“My son Gerardus was present during the entire trial; he heard all, he saw all, and he told me the story I have just told you. And what I say is the truth--Hamilton’s earthly doom has been fulfilled; Burr is yet learning the unpitying vengence of the dead. That insane idea of conquest, who drove him to it? Who, at the critical hour, turned his confederates against him? Who sent him to wander in Europe a degraded, desperate man? What a cup of shame and poverty he drank there, I and a few others know. Then, when reckless with his misfortune, back he comes to New York, and for a short time he is lifted up by the many old acquaintances who remember his abilities and his sufferings. But only to be cast down is he lifted up. In less than one month he hears of the death of his grandson, a beautiful, intelligent boy of twelve years old, on whom all his future hopes were built. A terrible blow it was, but only the beginning of sorrow. Six months afterwards his idolised daughter left Charleston for New York. She was heartbroken by the loss of her son, and was coming to her father to be comforted. She sailed on the thirtieth of December, 1811, A. D., and ought to have been in New York about the fifth of January. She did not come. She never came. She was never heard of again. It was then Catherine Ring’s promised retribution overtook him. Who can tell what agonies of suspense he endured? There was daily hope, and there was daily despair! Such nights of grief! Such days of watching! His worst unfriends pitied him. To have heard of the unhappy woman would have pleased every one; but no, no, never a word came. When some weeks were gone over, there was a report that the ship in which she sailed had been taken by pirates, and all on board murdered except Mr. Burr’s daughter. She, it was said, had been put on shore a captive. The miserable man! He would not, he could not, bear this idea. He said to me one morning, as I talked with him at the garden gate, ‘Theodosia is dead! If she were not all the prisons in the world could not keep her from me!’ Well, then, all of you must remember the loss of Theodosia Burr Alston?”
“I was in New Orleans at the time,” said Leonard. “I heard nothing there, or if so, have forgotten.”
“I also was in New Orleans,” said Achille. “I do not remember--no, not at all.”
“I do remember,” said Sappha. “Mother was very sorry for Mr. Burr. We often spoke of him.”
“You never told me about it, grandmother,” added Annette. “Why did you not?”
“Good reasons had I. So much was there to say that could not be talked about. A great many people had yet in mind Catherine Ring’s words, and so Aaron Burr’s long watch for the child that never came was quietly and pitifully passed over. Yes, people remember; and if they do not remember they _feel_--they _feel_, they know not what. I have watched. One by one, I have seen those that welcomed Aaron Burr home drop away from him. This day a man stops and greets him, to-morrow he passes him by. The unlucky, they only stick to him; because for a familiar they know him. Aaron Burr is a doomed man--haunted by the wraiths of those he has wronged--a doomed man, and nothing that he does shall ever prosper.”
She ceased speaking with these words, and after some desultory conversation on the subject, Sappha said, “she must go home.” Then Annette went upstairs with her, and Achille made an effort to continue the subject; but neither madame nor yet Leonard were disposed for discussion; and when Sappha returned to the parlour, cloaked and wrapped in furs, Leonard hastily assumed his street costume and went out with her. Then the conversation, the warmth, and the drowsy light, added to the unusual feeling which the Ring tragedy had evoked, produced an effect upon madame she did not anticipate--she gradually lost consciousness, and finally fell asleep. For a while Achille and Annette spoke in whispers, and Annette tried all her powers to win from her companion the secret madame made so much of. He dallied with it, but kept it inviolate; and she dropped her pretty head with a sense of defeat that the circumstance hardly seemed to warrant. Quiet and speechless she sat, and Achille held her hand and watched the shadow of disappointment obliterate the dimples and smiles, not always as becoming in his eyes as her graver deportment. The glow of the firelight, the stillness thrilled through and through with that old tragedy of love, the look of defeat in Annette’s pretty face, and her whole attitude of submission to it, pleased the young man. He thought her more womanly and exquisite than ever before; and he kissed the hand he held, and said in the softest, sweetest voice: “I cannot tell you madame’s secret, but I will tell you one of my own--Annette, beautiful Annette, I love you.”
