General Harrington had no power to
comfort the poor creature at his feet. More deeply
moved than he had been for years, the strangeness of
his own feelings paralyzed his action. But the
hand to which Lina clung grew cold in her grasp, and
over his face stole an expression of sadness, the
more touching because so foreign to its usual apathy.
“Father oh, my heart
breaks with the word are you indeed my father?”
cried Lina, lifting her pale face upward and sweeping
her hair back with a desperate motion of the hand.
“Poor child poor
child!” muttered the old man compassionately.
“What can I do? what shall I
do? It will kill me! It will kill us both.
Oh, Ralph, Ralph, if I had but died yesterday!”
cried the poor girl, attempting to rise, but falling
back again with a fresh burst of grief.
The old man stood gazing to harden
his heart striving to compose the unusual
tremor of his nerves, but all in vain. Sorrow,
regret, and something almost like remorse smote him
to the soul, for he had once been a man of strong
passions, and the ice of his selfishness again broken
up, the turbid waters rose and swelled in his bosom,
with a power that all the force of habit could not
resist. He bent down and lifted the girl from
his feet, trembling slightly, and with a touch of pity
in his voice.
“It is useless and foolish to
take any misfortune in this manner, child.”
“Child!” Lina shuddered
at the word. She shrunk away from his hand, arose
without his help, and staggered backward with a feeling
of unutterable repulsion.
He saw the quiver of pain in her features,
and his soul hardened once more. She had not
met the feeling of tenderness, so new, and, for the
moment, so exquisite to himself, and it withered away
like a hot-house blossom.
“This is a new and strange relation
to us both,” he said, seating himself, and regarding
her gravely. “Of course it involves many
important and painful questions. Up to this day
you have been to Mrs. Harrington and myself a daughter
in everything but the name!”
Lina wrung her hands, wildly moaning:
“That name! Oh, heavens! how can I bear
that name unless he should have given it to me.
Now, now just as it sounded so sweet, it
separates us for ever. This unholy name of child!”
General Harrington moved in his chair
with a gesture of annoyance, but Lina, growing still
more impassioned, came toward him, wringing her small
hands impetuously.
“You are my father God
forgive you! But there is yet another to curse
or bless me with her claims where and whom
is my mother? Is Mrs. Harrington indeed the parent
she has always seemed to me?”
The General waved his hand with a dissenting gesture.
“Do not question me upon a subject
that must be painful to us both. This is no time
to answer you.”
“No time, when you uproot every
hope of my life and present a future black with improbable
things? Up to this day, that dear lady was enough.
I had no desire to ask about father or mother.
They told me I was an orphan’s destiny, and
overlooked by all the world, if the dear ones under
this roof only loved me. I had no other place
on earth, and now, what am I? an impostor,
cast upon the charity of the dear lady my birth has
wronged.”
General Harrington arose, and advancing
toward Lina, took her hands in his. The poor
little hands quivered like wounded birds in his clasp,
and she lifted her eyes with a piteous and pleading
look that no human heart could have withstood.
“Ah! you are trying me?
It isn’t true?” she said, with a gleam
of hope and hysterical sobs.
“No! it is all real, far too
real, Lina! Do not deceive yourself. I would
not wound you thus for an aimless experiment.
You are indeed my child!”
“Your child, really really
your own child? Oh, I cannot understand it!
Ralph my brother, Ralph!”
Lina started as if some new pang had
struck her, and then drew away her hands with a gesture
of passionate grief.
“Ralph, my own brother, and
older than I am, for he is older oh, this
is terrible.”
“You will see,” said General
Harrington, speaking in a composed voice, that seemed
like a mockery of her passionate accents “you
will see by this how necessary it is that what I have
told you should be kept secret from my wife and child.
Your peculiar relations with my son rendered it imperative.
I have intrusted you with a secret of terrible importance.
You can imagine what the consequences would be, were
your relationship to myself made known.”
“I will not tell. Oh! thank
God, I need not tell!” cried Lina wildly; “but
then, Ralph? what will he think how
will he act? Ralph, Ralph my brother!
Oh, if I had but died on the threshold of this room!”
“Be comforted,” said the
General, in his usual bland voice, for the scene had
begun to weary him. “You will soon get used
to the new position of things.”
“But who will explain to Ralph?
What can I say? how can I act? He will not know.”
“Ralph is a very young man.
He will go into the world, and see more of society.
This is his first fancy I will take care
that he is more occupied. The world is full of
beautiful women.”
Lina turned deadly pale. The
cruel speech struck her to the soul.
The old man saw it, but worldly philosophy
made him ruthless. “I will crush the boy
out of her heart,” he said, inly, “to be
rude here is to be merciful.”
“You must forget Ralph,”
he said, and his voice partook of the hardness of
his thoughts.
“I cannot forget,” answered
the girl, with a faint moan, “but I will strive
to remember that that he is my brother!”
The last words came to her lips almost
in a cry. She shuddered all over, and the name
of brother broke from her with a pang, as if her heart-strings
snapped with the utterance.
“Can I go away?” she said,
at last, creeping like a wounded fawn slowly to the
door.
“Not yet,” answered the
old man. “You must first comprehend the
great necessity there is for composure and silence.
Not a word of this must be breathed under my roof
now or ever. My own tranquillity and that of Mrs.
Harrington are at stake, to say nothing of your own.
I have told you a momentous secret. Let it be
sacred.”
“Oh! the terrible burden of
this secret! Must I carry it for ever? Even
now I go out from your presence like a guilty thing,
and yet I am not guilty.”
