“You are puttin' your eyes out, workin' so stiddy, honey, and it's gettin' dark.”
Mabel aroused herself from her intent attitude, and looked at the window. There was a brassy glimmer in the cloudy west; the rest of the sky was covered by thick vapors.
“The days are still very short,” she said, folding her work, and becoming aware that her eyes ached from long and close study of the intricate pattern.
It was Mammy Phillis who had interrupted her reverie, and she now laid an armful of seasoned hickory wood upon the hearth, and set herself about mending the fire, taking up the ashes which had accumulated since morning, putting the charred sticks together, and collecting the embers into a compact bed.
“We're goin' to have fallin' weather 'fore long,” she observed, oracularly. “The wind has changed since dinner, and when the wind whirls about on a sudden, we upon this ridge is the fust to find it out. I must see that them lazy chil'len, Lena and Lizy, fills your wood-box to-night with dry wood; I'd be loth to have you ketch cold while you are here.”
“You are very good, Mammy, but why do you trouble yourself to attend to my fire? You should have sent up Lena with that great load of logs.”
“I ain't easy without I see to you myself, at least once a day. It 'minds me of the good ole times to wait upon you. O, Lord! how long?” shaking her tartan turban with a portentous groan, her chin almost scraping the hearth, as she stooped to blow into the crater of fiery coals.
Mabel was too well versed in the customs of the race and class to take alarm at the mysterious invocation. She watched the old woman's movements in a sort of pensive amusement at the recollection of an incident of her childhood, brought vividly to her mind by the servant's air and exclamation.
She was playing in the yard one day, when “Mammy” emerged from her cottage-door, and came toward her, with a batch of sweet cakes she had just baked for her nursling.
In crossing the gravel walk leading to the “house,” she struck her toe against the brick facing of this, and the cakes flew in all directions.
“Good Lord! my poor toe and my poor chile's cakes!” was her vehement interjection; and as she bent to gather up the cookies, she grunted out the same adjuration, coupled with “my poor ole back!”—a negress' stock subject of complaint, let her be but twenty years old and as strong as an ox.
“Mammy!” said the privileged child, reprovingly, “I thought you were too good a Christian to break the commandments in that way. You shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain.”
“Gracious! Sugar-pie! how you talk! Ef I don't call 'pon Him in time of trouble, who can I ask to help me?” was the confident reply.
With no thought of any more formidable cause of outcry than a cramp in the much-quoted spine, Mabel dreamed on sketchily and indolently, enjoying the sight of the once-familiar process of building a wood-fire, until the yellow serpents of flame crept, red-tongued through the interstices of the lower logs, and the larger and upper began to sing the low, drowsy tune, more suggestive of home-cheer and fireside comfort than the shrill, monotonous chirp of the famous cricket on the hearth. The pipe-clayed bricks on which the andirons rested were next swept clean; the hearth-brush hung up on its nail, and the architect of the edifice stepped back with a satisfied nod.
“I have often wished for a glimpse of one of your beautiful fires, Mammy, since I have been in Albany,” said Mabel, kindly. “Our rooms and halls are all heated by furnaces. An open fireplace would be a novelty to Northerners, and such a roaring, blazing pile of hard wood as that, be considered an unpardonable extravagance.”
“Humph! I never did have no 'pinion of them people.” Phillis tossed her turban and cocked her prominent chin. “It's all make money, and save! save! If I was 'lowed to go with you, I'll be bound I'd see you have sech things as you've been 'customed to. The new folks, them what comed from nothin' and nowhar, and made every dollar they can call their own with their own hands, don't know how to feel for and look after real ladies.”
“You are wrong about that, if you mean that I have not every comfort I could ask. My house is warm in the bitterest weather, and far more handsomely furnished than this. And I have many kind friends. I like the Northern people, and so would you, if you knew them well.”
“They send dreadful poor samples down this way, then,” muttered Phillis, significantly. “And, some as pertends to be somebody is nobody, or wuss, ef the truth was known. Don't talk to me 'bout 'em, Miss Mabel, darling! 'Twas a mighty black day for us when one on 'em fust laid eyes upon Mars' Winston. You've hearn, ain't you, that my house is to be tore down, and I'm to go into the quarters 'long with the field hands and sich like common trash? So long as our skins is all the same color, some folks can't see no difference in us.”
“I had not heard it. I am sorry.”
Mabel spoke earnestly, for “Mammy's house,” a neat frame cottage a story-and-a-half high, embowered in locust-trees, and with a thrifty, although aged garden—honeysuckle clambering all over the front, was to her one of the dearest pictures of her early days. She could see herself, now—the motherless babe whom Aunt Rachel and Mammy had never let feel her orphanage—sitting on the door-step, bedecking her doll with the odorous pink-and-white blossoms in summer time, and in autumn with the light-red berries.
“Why is that done?” she asked.
