CHAPTER VI.
She left the parent roof, and left in grief,Not from an idle passion vain and light,But in her heart there lived a firm belief,That duty call’d and honor urged her flight.
She left the parent roof, and left in grief,Not from an idle passion vain and light,But in her heart there lived a firm belief,That duty call’d and honor urged her flight.
She left the parent roof, and left in grief,Not from an idle passion vain and light,But in her heart there lived a firm belief,That duty call’d and honor urged her flight.
She left the parent roof, and left in grief,
Not from an idle passion vain and light,
But in her heart there lived a firm belief,
That duty call’d and honor urged her flight.
Little by little, as her shattered nerves could bear it, the truth was revealed to Myra. It was a sad, sad trial, the uprooting of her pure domestic faith, the tearing asunder of those thousand delicate fibers that had so long woven, and clung, and rooted themselves around the parents who had adopted her. Love them she did, now, as it seemed, more intensely than ever, but there was excitement in her heart, a sort of wild, unsettled feeling, that destroyed all the sweet faith and tranquillity of affection. It was no longer the quiet and serene love which had clung around her from infancy, naturally and without effort, as wild blossoms bud upon a bank where the sunshine sleeps longest—but something of unrest and pain mingled with it all. In the history of her parents she found much to excite her imagination, her deep and sorrowful interest. It opened upon her with all the vividness of a romance, that kindled her fancy, while it pained her to the soul. Then came other thoughts and more thrilling anxieties. The beloved one, the man of her choice, whom she had dreamed of endowing with riches, from which she now seemed legally dispossessed—how would he receive the news of her orphanage—of her dependent state? Alas, how were all her proud and generous visions swept away! And yet, did she doubt his love or his pure disinterestedness? Never for a moment. Loyal, lofty, and unselfish as her own pure heart, she knew the beloved of that heart to be. She felt assured that his faith to the dowerless orphan would be kept more sacred than his pledge to the heiress. Full of this high trust, she wrote to Whitney and told him the whole.
“You sought me,” said the letter, “and loved me as the heiress of great wealth, as the only daughter of a proud and rich man. All at once, as if a flash of lightning had swept across the horizon of my life, revealing the truth with a single fiery gleam, I find myself the orphan of a great and good man, whom I remember only as the shade of a vision—and of a woman, lovely as she has been unfortunate—alive still, but kept from her child by bonds that have yet proved too strong, even for the yearnings of maternal love. I know that Daniel Clark, my father, was supposed to possess great wealth, but I am told that he died insolvent, and that in his will neither wife nor child was mentioned. Therefore am I an orphan, dependent upon those who are strangers to me in blood for the love that shelters me, for the wealth that has hedged me in with comforts from my cradle up. * * * * I am not the person whom you loved—not the person whom, two short days ago, I believed myself to be. Should Myra Clark, orphaned and without inheritance—her very birth loaded with doubt, and her hold on any living thing uncertain—still claim the faith pledged to Myra D., the heiress? No; like the rest, I resign this last and most precious hold on the past. You are free—honorably free, from all responsibility arising from the faith you plighted. Of all my past life, I have nothing left but the simple name of Myra.”
This is but an extract of Myra’s letter to Mr. Whitney, but it was enough to satisfy her delicate sense of honor. It set him free. It relinquished all claim upon his faith or his honor. Much there was in the letter to melt and touch a heart like his, for with a great secret swelling in her breast, she found consolation in pouring out the feelings that oppressed her, where she was certain of sympathy.
And Whitney answered the letter. He had not loved the heiress or the lofty name—but Myra, the noble-minded, the lovely, the beautiful. If she was an orphan, so much the better; he would be family, wealth, the world to her. He grieved for her sorrow, but seemed to revel and rejoice in the idea of having her all to himself. This was the tenor of Whitney’s reply, and Myra felt no longer alone—her elastic nature gathered up its strength again. She became proud of the pure and holy love, which only grew brighter with adversity, and this beautiful pride rekindled all her energies.
