"At first, I intended to introduce you into this house, and marry you to James Harrington--thus ensuring a high position to my child, depriving Mabel of a protector, and sweeping away General Harrington"s sources of wealth at the same time. Then, while stripped of the luxuries he loves so well, my h.o.a.rded gold would have paved my way back to his favor; but you, ever perverse, ever disobedient, became infatuated with this boy, Mabel Harrington"s son, and thus defeated a plan that this brain had been weaving for years. You had stolen the book, that was something; but your perverse fancy rendered new complications necessary, and, to keep you quiet, I was compelled to c.u.mber myself with that poor girl, to lie, and almost betray myself.
"Be quiet, and listen. The book was incomplete, but I had studied Mabel Harrington"s writing well in my youth; she had left blank pages here and there in her journal; _I_ filled them up; he read them; all would have gone well--she would have been degraded, turned out of doors, but for the mad generosity of James Harrington. I listened, and saw that all was lost; that the journal would be given up to him, and the falsehood of those pages made known. I tore them out, and with them other pages that have since served a good purpose. Listen, still, for I have no time.
To-day, James Harrington came to the house in my absence, and had a conversation with Lina; what it was, I do not know, but it may put us in this woman"s power. Before morning, this battle must be over."
"Great heavens!" exclaimed Agnes, with a fresh burst of pa.s.sion, so absorbed by her own thoughts that she disregarded the purport of Zillah"s words. "_His_ child, _his_ sister, and the tool of a slave,--a n.o.ble burden this, to carry on through life!"
She arose and walked toward the door, pale as death, and with her teeth clenched.
"Where are you going?" inquired Zillah.
"Into the cold, where I can breathe. Do not speak. Let me go!"
"But not down stairs--not into her room!"
"I tell you," answered the girl, hoa.r.s.e with pa.s.sion, "I tell you that it is air, s.p.a.ce, a storm, a whirlwind that I want; nothing else will give back the breath to my lungs!"
She went out fiercely, like the tempest her evil heart evoked.
For an instant the woman Zillah stood still, looking after her; then she rushed to the door, and called out in a loud whisper,
"Agnes, Agnes, come back!"
But the call was too late. Like a black shadow, Agnes Barker had pa.s.sed out of the house.
Zillah reentered the room, looking so white that you would not have known the face again. She turned the gas full upon her, and, taking a bowl from the cabinet, poured some colored liquid into it. She placed the bowl upon the floor, and, kneeling by it, began to lave her hands, neck, and face in the liquid, leaving them of a nutty darkness. Then she opened the window, flung out the dye she had used, and proceeded to put on a front of woolly hair, tangled with grey, over which a Madras "kerchief was carefully folded. One by one she removed her rich garments, and directly stood out in dress, gait, and action, the colored chambermaid who had for months infested Mabel Harrington"s home.
The woman went out from the room, locking the door after her. She must have been very pale, though the color upon her face revealed no trace of this white terror; but her limbs shook, her knees knocked together, and her wild eyes grew fearful as she paused in the hall, looking up and down, to see if it was empty, before she moved away.
The moment Zillah left her chamber door, all became dark in the hall, for she concealed the light in pa.s.sing, and moved away as her daughter had done, still and black, like a retreating cloud.
When Zillah"s face was again revealed, it was far down in the coal vaults under the house. She was upon her knees, filling a small iron furnace with lumps of charcoal, which she dropped one by one on a handful of embers that glowed in the bottom, as she had found them after late use in the laundry. As she dropped the coal, Zillah looked fearfully about from time to time; and once, when a mouse scampered across the floor close by her, she started up with a smothered shriek; but, even in her terror, blew out the lamp, which rattled in the darkness some moments after, notwithstanding the efforts that she made to still her shaking hands.
At last she struck a match, and kindled the light once more, and fell to work again. A minute sufficed to heap the little furnace, and a faint crackling at the bottom gave proof that the living embers underneath were taking effect. When satisfied of this, she put out her lamp, took up the furnace, and, though it was still hot from recent use, placed one hand over the draft, that the fire might not ignite too rapidly, and crept out of the cellar. Any person awake in the house, might have traced the dark progress of this woman by a faint crackle, and the sparks that shot now and then up through the black ma.s.s of coal, which was kindling so fast, that the hand which she still kept upon the draft was almost blistered.
