LIFE’S STORM AND SOUL’S SHELTER.
Go, when the hunter’s hand hath wrung
From forest cave her shrieking young,
And calm the lonely lioness—
But chide not—mock not my distress.
_—Byron._
Alice retired to her chamber and waited restlessly. An hour passed, and
still she heard no sound of departing guests. It was quite dark and she
rang the bell.
Milly entered with lights.
“Tea is ready to go on the table, Miss Ally. Shall we put it up?”
“Where is your master? What is he doing?”
“He is in the library, ma’am, with the gentlemen. They don’t seem to
have any notion of going home. General Garnet—he sent for more wine, and
ordered deviled turkey and scalloped crabs—two other gentlemen have come
in, and they are all very high upon pullyticks.”
Alice heard and sighed deeply.
“So I thought, Miss Ally, how you’d like your cup of tea, anyhow. Shall
I set the table as usual? Though it will be very lonesome for you to sit
at the table all alone, now that Miss Elsie is gone, and marster’s
engaged. Or else shall I bring you a cup of tea up here, with anything
else you would like? There is some cold fowl in the pantry, and some
neat’s tongue, too; shall I bring it up to you, with a cup of tea?”
“No, Milly. Perhaps the general would like supper got for his guests.
Come with me; I will go down and see.”
“God bless your soul, Miss Ally, honey, they’s been a stuffing ever
since they’s been here.”
“No matter for that, Milly; you know our gentlemen have infinite
gastronomic capacities.”
“My Gor A’mighty, Miss Ally! you don’t say so. Is it catching?”
“What?”
“That there complaint our gemmen has got.”
“Nonsense, Milly! you misunderstood me; I meant to say that they had ‘no
bottoms to their stomachs.’”
“My Gor A’mighty! Miss Ally, what a misfortunate state to be in. It’s a
world’s wonder as it don’t kill ’em to death!”
“Pshaw, Milly! There is nothing the matter with them except that they
never get done eating.”
“Oh, is that it, Miss Ally? Well, indeed, I don’t believe they ever
does; especially when they is a talkin’ pullyticks. ’Case, you see, Miss
Ally, I done sent ’em in four dozen scallop crabs and six dozen raw open
Nanticoke oysters, each one of ’em as big as the palm of my hand, and
two deviled turkeys, and bless patience if they didn’t put all that away
in less than an hour, and sent for more.”
“Well, they will want a hot supper by and by, that is certain. So take
the candle, Milly, and go before me. I am going down to the library door
to speak to General Garnet.”
Milly lifted the candlestick, and preceded her mistress down the stairs.
When she reached the library door Alice stepped before her and rapped.
General Garnet came to the door and opened it. On seeing his wife:
“Well, what do you want now? Didn’t I direct you to keep your chamber
until I came?” he inquired sternly.
“Yes; and I would have done so, but your visitors are staying longer
than you or I supposed. Perhaps they will need supper; shall I order
it?”
“No! Mind your own business. Don’t go beyond your orders. Return to your
room and wait me there,” he said, and shut the door in her face.
Alice sighed, and turned from the door.
Milly was indignant. This was the first time she had ever positively
witnessed any disrespect shown to her beloved mistress. And Milly boiled
with rage.
“High! Who he? Mus’ think how people ’fraid o’ him. My Lor’! I only jes’
wish how my ole man, Tom, ’ould turn a darned etarnal fool in his ole
days, and talk to me so! that’s all! ‘High!’ I say, ‘Nigger, better hit
somebody, hadn’t you? Is you done tuk o’ your ole woolly head’s senses?’
’Deed I would. Look here, Miss Ally, honey! Don’t you put up o’ that
there shortness. Now Miss Elsie’s gone, he can’t spite you any way. He
daren’t hit you. ’Case why? ’case the law protects you. Now, Miss Ally,
I say, you take my ’vice. You jes’ pluck up a sperit and turn on him.
And put a ’stonishment on to him. Jes’ you step it over him in style.
