Agnes Barker came coldly into the
room, answering Lina’s cry.
“Mrs. Harrington has only fainted,”
she said, closing the door which she still held slightly
ajar, as if that moment entering.
“There is aromatic vinegar on
the console yonder do bring it, while I
open the window.”
Lina ran for the crystal flask pointed
out, and began to sprinkle Mabel’s face, sobbing
and moaning all the time. Agnes opened the sash
door, that led to a stone balcony full of flowers,
and their breath came floating into the room.
“Shall I run? shall I call help?”
questioned Lina, letting Mrs. Harrington’s head
fall back upon the crimson cushions of her chair,
“I I am sure Ralph would bring her
to.”
“Be quiet,” answered Agnes
Barker, dragging the easy-chair towards the window,
where the fragrant wind blew clear and cold into that
deathly face.
“If you call any one, let it be Mr. Harrington.”
“The General?”
“No, Mr. James Harrington.”
“I will go,” answered Lina, eagerly.
But the name of James Harrington,
even upon those lips, had reached the sleeping sense
of Mabel. She made a faint struggle. Her
lips quivered with an ineffectual attempt to speak.
This brought Lina back.
“Shall I call help, dear mamma? Shall I
call help?”
“No!”
The monosyllable was uttered so faintly,
that nothing but a loving ear, like Lina’s,
would have heard it. The warm-hearted girl stooped
and kissed Mabel softly upon the forehead, thanking
God silently in her heart.
Mabel shrunk from that pure kiss,
turned her head abruptly on the cushion, and tears
stole through her eyelashes, leaving them dark and
moist.
“Madam, is there anything I can do?”
As she spoke Agnes bent over the helpless
woman, and shed her glances over that pale face, as
the upas tree weeps poison.
The unaccountable dislike that Mabel
felt for this girl, gave her strength, and she sat
up, stung by the reflection that her weakness had
so objectionable a witness.
“You here, Miss Barker!”
she said with cold dignity; “I have always held
this room sacred from all, but my own family.”
“I come by invitation,”
answered Agnes, meekly. “Yesterday afternoon
you left a message with my nurse, desiring that I
should seek you before entering upon my duties again.
This command brought me here, not a wish to intrude.”
Mrs. Harrington arose, walked feebly
back to the little breakfast-table, and taking up
a small teapot of frosted silver, poured some strong
tea into a cup which she drank off clear. Then
moving back her chair, she sat down, evidently struggling
for composure.
“I remember,” she said
very quietly, for Mabel had controlled herself, “I
remember leaving this message with a woman who called
you her mistress.”
Agnes smiled. “Oh, yes,
our Southern nurses always claim us in some form.
‘My mammy,’ I think she must have called
herself that. Every child has its slave mammy
at the South.”
“Then you are from the South, Miss Barker?”
“Did not General Harrington tell you this, madam?”
“I do not recollect it, if he
did,” answered Mabel, searching the girl’s
face with her clear eyes; “in truth, Miss Barker,
I made so few inquiries when you entered my family,
that your very presence in it is almost a mystery
to me. General Harrington told me you were well
educated, and an orphan. I found that he was correct
in the latter point, but was somewhat astonished yesterday
afternoon to hear the woman whom I met, claim you
as her mistress.”
“You do not understand our Southern
ways, Mrs. Harrington, or this would not appear so
singular. With us the tie between a slave nurse
and her child, is never broken.”
“Then this woman is a slave?” questioned
Mabel.
“She has been, madam, but though
I had nothing else in the world, when I became of
age, she was made a free woman.”
“But she is not very black at
least, in the dim light, I saw but faint traces of
it.”
Again Agnes smiled a soft unpleasant
smile, that one could put no faith in:
“Perhaps it was that which rendered
her so valuable, but black or white, the woman you
saw was a born slave.”
“And how does she support herself
in that solitary house?”
“She has a garden, and some
poultry. The woods around afford plenty of dry
fuel, and my own humble labors supply the rest.”