And Annette behaved with the most amazing propriety. He felt the little hand he held tremble to his words, and he saw on her face the transfiguration of love, though she did not lift it, or answer him in any other way. But this coy reticence was exactly the conduct Achille approved; and in that dim room, where only sleep kept vigil, Achille asked Annette to be his wife, and Annette answered him as he desired.
“I shall speak to madame in the morning,” he said; “to-night it will be too much.”
“It is too much even for me,” answered Annette; “I never dreamed of being so happy.”
“Nor I,” answered the fortunate lover. He then surrendered himself to her charm. He forgot how often he had privately declared he would never do so; forgot how often he had told himself that Annette de Vries was a beauty with
[Illustration: “IN THAT DIM ROOM, WHERE ONLY SLEEP KEPT VIGIL, ACHILLE ASKED ANNETTE TO BE HIS WIFE.”]
a heart like a little glacier. As for Annette, she was satisfied. In the first days of her acquaintance with Achille St. Ange she had resolved to be his wife; and her resolve was now in process of accomplishment. And after all, it had not been a difficult end to attain; a little love, a little listening, a little patience, a little persistence, and the man was won. It was only another case of proving the folly of any resistance to invincible woman. For has not all experience proved that if a woman seriously determines to marry a certain man she is about as sure to accomplish her end as if, wishing to reach Washington, she entered a train bound for that city?
During this scene between Annette and Achille Sappha and Leonard Murray were walking in the clear, frosty starlight. They were lovers, but their conversation was too anxious to be loverlike. Sappha was entreating Leonard to cancel his engagement with Mr. Burr. She was sure if he did not her father would permit no engagement with his daughter. “You will have to choose,” she said, “between Mr. Burr and myself. You cannot take both into your life, Leonard; I am sure it is impossible.” She did not name the Ring tragedy. She was far less impressed by it than Leonard had been. It was her father’s opposition she feared.
Not so Leonard. He had inherited from his Scotch ancestors a vivid vein of supernatural tendency. His own clan had numerous traditions of posthumous revenge, so vindictive that Leonard’s first unconscious commentary on madame’s narrative was the whispered exclamation--only heard by Achille--“The vengeance of the dead is terrible!” But if there was this latent fear in his heart, mingled with the personal one that association might include him in that vengeance, the feeling was strongly combated by another inherited tendency, so vital as to be almost beyond reasoning with--the sentiment of loyalty to a person or a cause to which he had once given his allegiance. It had been a kind of insanity in his clan, for they had always gathered to the last man in the cause of their exiled kings, though they knew right well that to stand by the Stuarts was to stand by misfortune and death.
So, tossed between these two horns of a dilemma, Leonard could not make Sappha the unconditional promise she asked. He had given to Aaron Burr a fealty founded on an intense admiration for his great abilities and his great wrongs. The physical charm of the man had also fascinated Leonard, as it fascinated almost every one who came fairly under its influence; and thus, though warned by one ancestral strain to retire from some malignity he could not control, he was urged forward by another sentiment which put his word, his honour, his friendship, and his loyalty before all other considerations.
These underlying motives of action were but partially understood by Leonard, and were not comprehended in any measure by Sappha. But at eighteen years of age we do not need to know, in order to feel; we can feel without knowledge; and Sappha was certain that the association of her lover with a man so unfortunate as Mr. Burr would include both of them in its inimical proneness to calamity.
The mingling of these elements in Leonard’s nature must be recognised before we can understand how a lover, earnest and devoted, could hesitate about casting adrift a friendship so recent when it threatened a tie still fonder and more personal. But the most invulnerable sentiments a man has to conquer are those he brings with him from previous incarnations. Prejudices and opinions planted in his mind during last year, or the present year, will have a demonstrative vitality; but there is a stubborn quality about those we bring with us that is only gained by passing through the grave and tasting of immortality. If Sappha’s and Leonard’s love for each other was not of the past, then it was hardly one year old; yet she was demanding for it a sacrifice of feelings incorporate in Leonard’s nature from unknown centuries.