The Old Homestead Part 67

Mrs. Farnham sat down, and remained a moment gazing on the calm, severe face of the youth, with her thin hand clenched upon the folds of her morning dress, and her foot moving impetuously up and down on the carpet, as if she wanted to spring up and rend him to pieces.

The youth had evidently witnessed these paroxysms of rage before, for he bent his eyes to the ground as if the sight awoke some old pain, and turning quietly, seemed about to leave the room.

"You have done this without consulting me--countermanded my orders, defeated my object--how like you are to your father, now."

The last words were uttered with a burst of spite, as if they contained the very essence of bitterness, the last drop in the vials of her wrath.

The youth turned and lifted his eyes, full of sorrowful sternness, to her face. "Then you did--you did!" He paused, and his lips began to tremble under the muttered reproaches that sprang up from his heart.

"Yes," cried the woman, weak in everything but her malice, "yes, then, I did order it done--these people have tormented me enough with their miserable old house, always before my eyes, and that grim ugly face staring at me as I go to church. I tell you they shall leave the neighborhood, or I will. Give me the papers."

The youth lifted his eyes and regarded her sternly.

"They are cancelled, madam, and torn to ribbons, that our name might not be disgraced."

"Torn to pieces?"

"Into a thousand pieces, madam. I would have ground them to dust, if possible."

"You shall answer for this," cried the baffled woman, and with that sort of weak ferocity which is so repulsive, she sat down and began to cry.

The young man drew close to her chair, for though his whole soul recoiled from sympathy with her, he forced himself to remember that she was his mother, and in tears.

"Why do you dislike these old people so much?" he urged, with an attempt at soothing her.

"Because _he_ liked them!" she answered, das.h.i.+ng his proffered hand aside; "because his low tastes followed him to the last; he was always talking of the creature that died the night you were born. He cared more for her to the last, than he ever did for me; and I hate them for it. Now, are you satisfied?"

"Mother, you are talking of things that I do not understand."

"Well, your father was engaged to Anna, the girl that died in the old hovel down yonder; engaged to her when he married me."

"Then my father committed a great wrong!"

"A great wrong! Who ever doubted it, I should like to know? Even to think of her after marrying me--to say nothing of the way he went on--sometimes talking about her in my presence, with tears in his eyes. Once, once, would you believe it! he said--to me--me, his lawful wife, that your eyes--it was when you just began to walk--that my own baby's eyes put him in mind of her."

"I know very little of my father, nothing in fact, for he was a reserved man, always; but it is hard to believe that he would willfully do this foul wrong to a woman."

"Willfully! I wish you could have seen him when I, with the proper spirit of a woman, felt it my duty to expostulate with him about his feelings for that creature; how he took me up as if I were to blame for being young and beautiful, and engaged in the bazar just under his hotel, as if I had some design in standing at the door about meal-times, or could help him coming in after collars and cravats afterward, and, and"--

She stopped suddenly, and all the sallow wrinkles of her face burned with a crimson more vivid than exposure in the actual commission of a crime would have kindled there. Her mean spirit cowered beneath the looks of surprise that her son fixed upon her, as this confession of original poverty escaped her lips.

"I mean, I mean," she stammered, after biting her lips half through in impatient wrath, "that he should want my advice about such things before he was married."

It is a mournful thing when respect becomes a duty impossible to perform. Young Farnham felt this, and again his eyes drooped, while a flush of shame stole over his forehead.

"Well, madam," a woman of more sensitive feelings would have noticed that he did not call her mother, "well, madam, whatever cause of dislike may have been in this case, I cannot regret that all power to harm these old people is now at an end. The notes are cancelled, the money paid to your agent from my own pocket."

"But you had no right to pay this. You are not yet of age by some months. I will not sanction this extravagance."

"Nay, madam, this money is mine, and was saved from the extravagance that you _did_ sanction. I had intended to purchase a gift for Isabel with it, but she will be better pleased as it is."