Mabel became thoughtful and ceased
to ask questions. The governess stood quietly
waiting. All her answers had been straightforward
and given unhesitatingly, but they did not bring confidence
or conviction with them. Still Mrs. Harrington
was silenced for the time, and remained in deep thought.
“May I retire, madam?”
said the governess at last, drawing slowly toward
the door.
Mabel started from her reverie.
“Not yet. I would know
more of you, of your parents, and previous life.
Where we intrust those most dear to us, there should
be a perfect knowledge and profound confidence.”
“Of myself I have nothing to
say,” answered Agnes, turning coldly white,
for she was a girl who seldom blushed. All her
emotions broke out in a chilly pallor. “Of
my parents all that can be said is told, when I repeat
that they left me with nothing but an honorable name,
and this old woman in the wide world.”
Her voice broke a little here, and
this struck Mabel with a shade of compassion.
“But how did you chance to come North?”
“I entered a Louisianian family
as governess, directly after my parents’ death.
They brought me North in the summer, recommended me
to General Harrington, and I remained.”
Nothing could be more simple or frankly
spoken. Agnes, as I have said, was pale; but
for this, she might have seemed unconscious that all
this questioning was mingled with distrust.
Mabel had nothing more to say.
The feelings with which she had commenced this conversation,
were not in the slightest degree removed, and yet
they seemed utterly without foundation. She waved
her hand uneasily, murmuring, “you may go,”
and the governess went out softly as she had entered.
“Can I stay with you, mamma?”
pleaded Lina, creeping timidly up to Mabel’s
chair.
“I am weary,” answered
Mrs. Harrington, closing her eyes, and turning aside
her head. “Let me rest awhile!”
“But you will kiss me before I go?” said
the gentle girl.
“Yes, child,” and Mabel
kissed that white forehead with her quivering lips.
“Is it with your whole heart, mamma?”
Mabel turned away her face, that Lina
might not see how it was convulsed. So the young
girl went out from the boudoir, grieved to the verge
of tears.
After they were gone, Mabel grew strong
again and began to pace to and fro in the boudoir,
as if striving to outstrip the pain of thinking.
The accident had left her nerves greatly shattered,
and it was difficult to concentrate the high moral
courage that formed the glory of her woman’s
nature. Thus she walked to and fro in a sort of
vague, dreamy passion, her thoughts all in a tumult,
her very soul up in arms against the new struggle
forced upon her. Sometimes Mabel wrung her hand
with a sudden gush of sorrow. Her eyes would
fill and her lips quiver, and she looked around upon
the sumptuous objects in her room, as if seeking out
something among all the elegance that filled it, which
might have power to comfort her.
There was no bitter or bad passion
in the heart of Mabel Harrington. She had only
laid down her burden for a moment, and finding its
weight doubled, shrank from taking it up again.
But she had a brave, strong heart, that after a little
would leap forward, like a checked racehorse to its
duty. This might not have been, had she always
relied upon her own strength, which so far as human
power can go, was to be confided in. But Mabel
had a firmer and holier reliance, which was sure in
the end to subdue all these storms of trouble, and
prepare her for the battle which was to be fought
over and over again before she found rest.
After a time, Mabel Harrington stole
gently back to her easy-chair, and kneeling down,
buried her face in the cushions. Fair-Star, which
had been following her up and down, wondering at her
distress, and looking in that agitated face with his
intelligent eyes, came and lay softly down with his
head resting on the folds of her shawl, where it swept
over the floor. He knew with his gentle instinct,
that she was quieter now, and with a contented whine
lay down to guard her as she prayed.
While she was upon her knees, a rustling
among the flowers in the balcony made Fair-Star rise
suddenly to his fore feet, and cast a vigilant glance
that way. He saw a hand cautiously outstretched,
as if to put back the trails of a passion flower,
and then a dark figure stole along behind the screen
of blossoms, and crouching down, peered cautiously
through the leaves into the room. Fair-Star dropped
his head; he had recognized the intruder, and, not
having any very definite ideas of etiquette, concluded
that the governess had a right to crouch like a thief
behind that screen of flowers, if her fancy led that
way. For a little time her presence kept the
pretty hound restless, but it was not long before
Agnes had so draped the passion-flower that it entirely
concealed her person, and then Fair-Star betook himself
entirely to his mistress. A soul-struggle does
not always break forth in words, or exhaust itself
in cries. The heart has a still small voice, which
God recognizes the more readily, because it is like
his own.