Make him walk chalk. Ses you, ‘Now, you behave yourself, or I’ll unmask
you afore all the world, and let people see how pretty you are underneat
of your smiles.’ Lor’, Miss Ally, if men aint the easiest spil’t and
a-made fools of, of all the dumb beasts as ever wore shoe leather.
There’s my old man, Tom. Why, anybody’d think he was the bestest old
nigger as ever said prayers. But Lor’! when we first took up ’long o’
each other, the cussed infunnally fool thought he was master; thought
how he’d got a nigger of his own. Ugh—umph! I soon took him out o’ that
there. I wa’nt a-goin’ to lay down on the ground and let people walk on
me. Now he ’haves himself as a man ought to do. ’Twon’t do, Miss Ally,
’deed it won’t, Miss Ally! to spile men folks. Men folks ’quire to be
made to know their places. ’Deed, ’fore my Heavenly Marster, they do,
honey.”
Doubtless Alice would have rebuked this freedom of speech, had she heard
one word of it; but she did not. She only knew that Milly was twaddling
some monotonous strain of monologue, as she carried the candle before
her upstairs.
Arrived within her chamber Alice dismissed her maid, refusing all
refreshment, and threw herself, exhausted and anxious, upon her bed.
As the hours passed slowly away, sounds of revelry from below stairs
began to reach and disturb her. As time wore on toward midnight these
orgies became louder and higher. Vociferous laughter, shouting songs and
thundering cheers mingled in a strange wild discord, and broke
startlingly upon the aristocratic repose of that mansion and the holy
quiet of that night. Alice listened in fear and trembling and disgust,
for such orgies were unprecedented there.
At length, long after midnight, the company broke up in great disorder.
Alice listened shudderingly to their noisy leave-taking, as with jocular
songs, coarse jests, vociferous cheers and laughter, they departed. Then
she heard the closing of doors and windows, and the steps of General
Garnet as he moved about the house. Lastly, she heard him coming up the
stairs. He entered the chamber. Alice rose to meet him.
“Oh, you are waiting to hear something about Elsie. Well, sit down,”
said he, putting down the night-lamp, closing the door, and turning to
her with a sarcastic smile.
Alice had sunk into a chair, faint, sickened by the sight of the demon
leer that now he did not even turn to conceal.
“Well, now, what questions do you want to put to me? I am quite ready to
answer any,” he said, dropping himself into a chair before her, crossing
his feet, folding his arms, and leaning back.
“Elsie, then? Have you seen her?”
“No.”
“What, not seen Elsie!” she repeated, with a look of deep
disappointment. “Not seen Elsie?”
“No,” he answered again, looking at her with steady, imperturbable
contempt.
“But you—you intend to see her?” asked Alice, with a sinking voice.
“Never! Never, so help me Heaven! And now listen, minion! fool! It was
for the purpose of punishing her and you—of beggaring her and you, that
I obtained that deed!” he exclaimed, malice, scorn, taunting triumph
writhing around his lips, flashing from his eyes, and lighting up the
whole dark face with a lurid demoniac fire.
Alice stared at him for an instant with a marble-like immobility of
countenance, as if it were impossible for her to comprehend such black
treachery.
Stretching out his arm, and pointing his finger at her, he laughed
aloud.
Then the spell of amazement that checked the current of her blood was
broken, and slowly from the pallid lips came the words:
“Oh, my God! I understand it all now!”
“Ha! ha! ha! do you?”
“All—all,” she continued, without withdrawing her steady gaze—“all, all.
I have sold my birthright and hers, for—a kiss!”
“Ha! ha! ha! Well, what do you want to complain of? You got the kiss,”
he exclaimed, in the most insulting manner.
“I have sold her birthright for a kiss! a serpent’s kiss! a Judas kiss!”
cried Alice, wildly wringing her hands.
“Come, Mrs. Garnet, no hard words, if you please. Remember how you hung
upon me this morning. You were so affectionate! I was quite flattered;
grew ‘quite in favor with myself,’ and almost with you—only it is
impossible to rekindle ashes.”
