Chapter XXIX: An Act of Madness

“What is’t ye do?—A deed without a name!”

Lionne, palpitating, excited, frenzied and hurrying with her stolen treasure through the forest, was met and stopped by Vulcan the dwarf, who, holding up both hands to intercept her, cried—

“Mistress! mistress! for the love of heaven, mistress!”

“Vulcan! you here again!” she exclaimed hoarsely.

“Mistress! I have never been far from you! Oh, child! what is it you do?”

“Vulcan! I bade you keep away from my sufferings and sins and perils! why have you disobeyed me?”

“Mistress, I will never forsake you! I will stand or fall by your side!”

“Then you disobey me!”

“Mistress, I _serve_ you!”

Both—the dwarf and the wild girl—stopped and looked at each other wistfully, fixedly, defiantly—unflinching resolution in the eyes of each.

“Vulcan! you shall not ruin yourself for me!”

“Mistress, I follow you to save you, from yourself, your passions and your madness! Oh, lady! lady! what is it you do?”

“_A deed of retribution!_”

“Oh, lady! lady! is it the justice of retribution to avenge the guilt of the strong upon the innocence of the weak? What is that which you carry within your arms?”

“_My revenge._”

“A babe! Oh, Lionne! Lionne! has sorrow so changed you that you see not even what you do? Would you punish a helpless infant and its most innocent mother for crimes in which neither could have the smallest part?”

“I would strike the heart of my destroyer were it through the hearts of as many innocents as Herod slew at Bethlehem!”

“Horrible! she is a fiend! treachery has transformed her into a fiend! But no! she is mad! only mad! poor girl! trouble has turned her _brain_! not perverted her _heart_! I will save her! I must save her!” thought the dwarf to himself. Then softly he spoke:

“Lionne, my lady, my child, listen to me. Your morning of life has been _darkened_ with great _sorrow_; but it has not been _cursed_ with any _crime_. Oh, take care that you do not rush from the _darkness_ into _fire_, from _sorrow_ into _remorse_! You have suffered through the sins of _others_. Oh, avoid the deeper grief of suffering through your _own_! Lionne, let me take back the babe to its mother, and pray God to heal your own sick, sad heart. He will do it. Lionne, give me the babe.”

“NEVER!” exclaimed the desperate girl, through her set teeth, invincible resolution burning in her fixed eyes.

“Lionne, what would you do with it? You would not hurt it, I know. Lionne, in three hours from this the whole country will be up in arms and upon the track of the abductor.”

“I am in the pathless forest,—they will not find me.”

“Mistress, with the trained blood-hounds used in tracking fugitives, they will hunt you through the wilderness.”

“Then I will lose myself in the _greater_ wilderness of the city.”

“Lionne, give me the child.”

“NEVER, I say!—let me pass!” exclaimed the possessed girl, clutching the infant to her bosom with one arm and waving the dwarf away with the other. “Let me pass!”

“I dare not, mistress!”

“Then there is another way!” she exclaimed; and turning before he could prevent her, with the sudden bound of a tigress she fled down the way whence she came, until she reached the beach.

“Here they shall lose sight of me. Once more they shall believe me dead; but I shall live. Ha! ha! I shall live!” she cried.

Then stripping the outer garment from the infant and her own shawl from her bosom, she dragged them through the water and wound them among the long reefs of seaweed, as if they had been cast up by the waves. Then gathering the wailing babe to her bosom, she recommenced her flight, following the course of the river, and taking care to wade along the shallow water of the beach, so that no blood-hound could scent her track.

Meanwhile, at River-view, the search was kept up with zeal and anguish. The whole constabulary force of the county was put in requisition.

As a last resort, a pack of sleuth-hounds were put upon the scent. Commencing from the crib of the lost child, they tracked the abductor through every foot of her way, through house, lawn, orchard, vineyard, field and forest up to the very spot where, an hour before, Lionne had parted from Vulcan.

There, being at fault, they sniffed about for a while, and then returning upon the scent, tracked the fugitive to the water-side. There they found the sand beat up with footprints, and the wet outside-garments of the woman and the babe swathing the seaweed and cast up on the beach.

“The wretch has destroyed herself and the babe. Heaven help the poor bereaved mother!” was the exclamation of the foremost officer who reached the spot.

When this news was taken to Orville Deville, in his library—after the first force of the shock was spent, and even beside his affliction for the loss of his child, he experienced a certain satisfaction in the thought that his ruthless enemy was now no more.

For weeks the secret of the child’s supposed death was kept from Lady Adelaide. But at length, when it was seen that heart-sickening suspense as to the babe’s fate, daily anxiety for news, and constant disappointments were more dreadful to bear than the knowledge of the truth could be—then that truth was gently communicated. The intelligence was received with less of apparent anguish than could have been hoped. After the horrible uncertainty, in which imagination had painted in her darkest colors the doom of the living, lost infant, the certainty that it was at rest came as a relief to the bereaved mother.

The gentle, patient, young heart, schooled in suffering, humbly accepted this sorrow as the will of Heaven.

“Better so,” she said, “oh! much better so, than that the babe should have lived exposed to all the evils that dreadful woman would have brought upon her!” And so the meek head was bowed in resignation.