Eveline Mandeville The Horse Thief Rival

CHAPTER XIV.

THE EV­IDENCE--DUF­FEL THWART­ED.

It would be dif­fi­cult to tell which of the two, Eve­line or Duf­fel, was most un­easy, or least alarmed, dur­ing the progress of the con­ver­sa­tion record­ed in the last chap­ter. Duf­fel feared that Bill and Dick had played him false, and he al­so saw that his an­tag­onist was too much for him in a fair con­test. Eve­line felt an in­ter­nal dread of her ad­ver­sary, though she gave no out­ward man­ifes­ta­tion of fear, hav­ing firm­ly re­solved to with­stand his ev­ery at­tack, and if need be die in de­fense of her virtue. When alone, how­ev­er, the feel­ings up­per­most in her mind were those of dis­tress and ap­pre­hen­sion; and as she took a sur­vey of the po­si­tion in which she was placed, and con­tem­plat­ed the hope­less­ness of her sit­ua­tion, a tide of emo­tions, long sup­pressed, swept over her spir­it, and yield­ing to her feel­ings, she bowed her head, and wept.

When Duf­fel was alone, he called up all that had passed, and as he dwelt on the rev­ela­tion of his plots as made to him by Eve­line, he came to the con­clu­sion that the soon­er he could get rid of Bill and Dick the bet­ter; for it must have been through them that she came in pos­ses­sion of the se­crets known on­ly to them­selves.

“I'll teach them a les­son!” he said, “and once clear of these fel­lows I will nev­er trust ras­cals again. I wish they would, hur­ry and make way with Du­val; I would then have them! How­ev­er, I must have an in­ter­view now, and use them awhile longer.”

He pro­ceed­ed to the “swamp,” where his as­so­ciates were to meet him. They were al­ready in wait­ing when he ar­rived, and with­out cer­emo­ny or cir­cum­lo­cu­tion, he ac­cost­ed them as fol­lows:

“So, then, you have turned traitors, have you?”

“_Traitors!_”

“Yes, and been de­vel­op­ing my se­crets.”

“If any tongue but yours should dare make the ac­cu­sa­tion, it would be si­lenced for­ev­er,” replied Bill, in much ex­cite­ment. “Who dares to make such a charge against us? We de­mand to know, and his ly­ing lips shall be sealed with his own blood!”

“There, that will do. It was on­ly a wom­an that in­ti­mat­ed to me that you were un­faith­ful; and I thought then, as I think now, that it was all guess-​work with her.”

Here he nar­rat­ed so much of the in­ter­view with Eve­line as re­lat­ed to them­selves, and con­clud­ed by ask­ing if they had held any pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion that she could by any pos­si­bil­ity have over­heard.

“Not a word, your hon­or; we did not so much as make a sign by which she might sus­pect us or you.”

“Very well, I am sat­is­fied; but it seems she ei­ther knows or sus­pects some­thing, and we must be more than ev­er on our guard. What I wish to say to you now, is, that this la­dy, ei­ther for will­ful­ness or out of dis­be­lief, af­fects to dis­cred­it my state­ment con­cern­ing Hadley's death, and I wish you to ac­com­pa­ny me to the cave to-​mor­row, and con­firm my state­ments. You need not im­pli­cate your­selves, but give the facts as you saw them tran­spire.”

“All right we'll be there; and I guess we can fix up the right kind of a sto­ry for the oc­ca­sion.”

“And to-​mor­row night you must make a de­scent up­on 'Squire Williams' pas­ture-​field, and save a lit­tle of his grass by re­mov­ing a part of his stock. You un­der­stand?”

“Per­fect­ly. We will try, but it's get­ting to be rather a dan­ger­ous busi­ness of late. Since Man­dev­ille's horse was stolen, the men have tak­en it in­to their heads to de­fend their prop­er­ty. On­ly a few nights ago, two of our men went over with the in­ten­tion of tak­ing Thomp­son's fine bay; but he was on hand, and shot one of them through the arm; and they were glad to get off with­out the horse.”

