CHAPTER XVII.WHERE COULD SHE GO?
A young girl, pale and fragile almost as a shadow, came through the side-gate of Bellevue. She hesitated a moment, looked up and down the street, and then turning toward the water, moved languidly to an angle of the wharf, and placing a little bundle at her feet, glanced drearily down upon the tide as it rushed in and out against the timbers.
It was near sunset, and the March winds, that blew raw and cold from the river, seemed to chill her through and through, for her sweet, pale features became pinched, while she sat there lost in gloomy thought, and a tinge of purple crept around her mouth, which trembled visibly either from chilliness or coming tears. Her eyes seemed fascinated by the water, so dark and turbid that it appeared to hold some mysterious secret of repose in its depths; and once or twice she murmured, “Why not? why not?” in a voice of the most touching misery. Then she relapsed into silence again, broken only by a shiver when the wind rushed sharply over her.
“Where can I go?” she exclaimed at last, her voice breaking forth in a cry of anguish. “Tohismother—she will turn me away with insults, as she did before. To my aunt?”
She uttered the name with a shudder, and shrunk down beneath her shawl, as if some blow had been threatened, and relapsed into dreary silence again.
At last she arose with an effort, and casting a regretful look back upon the water, as if she longed to sleep beneath it, moved up the street again, her frail figure wavering to and fro, like the stalk of a flower, beneath the light weight of herbundle. Thus she disappeared in one of the cross streets that intersect the Second Avenue.
We find her again, just at nightfall, panting with fatigue, before a palace-building in the vicinity of Murry Hill. There she stood, grasping the iron fence with her hands, afraid to advance, and physically unable to retreat. It was a pitiful sight, that fair young creature, trembling beneath the weight of her little bundle, and kept only from falling to the earth by the hold she had clenched on the cold iron.
The brown front of the building loomed above her with forbidding grandeur. The sculptured lions, crouching on the stone pedestals each side the broad entrance-steps, seemed frowning her away. But there she stood, breathless and wavering, afraid to let go her hold lest she should fall to the earth.
The gas had just been kindled within the house, and a flood of light came pouring through the stained sashes of a bay-window, and fell like a gorgeous rain on the pavement, illuminating, as it were, her misery.
The young woman fell back, and slowly retreated from the light, clutching at the iron fence at every step.
“Oh that I could get away!—oh that I had not come! I am sinking—they will find me senseless on the pavement. Oh, my God, give me strength—one moment’s strength.”
There was strong mental energy in that frail creature, and the desperate cry with which she appealed to God seemed to win down life from heaven. She unclenched her hand from the railing, paused an instant, casting her eyes first to the basement entrance and then to the sunken arch guarded by the lions, and walked on with something of firmness, nay, even of pride in the movement.
“No, not there,” she said, passing the basement, and mounting the flight of steps hurriedly, as one who felt her strength giving way, “I am her sister’s child, and will enter here.”
She rang the bell and waited, struggling firmly against her weakness, and sustained by that moral courage which is the only true bravery of womanhood.
“I have done no wrong,” she thought, “why should this terror come over me? If poverty and helplessness were a sin, then I might tremble, but not now—not for this—not because I have left a pauper’s bed for her stone palace.”
The door opened, and a dainty mulatto boy, with livery buttons, and a white handkerchief visible at a side-pocket, presented himself.
“Mrs. Judson? couldn’t say; better go down to the basement. That’s the sort of thing for serving-people, and folks that come with bundles; couldn’t take it upon me to answer a single question here,” he said.
The girl advanced quietly into the hall, and sat down, with the light of a tinted lantern overhead falling directly upon her.
In spite of her little straw bonnet and plaided blanket-shawl, the boy discovered something in her air, and the pure loveliness of her features, that checked his rising impertinence.
“Go tell your mistress that Miss —— no, that her niece wishes to speak with her.”
The boy paused to take a survey of her person, and went down the hall, smiling till his white teeth shone again.
