Читать книгу For Woman's Love - Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth - Страница 6

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"Missing!" echoed old Aaron Rockharrt, drawing up his huge frame to its fullest height, and staring with strong black eyes in a defiant and aggressive manner. "Missing! did you say, sir?" he repeated sternly.

"Yes, Mr. Rockharrt; ever since last night," replied Judge Abbot, chairman of the committee, in much distress and anxiety.

"Impossible! Never heard of such a thing in the whole course of my life! A bridegroom lost on the evening of his marriage! A governor lost on the morning of his inauguration! I tell you, sir, it is impossible—utterly and entirely impossible! How do you know, sir, that he has not been seen by some one or other since last night? How do you know that he cannot be found, somewhere, this morning?"

"All his household have failed to find him. Our messengers have been sent in every direction without discovering the slightest clew to his—fate," gloomily replied the judge.

Mr. Rockharrt turned to the porter, who was still in attendance at the door, and demanded:

"Where is your mistress?"

The man, a negro and an old family servant of the Rockharrts, replied:

"The young madam is in the back drawing room, sir; and if you please, sir, I think she would be all the better for seeing the old madam."

"Who is with her now?" shortly demanded Mr. Rockharrt, ignoring his servant's suggestion, although Mrs. Rockharrt looked nervously anxious to follow it "There is no one with her, sir."

"Alone! Alone! My granddaughter left alone on the morning after her marriage? What do you mean by that? Where is your master?

"Show me in to your mistress at once. I will get at the bottom of this mystery, or this villainy, as it is more likely to prove, before I am through with the matter. And if my granddaughter's husband is not to be found before the day is out, I will have all concerned in the plot arrested for conspiracy!" exclaimed Mr. Rockharrt, with that utter recklessness of assertion to which he was addicted in moments of excitement.

The dismayed negro lowered his eyes and led the way. Aaron Rockharrt strode on, followed by his timid and terrified old wife, his stalwart sons, his mocking grandson, and the members of the committee. But the old man, not liking such an escort, turned upon them, and said, with sarcastic politeness and dignity:

"Gentlemen, permit me. It is expedient, under existing circumstances, that I should first see my granddaughter alone."

The members of the committee bowed with offended dignity and withdrew to the front of the hall.

Meanwhile Aaron Rockharrt sent back the members of his own family, and strode solemnly into the drawing room, which was half darkened by the closed window shutters.

"Now leave the room, sir; shut the door after you and stand on the outside to keep off all intruders," commanded Mr. Rockharrt to the servant who had admitted him.

When the door was closed upon him, Aaron Rockharrt discerned his granddaughter, who sat in an easy chair in a dark corner of the back drawing room, which was divided from the front by blue satin and white lace portieres. Her deadly pallid face gleamed out from the shadows in startling contrast to her jet black hair and the black dress which, against all precedent, she wore on this the morning after her marriage.

The old man of iron went up and stood before her, looking at her in silence for a few moments.

"Corona Rothsay," he began, sternly, "what is the meaning of this unparalleled situation?"

"I—I—do not know."

"You do not know where your husband is on the morning after his marriage and on the day of his expected inauguration?"

"No; I do not know."

"You seem to take this desertion or this death very quietly."

"What would be gained by taking it any other way?" she murmured, though indeed she was not taking the situation quietly, but controlling herself.

"How dare you say so to me?" severely demanded the old man, scarcely able to control his wrath, though at a loss to know against whom to direct it.

"You ask me a direct question. I give you a truthful answer."

"Answer me, truly!" rudely exclaimed Aaron Rockharrt, giving way, in his blind egotism, to utter recklessness of assertion, to gross injustice and exaggeration. "What have you done to him, Corona? Tell me that!"

She started violently and looked up quickly; her face was whiter, her eyes wilder than before.

"What—have—you—done to him?" he sternly repeated, looking her full in the deathly face.

"I? Nothing!" she answered, but her voice faltered and her frame shook.

"I believe that you have! You look as if you had! I have seen the devil in you since we brought you home from Europe against your will; especially within the last few days!"