Among the fine scenery which lies upon the upper portions of the Delaware Bay, there is a splendid old mansion house, large, massive, and bearing deeper marks of antiquity and aristocratic ownership, than are usually found in a country where dwellings that have withstood the ravages of a hundred years are seldom to be found. It was a superb countryplace, uplifted above the bay, and commanding one of the finest prospects in the whole country. Picturesque and broken scenery lay all around. Portions of this scenery were wild, and even rude, in their thrifty luxuriance, while close around the dwelling reigned the most perfect cultivation. Park-like groves, lawns fringed with choice shrubberies, and glowing with a profusion of flowers, might be seen from every window of the dwelling. The stables, lodges, and other buildings, all in excellent repair, bespoke a degree of prosperous wealth, and a luxurious taste, seldom found in our primitive land. A spacious veranda that ran along the front, commanded a beautiful view of the distant bay and all the broken shore, for miles and miles on either hand. In the whole State of Delaware could not have been found, at that day, a gentleman’s residence more perfect in itself, or more luxurious in its appointments. To this house Mr. D. took his family to spend the summer months, and Myra entered it, for the first time in her life, with a feeling of profound loneliness. This noble mansion was to have been her inheritance; she had spent all her girlhood in the shadows of its walks; she had learned to love every tree and flower and shady nook that surrounded it—to love them as the home of her parents, the home that should hereafter shelter her and her children. Now she entered it sadly, and with a feeling of cold desolation. Transient, certainly, but very painful were these natural regrets.
But amid all the shadows that hung around her path, there was one gleam of golden sunshine.Hislove was left to her—hisfaith still remained firm and perfect.
With the visitors who came with Mr. D. to his country dwelling, was a distant relation of the family, his wife, and two lovely children. To these persons the secret of Myra’s birth was made known, and to the lady, young and apparently amiable, Myra sometimes fled for counsel and sympathy.But to these persons the secret of Myra’s parentage opened new and selfish hopes that forbade all genuine friendship for the confiding girl. Myra, severed by all ties of blood from the family that had adopted her, now seemed only an obstacle in the way of their own interests. The excessive love still expressed for her both by Mr. D. and his angelic wife, seemed so much defrauded from the rights of their own offspring, and those who had flattered and fawned abjectly on the daughter and the heiress, now returned the touching confidence of the orphan with treachery and dislike.
Thus surrounded by secret enemies and those sad regrets which hopes so suddenly crushed could not fail to excite, the young girl yielded her whole being up to the one sweet hope still left to her, undimmed and brightening each day—a lone star in the clouded sky of her life. The love, that under other circumstances might have been diversified by many worldly fancies, now concentrated itself around her whole being, and in its pure intensity became almost sublime.
Mr. D. in revealing the secret of Myra’s birth had, as it were, thrown off all claims to her filial obedience, but the generous girl took no advantage of this most painful freedom; her great desire was still to win his consent to her union with the man she loved, her penniless union, for Myra neither hoped nor wished for any thing more than the love of those who had protected her infancy to carry as a marriage dower to her husband. Under the sanction of her gentle mother—for such Mrs. D. was ever to Myra—the young girl had still carried on a correspondence with Mr. Whitney, and it was decided that he should write to Mr. D. and again request permission to visit the young creature, who, without a daughter’s right, had no desire to evade a daughter’s obedience.
Believing the acquaintance between Myra and her lover broken off by his own firm opposition, Mr. D. had not given up her union with another, which had for many years been a favorite object with him. His astonishment and indignation may, therefore, be imagined, when the mild and respectful letter of Mr. Whitney reached him at D. Place, some few weeks after the retirement of his family to their country mansion. It was early in the morning when this letter came, and Mr. D. was alone with his relative and guest when hebroke the seal. The anger that shook the proud man’s nerves, the sharp exclamation that sprang from his lips, were heard by Mrs. D. as she passed into the breakfast-parlor. She saw the handwriting crushed angrily between the fingers of her husband, and filled with dread that Myra’s private correspondence had been betrayed, she left the room and hastened to her daughter’s chamber.
