"Well, and we, beloved! we shall pa.s.s to something much better! We are not partridges or squirrels to live in the woods and fields all winter!
We shall go to our own luxurious home! You will be my loved and honored and happy wife; the mistress of an elegant house, a fine estate, and many negroes. You will have superb furniture, beautiful dresses, splendid jewels, servants to attend you, carriages, horses, pleasure boats, and everything else that heart could wish, or money buy, or love find to make you happy! Think! Oh, think of all the joys that are in store for you!"
"Not for me! Oh, not for me those splendors and luxuries and joys that you speak of! They are too good for me; I shall never possess them; I know it, Herman; and I knew it even in that hour of heavenly bliss when you first told me you loved me! I knew it even when we stood before the minister to be married, and I know it still! This short summer of love will be all the joy I shall ever have."
"In the name of Heaven, Nora, what do you mean? Is it possible that you can imagine I shall ever be false to you?" pa.s.sionately demanded the young man, who was deeply impressed at last by the sad earnestness of her manner.
"No! no! no! I never imagine anything unworthy of your gentle and n.o.ble nature," said Nora, with fervent emphasis as she pressed closer to his side.
"Then why, why, do you torture yourself and me with these dark previsions?"
"I do not know. Forgive me, Herman," softly sighed Nora, laying her cheek against his own.
He stole his arm around her waist, and as he drew her to his heart, murmured:
"Why should you not enjoy all the wealth, rank, and love to which you are ent.i.tled as my wife?"
"Ah! dear Herman, I cannot tell why. I only know that I never shall!
Bear with me, dear Herman, while I say this; After I had learned to love you; after I had grieved myself almost to death for your absence; when you returned and asked me to be your wife, I seemed suddenly to have pa.s.sed from darkness into radiant light! But in the midst of it all I seemed to hear a voice in my heart, saying: "Poor Moth! you are basking in a consuming fire; you will presently fall to the ground a burnt, blackened, tortured, and writhing thing." And, Herman, when I thought of the great difference between us; of your old family, high rank, and vast wealth; and of your magnificent house, and your stately lady mother and fine lady sisters, I knew that though you had married me, I never could be owned as your wife--"
"Nora, if it were possible for me to be angry with you, I should be so!"
interrupted Herman vehemently; ""you never could be owned as my wife!" I tell you that you can be--and that you shall be, and very soon! It was only to avoid a rupture with my mother that I married you privately at all. Have I not surrounded you with every legal security? Have I not armed you even against myself? Do you not know that even if it were possible for me to turn rascal, and become so mean, and miserable, and dishonored as to desert you, you could still demand your rights as a wife, and compel me to yield them!"
"As if I would! Oh, Herman, as if I would depend upon anything but your dear love to give me all I need! Armed against you, am I? I do not choose to be so! It is enough for me to know that I am your wife. I do not care to be able to prove it; for, Herman, were it possible for you to forsake me, I should not insist upon my "rights"--I should die.
Therefore, why should I be armed with legal proofs against you, my Herman, my life, my soul, my self? I will not continue so!" And with a generous abandonment she drew from her bosom the marriage certificate, tore it to pieces, and scattered it abroad, saying: "There now! I had kept it as a love token, close to my heart, little knowing it was a cold-blooded, cautious, legal proof, else it should have gone before, where it has gone now, to the winds! There now, Herman, I am your own wife, your own Nora, quite unarmed and defenseless before you; trusting only to your faith for my happiness; knowing that you will never willingly forsake me; but feeling that if you do, I should not pursue you, but die!"
"Dear trusting girl! would you indeed deprive yourself of all defenses thus? But, my Nora, did you suppose when I took you to my bosom that I had intrusted your peace and safety and honor only to a sc.r.a.p of perishable paper? No, Nora, no! Infidelity to you is forever impossible to me; but death is always possible to all persons; and so, though I could never forsake you, I might die and leave you; and to guard against the consequences of such a contingency I surrounded you with every legal security. The minister that married us resides in this county; the witness that attended us lives with you. So that if to-morrow I should die, you could claim, as my widow, your half of my personal property and your life-interest in my estate. And if to-morrow you should become impatient of your condition as a secreted wife, and wish to enter upon all the honors of Bradenell Hall, you have the power to do so!"
"As if I would! As if it was for that I loved you! oh, Herman!"