“In­deed! that's bad news, for we must make a raise some­how. I don't want the cap­tain to come back and find we have done noth­ing in his ab­sence.”

“Well, we will do the best we can; but it is about time we were leav­ing this part of the coun­try, at least for awhile. I don't think we can ef­fect much, and we run great risks of be­ing de­tect­ed.”

“Do you think sus­pi­cion rests on any of our mem­bers?”

“Well I can't say as to that. Peo­ple are be­gin­ning to sus­pect ev­ery­body they don't know, and some that they do. If a man hasn't any par­tic­ular oc­cu­pa­tion, he is pret­ty cer­tain to be sus­pect­ed of get­ting his liv­ing by dis­hon­est means.”

“We must get away from here. I will be ready to look out some oth­er lo­ca­tion with­in the next fort­night. In the mean­time, do the best you can, and all that you can; but be very cau­tious. Re­mem­ber to-​mor­row.”

“We will be there, be as­sured.”

With this the vil­lains de­part­ed.

Eve­line con­tin­ued to weep for some length of time and then, arous­ing her­self, she sum­moned all the courage of which she was mas­ter, and braced her­self to meet the fate in store for her, be it what it might.

In pass­ing through the room, her eye fell up­on a strip of pa­per, which lay in such a po­si­tion as to in­di­cate that it had been brushed from a ta­ble which was some­times used by Duf­fel to write up­on. She list­less­ly took it up and glanced over it, when her eye caught a few lines pen­ciled up­on it. Seat­ing her­self, she ex­am­ined the writ­ing more close­ly, and in a mo­ment be­came in­ter­est­ed. On the pa­per were some char­ac­ters, the mean­ing of which she could not com­pre­hend, though she rec­og­nized them in a mo­ment, as be­ing the same in form and char­ac­ter as those on the let­ter which had fall­en in­to her fa­ther's hand, pur­port­ing to be from some one to Hadley, as re­lat­ed in the for­mer part of this sto­ry, and in con­nec­tion with these were clear­ly traced the fol­low­ing words:

“And then Bill and Dick! They are first rate fel­lows in their way, and have been very ser­vice­able to me; but I don't think it is best to have too many con­fi­dants. I must get rid of them in some way, ei­ther by fair or foul means. Then I shall feel safe and at ease.”

These few lines, it seemed to Eve­line, had been writ­ten un­in­ten­tion­al­ly, as a man would un­con­scious­ly “think aloud;” and she was per­suad­ed in her own mind, that Duf­fel knew not of their ex­is­tence, or he would have de­stroyed them. And this was the fact. He had writ­ten a let­ter to the cap­tain on the day pre­vi­ous to Eve­line's ab­duc­tion, the first draft of which was now in her hand. This pa­per was on the ta­ble at his side, and af­ter fin­ish­ing the let­ter, he sat for some mo­ments in deep thought, the bur­den of which was his own sit­ua­tion. His pen­cil was in his hand, and in the course of his se­cret com­mu­nion, the words we have quot­ed were spo­ken to him­self, and record­ed with the pen­cil--his mind the while too com­plete­ly ab­sorbed in the cur­rent of his re­flec­tions to note the act or be aware of the me­chan­ical ac­tion of his hand.

It in­stant­ly flashed across her mind that this doc­ument might be made ser­vice­able to her, if, on the mor­row, un­per­ceived by Duf­fel, she could find an op­por­tu­ni­ty of slip­ping it in­to the hand of one of his con­fed­er­ates. She turned it over, and wrote on the oth­er side:

"I found this pa­per in the room where I am con­fined. You will know whether or not the writ­ing is in the hand of your em­ploy­er; should it prove to be, as I sus­pect it is, you will at once per­ceive his in­ten­tions to­ward you, and can act ac­cord­ing­ly. If, in this new phase of af­fairs, you feel will­ing to desert his ser­vice, and aid me to es­cape out of his hands, and from this place, you shall be abun­dant­ly re­ward­ed, and I will ev­er be your debtor.

