Mabel's Mistake Part 65

"He did, indeed; but why waste time in guessing? Let us go home; the old fellow will help us to put this right."

James hesitated, and shrunk within himself; the look of pain came back to his face, and he answered with some constraint, that the steamer sailed for Europe on the morrow, and his pa.s.sage was already taken.

Ralph looked astonished and distressed.

"Would you leave us now?" he said, reproachfully.

James remained thoughtful a moment, and then answered with a touch of mournfulness:

"No, I will remain for a little time. So long as I am wanted, it must be so."

"Then, let us go home at once."

"Yes, it is a duty; I will return with you," said Harrington, with gentle concession; and, spite of himself, a gleam of pleasure broke into his eyes.

"Come, then, come!" cried Ralph, impetuously. "I cannot breathe till old Ben has spoken. Come!"

"Have patience, Ralph; let us talk this matter over more quietly. We are not at liberty to tell this painful secret to your mother, it would shock her too much; besides, I pledged my honor to the poor child that it should not be done. Let me find General Harrington, and learn the whole truth from him. If Lina proves to be your sister--do not turn so pale, my dear boy--if she proves to be this, you must go with me to Europe, and learn to regard her with that gentle affection which becomes these new relations."

"I tell you, Lina is _not_ my sister; every feeling of my soul rises up to contradict it!" cried the youth, impetuously. "General Harrington will not say it."

"Is the General at home now?" inquired Harrington, with a gentle wave of the hand.

"No; he seldom is, of late. He almost lives at the club-house."

"I will seek him there," said Harrington; "come with me."

"Not on this errand, James; I could not see my father, and maintain that self-control which is due from a son to his parent. His sins have fallen too heavily on me for that."

"You are right, perhaps," answered James, thoughtfully. "It will be a painful interview; but for her sake I will undertake it, though I had thought all subjects of this kind were at an end between General Harrington and myself."

Ralph wrung the hand extended to him, and the two went out, each taking his own way.

CHAPTER LXXV.

THE DESERTED CHAMBER.

Mabel had been very ill; the sense of humiliation, the outrage on every feeling of delicacy that had beset her after the fragments of that vellum book were placed in her hand, fell upon her strength with terrible effect. To herself, she seemed disgraced forever; the holiest portion of her life was torn away, to be trodden down by the feet of the mult.i.tude. No sin, however heinous, could have fallen upon her with more crus.h.i.+ng effect. The very maturity of age, which should have so far removed her from the romance of love, embittered her grief by a sense of self-ridicule. At times, she felt like reviling and scoffing at affections that up to this time had been h.o.a.rded away from her own thoughts. For a train of wrong feelings, unaccompanied by a single false act, save that of her marriage, she was suffering the most terrible humiliation before G.o.d and her own conscience.

Is it strange that her nerves, so long excited and so delicate in themselves, gave way at last, prostrating her to the earth, strengthless as a child? She did not leave her room, she scarcely looked up when the servants entered it, and was so broken and bowed down by the weight of her shame, that even the absence of her son was disregarded. No criminal ever shrank from the face of man more sensitively than this high-souled woman.

It annoyed Mabel to see any one enter her apartments. When the mulatto chambermaid came there, in the ordinary course of her duties, she would shrink back in her chair and shade her eyes, as if some hideous spectre had crossed her path; but, if Agnes Barker entered, this nervous shock became unendurable, and it was with the greatest effort that she could refrain from rus.h.i.+ng madly into the next room, and holding the door against her intrusions.

One night--it was that on which James Harrington went out in search of an explanation from the General--Mabel was more terribly oppressed than ever; all the bitter recollections of a most tedious life crowded upon her at once. She longed to flee away into some new place, where human intrusion would be impossible--and yet Agnes Barker would enter the room; again and again she saw the poor woman wince and s.h.i.+ver at her approach, but with malicious servility insisted on arranging her cus.h.i.+ons, and performing all those little services which are so sweet when love prompts them, yet which fall upon us like insults when rendered by those against whom our natures are in repulsion. To save herself from this officious tending, Mabel inquired for the mulatto woman, preferring her presence to the endurance of attentions so oppressive.

Agnes smiled sweetly at the inquiry: "but the chambermaid had gone out,"

she said, "and might not be back till late; meantime, it was a happiness to attend madam--was the cus.h.i.+on comfortably arranged? should she move the footstool?"

The girl sank upon her knees, and, in moving the ottoman, touched Mabel's foot with her hand. The excited woman sprang up with a shudder, as if a rattlesnake had crept across her ankles, and, unable to endure the presence of her tormentor a moment more, hurried out of the room.

"Is there no place," she said, moving wildly forward, "no place in which I can hide myself, and s.n.a.t.c.h a moment's rest? Will these creatures trail themselves in my path forever and ever!"

The unhappy woman did not even think that she possessed the right to send the offensive persons at any moment from her presence; for, since the discovery of her secret, Mabel no longer felt that she was the mistress of these people, or that she held a power of command anywhere.

All that she wished was to hide herself from every one. Influenced only by this unconquerable desire, she hurried up the stairs, and taking a bronze lamp from a statue that occupied a niche in the first landing, went forward till she came to the door of a chamber that had been occupied by James Harrington. Here a gleam of intelligence shot over her pale face, and she eagerly tried the lock. It yielded, and, drawing a quick breath, she crossed the threshold, turning the key which had been left inside with an impatient violence, and looked round exultingly at the solitude which she had thus insured.