“I spiles the prospect, honey!” fiercely—ironical. “Northern folks has tender eyes, and I hurts 'em—me and my poor little house what ole marster built for me when Mars' Winston was a baby, and your blessed ma couldn't be easy 'thout I was near her—WE spiles the prospect! So, it must be knocked down and carted away for rubbish to build pig-pens, I 'spose, and me sent off to live 'mong low-lived niggers, sech as I've always held myself above. She ain't never put it into Mars' Winston's head to cut down the trees that shets off the “prospect” of the colored people's burying-ground from her winder. There's some things she'd as lief not see. I oughtn't to mind this so much, I know, for I ain't got long for to stay here nohow, but I did hope to die in my nest!” sobbing behind her apron.
“I am very sorry—more grieved than you can think!” repeated Mabel. “If I could help you in any way, I would. But I cannot!”
“Bless your heart! Don't I know that, dear! Here, you ain't got no more power nor me. But I WAS a-thinkin' that maybe you wouldn't think me too old for a nuss when you come to want one, and could manage to take me with you when you went home. I'se a heap of wear in me yit, and there ain't nothing 'bout babies I don't understand.”
Mabel colored painfully.
“If I had my way”—she began—then altered her plan of reply. “I could not enter into such an arrangement without consulting Mr. Dorrance, Mammy, and I am afraid he would not think as favorably of it as you and I do. He has been brought up with different ideas, you see.”
“Um-HUM!”
An interjection capable of as many and as varied meanings in the mouth of a colored woman of her stamp as was little Jean Baptiste's “altro!” It signified now—“I comprehend a great deal more than you want me to perceive—you poor, downtrodden angel!”
“Um-HUM. I always did say he was his sister's own brother—for all they don't look a bit alike. What's born into a man never comes out!”
“Mr. Dorrance is my husband, Mammy! I shall not let you speak disrespectfully of him. He does what he believes to be right and just,” returned Mabel, sternly.
“I ain't a-goin' to arger that with you, my sugar-plum! You're right to stand up for him. I beg your pardon ef I've seemed sassy or hurt your feelin's. And I dar' say, there mayn't be nothin' wuss 'bout him nor his outside. And that don't matter so much, ef people's insides is clean and straight in the sight of the Lord. But HER outside is all that's decent about her, ef you'll listen to me—”
“You are forgetting yourself again!” said Mabel, unable to suppress a smile. “Mrs. Aylett is your mistress—”
The woman's queer behavior arrested the remonstrance. Stepping on tiptoe to the door she locked it, and approached her young mistress with an ostentatious attempt at treading lightly, shaking her head and pursing up her mouth in token of secrecy, while she fumbled in her bosom for something that seemed hard to get at. Drawing it forth at last she laid it in Mabel's lap—a small leather wallet, glossy with use, tattered at the corners, and tied up with a bit of dirty twine.
“What is this, and what am I to do with it?”
Mabel shrank from touching it, so foul and generally disreputable was its appearance.
“Keep both your ears open, dearie, and I'll tell you all I know!”
And with infinite prolixity and numerous digressions she recounted how, in removing the sodden clothing of the unknown man who had been picked up on the lawn on that memorable stormy Christmas night, more than a year before, this had slipped from an inner breast-pocket of the coat, “right into her hand.” Not caring to disturb the doctor's examination of his patient, or to tempt the cupidity of her fellow-servants by starting the notion that there might be other valuables hidden in the articles they handled so carelessly, she had pocketed it, unobserved by them, guessing that it would be of service at the inquest. Her purpose of producing it then was, according to her showing, reversed by Mrs. Aylett's stolen visit to the chamber and minute inspection of garments she would not have touched unless urged to the disagreeable task by some mighty consideration of duty, self-interest, or fear.
“'Then,' thinks I”—Phillis stated the various steps of her reasoning—“'you wouldn't take the trouble to pull over them nasty, muddy close, 'thout you expected to get some good out on 'em, or was afeard of somethin' or 'nother fallin' into somebody else's hands.' Whichsomever this mought be, 'twasn't my business to be gittin' up a row and a to-do before the crowner and all them gentlemen. 'Least said soonest mended,' says I to myself, and keeps mum about the whole thing—what I'd got, and what I'd seen. But when I come to think it all over arterward, I was skeered for true at what I'd done, and for fear Mars' Winston wouldn't like it. What reason could I give him for hidin' of the pocketbook, ef I give it up to him? Ef I tole all the truth, SHE'D be mad as a March hare, and like as not face me down that all I had said was a dream or a lie, or that I was drunk that night and couldn't see straight. I'd hearn her tell too many fibs with a smooth tongue and a sweet smile not to be sure of that! So, all I should git for my care of the repertation of my fam'ly would be her ill-will, and to be 'cused by other people of stealin', and for the rest of my days she'd do all she could to spite me. For I'm sure as I stand here, Miss Mabel, that she knew, or thought she knew, somethin' 'bout that poor, despisable wretch that died up in the garret. What else brought him a-spyin' 'round here, and what was there to make her faint when she ketched sight of him a-lookin' in at her through the winder? and what COULD a sent her upstars when everybody else was asleep, fur to haul his close about, and poke them fine white fingers of hern into his pockets, and pull his WHISKERY face over to the light so's to see it better? Depend 'pon it, there's a bad story at the bottom of this somewhere. I've hearn of many a sich that came of gentlemens' marrying forringers what nobody knowed anything about. Anyhow, I want you to take keer of this 'ere pocketbook. Ef I was to die all of a suddent, and 'twas found 'mong my things, some mischief mought be hatched out on it. It's safer in your hands nor it is in mine. Now, I'll jest light your lamp, and you can 'xamine it, and pitch it into the fire, ef you like, when you're through.”
