NEWS FROM HERMAN.
But that which keepeth us apart is not
Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth,
But the distractions of a various lot,
As various as the climates of our birth.
My blood is all meridian--were it not
I had not left my clime, nor should I be,
In spite of tortures, ne'er to be forgot,
A slave again of love, at least of thee!
--_Byron_.
The life of Berenice was lonely enough. She had perseveringly rejected
the visits of her neighbors, until at length they had taken her at her
word and kept away from her house.
She had persistently declined the invitations of Mrs. Brudenell to join
the family circle at Washington every winter, until at last that lady
had ceased to repeat them and had also discontinued her visits to
Brudenell Hall.
Berenice passed her time in hoping and praying for her husband's return,
and in preparing and adorning her home for his reception; in training
and improving the negroes; in visiting and relieving the poor; and in
walking to the turnstile and watching the high-road.
Surely a more harmless and beneficent life could not be led by woman;
yet the poisonous alchemy of detraction turned all her good deeds into
evil ones.
Poor Berenice--poor in love, was rich in gold, and she lavished it with
an unsparing hand on the improvement of Brudenell. She did not feel at
liberty to pull down and build up, else had the time-worn old mansion
house disappeared from sight and a new and elegant villa had reared its
walls upon Brudenell Heights. But she did everything else she could to
enhance the beauty and value of the estate.
The house was thoroughly repaired, refurnished, and decorated with great
luxury, richness, and splendor. The grounds were laid out, planted, and
adorned with all the beauty that taste, wealth, and skill could produce.
Orchards and vineyards were set out. Conservatories and pineries were
erected. The negroes' squalid log-huts were replaced with neat stone
cottages, and the shabby wooden fences by substantial stone walls.
And all this was done, not for herself, but for her husband, and her
constant mental inquiry was:
"After all, will Herman be pleased?"
Yet when the neighbors saw this general renovation, of the estate, which
could not have been accomplished without considerable expenditure of
time, money, and labor, they shook their heads in strong disapprobation,
and predicted that that woman's extravagance would bring Herman
Brudenell to beggary yet.
She sought to raise the condition of the negroes, not only by giving
them neat cottages, but by comfortably furnishing their rooms, and
encouraging them to keep their little houses and gardens in order,
rewarding them for neatness and industry, and established a school for
their children to learn to read and write. But the negroes--hereditary
servants of the Brudenells--looked upon this stranger with jealous
distrust, as an interloping foreigner who had, by some means or other,
managed to dispossess and drive away the rightful family from the old
place. And so they regarded all her favors as a species of bribery, and
thanked her for none of them. And this was really not ingratitude, but
fidelity. The neighbors denounced these well-meant efforts of the
mistress as dangerous innovations, incendiarisms, and so forth, and
thanked Heaven that the Brudenell negroes were too faithful to be led
away by her!
She went out among the poor of her neighborhood and relieved their wants
with such indiscriminate and munificent generosity as to draw down upon
herself the rebuke of the clergy for encouraging habits of improvidence
and dependence in the laboring classes. As for the subjects of her
benevolence, they received her bounty with the most extravagant
expressions of gratitude and the most fulsome flattery. This was so
distasteful to Berenice that she oftened turned her face away, blushing
with embarrassment at having listened to it. Yet such was the gentleness
of her spirit, that she never wounded their feelings by letting them see
that she distrusted the sincerity of these hyperbolical phrases.
"Poor souls," she said to herself, "it is the best they have to offer
me, and I will take it as if it were genuine."
Berenice was right in her estimate of their flattery. Astonished at her
lavish generosity, and ignorant of her great wealth, which made
alms-giving easy, her poor neighbors put their old heads together to
find out the solution of the problem. And they came to the conclusion
that this lady must have been a great sinner, whose husband had
abandoned her for some very good reason, and who was now endeavoring to
atone for her sins by a life of self-denial and benevolence. This
conclusion seemed too probable to be questioned. This verdict was
brought to the knowledge of Berenice in a curious way. Among the
recipients of her bounty was Mrs. Jones, the ladies' nurse. The old
woman had fallen into a long illness, and consequently into extreme
want. Her case came to the knowledge of Berenice, who hastened to
relieve her. When the lady had made the invalid comfortable and was
about to take leave, the latter said:
"Ah, 'charity covers a multitude of sins,' ma'am! Let us hope that all
yours may be so covered."
Berenice stared in surprise. It was not the words so much as the manner
that shocked her. And Phoebe, who had attended her mistress, scarcely
got well out of the house before her indignation burst forth in the
expletives:
"Old brute! Whatever did she mean by her insolence? My lady, I hope you
will do nothing more for the old wretch."
Berenice walked on in silence until they reached the spot where they had
left their carriage, and when they had re-entered it, she said:
"Something like this has vaguely met me before; but never so plainly and
bluntly as to-day; it is unpleasant; but I must not punish one poor old
woman for a misapprehension shared by the whole community."
