A MEETING IN THE HILLS.
"Mammy, this is too much. I can endure it no longer. You keep me working in the dark, and every step I take but adds to my own misery. I am baffled, defeated, almost exposed, and yet you say, go on."
Agnes Barker spoke in a harsh, angry tone. Her eyes blazed with pa.s.sion.
Her features had lost all their usual grace. She was not the same being whom we saw creeping softly into the family circle at General Harrington"s with that velvety tread and sidelong glance of the eye.
The woman who stood before her, regarded this outbreak with signs of kindred impatience, and gathering a vast blanket shawl of crimson and green around her imposing figure, she stood with her arms wreathed together in the gorgeous folds, steadily regarding the impetuous young creature, till the fury of her first onset had exhausted itself.
They had met upon the hill-side, upon the very spot where Mabel Harrington rested after her rescue from the Hudson, and the charred trunk of the cedar stood like a pillar of ruined ebony, just behind the woman, with the sunset playing around it, and spotting the rocks behind with flecks and dashes of golden light.
This, with naked trees, and a broken hill towering upward, formed a background to the two persons who had met by appointment, and who always came together with a clash which made each interview a mental and moral storm.
The woman remained silent for a moment after this rude a.s.sault, and fixed her dark, oriental eyes with a sort of fascination on the flushed face lifted in audacious rebellion to hers.
"Agnes," she said at last, "I am weary of this rebellion, of this rude questioning. In intrigue, as in war, there can be but one commander, and there must be implicit obedience."
"I am obedient--I have been so from the beginning," answered the girl, yielding to the frown of those eyes, "until you asked me to stand by and witness the triumphs of a rival--to see the man I love better than my own soul, better than ten thousand souls, if I had them, parading his pa.s.sion for another in my very presence. Till you asked this, I was obedient, but I can endure it no longer. They are torturing me to death!"
"Not to death," said the woman with a strange smile. "Women who love as you can, and as I did, have no power to die. Tortured you may be to the verge of the grave, but never into it. Listen, girl, and learn how charitable and just the world is. When wrong stings the soul into strength, and every access of vitality brings an additional pang to it, while you would gladly call on death as a comforter, and court oblivion as a second heaven, men denounce you for the very strength of endurance that cannot succ.u.mb to trouble. The suffering that does not kill, brings forth no compa.s.sion. Struggle is nothing--endurance is nothing--it is only those who weakly lie down and perish, that can claim charity of the world, and then it comes too late. With you and I, Agnes, love is destiny. What I have been and am, you will be. Our hearts are strong to endure, sensitive to feel, and quick to resent. Time, alone, divides us two. Where you are pa.s.sionate, I am strong. Where you would act, I can wait. The fire of my own nature breaks out too vividly in your girlish bosom. It must be suppressed, or quenched altogether. The woman who does not know how to wait and watch, should die of her first love, and let school-girls plant daisies on her grave."
Agnes watched the impetuous movement of those features as the woman spoke, and her own face worked in harmony till no one could have doubted the sympathy existing between them. Her eyes lost something of their fire, and took that deep, smouldering light which springs from a concentration of will. Her arms unconsciously folded themselves on her bosom, and she answered, with the air of a princess--
"I will learn to wait. Only give me some a.s.surance that Ralph Harrington shall not marry that girl."
"He never shall marry her--is that enough?"
"But he loves her, and General Harrington has consented, or almost consented."
"Ha! but the mother?"
"There again you have been mistaken. His mother has not only consented, but seems rejoiced at the attachment."
"But you told me that she fainted at the very idea."
"And so she did, but in less than twenty-four hours after we met, she sanctioned the engagement with a joy that surpa.s.sed their own."
"What! in your presence?"
"Not exactly," answered Agnes, confessing her meanness without a blush.
"I took advantage of the flower-screen which you know of, and, behind the plants, with the help of a floating curtain, managed to hear every word, and to see enough--more than enough."
The woman seemed surprised. Her brow contracted, and she looked hard at Agnes, as one appears to search through an object without seeing it, when the mind resolves a new idea.
"This is strange," she said; "I had more faith in Mabel Harrington"s pride. She glories in her son, you say--yet is willing to marry him to a penniless foundling."
"And is Lina a foundling?" inquired Agnes, eagerly.
The woman did not heed her.
"I would not believe it," she muttered--"and General Harrington--what can it all mean? I thought one might safely calculate on his family pride."
"If you have calculated much on that, it is all over with me, I can tell you," said the girl, sullenly unfolding her arms. "I do not think General Harrington cares much who his son marries, so long as he is not called upon for help. You tell me that Mr. James is the millionaire.
Ralph will be independent of his father so long as he keeps on the right side of the richer Harrington."
"Then this thing is settled," muttered the woman, with her eyes cast downward, and her brows gathered in a frown.
"Yes, with all your management, it _is_ settled."
"You are mistaken, girl. Now, I will teach you how much faith can be placed on a woman"s promise. Ralph Harrington shall not marry Lina French."
Agnes looked suddenly up. The woman"s face was composed and confident; her eyes sparkled, and her lip curved proudly, as if conscious of having resolved some difficulty to her own satisfaction.
"What do you mean, mammy? How can you prevent it?"
"I will prevent it, girl."
"But, how?"
"General Harrington shall withdraw his consent."
Agnes laughed rather scornfully. "_Shall_ withdraw his consent? Who will make him?"
"As a reward for your obedience, _you_ shall make him."
"I, mammy? but he is not easily won upon; the General has strange ideas of his own, which one does not know how to meet. There is nothing, it seems to me, so unimpressible as a worldly old man--especially if he has had all heart polished out of him by what is called society. It takes a great deal to disturb the apathy of men who have settled down from active evil into selfish respectability; and that, I take it, is General Harrington"s present condition."
"Then, the influence that you rather boasted of has failed of late, I take it," said the woman, with a gleam of the eye at once unpleasant and triumphant.
Agnes colored with mortified vanity, but she answered, with a forced laugh:
"A young girl of eighteen does not care to waste much energy on a conceited old man, at any one"s command. Still, if you desire it, I will strive to be more agreeable."
"No," answered the woman, sharply, "I will control this matter hereafter myself. That affair of the journal was badly managed, Agnes."
"I did the best in my power," replied the girl, with a tinge of insolence in her manner. "But, how was it possible to force a knowledge of the contents on the old man, after I had denied reading the book? He must have opened at some unimportant pa.s.sage, or a deeper interest would have been excited."
"Are you certain that he did not read the book?" demanded the woman.
"I am certain that it lies unlocked in a drawer of his writing-desk, this moment, where I saw him place it, while I turned to close the library door after me."
"But, he may have read it."
"Impossible, for when I went to look, an hour after, one half of the clasp had accidentally been shut into the book, a thing that could not happen twice in the same way; and there it lies yet."
The woman dropped into thought an instant, with her eyes on the ground; a shade of sadness came to her face, and she murmured regretfully:
"Indeed, how he must have changed: one so pa.s.sionate, so suspicious, so"----