CHAPTER XXXVI.AGONY.
The peace that others seek they find;The heaviest storms not longest last;Heaven grants even to the guilty mind,An amnesty for what is past.I only pray to know the worst,And wish, as if my heart would burst.—Wordsworth.
The peace that others seek they find;The heaviest storms not longest last;Heaven grants even to the guilty mind,An amnesty for what is past.I only pray to know the worst,And wish, as if my heart would burst.—Wordsworth.
The peace that others seek they find;The heaviest storms not longest last;Heaven grants even to the guilty mind,An amnesty for what is past.I only pray to know the worst,And wish, as if my heart would burst.—Wordsworth.
The peace that others seek they find;
The heaviest storms not longest last;
Heaven grants even to the guilty mind,
An amnesty for what is past.
I only pray to know the worst,
And wish, as if my heart would burst.—Wordsworth.
As before, day after day passed slowly and sadly over the head of the young forsaken wife. The golden month of October was declining towards its close, and still she received no letter from her husband in answer to her last impassioned appeal.
She wrote again and again; but with no better success. How he must have steeled his breast against her to resist the pleading of her letters, where every word seemed a tear of blood wrung from her crushed and bleeding heart. But most likely he did not even trust himself to read them.
In this agony of suspense, she must have either maddened or died, but for the “little angel” she expected; for it is scarcely possible for the mother of an unborn babe, even under the greatest trials and heaviest sorrows, either to lose her reason, or break her heart. In making ready for the little one, and in looking for its coming, she found an antidote against despair.
But her moods, of course, varied with the state of her nerves. There were times in which she hoped, when her hour should come, that both she and her babe might be permitted to die, and go to their eternal rest.
“Where I shall never trouble him more; or, perhaps regret him, either, though this is doubtful. Oh, Alick! Alick!” she would exclaim, with a burst of tears and sobs.
But these miserable spells of despondency she always repented as sins. And she, afterwards, prayed that herbabe might live, and that she might be forgiven, and spared and strengthened to raise it.
She was so young and inexperienced that she did not know when to count upon the advent of the little stranger; but she felt sure that the time could not be far off.
It was in the last days of October, that she received another letter from her recreant husband. She was standing at the window of her bed-chamber, watching for the arrival of Leo from the post-office, as she had watched for so many days, when she saw the boy riding towards the house.
She tapped on the glass panes to attract his attention; and he heard her, and he pulled a letter from his pocket, and held it up to view as he struck the spurs to his horse’s flanks and dashed rapidly up to the door.
She rushed down to meet him, and snatched the letter.
“From Richmond, madam,” he said; “which I hope master is well, and is coming home.”
“Yes, from Richmond,” she said, tearing the envelope open, and beginning to run her eyes over it, as she went back to her room and sank into her resting chair. For the poor young wife and expectant mother could not now rush about and excite herself with impunity.
She sank, faint, dizzy and breathless, into her chair, and tried to read her letter; but the words ran together, and the lines reeled before her eyes; and some minutes passed before she was sufficiently recovered and calmed to do so. And as she gathered the meaning of this most cruel of all his heartless letters, her pale face grew paler still, her breath came in short gasps, and her frame shook as with an ague fit.
Before she had quite finished reading it, she let it drop from her hands, threw up her arms, and, with a piercing shriek, fell forward to the floor.
And well she might.
This murderous letter Alexander had sent to his wronged wife as acoup de grace.
In it he told her that humanity had induced him to prepare her, by a long abstinence from her society, for the painful communication he was about to make. He dared to hope that by this time she must have seen that there was something wrong in their union, and some good cause other than he had before stated for his keeping away from her. He said that now he believed she was ready to learn, without a great shock, which he had studied to spare her, the true cause of his parting from her. He then went on to tell her that early in the month of March he had discovered, to his own great astonishment, that their union was utterly null, void, and illegal; that he could not find it in his heart at that time to shock her with the fatal news; but he made up his mind to prepare her for it by degrees, and finally to break it to her very slowly. He begged to remind her that since the day upon which he had made the discovery of the unlawfulness of their connection he had never wronged her by intruding into her private apartments, or treating her otherwise than with the reserve due to a lady and the affection owed to a sister. He repeated that he had tried to spare her pain in the breaking of this tie, the severance of which was as distressing to him as it could possibly be to her. He assured her that, though duty forbade him ever to see her face again, he should provide for her future welfare, by securing to her the little estate upon which she lived. He concluded by telling her, that as propriety required all possible intercourse, even by writing, to cease between them, and as he himself was about to leave town for the country, it would be useless for her to reply to his letter.
