A MEETING IN THE HILLS.
"Mammy, this is too much. I can endure it no longer. You keep me working
in the dark, and every step I take but adds to my own misery. I am
baffled, defeated, almost exposed, and yet you say, go on."
Agnes Barker spoke in a harsh, angry tone. Her eyes blazed with passion.
Her features had lost all their usual grace. She was not the same being
whom we saw creeping softly into the family circle at General
Harrington's with that velvety tread and sidelong glance of the eye.
The woman who stood before her, regarded this outbreak with signs of
kindred impatience, and gathering a vast blanket shawl of crimson and
green around her imposing figure, she stood with her arms wreathed
together in the gorgeous folds, steadily regarding the impetuous young
creature, till the fury of her first onset had exhausted itself.
They had met upon the hill-side, upon the very spot where Mabel
Harrington rested after her rescue from the Hudson, and the charred
trunk of the cedar stood like a pillar of ruined ebony, just behind the
woman, with the sunset playing around it, and spotting the rocks behind
with flecks and dashes of golden light.
This, with naked trees, and a broken hill towering upward, formed a
background to the two persons who had met by appointment, and who always
came together with a clash which made each interview a mental and moral
storm.
The woman remained silent for a moment after this rude assault, and
fixed her dark, oriental eyes with a sort of fascination on the flushed
face lifted in audacious rebellion to hers.
"Agnes," she said at last, "I am weary of this rebellion, of this rude
questioning. In intrigue, as in war, there can be but one commander, and
there must be implicit obedience."
"I am obedient--I have been so from the beginning," answered the girl,
yielding to the frown of those eyes, "until you asked me to stand by and
witness the triumphs of a rival--to see the man I love better than my
own soul, better than ten thousand souls, if I had them, parading his
passion for another in my very presence. Till you asked this, I was
obedient, but I can endure it no longer. They are torturing me to
death!"
"Not to death," said the woman with a strange smile. "Women who love as
you can, and as I did, have no power to die. Tortured you may be to the
verge of the grave, but never into it. Listen, girl, and learn how
charitable and just the world is. When wrong stings the soul into
strength, and every access of vitality brings an additional pang to it,
while you would gladly call on death as a comforter, and court oblivion
as a second heaven, men denounce you for the very strength of endurance
that cannot succumb to trouble. The suffering that does not kill, brings
forth no compassion. Struggle is nothing--endurance is nothing--it is
only those who weakly lie down and perish, that can claim charity of the
world, and then it comes too late. With you and I, Agnes, love is
destiny. What I have been and am, you will be. Our hearts are strong to
endure, sensitive to feel, and quick to resent. Time, alone, divides us
two. Where you are passionate, I am strong. Where you would act, I can
wait. The fire of my own nature breaks out too vividly in your girlish
bosom. It must be suppressed, or quenched altogether. The woman who does
not know how to wait and watch, should die of her first love, and let
school-girls plant daisies on her grave."
Agnes watched the impetuous movement of those features as the woman
spoke, and her own face worked in harmony till no one could have doubted
the sympathy existing between them. Her eyes lost something of their
fire, and took that deep, smouldering light which springs from a
concentration of will. Her arms unconsciously folded themselves on her
bosom, and she answered, with the air of a princess--
"I will learn to wait. Only give me some assurance that Ralph Harrington
shall not marry that girl."
"He never shall marry her--is that enough?"
"But he loves her, and General Harrington has consented, or almost
consented."
"Ha! but the mother?"
"There again you have been mistaken. His mother has not only consented,
but seems rejoiced at the attachment."
"But you told me that she fainted at the very idea."
"And so she did, but in less than twenty-four hours after we met, she
sanctioned the engagement with a joy that surpassed their own."
"What! in your presence?"
"Not exactly," answered Agnes, confessing her meanness without a blush.
"I took advantage of the flower-screen which you know of, and, behind
the plants, with the help of a floating curtain, managed to hear every
word, and to see enough--more than enough."
The woman seemed surprised. Her brow contracted, and she looked hard at
Agnes, as one appears to search through an object without seeing it,
when the mind resolves a new idea.
"This is strange," she said; "I had more faith in Mabel Harrington's
pride. She glories in her son, you say--yet is willing to marry him to a
penniless foundling."
"And is Lina a foundling?" inquired Agnes, eagerly.
The woman did not heed her.
"I would not believe it," she muttered--"and General Harrington--what
can it all mean? I thought one might safely calculate on his family
pride."
"If you have calculated much on that, it is all over with me, I can tell
you," said the girl, sullenly unfolding her arms. "I do not think
General Harrington cares much who his son marries, so long as he is not
called upon for help. You tell me that Mr. James is the millionaire.
Ralph will be independent of his father so long as he keeps on the right
side of the richer Harrington."
"Then this thing is settled," muttered the woman, with her eyes cast
downward, and her brows gathered in a frown.
"Yes, with all your management, it _is_ settled."
"You are mistaken, girl. Now, I will teach you how much faith can be
placed on a woman's promise. Ralph Harrington shall not marry Lina
French."
Agnes looked suddenly up. The woman's face was composed and confident;
her eyes sparkled, and her lip curved proudly, as if conscious of having
resolved some difficulty to her own satisfaction.
"What do you mean, mammy? How can you prevent it?"
"I will prevent it, girl."
"But, how?"
"General Harrington shall withdraw his consent."
Agnes laughed rather scornfully. "_Shall_ withdraw his consent? Who will
make him?"
"As a reward for your obedience, _you_ shall make him."
"I, mammy? but he is not easily won upon; the General has strange ideas
of his own, which one does not know how to meet. There is nothing, it
seems to me, so unimpressible as a worldly old man--especially if he has
had all heart polished out of him by what is called society. It takes a
great deal to disturb the apathy of men who have settled down from
active evil into selfish respectability; and that, I take it, is General
Harrington's present condition."
"Then, the influence that you rather boasted of has failed of late, I
take it," said the woman, with a gleam of the eye at once unpleasant and
triumphant.
Agnes colored with mortified vanity, but she answered, with a forced
laugh:
"A young girl of eighteen does not care to waste much energy on a
conceited old man, at any one's command. Still, if you desire it, I will
strive to be more agreeable."
"No," answered the woman, sharply, "I will control this matter hereafter
myself. That affair of the journal was badly managed, Agnes."
"I did the best in my power," replied the girl, with a tinge of
insolence in her manner. "But, how was it possible to force a knowledge
of the contents on the old man, after I had denied reading the book? He
must have opened at some unimportant passage, or a deeper interest
would have been excited."
"Are you certain that he did not read the book?" demanded the woman.
"I am certain that it lies unlocked in a drawer of his writing-desk,
this moment, where I saw him place it, while I turned to close the
library door after me."
"But, he may have read it."
"Impossible, for when I went to look, an hour after, one half of the
clasp had accidentally been shut into the book, a thing that could not
happen twice in the same way; and there it lies yet."
The woman dropped into thought an instant, with her eyes on the ground;
a shade of sadness came to her face, and she murmured regretfully:
"Indeed, how he must have changed: one so passionate, so suspicious,
so"----
She started and looked up, keenly regarding Agnes Barker, as if angry
that these broken thoughts were overheard--angry in vain, for the gentle
reminiscences of which she was ashamed had trembled away from her lips
in a deep sigh; and Agnes only saw a look of tender trouble, where
suspicion and anger had been a moment before.