“You are puttin' your eyes out, workin' so stiddy, honey, and it's
gettin' dark.”
Mabel aroused herself from her intent attitude, and looked at the
window. There was a brassy glimmer in the cloudy west; the rest of the
sky was covered by thick vapors.
“The days are still very short,” she said, folding her work, and
becoming aware that her eyes ached from long and close study of the
intricate pattern.
It was Mammy Phillis who had interrupted her reverie, and she now laid
an armful of seasoned hickory wood upon the hearth, and set herself
about mending the fire, taking up the ashes which had accumulated since
morning, putting the charred sticks together, and collecting the embers
into a compact bed.
“We're goin' to have fallin' weather 'fore long,” she observed,
oracularly. “The wind has changed since dinner, and when the wind whirls
about on a sudden, we upon this ridge is the fust to find it out. I must
see that them lazy chil'len, Lena and Lizy, fills your wood-box to-night
with dry wood; I'd be loth to have you ketch cold while you are here.”
“You are very good, Mammy, but why do you trouble yourself to attend to
my fire? You should have sent up Lena with that great load of logs.”
“I ain't easy without I see to you myself, at least once a day. It
'minds me of the good ole times to wait upon you. O, Lord! how long?”
shaking her tartan turban with a portentous groan, her chin almost
scraping the hearth, as she stooped to blow into the crater of fiery
coals.
Mabel was too well versed in the customs of the race and class to
take alarm at the mysterious invocation. She watched the old woman's
movements in a sort of pensive amusement at the recollection of an
incident of her childhood, brought vividly to her mind by the servant's
air and exclamation.
She was playing in the yard one day, when “Mammy” emerged from her
cottage-door, and came toward her, with a batch of sweet cakes she had
just baked for her nursling.
In crossing the gravel walk leading to the “house,” she struck her toe
against the brick facing of this, and the cakes flew in all directions.
“Good Lord! my poor toe and my poor chile's cakes!” was her vehement
interjection; and as she bent to gather up the cookies, she grunted out
the same adjuration, coupled with “my poor ole back!”--a negress' stock
subject of complaint, let her be but twenty years old and as strong as
an ox.
“Mammy!” said the privileged child, reprovingly, “I thought you were too
good a Christian to break the commandments in that way. You shouldn't
take the Lord's name in vain.”
“Gracious! Sugar-pie! how you talk! Ef I don't call 'pon Him in time of
trouble, who can I ask to help me?” was the confident reply.
With no thought of any more formidable cause of outcry than a cramp
in the much-quoted spine, Mabel dreamed on sketchily and indolently,
enjoying the sight of the once-familiar process of building a wood-fire,
until the yellow serpents of flame crept, red-tongued through the
interstices of the lower logs, and the larger and upper began to sing
the low, drowsy tune, more suggestive of home-cheer and fireside comfort
than the shrill, monotonous chirp of the famous cricket on the hearth.
The pipe-clayed bricks on which the andirons rested were next swept
clean; the hearth-brush hung up on its nail, and the architect of the
edifice stepped back with a satisfied nod.
“I have often wished for a glimpse of one of your beautiful fires,
Mammy, since I have been in Albany,” said Mabel, kindly. “Our rooms and
halls are all heated by furnaces. An open fireplace would be a novelty
to Northerners, and such a roaring, blazing pile of hard wood as that,
be considered an unpardonable extravagance.”
“Humph! I never did have no 'pinion of them people.” Phillis tossed her
turban and cocked her prominent chin. “It's all make money, and save!
save! If I was 'lowed to go with you, I'll be bound I'd see you have
sech things as you've been 'customed to. The new folks, them what comed
from nothin' and nowhar, and made every dollar they can call their own
with their own hands, don't know how to feel for and look after real
ladies.”
“You are wrong about that, if you mean that I have not every comfort
I could ask. My house is warm in the bitterest weather, and far more
handsomely furnished than this. And I have many kind friends. I like the
Northern people, and so would you, if you knew them well.”
“They send dreadful poor samples down this way, then,” muttered Phillis,
significantly. “And, some as pertends to be somebody is nobody, or wuss,
ef the truth was known. Don't talk to me 'bout 'em, Miss Mabel, darling!
