afterwards, with his morning
paper in his hand.
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“There will be no other steamer from here till the
first of next month,” he said.
“Are we to wait here, or go back to Paris?” Elizabeth
asked, feeling like a foot-ball which he and destiny
were knocking back and forth between them, and
waiting passively for the next push.
“Neither. My first thought was to go to Liverpool,
and take the first Cunarder from there; but I see by a
telegraphic despatch in the Messenger, that a steamer
which left Hamburg last evening will stop at Southampton.
We can sail for there to-night, after a day's
rest here, and catch this German steamer for New
York. Does this plan meet your approval, Mrs. Le
Roy?”
“All plans are alike to me,” Elizabeth answered,
wearily. “If we are going to take the German steamer,
may I telegraph to Madame Ponsard? She made me
promise to send her word of my arrival here if I could.
She thought we were going in the Fulton; and she will
want to look out for news of us.”
“Gratify your sentimental friend, by all means,” Le
Roy said, with a little sneer. “Write your dispatch,
and I will see that it is sent.”
Elizabeth wrote: —
“We were too late for the Fulton, and are going to
Southampton to take the German steamer from Hamburg.
Good-by.”
She did not know why she said good-by over again
by telegraph, — she certainly did not believe in
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presentiments, but some subtle foreboding of evil was assailing
her, for which she did not try to account.
The next day, at Southampton, they went on board
the German steamer, which set sail at quite a late hour
in the afternoon. A heavy mist settled down with the
twilight, and it was considered advisable to anchor the
vessel between the Isle of Wight and the main-land.
Early next morning they weighed anchor again, and in
the process one of the crew lost his life. Owing to
some mismanagement, the anchor ran out, whirling the
capstan round with terrific force, and hurling the men
in all directions. One was thrown overboard, and was
supposed to have been instantly killed, as he never rose
to the surface. This accident cast a gloom over the
officers and crew, which any one familiar with the
superstitions of the sea would readily understand.
“He's gone down below to tell 'em we're all comin',”
one white-lipped sailor said to another; and the shadow
fell upon them all. They were silent and depressed for
days, though every thing seemed to promise a prosperous
voyage.
Once at sea, and the confusion and excitement of
embarkation over, Elizabeth settled into a strange, sad
calm. Her presentiment of evil, though she had not
forgotten it, ceased in any degree to absorb her
thoughts. Every day, and all the day, she sat motionless
and silent on the deck, looking into the troubled
sea, or equally motionless and silent in her state-room.
But everywhere she looked, into yeasty waves, or empty
air, she saw one face only, — her child's. Madame
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Ponsard, and the rest of them at the Rue Jacob; even
Dr. Erskine himself came sometimes into the picture of
which this face was the centre, but only as accessories
to it. They seemed blank of human significance to her
as the angles of a wall.
Of only one thing besides that face was she intensely
conscious, and that was of Le Roy, — that he, her
keeper, was breathing the same air with her, was carrying
her home. How mad she had been ever to think
that she could escape him. She wondered if through
all eternity he would be beside her, and she should see
for ever that face of pitiless power and mocking scorn.
But it was very seldom that he came near her; and
when they had been eight days at sea they had hardly
spoken as many words to each other, beyond those
demanded in the presence of others by the ordinary
small courtesies of life.
On the afternoon of the ninth day, Elizabeth had
come out of the state-room, and was standing quite by
herself, looking into the surging autumn sea, but seeing
only the one small face which for her filled sea and sky.
After a while she heard a wild and awful shriek, —
the cry of fire, — horrible anywhere, but most unearthly
and hideous in its horror far out at sea, when the flames
are burning the one plank betwixt you and death.
By whom the cry was started, no one knew, but
hundreds of voices took it up, and swelled it to a yell
of madness and despair. A dense volume of smoke
burst from the steerage, and then the flames broke
through the lights, and leaped and crackled along the
deck.
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That first shriek had roused Elizabeth to something
which was scarcely terror, — awful expectation, rather.
Her foreboding was realized. Death was at last waiting
for her. She had tasted the apple of life and found it
bitter. What next?
She did not join in the wailing which went up to the
unheeding sky. She no longer seemed to see the face
of her little child. It had vanished like a vision. She
looked down still into the sea, but she saw something
else. Face to face with death, she seemed strangely
enough to be living over again an hour of most intense
and thrilling life. An October afternoon came back to
her so vividly, that she seemed not to be standing on a
burning ship, betwixt pitiless sky and pitiless sea; but
sitting in a fair French garden, near Coustou's Venus,
while the autumn sun shone, and the autumn wind blew,
and the slow, sad music played, and through it all she
heard Dr. Erskine's voice saying things which she had
no right to hear. It was all so sweet, and sad, and
wrong, — and now death was waiting for her.