She moved along the hall, noiselessly and rapid as death. The sparks that leaped up from the furnace, gave all the light she had, and more than she desired; for many a time before had she threaded the same pa.s.sage, rehearsing the terrible deed she was enacting. She paused directly in front of Mabel Harrington"s boudoir, and laid her hand upon the latch without a moment"s search, as if it had been broad daylight.
She did not pause in the boudoir, but stole through, shuddering beneath the pale light of that alabaster lamp, as if it had distilled poison over her.
There was no stir in the chamber when she entered it. The low regular breathing of some one asleep upon the bed which stood entirely in shadow, was all the sound that reached her when she paused to listen.
From without she could hear nothing, not even the sharp whisperings of the wind; for that day her own hands had calked the windows with singular care, and besides that, rich curtains m.u.f.fled them from floor to ceiling.
Zillah dared not look toward the bed, but with the stealthy movements of a panther she crept to the fire-place sealed up with a marble slab, and placing the furnace on the hearth, slunk away from the chamber and through the boudoir, closing both doors cautiously behind her.
After that, she staggered away into the darkness.
CHAPTER LXXIX
UNDER THE ICE.
Agnes Barker rushed into the cold night so wrathfully that even the shadow that followed her seemed vital with hate. On they walked together--the girl and this weird shadow--blackening the snow with momentary darkness as they pa.s.sed; the one tossing out her arms with unconscious gesticulation, the other mocking her, grotesquely, from the crusted snow.
She descended from the eminence upon which the house stood, into the hollow where Lina and Ralph had paused on the first day of their confessed love. Over the spot made holy by the feelings of this beautiful epoch, she trod her way in mad haste, reckless of the cold, which, but for the fiery strife within, must have pierced her to the vitals; Zillah had aroused her from sleep but half-robed--her dress had been loosened as she lay down, and the sharp wind lifted particles of snow with every gust, sweeping them into her bosom and over her uncovered head. Neither shawl nor mantle shielded her, but thus all exposed as she had risen from her sleep, she rushed on, mad as a wild animal which save in form, for that fatal moment, she was.
The snow upon the hills, drifted its white carpet out upon the Hudson, and even in the day time a practised eye only could tell where the sh.o.r.e ended, and the water commenced. Agnes had no motive for crossing the river, and, for a time, she kept along the bank, going nearer and nearer to Ben Benson"s boat-house, but perfectly regardless of that or anything else.
As she came out from among the evergreens close by Ben"s retreat, a light, gleaming through its window, made her halt and swerve toward the river. Any vestige of humanity was hateful to her then, and she was glad to plunge into the cold winds which swept down the channel of the stream, that, lacking all other opponents, she might wrestle with them.
Out she went upon the sheeted river. It was white some distance from the sh.o.r.e, but in the centre lay a s.p.a.ce of blue ice, with a surface like polished steel, and a deep, swift current rushing beneath. This frozen channel took an unnatural darkness from the gleam of snow on either side. Toward this black line the girl made her way, trampling down the snow like an enraged lioness, and laughing back a defiance to the winds as they drifted cutting particles of snow into her face and through the loose tresses of her hair.
It was in her face, this keen wind, beating against her, and closing the eyes which rage had already rendered blind. She left the snow and struck out upon the ice. That instant a cloud swept over the moon. Her shadow forsook her then--even her shadow! A step, a hoa.r.s.e plunge, and a piercing cry rushed up from that break in the ice, a cry that cut through the air sharper than an arrow, piercing far and wide through the cold night! Then the moon came out, and revealed a ghastly face low down in the blackness, and two hands grasping the ragged edges of the ice, slipping away--clutching out again, and still again, so fiercely, that drops of blood fell after them into the dark current beneath. Still the white face struggled upward through ma.s.ses of wet hair, and the baffled hands groped about fiercer, but more aimlessly, till both were forced away beneath the ice, sending back a shriek so sharp and terrible that it might have aroused the dead!--no, not the dead, for up in that stately mansion, frowning among the snows a little way off, a human soul had just departed--nor paused to look back, though the existence, which was its own great sin, followed close, till both stood face to face before the G.o.d they had offended!
