Ralph took Lina"s poor little hand from its rest on the counterpane, and, with a touch of his old tenderness, was about to press his lips upon it; but a bitter memory seized him, and he dropped it, murmuring, "Poor child, poor child, it is a hard wish, but G.o.d had been merciful if this stillness were, indeed, death!"
A pang of tender sorrow ran through Lina"s apparently lifeless frame, as a broken lily is disturbed by the wind, but she had no strength even for a sob; she heard his footsteps as he went out, but they sounded afar off, and, when all was still, she fell into total unconsciousness.
Then the woman who had received Ralph and Agnes came in from an adjoining room, and, bending down, listened for the breath that had just been suspended; when satisfied that the poor sufferer was totally unconscious, she turned with a fierce look upon Agnes.
"Now, Agnes, tell me the meaning of this intrusion. How dare you bring that young man here without my permission?"
"I brought him, madam, because you were resolved to leave my share of the compact half-performed. Did I not warn you in the beginning that his alienation from this girl must be complete? Nothing would convince him that she was utterly lost, but the sight he has just witnessed. It was a dangerous experiment, but I have conquered with it."
"And for what purpose? I tell you, girl, all this craft and perseverance is exhausted for nothing. You are constantly crossing my purposes, and only to defeat yourself in the end."
"It is useless reasoning in this fashion," answered Agnes, insolently; "half-confidences always lead to confusion. The truth is, madam, you have not at any time really studied my interests; there is something beyond it all that I have had no share in from the first. I have been frank and above-board, while you are all mystery. My love for the young gentleman below was confessed the moment my own heart became conscious of it. Nothing but his lingering trust in this frail thing kept back all the response to that love that I can desire. This visit has utterly uprooted that faith. The way is clear now. Another month, and you shall see if I am defeated."
The woman smiled derisively.
"Poor fool," she said, "a single sweep of my hand--or a word from my lips, and all your romantic dreams are dashed away. I have separated the miserable girl from her lover to gratify the wildest delusion that ever entered a human brain. This very night I sent for you, that this game of cross-purposes might have an end. The confidence you have so often asked for, would have been yours but for this rash introduction of the young man into a house he should never have seen."
"Give me that confidence now, and it may avail something!" answered Agnes, always insolent and disrespectful to the woman before her; "that I have some of your precious blood in my veins, you have taken plenty of opportunities to impress upon me, but it shall not prevent my seeking happiness in my own way!"
"Then you are resolved to entice this young man into a marriage, Agnes?"
"I am resolved that he shall desire it as much as myself."
Again Zillah covered the girl with her scornful glances.
"I tell you, girl," she broke forth pa.s.sionately, "this is a subject that you shall not dare to trifle with. I desire you to leave General Harrington"s house; it is no safe home for you. Obey me, and, in a little time all the fragments of my legacy shall be yours."
"I should fancy those fragments were pretty well used up, if all the finery in this house is paid for," said Agnes, with a scornful laugh.
"Even as a speculation, my own project is the best."
"Then you are determined to stay in the house with this young man?"
"Why, am I not well protected, and is it not the most natural thing in the world? Mrs. Harrington has lost her companion--I fill her place.
Then, there is the precious old chambermaid; she might have more dangerous people in the house than I am."
"True," muttered Zillah, thoughtfully. "Well, girl, take your own way a little longer; but, remember, I must have a promise that no engagement shall be made with Ralph Harrington without my previous knowledge. A few weeks, Agnes, will bring our affairs to a crisis--when you and I shall be all-powerful or nothing. As for this wild--but hush!"
Zillah pointed warningly toward the bed, where Lina was struggling into consciousness again. "Are you better, love?" she inquired, gently bending over the pale form.
But Lina faintly turned away her head, without even an attempt at speech.
Taking advantage of the moment, Agnes left the chamber, and glided down into the room where Ralph sat waiting, hara.s.sed with painful thoughts.
He did not notice Agnes as she came gliding up the room, and took her place on the sofa by his side; but directly the clasp of soft fingers on his hand, which fell listlessly on the cushion, made him look up, and the large, compa.s.sionate eyes of Agnes Barker looked into his.
Unconsciously he clasped the fingers that had sought his. "How is she now? I am sure that you were kind to her, poor young thing."
Agnes did not answer; but, as he looked up, astonished at her silence, the sight of her dark eyes flooded with tears, and a broken sob that struggled up from her bosom, took him by surprise. In all his acquaintance with her, he had never seen Agnes shed a tear till that moment.
"You are ready to cry," he said, gratefully. "Heaven knows a better reason for tears never existed--poor, lost girl!"
"You give me too much credit," said Agnes, in a low voice; "from my soul I pity the unhappy young creature up-stairs--but, indeed, indeed I envy her, too!"
"Envy her?"
"Indeed, yes, that so much love--such heavenly forgiveness can outlive her fault; that she has even now the power to reject the compa.s.sion withheld from deeper and purer feelings in others. Oh, yes, Ralph Harrington, it is envy more than anything else that fills my eyes with tears."
"Agnes!" exclaimed the young man, breathlessly.
The girl bent her head, and made a faint effort to withdraw her hand from his tightened clasp. Directly Ralph relinquished the hand slowly, and arose.
"Miss Barker, you pity me. You feel compa.s.sion for the tenacity of affection which clings around its object even in ruin. I understand this, and am grateful."
Agnes clenched the rejected hand in noiseless pa.s.sion, but Ralph only saw the great tears that fell into her lap. He stood a moment irresolute, and then placed himself again by her side.
"Do not weep, Miss Barker; you only make my unhappiness more complete!"
He looked up, and again their eyes met.
"If it were so, you can at least give me pity in exchange for pity!" she said, with gentle humility; "faith to the faithless cannot forbid this to me."