How much had she sinned, she wondered. Was she
past hoping for Heaven? God knew all, — temptation
and sin and struggle, — God knew. Through all her
turmoil and unrest, that thought filled her soul with a
great calm. Simply as a child she said her prayer.
“Oh, God! oh, Father! suffer not my soul to perish!
Take me home by flame or flood, as Thou wilt, but take
me home!”
Meantime, a wild panic, of which she was altogether
unconscious, had swept through the ship. From the
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very beginning of the voyage, when the sailor's life was
lost at the weighing of the anchor, a secret terror had
ruled the hearts of officers and crew. Now, with the
first alarm, all presence of mind forsook them. The man
at the wheel left his post, and the vessel being head to
the wind, the flames swept back over her with awful
rapidity. The captain was among the first to lose his
self-command. Mad with panic terror, he attempted,
forsaking all, to lower himself into a boat, and missing
his foothold, was swept away. Then the wildest confusion
began to reign. Boats were lowered, and some
of them swamped in the very act of lowering. Those
rushed into them who could, while others jumped into
the sea, to escape the swift, hot pursuit of the flames.
At last Le Roy came to Elizabeth. He had been
calm and clear-sighted through it all, waiting his opportunity.
Now, as he thought, he saw it. A boat only
partly filled, lay under the davits, on one side.
“Come,” he said, pulling her along with him, swiftly.
He took a cloak from his own shoulders, and wrapped
it round her, then lowered her from the vessel, and she
was in the boat almost before she knew it. She looked
back for him. He had stood aside for two more
women. The officer in charge of the boat shouted, —
“Keep off! We are full! another man would swamp
us!” and at a sign from him, the men caught up their
oars.
Just as, in defiance of the officer's warning shout, Le
Roy was swinging himself down, the boat rocked away,
and he touched the waves instead.
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In an instant Elizabeth saw that white, satirical face,
which seemed to mock even at death, looking up at
her, with an awful light upon it, from the surging, firelit
sea.
“Oh, save him! save him! for the love of God!” she
cried, penetrated at last with the very passion and madness
of terror, for that other life, not for her own. But
no one noticed her cry. The rowers pulled away rapidly,
and Elliott Le Roy went down, — as the captain
had gone down before, — as hundreds of souls went
down that awful day.
The engineers had been smothered at their posts
among the first, so the steamer was going on all this
time, at a rate of eight or ten knots an hour, as if she
were trying to escape from the flames of her own burning.
She was an awful beacon, — a great, towering holocaust.
The boat which held Elizabeth, pulled with all
the might of its rowers in her wake. It was their best
chance for a rescue; for she was a signal-fire of distress
the like of which has seldom been kindled.
Still Elizabeth was calm and silent, but with all her
faculties fully alive, — ready to live or die, as God
willed, — anxious only, whether in life or death, to be
in His keeping.
She should be glad, she felt, through all eternity, that
Le Roy's last act toward her had been one of unselfish
kindness. If she had any thing to forgive, she could
forgive it all for the sake of that one moment. She
had not loved him, nor he her; but, now that he was
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dead, she remembered how she had idealized him once,
and began to look at him again in the old light, — to
remember his power and exalt his strength, and see
him master of circumstance, yielding only to destiny.
So the doomed steamer went on, grander spectacle
in her death than she had ever been in her life; and
the boat, with its dozen souls, pulled after her; till, just
as night was settling down, the little company, faint
with thirst and spent with rowing, saw a ship under
full sail approaching the burning vessel, and rowed
toward her with a strength renewed by hope. In an
hour they got within hailing distance, and before the
night had quite closed round them she had taken them
on board.
The ship proved to be a French barque, taking a
cargo from Newfoundland to the Isle of Bourbon.
During the night sixty souls were received on board
of her. Elizabeth looked anxiously at every one, to see
if, by some Providence, the sea might not have given
up its prey, but all were strangers. She thought then
that she would have laid down her own sad life with
unutterable content, but to see again in safety one
face which had looked its last at her from the yeasty
sea.
But Elliott Le Roy had gone down, with all the rest
whom that day, by those gates of Flame and of Flood,
Death led into the Land of the Hereafter.
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Moulton, Louise Chandler, 1835-1908 [1874], Some women's hearts. (Roberts Brothers, Boston) [word count] [eaf654T].
