ELSIE IN THE ATTIC.
To-night, when my head aches indeed,
And I can either think nor read,
And these blue fingers will not hold
The pen—(this attic’s freezing cold)—
I tell you, I pace up and down
This garret, crowned with love’s best crown,
And feasted with love’s perfect feast,
To think I bear for him at least.
_—Browning._
When they re-entered the ballroom the revelry was still at its height.
Six cotillions were on the floor.
Judge Jacky was flying about, now here and now there, now everywhere at
once.
Ambrosia Wylie, in a gold-colored satin, that harmonized well with her
warm-hued tone of beauty, sat in the bay window, the sunny center of a
system of satellites.
General Garnet, who had got through with the political business that
detained him at Huttontown, had just arrived, and was now standing
apart, conversing with Lionel Hardcastle. He frowned darkly on seeing
Elsie enter the room leaning on the arm of Magnus, and both looking so
self-possessed, confident, and happy.
He smoothed his brow quickly, however, excused himself to Lionel, and
advanced toward them. Bowing slightly to Magnus, he took the arm of
Elsie, and saying that he wished to have a conversation with her, drew
her off for a promenade.
In going off, Elsie turned, smiled on Magnus, and said:
“If I do not return in half an hour, Dr. Hardcastle, you must seek me
out,” and, bowing playfully, she went on.
“Was that done to insult me, Miss Garnet?”
“No, dearest father, it was done out of respect to Dr. Hardcastle; as
you forgot to excuse yourself to him for taking me off so abruptly, it
would have been scarcely courteous in me to have left him without a
word. We would not have treated a common acquaintance so, father.”
“A common acquaintance! And pray what more is Dr. Hardcastle entitled
henceforth to be considered?”
“As my husband, and as your son-in-law, father.”
General Garnet turned pale, and spoke low, with suppressed rage:
“Your husband, and my son-in-law! I—would—see—him—and—you—in the lowest
pit of h——l first!”
Elsie gave a violent start as this awful word struck her like a bullet.
It was the more awful, that Elsie had never known her father to forget
himself so far before. Violence shocked her, profanity revolted her; she
was unaccustomed to either. Her father, even in his tyranny, was
habitually polite. Her mother was ever gentle. Fury, threats, were
strange to her; and now came this terrible burst of passion, the more
terrible for its half suppression. She gazed at him in alarm. His face
was white with anger, but it reminded her of the white ashes upon a
burning coal. He continued in the same deep, stern tone:
“How dared you even receive that young man’s attentions, after I have
withdrawn my countenance of him?”
“Father, because his attentions were my right and his right. Who else,
in your absence, could have attended me with so much propriety?” asked
Elsie, trembling in her flesh, but firm in her spirit.
“Do not commit the impertinence of answering my question by asking
another again, Miss Garnet. A question which, impertinent as it was, I
will answer. ‘Who,’ you inquire, ‘in my absence, could have attended you
with so much propriety?’ I reply, Mr. Lionel Hardcastle, the gentleman
under whose protection I placed you for the evening.”
“And who wickedly abused his position by addressing the words of love to
one whom he knew to be Dr. Hardcastle’s betrothed wife.”
“Death! if you say that again,” exclaimed General Garnet, trembling with
fury.
“And whom,” continued Elsie, frightened, but resolute, “I had therefore
to dismiss as soon as I found Dr. Hardcastle.”
He grasped her arm with a violence that might have crushed it. He set
his teeth, and drew his breath hard. He could not shake or beat her
there—not in that room full of company—among those hundreds of people.
He could not even let them see the rage that was on the eve of
explosion.
He looked around. Seeing Lionel Hardcastle at a short distance, he
beckoned him to approach, and, without relinquishing his vise-like grip,
said, in a deep, hurried tone:
“Do me the favor to call my carriage, sir, instantly, if you please.”
Lionel opened his soft, bright eyes in a look of wide surprise, turned
on Elsie a gaze of mingled admiration, sorrow, and deprecation, and,
bowing to General Garnet, moved off to comply with his request.
General Garnet grasped Elsie’s arm with a suppressed fierceness, and
pulled her after him into the hall, thence out into the portico, and
down the steps to the carriage door. Pushing her forcibly in, he jumped
in after, pulled to the door, commanded the coachman to drive rapidly
for Mount Calm, and was soon whirled away on the road to that place. He
maintained a stern silence toward Elsie during the whole ride.
Arrived at Mount Calm, he sprang from the carriage, took Elsie out, drew
her arm roughly within his own, and pulled her up the steps.
“Has your mistress retired?” was the first question he asked of the
servant at the door. The man started at the fierce abruptness of his
master’s tone and manner, and replied hurriedly that she had.
“It is very well. Go wake up the housekeeper; ask her for the keys of
the attic-room, and bring them to me yourself, with a night-lamp.”
The man hurried away in dismay. And General Garnet remained there, still
with his violent grasp upon Elsie’s arm. When the servant returned with
the bunch of keys and the light:
“Precede me upstairs, and on up into the attic,” said General Garnet;
and grasping Elsie more tightly, he fiercely hurried her on, till they
reached the first floor, and the wide hall into which the family
chambers opened.
“Father, this is my chamber door. I wish to retire,” said Elsie,
pointing to the door on her left. But her father hurried her past it.
The servant was now going up the attic steps, but paused to look down
upon the scene.
“Father, what are you about to do?” asked Elsie, holding back. Her
attire had been very much disordered by the violence with which she had
been hurried in, her cloak and hood had fallen off below stairs; now her
beautiful dress was tumbled, and her hair in wild disorder. “What are
you going to do, father?” she asked again, drawing back.