Mabel came with no rush of stormy
passion before the Lord. The very force of her
anguish was laid aside as she bowed her proud head,
and meekly besought strength to suffer and be still to
struggle for the right. Now and then her clasped
hands were uplifted, once the spy on the balcony caught
a glimpse of her face. It was luminous and lovely,
spite of the anguish to be read there.
At last she arose, and seating herself,
remained for some time in thoughtful silence, her
arms folded on her bosom, her eyes full of troubled
light, looking afar off, as if she were following with
her eyes the angels that had been gathering over her
as she knelt.
After awhile, Mabel arose, and walking
across the room more composedly, unlocked a little
escritoir of ebony, from which she drew forth a book
bound in white vellum, and embossed with gold.
Seating herself at the escritoir, she began to search
among the trinkets attached to her chatelaine for
a small key, which she inserted in a little heart beset
with rubies, which locked the golden clasps of the
book.
All this time Agnes Barker was watching
each movement of her benefactress with the eyes of
a serpent. She saw the tiny heart fly open, and
the manuscript pages of the book exposed. She
saw Mrs. Harrington turn these pages, now slowly,
now hurriedly reading a line here, a sentence
there, and more than once two or three pages together.
Sometimes her fine eyes were full of tears. Sometimes
they were reverently uplifted to Heaven, as if seeking
strength or comfort there; but more frequently she
pursued those pages with a sad thoughtfulness, full
of dignity.
After she had been reading, perhaps
an hour, she dipped a pen into the standish on her
escritoir, and began to write slowly, as if weighing
every word as it dropped from her pen. Then she
closed the book, locked it carefully, and securing
it in the escritoir again, walked slowly toward her
bed-chamber, which opened from the boudoir, evidently
worn out and ready to drop down with exhaustion.
A slight disturbance in the passion-vine betrayed
that Agnes Barker had changed her position, and now
commanded a view through the open door of Mabel’s
chamber. She saw the poor lady move wearily toward
a bed, which stood like a snowdrift in the midst of
the room, and pulling the cloud of white lace, which
enveloped it aside, with her trembling hands, fell
wearily down upon the pillows, and dropped away into
tranquil slumber, like a child that had played itself
to sleep in a daisy field.
Mabel had asked for strength, and
God gave her its first tranquilizing element rest.
Agnes stood motionless till the lace
curtains above the sleeper closed again, leaving nothing
visible upon the snowy white beneath but the calm,
sleeping face of Mabel Harrington, gleaming as it were
through a cloud, and the folds of her azure shawl,
that lay around her like fragments of the blue sky.
Mrs. Harrington had evidently sunk into a heavy slumber,
but Agnes kept her concealment some time after this,
for Fair-Star was still vigilant, and she shrunk from
his glances as if they had been human.
But the dog crept into his mistress’s
chamber at last, and then Agnes Barker stole from
her fragrant hiding-place, and entered the boudoir
again.
The escritoir was closed, but Agnes
saw with joy that the key still remained in its lock,
and that Mrs. Harrington had left her watch upon a
marble console close by. Stealing across the room,
and holding her wicked breath, as if she felt that
it would poison the air of that tranquil room, she
crept to the escritoir, turned the key, and stealthily
drawing forth the vellum book, dropped on one knee,
while she reached forth her hand, drawing the watch
softly to her lap.
There was a quiver in her hands as
she unlocked that little golden heart, forcing it
asunder with a jerk, for the dog came back just then,
and stood regarding her with his clear, honest eyes.
She strove to evade him, and gleams of angry shame
stole across her cheeks as she laid down the watch,
and stole, like the thief that she was, through the
sash door, along the pretty labyrinth of flowers,
and into another door that opened upon one end of
the balcony.
And Mabel slept on, while this ruthless
girl was tearing the secret from her life.