Having hurled upon her this avalanche of abuse, he turned and strode wrathfully up and down the room until he had got off some of his excitement. Then, he came and stood before his granddaughter.

"How long has your husband been missing?" he abruptly inquired.

"Since last night," in a very low tone.

"When did you see him last? Tell me that!"

"I have already told you—last evening."

"Tell me all that has occurred from the time you both left Rockhold to the time you entered this house which I placed at your disposal and to which I sent you, to save you from the noise and bustle and excitement of a crowded hotel, and to give you rest and quiet and seclusion. Yes! and this the result! But go on and tell me. From the time you left Rockhold to this time, mind you!"

"Very well, sir, I will tell you. Our journey, a series of ovations. Our reception in this city was a triumph. We were met at the depot by a great crowd, and by the committee with carriages, and we were escorted to this house by a military and civil procession with a band of music. They left us at the gate.

"We entered, and were received by the servants. As soon as I had changed my dress we went down to dinner. After dinner we went into the drawing room. A gentleman was announced on official business connected with the ceremonies of to-day. He was shown into the library, and my husband went to him. Many callers came. They talked with Mr. Rothsay in the library. I remained in this room. At last the crowd began to thin off, and soon all were gone. Mr. Rothsay came into this room—and sat down by my side. We talked together for an hour or more. Then a card was brought in. Mr. Rothsay took it, looked at it, and said:

"'I will see the gentleman. Show him into the front room.'

"Mr. Rothsay arose and went into the front room to receive his visitor. It was late, and I was very tired, so I went up stairs to my chamber and retired to bed. I have never seen my husband since."

And Corona dropped her face upon her hands and sobbed as if her heart would break. She had utterly broken down for the first time.

"Good heavens! I don't understand it all! Had you had a lover's quarrel now in that hour when you talked together in this parlor?" inquired the old gentleman, his insane anger being now merged in wonder. "Had you reproached him for spending so much time with his political friends while you were waiting here alone?"

"Oh, no, no," replied Corona, between her convulsive sobs.

"Good heavens!" again exclaimed the old man. "When did you first miss him?"

"When I came down in the morning. I thought then that he had been kept up all night by his friends, and that I should meet him at breakfast. He did not appear at breakfast. The servants searched for him all over the house, but could not find him. I waited breakfast until I was faint with fasting and suspense. Then I took a cup of coffee. On inquiry it was found that Jasper had been the last to see him, and that he had not seen him since he showed the visitor in. He did not show the visitor out. He waited some time to do so, and fell asleep. When he awoke the visitor had gone, and the drawing rooms were empty. The man supposed that Mr. Rothsay had seen his friend to the door, and had then retired to bed. And so he shut up the house and went to his room. No one discovered that Mr. Rothsay was missing until this morning. When the inaugural committee came two hours ago, the servants told them all that I have just told you."

"Who was the last visitor? He might throw some light upon this dark, evil subject. Who was he?" abruptly demanded Aaron Rockharrt.

"I do not know. No one seems to know. Jasper says he never saw him before, nor ever heard his name."

"Couldn't he see it on his card?"

"Jasper cannot read, you must remember."

"Where is that card? Let me see it!"

"It cannot be found."

"Conspiracy! Treason! Murder!" interrupted Aaron Rockharrt. "The governor-elect has been decoyed away from the house by that last caller, and has been murdered! And the people in the house may not be as innocent or ignorant as they pretend to be. I will go out and take counsel with the committee," he said, and he turned and strode out of the drawing room.

When he reached the hall, however, he found that the officials had gone to pursue their search for the missing man elsewhere. The men of his own party were nowhere to be seen. The porter, Jasper, was the only occupant of the hall, and Aaron Rockharrt opened the hall door and walked out. The military and civil escort were still on parade before the house, waiting for the governor-elect.

Mr. Rockharrt's carriage was standing before the door. He entered it and ordered the coachman to drive to police headquarters.

The hour for the inauguration of the new governor was approaching. The procession to the State house should have been in motion by this time. The people on the sidewalks, at the doors and windows, on the balconies, and on the roofs, all along the line of march, were beginning to be weary of waiting.

