Mabel's Mistake Part 18

"And who is that?" demanded the woman sharply, and her black eyes caught fire from the anger within her.

"It is the other, Ralph Harrington."

How hard and defiant was the voice in which Agnes Barker said this--a young girl expressing her first love without a blush, and with that air of cold-blooded defiance. It was terrible!

"Ralph Harrington, he is _her_ son, and a beggar!" cried the woman bitterly.

"I do not understand what force may lie in the first objection, and I do not believe in the second. Ralph cannot be a beggar, while his brother holds so much wealth; at any rate, I love him."

"Love, girl! What have you to do with this sweet poison? The thing Love is not your destiny."

"It is, though, and shall control it," replied Agnes, with the same half-insolent tone; for it seemed to be a relief for this young girl to act out spontaneously the evil of her nature, and she appeared to enjoy the kindling anger of her servant--if that slave woman was her servant--with vicious relish.

The woman walked close to the insolent girl, with her hand clenched, and her lips pressed firmly together.

"Agnes, Agnes--you cannot know how much rests on you--how great a revenge your obstinacy may baffle."

"I know that I love Ralph Harrington, and if it will comfort you to hear it, he does not love me," answered the girl with a burning glow in either cheek.

"Oh, you have come back again--it is his blood on fire in your cheeks. I have no fear of you, Agnes. That blood grows strong with age like old wine, and soon learns to give hatred for unanswered love. I can trust the blood."

"But he shall love me, or, at any rate, no one else shall have what he withholds from me."

"Be still, Agnes, do not make me angry again. You and I must work together. Tell me, did you succeed in quieting General Harrington's inquiries regarding the letters of recommendation?"

"Did I succeed?" answered Agnes, with a smile that crept over her young lips like a viper. "The old General is more pliable than the son. Oh, yes, when he began questioning me of the whereabouts of our kind friends who think so much of us, you know, I put forth all the accomplishments you have taught me, and wiled him from the subject in no time. You have just questioned my beauty, mammy. I doubt if he did then, for his eyes were not off my face a moment. What fine eyes the old gentleman has, though! I think it would be easier to obey you in that quarter than the other."

As she uttered the last words with a reckless lift of the head, the slave-woman made a spring at her, and grasping the scornfully uplifted shoulder, bent her face--which was that of a fiend--close to the young girl's ear: "Beware, girl, beware!" she whispered, "you are treading among adders."

"I think you are crazy," was the contemptuous reply, as Agnes released her shoulder from the gripe of that fierce hand. "My shoulder will be black and blue after this, and all for a joke about a conceited old gentleman whom we are both taking in. Did you not tell me to delude him off the subject if he mentioned those letters of recommendation again?"

The woman did not answer, but stood bending forward as if ashamed of her violence, but yet with a gleam of rage lingering in her black eyes.

"Have you done?" said Agnes, arranging her velvet sacque, which had been torn from its b.u.t.tons in front, by the rude handling she had received.

"You must not speak in that way again," answered the old woman in a low voice, "I did not mean to hurt you, child, but General Harrington is not a man for girls like you to joke about."

"This is consistent, upon my word," answered the girl with a short scornful laugh. "You teach me to delude the old gentleman into a half-flirtation. He meets me in the grounds--begins to ask about the persons from whom we obtained those precious recommendations, and when I attempt to escape the subject, persists in walking by me till I led him a merry dance up the steepest hill that could be found, and left him there out of breath, and in the midst of a protestation that I was the loveliest person he had ever seen. Loveliest--no, that was not it--the most bewitching creature! these were the last words I remember, for that moment Benson's boat hove in sight, and there sat madam looking fairly at us. If they had been a moment later, I'm quite sure the old fellow would have been down upon his knees in the dead leaves."

The slave-woman listened to this flippant speech in cold silence. She was endowed with a powerful will, matched with pride that was almost satanic. She saw the malicious pleasure with which Agnes said all this, and would not gratify it by a single glance. With all her wicked craft, the young girl was no match for the woman.

"You have acted unwisely," she said with wonderful self-command; "never trifle with side issues when they can possibly interfere with the main object. I wished to evade General Harrington's close scrutiny into our antecedents; to soothe the lion, not goad him. Be careful of this a second time!"

How calmly she spoke! You would not have believed her the same woman who had sprung upon the girl so like a tiger only a few moments before. Even Agnes looked upon her with amazement.

"Woman," she said, "tell me what you are at--trust me, and I will help you heart and soul."

"What! even to the giving up of this new-born love?"

"Even to that, if I can be convinced of its necessity."

"I will trust you."

"Wholly--entirely?"

"Entirely!"

The girl threw her arms around that singular woman, their lips met, and the subtle force of one heart kindled and burned in the bosom of the other.

"Tell me everything, mamma!"

"I will. But first, let us read Mabel Harrington's journal, it will prepare you for the rest."

They opened the stolen book, and sat down together so close that their arms were interlaced, and their cheeks touched as they read.

It was a terrible picture, that meagre, dimly-lighted room, the tree-boughs waving against the window, their leaves vocal with the last sob of the storm, and those two women with their keen evil faces, their lips parted with eagerness, and their eyes gleaming darkly, as they drank up the secrets of poor Mabel Harrington's life.

CHAPTER XVIII.

OLD HEADS AND YOUNG HEARTS.

General Harrington spent the entire day at home. After the rather uncomfortable breakfast we have already described, he went to his library, discontented and moody. All day he was disposed to be restless and dissatisfied with his books, as he had been with the appointments of his morning meal. Indignant with his whole household, for not being on the alert to amuse him, he declined going down to dinner; but ordering some choicely cooked birds and a bottle of champagne in his own room, amused his rather fastidious appet.i.te with these delicacies, while he luxuriated in his dressing-gown, and read s.n.a.t.c.hes from a new book of poems that had interested him for the moment.

This rather pleasant occupation wiled away an hour, when he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Lifting his eyes from the book, the General said, "Come in," rather hastily, for the knock had broken into one of the finest pa.s.sages of the poem, and General Harrington detested interruptions of any kind, either in a mental or sensual enjoyment.

"Come in!"

The General was a good deal astonished when his son Ralph opened the door, and stood before him with an air of awkward constraint, that would certainly have secured him a reprimand had he not been the first to speak.

"Father!"

General Harrington gave an impatient wave of the hand.

"Young gentleman," he said, "how often am I to remind you that the use of the paternal t.i.tle after childhood is offensive. Can't you call me General Harrington, sir, as other people do? A handsome young fellow six feet high should learn to forget the nursery. Sit down, sir, sit down and converse like a gentleman, if you have anything to say."

The blood rose warmly in Ralph's face, not that he was angry or surprised, but it seemed impossible to open his warm heart to the man before him.

"Well then, General," he said, with a troubled smile, "I--I've been getting into--into----"

"Not into debt, I trust," said the General, folding the skirts of the Turkish dressing-gown over his knees, and smoothing the silken fabric with his hand, but speaking with a degree of genuine bitterness, "because, if that's it, you had better go to James at once--he is the millionaire. I am not much better than his pensioner myself!"

"It is not that," answered Ralph, with an effort which sent the blood crimsoning to his temples, "though money may have something to do with it in time. The truth is, General, I have been in love with Lina all my life, and never found it out till yesterday."

General Harrington gave the youth a look from under his bent brows, that made the young man shrink back in his chair, but in a moment the unpleasant expression went off, and a quiet smile stole over the old man's lip.