“Oh, fiend, fiend! remorseless fiend! I shall go mad! Oh, God! where
sleep your thunderbolts?” cried Alice, rising, and walking distractedly
up and down the floor.
“Come, madam. No more of this. I am tired of it. Resume your seat,”
exclaimed General Garnet, leaving his scornful, taunting manner, and
speaking in the deep, stern tones of haughty command.
But Alice heard him not, as she walked wildly up and down the room,
crying:
“Oh, God! God! where rest your thunderbolts?”
“Do you hear me? Sit down, I say! or, by Heaven, I will send you in
search of the thunderbolts!”
But Alice was not to be stopped now. Still wildly walking up and down
the floor, distractedly wringing her hands, she was pouring forth the
gathered bitterness of many years.
“I have borne so much, great God. I have borne so much. Oh, I have been
a woman ‘of sorrows and acquainted with grief.’ And who is it that has
made my life, my harmless life, one long pain? You, General Garnet, you.
You married me by force, you know you did. In my young girlhood—nay, in
my innocent childhood, when life opened to me with such a bright promise
of usefulness and happiness with one I loved, with one to whom my faith
was plighted, you tore me away from that one, and made his life a
useless, barren waste, and married me yourself, for your own selfish
purposes, and nearly broke my heart and crazed my brain. God knows I
have no clear recollection now of the months that followed my marriage.
Well! Well! Well! ‘Time and the hour beareth away all things,’ and as
time passed, I learned to love you. Because you were my husband, and the
father of my child, and because it was the great necessity of my nature
to love, I loved you. God knows, I think there was no other reason. Oh,
if Heaven gave me one idea purer and higher than all the rest, it was
that of the beauty and holiness of marriage! And though mine was a
miserable sacrifice, so great was my need to live in an atmosphere of
love and piety, that I tried to make a sort of temple of it. It was a
wild ruin. Oh, worse! it was a ridiculous failure! This hour has proved
it. Ha! ha! ha! Hark! did I laugh? No, it was not I. I have nothing to
laugh at in earnest, and I never laugh in scorn. But there are two
spirits in me now, and one mocks at the other.”
“Sit down, this moment, sit down!” thundered General Garnet, stamping
furiously.
“But heedless as the dead was she
Of all around, above, beneath!”
Of all but the stormy outpouring of thought and feeling, from her own
over-burdened heart and brain.
“When you trampled all my rights and my happiness beneath your feet,
when you seized and married me against my will, I excused you, for I
said you loved me with a strong passion, and strong passions have their
necessities and their rights. When you required me to give up my dearest
friends, and lay aside habits of study and elegant amusements, that were
a second nature to me, I said that your position gave you a right to
dictate to me, and I acquiesced without a murmur. When you took my
little child away from me, the only comfort I had left in the world, and
sent her across the ocean, to remain at school for many years, I said
you were her father, and what you did was doubtless intended for her
good, however mistaken the intention might be, and I submitted.
Recently, when you have laid violent hands upon my person, and
endangered my life, I said it was violence of temper, not malignity of
heart, and I resolved, for your sake and mine, to keep our secret, and
to bear with it. I excused it—nay, I went farther, and vindicated it. No
ill-usage, from mere violence of temper, could have affected my
happiness. I do not know but that I thought you had a right to strike me
if you were angry. Because I was superstitious and fanatical, and
because I loved you then. They say that ‘perfect love casteth out fear.’
My love, imperfect as it was, cast out fear. When I conscientiously
assisted at Elsie’s marriage, and remained home here to meet you, I
nerved my heart to bear all your fury. I even said it would be just,
coming from you. And no matter how much I had suffered at your hands, no
matter if you had left me for dead, as you did once before, if I had
recovered I could have gone on cheerily with my daily duties, as if
nothing had happened. Because I could have understood violence, as I
said: I could have understood anything that grew out of heat of
passion—anything, but this clear-headed, cold-blooded treachery—because
I loved you then. Nay! My God! I believe in my soul, I love you yet, and
it is that which stings my self-respect to madness. It is that which
lays my soul open to the entrance of the scornful, jibing spirit that
mocks at my holiest instincts.”