'Twas a mighty black day for us when one on 'em fust laid eyes upon
Mars' Winston. You've hearn, ain't you, that my house is to be tore
down, and I'm to go into the quarters 'long with the field hands and
sich like common trash? So long as our skins is all the same color, some
folks can't see no difference in us.”
“I had not heard it. I am sorry.”
Mabel spoke earnestly, for “Mammy's house,” a neat frame cottage a
story-and-a-half high, embowered in locust-trees, and with a thrifty,
although aged garden--honeysuckle clambering all over the front, was
to her one of the dearest pictures of her early days. She could see
herself, now--the motherless babe whom Aunt Rachel and Mammy had never
let feel her orphanage--sitting on the door-step, bedecking her doll
with the odorous pink-and-white blossoms in summer time, and in autumn
with the light-red berries.
“Why is that done?” she asked.
“I spiles the prospect, honey!” fiercely--ironical. “Northern folks
has tender eyes, and I hurts 'em--me and my poor little house what ole
marster built for me when Mars' Winston was a baby, and your blessed ma
couldn't be easy 'thout I was near her--WE spiles the prospect! So, it
must be knocked down and carted away for rubbish to build pig-pens, I
'spose, and me sent off to live 'mong low-lived niggers, sech as I've
always held myself above. She ain't never put it into Mars' Winston's
head to cut down the trees that shets off the “prospect” of the colored
people's burying-ground from her winder. There's some things she'd as
lief not see. I oughtn't to mind this so much, I know, for I ain't got
long for to stay here nohow, but I did hope to die in my nest!” sobbing
behind her apron.
“I am very sorry--more grieved than you can think!” repeated Mabel. “If
I could help you in any way, I would. But I cannot!”
“Bless your heart! Don't I know that, dear! Here, you ain't got no more
power nor me. But I WAS a-thinkin' that maybe you wouldn't think me too
old for a nuss when you come to want one, and could manage to take me
with you when you went home. I'se a heap of wear in me yit, and there
ain't nothing 'bout babies I don't understand.”
Mabel colored painfully.
“If I had my way”--she began--then altered her plan of reply. “I could
not enter into such an arrangement without consulting Mr. Dorrance,
Mammy, and I am afraid he would not think as favorably of it as you and
I do. He has been brought up with different ideas, you see.”
“Um-HUM!”
An interjection capable of as many and as varied meanings in the mouth
of a colored woman of her stamp as was little Jean Baptiste's “altro!”
It signified now--“I comprehend a great deal more than you want me to
perceive--you poor, downtrodden angel!”
“Um-HUM. I always did say he was his sister's own brother--for all they
don't look a bit alike. What's born into a man never comes out!”
“Mr. Dorrance is my husband, Mammy! I shall not let you speak
disrespectfully of him. He does what he believes to be right and just,”
returned Mabel, sternly.
“I ain't a-goin' to arger that with you, my sugar-plum! You're right to
stand up for him. I beg your pardon ef I've seemed sassy or hurt your
feelin's. And I dar' say, there mayn't be nothin' wuss 'bout him nor his
outside. And that don't matter so much, ef people's insides is clean and
straight in the sight of the Lord. But HER outside is all that's decent
about her, ef you'll listen to me--”
“You are forgetting yourself again!” said Mabel, unable to suppress a
smile. “Mrs. Aylett is your mistress--”
The woman's queer behavior arrested the remonstrance. Stepping on tiptoe
to the door she locked it, and approached her young mistress with an
ostentatious attempt at treading lightly, shaking her head and pursing
up her mouth in token of secrecy, while she fumbled in her bosom for
something that seemed hard to get at. Drawing it forth at last she laid
it in Mabel's lap--a small leather wallet, glossy with use, tattered at
the corners, and tied up with a bit of dirty twine.
“What is this, and what am I to do with it?”
Mabel shrank from touching it, so foul and generally disreputable was
its appearance.
“Keep both your ears open, dearie, and I'll tell you all I know!”