"It was here," she said, looking around on the grate and on the table, while her pale brow darkened and her lips began to tremble; "it was here that he burned my poor journal--here that he tore the secret from my soul, while I lay sleeping below. After this cruel pillage of my life, he fled to hide the----No, no! Scorn he could _not_ feel--hate, pity, anything but scorn! Let me search if any vestige remains."

She bent over the empty grate, peering through the polished bars with keen glances, but it was bare and cold; not an ember remained, nor a grain of dust. The very ashes of her book had been cast forth with the common refuse. The table was empty, not a paper littered it: a bronze standish, in which the ink was frozen to a black ice and a useless pen or two, alone met her search; all was in cruel order. The bed, with its unpressed pillows smooth as iced snow--the easy-chair wheeled into a corner of the room--the closed shutters without--everything was desolate.

Mabel sat down upon the bed, the most dreary thing there; she looked mournfully around. The wild eagerness died out of her features, and lowering her face upon the cold pillow, she began to cry like a child.

Directly the chill of the night struck through and through her. She s.h.i.+vered till the teeth chattered beneath her quivering lips; what with grief, cold, and exhaustion, the poor lady had become helpless as infancy. Forgetting where she was, and careless of everything on earth, she gathered the bed-clothes slowly around her, and shuddered herself to sleep.

CHAPTER LXXVI.

[ THE UNEXPECTED RETURN.

As General Harrington was dining at his club that day, a note was sent up to him; and, as his meal had reached the last stage of a luxurious dessert, he quietly broke open the envelope, and read:

"James Harrington has found means to see Lina, and she has told him everything. I shall await you here during the next hour.

ZILLAH."

The General crushed this note slowly in his hand, a quiet smile stole over his face, and sipping his wine with great complacency, he murmured:

"Well? but the life deeds are safe, what is his anger to me?"

But, directly a less pleasant thought forced itself on his mind; he remembered that the deeds he exulted over, were only binding so long as Mabel Harrington remained contentedly beneath his roof. What if James should take advantage of the knowledge obtained from Lina, as a counterbalancing power against him? What if Mabel should at once use that knowledge to protect herself, and by suing out a divorce, cast all the shame he had threatened to heap upon her, back upon his own head?

Certainly, James Harrington would not fail to inform her of the powers of retaliation that lay within her grasp; perhaps even now she knew everything.

He started up from the table, calling for his furred paletot, and gave orders that his sleigh and horses should be brought round. The well-bred waiters, whose duty it was to be surprised at nothing, were evidently astonished at these signs of agitation in the most urbane and reposeful visitor at the club-rooms. With a hurried step he descended to the street, stepped into his sleigh, buried himself to the chin in furs, and the driver dashed off with a ringing of bells and a flourish of the whip around his horses' ears, that made them dance like Russian leaders.

The day was growing dusky, and General Harrington urged the driver on, for he was eager to reach home and have an interview with his wife, before the younger Harrington could reveal his secret. Trusting much to Mabel's n.o.ble powers of forgiveness, and more to the allurements of his own eloquence, which should so word his contrition that it would be sure to touch a nature like hers, he was only anxious to forestall her anger by what would appear to be a frank confession of his fault; thus, by throwing himself upon her mercy, and challenging the generosity which had never yet failed him, he hoped to retain control of the wealth which had become doubly important from the lavish expenditure of the last few weeks.

Thus, full of anxiety and terror regarding a revelation that James Harrington would have died rather than make to Mabel, the old gentleman dashed on toward home, eager to be in advance with his disgraceful news.

The house was very still when he entered it; faint lights broke through the library windows and from the balcony in front of Mabel's boudoir, but the rest of the house was dark and quiet as death. General Harrington had left his sleigh at the stables, which were some distance from the house--thus the noise of his arrival was lost on the inmates; and, as he let himself in at the front door with a latch-key, no one was aware of his presence.

Flinging off his wrappers in the hall, he looked into the usual sitting-room to a.s.sure himself that it was empty; then going to his own room long enough to change his boots for a pair of furred slippers, he went at once to Mabel's boudoir. A fire burned dimly on the hearth, and over the table hung a small alabaster lamp, that seemed full of imprisoned moonlight, but was not brilliant enough to subdue the quiet shadows that lay like a mist all around the room. Mabel was not there, and the General sought for her in the bed-chamber adjoining, but all was still; the faint light that stole in from the alabaster lamp, revealed a snowy night-robe laid upon the bed, and everything prepared for rest, but the lady was absent.

"Well, well," muttered the old gentleman, drawing Mabel's easy-chair to the hearth, and warming his hands by the pleasant fire, "she cannot be gone far, and, at any rate, my hopeful step-son will find himself too late for an interview to-night; so I will quietly await her here. What a dreamy place it is, though; I did not think that she possessed so much of the philosophy of life; but the strangeness reminds me that I have been rather too negligent of late. No matter, she will only be the more ready to welcome me; for, with all her romance and journalizing, the woman loves me: I was sure of that, even while pus.h.i.+ng the hard bargain with her cavalier. Faith," he continued, rubbing his velvety palms together, and leaning toward the fire, "I am glad she did not happen to be present! A little warmth and calm thought will do everything towards preparing me for the interview."

With these thoughts running through his mind, the old man--for he was old, spite of appearances--began to feel the effects of a long ride in the cold. The bland warmth of the fire overcame him with luxurious drowsiness, and he would have dropped to sleep in his chair, but that it afforded no easy rest for his head, which fell forward, whenever he sank into a doze, with a jerk that awoke him very unpleasantly.