Directly after James Harrington left
the General’s room, the waiting-woman Zillah
entered cautiously, and with breathless eagerness.
She stood some moments partly behind the General’s
chair, before he regarded her. When he did look
up, a faint color swept over his face, and he made
a gesture of annoyance.
“You are not pleased to find
me here so soon,” she said quickly, for impatience
had for the moment disturbed the wonderful self-control
with which her interviews with General Harrington
were invariably conducted. “Is it a sign
this woman, who has outraged the name of wife, is to
triumph over me always?”
“Zillah!” answered the
General, angrily, “my relations with my wife
are beyond your interference.”
“Your wife!” exclaimed
the woman with a fiendish sneer. “You can
still call her that!”
“Zillah, be careful. I
have permitted you to go in and out of my house in
this surreptitious fashion unmolested, from regard
to old attachments; but you shall not again interfere
in my family arrangements. The charges that you
have, I see now, been the means of making against
Mrs. Harrington, are groundless. I will not have
a word spoken mark me against
that excellent lady.”
“What!” said the woman hoarsely; “what
does this mean?”
“It means, Zillah, that I am
perfectly convinced not only of Mrs. Harrington’s
rectitude, but of her entire attachment to myself.
As for Mr. James Harrington, his conduct has been
unexceptionable nay, magnanimous.
We are a happy and united family, Zillah.”
“A happy and united family!”
almost shrieked the woman. “And has it all
come to this am I again spurned, again hurled
back to the earth Hagar thrust forth to
wander forever and ever with her child in the broad
desert the world. I tell you, General
Harrington, this shall not be!”
“Shall not slave,
how dare you?” cried the old man, rising haughtily.
“Slave, slave! Yes, I am
your slave, for I love you, my master, love you with
a madness this cold white lady never dreamed of.
Do not crush me beneath this woman’s feet do
not. For years and years I have lived on this
one wish, to be your slave again. She, your wife,
is faithless, false, cold as marble; put her away send
her forth, as I have been. The same God made
us both, and should punish us both alike. I have
been tortured long enough; take me home, master, take
me home a servant, a slave, anything; but
send this woman from beneath your roof. She has
had her life, I have a right to mine! Give it
to me give it to me for my love’s
sake, for our child’s sake!”
The woman fell upon her knees as she
spoke; her locked hands were uplifted, and wrung madly
together her eyes were full of wild, passionate
tears. She looked, indeed, a Hagar coming back
from the desert, where she had left her youth buried.
“Master, master, send her away,
send her away!” she pleaded, in a burst of pathetic
entreaty. “What has she been to you, that
I was not? She is the mother of your child so
am I. She was your wife I was your slave.
She claimed rights, station, wealth, power, and returned
nothing. I gave my soul, my being, every breath
of my life, every pulse in my heart, and claimed only
bonds. You fettered her with flowers me
with iron. I loved these chains, for they bound
me to you they have drawn me to your feet
again. I will not give way to that woman a second
time!”
The old man had been growing calm
amid this passionate appeal. Strong feeling always
annoyed him, and the woman seemed actuated by a species
of madness, that filled him with repulsion. He
turned from her with a look of quiet contempt.
“Why, Zillah, you should go
on the stage. These wild paroxysms, half-pathetic,
half-demoniac, tell splendidly with the public:
a little dash of blasphemy now, and you are perfect.
The best society would run wild about you ladies,
most of all, especially if they knew exactly who and
what you were, Zillah.”
The woman sprang to her feet, white
as death; her eyes closing, her lips specked with
foam. She attempted to speak, but the words writhed
themselves to death on her lips without a sound.
How still intense rage can sometimes
appear! The woman stood mute for more than a
moment, in which General Harrington held his breath,
awed, in spite of himself, by a force of passion he
had never witnessed before.
“Zillah,” he said at last,
half-terrified, “Zillah, control yourself; this
rage will injure you. Come, come, let us talk
together more reasonably. You know how I dislike
these wild flights of temper, and how little good
they can effect. Take that hand from your bosom,
girl; if you have a poniard there, let it stay sheathed.
I do not fear you, at any rate.”
“You need not,” said the
woman, in a hoarse whisper. “I could not
strike, even while you were mocking me.”
Her hand fell slowly downward as she
spoke, leaving the hilt of a dagger just visible under
her dress.
The General stepped toward her, took
the dagger from her bosom, and cast it contemptuously
on the fire.
“Have done with this acting,
girl, and talk like a sensible woman, if you have
really anything to say.”
Zillah smiled scornfully, as he had
done, while her eyes followed the dagger to its lodgment
in the fire.
“It is the purpose, not the
instrument, which is dangerous,” she said, with
pale self-possession, still speaking in hoarse undertones;
“and, in order to reach that, you must clutch
here.”
Zillah pressed one hand hard on her
heart as she spoke, and the old man could see that
concentrated passion shook her from head to foot, still
as she seemed.