The officials who had the ceremonies of the occasion in hand waited until three o'clock in the afternoon, and then, as the governor-elect was nowhere to be found, as the necessity was imminent, the inaugural procession was ordered to begin its march.

"Where is he? Where is Rothsay?" demanded the spectators one of the other.

No one knew. No one had seen him. No one could, therefore, answer.

When the procession reached the State house, the lieutenant-governor, Kennelm Kennedy, was sworn in, and the military companies and the civic societies and the spectators all dispersed.

But where was the governor? That was the question of the hour. Why had he not been inaugurated? was asked by everybody of everybody else. The secret of his total and unexplained disappearance had not, indeed, been closely kept. His intimate friends, his household servants and the public officials knew it, but the general public did not.

The next morning the news came out, and the papers had sensational head-lines and long accounts of the sudden and mysterious disappearance of the governor-elect on the eve of his inauguration and of a bridegroom on the evening of his wedding day.

Also there were rewards offered for any intelligence of Regulas Rothsay, living or dead, and for the identification of the unknown visitor who was supposed to have been the last to have seen him on the night of his disappearance.

Days passed, and nothing came in answer to the advertisements. The public at length reached in theory this conclusion: that the governor-elect had been decoyed from the house by his latest visitor, and had been secretly murdered in some remote quarter.

The Rockharrts did not return to Rockhold, but remained in town through all the heat of that hot summer, because Aaron Rockharrt thought he could best pursue his investigations on the scene of the mystery. But he sent his sons to North End to look after the works.

Corona would see no one save the members of her own family. She kept her room, and grieved without ceasing. On the ninth day after the disappearance of her lover-husband she made an effort and came down into the drawing room, to please the gentle old grandmother.

She sat there with the old lady, reading to her, until Mrs. Rockharrt was called out by her tyrant to get something, it might be a book or a paper, a cigar or a pipe, that he himself or a servant might have got just as well, except that Aaron Rockharrt liked to have the ladies of his family wait upon him.

What happened during the hour of the old lady's absence from the drawing room no one knew, but when she returned she found her granddaughter in a swoon on the carpet. In great alarm she called the servants to her assistance. The unconscious girl was laid upon a sofa, and all means were taken to restore her to her senses. Corona recovered her faculties only to fall into the most violent paroxysms of anguish and despair.

From her ravings and self-reproaches Mrs. Rockharrt gathered that the unfortunate girl had heard, or in some way learned, some fatal news.

She sent all the servants out of the room, locked the door, administered a sedative to her child, and then, when the latter was somewhat calmer, questioned her as to the cause of her distress.

"I have nothing to tell—nothing, nothing to tell! But take me away from this place! Take me home to Rockhold, where I may be alone!"

"I will do all I can to comfort you, my dear," said Mrs. Rockharrt. "I will speak to Mr. Rockharrt when he comes in."

No one but the snubbed, brow-beaten and humiliated wife knew all that she engaged to suffer when she promised to speak to her lord and master.

Corona, soothed by the sedative that had been given her, and consoled by the love and sympathy that had been lavished upon her, grew more composed, and finally fell into a deep sleep from which she awoke refreshed. But a rumor went through the house that the young lady had got news which she did not choose to communicate.

Later in the day Mrs. Rockharrt deferentially proposed to the domestic despot that they should return to Rockhold, as the weather was so oppressive and the town house was so obnoxious to dear Corona, which was quite natural under the trying circumstances.

Aaron Rockharrt glared at her until she cowered, and then he told her that he should direct the movements of his family as he thought proper, and that any suggestions from her or from his granddaughter were both unnecessary and impertinent.

So they both had to bend under the iron will of Aaron Rockharrt.

At length, however, something happened to relieve them.

Mr. Rockharrt had not been neglecting his own business, while looking after the missing governor-elect, nor had he been leaving it to his sons and partners, whom he refused to trust. He had been corresponding with his chief manager, Ryland. This correspondence had not been entirely satisfactory, so at length he wrote to Ryland to come to the city for a business talk. It was about the middle of August that the manager arrived and was closeted with his chief. After two hours' discussion of business matters, which ended satisfactorily, the manager, rising to leave the study, observed:

"This is a bad job about the governor, sir!"

