RALPH'S LOVE CHASE.
It was an uncomfortable breakfast-table to which the Harringtons sat
down that morning. The lady of the house and Lina, its morning-star,
were both absent, and the servant, who stood at the coffee-urn ready to
distribute its contents, was a most unsatisfactory substitute.
Their absence left a gloom on everything. The very morning seemed
darkened by the want of their smiling faces and cheerful garments. A
breakfast-table at which no lady presides, is always a desert--and so
was this; spite of its glittering silver, its transparent china, and the
warm October sunshine, which penetrated the broad eastern window with a
thousand cheerful flashes, scarcely broken by the gorgeous tree boughs,
or the climbing vines that waved and clustered around it.
Gen. Harrington was out of sorts, as your polished man of the world
sometimes proves when his circle of admirers is a household one. The
absence of his wife was an annoyance which, under the circumstances, he
could not well resent, but that Lina should have been so indolent, or so
forgetful, he considered a just cause of complaint. Thus in that smooth,
ironical way, which usually expressed the General's anger, he began a
series of complaints, that in another might have been considered
grumbling, but in a man of Gen. Harrington's perfect breeding, could
have been only an expression of elegant displeasure.
Ralph, radiant with his new-born happiness, and full of generous
enthusiasm, strove to dissipate this gloom by extra cheerfulness; but
this only irritated the grand old gentleman, who stirred the cream in
his coffee, and buttered his delicate French rolls in dignified silence,
into which his displeasure had at last subsided.
James Harrington, unlike his irritable father, or the bright animation
of his brother, was so rapt in heavy thought, that he seemed unmindful
of all that was going on. He had cast one quick, almost wild glance at
the head of the table as he entered, and after that took his seat like
one in a dream.
"Let me," said Ralph, taking the second cup from the servant, and
carrying it to the General, "let me help you, father."
"My boy," said the General, "when will you learn to comprehend the
refined taste which I fear you will never emulate? You ought to know,
sir, that a breakfast without a lady is an unnatural thing in society,
calculated to disturb the composure and injure the digestion of any
gentleman. As Mrs. Harrington is not able to preside, will you have the
goodness to inform Miss Lina that her seat is empty?"
"I--I don't know where Lina is, father. Indeed, I have been searching
and searching for her all the morning," answered the youth with a vivid
blush.
"Go knock at her door. She may be ill," answered the General, "and, in
the meantime, inquire after Mrs. Harrington, with my compliments."
Ralph grew crimson to the temples. A hundred times before, he had
summoned Lina from her slumbers, but now it seemed like presumption.
It was strange, but James Harrington had not inquired after either of
the ladies; but he looked up with an eager flash of the eyes when the
General gave his message; and, as Ralph hesitated, he said in a grave
voice--
"What are you waiting for, Ralph? There is something strange in Lina's
absence."
"Is there? Do you think so?" exclaimed the excitable boy, and the
crimson came and went in flashes over his face. "Oh, brother James, do
you think so?"
The General lowered his cup to the table, and began tinkling the spoon
against its side, softly, but in a way which bespoke a world of
impatience. Ralph understood the signal, and disappeared.
"Upon my word, I'd rather be shot," thought Ralph, pausing before the
door he had knocked at heedlessly a thousand times during his boyish
life; "I wonder what she'll think of it, so coarse and rude to present
myself in this fashion after her first sweet sleep. Dear, dear Lina."
He reached forth his hand timidly, and with a pleasant tremble in all
the nerves, drew it back, attempted again, and ended with one of the
faintest possible taps against the black walnut panelling.
No answer came. The knock was repeated, louder and louder, still no
answer. But at last the door was suddenly opened, and while Ralph stood
in breathless expectation, he saw a mulatto chambermaid before him,
beating a pillow with one hand, from which two or three feathers had
broken loose, and stood quivering in her braided wool.
"Oh, it's you, is it, Master Ralph? Thought, mebbe, it was Miss Lina
a-coming back agin. Everything sixes and sevens, I can tell you, since
Miss Mabel took sick--now I tell you."
"Can you tell me where Miss Lina is?"
"Don't know nothin' 'bout her, no how--cum in here a little while ago,
and didn't speak a word when I said 'Good mornin',' as pleasant as could
be--but jist turned her head away and went off, as if I'd been the dirt
under her feet."
With these words the exasperated damsel punched her right hand
ferociously into the pillow, as if that had been in fault, and added
half a dozen more feathers to those already encamped in her dingy
tresses.