"I know you would not, love! And I know it was not for that you loved me! I have perfect confidence in your disinterestedness. And I hope you have as much in mine."
"I have, Herman. I have!"
"Then, to go back to the first question, why did you wound me by saying, that though I had married you, you knew you never could be owned as my wife?"
"I spoke from a deep conviction! Oh, Herman, I know you will never willingly forsake me; but I feel you will never acknowledge me!"
"Then you must think me a villain!" said Herman bitterly.
"No, no, no; I think, if you must have my thoughts, you are the gentlest, truest, and n.o.blest among men."
"You cannot get away from the point; if you think I could desert you, you must think I am a villain!"
"Oh, no, no! besides, I did not say you would desert me! I said you would never own me!"
"It is in effect the same thing."
"Herman, understand me: when I say, from the deep conviction I feel, that you will never own me, I also say that you will be blameless."
"Those two things are incompatible, Nora! But why do you persist in a.s.serting that you will never be owned?"
"Ah, dear me, because it is true!"
"But why do you think it is true?"
"Because when I try to imagine our future, I see only my own humble hut, with its spinning-wheel and loom. And I feel I shall never live in Brudenell Hall!"
"Nora, hear me: this is near the first of July; in six months, that is before the first of January, whether I live or die, as my wife or as my widow, you shall rule at Brudenell Hall!"
Nora smiled, a strange, sad smile.
"Listen, dearest," he continued; "my mother leaves Brudenell in December. She thinks the two young ladies, my sisters, should have more society; so she has purchased a fine house in a fashionable quarter of Washington City. The workmen are now busy decorating and furnishing it.
She takes possession of it early in December. Then, my Nora, when my mother and sisters are clear of Brudenell Hall, and settled in their town-house, I will bring you home and write and announce our marriage.
Thus there can be no noise. People cannot quarrel very long or fiercely through the post. And finally time and reflection will reconcile my mother to the inevitable, and we shall be all once more united and happy."
"Herman dear," said Nora softly, "indeed my heart is toward your mother; I could love and revere and serve her as dutifully as if I were her daughter, if she would only deign to let me. And, at any rate, whether she will or not, I cannot help loving and honoring her, because she is your mother and loves you. And, oh, Herman, if she could look into my heart and see how truly I love you, her son, how gladly I would suffer to make you happy, and how willing I should be to live in utter poverty and obscurity, if it would be for your good, I do think she would love me a little for your sake!"
"Heaven grant it, my darling!"
"But be sure of this, dear Herman. No matter how she may think it good to treat me, I can never be angry with her. I must always love her and seek her favor, for she is your mother."
CHAPTER VI.
A SECRET REVEALED.
Full soon upon that dream of sin An awful light came bursting in; The shrine was cold at which she knelt; The idol of that shrine was gone; An humbled thing of shame and guilt; Outcast and spurned and lone, Wrapt in the shadows of that crime, With withered heart and burning brain, And tears that fell like fiery rain, She pa.s.sed a fearful time.
--_Whittier_.
Thus in pleasant wandering through the wood and sweet repose beneath the trees the happy lovers pa.s.sed the blooming months of summer and the glowing months of autumn.
But when the seasons changed again, and with the last days of November came the bleak northwestern winds that stripped the last leaves from the bare trees, and covered the ground with snow and bound up the streams with ice, and drove the birds to the South, the lovers withdrew within doors, and spent many hours beside the humble cottage fireside.
Here for the first time Herman had ample opportunity of finding out how very poor the sisters really were, and how very hard one of them at least worked.
And from the abundance of his own resources he would have supplied their wants and relieved them from this excess of toil, but that there was a reserve of honest pride in these poor girls that forbade them to accept his pressing offers.
"But this is my own family now," said Herman. "Nora is my wife and Hannah is my sister-in-law, and it is equally my duty and pleasure to provide for them."
"No, Herman! No, dear Herman! we cannot be considered as your family until you publicly acknowledge us as such. Dear Herman, do not think me cold or ungrateful, when I say to you that it would give me pain and mortification to receive anything from you, until I do so as your acknowledged wife," said Nora.
"You give everything--you give your hand, your heart, yourself! and you will take nothing," said the young man sadly.
"Yes, I take as much as I give! I take your hand, your heart, and yourself in return for mine. That is fair; but I will take no more until as your wife I take the head of your establishment," said Nora proudly.