All night long the slave woman crouched
down in the middle of her bed, with the blankets drawn
over her like a tent, and her eyes looking out into
the darkness, waiting for the morning, and yet shrinking
with terror whenever a gleam of light appeared.
At last, when the morning broke, grey and cold, she
crept forth in her clothes as she had been
all night and stood for a time listening
as if she expected some unusual sound. But all
was still, no servant was yet abroad, and she sat
down upon the bed, waiting with a dull heavy gleam
of the eye that had something awful in it. At
last she was aroused by a loud ring at the hall door,
which brought a smothered scream to her lips; but she
arose and went down stairs, opening the door with
a sort of mechanical composure. Ralph Harrington
stood upon the threshold, and a little way off winding
up the circular carriage sweep was a sleigh, in which
she discovered James Harrington and the pale face
of Lina. The sight made her tremble in every
limb, and her eyes were terrible to look upon.
“Is my mother up yet?”
said Ralph, without regarding the woman, who did not
answer, for her teeth chattered when she made the attempt.
“Well, then we must arouse her;
of course the fires are kept up such nights as this;
take Miss French to the breakfast-room while I inquire
for Mrs. Harrington.”
But Lina would not be restrained:
joy at the sight of that dear old home gave her temporary
strength; she ran up the steps, passing James and
Ralph, in the speed of her love.
“No, no, I cannot wait.
Let me go to her room. I will awake her as of
old with my kisses they will not frighten
her.”
Before the sentence was finished,
Lina had reached the door of Mabel’s boudoir,
and throwing it open, flew into the bed-room.
A close stifling vapor enclouded her as she entered,
but in the ardor of her love she rushed through it,
flung back the bed-curtains, and throwing her arms
over the sleeper there cried out
“Mamma, awake! it is Lina your
own Lina come back to live at home, mamma mamma”
The last word died away in an exclamation
of horror, for the face she touched was cold as marble,
and she fell forward struggling for breath.
Ralph had followed her to the door,
and lingered there, waiting for his mother to summon
him, but there was something in the atmosphere which
crept through into the hall that awoke his apprehension,
this was increased by Lina’s sudden silence.
With a quickened beat of the heart
he went in, but a stifling haze filled the room, which
was so dark that he could only see Lina, lying motionless
across the bed. He rushed to the window and tore
back the curtains, filling the room with a dull luminous
fog, through which he saw Lina, pale as marble, and
gasping for breath, but with her eyes wide open, and
fixed on the face of his father.
“My God oh, my God!
what is this?” he cried, staggering forward.
“It is your father, Ralph, cold as death.”
Ralph uttered a cry so sharp and piercing
that it reached James and Benson, who came in alarm
from the breakfast-room nay, it penetrated
farther, and aroused Mabel from her comfortless sleep
in the chamber above. She arose with a thrill
of unaccountable awe, and glided down the stairs,
passing the mulatto chambermaid, who stood motionless
as a bronze statue outside the door. As the woman
saw her she gave a cry and her eyes dilated with unspeakable
horror; slowly, as if she had been forced into motion
by some irresistible power, she turned and followed
after Mabel, step by step, till both stood in the room
of death. The eyes of those two women fell on
the dead body of General Harrington at the same moment;
Mabel burst into tears. The mulatto seemed turning
to stone she did not breathe, she did not
move, but stood with her lips apart, helpless, speechless,
stricken with a terrible horror.
James Harrington saw the furnace standing
on the hearth with a handful of white ashes at the
bottom.
“It is the fumes of charcoal he
has been smothered who brought this here?”
he exclaimed, looking at the woman.
If he expected to see that ashen grey
upon her cheek, which is the nearest approach to pallor
that her race can know, he was disappointed.
She neither changed color nor moved, but a gleam of
horrible intelligence came into her eyes, and as her
lips closed, a faint quiver stirred them.
She did not heed his question, but
turned in silence and went out.
Half an hour after, when the first
great shock was over, and James Harrington sent to
have the movements of this woman watched, she was
nowhere to be found. The servants had seen a handsome
and richly dressed lady pass through the front door,
and walk swiftly toward the highway. The chambermaid
could not have passed without being observed.
Yet no human being ever saw her afterward.
The day on which General Harrington
was buried, the funeral procession passed by the house
in which Lina had lived during her painful sojourn
in the city. As it went by, a woman rushed to
and fro in the house, uttering the most piteous cries,
and tearing at everything within her reach. From
that little fairy-like conservatory she had torn down
the blossoming vines, and broken the plants, crowning
herself fantastically with the trailing garlands,
and trampling the blossoms beneath her feet with bursts
of wild laughter, alternated with groans, that seemed
to rend her heart asunder. As the funeral cortege
went by, these groans and shrieks of laughter aroused
the neighborhood. Some members of the police
entered, and took the maniac away.
It was a year after General Harrington’s
death, a steamer was passing through a channel of
the East River, leaving Blackwell’s Island on
the left. Sitting upon the deck was a bridal
party: that morning had made Lina, Ralph Harrington’s
wife. James Harrington had given her away, having
first richly endowed the young couple, and Mabel made
one of the wedding party.
Upon the shore near the end of Blackwell’s
Island, stands that most painful appendage to a lunatic
asylum, the mad-house; looming over the water like
a huge menagerie, in which wild animals are kept.
Through the iron lattices, which gird in the granite
walls of this building, you may at any time see the
maniacs roaming to and fro, sometimes in sullen silence,
sometimes shrieking out their fantasies or their rage
to the winds as they whistle by, and the waters that
flow on forever and ever, unconscious of the miserable
secrets given to their keeping.
As the boat containing the bridal
party swept by the mad-house a beautiful but most
fiendish face looked out between these bars; a clenched
hand was thrust through, and a storm of terrible curses
hailed after Mabel and her newly married children.
But the boat swept calmly by, leaving them behind.
Mabel saw the clenched hand, but the curses rushed
by her in one confused wail, which touched her only
with gentle compassion; for she little thought that
Zillah, the woman who, in seeking her life, had murdered
her husband, was hurling these fiendish anathemas
after her.
So in her happiness, for Mabel was
happy then she turned away from the mad-house,
touched with momentary gloom and, taking James Harrington’s
arm moved to the other side of the boat, and leaning
upon him watched the sun go down. Thus, with
the rich twilight falling softly around them, these
two noble beings drifted into their new life.