"But oh, do let me have it! do, please; you can draw another, you know,"
coaxed Miss Felice.
"Of what possible use can that portrait be to you, Miss Leonard?"
"Well, it"s not for me, it"s for a friend. Do oblige me, Miss Randall.
Mr. Randall wants it so dreadfully."
"Mr. Randall! who is he?"
"The author, the poet that everybody is talking about. He saw it last night with Jennie, and took a desperate fancy to it, and, what"s more, wants to be introduced to you."
"I would rather be excused," said Georgia, with some of her old _hauteur_. "I do not like to refuse you, Miss Leonard, and if any other picture----"
"Oh, any other won"t do; I must have this. There, I shall keep it, and you can draw a dozen like it any time. And every one would not refuse to be introduced to Mr. Randall, I can tell you," said Miss Felice, half inclined to be angry; "he is immensely rich and ever so handsome, and as clever as ever he can be, and most young ladies would consider it an honor to be acquainted with him."
Georgia bowed slightly, and made an impatient motion to pa.s.s on.
"Well, I am going to keep it, Miss Randall," said Miss Felice, half inquiringly.
"As you please, Miss Leonard. Good-morning," and Georgia swept on to the school-room, and Miss Felice ran to give the poet the picture, and tell him their haughty governess refused the introduction.
CHAPTER XX.
FOUND AND LOST.
"There are words of deeper sorrow Than the wail above the dead."
"An eagle with a broken wing, A harp with many a broken string."
It was a pleasant morning in early spring. The sunshine lay in broad sheets of golden light over the fields, and tinted the tree-tops with a yellow l.u.s.ter. The fresh morning air came laden with the fragrance of sweet spring flowers, and the musical chirping of many birds from the neighboring forest was borne to Georgia"s ears, as she stood on the veranda, her thoughts far away.
You would scarcely have recognized the flashing-eyed, blooming, wild-hearted Georgia Darrell in this cold, stately, stone-like Miss Randall, with cheek and brow cold and colorless as Parian marble, and the dark, mournful eyes void of light and sparkle.
It could scarcely be expected but that she would sink under the dreary monotony of her life here, so completely different in every way from what she had been accustomed to; and of late, she had fallen into a lifeless lethargy, from which nothing seemed able to arouse her. There were times, it was true, when, for an instant, she would awake, and her very soul would cry out under the galling chains of her intolerable bondage; but these flashes of her old spirit were few and far between, and were always followed by a la.s.situde, a languor, a dull, spiritless gloom, under which life, and flesh, and health seemed alike deserting her. Her "Hagar in the Wilderness" was finished, and she commenced drawing another, but lacked the energy to finish it.
It was an unnatural life for Georgia--the once wild, fiery, spirited Georgia, and it was probably a year or two, of such existence, would have found her in a lunatic asylum or in her grave, had not an unlooked-for discovery given a new spring to her dormant energies.
Nearly half a year had now elapsed since that sorrowful night when she had fled from home--six of the darkest months in all Georgia"s life. For the first four she had heard no news of any of those she had left, not even of him who, sleeping or waking, was ever uppermost in her thoughts.
But one morning, at breakfast, Mr. Leonard had read aloud that our "gifted young follow-citizen, Mr. Richmond Wildair, had returned from abroad, and having re-entered the political world, which he was so well fitted to adorn, had been elected to the legislature, where he had already distinguished himself as a statesman of extraordinary merit and profound wisdom, notwithstanding his extreme youth." Then there was another brief paragraph, in which a mysterious allusion was made to some dark, domestic calamity that had befallen the young statesman; but before Mr. Leonard could finish it he was startled to see the governess make an effort to rise from her seat and fall heavily back in her chair.
Then there was a cry that Miss Randall was fainting, and a gla.s.s of water was held to her lips, and when, in a moment, she was her own calm, cold self again, she arose and hastily left the room.
But from that day Georgia made a point every morning, with feverish interest, to read the political papers in search of that one loved name.
And in every one of them it continually met her eye, lauded to the skies by his friends and followers, and loaded with the fiercest abuse by his enemies. There were long, eloquent speeches of his, glowing, fiery, living, impa.s.sioned bursts of eloquence, that sent a thrill to the heart of all who heard him, and swept away all obstacles before the force of its own matchless logic.
A great question was then in agitation, and the young orator, as the champion of humanity and equal rights, flung himself into the thickest of the political _melee_ and was soon the reigning demi-G.o.d of his party. It was well known he was soon to be sent as a Representative to Congress, and the knowing ones predicted for him the highest honors the political strife could yield--perhaps at some future day the Presidency of the United States. His name and fame were already resounding through the land, and morning, noon, and night, Mr. Leonard, who was the fiercest of politicians, was talking and raving of the matchless talents of this rising star.
And Georgia, how did she listen to all this. All she had hitherto endured seemed nothing in comparison to the anguish she felt in his evident utter forgetfulness of her. All the pride, and triumph, and exultation, she would have felt in his success was swallowed up in the misery of knowing she was forgotten--as completely forgotten as if she had never existed. And oh, the humiliation she felt, when in the papers of the opposition party, she saw _herself_ dragged in as a slur, a disgrace, in his private life. The sneering insinuations that the wife of Richmond Wildair had deserted him--had eloped--had been driven from home by his ill-treatment; _these_ were worse to her than death. She could almost fancy his cursing her in the bitterness of his heart when his eyes would fall on this, for having disgraced him as she had done.