“E. MAN­DEV­ILLE.”

She then fold­ed the note in­to as small a com­pass as pos­si­ble, and placed it about her per­son for fu­ture use.

The next day, Duf­fel vis­it­ed the cave in com­pa­ny with Bill and Dick, whom he in­tro­duced in­to the cap­tain's room for the pur­pose al­ready named.

“You have not for­got­ten our con­ver­sa­tion yes­ter­day, Eve­line,” said he, “nor have I my promise. In these gen­tle­men you have the wit­ness­es of Hadley's death, which, for your own good, I have tak­en this pains to es­tab­lish be­yond a doubt. My friends will now speak for them­selves.”

Bill at once ad­dressed him­self to her as fol­lows:

“It is with much pain, fair la­dy, that we are be­fore you as wit­ness­es of the sad oc­cur­rence re­ferred to by Mr. Duf­fel; but as cir­cum­stances have placed us in this un­pleas­ant sit­ua­tion, we crave your par­don most hearti­ly, and the more so, if what we have to say should be a source of grief to you. It so hap­pened that my friend and my­self were cross­ing the moun­tains, a short time since, and be­ing some­what be­lat­ed, were urg­ing our pas­sage through a dark and gloomy val­ley, in some ap­pre­hen­sion, when we sud­den­ly came up­on two vil­lains, who had just slain a man, and were about to rob him. We rushed to the spot be­fore their work was com­plet­ed, and they fled from the scene of mur­der in the great­est alarm. We dis­mount­ed, and found that the in­di­vid­ual was Mr. CHARLES HADLEY, with whom we had been ac­quaint­ed some years be­fore. He was not yet quite dead, and spoke a few words about his moth­er and some oth­er la­dy; but his ar­tic­ula­tion was so in­dis­tinct and his words so bro­ken, we could not gath­er the im­port of what we sup­posed to be his dy­ing mes­sages to those of whom he spoke. He ex­pired in a few mo­ments, and we then has­tened to the near­est ham­let for as­sis­tance. I would fain stop here, la­dy, for the rest of the recital is very shock­ing; but I have been re­quest­ed to tell all, and must do so. It was some­thing over an hour be­fore we, with some four or five oth­ers, who had ac­com­pa­nied us, re­turned, when, oh, hor­ror! what were our feel­ings on be­hold­ing a pack of hun­gry wolves de­vour­ing the body of Mr. Hadley! We light­ed torch­es and drove them away, but noth­ing re­mained of the dead man but his bones! God grant that I may nev­er wit­ness an­oth­er such a sight!”

Eve­line, who was much shocked at this sto­ry, lest it _might_ be true, though she was by no means cer­tain it was not made up for the oc­ca­sion, ap­peared to be much more deeply af­fect­ed than she re­al­ly was, and made ap­pear as though she was about to faint, see­ing which, Duf­fel stepped up with the in­ten­tion of sup­port­ing her. She sprang from him, and, in great ap­par­ent ag­ita­tion, seized Bill by the arm, and de­mand­ed of him if what he had said was the ac­tu­al truth, and at the same time pressed the note in his hand, giv­ing him an in­tel­li­gent look. He very dex­trous­ly trans­ferred the lit­tle bil­let to his left vest pock­et, as though he was sim­ply lay­ing his hand up­on his heart to give greater solem­ni­ty to his re­ply, and said:

“I as­sure you, madam, what I have told you is the truth, the whole truth, and noth­ing but the truth, and my friend will con­firm the state­ment I have made.”

“Yes,” said Dick, thus ap­pealed to, “the sad sto­ry is but too true; I wish for your sake it was not.”

