"What? Ralph--never speak of Ralph? You do not mean it. Indeed, I am quite sure, you do not mean it. Not speak of Ralph? Dear General, if he has done anything wrong, let me run for him at once, and he will beg your pardon--oh, how willingly! Not speak of Ralph? Ah, you are teasing me, General, because you know--that is, you guess--it would break my heart not to think of him every minute of my life."
"Silence, girl; I must not hear this," said the old man, dashing his hand aside with a violence that scattered Lina"s hair all over her shoulders.
"General," said Lina, lifting up her eyes, all br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears, and regarding him with the look of a grieved cherub: "don"t terrify me so.
What have I done? What has Ralph done? For the whole world we would not displease you, after all your kindness. Indeed, indeed we are too happy for anything evil to come within our thoughts."
"And you are happy, girl?"
"Very, very happy. It seems to me that all the earth has blossomed afresh. I thought this morning, that the sunshine never was so bright as it is to-day, and what few leaves are left on the branches, seem more beautiful than roses in full flower. Dear, dear General, it is something to have made two young creatures so happy! I thought last night, for life seemed so sweet that I could not waste it in slumber--and when the moonbeams came stealing in around me, making the curtains luminous, like summer clouds--I thought that you must have such heavenly dreams and grateful prayers to G.o.d, for giving you power--so like his own--that of filling young souls with this beautiful, beautiful joy!"
"Ah!" said the General, with a deep sigh; "all this must change, my poor child. I thought yours was but a pretty love-dream, that would pa.s.s over in a week."
"Oh, do not say that--do not say your consent was not real--that you have trilled with two young creatures, who honestly left their hearts all helpless in your hands."
"Peace, peace," said the old man, standing upright, and speaking with an effort. "I have not trifled with you. I did hope that all this might pa.s.s off as such love-dreams usually do; but, I have promised nothing which should not have been accomplished, had not a destiny stronger than my will, or your love, intervened. Lina, you can never be married to my son!"
Lina looked in his face--it was pale and troubled; his eyes fell beneath the intensity of her gaze--his proud shoulders stooped--he did not seem so tall as he was, by some inches. The deathly white of her face, the violet lips parted and speechless, the wild agony of those eyes, made him tremble from head to foot.
"Why? oh, why!" at last broke from her lips.
"Because," said the old man, drawing himself up, and speaking with a hoa.r.s.e effort; "because, G.o.d forgive me, you are my own daughter!"
She was looking in his face. A sob broke upon her pale lips--the strength left her limbs--and she fell down before him, shrouding her agony with both hands.
CHAPTER XXIX.
FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
General Harrington had no power to comfort the poor creature at his feet. More deeply moved than he had been for years, the strangeness of his own feelings paralyzed his action. But the hand to which Lina clung grew cold in her grasp, and over his face stole an expression of sadness, the more touching because so foreign to its usual apathy.
"Father--oh, my heart breaks with the word--are you indeed my father?"
cried Lina, lifting her pale face upward and sweeping her hair back with a desperate motion of the hand.
"Poor child--poor child!" muttered the old man compa.s.sionately.
"What can I do? what shall I do? It will kill me! It will kill us both.
Oh, Ralph, Ralph, if I had but died yesterday!" cried the poor girl, attempting to rise, but falling back again with a fresh burst of grief.
The old man stood gazing to harden his heart--striving to compose the unusual tremor of his nerves, but all in vain. Sorrow, regret, and something almost like remorse smote him to the soul, for he had once been a man of strong pa.s.sions, and the ice of his selfishness again broken up, the turbid waters rose and swelled in his bosom, with a power that all the force of habit could not resist. He bent down and lifted the girl from his feet, trembling slightly, and with a touch of pity in his voice.
"It is useless and foolish to take any misfortune in this manner, child."
"Child!" Lina shuddered at the word. She shrunk away from his hand, arose without his help, and staggered backward with a feeling of unutterable repulsion.
He saw the quiver of pain in her features, and his soul hardened once more. She had not met the feeling of tenderness, so new, and, for the moment, so exquisite to himself, and it withered away like a hot-house blossom.
"This is a new and strange relation to us both," he said, seating himself, and regarding her gravely. "Of course it involves many important and painful questions. Up to this day you have been to Mrs.
Harrington and myself a daughter in everything but the name!"
Lina wrung her hands, wildly moaning: "That name! Oh, heavens! how can I bear that name unless he should have given it to me. Now, now--just as it sounded so sweet, it separates us for ever. This unholy name of child!"
General Harrington moved in his chair with a gesture of annoyance, but Lina, growing still more impa.s.sioned, came toward him, wringing her small hands impetuously.
"You are my father--G.o.d forgive you! But there is yet another to curse or bless me with her claims--where and whom is my mother? Is Mrs.
Harrington indeed the parent she has always seemed to me?"
The General waved his hand with a dissenting gesture.
"Do not question me upon a subject that must be painful to us both. This is no time to answer you."
"No time, when you uproot every hope of my life and present a future black with improbable things? Up to this day, that dear lady was enough.
I had no desire to ask about father or mother. They told me I was an orphan"s destiny, and overlooked by all the world, if the dear ones under this roof only loved me. I had no other place on earth, and now, what am I?--an impostor, cast upon the charity of the dear lady my birth has wronged."
General Harrington arose, and advancing toward Lina, took her hands in his. The poor little hands quivered like wounded birds in his clasp, and she lifted her eyes with a piteous and pleading look that no human heart could have withstood.
"Ah! you are trying me? It isn"t true?" she said, with a gleam of hope and hysterical sobs.
"No! it is all real, far too real, Lina! Do not deceive yourself. I would not wound you thus for an aimless experiment. You are indeed my child!"
"Your child, really--really your own child? Oh, I cannot understand it!
Ralph--my brother, Ralph!"
Lina started as if some new pang had struck her, and then drew away her hands with a gesture of pa.s.sionate grief.
"Ralph, my own brother, and older than I am, for he is older--oh, this is terrible."
"You will see," said General Harrington, speaking in a composed voice, that seemed like a mockery of her pa.s.sionate accents--"you will see by this how necessary it is that what I have told you should be kept secret from my wife and child. Your peculiar relations with my son rendered it imperative. I have intrusted you with a secret of terrible importance.
You can imagine what the consequences would be, were your relationship to myself made known."
"I will not tell. Oh! thank G.o.d, I need not tell!" cried Lina wildly; "but then, Ralph?--what will he think--how will he act? Ralph, Ralph--my brother! Oh, if I had but died on the threshold of this room!"
"Be comforted," said the General, in his usual bland voice, for the scene had begun to weary him. "You will soon get used to the new position of things."
"But who will explain to Ralph? What can I say? how can I act? He will not know."
"Ralph is a very young man. He will go into the world, and see more of society. This is his first fancy--I will take care that he is more occupied. The world is full of beautiful women."
Lina turned deadly pale. The cruel speech struck her to the soul.
The old man saw it, but worldly philosophy made him ruthless. "I will crush the boy out of her heart," he said, inly, "to be rude here is to be merciful."
"You must forget Ralph," he said, and his voice partook of the hardness of his thoughts.
"I cannot forget," answered the girl, with a faint moan, "but I will strive to remember that--that he is my brother!"