And with infinite prolixity and numerous digressions she recounted how,
in removing the sodden clothing of the unknown man who had been picked
up on the lawn on that memorable stormy Christmas night, more than a year
before, this had slipped from an inner breast-pocket of the coat, “right
into her hand.” Not caring to disturb the doctor's examination of his
patient, or to tempt the cupidity of her fellow-servants by starting the
notion that there might be other valuables hidden in the articles they
handled so carelessly, she had pocketed it, unobserved by them, guessing
that it would be of service at the inquest. Her purpose of producing
it then was, according to her showing, reversed by Mrs. Aylett's stolen
visit to the chamber and minute inspection of garments she would not
have touched unless urged to the disagreeable task by some mighty
consideration of duty, self-interest, or fear.
“'Then,' thinks I”--Phillis stated the various steps of her
reasoning--“'you wouldn't take the trouble to pull over them nasty,
muddy close, 'thout you expected to get some good out on 'em, or was
afeard of somethin' or 'nother fallin' into somebody else's hands.'
Whichsomever this mought be, 'twasn't my business to be gittin' up a
row and a to-do before the crowner and all them gentlemen. 'Least
said soonest mended,' says I to myself, and keeps mum about the whole
thing--what I'd got, and what I'd seen. But when I come to think it all
over arterward, I was skeered for true at what I'd done, and for fear
Mars' Winston wouldn't like it. What reason could I give him for hidin'
of the pocketbook, ef I give it up to him? Ef I tole all the truth,
SHE'D be mad as a March hare, and like as not face me down that all
I had said was a dream or a lie, or that I was drunk that night and
couldn't see straight. I'd hearn her tell too many fibs with a smooth
tongue and a sweet smile not to be sure of that! So, all I should git
for my care of the repertation of my fam'ly would be her ill-will, and
to be 'cused by other people of stealin', and for the rest of my days
she'd do all she could to spite me. For I'm sure as I stand here, Miss
Mabel, that she knew, or thought she knew, somethin' 'bout that poor,
despisable wretch that died up in the garret. What else brought him
a-spyin' 'round here, and what was there to make her faint when she
ketched sight of him a-lookin' in at her through the winder? and what
COULD a sent her upstars when everybody else was asleep, fur to haul his
close about, and poke them fine white fingers of hern into his pockets,
and pull his WHISKERY face over to the light so's to see it better?
Depend 'pon it, there's a bad story at the bottom of this somewhere.
I've hearn of many a sich that came of gentlemens' marrying forringers
what nobody knowed anything about. Anyhow, I want you to take keer of
this 'ere pocketbook. Ef I was to die all of a suddent, and 'twas found
'mong my things, some mischief mought be hatched out on it. It's safer
in your hands nor it is in mine. Now, I'll jest light your lamp, and
you can 'xamine it, and pitch it into the fire, ef you like, when you're
through.”
In a cooler moment Mabel would have hesitated to obey the advice of an
ignorant, prejudiced person, her inferior in station and intelligence.
But in the whirl of astonishment, incredulity, and speculation created
by the tale she had heard, she untied the string which formed the
primitive fastening of the worn wallet, and unclosed it.
The main compartment contained four tickets, issued by as many different
pawnbrokers, testifying that such and such articles had been deposited
with them for and in consideration of moneys advanced by them to Thomas
Lindsay; a liquor-seller's score against William Jones--unpaid; and a
tavern bill, in which brandy and water, whiskey and mint-juleps, were
the principal items charged against Edmund Jackson. This last was
the only paper which bore the indorsement “Rec'd payment,” and this
circumstance had, probably, led to its preservation. The adjoining
division of the wallet was sewed up with stout black thread and Mabel
had to resort to her scissors before she could get at its contents.
These were a couple of worn envelopes, crumpled and dog-eared, and
stained with liquor or salt water, but still bearing the address, in a
feminine hand, of “Lieutenant Julius Lennox, U. S. N.” In addition to
this, one was directed to Havana, Cuba; the other to Calcutta, in care,
of a mercantile or banking-house at each place. A third cover bore the
superscription, “CERTIFICATE,” in bold characters.
The negress' watchful eyes dilated with greedy expectancy at Mrs.
Dorrance's ghastly face when this last had been examined, but she
was foiled if she hoped for any valuable addition to her store of
information, or anything resembling elucidation of her pet mystery.