This was said with some feel­ing, and it had more ef­fect up­on Eve­line than even the hor­rid recital giv­en by Bill, but she felt the ne­ces­si­ty of crush­ing down all ten­der feel­ings, and with a mas­ter­ly ef­fort suc­ceed­ed in do­ing so, then replied:

“You will par­don me, gen­tle­men, for hav­ing seemed to ex­press a doubt on the sub­ject of your nar­ra­tive; we are apt to judge per­sons by the com­pa­ny they keep, and know­ing your friend here,” (point­ing to Duf­fel,) “is very much giv­en to telling false­hoods, I thought it pos­si­ble you might have formed that de­testable habit through his ex­am­ple; I trust, how­ev­er, it is not the case.”

Duf­fel boiled with in­ter­nal rage at this re­mark; but sup­press­ing his anger, he con­duct­ed his al­lies out of the room, gave them some di­rec­tions, and then re­turned to im­pose his un­wel­come pres­ence and con­ver­sa­tion up­on Eve­line, who had no means of avoid­ing him, but was com­pelled to hear his words.

“I hope,” said he, “you are now sat­is­fied of the truth of my dec­la­ra­tion, that Hadley is dead.”

“He may be; but I say now, as I said be­fore, I do not _know_ that he is; but ad­mit­ting that he _is_ dead, what dif­fer­ence does it make?”

“Why not much, it is true, and I think I took the lib­er­ty of say­ing so yes­ter­day. I on­ly wish, by prov­ing the cer­tain­ty of this event, to show you the fol­ly of con­tin­uing longer to set your af­fec­tions up­on him, pro­vid­ed you have been do­ing so hereto­fore.”

“And sup­pose I should cease to re­mem­ber him, what would that avail you?”

“I would then hope to be able to con­vince you of my own deep love, and in so do­ing of ex­cit­ing a kin­dred sen­ti­ment in your own bo­som.”

“Have you the pre­sump­tion to be­lieve that I could be brought to such a state of degra­da­tion of feel­ing, now that I know who and what you are, when I re­ject­ed you un­der far more fa­vor­able cir­cum­stances? If you have, let me at once tell you, that in this in­stance, as in many oth­ers, your van­ity has led you to en­tire­ly over-​es­ti­mate your abil­ity to please. Per­haps some of my sex might be sil­ly enough to lis­ten to your well-​turned speech­es, but I can as­sure you the less you speak to me of _love_ the bet­ter.”

“Peo­ple of­ten change their minds.”

“So they do; but I think you have pret­ty good rea­son to be­lieve that _I_ am not par­tic­ular­ly li­able to be charged with that fail­ing.”

“Well, no, I be­lieve I can­not charge you with that weak­ness; but I am sure you are very ob­sti­nate for one of your sex, which is not usu­al­ly ad­judged to be among the ami­able char­ac­ter­is­tics of a la­dy.”

“A la­dy that has no mind of her own is no cred­it to the sex; but I am sor­ry to say there are too many of that class, at least we might read­ily sup­pose so by the easy man­ner in which they are tak­en cap­tive with soft, sil­ly non­sense, and smooth, flat­ter­ing words. If you ad­mire such, the best thing you can do is to go and make love to them; you will progress much faster than you do here.”

“There now, by my troth, I like that! I wouldn't give a cent for a girl that had no spir­it about her. If you keep on at such a rate, I shall be more mad­ly in love with you than ev­er! Come, be a good girl, and give us a lit­tle more of that kind of spice!”

“You like it, do you? Very well, I will change the key a lit­tle then, just a lit­tle, and let you have a peep at your­self. You pre­tend to en­ter­tain sen­ti­ments of re­gard for me; but you know, and I know al­so, that it is my fa­ther's wealth of which you are en­am­ored.”

“No, I swear to you, I love _you_!”