It is to be noted that in this cruel communication he took care to say no more than was absolutely necessary to quell and quiet her claims on him. He did not even callher by name, but addressed her as “my poor little friend.” He did not acknowledge the receipt of any of her letters. And, worse than all, he failed to specify the cause of the alleged illegality of their marriage—whether it had chanced in any informality of the ceremony, which might be remedied by a second and more careful solemnization of the rites; or whether it existed in the shape of some insurmountable impediment that must forbid their union. Nor did he venture to allude to his former betrothal and his approaching wedding with his cousin Anna. Indeed, all proper names of persons and places seemed studiously left out. The writing also, was in a disguised hand, and without date or signature.
Altogether it was a careful work of a cautious man, who would have been an astute villain and a successful schemer if he had not, in the blindness of his selfishness, overreached even himself.
It bore no internal signs of the writer or of the person to whom it was written. It might have been sent by another man to another woman. It could never be successfully produced in evidence against any one in any court.
But if he took this precaution with the idea that his deeply wronged wife could ever drag her domestic sorrows before a public tribunal, and expose his private letters for her own vindication, he had studied her character to very little purpose.
The blow he had dealt had well nigh proved her death stroke. It struck her to the floor. Her cry and her fall aroused her servants, who came running to her room in haste. They found her stretched in a swoon on the carpet, with the open letter beside her.
“Master’s dead now, for sure!” exclaimed Leo, in consternation.
“And no harm done if he is!” cried Pina, who had, with her woman’s wit, long ago detected the bad faith.
“But it’s killed mist’ess!” groaned the boy.
“It hain’t! it’s only overcome her like! Help me to get her up, and don’t stand there blubbering!” said the girl.
Between them they tenderly lifted their mistress and laid her on her bed.
“Now, Leo, you go out and stop in the passage, so as to be in calling distance if I want anything. And leave me alone with my madam. I’ve seen her in these here fainty fits before, and I know what to do with her. Come, now!” impatiently exclaimed Pina, seeing that her brother still lingered, “be off with you, will you? It ain’t no ways proper for you to be looking on while I’m unloosening of her clothes!”
This hint drove the boy in haste from the room.
Pina proceeded to undress her mistress, turning her about very gently on the bed, until she had freed all her fastenings so as to give her lungs the fullest play. Then she applied the usual potent stimulants, and after much patient effort, she had the pleasure of seeing the little lady open her eyes.
But Drusilla recovered her senses only to fall into the most violent paroxysms of grief and despair. Convulsive sobs shook her whole frame; bitter groans burst from her lips; tears gushed in torrents from her eyes. As her passion of grief arose, she wrung her hands, and writhed, and threw herself from side to side, moaning piteously. Then in her frenzy of despair, she sprang up and began walking about the room, striking her hands together, and uttering piercing cries.
In truth, hers was not a mute grief. Your “silent sorrow” belongs to a little later period of life, when years have taught the sufferer such resignation that she will “die and make no sign.” But on this stricken young wife a blow had fallen, heavy enough to crush the strongest woman, while she was yet little more than a child. Andshe felt it with all a child’s intense sensibility, and she grieved with a child’s excessive vehemence.
Vainly her maid tried to restrain her or to comfort her, Pina followed her mistress up and down the room, weeping for company, and pleading with her—
“Oh, mist’ess darling, don’t take on so dreadful! Don’t mist’ess, that’s a dear! Oh, what has happened? Tell your true servant, who never left you but only once, and never will do so wicked an act again, never, if there’s twenty robbers in the house. Oh, mist’ess, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, girl, girl, he has left me, he has left me forever,” cried the poor young wife, with another gush of tears.
And it showed how utterly abject and self-abandoned she was in her profound and terrible sorrow, when she could forget her dignity, and make complaint in the presence of her youthful servant.
“He has left me, Pina! Oh, he has left me forever!” she repeated, wringing her hands and sobbing violently. “He has gone, he has gone for good!”
“Blest if I don’t think itisfor good! and a good riddance of uncommon bad rubbish!” grumbled the girl in a low voice; but she did not dare to let her words be heard.
“Oh, what shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?” cried the wretched wife, walking wildly about the room and wringing her hands. “He has left me forever! forever and ever!”
“Don’t you believe one word of that, ma’am, now, don’t, that’s a dear lady! Lors, he wouldn’t have the heart! he couldn’t stay away from you forever, no, not if he was to try to ever so hard,” said Pina, soothingly, as she followed her mistress.
“But he says so himself! he says so!” exclaimed Drusilla, with a passionate burst of weeping.