Ralph was troubled. What could this mean? Lina was never ill-tempered.
Something must have grieved her.
"Tell me," he said, addressing the indignant girl, "was anything the
matter? Did my--did Miss Lina look ill?"
"Just as blooming as a rose, de fust time I see her, and as white as
this pillar when she went out, after I'd expressed myself regarding the
ridickelousness of her stuck up ways."
"But where is she now?"
"Don't know. Shouldn't wonder if she's wid de madam--like as not."
Ralph went to his mother's boudoir, and after knocking in vain, softly
opened the door. Fair-Star came towards him with his serious eyes and
velvet tread, looking back toward the inner room, where Ralph saw his
mother through the lace curtains, asleep and alone. He saw also the
shrubs in motion at the window, and fancied that a rustling sound came
from the balcony.
"Hist, Lina--sweet Lina, it is I!"
Before he reached the balcony, all was still there, but certainly the
sound of a closing door had reached him, and the plants at one end of
the balcony were vibrating yet.
"Ah, she is teasing me," thought the boy, and his heart rose with the
playful thought. "We'll see if Lady Lina escapes in this way."
He opened a door leading from the balcony, and entered a room that had
once been occupied by General Harrington's first wife. It was a small
chamber, rich in old-fashioned decorations, and gloomy with disuse. The
shutters were all closed, and curtains of heavy silk darkened the
windows entirely. Still Ralph could see a high-post bedstead and the
outlines of other objects equally ponderous. Beyond this, he saw a
female figure, evidently attempting to hide itself behind the bed
drapery.
Ralph sprang forward with his hands extended.
"Ah, ha, my lady-bird, with all this fluttering I have found you!"
There was a quick rush behind the drapery, which shook and swayed, till
the dust fell from it in showers. Again Ralph laughed, "Ah, lapwing,
struggle away, I have you safe."
He seized an armful of the damask drapery as he spoke, and felt a slight
form struggling and trembling in his embrace. Instinctively his arms
relaxed their hold, and with something akin to terror, he whispered:--
"Why, Lina, darling, what is this? I thought that we loved each other.
You did not tremble so, when I held you in my arms yesterday!"
A smothered cry, as of acute pain, broke from beneath the drapery, and
then, while Ralph stood lost in surprise, the curtains fell rustling
together, and the faint sound of a door cautiously closed, admonished
him that he was alone.
"Lina, dear Lina," he called, reluctant to believe that she had left him
so abruptly.
There was no answer, not even a rustle of the damask.
He was alone. When satisfied of this, the young man found his way to the
light again. But for the terror and evident recoil of the person who had
evaded him, he would have considered the whole adventure a capital joke,
in which he had been famously baffled; but there was something too
earnest in that struggle and cry for trifling, and the remembrance left
him with a heart-ache.
When Ralph came back to the breakfast-table, he found Lina seated in his
mother's place. A faint color came into her cheek as she saw him, but
otherwise she was calm and thoughtful. Nay, there was a shade of sorrow
upon her countenance, but nothing of the flush and tumult that would
naturally have followed the encounter from which she was so fresh.
Spite of himself, Ralph was shocked. The delicacy of a first passion had
been a little outraged by the rude way in which he and Lina had just
met, and struggled together, but her composure wounded him still more
deeply. "So young, so innocent, and so deceptive," he thought, looking
at her almost angrily, "I would not have believed it."
Lina was all unconscious. Full of her own sorrowful perplexities, she
experienced none of the bashful tremors that had troubled her in
anticipation. That interview in Mrs. Harrington's room had chilled all
the joy of her young love. Thus she sat, pale and cold, under the
reproachful glances of her lover.
And General Harrington was watching them with his keen, worldly glances.
A smile crept over his lips as he read those young hearts, a smile of
cool quiet craft, which no one remarked; but there was destiny in it.
Altogether the breakfast was a gloomy meal. There was discord in every
heart, and a foreshadowing of trouble which no one dared to speak about.
For some time after his father had left the table, Ralph sat moodily
thinking of Lina's changed manner. A revulsion came over him as he
thought of his singular encounter with her that morning, and with the
quick anger of youth, he allowed her to rise from the table and leave
the room without a smile or a word.
James saw nothing that was passing. Self-centred and thoughtful, he was
scarcely conscious of their presence.
Lina sought Mrs. Harrington's chamber, but found it perfectly quiet, and
the lady asleep. Then she took a straw hat from the hall, and flinging a
mantilla about her, went out into the grounds, ready to weep anywhere,
if she could but be alone.