“And I know that is a false oath. You base hyp­ocrite! do you think for a mo­ment that I can­not and do not see through your flim­sy gauze of de­cep­tion? I can read your guilty soul as a book; I know your mo­tives, and I know that a pure, gen­er­ous, or no­ble sen­ti­ment nev­er had a lodg­ment in your breast. You are base, cor­rupt, cow­ard­ly and un­man­ly in ev­ery sense of the word. There is not a re­deem­ing trait in your char­ac­ter. You are false to your friends, you ca­jole your en­emies, and prey up­on com­mu­ni­ty. You _know_ this is a true pic­ture of your­self, on­ly that 'the half has not been told;' and yet you have the un­blush­ing au­dac­ity to talk to me of _love_!”

“Yes; and what is more, I am go­ing to wed you.”

“Sir! nev­er dare to ut­ter such a word in my pres­ence again!”

“Ha, ha, ha! That _is_ rich, any how! Ha, ha! A weak pris­on­er to dare a mighty cap­tor in that way! You cer­tain­ly must for­get where you are, my pret­ty lit­tle de­fi­ant beau­ty! Why I could just as eas­ily com­pel a com­pli­ance with my wish­es, as make you a lis­ten­er to my dis­course.”

“Not quite, sir; you might pos­si­bly find your­self slight­ly mis­tak­en should you at­tempt too much, and I give you fair warn­ing to be­ware what you do!”

“Ha, ha, ha! Why, my love, I could con­quer you with one hand.”

“You had bet­ter not try it, sir!”

“I cer­tain­ly would make an ef­fort had I not al­ready al­lowed you a week to make up your mind. But to show you how com­plete­ly you are in my pow­er, I will just plant a kiss on your ru­by lips--”

“Nev­er, sir; _nev­er_!” said she, with flash­ing eye. “Dare to touch me with your pol­lut­ed hand, and you die on the spot!”

“Ha! what's that I hear? Talk of killing, do you? Well, we shall see.”

And he took a step to­ward her, with the in­ten­tion of car­ry­ing out his threat.

“Stop, sir!” she said; and there was that in the tone of her voice which ar­rest­ed him as sud­den­ly as would a bar of iron in­ter­posed across his way. “Know,” she con­tin­ued, “that lips pol­lut­ed as yours are can nev­er come in con­tact with mine! I would soon­er press mine to the slimy car­cass of a de­cay­ing an­imal, than per­mit them even to touch yours! and I would far rather in­hale the at­mo­sphere from pu­trid flesh, aye, from the vilest car­rion, than that your foul breath should en­ter my nos­trils! This, sir, will give a faint idea of the ut­ter de­tes­ta­tion, the in­ex­press­ible loathing, I feel for you.”

“By heav­ens! you shall re­pent of this in sack­cloth and ash­es! De­test and loathe as you please, you _shall_ feel my lips up­on your own! and that now!”

With this, the in­fu­ri­at­ed vil­lain stepped for­ward and made a pass, in­tend­ing to en­cir­cle Eve­line in his arms, but she elud­ed his grasp, and plac­ing the so­fa be­tween them, drew from the folds of her dress a small dag­ger, and point­ing it at his heart, said:

“One step, one move­ment to­ward me, and your life pays the for­feit!” and she pressed the point of the weapon against his breast.

The cow­ard­ly wretch was tak­en aback, and the mo­ment he felt the in­stru­ment touch him sprang away, as if the sharp steel was tru­ly en­ter­ing his flesh.

“Base cow­ard!” she, in her ex­cite­ment, hissed be­tween her teeth in the most con­temp­tu­ous man­ner. At his dis­com­fi­ture and these words, his rage knew no bounds; he was be­side him­self with anger, and but for the weapon which she held, would have wreaked his vengeance up­on her at once in the most beast­ly man­ner. As it was, his cow­ardice did not per­mit him to make the at­tempt, and he con­tent­ed him­self with pour­ing out his wrath in words:

“You in­car­nate child of h----l! I'll make you weep in sor­row and shame for this! I have giv­en you a week for re­flec­tion, but now your time is at hand, any hour that I shall please to crush you! and I will not keep you long in sus­pense. You have called up a thou­sand fu­ries in my breast, all clam­orous for re­venge, and I will not re­sist their cries! No, it will be man­na to my soul to see your proud spir­it hum­bled, or be­hold you a sup­pli­ant for mer­cy at my feet!”

