"A fierce quarrel ensued, which was ended at last by the reverend gentleman going out and banging the door behind him with a force that shook the house, and in a state of mind that rendered him singularly unfit to read the prayers for the sick beside the bed of a dying parishioner to whom he was urgently summoned.
"Mrs. Rosslynn immediately hastened to wreak her vengeance on her step-daughter. She set her teeth as she seized the unlucky girl, whom she found at work in the kitchen, pushed her roughly on into the narrow pa.s.sage up the steep stairs and into the little back loft that the child called her own bedroom.
"Here she took a firmer grip upon the girl, and with a dog whip that she had hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed from the hat rack in pa.s.sing, she lashed the hapless creature over back and shoulder.
"Ann never struggled or cried out, but held her tongue in fierce wrath and stubborn endurance. Could that woman, the victim of all ungovernable pa.s.sions, have but known what she did, or foreseen its results!
"At last she ceased, pushed the bruised and wounded child away from her, sank panting to a chair, and as soon as she recovered her breath, began to insult and abuse the orphan child of her deceased husband, charging her with disgracing the house by improper conduct, of which the girl had never even dreamed; accusing her of causing the loss of their pupil and the income derived from him, and reproaching her for making discord between herself (Mrs. Rosslynn) and her husband.
"Ann replied by not one word.
"At length the maddened woman, having talked herself out of breath, got up, left the room, and locked the door, not on her victim alone, but on all the evil spirits she had raised from Tartarus and left with the girl.
"Ann sank upon the bed, weeping, moaning, and grinding her teeth, her body prostrated by pain, her soul filled with bitter wrath and scorn toward one whom she should rather have been led to love and honor. In the fiery torture of her flesh and the humiliation of her spirit she uttered but these piteous words:
""Oh, my own mother!--oh, my lost father! do you see your child?"
"For more than an hour she lay there before the fierce smarting and burning of her scourged flesh began to subside. The short November afternoon darkened into night. No one came near her. The hour for supper pa.s.sed. No one called her to the meal. She heard the family pa.s.sing to their rooms. She heard her mother putting the other children to bed--a duty that she herself had hitherto performed. At last all sounds died away in the house, and she knew that all the inmates had retired, and the lights were out. She was meditating to run away; she did not know in what direction, or to what end, farther than to escape from the home that was hateful to her.
"Evil spirits were with her, suggesting many desperate thoughts; at length they infused a deadly, horrible temptation to a deed of self-destruction so ghastly that its discovery should appal the family, the parish, and the whole world; that should cover her tormentors with shame, reproach and infamy.
"She sprang up from her bed and went to search in the drawer of a little old wooden stand, until she found a half page of note paper and a bit of lead pencil.
"She took them out and wrote to her persecutors, saying that she was going to throw herself--not into the sea, nor from a precipice, because both earth and sea give up their dead--but into the quicksands, which never give up anything; they, her tormentors, should never even see again the body they had bruised and torn and degraded; and she prayed that the Lord would ever deal by them as they had dealt with her.
"It must have been near midnight when she heard a tap at her window, so light that at first she thought it was made by a large raindrop; but presently her name was softly called by a voice that she recognized.
Then she understood it all, and her thoughts of the quicksands vanished.
"Her room was a small one in the rear of the house, immediately over the back kitchen, and her back window opened upon the roof of the wood shed behind the kitchen. She went and hoisted the window, and there on the roof of the wood shed stood Alfred Whyte.
"He told her that he had taken leave of the ogre and the ogress hours before, and they thought he was off to London by the four o"clock mail; but that he had gone no farther than the railway station, where he had bought a ticket, and had gone on the platform, as if to wait for his train; but when it came up, instead of taking his place on it, he had slipped away in the confusion of its arrival and had hidden himself in the woods on the other side of the road, where he had waited until it was dark, when he had come back to watch the parsonage until every one should have gone to bed, so that he could get speech with Ann.
"And then he asked her if she were "game for a bolt?"
"She did not understand him; but when he next spoke plainly, and inquired if she would run away with him and be married, she answered promptly that she would.
"He told her to get ready quickly, and to dress warmly, for the night was damp and cold, and to tie up a little bundle of things that she might need on the journey; but not to take much, because he had plenty of money, and could buy her all she needed.
""Much;" Poor little thing, she had not much to take! She put on her best dress--a well-worn blue serge--a coa.r.s.e, black cloth walking jacket, and a little straw hat with a faded blue ribbon. She had no gloves. She tied up a hair brush, worn nearly to the wood, a tooth brush not much better, the half of a broken dressing comb, and one clean linen collar, in a small pocket handkerchief, and she was all ready for her wedding trip.
"He told her to bolt her door before she came out, because that would take the ogres some little while to force it open, and would give the fugitives a better start.
"Ann did everything her boy lover directed, and finally stepped out of the window on to the roof below, and joined him. He let down the window, and closed the shutters with a spring that securely fastened them.
"That, he told her, would certainly give them a longer start, for it would take an hour at least to force the room open and discover her flight.
"Then they left the parsonage together.
"She had forgotten all about the parting note of malediction which she had left behind her on the stand, as she stepped along the lane leading to the highway.
"He asked her to take his arm, and when they reached the public road, he inquired if she were game for a ten mile walk.