But he turned upon her sharply, shook her furiously, as though he would
have shaken the life from out her; and then seeing the horrified gaze of
the servant standing on the stairs, he exclaimed, “Up into the attic,
and wait for me there, instantly, sirrah. And consider yourself already
sold to a trader, for your insolence in watching me!”
The appalled servant vanished up the steps, and the unmasked tyrant
turned to Elsie, and tightening the grasp that he had never
relinquished, dragged her to the foot of the attic stairs. Here the girl
sank with all her weight upon him, upheld only by his hand.
“Up, up the stairs with you!” he exclaimed fiercely.
Elsie had too much physical strength to swoon, and too much presence of
mind to scream. She would not have terrified her poor mother to no good
purpose. Yet her agitation was so great, with augmented astonishment and
terror, that she could not move.
He seized her violently, drew her up the stairs until they had reached
the narrow attic passage, and commanding the negro to unlock the door
that stood before them, forced her into the room; dismissed the servant,
locked the door on the inside, and turned upon her. Elsie had dropped
into an old flag-bottomed armchair, where she sat shivering with cold
and fear. He turned upon the delicate and trembling girl fiercely,
scornfully, triumphantly, tauntingly, as if she had been some rough male
adversary in his power. He placed the key in his pocket, buttoned up his
overcoat, and stood looking at her with a bitter, sarcastic laugh,
saying:
“You have insulted and provoked me sufficiently this evening, Miss
Garnet! You were very happy and confident an hour ago. What do you think
of your prospects now?”
Elsie shuddered and was silent.
“Can you escape from this room? Will you jump from one of those windows
and fall a hundred feet? Will your lover find a ladder long enough to
reach you? I think not. Can you break that lock? I think not. Will you
bribe your jailer? I think not; for I shall be your jailer myself. No
one else shall enter this room. And now listen to me,” and taking a
chair, he sat down before her, and said in a hard, harsh voice, “I do
not care one jot for all the miserable, contemptible love sentiment in
the world; I never did! I do not believe in it. I never did! But that
which I want, and that which I will have, is the union of these two
joining estates, Mount Calm and Hemlock Hollow. That project is as dear
to old Mr. Hardcastle as it is to me. It was for that reason, and not
upon account of any trifling, mutual predilection of yours, that we were
about to negotiate a marriage between my daughter and his nephew, when
fortunately Lionel came home in time to arrest the execution of the
plan; of course it was perfectly easy to see what then became the duty
of all parties.”
“Fidelity,” said Elsie in a low voice.
General Garnet laughed tauntingly, and continued without further notice
of her reply:
“The young man who was to inherit the estate was to have the bride. It
mattered nothing to me whether that were Magnus or Lionel; but the hand
of my heiress was to be bestowed upon the heir of Hemlock Hollow. That
was the treaty. So I reminded old Mr. Hardcastle. He remembered that it
really was so, and fully and entirely agreed with me. Young Lionel
Hardcastle is also conformable. You only are contumacious. But I have
pledged myself to your consent, and, by Heaven, you shall redeem my
pledge. Listen, minion! You never leave this room until you leave it as
the wife of Lionel Hardcastle. Curious place for a marriage ceremony!
but, come, it does not matter; we can have the wedding afterward. You
were to be the wife of Dr. Hardcastle, as you very respectfully call
him, on Thursday week. Ha! ha! ha! Come, what do you think of your
prospects of marrying him now?”
“Father, as far as my marriage with Dr. Hardcastle on Thursday week is
concerned, my fate has gone out of my hands and into God’s! I have no
more to say about that.”
“Ha! ha! I should think not. Not quite so confident as you were an hour
ago, hey?”
“But, father, forgive me for reminding you that as far as marriage with
any other person is concerned, that is entirely in my hands for refusal.
Church and State very properly make the bride’s consent an indispensable
preliminary to marriage, and even a vital part of the marriage ceremony.
And my consent can never be gained to marry Lionel.”
“Ha! my pretty piece of stubbornness, we shall see. Pray, do you
know—have you ever felt the power of solitary imprisonment, cold, and
hunger, in bringing a contumacious girl to docility?”
Elsie’s face flushed, more for him than herself.
He continued:
“For all those mighty engines can I spring upon you! And will I, by
Satan and all his hosts!”
“Father, you may do that, and nature may faint and succumb to their
power. I am very strong, but those things you threaten me with may be
stronger still. But, father, if ever I am left with strength enough to
stand before the minister with Lionel Hardcastle by my side, when that
minister shall ask me whether I will promise to love, honor, and obey
him till death, I shall answer, ‘No, I do not love him, I never did, I
never shall. If I stand here to be married to him, it is to please my
father, his father, and not myself! And so I cannot tell a falsehood,
far less vow one in God’s presence about it. I love Dr. Hardcastle, to
whom you all know that I have been long engaged. I always did love him,
and always shall,’ and then let the minister of God marry us, if he
durst.”
With a furious oath he sprang upon her—seized her—the idea of strangling
her upon the instant darted through his brain; but he only shook her
with frenzied violence, and holding her in his terrible grip, said, with
a husky voice and ashen cheek, and gleaming eye:
“If you were to do so, girl, as God in heaven hears me, I would kill
you!”
And she felt to the very core of her shuddering heart that he told the
truth. Then he dropped her, and threw himself out of the room, leaving
her there, half dead with cold and fright, in the miserably bleak attic,
without a spark of fire or light, for the lamp had been blown out by the
fury with which her father had banged the door.