“_Nev­er!_”

“Oh, yes; you may talk, and by my dal­liance I have learned you to be­come in­so­lent; but now I am done with tem­po­riz­ing. I throw down the gaunt­let, since you have en­tered the lists, and will com­pel you to ac­cept the chal­lenge.”

“No, sir, I ac­cept it freely! Don't talk of com­pelling _me_ to do a thing.”

“I'll show you what I'll do! I'll bring tears in­to those flash­ing eyes, and prayers from that ven­omous tongue! Yes, I will! I have en­gage­ments ahead for two days, and af­ter that you shall have no peace day or night, un­til I have forced you to be­come my wife! I wouldn't mar­ry you at all, but that I have sworn to you to that ef­fect, and I will keep my word.”

“You have ut­tered many false oaths be­fore; they are so com­mon I do not re­gard them.”

“Your boast­ing will soon be done! If need be, I have fifty men un­der my com­mand, up­on whom I can call for as­sis­tance, and not one of them will dare to dis­obey my or­ders.”

“Poor, con­temptible poltroon! Fifty men against one fee­ble wom­an! Ver­ily, you have a brave set of fel­lows un­der a brave com­man­der! But you dare not call up­on your men; I could make forty friends of the num­ber in quick time; but, even if I should fail, you are too much of a cow­ard to trust fifty men with your se­cret, es­pe­cial­ly as they all know you have a su­pe­ri­or in com­mand, to whom _you_ are amenable.”

“Who told you this?”

“Find out as best you can. Per­haps I might sug­gest to you the pos­si­bil­ity of hav­ing al­ready made friends among the mem­bers of the Or­der.”

“Or­der! Who the d----l told you there was an Or­der?”

“Well, find out.”

“I will, then!”

“And you will not!”

“Then there's trea­son in the League, and I'll fer­ret it out.”

“Do so, by all means!”

She was gain­ing the vic­to­ry again, and he changed his tac­tics.

“I care but lit­tle who you may have in league with you, so long as you are here in my pow­er. No one can en­ter this room with­out my con­sent, and in it I am safe even from the at­tack of an army with­out. Here you are my pris­on­er; you think you are safe in the oth­er apart­ment with the door locked and bolt­ed on the in­side, but you are not. There is a se­cret pas­sage to the room, of which you are in to­tal ig­no­rance. I can avail my­self of it at any mo­ment: and you will some time be com­pelled to sleep. Don't you see I have you, now?”

This was sheer fol­ly; for it was ev­ident­ly his best pol­icy to have kept the knowl­edge of the se­cret pas­sage to him­self if he ex­pect­ed to avail him­self of it; but he was for in­flict­ing all the pain he could, and this he fan­cied would be a deep thrust.

“I thank you, vil­lain, for this time­ly piece of in­for­ma­tion; and be as­sured I shall not fail to be pre­pared for your re­cep­tion, should you dare to in­trude in­to my pres­ence while there.”

“Hooty-​tooty! as if I am not to be mas­ter in my own house! Well, well; flat­ter your­self with fool­ish fan­cies if you will; but know that your des­tiny is fixed. You shall nev­er leave this cave, ex­cept as my wife. This is your fate, and you may as well make up your mind to it at once. I will have no more words with you at present, but will leave you to re­flect on what I have said, with the hope that a lit­tle calm thought will show you the fol­ly of re­sis­tance, the cer­tain­ty of your fate and the wis­dom of a peace­ful ac­qui­es­cence there­in.”

Say­ing which, he left the cave, as much van­quished as vic­tor, though with a firm re­solve to car­ry his pur­pose, even if he had to dis­able her first, by shoot­ing her through the arm, with a pis­tol, in or­der to over­come her!