"She told him that she could walk to the end of the world with him, because she was so happy to be beside the only one on earth who had ever been kind to her--since her father"s death.
"Then he explained the steps that he had taken, and must still take, to elude pursuit; how that he had gone to the railway station and bought a first cla.s.s ticket for the four o"clock express to London, and afterward, when the train came up, he had mingled with the crowd getting off and getting on, and so eluded observation, and had slipped away and hidden himself in the thicket until dark, so as to make every one concerned believe that he had gone off by the mail train alone to London.
"Now he told her that they must trudge straight on ten miles north, to take the train to Glasgow; so that while people were hunting for them in the south, they would be safe in the north.
"As they walked on he told her that he wanted to get away from England and see the world--the new world across the ocean. He had seen Europe summer after summer, traveling with his father and mother on the Continent. Now he wanted to see America; and asked her if she did not also.
"She told him that she wanted to see every place that he wanted to see, and to go everywhere he wanted to go, for that he was the only friend she had in all the wide world.
"So they walked on for about three hours, and then, about two o"clock in the morning, they reached the little railway station of Skelton. They had to wait two hours for the parliamentary train, which came heavily puffing in about five o"clock on that November morning.
"Young Whyte took second cla.s.s tickets, and led his closely veiled companion to her seat on the train. And they moved off.
"They reached Glasgow about ten o"clock the next day, and found that there was a steamer bound for New York, to sail at noon. No time was to be lost, so they both went to the agency together, represented themselves as a newly married pair, and engaged the only stateroom to be procured--which happened to be in the second cabin. Their tickets were filled in with the names of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Whyte--which indeed const.i.tuted a legal marriage in Scotland, where a marriageable pair of lovers have only to declare themselves man and wife, in the presence of competent witnesses, to be as lawfully married as if the ceremony had been performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his own cathedral.
"They took possession of their stateroom on the Caledonian, which sailed at noon of the same day, and in due time arrived at New York.
"They spent two days at an uptown hotel, and then took the pretty cottage at Harlem, in which they lived for several months. Ann"s boy-husband often told her that she grew prettier every day, and he seemed to grow fonder of her every day. He supplied her with a nicer outfit of clothing and more pocket money than she had ever had in her poverty-stricken life, and made her much happier every way than she had ever been before, as long as his money lasted.
"He had left England with nearly one hundred pounds in his pocket--the amount of his half-yearly allowance.
"On his arrival in New York, he had written to his father and confessed his marriage with his tutor"s step-daughter and begged forgiveness and--remittances.
"Ann declined to write to her step-mother or the curate, declaring that she preferred that they should believe that she had been driven by their cruelty to bury herself in the quicksands, and that they should suffer all the remorse of conscience and reprobation of society that their conduct toward her deserved.
"But weeks pa.s.sed, on and no letter filled with blessings and bank notes came from the offended and obdurate father, though the boy constantly a.s.sured his girl-wife that the expected epistle would surely come in time, for he was the "old man"s" only son, whom he would not be likely to discard.
"Meanwhile their money was running low. The youth was anxious to travel and see the new world, and to take his bride with him, but he could not do so without funds. At the end of six weeks after he had written the first letter to his father he wrote a second, but received no answer; later still he wrote a third, with no better success.
"They had gone a little into debt, in order to eke out their little ready money until the longed-for letters of credit should come from England; but at the end of six months credit and cash were nearly exhausted.
"One morning in May the boy-husband took leave of the girl-wife, saying, as he kissed her good-by, that he was going down into the city to see if he could get some work to do.
"Without the least misgiving, she received his farewell kiss, and saw him depart--watched him all the way down the street, until he got to Second Avenue and boarded a down-town car.
"Then she re-entered the little gate, and began to tend the jonquils and hyacinths that were just coming into bloom in her little flower garden.
She did not expect to see him until night, nor--did she see him even then. When the little gate opened at eight o"clock and a man came up the walk leading to the front door at which she stood, he was not her husband, but the letter carrier, who put a letter in her hand and went away.
"She ran into the house, and lighted the gas to read her letter. Though it gave her a shock, it did not shake her faith in her boy.
"The letter told her, in effect, that Alfred Whyte, when he left her that morning, had started to go to England in the only way by which he could get there--that is, by working his pa.s.sage as a deck hand on board an outward bound ship; that he had decided on this course so as to get a personal interview with his father, to whom he would go as a penitent prodigal son; for he was sure of obtaining by this means forgiveness, and a.s.sistance that would enable him to return and bring his little wife back to England, where they would thenceforth live in comfort and luxury; that the reason he had not confided to her his intention of making the voyage was because he dreaded opposition from her that might have led him to abandon the one plan by which he hoped to better their condition.
"He concluded by entreating her not to think for one instant that he intended to desert her, who was dearer to him than his own life, but to trust in him as he trusted in her. In a postscript he told her where to find the small balance of money they had left, as he had only taken enough for his car fare to the city. In a second postscript he promised to write by every opportunity. In a third and last postscript he begged her to keep up her heart.
"It seemed a frank letter, yet it was reticent upon one point--the name of the ship on which he had sailed. This omission might have been accidental. It certainly did not raise any doubt of the boy"s good faith in the mind of the girl.