But, in the stillness of the night, and in the depths of his honest sleep, Ben Benson heard the cry. He started from his bed, hurriedly dressed himself, and went out in great alarm, listening, as he went, for a renewal of that fierce cry; but, though he reached the ice, and bent over the yawning hole, nothing but the wail of the winds, and the rush of waters underneath, met his ear. Still, as he peered down into the darkness, a human face weltered up through the waters. Instantly, Ben threw himself upon the ice, plunged his arms downward, and rose staggering to his feet. In the grasp of his strong hands, he drew a human form half-way upon the ice. He had paused for breath, but horror gave him double strength; and, gathering the pale form in his arms, he laid it upon the ice, parting the long, dark hair reverently with his hands, and leaving the marble face bare in the moonlight.
"Lord a mercy on us!" he exclaimed, stooping over the cold form. "It"s the young governess, dead as a stone! How on arth did she get here? Not a purpose, I hope to mercy; it wasn"t a purpose. Poor critter, if it hadn"t a been that the ice broke just here in the eddy, her poor body would a been miles down stream "fore now. Instead of that, she was sucked under, and has been a whirling and a whirling the Lord of heaven only knows how long--how long--Ben Benson, be you crazy? Wasn"t it her scream as woke you up? Ma" be there"s a spark of life yet, and you a talking over her here. Go home, you old heathen; go home at "onst. Poor young critter, I didn"t like you over much, but now I"d give ten years of my old life to be sarten there was a drop of warm blood in this little heart!"
Ben knelt over the governess as he muttered those feeling words, and laid his great kind hand over the heart, but the touch made even his strong nerves recoil.
"It ain"t a beatin"--it doesn"t stir--she seems to be a freezing now under my hand. But, I"ll try. G.o.d have mercy on the poor thing! I"ll try."
Ben took the body in his arms, and carried it to the boat-house; but with all his earnestness and strength, he had no power to give back life, where it had been so rudely quenched. Pure or not, the blood in those veins was frozen to ice, and though Ben heaped up wood on his hearth till the flames roared up the wide-throated chimney, there was not heat enough to thaw a single drop. At last, Ben gave up his own exertions, and laid the dead girl reverently on his own couch; kneeling meekly by her side, and then he began repeating the Lord"s Prayer over her again and again: for, when the boatman was in great trouble he always went back, like a little child, to the prayer learned at his mother"s knee.
CHAPTER Lx.x.x.
WHO WAS LINA?
The sound of sleigh-bells stopping suddenly and a sharp knock at his own door, aroused Ben from his mournful prayers. He got up and turned the latch. To his astonishment, it was broad daylight. The persons who had aroused him were James and Ralph Harrington.
"Ben," said Ralph, stepping eagerly forward, "tell us--repeat to James what you refused to tell Lina. On your life, on your honor, dear old Ben: tell him whose child she is."
"All that you know about her. I am sure there is something you can explain. If you ever loved her or care for me, speak out now. You said that she had gone off because you refused to tell her something."
Ben had been praying in the presence of death, and there were both power and pathos in his voice as he clasped those rough hands and said:
"As the great G.o.d aloft is his witness! Ralph Harrington, Ben Benson spoke nothing but the truth when he said that ere."
"But you will tell us, for her dear sake, you will tell us."
"Yes, Master Ralph I will. Jist ask what you want to know, and I"ll tell it."
"Who was she, Ben? I"ve asked my mother often, but she always answered, that the child, while a mere infant, was seen one day wandering on the banks of the river, quite alone. At night, she came up to the house, and was found asleep on the door-step--from that day to this, she has never been inquired after, but dropped into the family naturally as a pet-bird. I loved her the better for having no friends--for belonging entirely to us."