THE BROKEN CONFESSION.
Agnes Barker came coldly into the room, answering Lina's cry.
"Mrs. Harrington has only fainted," she said, closing the door which she
still held slightly ajar, as if that moment entering.
"There is aromatic vinegar on the console yonder--do bring it, while I
open the window."
Lina ran for the crystal flask pointed out, and began to sprinkle
Mabel's face, sobbing and moaning all the time. Agnes opened the sash
door, that led to a stone balcony full of flowers, and their breath came
floating into the room.
"Shall I run? shall I call help?" questioned Lina, letting Mrs.
Harrington's head fall back upon the crimson cushions of her chair,
"I--I am sure Ralph would bring her to."
"Be quiet," answered Agnes Barker, dragging the easy-chair towards the
window, where the fragrant wind blew clear and cold into that deathly
face.
"If you call any one, let it be Mr. Harrington."
"The General?"
"No, Mr. James Harrington."
"I will go," answered Lina, eagerly.
But the name of James Harrington, even upon those lips, had reached the
sleeping sense of Mabel. She made a faint struggle. Her lips quivered
with an ineffectual attempt to speak. This brought Lina back.
"Shall I call help, dear mamma? Shall I call help?"
"No!"
The monosyllable was uttered so faintly, that nothing but a loving ear,
like Lina's, would have heard it. The warm-hearted girl stooped and
kissed Mabel softly upon the forehead, thanking God silently in her
heart.
Mabel shrunk from that pure kiss, turned her head abruptly on the
cushion, and tears stole through her eyelashes, leaving them dark and
moist.
"Madam, is there anything I can do?"
As she spoke Agnes bent over the helpless woman, and shed her glances
over that pale face, as the upas tree weeps poison.
The unaccountable dislike that Mabel felt for this girl, gave her
strength, and she sat up, stung by the reflection that her weakness had
so objectionable a witness.
"You here, Miss Barker!" she said with cold dignity; "I have always held
this room sacred from all, but my own family."
"I come by invitation," answered Agnes, meekly. "Yesterday afternoon you
left a message with my nurse, desiring that I should seek you before
entering upon my duties again. This command brought me here, not a wish
to intrude."
Mrs. Harrington arose, walked feebly back to the little breakfast-table,
and taking up a small teapot of frosted silver, poured some strong tea
into a cup which she drank off clear. Then moving back her chair, she
sat down, evidently struggling for composure.
"I remember," she said very quietly, for Mabel had controlled herself,
"I remember leaving this message with a woman who called you her
mistress."
Agnes smiled. "Oh, yes, our Southern nurses always claim us in some
form. 'My mammy,' I think she must have called herself that. Every child
has its slave mammy at the South."
"Then you _are_ from the South, Miss Barker?"
"Did not General Harrington tell you this, madam?"
"I do not recollect it, if he did," answered Mabel, searching the girl's
face with her clear eyes; "in truth, Miss Barker, I made so few
inquiries when you entered my family, that your very presence in it is
almost a mystery to me. General Harrington told me you were well
educated, and an orphan. I found that he was correct in the latter
point, but was somewhat astonished yesterday afternoon to hear the woman
whom I met, claim you as her mistress."
"You do not understand our Southern ways, Mrs. Harrington, or this would
not appear so singular. With us the tie between a slave nurse and her
child, is never broken."
"Then this woman is a slave?" questioned Mabel.
"She has been, madam, but though I had nothing else in the world, when I
became of age, she was made a free woman."
"But she is not very black--at least, in the dim light, I saw but faint
traces of it."
Again Agnes smiled a soft unpleasant smile, that one could put no faith
in:
"Perhaps it was that which rendered her so valuable, but black or white,
the woman you saw was a born slave."
"And how does she support herself in that solitary house?"
"She has a garden, and some poultry. The woods around afford plenty of
dry fuel, and my own humble labors supply the rest."