In a cooler moment Mabel would have hesitated to obey the advice of an ignorant, prejudiced person, her inferior in station and intelligence. But in the whirl of astonishment, incredulity, and speculation created by the tale she had heard, she untied the string which formed the primitive fastening of the worn wallet, and unclosed it.
The main compartment contained four tickets, issued by as many different pawnbrokers, testifying that such and such articles had been deposited with them for and in consideration of moneys advanced by them to Thomas Lindsay; a liquor-seller's score against William Jones—unpaid; and a tavern bill, in which brandy and water, whiskey and mint-juleps, were the principal items charged against Edmund Jackson. This last was the only paper which bore the indorsement “Rec'd payment,” and this circumstance had, probably, led to its preservation. The adjoining division of the wallet was sewed up with stout black thread and Mabel had to resort to her scissors before she could get at its contents. These were a couple of worn envelopes, crumpled and dog-eared, and stained with liquor or salt water, but still bearing the address, in a feminine hand, of “Lieutenant Julius Lennox, U. S. N.” In addition to this, one was directed to Havana, Cuba; the other to Calcutta, in care, of a mercantile or banking-house at each place. A third cover bore the superscription, “CERTIFICATE,” in bold characters.
The negress' watchful eyes dilated with greedy expectancy at Mrs. Dorrance's ghastly face when this last had been examined, but she was foiled if she hoped for any valuable addition to her store of information, or anything resembling elucidation of her pet mystery.
“It will take me some time to read all these,” remarked Mabel, still scanning the half-sheet she held. “You had better not wait, Mammy. They are safe with me. No one else shall see them, and no harm can come to you through them.”
She promised mechanically what she supposed would soonest buy for her privacy and needed quiet, and gave no heed to the manifest disappointment of her visitor.
When she was at last alone, Mrs. Dorrance relocked the door, and bent close to the lamp, as if more light upon the surface of the document would tend to clear up the terrible secret thus strangely committed to her discretion and mercy. The paper was a certificate, drawn up in regular form, and signed by a clergyman, whose address was appended below, in a different hand writing—of a marriage between Julius Lennox and Clara Louise Dorrance.
“Her very name!” repeated the whitening lips. “I remember asking her once what the 'L' in her signature stood for.”
But while she said it, there was a look in the reader's eye that bespoke inability or reluctance to grapple with the revelation threatened by the discovery.
“The letters may tell me more!” she added, in the same frightened whisper, refolding the certificate.
They did—for they were in the long, sloping chirography of her sister-in-law, and signed “Your ever-fond, but lonely wife.” Each contained, moreover, allusions to “Ellis,” to “Clermont,” to “Julia,” and to “Herbert”—all family names in the Dorrance connection; spoke gratefully of her parents' kindness to his “poor Louise” in the absence of “her beloved Julius;” and was liberally spiced with passionate protestations of her inconsolableness and yearnings for his return. Both were dated ten years back, and the paper was yellow with time, besides being creased and thumbed as by many readings.
“What am I to do?” thought Mabel, sinking into her chair, trembling all over with terror and incertitude.
If there were one sentiment in Winston Aylett's heart that equalled his haughtiness, it was love for his wife. But could it be that he had totally forgotten pride and his habitual caution in the selection of the woman who was to be the partner of his home, fortune, and reputation—possibly the mother of children who were to perpetuate the noble name he bore? By what miracle of unrighteous craft, what subornation of witnesses, what concealments, what barefaced and unscrupulous falsehoods had this adventuress been imposed upon him as unmarried, when the evidence of her former wedlock was held by a low stroller—a drunken wretch who might betray it in an unguarded or insane hour, and who, judging from his exterior, would not be averse to publishing or selling the information if he could make more money by doing this than by preserving the secret. And how came he by these papers?
Confused, partly by his numerous aliases, more by incapacity to conceive of such depth and complication of horror as were revealed by the idea, the perplexed thinker did not, for a while, admit to herself the possibility that the nameless vagabond may have been Clara's living husband, instead of a mercenary villain who had secured surreptitiously the proofs of a marriage she wished the world to forget. Having learned that she had wedded, a second time, in her maiden name, and that her antecedents were unsuspected in her present home, the thought of extorting a bribe to continued silence, from the wealthy lady of Ridgeley, would have occurred to any common rascal with more audacity than principle. It was but a spark—the merest point of light that showed her the verge of the precipice toward which one link after another of the chain of circumstantial evidence was dragging her.
