Tales of terror
could not melt, nor even temper, the hardness of his deep-seated
malice; he again looked sternly, and then coldly uttered these slow,
soul-withering words, ‘Woman, you are doomed to be a murderess!’ At
first she sneered at his prediction, and then laughed at him; but with
greater solemnity, and speaking as if he were inspired, he exclaimed,
‘I tell you, Ruth, you will become a murderess! I see blood upon your
hands and blood upon your face, and the black stain of awful guilt upon
your immortal soul.’
Her arrogance was subdued, her haughty spirit overcome, and with
something liked a groan she hurried away. But from that day she found
that she was a marked woman. The superstitious villagers shunned her,
and she became, as it were, an outcast.
Abhorring Morgan, she yet felt drawn towards him, and while she sat
by his side felt as if he alone could avert the evil destiny which he
himself had foretold. With him only was she seen to smile; elsewhere,
sad, silent, stern; it seemed as if she were ever occupied in nerving
her mind for that which she had to do, and she grew melancholy and
morbid.
But there were moments when her naturally strong spirit, not yet
wholly subdued, struggled against her conviction, and endeavoured to
find modes of averting her fate; it was in one of these, perhaps, that
she gave her hand to a wooer, from a distant part of the country, a
mariner, who either had not heard or did not regard the prediction,
upon condition that he should remove her far from her native village
to the home of his family and friends, for she sometimes felt as if
the decree which had gone forth against her could not be fulfilled
except upon the spot where she had heard it, and that her heart would
be lighter if men’s eyes would again look upon her in kindliness and
she no longer sat beneath the glare of those that knew so well the
secret of her soul. Thus thinking, she quitted the village with her
husband; and the tormentor, who had poisoned her repose, soon after
her departure, left the village as secretly and as suddenly as he had
entered it.
But, though Ruth could depart from his corporeal presence, and look
upon his cruel visage no more, yet the eye of her soul was fixed upon
his shadow, and his airy form, the creation of her sorrow, still
sat by her side; the blight that he had breathed upon her peace had
withered her heart, and it was in vain that she sought to forget or
banish the recollection from her brain. Men and women smiled upon her
as before in the days of her joy, the friends of her husband welcomed
her to their bosoms, but they could give no peace to her heart; she
shrunk from their friendship, she shivered equally at their neglect,
she dreaded any cause that might lead to that which, it had been said,
she must do; nightly she sat alone and thought, she dwelt upon the
characters of those around her, and shuddered that in some she saw
violence and selfishness enough to cause injury, which she might be
supposed to resent to blood. Against the use of actual violence she had
disabled herself; she had never struck a blow--her small hand would
have suffered injury in the attempt; she did not understand the use of
firearms, she was ignorant of what were poisons, and a knife she never
allowed herself, even for the most necessary purposes. How, then, could
she slay? At times she took comfort from thoughts like these, and at
others she was plunged in the darkness of despair.
Her husband went forth to and returned from the voyages which made
up the avocation and felicity of his life, without noticing the
deep-rooted sorrow of his wife. He was a common man, and of a common
mind; his eye had not seen the awful beauty of her whom he had chosen;
his spirit had not felt her power; and, if he had marked, he would not
have understood her grief; so she ministered to him as a duty. She was
a silent and obedient wife, but she saw him come home without joy,
and witnessed his departure without regret; he neither added to nor
diminished her sorrow. But destiny had one solitary blessing in store
for the victim of its decrees--a child was born to the hapless Ruth, a
lovely little girl soon slept upon her bosom, and, coming as it did,
the one lone and lovely rosebud in her desolate garden, she welcomed it
with a kindlier hope.
A few years went by unsoiled by the wretchedness which had marked the
preceding; the joy of the mother softened the anguish of the condemned,
and sometimes when she looked upon her daughter she ceased to despair;
but destiny had not forgotten its claim, and soon its hand pressed
heavily upon its victim; the giant ocean rolled over the body of her
husband, poverty visited the cottage of the widow, and famine’s gaunt
figure was visible in the distance. Oppression came with these, arrears
of rent were demanded, and the landlord was brutal in his anger and
harsh in his language to the sufferer.
Thus goaded, she saw but one thing that could save her--she fled from
her persecutor to the home of her youth, and, leading her little Rachel
by the hand, threw herself into the arms of her people. They received
her with distant kindness, and assured her that she should not want.
In this they kept their promise, but it was all they did for Ruth
and her daughter. A miserable subsistence was given to them, and that
was embittered by distrust, and the knowledge that it was yielded
unwillingly.
Among the villagers, although she was no longer shunned as formerly,
her story was not forgotten. If it had been, her strange beauty, her
sorrow-stamped face, the flashing of her eyes, her majestic stature
and solemn movements, would have recalled it to their recollections.