So calmly and dispassionately had the countess answered her attendant's
indignant exclamation. But as soon as Berenice reached her own chamber
she dismissed her maid, locked her door, and gave herself up to a
passion of grief.
It was but a trifle--that coarse speech of a thoughtless old woman--a
mere trifle; but it overwhelmed her, coming, as it did, after all that
had gone before. It was but the last feather, you know, only a single
feather laid on the pack that broke the camel's back. It was but a drop
of water, a single drop, that made the full cup overflow!
Added to bereavement, desertion, loneliness, slander, ingratitude, had
come this little bit of insolence to overthrow the firmness that had
stood all the rest. And Berenice wept.
She had left home, friends, and country for one who repaid the sacrifice
by leaving her. She had lavished her wealth upon those who received her
bounty with suspicion and repaid her kindness with ingratitude. She had
lived a life as blameless and as beneficent as that of any old time
saint or martyr, and had won by it nothing but detraction and calumny.
Her parents were dead, her husband gone, her native land far away, her
hopes were crushed. No wonder she wept. And then the countess was out of
her sphere; as much out of her sphere in the woods of Maryland as Hans
Christian Andersen's cygnet was in the barnyard full of fowls. She was a
swan, and they took her for a deformed duck. And at last she herself
began to be vaguely conscious of this.
"Why do I remain here?" she moaned; "what strange magnetic power is it
that holds my very will, fettered here, against my reason and judgment?
That has so held me for long years? Yes, for long, weary years have I
been bound to this cross, and I am not dead yet! Heavenly Powers! what
are my nerves and brain and heart made of that I am not dead, or mad, or
criminal before this? Steel, and rock, and gutta percha, I think! Not
mere flesh and blood and bone like other women's? Oh, why do I stay
here? Why do I not go home? I have lost everything else; but I have
still a home and country left! Oh, that I could break loose! Oh, that I
could free myself! Oh, that I had the wings of a dove, for then I would
fly away and be at rest!'" she exclaimed, breaking into the pathetic
language of the Psalmist.
A voice softly stole upon her ear, a low, plaintive voice singing a
homely Scotch song:
"'Oh, it's hame, hame, hame,
Hame fain would I be;
But the wearie never win back
To their ain countrie.'"
Tears sprang again to the eyes of the countess as she caught up and
murmured the last two lines:
"'But the wearie never win back
To their ain countrie.'"
Phoebe, for it was she who was singing, hushed her song as she reached
her lady's door, and knocked softly. The countess unlocked the door to
admit her.
"It is only the mail bag, my lady, that old Jovial has just brought from
the post office," said the girl.
Lady Hurstmonceux listlessly looked over its contents. Several years of
disappointment had worn out all expectation of hearing from the only one
of whom she cared to receive news. There were home and foreign
newspapers that she threw carelessly out. And there was one letter at
the bottom of all the rest that she lifted up and looked at with languid
curiosity. But as soon as her eyes fell upon the handwriting of the
superscription the letter dropped from her hand and she sank back in her
chair and quietly fainted away.
Phoebe hastened to apply restoratives, and after a few minutes the
lady recovered consciousness and rallied her faculties.
"The letter! the letter, girl! give me the letter!" she gasped in eager
tones.
Phoebe picked it up from the carpet, upon which it had fallen, and
handed it to her mistress.
Berenice, with trembling fingers, broke the seal and read the letter. It
was from Herman Brudenell, and ran as follows:
"London, December 1, 18--
"Lady Hurstmonceux: If there is one element of saving comfort in
my lost, unhappy life, it is the reflection that, though in an evil
hour I made you my wife, you are not called by my name; but that
the courtesy of custom continues to you the title won by your first
marriage with the late Earl of Hurstmonceux; and that you cannot
therefore so deeply dishonor my family.
"Madam, it would give me great pain to write to any other woman,
however guilty, as I am forced to write to you; because on any
woman I should feel that I was inflicting suffering, which you know
too well I have not--never had the nerve to do; but you, I know,
cannot be hurt; you are callous. If your early youth had not shown
you to be so, the last few years of your life would have proved it.
If you had not been so insensible to shame as you are to remorse,
how could you, after your great crime, take possession of my house
and, by so doing, turn my mother and sisters from their home and
banish me from my country? For well you know that, while you live
at Brudenell Hall, my family cannot re-enter its walls! Nay,
more--while you choose to reside in America, I must remain an exile
in Europe. The same hemisphere is not broad enough to contain the
Countess of Hurstmonceux and Herman Brudenell.
"I have given you a long time to come to your senses and leave my
house. Now my patience is exhausted, and I require you to depart.