Groping dizzily among her recollections of that Christmas night, there gleamed luridly upon her the vision of Mrs. Aylett's strange smile, as she said, “It may be that his wife, if she were cognizant of his condition, would not lift a finger or take a step to save his life, or to prolong it for an hour!”
Then, in response to Mabel's indignant reply—the momentary passion darting from her hitherto languorous orbs, and vibrating in her accents, in adding—“There are women in whose hearts the monument to departed affection is a hatred that can never die.”
If this man were a stranger, from whom she had nothing to fear, why her extraordinary agitation at seeing him, even imperfectly, through the window? She must have known him well to recognize him in the darkness and at that fleeting glimpse. Perhaps she had believed him dead, until then! This would account for her clandestine visit to his chamber, to which Mrs. Sutton and her niece had gone, without effort at concealment; explain the rigid examination of his clothing ensuing upon her scrutiny of his features.
“I must be mad!” Mabel said, here, pressing her hand to her head. “There does not live the woman, however wicked and hypocritical, who could sit at ease in the midst of ill-gotten luxury, on an inclement night, and talk smilingly of other things, if she suspected that one she had known, much less loved, lay dying in wretchedness and solitude so near her.”
The vagrant was some evil-disposed spy, whose person Clara knew, and whose intentions she had reason to dread were unfriendly. Had she dared—for she was daring—to attempt this nefarious plot against the fair fame and happiness of an honorable gentleman, her family would not have become her accomplices. They could not have blinded themselves to the perils of the enterprise, the extreme probabilities of detection, the consequences of Winston's anger. Herbert, at least, would have forbidden the unlawful deceit. When his sister was wedded to Winston, he believed that her first husband was no longer in the land of the living—as she must also have done.
“For he is a good—an upright man!” thought the wife. “But he was privy to the fact of her previous marriage! Why have I never heard of it? He has invariably spoken of Clara as having lived single in her mother's house up to the date of her union with my brother.”
She could not but remember, likewise, that there was a certain tone about the Dorrance connection she had never quite comprehended or liked—a reticence with respect to details of family history, while they were voluble upon generalities, over-fond of lauding one another's exploits, virtues, and accomplishments; referring in wonderful pride to “our beloved father,” and extolling “our precious mother,” who, by the way, was so little in request among the children, that she had, since Clara's marriage, occupied apartments in a second-rate boarding-house in Boston. Mabel, when convinced of the futility of her hope of having Aunt Rachel with her, had proposed to offer Mrs. Dorrance a house in the commodious mansion of her youngest son; but Herbert, with no show of gratification at what he must have known was a sacrifice of her inclinations, had coolly reasoned down the suggestion. The whole tribe—if she excepted her husband, and perhaps Clara—had, to her perception, a tinge of Bohemianism, although all were in comfortable circumstances, and lived showily. Mabel had often chided herself for uncharitable judgment and groundless prejudice, in admitting these impressions of her relatives-in-law; but they returned upon her in this twilight reverie with the force of convictions she was, each moment, less able to combat. What darker secret lay back of the concealment her rectitude of principle and sense of justice declared to be unjustifiable? and might not this concerted and persistent reserve imply others yet more culpable?
It showed her correct estimate of her brother's character, that she never for a second accused him of connivance in the deceit practised upon his relations and neighbors. He would not have scrupled to wed a widow, knowing and acknowledging her to be such. Nothing—not love, tenfold more ardent and irrational than that he felt for his siren wife—could have wrought upon him to introduce to the world, as Mrs. Aylett of Ridgeley, one who had been before married, and was ashamed, for any cause whatever, to avow this. The blemish left by the acrid breath of common scandal upon a woman's fame was to him ineffaceable by any process yet discovered by pitying man or angels. The maligned one may not have erred from the straitest road of virtue and discretion, but she had been “talked about,” and was no consort for him. In his State and caste, private marriages were things disallowed, and but one shade more respectable than liasons that did not pretend to the sanctity of wedlock. What would he say when the contents of this dingy pocket-book were spread before him? Ought his sister to do this?
COULD she? He had not earned compassionate consideration from her by any act of gentleness and forbearance. He had handled the lopping-knife without ruth, and let the gaping wounds bleed as long as the bitter ichor would ooze from her heart. She had learned hardness and self-control from the lesson, but not vindictiveness. Now that the power was hers to visit upon his haughty spirit something of the humiliation and distress he had not spared her; that it was her turn to harangue upon mesalliances and love-matches, and want of circumspect investigation into early records before committing one's self to a contract of marriage—she recoiled at the thought; felt, in her exceeding pity for the trustful husband, a stirring of the love she had herself once borne him in the days when the changed homestead was her world, and its master a king among men.