Ralph was silent; in the tumult of his thoughts he forgot to answer, and that moment Zillah entered the room.
CHAPTER LXX.
MABEL HARRINGTON AND HER SON.
Ben Benson was never at home now; he went into the woods daily to snare partridges, and set box-traps for rabbits, he said; and the inmates of General Harrington"s mansion were too sad and disheartened even for smiles, at the idea of rabbits or partridges on New York island. Indeed, the old fellow was too unhappy for his usual avocations. He would not force himself to sit down at his nets, or touch the carpenter"s tools with which the boat-house was garnished. A strange belief haunted him night and day, that Lina was somewhere in the wood, frozen to death, and buried in the snow drifts--or worse, perhaps, had fallen through some air-hole in the ice, and perished, calling in vain for help! The idea that she had deliberately left her home, never found a place in his belief for an instant.
Sometimes, in these wanderings, the old seaman saw Mabel Harrington taking her own solitary way through the woods, but he had no wish to address her; and, if she pa.s.sed near him, would shrink behind some tree, or pretend to be busy with his traps; for the mere sight of her face, rigid and stern with a continued strain of thought, was enough to strike him mute.
Thus it was that Mabel appeared to her family now. The strength and the sunshine had departed from beneath that roof, and a dull, heavy depression lay everywhere about her. General Harrington rather made the old mansion a convenience than a home; half his time was spent at the club-house. He had of late taken rooms at one of those aristocratic up-town hotels, so foreign in all their appointments, that they might as well be in the Boulevards of Paris as in New York, and often remained in them all night; thus, without any apparent abandonment of his wife, he in reality made the separation between them more complete than it had yet been.
Did Mabel never inquire of herself the reason of all this? Alas! it is difficult to say what anxiety or idea fixed itself uppermost in that disturbed mind. The period was one of continued and heavy depression with her. She had ceased to struggle with her own heart, or with the dead, heavy weight of misery that settled each hour colder and more drearily about her life. She took no interest in the household, but left everything to the management of Agnes Barker. The very presence of the young woman was oppressive to her, yet so drearily had her high spirit yielded itself to the one numbing thought of James Harrington"s absence, that she had no power even to repel this repulsion, much less cast its object off.
For a time, Ralph had broken up the monotony of this dead life, with his wild conjectures and bitter complaints. He spoke of his half-brother in wrath the more stern and deep, that his love for him had once been so full of tenderness. He was like a man whose old religious faith being once uprooted, believes that no other can exist, and that the Deity is unstable. In his wrath against this brother--in his weak distrust of Lina, the young man had recklessly cast away the brightest jewel of his nature, because they appeared faithless; he believed that all humanity was frail. Alas! when such gems of the soul drop away in youth, it is only with hard experience and keen suffering that they can be gathered back from the depths of life again.
But, during the last few days, Ralph had seen little of his mother. His interview with Lina, and his promise of silence, had effected this. The dead certainty that fell upon him of her utter unworthiness, had buried all the fiery pa.s.sions of his heart into a smouldering desire for revenge on the man who had smitten her down from the altar of his esteem. Formerly he had raved, and argued, and out-run his own belief of her faithlessness--hoping, poor fellow, that out of all this storm some proof would be wrung that his suspicions wronged her. His mother"s sweet attempts at defence--her broken-hearted efforts to explain away the disgraceful appearances that hung around the departure of Harrington and her protege at the same time, only exasperated him. He wanted her to condemn his suspicions--contradict, trample on them. He would have gloried in any injustice against himself, if she had only stood up stoutly against his bitter suspicions. But Mabel was too truthful for this. The proud heart recoiled in her bosom, as from a blow, at every harsh word against either Harrington or her adopted daughter. The strong sense of justice, which was her finest attribute, kept her from those impetuous bursts of defence, which a single gleam of doubt would have brought vividly to her lips.
Mabel did not for an instant believe in the coa.r.s.e interpretation which others might have given to the elopement; had that been possible, the keenest of her pain might have been dulled by contempt. No, no! The worst that she thought was that Harrington, for some inexplicable reason, had withdrawn Lina from her home to marry her in private; but this was enough. It had broken up that confidence, unexpressed, but always a holy principle in both, which had so long held those two souls together, spite of everything that ought to have kept them apart, and did keep them apart, completely as the most rigid moralist could have demanded.
But we suffer as often for our feelings as our actions; and, in the bare fact that a woman like Mabel Harrington--so capable of deep feeling, so rich in all those higher qualities that ripen to perfection only in the warm atmosphere of love--had married a man whom she never could love, lay a bitter reason for her unhappiness; the one sin that had woven its iron thread through what seemed to others the golden coil of her life.
Mabel saw all this; for years the knowledge of her own rash act had coiled the snake around her heart, which was eating away its life, had been the shadow around her footsteps which nothing could sweep away, not even her own will. She was a slave, the slave of her own deadly sin; for a deadly sin it is which links two unloving hearts together, even in so brief a period of eternity as this world. And Mabel was too good, too great, too kindly of heart to be the bond slave of one sin forever and ever, to feel her soul eternally dragged back by the chain and ball which she had fastened to it in one rash moment of her early youth. Had she been otherwise, some thought of escape would have presented itself to a mind so full of strength and vivid imagination as hers. On every hand the law, and society itself, held out temptations, and pointed to the way by which she might cast off her bonds, and, as thousands do, escape the penalty of one rash act by a cowardly defiance of the laws of G.o.d, under the mean shelter of human legislation.
In a country where venal statesmen make "marriage vows as false as dicers" oaths," by reducing a solemn sacrament into a miserable compact, Mabel Harrington might have escaped the evil of her own act, and taken a dastardly refuge in the law, but the thought had never entered her mind.