“Well, he says so, and maybe he thinks so, but hecan’t do it. It’s only because some wicked woman has got the whip hand of him now. But lor bless you,thatcan’t last. All men is fools, ma’am. I know that much, if I don’t know any more. But lor! the foolishest of ’em knows gold from brass, and is sure to come back to the old love and the true love, for theirowninterests. Goodness knows they never does anything for ours! He’ll come back, ma’am! Bad pennies always does.”
“Oh,” moaned Drusilla, “how low I have fallen! how low, to say what I have said, and to hear what I have heard! Pina, my girl, hush. You must not speak of your master in this manner, especially in my presence. It is untrue of him and disrespectful to us both,” she added, as calmly as she could force herself to speak, as she dropped into her resting chair.
This was but a short lull in the storm of her grief; for presently, the keen sense of her husband’s desertion and her own desolation, pierced her heart, and she fell into a fresh paroxysm of sobs and tears, and leaving her chair, walked distractedly about the room, raving and wringing her hands as before.
Pina went to her and threw her arms around her, saying:
“Oh, mist’ess, mist’ess, don’t do so! You’ll kill yourself and kill your child!”
“Better I were dead! better my child should never be born!” cried the frantic woman, abandoning herself to the wildest excesses of despair.
“Oh, mist’ess, don’t say so! and don’t rave so! If you have no pity for yourself, have some for the poor little blind and breathless baby that depends on you for its life; and don’t kill it before it has even a soul to be saved!” pleaded Pina, touching the most sensitive chord in the mother’s heart and in the Christian conscience.
“Give me something! Give me something to benumbthis keen pang, then. Give me opium! Give me anything that will dull my heart and brain without doing harm,” she demanded, sitting down in her chair, and making a great effort to control the violence of her emotions.
Pina mixed a composing draught of tincture of valerian and water and brought it to her mistress.
Drusilla drank it, and its effect upon her sensitive system was instantaneous and powerful. Though her eyes still streamed with tears, the convulsive heavings of her bosom subsided, and she became comparatively calm.
“Now, mist’ess, darlin’, you just let me help you to bed and you lay still and keep quiet. And I will darken the room and sit by you. And may be you will go to sleep and then you will be better.”
And Drusilla, docile as a child now, suffered her maid to put her to bed.
While the girl was smoothing the white counterpane and making everything tidy about the dainty couch, Drusilla suddenly put her hand to her throat and with a frightened look cried out:
“Where—where is—?”
“Oh, you mean the little black silk bag, ma’am, that was tied around you neck?” inquired Pina.
“Yes! yes! where is it?”
“I took it off when I undressed you, while you were in your fainty fit.”
“Where did you put it?”
“In your upper bureau drawer, ma’am, where it is quite safe.”
“Oh, Pina, bring it back to me directly.”
The girl obeyed.
“Is it a relic, ma’am?” inquired Pina.
“Yes,” answered her mistress. And so it was, though not of the sort Pina was thinking of.
“Oh, I beg pardon—I didn’t know, ma’am.”
“And now, Pina, no matter how ill I may become, you must never let this be removed from my bosom again. It is more precious to me than anything I have in the world except my Bible and my wedding-ring,” said Drusilla, as she fastened the treasure around her neck.
“Indeed, ma’am! Then I will be very careful not to have it removed. Now try to compose yourself, ma’am,” said Pina, as she proceeded to close the shutters and draw the curtains to darken the room.
Drusilla complied with this good advice, and folding her hands as if in prayer, lay very quietly.
Pina went to the chamber door and spoke to Leo, who had remained on duty in the passage for some hours. She told him that their mistress was now better, and that he might go down stairs and look after his own affairs, and that she would call him if his services should be needed.
Leo, glad to hear of the little lady’s improvement, glad also to be relieved from duty, hurried down into the kitchen to look for something to eat, of which he stood greatly in need, not having broken his fast since he went to the post-office in the morning.
Pina took her place by her mistress’s bed, and patiently watched there.
Night deepened; but the girl lighted no lamp, finding the subdued glow of the low wood-fire on the hearth sufficient to see by.
Drusilla lay so motionless that Pina thought she slept. But by bending down and looking attentively at the supposed sleeper, the watcher saw that her lips were moving as in silent prayer. And soon deep sighs arose from the sufferer’s bosom, and large tears rolled down her face. She was awake and weeping.
Pina silently arose and mixed another dose of the beneficial composing draught, and brought it to the bedside.
Drusilla drank it. And soon after she fell asleep. Andthe youthful watcher, with her heavy head dropped upon the side of the bed, also slept well.