And yet—and yet—was it the truest friendship—the most prudent course to prolong the ignorance which left him liable at any moment to be shocked into the perpetration of some desperate deed by the discovery, through some other channel, of his wife's perfidy, and the abominable snare that bad been woven about him!
MABEL was still turning the vexed question of right and expediency over in her fast-heating brain, the next evening, as she sat in the parlor, and feigned to hearken to the diligent duett-practising going on at the piano, her husband and Mrs. Aylett being the performers.
Mrs. Sutton had gone home that afternoon, engaging to return for a longer sojourn in the course of a month. Mr. Aylett read his newspaper at one side of the centre table, and his sister employed her fingers and eyes at the other with a trifle of fancy-work—-an antimacassar she was crocheting for her hostess. Her industrious or fidgetty habits were chronic and inveterate, and people, in remarking upon them, did not reflect that this species of restlessness is in itself a disease, seldom analyzed, more seldom cured. There are few students or physicians of human nature, in this world of superficial observers, who go deep enough into the springs of man's action to distinguish the external symptoms of heart-cancer from ossification, or to learn the difference between satiety and atrophy. A night of nervous sleeplessness, a day of irresolution and dread, had aggravated almost beyond her control the restlessness which in Mabel was the unerring indication of unhealthiness of mind and body. To sit still was impracticable; to talk connectedly and easily would soon be as difficult. She was glad to see Aunt Rachel go—immeasurably relieved when a musical evening was proposed by the brother and sister, seconding the motion with alacrity that called forth a pleased smile from the one, and a look of surprised inquisitiveness from the other.
“You have grown more fond of instrumental music,” said Mrs. Aylett, half interrogatively. “You used always to prefer vocal.”
“Try me and see what an appreciative listener I am,” rejoined Mabel, with a sickly smile, and the concert commenced.
Overmuch thought upon the revelation of the preceding day had begotten in her, fears of the imminence of the dangers to Winston's peace of mind—a persuasion that the birds of the air and the restless air itself might bear to him the news she still withheld. Mammy had averred, upon her cross-examination, that “not a living soul had ever seen the wallet” since it fell from the dying man's pocket—an affirmation Mabel could not decide whether to believe or discredit. If she could but be certain that the secret was all hers!
She trembled guiltily when her brother folded his last paper, and sauntered around to the back of her chair, leaning upon it, while he affected to be interested in her work, and the too-ready scarlet blood pulsed now hotly in her cheeks with each moment of his mute observation.
“I heard a piece of news to-day,” he said, presently, in his most even tone; but Mabel's start upon her seat was almost a leap, while her fingers moved faster and more irregularly.
“I suspect, from your unsettled demeanor this evening, that it reached you before it did me,” continued he. “I can attribute your badly suppressed pertubation to no other cause. Mrs. Sutton is such an indefatigable gossip, that this item could hardly have passed her by. Has she told you that Rosa Tazewell is shortly to become Mrs. Chilton?”
“She has.”
He thought she was nerving herself to a simulation of hardihood, and the long-indulged habit of censorship was strong upon him.
“I had trusted, until to-day, Mabel, that you had conquered that disgraceful weakness,” he resumed, yet more pitilessly.
Domination was one of his besetting sins. He never saw a helpless or cowering thing without feeling the inclination to set his foot upon it, and the least show of resistance in such, piqued him into despotism.
“I was aware that it was not dead when you married a man worth a thousand such scoundrels as that fellow in Philadelphia. I believed that the sentiment was powerful in impelling you to that marriage, and that this irrevocable measure would be an antidote to the evil. It was a wise course, and I commended you for pursuing it. But I am too well read in your countenance and moods not to see that there is something far amiss with you. You have been playing a part for twenty-four hours, and you have played it wretchedly. Your nervous flutters and laugh, your sudden changes of complexion, and the incoherence of your language, would betray you to the least penetrating observer. I caution you to be on your guard lest your husband should take just offence at all this. The need of dissimulation is the evidence that something is radically wrong in your moral nature, and is derogatory to your lawful partner. I am ashamed to remind you of the golden maxim of wedded life—that without perfect and mutual confidence there can be no substantial happiness. Does Dorrance know of your escapade at the Springs?”
“If you refer to my engagement to Mr. Chilton, I told him of it before our marriage.”
“I rejoice to hear it—am pleased at this one proof of good sense and right feeling,” in lofty patronage. “You owed him no less. You have, without doubt been informed long since how I obtained the most important proof against that villain?”
“I have not heard Mr. Chilton's name in a year until yesterday,” said Mabel, the scarlet spots ceasing to flicker, and her voice hard as was his own.
Unable to interpret her sudden steadiness of demeanor and accent, Winston leaped to the irritating conclusion that she was sullen, and meditated a defiant retreat from this untimely usurpation of his olden authority.