“O Myra! I fear—I fear that your papa has in some way obtained one of Mr. Whitney’s letters,” cried the generous lady, with a face that bespoke all the anxiety that preyed upon her.
Myra turned a little more pallid than usual, for her father’s anger was a terrible thing to brave,—of that she was well aware; but, after a moment, her natural courage returned, and she answered with some degree of firmness:
“Dear mamma, do not look so terrified. Let his anger fall on me; sit down. That pale face must not tell him that you have ever known of these letters.”
Mrs. D. sank to a seat, striving to regain some degree of composure, and Myra went down-stairs, very pale, but making an effort to sustain with dignity the reproaches that she felt to be prepared for her.
“Here, young lady!” said Mr. D. as Myra entered the room; “here is a letter from that Whitney again—a letter to me—asking permission to visit you.”
Myra drew a deep breath; in her agitation she had forgotten that this letter might be expected, and so long as her father’s anger had only this source, she could withstand it.
“Well, papa, and you will answer it?” said the young girl, gently, but still with some tremor of the voice.
“I will!” was the angry reply; “I will answer it as such presumption deserves!”
“Surely—surely, papa, you will not forget that Mr. Whitney is a gentleman, and deserving of courteous treatment?”
“I forget nothing!” was the curt reply; and without further argument Mr. D. left the room, and in half an hour after an old colored man was galloping toward Wilmington, with a letter, directed to Mr. Whitney, in his pocket. What that letter contained might have been guessed from the hasty and blotted address, had it not been written black as night on theangry forehead of Mr. D. when he sat down to breakfast that morning.
A few days went by—days of keen anxiety to poor Myra and her gentle mother; then was the young girl summoned once more to the presence of Mr. D. She found him white with rage—deeper and more terrible rage than his fine features had ever exhibited before; a letter was clenched tightly in his hand; his fingers worked convulsively around the crushed paper as he addressed the trembling girl.
“Twice—twice in my life have I been insulted, girl! By your father once—by your lover now. He is coming here! He will be in Wilmington in a few days, will he! Let him come; but as I live—as I live, girl, he shall never leave that place alive! This insult shall be atoned then and there.”
“O father!” was all poor Myra could say.
“If he is a gentleman, he shall answer thisasa gentleman. If he is what I suppose, then I will chastise this insolence as I would a menial. When once we meet, one or the other will never return alive.”
Myra shuddered, her pale lips refused to utter the words that sprang to them, and she stood before the angry man with her hands clasped, but motionless as a statue. At length she gathered strength to utter a single sentence.
“Father, you will not challenge Mr. Whitney? It would be terrible; it would kill me.”
“If he comes within my reach, if he dares to intrude his presence even into the neighborhood, he shall answer it with his life or mine!” was the stern reply.
Myra turned away trembling and heart-sick; she knew that this was no idle threat, no mere burst of vivid passion that would die within the hour. Her lover would be in Wilmington in a few days; it was a firm but courteous announcement to this effect that had so exasperated the man whom she had just left.
“Mother—mother, he will not do this thing—he will not meet Mr. Whitney with a challenge!” cried the harassed young creature, throwing herself into the arms of Mrs. D., who stood in the chamber of her child, where she had retired from the angry storm below.
“I fear it, alas! he deems himself braved and insulted,”said the good lady, weeping bitterly. “O Myra! why did we permit Whitney to write—why consent to his coming to the neighborhood?”
“Why, why, indeed! if it is but to meet his death?” cried the poor girl, wringing her hands. “But, mother, this can not be; my father will relent!”
Mrs. D. shook her head. “Not where he deems his honor or authority contemned, my poor child!”
“Oh, what can we do—what can we do?”
“His anger is so terrible—if you could but give up all thoughts of the man; if you only could, my child.”
Myra withdrew from her mother’s arms, her slight form seemed to dilate and nerve itself for some great effort. The tears hung unshed upon her eyelashes, and her lips were pressed firmly together. The thoughts that swept across her sweet face were quick and painful; she scarcely seemed to breathe, so intense was the struggle within that motionless bosom.