“Perhaps it’s a lie, and perhaps it isn’t—who knows,” he muttered, threading his way up the flight of stairs set aside for menials. “But won’t she catch it for claiming relationship, true or not?—well, I shouldn’t wonder.”
The greatest trial that can be inflicted on an ardent nature is that ofwaiting. When the mulatto came back, he found the young person who had excited his curiosity, with a flush in her cheeks, eagerly watching his approach.
“You may go up to Mrs. Judson’s room,” he said, and muttering to himself, he added, “and much good it’ll do you.”
The girl was about to mount the richly carpeted steps that swept down between those curving rosewood balusters like a sloping bed of moss mottled with forest-flowers, but the mulatto interfered.
“This way, miss, this way; Mrs. Judson ordered me to be particular and bring you up these stairs.”
The girl withdrew her foot from the soft carpet and followed the boy in silence. The atmosphere of the house affected her feeble form pleasantly, and she longed to lie down and sleep before seeing her aunt. The carpets under her feet were so luxuriously pliant, it seemed impossible for her to move. The air was bland and fragrant; as she pressed forward, the breath of flowers from an open balcony swept over her, and it seemed, after the atmosphere of Bellevue, like a gale from paradise.
Oh! if she could but remain quietly where she was all night, without seeing any one, with that soft carpet to sleep on, the breath of those flowers floating over her. But no, the mulatto kept turning to be sure that she was close behind; for he seemed rather suspicious of her frequent pauses. At last he threw open a chamber-door.
“This is Mrs. Judson’s room, miss.” The boy made a feint as if going back in great haste, but returned in a moment, entered the chamber, gliding along the wall, and peeped through the partially closed door, with all the craft of his race, determined to ascertain by the first words whether the fair girl with her humble garments was really the niece of his mistress or not.
The room which this strange girl entered was a bed-chamber, fitted up in a style of stately grandeur which contrasted strongly with the mournful look and modest garb of the young girl, who should have claimed a free welcome there.
A spacious bed stood on one side; high up over the pillows was a light gilded canopy of grape-leaves and fruit, through which the crimson drapery, that swept to the ground oneach side, gleamed like flashes of the sunset through a golden cloud. The same rich crimson broke through the open network of rosewood that formed the foot-board and side-pieces of the bedstead; and to this was contrasted the pure whiteness of richly laced pillows, and a counterpane that seemed of quilted snow. On a crimson lounge, severely magnificent, for all this grandeur had an air of rigid coldness hanging over it, Mrs. Judson was seated, with a slight frown upon her forehead, and her keen, black eyes fixed upon the door.
The girl saw this, as she paused a moment in the shadow before entering; and she saw also, with a sinking heart, that the frown deepened as she made her appearance; while a quick pressure of the lip added to the displeasure of that haughty face.
Mrs. Judson had evidently been disturbed while completing her evening toilet, for though her purple brocade fell in precise and voluminous richness adown her tall figure, her headdress of purple velvet and golden acorns hung upon a branch of gilded spray attached to the frame of her toilet-glass, while several diamond ornaments glittered upon the marble underneath, and an undersleeve of Brussels point had evidently fallen from her hand upon the carpet before she assumed her present imposing attitude.
“Well,” said the lady, with frigid dignity, “you have come again, I see; what is the trouble now?”
“I have no home—I am in want,” said the poor girl, in a quiet, sad voice. “You are my mother’s sister—sister to an angel in heaven—and in her name I ask you to have pity on me!”
“No home? no home? Were you not bound to Madame De Marke? How could I, or any one, provide for you better? You astonish me by these complaints!”
“Madame De Marke gave up her house almost a year ago,” answered the girl, with a degree of gentle firmness that imparted dignity even to her tone of supplication; “she is very rich; but no beggar in the street lives more meanly.”
“Well, but you were bound to her still; she is compelled by law to give you a home.”
The girl smiled a wan smile, but with an expression of some humor in it.