“Sit down! Sit down, I say!” vociferated General Garnet, striding toward
her.
Suddenly she fell at his feet, and raised her clasped hands, saying:
“I am mad! I am mad! Two spirits possess me—a mad and a sane one. It is
the mad spirit that impels me to say now—while your serpent-treachery
folds its cold, damp coils about my heart, and not so much stings as
chills me to death—to say now, in the face of all reason—while the same
spirit keeps before me—to say, only forgive Elsie! only be reconciled
with her, and take all the rest; and I will try to forget that I have
been deceived and scorned. At least I will never, never harbor the
thought, much less give it expression again. Come, forgive your child!
You cannot be forever obdurate to your child! Be reconciled to her, and
I will believe that anger and disappointment bereft you of your
reason—for a little while—and that it was only during a temporary fit of
insanity that you could have done such a thing. And I will honor you
again.”
“Pooh! fudge! You are not so mad as to believe the words you are
saying,” said General Garnet, jerking her up and flinging her upon the
sofa. “There, be quiet; I hate raving. And now listen to what I have to
say in regard to Elsie: I will never see her, or speak to her, or
receive a letter or a message from her, under any circumstances
whatever, so long as I live. I will never permit you to see her, or
speak to her, or hold any communication, by letter or message, with her,
under any circumstances that may occur, so long as you live. I will
never give her an acre of land, or a cent of money, or an article of
food, or raiment, or fuel, to save her from starvation or freezing!”
Alice, exhausted, prostrate, gazed at him in horror, as with a darkened
and ferocious countenance, and a voice of concentrated hatred, so deep
as to be nearly inaudible, he continued:
“If she were to dare to set foot upon this plantation I would loosen my
bloodhounds upon her!”
“Fiend—you are the only bloodhound that would hurt her. Turn them loose
on her, then—do it! They would crouch at her feet! They would lick her
hands—her beautiful hands—that have fed and caressed them all. Or get
strange dogs to hunt her with, and even they would grovel before the
angel in her eyes. Oh, fool!—you are the only brute on God’s creation
that would harm her,” said Alice, in a low, deep tone.
General Garnet continued, as if he had not heard her:
“If she were lying, dying, at my gate I would not suffer one of my
negroes to hand her a drink of water, if that drink of water would save
her from death!”
“Demon—there is not a man, woman, or child on this plantation that you
could hinder, with all your malice and power, from rendering Elsie any
service she might require—unless you imprisoned them, or tied them hand
and foot!” said Alice, in a dying voice.
Still he continued, without attending to her indignant but faint
interruptions. And his face became still more dark and demoniac.
“And now comes the very best part of the argument, which, like a good
orator, I have saved for the very last—I wonder how you will like it! I
shall take pleasure in watching the play of your pretty features while I
tell you, and dissecting and analyzing the emotions of your heart as you
hear! And saying within myself—there is so much regret, and there is so
much shame, and there is so much jealousy, and there is so much rage.
Listen, then—you have disappointed me in my first plan for uniting two
great estates. Before I have done I will make you regret that. The
estates shall be united yet. You have taught your daughter to disobey
me. Very well; you have bereft her of her birthright for a caress, to
your shame be it remembered—and I have discarded and disowned her. But,
listen: I have another daughter—the child of my love—ha!—are you pale
with jealousy? Listen, farther yet: all the broad lands of Mount Calm
that came by you, and should descend to your child, and enrich her, will
I bestow upon the child of my love; and her hand will I bestow upon
Lionel Hardcastle, who will be glad to accept it, no doubt. Ha! Now die
of rage!” he exclaimed, with a ferocious laugh.
But neither regret, shame, nor jealousy, nor rage, disfigured that
peaceful face, or agitated that composed figure. General Garnet, who
glanced at her first in triumph, now gazed in awe. Her eyes were closed,
her hands had fallen. Her whole figure expressed perfect repose. She
looked as if the Angel of Death had laid hand upon her head, and said to
that storm-tossed life, “Peace—be still.” “And there had fallen a Great
Calm.”