“It will take me some time to read all these,” remarked Mabel, still
scanning the half-sheet she held. “You had better not wait, Mammy. They
are safe with me. No one else shall see them, and no harm can come to
you through them.”
She promised mechanically what she supposed would soonest buy for
her privacy and needed quiet, and gave no heed to the manifest
disappointment of her visitor.
When she was at last alone, Mrs. Dorrance relocked the door, and bent
close to the lamp, as if more light upon the surface of the document
would tend to clear up the terrible secret thus strangely committed
to her discretion and mercy. The paper was a certificate, drawn up in
regular form, and signed by a clergyman, whose address was appended
below, in a different hand writing--of a marriage between Julius Lennox
and Clara Louise Dorrance.
“Her very name!” repeated the whitening lips. “I remember asking her
once what the 'L' in her signature stood for.”
But while she said it, there was a look in the reader's eye that bespoke
inability or reluctance to grapple with the revelation threatened by the
discovery.
“The letters may tell me more!” she added, in the same frightened
whisper, refolding the certificate.
They did--for they were in the long, sloping chirography of her
sister-in-law, and signed “Your ever-fond, but lonely wife.” Each
contained, moreover, allusions to “Ellis,” to “Clermont,” to “Julia,”
and to “Herbert”--all family names in the Dorrance connection; spoke
gratefully of her parents' kindness to his “poor Louise” in the absence
of “her beloved Julius;” and was liberally spiced with passionate
protestations of her inconsolableness and yearnings for his return. Both
were dated ten years back, and the paper was yellow with time, besides
being creased and thumbed as by many readings.
“What am I to do?” thought Mabel, sinking into her chair, trembling all
over with terror and incertitude.
If there were one sentiment in Winston Aylett's heart that equalled
his haughtiness, it was love for his wife. But could it be that he had
totally forgotten pride and his habitual caution in the selection of
the woman who was to be the partner of his home, fortune, and
reputation--possibly the mother of children who were to perpetuate
the noble name he bore? By what miracle of unrighteous craft, what
subornation of witnesses, what concealments, what barefaced and
unscrupulous falsehoods had this adventuress been imposed upon him as
unmarried, when the evidence of her former wedlock was held by a low
stroller--a drunken wretch who might betray it in an unguarded or
insane hour, and who, judging from his exterior, would not be averse
to publishing or selling the information if he could make more money
by doing this than by preserving the secret. And how came he by these
papers?
Confused, partly by his numerous aliases, more by incapacity to conceive
of such depth and complication of horror as were revealed by the
idea, the perplexed thinker did not, for a while, admit to herself the
possibility that the nameless vagabond may have been Clara's living
husband, instead of a mercenary villain who had secured surreptitiously
the proofs of a marriage she wished the world to forget. Having learned
that she had wedded, a second time, in her maiden name, and that
her antecedents were unsuspected in her present home, the thought
of extorting a bribe to continued silence, from the wealthy lady of
Ridgeley, would have occurred to any common rascal with more audacity
than principle. It was but a spark--the merest point of light that
showed her the verge of the precipice toward which one link after
another of the chain of circumstantial evidence was dragging her.
Groping dizzily among her recollections of that Christmas night, there
gleamed luridly upon her the vision of Mrs. Aylett's strange smile,
as she said, “It may be that his wife, if she were cognizant of his
condition, would not lift a finger or take a step to save his life, or
to prolong it for an hour!”
Then, in response to Mabel's indignant reply--the momentary passion
darting from her hitherto languorous orbs, and vibrating in her accents,
in adding--“There are women in whose hearts the monument to departed
affection is a hatred that can never die.”
If this man were a stranger, from whom she had nothing to fear, why her
extraordinary agitation at seeing him, even imperfectly, through the
window? She must have known him well to recognize him in the darkness
and at that fleeting glimpse. Perhaps she had believed him dead, until
then! This would account for her clandestine visit to his chamber, to
which Mrs. Sutton and her niece had gone, without effort at concealment;
explain the rigid examination of his clothing ensuing upon her scrutiny
of his features.