“Madame De Marke’s home! Do you know what it is, aunt? A room in the loft of one of her own buildings. The lowest servant in your house would turn from it in disdain; and for food, why, aunt, this rich woman lives absolutely the life of a beggar, and in the market asks, for her cat, refuse scraps of meat, which she devours herself. That was the home and food which Madame De Marke gave to me, after she left her house. Instead of being lady’s maid, I was compelled to sweep out the offices and scrub the stores for her tenants.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed the lady, smoothing the trimming of her sleeve. “Madame De Marke forgot thatIbound you to her, it seems to me.”
“No, madam, she did not forget it; and because you had abandoned me because of her knowledge that I was friendless, she made me a drudge. I was not strong; the work broke me down. Oh! aunt, I was heart-sick, and ready to fall down on my knees with gratitude for the least breath of kindness, and—and——”
“Well,” said the aunt, looking coldly up, as the poor girl paused, her eyes full of tears, her lips quivering.
“There was one noble person whowaskind to me, so kind that I could not help loving him, aunt.” Catharine said this in a low voice, and trembling from head to foot.
“Him!” cried the aunt, half-starting from her lounge, “him, a man! Shameless girl! how dare you talk of a love like that in my presence?”
“Aunt, I have not another creature to love on earth.”
“And who told you—who compelled you to love at all? It is an indecorous word.”
“And yet ‘God is love!’” answered Catharine, liftingher soft eyes, misty with tearfulness, while her lips unconsciously pronounced the quotation.
“Don’t quote Scripture here in this infamous fashion; don’t talk to me of love. What right had you to love any one but Madame De Marke herself? Thank heaven! I never found it necessary to love any one.”
“ButI,” answered the girl, with the most profound humility, “Ihad no other happiness. I never knew what it was to love myself, till he told me how dear, how beautiful I was to him.”
The aunt arose and stood up. Her dress fell in rustling folds to the floor, her black eyes flashed fiercely.
“How dare you—infamous girl, how dare you? Leave the house!”
“No, aunt, I am not infamous. He loved me, and I, oh! how truly I loved him. We were married, aunt; as honorably married as you and my uncle were. Do not call me infamous; I will not endure it.”
The aunt sat down again, wondering at the strange beauty that lighted up that young face, almost touched by the passionate speech, for she could understand all the pride that was in it, though pathos and appeal were lost upon her.
“Speak a little more moderately, if you have anything to say; and if you are truly married, tell me how, and when. I’m sure it would give me great pleasure to have you well settled and off my hands. Who is the man you are talking about?”
“Young De Marke,” answered the girl, drawing close to her aunt, and speaking in a whisper; “but do not let any one know; he said I might tell you, but no person else.”
“Catharine Lacy, this is a shameful falsehood, or young De Marke is base beyond anything I ever heard of. Wretched girl, I have quite as good proof as you can bring that you are not his only victim. But where is this man now?”
“He is away. I have not seen him since last fall. Hedoes not know how miserable I am. Aunt, dear aunt, have pity on me; I have just come from the hospital—my poor baby is dead and buried.”
“Hospital! what hospital? Not Bellevue? not the Almshouse?”
“Yes, the Almshouse, aunt. Where else could I go?Hewas away, and if he wrote, I never got the letter. His mother turned me out-of-doors, with bitter language and coarse abuse. I was afraid to come here.”
“But if you were married, how dare Madame De Marke treat you in this way?”
“She pretended not to believe me—though I am sure he told her of our marriage with his own lips. She was angry because I would not let her keep my certificate, and said it was all made up.”
“Where did this marriage take place?” inquired the aunt, quickly.
“In Philadelphia. He went there when Madame was away from home a week. She did not know of it.”
“Let me read the certificate,” said the aunt, extending her hand; “if that is genuine, I will see that the rights of my relative are respected, let what will have gone before. This young man must inherit a fine property, De Marke was very rich. The certificate of marriage, girl. What are you waiting for?”
The poor girl began to weep bitterly, and, wringing her hands, fell upon her knees before that haughty woman.
“Oh! aunt, aunt, don’t ask me; I have lost it—I have lost it!”