On this morning, as she stood on the veranda, with a paper in her hand containing an unusually brilliant speech of the gifted young statesman, her thoughts wandering to the days long past when she had first known him, Miss Maggie came dancing out with sparkling eyes, and eagerly accosted her.
"Oh, Miss Randall! only think! papa is going to give a splendid dinner-party, and going to have lots of these political big-wigs here.
You know, I suppose, that they, or rather that Mr. Wildair, has gained that horrid question about something or other the papers have been making such a time about?"
"Yes," murmured the white lips, faintly.
"Well, papa"s been so dreadfully tickled about it, though why I can"t see, that he is going to give this dinner-party, and have lots of those great guns at it, and at their head Mr. Wildair himself, the greatest gun of the lot. Only think of that!"
Georgia had averted her head, and Miss Maggie did not see the deadly paleness that overspread her face, blanching even her very lips, at the words. There was no reply, and shaking back her curls coquettishly, that young lady went on:
"I"m just dying to see Mr. Wildair, you know, everybody is making such a fuss about him; and I do like famous men, of all things. They say he is young and handsome, but whether he is married or not I never can rightly discover; some of the papers say he was, and that he didn"t treat his wife well, and Mr. Brown from New York, who was here yesterday, says she committed suicide--isn"t that dreadful? But I don"t care; I"m bound to set my cap for him, and I guess _I_ can manage to get along with him. I should like to see the man would make me commit suicide, that"s all! But it may not be true, you know; these horrid papers tell the most shocking fibs about any one they don"t like. I wish d.i.c.k Curtis were here; he knows all about him, I"ve heard, but he hasn"t called for ever so many ages. Maybe I won"t blow him up when I see him, and then I"ll pardon him on condition that he tells me all about Mr. Wildair. He is going to be a senator one of these days, and a governor, and a president, and an amba.s.sador, and ever so many other nice things, and there is nothing I would like better than being Madame L"Amba.s.sadrice, and shining in foreign courts, though I _am_ the daughter of a red-hot republican. Ha!
ha! don"t I know how to build castles in Spain, Miss Randall? Poor dear Signor Popkins! what _would_ he say if he heard me?"
All this time Georgia had been standing as still and rigid, and coldly white as monumental marble, hearing as one hears not this tirade, which Miss Maggie delivered while dancing up and down the veranda like a living whirligig, too full of spirits to be still for an instant. All Georgia heard or realized of it was that Richmond was coming here--here!
under the same roof with herself. Her brain was giddy; a wild impulse came over her to fly, fly far away, to bury herself in the depths of the forest, where he could never find her or hear her name again.
Miss Maggie, having waited in vain for some remark from the governess, was turning away, with a muttered "How tiresome!" when Georgia laid her hand on her arm, and with a face that startled her companion, asked:
"When--when do they come?"
"Who? Dear me, Miss Randall, don"t look so ghastly! I declare you"re enough to scare a person into fits."
"Those--those--gentlemen."
"Oh, the dinner-party. Thursday week. Papa"s waiting till Mr. Wildair comes from Washington."
Georgia turned her face away and covered her eyes with her hand, with a face so agitated, that Maggie"s eyes opened with a look of intense curiosity.
"Why, Miss Randall, you are so queer! What on earth makes you look so?
Did _you_ know Mr. Wildair, or any of them?"
With a gesture of desperation, Georgia raised her head, and then, through all the storm of conflicting feelings within, came the thought that her conduct might excite suspicion, and, without looking round, she said huskily:
"I do not feel well, and I do not like strangers--that is all. Don"t mind me--it is nothing."
"Why, what harm can strangers do you? I never saw any one like you in my life, Miss Randall. Wouldn"t you like to see Mr. Wildair? I"m sure you seem fond enough of reading about him. Papa told me to persuade you to join us at dinner that day."
"No! no! no! Not for ten thousand worlds!" cried Georgia, wildly. Then, seeing her companion recoil and look upon her with evident alarm, she turned hastily away, and sought refuge in the school-room.
Miss Maggie looked after her in comical bewilderment for a moment, and then setting it down to "oddity," she danced off to practice "Casta Diva," preparatory to taking Mr. Wildair"s heart by storm singing it.
"I do hope he isn"t married," thought Maggie, dropping on the piano stool, and commencing with a terrific preparatory bang; "he is _so_ clever and _such_ a catch! My! wouldn"t Felice be mad!"
All the next week Miss Randall was more of a puzzle to the Leonards than ever before. Her moods were so changeable, so variable, so eccentric, that it was not strange that she startled them. Mrs. Leonard declared she was hysterical, or in the first stages of a brain fever; Miss Felice pooh-poohed the notion, and said it was only the eccentricity of genius, for Mr. Randall had said she was a genius, and he was infallible; while Miss Maggie differed from both, and set it down to "oddity."
Fortunately, however, for Georgia, the whole house was in such an uproar of preparation, and new furnishing and cooking, and there was such distracting running up and down stairs from day-dawn till midnight, and the house was so overrun with milliners and dressmakers, and they were all so absorbed in those mysteries of flounces, and silks, and flowers, and laces wherein the female heart delighteth, that she was left pretty much to her own devices, and seldom ever disturbed.