“Zillah, this passion will prevent
me ever seeing you again. I am no boy, to be
terrified into concessions; as for violence, attempt
it, and I will have you dealt with like any other
house-breaker. In the North we have heavier chains
than you have ever worn. You will find that the
slavery which springs from crime, is a reality that
you have not yet known. No more threats, then,
if you ever hope to see your master again.”
“I was wrong,” said the
woman, standing before him with the downcast look
learned in her early bondage. “It was wounded
love, not anger, against you, my master, that tortured
me into this rash language. I came to tell you
of L of our child; she is very,
very ill.”
“What, Lina? poor child, no
wonder she is heart-broken. Heaven knows I would
have kept this miserable secret from her, but for Ralph!
Where is she now?”
“In my own house, raving with brain fever!”
“And have you told her all?”
“Yes, and she, too, spurned
me every one repulses and scorns me, while
that woman”
“Hush! Zillah, you are
getting fierce again, and that I will not submit to.”
“No, no, master, it was grief
for my child, not anger,” said the woman, checking
herself. “She is ill, very ill. The
doctor thinks she must die.”
“Indeed, I am grieved to hear
it. Let her have every care; have a dozen physicians,
if it is needful. Poor child poor child!”
“You love her, then, this daughter
of a slave?” said Zillah, with a fierce gleam
in her eyes, as if jealous of his very love for her
own child.
“Love her? Why she has
always been a pet in the house a beautiful,
sweet-tempered creature, whom everyone loved.
I think she is even dearer to me than Ralph himself.”
Again the woman turned white.
“And you love her so much?”
“Again, Zillah: you are
hard to please; but take good care of the child in
a day or two I will come to see her!”
“Indeed, to see her her only.”
“Have done with this paltry
childishness, I am tired of it!” answered the
General, with authority. “This comes of
allowing you a foothold here. Remember I cannot
have my privacy intruded on in future by these mysterious
visits; they will become known to the family, and Mrs.
Harrington may think them a just cause of complaint a
thing above all others to be avoided. I tell
you, Zillah, this rash passion, which at your age
should be controlled, inconveniences me very much;
indeed, as a man of honor, I cannot encourage it farther.”
Zillah’s lips writhed, as if
she were repeating over his last words in the scorn
of her heart; but she stood immovable and silent, with
her eyes bent on the floor.
“If money is needed for you
or Lina, whose future I will liberally provide for,
that can at any time be supplied to the extent of your
wishes.”
“I shall not need your money,” answered
the woman coldly.
“But you cannot be rich!”
“The master to whom you sold
me left his property to be divided between some half
dozen slaves, who received their freedom and the legacy
together. I am spending mine; when it is gone,
I can work.”
“Then you reject all help from me?”
“I was your slave, General Harrington twice
bound, first by your laws, again by the will of my
own heart, but I am no beggar; even when you loved
me, I worked for my own bread.”
“I am glad that you are so well
provided for: now let this romance come to an
end. We are no boy and girl, remember, Zillah;
and, though it is very pleasant to feel that one heart
at least proves faithful to the end, I cannot, in
justice to Mrs. Harrington, admit you under the same
roof with herself. Her peace of mind is important
to me, very important, and her tranquillity must not
be endangered by these wild visits. I will withdraw,
now, and give you an opportunity to leave the house;
be careful that no one sees you, especially Mrs. Harrington.
Adieu! In two or three days, at most, I shall
be able to see you and Lina.”
The old gentleman waved his hand,
in token of a friendly adieu, as he went, leaving
his singular visitor standing in the middle of the
room, so numbed in feeling or lost in thought, that
she seemed unconscious of his departure.
It was more than a minute before the
woman lifted her head; then her face was pale, and
a deep smouldering purpose burned like fire in the
depths of her eyes. She looked around wildly,
as if searching for the man who had just left the
room; then her recollection seemed to come back, and
she went up to the table, examining everything upon
it with eager haste. The journal was no longer
there, but in its place she found a folded paper placed
in a small portfolio, which bore the General’s
initials.
The paper shook in her hands as she
unfolded it, for all her former agitation had come
back; and, in her haste to read, the fire seemed to
leap from her black eyes over the writing. It
was the life-deed which had just passed between General
Harrington and his son-in-law.
The woman laughed as she folded up
the paper a laugh of such bitter mockery
that it started even herself, as if some other person
had been reviling her.
“And has it ended in this, after
years of plotting and privations that would have killed
a common person? Have I ended in binding them
more firmly together. This accounts for his solicitude
for her welfare. This is why these visits of
mine trouble him. They might break the compact
which secures repose and reputation to Mabel Harrington,
for so much money and she is to triumph
a second time! I am nothing a weed,
a bit of miserable night-shade that has poison in
it, and nothing more.”
As she muttered over these thoughts,
more and more slowly, the woman folded her arms, and
stood immovable for several minutes; her brow grew
dark as midnight, and a strange, settled expression
came up to her face, as if the poison she had just
spoken of were diffusing itself through her entire
system. At last she heard steps approaching the
library, and hurried away through the disused entrance.