"I do not wish to talk of this matter," said Mr. Rockharrt.

"Very well, sir, I am dumb," replied the manager, taking up his hat to leave the house.

"Do you go back to North End by the night train?" inquired Mr. Rockharrt.

"Yes, sir! I must be at my post to-morrow morning, in order to carry out your instructions."

"Quite right," said the head of the great firm. Then with strange inconsistency, since he had declared that he wished to talk no more on the subject of the lost governor, he suddenly inquired:

"What do the people of North End say about the disappearance of Governor Rothsay?"

"Some say he was beguiled away by that man who called on him late at night, and that he was murdered and his body made away with. But I beg your pardon, sir, for repeating such dreadful things."

"Go on! What else do they say?"

"Well, sir, one says one thing, and one another; but they all agree that Old Scythia could tell something if she chose."

"Old Scythia? And what has she to do with the loss of the governor?"

"Nothing that I know of, sir. But the people at North End say that she has."

"Why do they say it?"

"Because, sir, on the day of the wedding, and the eve of the inauguration, she did foretell, in the hearing of a score, that Mr. Rothsay would never take his seat as governor."

"What! Absurd! Preposterous!"

"Of course it was, sir! Yet she did say that, sir, in the hearing of twenty or more of us, and it was a strange coincidence, to say the least, that her words came true. She said it in the presence of many witnesses on the day before the intended inauguration, and when there seemed no possibility of her words coming true. And strange to say, they have come true."

Old Aaron Rockharrt mused for a few minutes and then replied:

"There is no such thing as divination, or soothsaying, or prophesy, or fortune telling in this world. It is all coarse imposture, that can deceive only the weakest mortals. You know that, of course, Ryland. It follows, then, that this old woman could have had no knowledge of what was going to happen unless she was in league with conspirators who had planned to kidnap or murder the governor-elect."

"But, sir, if Old Scythia had been in league with any conspirators, would she have betrayed them—beforehand?"

"No; unless she was too crazy to keep their secret. But—she may have got wind of their plots in some way without their knowledge."

"Yes, sir," said Manager Ryland, who agreed to every opinion advanced by his chief.

"Well, then, I shall go down to Rockhold to-morrow, and investigate this matter for myself. In my capacity of justice of the peace I shall issue a warrant to have that woman brought before me on a charge of vagrancy, and then I shall examine her on this point. But, Ryland, you are to be careful not to drop even a hint of my intention."

"Of course I will not, sir," replied the manager, and then, as there seemed no more to do or say, he took his leave.

Old Aaron Rockharrt strode into the drawing room where his wife and granddaughter sat, and astonished them by saying:

"Pack up your things this afternoon. We leave for Rockland by the first train to-morrow morning."

He deigned no explanation, but turned and stalked off.

The three reached North End at noon. As their arrival was to be a surprise, no carriage had been ordered to meet them. But the large, comfortable hack from the North End Hotel was engaged, and in it they rode on to Rockhold, where they pulled up two hours later, to the astonishment and consternation of the household, who, be it whispered, had almost as lief been confronted with his satanic majesty as to be surprised by their despotic master.

Leaving his womenkind to get domestic affairs into order, the Iron King went to the little den at the end of the hall, which he called his study, and there made out a warrant for the arrest of Hyacinth Woods on the charge of vagrancy. This he directed to William Hook, county constable, and sent it off to the county seat by one of his servants. He waited all the rest of the day for the return of the warrant with the prisoner, but in vain.

The next day, in the afternoon, Constable Hook made his appearance before the magistrate without the prisoner, and reported:

"She cannot be found. I went first to her hut on the mountain, but it was in ruins. It had fallen in. I searched for the woman everywhere, and only found out that she had not been seen by anybody since the day of the grand wedding here," replied the officer.

"The old crone is lost on the same day that the young governor was missing, eh? Very significant. I want you to take a paper for me to the Peakeville Gazette. I will advertise a thousand dollars reward for the discovery of that woman. She knows the fate of Rothsay."