Mabel became thoughtful and ceased to ask questions. The governess stood
quietly waiting. All her answers had been straightforward and given
unhesitatingly, but they did not bring confidence or conviction with
them. Still Mrs. Harrington was silenced for the time, and remained in
deep thought.
"May I retire, madam?" said the governess at last, drawing slowly toward
the door.
Mabel started from her reverie.
"Not yet. I would know more of you, of your parents, and previous life.
Where we intrust those most dear to us, there should be a perfect
knowledge and profound confidence."
"Of myself I have nothing to say," answered Agnes, turning coldly white,
for she was a girl who seldom blushed. All her emotions broke out in a
chilly pallor. "Of my parents all that can be said is told, when I
repeat that they left me with nothing but an honorable name, and this
old woman in the wide world."
Her voice broke a little here, and this struck Mabel with a shade of
compassion.
"But how did you chance to come North?"
"I entered a Louisianian family as governess, directly after my parents'
death. They brought me North in the summer, recommended me to General
Harrington, and I remained."
Nothing could be more simple or frankly spoken. Agnes, as I have said,
was pale; but for this, she might have seemed unconscious that all this
questioning was mingled with distrust.
Mabel had nothing more to say. The feelings with which she had commenced
this conversation, were not in the slightest degree removed, and yet
they seemed utterly without foundation. She waved her hand uneasily,
murmuring, "you may go," and the governess went out softly as she had
entered.
"Can I stay with you, mamma?" pleaded Lina, creeping timidly up to
Mabel's chair.
"I am weary," answered Mrs. Harrington, closing her eyes, and turning
aside her head. "Let me rest awhile!"
"But you will kiss me before I go?" said the gentle girl.
"Yes, child," and Mabel kissed that white forehead with her quivering
lips.
"Is it with your whole heart, mamma?"
Mabel turned away her face, that Lina might not see how it was
convulsed. So the young girl went out from the boudoir, grieved to the
verge of tears.
After they were gone, Mabel grew strong again and began to pace to and
fro in the boudoir, as if striving to outstrip the pain of thinking. The
accident had left her nerves greatly shattered, and it was difficult to
concentrate the high moral courage that formed the glory of her woman's
nature. Thus she walked to and fro in a sort of vague, dreamy passion,
her thoughts all in a tumult, her very soul up in arms against the new
struggle forced upon her. Sometimes Mabel wrung her hand with a sudden
gush of sorrow. Her eyes would fill and her lips quiver, and she looked
around upon the sumptuous objects in her room, as if seeking out
something among all the elegance that filled it, which might have power
to comfort her.
There was no bitter or bad passion in the heart of Mabel Harrington. She
had only laid down her burden for a moment, and finding its weight
doubled, shrank from taking it up again. But she had a brave, strong
heart, that after a little would leap forward, like a checked racehorse
to its duty. This might not have been, had she always relied upon her
own strength, which so far as human power can go, was to be confided in.
But Mabel had a firmer and holier reliance, which was sure in the end to
subdue all these storms of trouble, and prepare her for the battle which
was to be fought over and over again before she found rest.
After a time, Mabel Harrington stole gently back to her easy-chair, and
kneeling down, buried her face in the cushions. Fair-Star, which had
been following her up and down, wondering at her distress, and looking
in that agitated face with his intelligent eyes, came and lay softly
down with his head resting on the folds of her shawl, where it swept
over the floor. He knew with his gentle instinct, that she was quieter
now, and with a contented whine lay down to guard her as she prayed.
While she was upon her knees, a rustling among the flowers in the
balcony made Fair-Star rise suddenly to his fore feet, and cast a
vigilant glance that way. He saw a hand cautiously outstretched, as if
to put back the trails of a passion flower, and then a dark figure stole
along behind the screen of blossoms, and crouching down, peered
cautiously through the leaves into the room. Fair-Star dropped his head;
he had recognized the intruder, and, not having any very definite ideas
of etiquette, concluded that the governess had a right to crouch like a
thief behind that screen of flowers, if her fancy led that way. For a
little time her presence kept the pretty hound restless, but it was not
long before Agnes had so draped the passion-flower that it entirely
concealed her person, and then Fair-Star betook himself entirely to his
mistress. A soul-struggle does not always break forth in words, or
exhaust itself in cries. The heart has a still small voice, which God
recognizes the more readily, because it is like his own.