“No one was talking of guilt,
I imagine,” answered the General, with a slight
flush of the forehead. “The whole thing
is certainly an annoyance, and in one sense, a misfortune,
perhaps. But guilt is an unfeminine word, and
I regret that you could have used it.”
Lina wrung her hands in desperation.
“I could not help it. This misery has found
me so unprepared.”
“Misery! Indeed, young
lady, it seems to me that few women would consider
it so great an evil to have the blood of a Harrington
in her veins,” said the General, stung in the
inner depths of his vanity by her words, and losing
all pity in his wounded self-love.
“But I am a Harrington without
a name a daughter without parent a
beggar upon the charity of one to whom my existence
is an insult! Would you have me grateful for
this?” cried Lina, with all the grief and fire
of her young nature in arms against the cold-blooded
composure of the man who so quietly called her child.
“I would have you prudent, silent,
and at all events, more lady-like in your expressions;
with well-bred people, a scene is always revolting,
and it pains me that a daughter of mine can be led
into the intemperance of action and speech that has
marked this interview.”
The General glanced with a look of
cool criticism at the excited girl as he spoke.
Her pale, tearful face, the dishevelled masses of hair
falling upon her shoulders, and the almost crouching
attitude that a sudden sense of shame had left her
in, outraged his fastidious taste, and the old habits
of a life swept over his new-born tenderness.
Feeling, if not elegantly expressed, always shocked
the old gentleman, and for the moment, shame and tears
had swept Lina’s beauty all away. She might
have been picturesque to an artist, but General Harrington
was not an artist only a fastidious, selfish
old man, whose eyes always led what little of heart
he possessed.
“Can I go, sir? I am faint the
room is growing dark. I wish, sir, I I”
The poor girl attempted to move toward
the door, as she uttered this broken protestation;
but the sight utterly left her eyes and,
instead of the entrance, she tottered toward the General,
with her hands extended as if to catch at some support,
and fell forward, resting her poor white face upon
the folds of his Oriental dressing gown that fell
around his feet.
“This is very embarrassing,”
muttered the General, jerking the gorgeous folds of
his gown from beneath the head of his child, and scattering
her hair, in a thousand glossy tresses, over the floor.
“What is to be done now? I suppose the
religious people would call this sowing dragon’s
teeth with a vengeance. I wish the girl had more
coolness; there is no managing events against weak
nerves and hysterics but she must be soothed;
at this rate, we shall have the whole house in commotion.
Lina, my child, make an effort to be calm. Look
up, I am not angry with you!”
The old man was so encased and wrapped
in self-love, that he really believed his own severe
words had alone dashed the strength from those young
limbs, and that a little gentle encouragement would
make all right again. So, stooping downward,
he laid his soft, white hand, upon Lina’s head,
as the last words were uttered; and, when this failed,
made an effort to lift her from the floor. But
the leaden weight of utter insensibility rendered
more effort necessary, and, at last really frightened,
he arose and lifted the insensible girl in his arms.
That moment, as her pale face lay
upon his bosom, and her loosened hair fell in floods
over his arm, the door softly opened, and Agnes Barker
looked in.
“Did you ring, General? I heard a bell
ring somewhere.”
“No, I did not ring, young lady,”
answered General Harrington, sharply, “but this
young lady has been over-fatigued someway, or was taken
suddenly ill as I was speaking of her studies.”
A faint smile crept over Agnes’
lips, but she checked it in an instant, and moved
forward with an air of gentle interest.
“She has studied very hard of
late, no wonder her strength gave way,” suggested
Agnes, softly smoothing the hair back from Lina’s
forehead.
There seemed to be fascination in
the movement of those treacherous fingers, for they
had scarcely touched her brow, when Lina started to
life with a shudder, as if the rattlesnake of the hill
had sprung upon her unawares.
Casting one wild look upon the female,
and another upon the General, she drew from his arm,
with a sensation of loathing that made her faint again.
“Let me go to my room I
must be alone!” she said, with a hand pressed
upon either temple. “The air of this place
drives me frantic: so close so dreary so so”
She moved away wavering in her walk,
but making feeble motions with her hand, as if to
repel all assistance. Thus faint, pale, and almost
broken-hearted, the poor girl stole away, to weep over
her new-born shame.
“She seems very ill,” said Agnes, softly,
“very ill!”
“You have allowed her studies
to prey upon her health,” said General Harrington,
seating himself and fixing his cold, clear eyes on
the face of his questioner. “I must hereafter
more directly superintend her education in person.
You will have the goodness to inform Mrs. Harrington
of this sudden indisposition.”
Agnes changed color. The self-poise
of this old man of the world, baffled even her eager
curiosity. She had expected that he would desire
her to keep the whole scene secret; and when he quietly
told her to reveal it to his wife, and took a resenting
tone, as if she had herself been the person in fault,
her astonishment was extreme. The General saw
his advantage, and improved upon it. After softly
folding the skirts of his dressing-gown over his knees,
and smoothing the silk with his palm, he took up a
volume from the table, and adjusted the gold glasses
to his eyes with more than usual deliberation.
Agnes looked at him steadily, baffled, but not deceived,
till his thoughts seemed completely buried in the
volume. As she gazed, the evil of her half-smothered
passion broke out in her glance; and, as the General
languidly raised his eyes from the book, they met
hers.
“Is there anything you wait
for?” he inquired, meeting that fierce gaze
with his cold eyes. “Ah, I had forgotten,
my people may drive the carriage round please
say as much.”
Agnes left the room, biting her lips
till they glowed again, and with her hand clenched
in impatient fury. As she closed the door, General
Harrington laid down his book with an impatient gesture.