You are not embarrassed for a home or a support: if you were I
should afford you both, on condition of your departure from
America. But my whole patrimony would be but a mite added to your
treasures.
"You have country-seats in England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well
as a town house in London, a marine villa at Boulougne, and a Swiss
cottage on Lake Leman. All these are your own; and you shall never
be molested by me in your exclusive possession of them. Choose your
residence from among them, and leave me in peaceable possession of
the one modest countryhouse I have inherited in my native land. I
wish to sell it.
"But you doubtless have informed yourself before this time, that by
the laws of the State in which my property is situated, a man
cannot sell his homestead without the consent of his wife. Your
co-operation is therefore necessary in the sale of Brudenell Hall.
I wish you to put yourself in immediate communication with my
solicitors, Messrs. Kage & Kage, Monument Street, Baltimore, who
are in possession of my instructions. Do this promptly, and win
from me the only return you have left it in my power to make
you--oblivion of your crimes and of yourself.
"Herman Brudenell."
With the calmness of despair Berenice read this cruel letter through to
the end, and dropped it on her lap, and sat staring at it in silence.
Then, as if incredulous of its contents, or doubtful of its meaning, she
took it up and read it again, and again let it fall. And yet a third
time--after rapidly passing her hand to and fro across her forehead, as
if that action would clear her vision--she raised, re-perused, and laid
aside the letter. Then she firmly set her teeth, and slowly nodded her
head, while for an instant a startling light gleamed from her deep black
eyes.
Her faithful attendant, while seeming to be busy arranging the flasks on
the dressing-table, furtively and anxiously watched her mistress, who at
last spoke:
"Phoebe!"
"Yes, my lady."
"Bring me a glass of wine."
The girl brought the required stimulant, and in handing it to her
mistress noticed how deadly white her face had become. And as the
countess took the glass from the little silver waiter her hand came in
contact with that of Phoebe, and the girl felt as if an icicle had
touched her, so cold it was.
"Now wheel my writing-desk forward," said the countess, as she sipped
her wine.
The order was obeyed.
"And now," continued the lady, as she replaced the glass and opened her
desk, "pack up my wardrobe and jewels, and your own clothes. Order the
carriage to be at the door at eight o'clock, to take us to Baymouth. We
leave Baymouth for New York to-morrow morning, and New York for
Liverpool next Saturday."
"Now, glory be to Heaven for that, my lady; and I wish it had been years
ago instead of to-day!" joyfully exclaimed the girl, as she went about
her business.
"And so do I! And so do I, with all my heart and soul!" thought
Berenice, as she arranged her papers and took up a pen to write. In an
instant she laid it down again, and arose and walked restlessly up and
down the floor, wringing her hands, and muttering to herself:
"And this is the man for whose sake I sacrificed home, friends, country,
and the most splendid prospects that ever dazzled the imagination of
woman! This is the man whom I have loved and watched and prayed for, all
these long years, hoping against hope, and believing against knowledge.
If he had ceased to love me, grown tired of me, and wished to be rid of
me, could he not have told me so, frankly, from the first? It would have
been less cruel than to have inflicted on me this long anguish of
suspense! less cowardly than to have attempted to justify his desertion
of me by a charge of crime! What crime--he knows no more than I do! Oh,
Herman! Herman! how could you fall so low? But I will not reproach you
even in my thoughts. But I must, I must forget you!"
She returned to her desk, sat down and took up her pen; but again she
dropped it, bowed her head upon her desk, and wept:
"Oh, Herman! Herman! must I never hope to meet you again? never look
into your dark eyes, never clasp your hand, or hear your voice again?
never more? never more! Must mine be the hand that writes our sentence
of separation? I cannot! oh! I cannot do it, Herman! And yet!--it is you
who require it!"
After a few minutes she took up his letter and read it over for the
fourth time. Its ruthless implacability seemed to give her the strength
necessary to obey its behests. As if fearing another failure of her
resolution, she wrote at once:
"Brudenell Hall, December 30, 18--
"Mr. Brudenell: Your letter has relieved me from an embarrassing
position. I beg your pardon for having been for so long a period an
unconscious usurper of your premises. I had mistaken this place for
my husband's house and my proper home. My mistake, however, has not
extended to the appropriation of the revenues of the estate. You
will find every dollar of those placed to your credit in the
Planters' Bank of Baymouth. My mistake has been limited to the
occupancy of the house. For that wrong I shall make what reparation
remains in my power. I shall leave this place this Friday evening;
see your solicitors on Monday; place in their hands a sum
equivalent to the full value of Brudenell Hall, as a compensation
to you for my long use of the house; and then sign whatever
documents may be necessary to renounce all claim upon yourself and
your estate, and to free you forever from
"Berenice, Countess of Hurstmonceux."
She finished the letter and threw down the pen. What it had cost her to
write thus, only her own loving and outraged woman's heart knew.