“Mother,” she said, in a low and husky voice, so low that it was almost a whisper—“mother, I will give him up. It is to save his life or the life of your husband; I will give him up!”
While the unhappy lady stood wondering at the strange calmness with which these words were spoken, Myra passed down-stairs once more, and stood in her father’s presence, calm, resolute, but very sorrowful.
“Father, I love the man whom you would challenge, whom you would force to the extremities of life or death. How dearly, how wholly I love him, you can never believe, or this agony would have been spared me. Father, you know of his coming; he is already on the way; thus it is out of my power to prevent that which so offends you. Let him come; let him depart in peace, and here I solemnly promise never to speak to him again. Father, I give him up, but it is to save his life or yours!”
The young girl ceased speaking; the words she had uttered were pronounced hurriedly and with firmness, but the white lips, the heavy trouble that clouded her eyes with something more touching than tears, revealed all the heroism of her sacrifice. You could see that to save a human life, she hadgiven up all that made her own life valuable. It was strange to see so much heroism in a form so gentle and so frail; it was strange that this beautiful spirit of self-sacrifice should prove powerless to curb the wrathful spirit that possessed the proud man before whom she pleaded, but his answer was relentless.
“No!” he replied. “That which I have said is immutable! If this man comes so near my house as the next town, he shall answer for the presumption with his life, or I will sacrifice mine!”
Myra stood for a moment looking in that frowning face, and as she gazed her own became painfully calm.
“My father, once again—once again reflect, it is more than life that I offer you for this!” she said, and her voice grew softer, as if tears were swelling in its tones once more.
“That which I have said I abide by!” was the stern reply.
Myra pleaded no longer, but turned gently and left the room. In the upper hall she met her mother.
“Does he relent—will he accept the sacrifice of your offer?” questioned the anxious lady.
“No, mother, he refuses; he seems athirst for the life of this noble young man; but I will save him, I will save them both.”
“How, my child? how can you, so frail and so helpless, struggle against the strong will of your father?”
“I will leave the house. I will no longer remain where innocent and honorable love leads to scenes like this.”
“What, leave your mother—your own fond, too fond mother? Myra, my child, my child!”
“Hush! mother; dear, dear mother; these tears, they make me weak as an infant. If you weep and cling to me thus, mother, my strength may fail; and do you not know that death may follow—death to your husband or to mine, for is he not my husband before God, do you think, sweet mother?”
But Mrs. D. only wept, and clung more fondly to her daughter. Myra withdrew herself gently from that warm clasp, and went away. On the morrow Mr. Whitney would be in Wilmington, and before then the young girl had much to accomplish—much to suffer.
All that day Myra avoided the family, above all the gentlemother, whose tears she feared far more than the anger of her proud father. She had formed a resolution that required all her courage, and more strength than seemed to animate that slender form. She shrunk, therefore, from encountering the tears of that sweet and loving woman.
There was an old servant in the family, with whom Myra from her childhood had been a sort of idol. Indeed, in all that large household there was not a dependant who did not reverence and love the young creature. This man, early in the afternoon, might have been seen riding toward Wilmington at a brisk trot, and with some little anxiety in his manner. When he reached the town the old man entered a dwelling where he was received by two bright and joyous-looking young ladies, who greeted him eagerly, and inquired for news of his young mistress, while the old negro was searching in his pockets for a hastily folded billet, which he, at length, produced with no little mysterious importance. One of the young ladies tore open the billet, and began to read.
“Sit up for me to-night, dear girls,” thus the billet commenced, “sit up till morning, unless I come before; you will certainly see me during the night; then I will explain this hasty message. It may storm; no matter, I shall surely be with you.
Myra.”
The young ladies looked at each other, wholly at a loss to guess the reason of this singular message, but Myra had promised to explain all, and so they allowed the old man to depart unquestioned.
Long before the faithful messenger returned, Myra was standing in the humble dwelling of an out-door dependent in whom she could trust.
“And you are determined, Miss Myra,” was the man’s question as he stood, hat in hand, by the door.