Mabel came with no rush of stormy passion before the Lord. The very
force of her anguish was laid aside as she bowed her proud head, and
meekly besought strength to suffer and be still--to struggle for the
right. Now and then her clasped hands were uplifted, once the spy on the
balcony caught a glimpse of her face. It was luminous and lovely, spite
of the anguish to be read there.
At last she arose, and seating herself, remained for some time in
thoughtful silence, her arms folded on her bosom, her eyes full of
troubled light, looking afar off, as if she were following with her eyes
the angels that had been gathering over her as she knelt.
After awhile, Mabel arose, and walking across the room more composedly,
unlocked a little escritoir of ebony, from which she drew forth a book
bound in white vellum, and embossed with gold. Seating herself at the
escritoir, she began to search among the trinkets attached to her
chatelaine for a small key, which she inserted in a little heart beset
with rubies, which locked the golden clasps of the book.
All this time Agnes Barker was watching each movement of her
benefactress with the eyes of a serpent. She saw the tiny heart fly
open, and the manuscript pages of the book exposed. She saw Mrs.
Harrington turn these pages, now slowly, now hurriedly--reading a line
here, a sentence there, and more than once two or three pages together.
Sometimes her fine eyes were full of tears. Sometimes they were
reverently uplifted to Heaven, as if seeking strength or comfort there;
but more frequently she pursued those pages with a sad thoughtfulness,
full of dignity.
After she had been reading, perhaps an hour, she dipped a pen into the
standish on her escritoir, and began to write slowly, as if weighing
every word as it dropped from her pen. Then she closed the book, locked
it carefully, and securing it in the escritoir again, walked slowly
toward her bed-chamber, which opened from the boudoir, evidently worn
out and ready to drop down with exhaustion. A slight disturbance in the
passion-vine betrayed that Agnes Barker had changed her position, and
now commanded a view through the open door of Mabel's chamber. She saw
the poor lady move wearily toward a bed, which stood like a snowdrift in
the midst of the room, and pulling the cloud of white lace, which
enveloped it aside, with her trembling hands, fell wearily down upon the
pillows, and dropped away into tranquil slumber, like a child that had
played itself to sleep in a daisy field.
Mabel had asked for strength, and God gave her its first tranquilizing
element--rest.
Agnes stood motionless till the lace curtains above the sleeper closed
again, leaving nothing visible upon the snowy white beneath but the
calm, sleeping face of Mabel Harrington, gleaming as it were through a
cloud, and the folds of her azure shawl, that lay around her like
fragments of the blue sky. Mrs. Harrington had evidently sunk into a
heavy slumber, but Agnes kept her concealment some time after this, for
Fair-Star was still vigilant, and she shrunk from his glances as if they
had been human.
But the dog crept into his mistress's chamber at last, and then Agnes
Barker stole from her fragrant hiding-place, and entered the boudoir
again.
The escritoir was closed, but Agnes saw with joy that the key still
remained in its lock, and that Mrs. Harrington had left her watch upon a
marble console close by. Stealing across the room, and holding her
wicked breath, as if she felt that it would poison the air of that
tranquil room, she crept to the escritoir, turned the key, and
stealthily drawing forth the vellum book, dropped on one knee, while she
reached forth her hand, drawing the watch softly to her lap.
There was a quiver in her hands as she unlocked that little golden
heart, forcing it asunder with a jerk, for the dog came back just then,
and stood regarding her with his clear, honest eyes. She strove to evade
him, and gleams of angry shame stole across her cheeks as she laid down
the watch, and stole, like the thief that she was, through the sash
door, along the pretty labyrinth of flowers, and into another door that
opened upon one end of the balcony.
And Mabel slept on, while this ruthless girl was tearing the secret from
her life.