She was a marked being, and all believed (though each would have
pitied her, had they not been afraid) that her evil destiny was not to
be averted. They declared that she looked like one fated to do some
dreadful deed. They saw she was not one of them, and though they did
not directly avoid her, yet they never threw themselves in her way,
and thus the hapless Ruth had ample leisure to contemplate and grieve
over her fate. One night she sat alone in her little hovel, and, with
many bitter ruminations, was watching the happy sleep of her child,
who slumbered tranquilly on their only bed. Midnight had long passed,
yet Ruth was not disposed to rest. She trimmed her dull light, and
said mentally, ‘Were I not poor such a temptation might not assail
me, riches would procure me deference; but poverty, or the wrongs it
brings, may drive me to this evil. Were I above want it would be less
likely to be. Oh, my child, for your sake would I avoid this doom more
than for mine own, for if it should bring death to me, what will it not
bring to you?--infamy, agony, scorn.’
She wept aloud as she spoke, and scarcely seemed to notice the
singularity (at that late hour) of someone without attempting to open
the door. She heard, but the circumstance made little impression. She
knew that as yet her doom was unfulfilled, and that, therefore, no
danger could reach her. She was no coward at any time, but now despair
had made her brave. She flung the door open, a stranger entered,
without either alarming or disturbing her, and it was not till he had
stood face to face with Ruth, and she discovered his features to be
those of William Morgan, that she sprung up from her seat and gazed
wildly and earnestly upon him. He gave her no time to question.
‘Ruth Tudor,’ said he, ‘behold I come to sue for your pity and mercy.
I have embittered your existence, and doomed you to a terrible lot.
What first was dictated by vengeance and malice became truth as I
uttered it, for what I spoke I believed. Yet, take comfort, some of my
predictions have failed, and why may not this one be false? In my own
fate I have ever been deceived; perhaps I may be equally so in yours.
In the meantime have pity upon him who was your enemy, but who, when
his vengeance was uttered, instantly became your friend. I was poor,
and your scorn might have robbed me of subsistence in danger, and your
contempt might have given me up. Beggared by some disastrous events,
hunted by creditors, I fled from my wife and son because I could no
longer bear to contemplate their suffering. I have sought fortune in
many ways since we parted, and always has she eluded my grasp till last
night, when she rather tempted than smiled upon me. At an idle fair
I met the steward of this estate drunk and stupid, but loaded with
gold. He travelled towards home alone. I could not, did not, wrestle
with the fiend that possessed me, but hastened to overtake him in his
lonely ride. Start not! No hair of his head was harmed by me. Of his
gold I robbed him, but not of his life, though, had I been the greater
villain, I should now be in less danger, since he saw and marked my
person. Three hundred pounds is the result of my deed, but I must keep
it now or die. Ruth, you, too, are poor and forsaken, but you are
faithful and kind, and will not betray me to justice. Save me, and I
will not enjoy my riches alone. You know all the caves in the rocks,
those hideous hiding places, where no foot, save yours, has dared to
tread. Conceal me in one of these till the pursuit be passed, and I
will give you one half my wealth, and return with the other to gladden
my wife and son.’
The hand of Ruth was already opened, and in imagination she grasped the
wealth he promised. Oppression and poverty had somewhat clouded the
nobleness, but not the fierceness of her spirit. She saw that riches
would save her from wrath, perhaps from blood, and as the means to
escape from so mighty an evil she was not unscrupulous respecting a
lesser. Independently of this, she felt a great interest in the safety
of Morgan. Her own fate seemed to hang upon his. She hid the ruffian in
a cave which she had known from her youth, and supplied him with light
and food.
There was a happiness now in the heart of Ruth, a joy in her thoughts
as she sat all the long day upon the deserted settle of her wretched
fireside, to which they had, for many years, been strangers. Many times
during the past years of her sorrow she had thought of Morgan, and
longed to look upon his face, and sit under his shadow, as one whose
presence could preserve her from the evil fate which he himself had
predicted. She had long since forgiven him his prophecy. She believed
he had spoken truth, and this gave her a wild confidence in his
power--a confidence that sometimes thought, ‘If he can foreknow, can he
not also avert?’
And she thought she would deserve his confidence, and support him in
his suffering. She had concealed him in a deep dark cave, hewn far in
the rock, to which she alone knew the entrance from the beach. There
was another (if a huge aperture in the top of the rock might be so
called) which, far from attempting to descend, the peasants and seekers
for the culprit had scarcely dared to look into, so perpendicular,
dark, and uncertain was the hideous descent into what justly appeared
to them a bottomless abyss. They passed over his head in their search
through the fields above, and before the mouth of his den upon the
beach below, yet they left him in safety, though incertitude and fear.
It was less wonderful, the suspicionless conduct of the villagers
towards Ruth, than the calm prudence with which she conducted all
the details relating to her secret. Her poverty was well known, yet
she daily procured a double portion of food, which was won by double
labour. She toiled in the fields for the meed of oaken cake and
potatoes, or she dashed out in a crazy boat on the wide ocean, to
win with the dredgers the spoils of the oyster beds that lie on its
bosom. The daintier fare was for the unhappy guest, and daily did she