“Yes; obey my directions exactly as they are given, that is all I require of you.”
“We would do any thing—any thing on earth for you,” said the wife of this man, coming forward; “you know we would, Miss Myra, even though it may be our ruin should your father know that we aided you against his will!”
“But he never can know; nothing shall tempt me toinform him, and the secret will rest with us alone,” was the prompt reply.
“We will be punctual, never fear,” said the man; “but it looks like a storm.”
“Well,” said Myra, casting her eyes toward the heavens, which did indeed bear indications of a mustering tempest, “it does not matter, be ready all the same. Remember to come by the old carriage route, not along the new road—you might meet company there.”
“I will be cautious, dear young lady; I will be cautious as you could wish.”
“I am sure of it,” was the mild and grateful reply; and with a beating heart Myra went back to the house which was soon to be her home no longer.
The relation whom we have mentioned was still at D. Place, and his wife, with her two beautiful children, occupied a room near that appropriated to Myra, and to this room the young girl betook herself after returning from the visit to her humble friends. A spirit of unrest was upon her; she longed for action, for sympathy, for some being to whom she could pour forth the anguish which beat like a fever in every vein of her delicate body.
Myra found her father’s guest in an easy chair near the window. She was a quiet, tranquil woman, devoid of strong passions, but selfish in the extreme, and possessing a sort of gentle craft that from its very want of active spirit was calculated to deceive. She knew that discontent and disunion were active in the dwelling, and after her usual inert manner was waiting for some result that might prove beneficial to herself and her children. When she saw Myra enter her room with a glow upon her cheek, but pale as death about the mouth and temples, this woman drooped her eyelids to conceal all expression of the joy this agitation kindled in her bosom, but her look was tranquil, her voice was full of sympathy as she addressed the young girl.
“You look anxious, nay, ill, my sweet friend,” she said, taking Myra’s hand, which fell over the back of her chair.
“You know,” answered Myra, in a sad voice, “you know what has passed to-day in this house; tell me—for much depends on your answer, and I can hold counsel with no oneelse beneath this roof—tell me, do you believe that if Mr. Whitney should arrive in Wilmington to-morrow, my father would find him out and put his cruel threat into execution.”
“You know Mr. D. Is he not determined; did he ever swerve from a resolution once formed?” was the mild and sinister reply.
“Then you honestly believe that he would challenge Mr. Whitney?” was the anxious rejoinder.
“Has he not said it, Myra?”
“Then if you think so—you who always look on events so still and passionless—I have but to go on,” said Myra, in accents that bespoke all the grief this conviction fastened on her young heart.
“What do you mean, Myra—what is it you contemplate?” said the confidant, with a gleam of satisfaction in her downcast eyes.
“I am going from this house to-night. Before Mr. Whitney reaches Wilmington, I will see him and prevent this meeting.”
“You, Myra! you—what will your father say? What will the world think?”
“It is to save life!” answered Myra. “My own soul tells me that I am right.”
The wily confidant dropped her head upon her hand, when she fell into a moment’s thought. With all her apparent apathy, she knew well how to excite the resolution of a generous and ardent nature like Myra’s, while seeming to oppose it. The arguments that she used appealed entirely to those selfish considerations which were sure to be cast away with disdain by the young creature on whom they were urged, and Myra went out from the interview more impressed than ever with the necessity of putting her project into immediate operation.
The storm that had been threatening all day, came on at nightfall with all the rush and violence of a tempest, but this scene suited well with the excitement and wild wish for action which swelled in the young girl’s heart, even as the elements heaved and struggled without. She sat by the window, gazing upon the storm; the trees tossing their branches to and fro like giants reveling in the wind; the rain sweeping downward in wreaths and sheets of silvery water whenever the lightningglared over it; and afar off the distant bay, heaving into sight, as it were, from the very bosom of darkness, and sinking back again when the lightning withdrew the sweep of its fiery wing.
