Like most extravagant men, the General, under the weight of an enormous gambling debt, became excessively parsimonious in his household, and talked loudly of retrenchment and home reforms. In this new mood, Agnes Barker found little difficulty in having several of the old servants discharged, before Mabel left her sick room. Indeed this girl, with her velvety tread and fawning attentions, was the only one of his household with whom General Harrington was not for the time in ill-humor.
With all his self-possession, this old man was a moral coward. He knew that James Harrington was the only person to whom he could look for help--and yet the very thought of applying to him, made the gall rise bitterly in his bosom. To save time, he gave notes for the debt, and made no change in his life, save that he was away from home now almost constantly--a circ.u.mstance which the members of his household scarcely remarked in their new-found happiness.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE NOTE ON THE BREAKFAST TABLE.
One morning General Harrington came forth from his bed chamber, hara.s.sed and anxious. He had slept little during the night, and the weariness of age would make itself felt, after a season of excitement like that through which he had pa.s.sed.
He found the Sevres cup on his table, filled with strong, hot coffee, and a m.u.f.fin delicately toasted, upon the salver of frosted silver, by its side. Indeed, as he entered the room, a flutter of garments reached him from the door, and he muttered, with a smile, as he looked in an opposite mirror.
"Faith, the little girl is very kind; I must think of this." He sat down and drank off the coffee, rejecting the m.u.f.fin with a faint expression of disgust. As he lifted it from the salver, a note, lying half across the edge, as if it had lodged there when the papers on the table were pushed aside, attracted his attention. He was about to cast it on one side, when a singular perfume came across him with a sickening sweetness. s.n.a.t.c.hing at the note, he stared an instant at the seal, and tore it open.
The color left General Harrington"s cheek. As he read he started up, crushing the note in his hand, while he rang the bell.
"Did you ring, General. I was going by, and so answered the bell," said Agnes Barker, presenting herself.
"Yes, I rang, certainly I rang--but where are the servants? Where is the woman who takes charge of my rooms?"
"The chambermaid? oh, she went away yesterday. I believe Mrs. Harrington has not supplied her place yet."
"Who brought up my coffee? who arranged my rooms yesterday and this morning?"
Agnes blushed, and cast down her eyes in pretty confusion. "The new cook has not learned your ways, sir; there was no one else, and I"----
"You are very kind, Miss Agnes--another time I shall not forget it: but, tell me, here is a note lying on my table near the breakfast tray; how long has it been there--who brought it--where did it come from?"
Agnes looked up, with the most innocent face in the world.
"Indeed, sir, I cannot tell. A good many papers lay on the table, which I carefully put aside; but no sealed note, that I remember."
"This is strange," muttered the General, walking up and down, stopping to look in his coffee-cup, as if still athirst; but waving her away when Agnes filled it again, and would have pressed it upon him.
"Remove these things, Miss Agnes, if you please--and order some one to have the carriage ready. I must go to the city at once."
Agnes took up the salver, and moved away, hesitating, by the door, as if she wished to speak.
"Well," said the General, a little impatiently, "is there anything I can do?"
"The chambermaid, sir, I dare say Mrs. Harrington has no choice; and I should be so obliged if you permitted my old nurse to have the place.
She is very capable, and I am lonely without her."
"A colored woman, is it?" asked the General, hastily.
"Yes, from the South. She is all I have left."
"Of course, let her come, if she knows her duty. I will mention it to Mrs. Harrington."
"Thank you," said the girl, gliding softly away. "It will make me so happy to have some one in the house that loves me."
The General answered this attack on his sympathies, with an impatient wave of the hand. He seemed greatly disturbed--and, as the door closed, threw himself into a chair, with something like a groan.
"Can this be true? Lina, poor little Lina, can this be real? and Ralph, my own son. Great Heavens, it is terrible!"
He swept a hand across his forehead, distractedly. Then, starting up, as if stung to action by some agonizing thought, he began to pace up and down the room with a degree of excitement very unusual to him. At length he paused by the window, and, opening the note, again read it over and over with great anxiety. At last he went to a desk standing in a corner of the room, and opening one secret drawer after another, drew forth a bundle of faded letters. As he untied them, the identical perfume that hung about the note he had been reading, stole around him; and, turning paler and paler, as if the odor made him faint, he began to read the letters, one after another, comparing them first with the note, and then with a key to the cypher in which they were all written, that he took from another compartment of the desk.
At last he drew a deep breath, and wearily folded the papers up.
"This is plausible, and it may be true," he said, locking his hands on the table. "The persistent malice of the thing, confirms its probability. She was capable of it--capable of anything; and yet I do think the poor creature loved me. If I could but see her, and learn all the facts from her own lips. Yet the note is better evidence. Who, except us two, ever learned this cypher? How else could she have known these particulars about poor Lina? But, this is terrible. I did not think anything could shake me so! Ralph, my son Ralph, I must speak with him----No, no! Let me think; it"s better that Lina alone should know it."
The old man arose--tottered towards the bell, and rang it, nervelessly, as if the silver k.n.o.b were a hand he loathed to touch.
Agnes answered the summons, but even her self-possession gave way as she saw the General"s face, pale and almost convulsed, turned upon her.
"I have ordered the carriage--it will be at the door in a few moments, sir," she stammered forth.
"Send it back to the stables: I shall not go out. The morning has clouded over."
Agnes glanced at the sunshine pouring its silvery warmth through the library window, but she did not venture to speak.
"Go," said General Harrington, in a suppressed voice, "go find your pupil, and say that I wish to speak with her a moment."
"Miss Lina--is it Miss Lina I am to call?" stammered Agnes, taken by surprise.
"It is Miss Lina that I wish to see; have the goodness to call her."
The courteous but peremptory voice in which this was said, left Agnes no excuse for delay; and, though racked with curiosity, she was obliged to depart on her errand.
The General sat down the moment he was alone--and shrouding his forehead, lost himself in painful thought.
The door opened, and Lina came in, smiling like a sunbeam, and rosy with a.s.sured happiness. "Did you send for me, General?" she said, drawing close the chair in which the old man sat. "Is there something I can do that will give you pleasure. I hope so!"
The General looked up; his eyes were heavy--his face bore an expression she had never witnessed in it till then. He looked on her a moment, and she saw the mist melting away from his glance, and it seemed to her that his proud lip began to quiver.
"Have I offended you?" inquired Lina, with gentle regret. "What have I done?"
The old man arose, and laying a hand on each of her shoulders, bore heavily upon her, as he perused her face with an earnestness that made her tremble. He lifted one hand at last, and sweeping the heavy curls back from her brow, gazed sadly and earnestly down into her eyes. Those soft blue eyes, that filled with tears beneath the sad pathos of his gaze.
"Lina!" His hand began to tremble among her curls. He bent his forehead down, and rested it on her shoulders sighing heavily.
"Tell me--do tell me what I have done," said the gentle girl, weeping; "or, is it Ralph? Oh, sir, he cannot have intended to wound you!"
"Ralph!" exclaimed the General, starting up, with a flush of the brow.
"Do not speak of him; never let me hear his name on your lips again!"