By the time she had sealed her letter Phoebe entered to say that the
dinner was served--that solitary meal at which she had sat down,
heart-broken, for so many weary years.
She answered, "Very well," but never stirred from her seat.
Phoebe fidgeted about the room for a while, and then, with the freedom
of a favorite attendant, she came to the side of the countess and,
smiling archly, said:
"My lady."
"Well, Phoebe?"
"People needn't starve, need they, because they are going back to their
'ain countrie'?"
Lady Hurstmonceux smiled faintly, roused herself, and went down to
dinner.
On her return to her room she found her maid locking the last trunks.
"Is everything packed, Phoebe?"
"Except the dress you have on, my lady; and I can lay that on the top of
this trunk after you put on your traveling dress."
"And you are glad we are going home, my girl?"
"Oh, my lady, I feel as if I could just spread out my arms and fly for
joy."
"Then I am, also, for your sake. What time is it now?"
"Five o'clock, my lady."
"Three hours yet. Tell Mrs. Spicer to come here."
Phoebe locked the trunk she had under her hand and went out to obey.
When Mrs. Spicer came in she was startled by the intelligence that her
lady was going away immediately, and that the house was to be shut up
until the arrival of Mr. Brudenell or his agents, who would arrange for
its future disposition.
When Lady Hurstmonceux had finished these instructions she placed a
liberal sum of money in the housekeeper's hands, with orders to divide
it among the house-servants.
Next she sent for Grainger, the overseer, and having given him the same
information, and put a similar sum of money in his hands for
distribution among the negroes, she dismissed both the housekeeper and
the overseer. Then she enclosed a note for a large amount in a letter
addressed to the pastor of the parish, with a request that he would
appropriate it for the relief of the suffering poor in that
neighborhood. Finally, having completed all her preparations, she took a
cup of tea, bade farewell to her dependents, and, attended by Phoebe,
entered the carriage and was driven to Baymouth, where she posted her
two letters in time for the evening mail, and where the next morning she
took the boat for Baltimore, en route for the North. She stopped in
Baltimore only long enough to arrange business with Mr. Brudenell's
solicitors, and then proceeded to New York, whence, at the end of the
same week, she sailed for Liverpool. Thus the beautiful young English
Jewess, who had dropped for a while like some rich exotic flower
transplanted to our wild Maryland woods, returned to her native land,
where, let us hope, she found in an appreciating circle of friends some
consolation for the loss of that domestic happiness that had been so
cruelly torn from her.
We shall meet with Berenice, Countess of Hurstmonceux, again; but it
will be in another sphere, and under other circumstances.
It was in the spring succeeding her departure that the house-agents and
attorneys came down to appraise and sell Brudenell Hall. Since the
improvements bestowed upon the estate by Lady Hurstmonceux, the property
had increased its value, so that a purchaser could not at once be found.
When this fact was communicated to Mr. Brudenell, in London, he wrote
and authorized his agent to let the property to a responsible tenant,
and if possible to hire the plantation negroes to the same party who
should take the house.
All this after a while was successfully accomplished. A gentleman from a
neighboring State took the house, all furnished as it was, and hired all
the servants of the premises.
He came early in June, but who or what he was, or whence he came, none
of the neighbors knew. The arrival of any stranger in a remote country
district is always the occasion of much curiosity, speculation, and
gossip. But when such a one brings the purse of Fortunatus in his
pocket, and takes possession of the finest establishment in the
country--house, furniture, servants, carriages, horses, stock and all,
he becomes the subject of the wildest conjecture.
It does not require long to get comfortably to housekeeping in a
ready-made home; so it was soon understood in the neighborhood that the
strangers were settled in their new residence, and might be supposed to
be ready to receive calls.
But the neighbors, though tormented with curiosity, cautiously held
aloof, and waited until the Sabbath, when they might expect to see the
newcomers, and judge of their appearance and hear their pastor's opinion
of them.
So, on the first Sunday after the stranger's settlement at Brudenell
Hall the Baymouth Church was crowded to excess. But those of the
congregation who went there with other motives than to worship their
Creator were sadly disappointed. The crimson-lined Brudenell pew
remained vacant, as it had remained for several years.
"Humph! not church-going people, perhaps! We had an English Jewess
before, perhaps we shall have a Turkish Mohammedan next!" was the
speculation of one of the disappointed.
The conjecture proved false.
The next Sunday the Brudenell pew was filled. There was a gentleman and
lady, and half-a-dozen girls and boys, all dressed in half-mourning,
except one little lady of about ten years old, whose form was enveloped
in black bombazine and crape, and whose face, what could be seen of it,
was drowned in tears. It needed no seer to tell that she was just left
motherless, and placed in charge of her relations.
After undergoing the scrutiny of the congregation, this family was
unanimously, though silently, voted to be perfectly respectable.