“I must be mad!” Mabel said, here, pressing her hand to her head. “There
does not live the woman, however wicked and hypocritical, who could sit
at ease in the midst of ill-gotten luxury, on an inclement night, and
talk smilingly of other things, if she suspected that one she had known,
much less loved, lay dying in wretchedness and solitude so near her.”
The vagrant was some evil-disposed spy, whose person Clara knew, and
whose intentions she had reason to dread were unfriendly. Had she
dared--for she was daring--to attempt this nefarious plot against the
fair fame and happiness of an honorable gentleman, her family would not
have become her accomplices. They could not have blinded themselves to
the perils of the enterprise, the extreme probabilities of detection,
the consequences of Winston's anger. Herbert, at least, would have
forbidden the unlawful deceit. When his sister was wedded to Winston,
he believed that her first husband was no longer in the land of the
living--as she must also have done.
“For he is a good--an upright man!” thought the wife. “But he was privy
to the fact of her previous marriage! Why have I never heard of it? He
has invariably spoken of Clara as having lived single in her mother's
house up to the date of her union with my brother.”
She could not but remember, likewise, that there was a certain tone
about the Dorrance connection she had never quite comprehended or
liked--a reticence with respect to details of family history, while
they were voluble upon generalities, over-fond of lauding one another's
exploits, virtues, and accomplishments; referring in wonderful pride to
“our beloved father,” and extolling “our precious mother,” who, by the
way, was so little in request among the children, that she had, since
Clara's marriage, occupied apartments in a second-rate boarding-house in
Boston. Mabel, when convinced of the futility of her hope of having
Aunt Rachel with her, had proposed to offer Mrs. Dorrance a house in
the commodious mansion of her youngest son; but Herbert, with no show
of gratification at what he must have known was a sacrifice of her
inclinations, had coolly reasoned down the suggestion. The whole
tribe--if she excepted her husband, and perhaps Clara--had, to her
perception, a tinge of Bohemianism, although all were in comfortable
circumstances, and lived showily. Mabel had often chided herself for
uncharitable judgment and groundless prejudice, in admitting these
impressions of her relatives-in-law; but they returned upon her in this
twilight reverie with the force of convictions she was, each moment,
less able to combat. What darker secret lay back of the concealment
her rectitude of principle and sense of justice declared to be
unjustifiable? and might not this concerted and persistent reserve imply
others yet more culpable?
It showed her correct estimate of her brother's character, that she
never for a second accused him of connivance in the deceit practised
upon his relations and neighbors. He would not have scrupled to wed
a widow, knowing and acknowledging her to be such. Nothing--not love,
tenfold more ardent and irrational than that he felt for his siren
wife--could have wrought upon him to introduce to the world, as Mrs.
Aylett of Ridgeley, one who had been before married, and was ashamed,
for any cause whatever, to avow this. The blemish left by the acrid
breath of common scandal upon a woman's fame was to him ineffaceable by
any process yet discovered by pitying man or angels. The maligned one
may not have erred from the straitest road of virtue and discretion, but
she had been “talked about,” and was no consort for him. In his State
and caste, private marriages were things disallowed, and but one shade
more respectable than liasons that did not pretend to the sanctity of
wedlock. What would he say when the contents of this dingy pocket-book
were spread before him? Ought his sister to do this?
COULD she? He had not earned compassionate consideration from her by
any act of gentleness and forbearance. He had handled the lopping-knife
without ruth, and let the gaping wounds bleed as long as the bitter
ichor would ooze from her heart. She had learned hardness and
self-control from the lesson, but not vindictiveness. Now that the power
was hers to visit upon his haughty spirit something of the humiliation
and distress he had not spared her; that it was her turn to
harangue upon mesalliances and love-matches, and want of circumspect
investigation into early records before committing one's self to
a contract of marriage--she recoiled at the thought; felt, in her
exceeding pity for the trustful husband, a stirring of the love she had
herself once borne him in the days when the changed homestead was her
world, and its master a king among men.
And yet--and yet--was it the truest friendship--the most prudent course
to prolong the ignorance which left him liable at any moment to be
shocked into the perpetration of some desperate deed by the discovery,
through some other channel, of his wife's perfidy, and the abominable
snare that bad been woven about him!