"To Isabel, five hundred dollars to Isabel!" cried the harsh woman.

"This is putting a beggar on horseback with a vengeance."

"Hush, madam, I will not listen to this; you know, or might have seen long before this, that the young girl your language insults, has refused to become my wife."

"Your _wife_! Isabel Chester _your_ wife! A pauper, and the child of a pauper! Say it again, say that again if you dare!" cried the woman in a whirlwind of pa.s.sion. "Say that the policeman's daughter has refused you!"

"When you are calmer, madam, I will repeat it, for no truth can be more fixed, but now it would only exasperate you."

"Go on--go on, let me hear it again. It proves the Farnham blood in your veins, always sighing and grovelling after low objects. Go on, sir, I am listening--you intend to make _me_ mother-in-law to a pauper; a miserable thing that I took to keep me company, as I would a poodle-dog, and dressed and petted just in the same way. Marry her!

try it, and I'll make a beggar of _you_!"

"I do not know that you have the power to make me a beggar, madam, but a slave you never shall make me; as for Isabel," he added, with a scornful smile on his lips, firing up with something of her own ungovernable anger, "she is at least your equal and mine."

"_My_ equal, the pauper, the--the--oh--oh!"

Insane with bitter pa.s.sion, the woman stamped her foot fiercely on the floor, and began tearing the delicate lace from her handkerchief with her teeth, laughter and hysterical sobs hissing through them at the same moment.

"Madam, restrain yourself," pleaded the young man, greatly shocked, "I have been to blame, I should have told you of this some other time."

"Never, never," she answered, tearing the handkerchief from her teeth, and das.h.i.+ng it fiercely to the floor. "The miserable Alms-House bird shall leave my roof. I have got her pauper garments yet--would you like to see them?--a blue chambrey frock and checked sun-bonnet--it was all she brought here--and shall be all she takes away."

Again she stamped fiercely with her foot, and menaced her son with her hand. "Send the girl to me, I say!"

"I am here, madam," said Isabel, arising from a chair by the door, where she had fallen paralyzed and unnoticed, on her entrance, just as her name was brought up. Her cheeks were in a blaze of red, and her eyes emitted quick gleams of light. "I am here to take leave of you for ever." Isabel's voice was constrained and hoa.r.s.e; her face was white with pa.s.sion.

"Isabel, Isabel Chester!" exclaimed young Farnham, turning pale, and yet with a glow of animation in his fine eyes, "my mother was angry; she would not repeat those offensive words; she loves you!"

"But I do _not_ love _her_!" answered the proud girl, regarding the woman whom the world called her benefactress, with a glance of queenly scorn. "Her very kindness has always been oppressive; her presence almost hateful; now it is entirely so."

"Isabel, Isabel!" exclaimed the young man, "remember she is my mother, and you, beloved--oh, let me say to her, that you will be my wife!"

Isabel Chester turned her beautiful eyes upon him, and proud fire gleamed through the tears that filled them like star-light in the evening mist.

"No!" she answered in a very firm voice, "never will I become the wife of that woman's son. My very soul recoils from the thought that she who can so insult, ever had the power to confer benefits upon me. She is right; I will go forth in the pauper garments in which she found me at first. G.o.d has given me health, talent, energy; with his help I will yet repay this lady, dollar for dollar, all that she has ever expended on me. I shall never breathe deeply again till this is done."

"This is grat.i.tude, this is just what I expected from the first," said Mrs. Farnham, applying the mutilated handkerchief to her eyes. "It's enough to sicken one with benevolence for ever. This girl, now, that I've educated, taught everything, music, painting, all the ologies and other sciences see how she has repaid me, after putting herself in the way of my son, and tempting him to degrade himself by marrying her!"

Young Farnham started forward and attempted to arrest Isabel, who had turned in proud silence, and was leaving the room.

"Isabel, where are you going?"

She turned, and looking into his anxious eyes, answered,

"Anywhere out of this house, and away from her presence."

"No, no, you shall not do this."