Mr. D., full of unrest as the elements, was pacing the veranda—his face was unnaturally pale in the gleams of lightning, and he paced up and down, unconscious or heedless of the water-drifts that now and then swept over him. Poor Myra sat watching him; the storm within her own breast and the tempest without, imparted to her spirit a wild and reckless courage. She stepped out on the veranda; the rain beat in her pale face, the lightning glared across her eyes, already more than brilliant; she met her father in his walk, and touched his arm with her cold hand.
“Father, father! you have reflected. Oh, say that you will not provoke Mr. Whitney into this death-strife when he comes.”
Mr. D. paused for one moment, a shade of irresolution swept across his features, but it left them more pale, more resolute than before; he turned away without a word of answer, and Myra disappeared.
That night, close upon the hour of twelve, two people, a man and a woman, stood near a back entrance of Mr. D.’s dwelling. The female held an umbrella, dripping and drenched with rain; the man stood with his ear bent to the door, listening.
At last, amid the storm, he heard a key turn and a bolt withdrawn; then the door swung open, and Myra appeared, wrapped in a large shawl, and standing by a little trunk which the slender girl had dragged step by step down the lofty staircase.
“Carry it carefully; there is neither lock nor key; it was the only one I could reach,” she whispered, dragging her humble burden toward the man, who swung it to his shoulders and disappeared in the darkness.
Myra drew close to the woman, and sheltered by the dripping umbrella, followed after. A walk of some distance brought them to a carriage which stood waiting back of the stables; the steps were down, the horses and vehicle all drenched with rain, and furiously shaken by the wind, stood ready to receive her. She sprang, pale and breathless, intothe frail shelter. Her faithful friend was about to mount the seat.
“One word,” said Myra, bending her white face into the storm; “the turnpike gate—you may be known there if the man sees you. The storm rages so fiercely he may not be aroused, but if he is, make no answer; your voice, my good friend, would betray you, and this kindness to me might be your ruin with my father. If this man calls, do not speak; the gate is old, the horses good, the carriage strong; be resolute, and drive on as if nothing were in the way. Do you understand? trample the old gate down, and that without a word. It will open your way back again.”
“I will drive through the gate; never fear,” was the prompt reply, and the man sprang to his seat.
One grateful shake of the hand, a smothered “God bless you, Miss Myra,” from the good woman who had risked so much for her, and Myra fell back in the carriage.
The man was obliged to drive very slowly, for the night was intensely dark, and he only kept the road by the gleams of lightning that ever and anon flashed over it. At length they came to the turnpike gate that stretched its sodden timbers in a dark line across the road. The tempest was high, and every precaution was made to avoid the least noise, but the old toll-gatherer had a well-trained and most acute ear. Just as the driver was dismounting to try the lock of his gate, out came the old man, half-dressed, and with a candle in his hand that flared out the moment it felt a breath of the tempest.
“Halloa! who goes there?” shouted the old fellow.
Myra leaned from the carriage: “Not a word—use the whip—down with the gate—but not a single word.”
A firm sweep of the whip followed—a plunge—a crash—and then over the broken boards and through the black storm, the carriage was swept away. Along the dark road it toiled, pelted with rain, half-overturned every instant by a sweep of the wind, that kept rising stronger and higher, till on every hand rose the black, gaunt shadow of many a darkened dwelling, and in their midst a single light gleamed like a star.
“They are up—they are waiting!” exclaimed Myra, with a burst of grateful joy, as she saw this light. “Now, my friend—my good, kind friend—you must go no farther; even theymust not see you. Stop here; set my trunk on the walk; I will find the way myself, now!”
The man would have protested against this, but Myra was firm, and there in that wild storm she stood till the carriage was out of sight. Then she seized the trunk by the handle, and straining every nerve in her delicate frame by the effort, dragged it toward a window where she saw two fair, young, beautiful faces peering anxiously out, as if they were searching for some loved object in the darkness.
All at once those faces disappeared, a sound of glad welcome came toward the door, and the next instant Myra, panting with fatigue, white as death, and drenched through and through, till the rain dripped like a rivulet from her garments, was folded in the arms of those noble-hearted girls.