“It was injudicious—miserably ill-judged in Dorrance not to acquaint you with this. I have always feared lest his indulgence might not be the most salutary method of repressing your self-will and pride of opinion. You, more than any other woman I know, require the tight rein of vigilant discipline. I intimated as much to Dorrance when he asked my consent to your engagement. But this is his lookout, not mine. What I began to say was that, in MY opinion, he would have acted more sensibly had he not encouraged your squeamish repugnance to talking of your early fault and its mortifying consequences.”
“Fortunately for me, my husband is a man of feeling and delicacy!” Mabel was goaded to boast. “I said to him, the evening of our betrothal, that the subject you have chosen to revive to-night was painful to me, and he has respected the reluctance you condemn.”
“He would have overcome it more quickly and thoroughly had he informed you that he had had the honor of horse-whipping your ci-devant betrothed!” sneered Winston, with white dinted nostrils. “That he was the author of the letter, a portion of which I copied for your perusal, when I announced the dissolution of your provisional engagement—the main agent, in effect, of the rupture, since but for him I should have had much difficulty in proving what I had believed from the beginning—that the rascal ought to be shot for presuming to think of you in any other light than as the merest acquaintance. And he should never have been that, had I been with you that unlucky summer.”
“We have been over that ground so often, Winston, that both of us should be tolerably familiar with it,” rejoined Mabel, decidedly. “I prefer that, instead of reviewing the circumstances of what you term my 'early fault,' you should show me the evidence of your singular assertion respecting Mr. Dorrance's agency in a matter in which he could not at that time have had the slightest personal interest. Or, shall I ask him? It is an enigma to me.”
Without other answer than a contemptuous laugh, Winston left the room, unnoticed by the musicians. But before she could form a conjecture as to the meaning of his abrupt movement, he was back with a letter in his hand.
“Documentary testimony!” he said, shortly, passing it to her. “I should have forwarded it entire, instead of transcribing an extract, but for Clara's fear lest you should be led thereby to dislike her brother before you had ever seen him. I take it there is no danger of prejudicing you against him now!”
The letter was from Herbert Dorrance, and began thus:
“Mr. Aylett:
“Dear Sir,—Your favor of the 15th, enclosed in one from my sister, reached me this morning.”
Then followed the expose of Frederic Chilton's misdeeds, which Winston had transferred to his own epistle to Mabel, as the leading argument in his refusal to sanction her engagement.
Mabel read it through without flinching; then turned over to the first page and put her finger upon a paragraph.
“Who was the lady here mentioned?”
Mr. Aylett shrugged his fine shoulders.
“I have never interested myself to inquire. Beyond the statement of your friend's rascality, the story was nothing to me.”
“Herbert!”
The ringing call—sharp and clear—checked the pianists in the middle of a bar.
“Step here a moment, if you please!”
The novelty of the imperative tone and the glitter of his wife's eyes moved Mr. Dorrance to more prompt compliance than he would have adjudged to be dignified and husbandly in the case of another man.
Mabel held out the letter at his approach, still pointing to the passage she had asked her brother to explain.
“To whom does this refer? Who was the relative whose husband was a naval officer?”
Herbert Dorrance's constitutional phlegm was a valuable ally in the very contracted quarters into which this question drove him, but his sister was his deliverer. Affecting forgetfulness of the letter and its contents, he glanced down one page, Mrs. Aylett leaning upon his arm, and reading with him.
“I don't think you need mind telling the name, here and at this late day, Herbert,” she said, seriously and slowly, “provided Mabel will never repeat the story when it can do harm. Have you never heard any of us speak of poor Ellen Lester, my mother's niece, who died several years before your marriage?” accosting her sister-in-law, with a face so devoid of aught resembling cowardly or guilty fears, that Mabel's brain, tried and shaken, tottered into disbelief at her own wild surmises.
“Not that I remember!”
“Is that so? Yet it might easily have been. She accompanied her husband upon his last voyage, and the ship was never heard of again. Her parents are dead, too, so there are few to cherish her memory. She was a school-fellow of mine, and Herbert loved her as a sister.”
Mabel was gazing fixedly at her husband's stolid countenance and averted eyes, and made no rejoinder until the silent intensity of her regards compelled him to look up. Reading distrust and alarm in these, he shook off his sister's warning hold.
“When you wish to catechise me upon family matters, Mabel, it is my wish that you should do it in private,” he said, roughly. “Then you shall learn all that it concerns you to know. There are subjects into which only prurient curiosity cares to pry.”
“I beg your pardon!” answered Mabel, quietly. “I have but to say, in self-defence, that I did not ask to see the letter.”
“It is a matter of profound indifference to me whether you did or not,” was the reply. “For aught that I know or cared, you may have read it a year and a half ago. I retract nothing that is set down there. Clara, shall we go on with our music?”
Glancing around stealthily at the finale of the (sic) he saw that Mabel's chair was vacant, and Mr. Aylett was reading composedly beneath the lamp.
Clara made the same discovery at the same moment, and came forward laughing to her husband.
“What had you been saying to our dear, excitable Mabel, that challenged the introduction of that unfortunate document?”
“Told her of Frederic Chilton's intended marriage!” curtly, and without laying aside his volume.
“Preposterous!”
“I agree with you—but it is the truth.”
Herbert stood apart glowing at the fire.
“You must have approached the subject unskilfully,” urged the peacemaker. “These old sores are oest left alone.”
“It is best for married woman to have none,” retorted Winston, doggedly.
“She does not persist in doubting his unworthiness, does she?” queried the wife, aside, but not so cautiously that her brother did not hear her.
He wheeled about suddenly.
“She SHALL believe it, or call me a liar to my face!” he uttered, angrily. “I will put a stop to this sentimental folly!”
“You are late in beginning your reforms,” observed Mr. Aylett, dryly.
“You are a less sensible man than I give you credit for being, if you ever begin!” interposed his sister.
“Leave Mabel to herself until she recovers from the shock—if it be one—of this intelligence. The surest means of keeping alive a dying coal is to stir and blow upon it. And even we”—lifting the heavy locks of her husband's hair in playful dalliance—“even we are mortal. We have had our peccadilloes and our repentances, and have now our little concealments of affairs that would interest nobody but ourselves. Do you hear what I am saying, Herbert! Leave off your high tragedy airs and attend to reason, as expressed in your sister's advice. While your wife is my invalid guest, I will not have her subjected to any inquisitorial process. There is a time for everything under the sun, saith the preacher. This is the season for tender forbearance, and if need be, of forgiveness.”
Herbert blessed her humane tolerance in his alarmed heart, when Mabel awoke from her troubled slumbers at midnight, in extreme pain, that culminated before dawn, in convulsions.
Two physicians were hastily summoned, and when Mrs. Sutton arrived about noon, she met Phillis outside the door of the sick-chamber, carrying a lifeless infant in her arms, and weeping bitterly.
This was the end of the months of hopeful longing and glad anticipation which were Heaven's messengers of healing and comfort to the sick and lonely heart. The cunningly-fashioned robes were never to have a wearer, the clasping arms to remain still empty. Oh wondrous mystery—past finding out—of the human soul! Had the lungs once heaved with breath, the heart given one throb; the eyes caught one beam of Heaven's light ere they were sealed fast in eternal darkness, she, who travailed with the infant through the inexpressible agony of birth, would have been written a mother among women; have had the right accorded her, without the cavil of formalist or the disputations of science, to claim the precious thing as her own still—a living baby-spirit that had fluttered back to the bosom of the Almighty Father, after alighting, for one painful moment, upon the confines of the lower world. As it was, custom ordained that there should be no mourning for what had never really been. Anguish, hope, and the patient love at which we do not scoff when the mother-bird broods over the eggs that may never hatch—these were to be no more named or remembered. In silence and without sympathy she must endure her disappointment. The tenderest woman about whose knees cluster living children, and who has sowed in tears the blessed seed, that in the resurrection-morn shall be gathered in beauteous sheaves of richest recompense—would smile in pitying contempt over the tiny headstone which should be lettered—“Born Dead.”
All this and much more Mabel was to learn with the return of health and reason, but she lay now, like one who had passed for herself the narrow sea that separates the Now from the Hereafter; her features chiselled into the unmoving outlines of a waxen image, only a feeble flutter of breath and pulse telling that this was lethargy, not death. They watched her all night, Mrs. Sutton on one side and Phillis on the other, the family physician stealing in with slippered tread from hour to hour, to note with his sensitive touch if the few poor drops of vital blood yet trickled from veins to heart, always with the same directions, “Give her the stimulant while she can swallow it. It is the only hope of saving her.”
Armed with this, the two devoted women fought the Destroyer, praying inaudibly, while they wrought, for the life of the child they had reared to her sorrowful womanhood.
“HE'S asleep, and so is SHE!” whispered Phillis, once, pointing alternately to the adjoining room where Herbert Dorrance awaited the issue of this critical stage of his wife's illness, and to Mrs. Aylett's chamber across the hall. “The Lord forgive 'em both! It won't be they two that will shed many tears if so be she doesn't see the light of another day—the murdered lamb! They tormented the life out of her. I passed by her room last night before bed-time, and heard her a-sobbin' and talkin' to herself, and walkin' up and down the floor, and THEY a-bangin' away on the pyano down in the parlor!”
The faithful creature's prejudice wronged one of the hated pair. Mrs. Aylett's slumbers upon her downy couch might be none the less serene for her sister-in-law's danger, but Herbert's was the sleep of exhaustion, not callousness. He had been up all the previous night, and racked by the wildest anxiety throughout the intervening day, and to compass this vigil was beyond his physical powers. Mabel would not miss him, and he could do nothing for her—would only be in the way, being totally unpractised in the art of nursing, he reasoned; and there was no telling what new draught upon his strength the morrow might bring. He would just lie down for an hour; then he would be fresh for whatever service might be required of him. With this prudent resolve, he threw himself along the bed in the spare-room, and was oblivious of everything sublunary until sunrise.
“If there should be any change, call me!” Mrs. Aylett had enjoined, plaintively. “Winston will not hear of my sitting up, but I shall not close my eyes all night, so do not hesitate to disturb me, if I can be of any use whatever.”
Which, it is idle to remark, was the last thing either of the nurses thought of doing. If their darling were, in truth, dying, they were the fittest persons to receive her latest sigh; for had they not been present at her birth, and did not her mother go to glory from their supporting arms?
There was a change, and not a favorable one, before daybreak. The patient, from mutterings and restless starts, passed into violent delirium, laughing, crying, and singing in a style so opposed to the prescribed diagnosis of her case, as to lash the provincial doctor to his wits' end, and extinguish in Aunt Rachel's sanguine heart the faint hope to which she had clung until now. Herbert, awakened finally by the turbulent sounds from the room he had been told must be kept perfectly quiet, jumped up, and showed himself, with disordered hair and blinking eyes, in the door of communication, just as Mabel struggled to rise, and pleaded weepingly with those who held her down that they would restore her child to her.
“I had her in my arms not a moment ago!” she insisted. “See! the print of her little head is here on my breast! You have taken her away among you! I saw it all—those who ordered that it should be done and those who did it, when I was too weak to hold her, or to keep them back!”
And passing from the height of furious invective to deadly and earnest calm, she told them off upon her fingers.
“Clara Aylett! Rosa Tazewell! Winston Aylett! (he married Clara Louise Dorrance, you know!) Herbert Dorrance! JULIUS LENNOX!”
The household was astir by this time, and Mrs. Aylett entered from the hall as her brother did from his bedroom. There was but one spectator who was sufficiently composed to note and marvel at the scared look exchanged by the two at the sound of the last name. This was Mr. Aylett, who, from his position behind his wife, had an excellent view of all the actors in the exciting tableau before she fell back, swooning, in his arms.
He was alone with her in their chamber when she revived, and the earliest effort of her restored consciousness was to seize both his hands in hers, and scan his face searchingly—it would seem agonizingly—until his fond smile dispelled the unspoken dread.
“Ah!” she murmured, hiding her face upon his bosom, “she is still alive, then! I thought—I thought”—a mighty sob—“Don't despise your weak, silly wife, darling! but it was very terrible! I believed it was the last struggle, and was appalled at the sight. And my poor Herbert! he was frightfully overcome. Did you notice him? Will you send him to me, dear? I can soothe him better than any one else—prepare him for what is, I fear, inevitable. I shall not give way again to my terrors.”
The brother and sister were still together when word was brought, two hours later that Mabel had fallen into a profound sleep—a good omen, the doctor said.
“Thank Heaven!” ejaculated Herbert, fervently, his eyes softening until he turned away to conceal his emotion.
He was haggard with solicitude, while Mrs. Aylett's healthful bloom betokened slight interest in the termination of the seizure, a glance at which had thrown her into a faint. Nor did she echo the thanksgiving. She waited until the messenger had gone, and continued the conversation her entrance had interrupted.
“I incline to the belief that she caught the name, in some manner, on Christmas before last. HE was delirious, too, and although doctor and nurse reported that he did not speak articulately after he was brought in, she may have heard more than they. From what has been told me, I gather that she was in the room with him alone, while Mrs. Sutton was down-stairs looking for Dr. Ritchie. In a lucid interval he may have given his name—possibly some particulars of his history. Unless—are you positive there has been no indiscretion on your part, or that others may have talked negligently to her, because she was a member of the family?”
“There are topics of which we—your mother, sister, and brothers—never speak, even to one another. You may trust us that far,” rejoined Herbert, emphatically. “Nor do I see what we can do, except wait for other proof that Mabel really knows anything beyond a name she has picked up at random and never, to my knowledge, repeated, save in her ravings. Should she recover, the test can be easily applied, and we can judge then, how to handle the dilemma.”
“Should she recover!” He said the words reluctantly, as loth to express the doubt.
His sister's lips twitched nervously into a sinister smile. It was as if she would have whispered, had she dared, “Heaven forbid!”
“You have chosen a toilsome and a perilous path, Clara,” he resumed, by and by. “I do not wonder that you are, with all your courage and sanguine trust in your own powers, sometimes disquieted, and often weary.”
“Who says that I am ever weary? And did you ever know me to disquiet myself in vain?” with the low, musical ripple of laughter that belonged to her sunniest mood. “Had I been born in the classic age, I should have been a devout disciple of Epicurus. Don't imagine that my success has not, thus far, amply repaid me for my toil and ingenuity. Having lived upon excitement all my days, I should starve without it. Pleasure, like safety, is the dearer for being plucked from that evergreen nettle, Danger!”