THE NOTE ON THE BREAKFAST TABLE.
One morning General Harrington came forth from his bed chamber, harassed
and anxious. He had slept little during the night, and the weariness of
age would make itself felt, after a season of excitement like that
through which he had passed.
He found the Sevrés cup on his table, filled with strong, hot coffee,
and a muffin delicately toasted, upon the salver of frosted silver, by
its side. Indeed, as he entered the room, a flutter of garments reached
him from the door, and he muttered, with a smile, as he looked in an
opposite mirror.
"Faith, the little girl is very kind; I must think of this." He sat down
and drank off the coffee, rejecting the muffin with a faint expression
of disgust. As he lifted it from the salver, a note, lying half across
the edge, as if it had lodged there when the papers on the table were
pushed aside, attracted his attention. He was about to cast it on one
side, when a singular perfume came across him with a sickening
sweetness. Snatching at the note, he stared an instant at the seal, and
tore it open.
The color left General Harrington's cheek. As he read he started up,
crushing the note in his hand, while he rang the bell.
"Did you ring, General. I was going by, and so answered the bell," said
Agnes Barker, presenting herself.
"Yes, I rang, certainly I rang--but where are the servants? Where is the
woman who takes charge of my rooms?"
"The chambermaid? oh, she went away yesterday. I believe Mrs. Harrington
has not supplied her place yet."
"Who brought up my coffee? who arranged my rooms yesterday and this
morning?"
Agnes blushed, and cast down her eyes in pretty confusion. "The new cook
has not learned your ways, sir; there was no one else, and I"----
"You are very kind, Miss Agnes--another time I shall not forget it: but,
tell me, here is a note lying on my table near the breakfast tray; how
long has it been there--who brought it--where did it come from?"
Agnes looked up, with the most innocent face in the world.
"Indeed, sir, I cannot tell. A good many papers lay on the table, which
I carefully put aside; but no sealed note, that I remember."
"This is strange," muttered the General, walking up and down, stopping
to look in his coffee-cup, as if still athirst; but waving her away when
Agnes filled it again, and would have pressed it upon him.
"Remove these things, Miss Agnes, if you please--and order some one to
have the carriage ready. I must go to the city at once."
Agnes took up the salver, and moved away, hesitating, by the door, as if
she wished to speak.
"Well," said the General, a little impatiently, "is there anything I can
do?"
"The chambermaid, sir, I dare say Mrs. Harrington has no choice; and I
should be so obliged if you permitted my old nurse to have the place.
She is very capable, and I am lonely without her."
"A colored woman, is it?" asked the General, hastily.
"Yes, from the South. She is all I have left."
"Of course, let her come, if she knows her duty. I will mention it to
Mrs. Harrington."
"Thank you," said the girl, gliding softly away. "It will make me so
happy to have some one in the house that loves me."
The General answered this attack on his sympathies, with an impatient
wave of the hand. He seemed greatly disturbed--and, as the door closed,
threw himself into a chair, with something like a groan.
"Can this be true? Lina, poor little Lina, can this be real? and Ralph,
my own son. Great Heavens, it is terrible!"
He swept a hand across his forehead, distractedly. Then, starting up, as
if stung to action by some agonizing thought, he began to pace up and
down the room with a degree of excitement very unusual to him. At
length he paused by the window, and, opening the note, again read it
over and over with great anxiety. At last he went to a desk standing in
a corner of the room, and opening one secret drawer after another, drew
forth a bundle of faded letters. As he untied them, the identical
perfume that hung about the note he had been reading, stole around him;
and, turning paler and paler, as if the odor made him faint, he began to
read the letters, one after another, comparing them first with the note,
and then with a key to the cypher in which they were all written, that
he took from another compartment of the desk.
At last he drew a deep breath, and wearily folded the papers up.
"This is plausible, and it may be true," he said, locking his hands on
the table. "The persistent malice of the thing, confirms its
probability. She was capable of it--capable of anything; and yet I do
think the poor creature loved me. If I could but see her, and learn all
the facts from her own lips. Yet the note is better evidence. Who,
except us two, ever learned this cypher? How else could she have known
these particulars about poor Lina? But, this is terrible. I did not
think anything could shake me so! Ralph, my son Ralph, I must speak with
him----No, no! Let me think; it's better that Lina alone should know
it."
The old man arose--tottered towards the bell, and rang it, nervelessly,
as if the silver knob were a hand he loathed to touch.
Agnes answered the summons, but even her self-possession gave way as she
saw the General's face, pale and almost convulsed, turned upon her.
"I have ordered the carriage--it will be at the door in a few moments,
sir," she stammered forth.
"Send it back to the stables: I shall not go out. The morning has
clouded over."
Agnes glanced at the sunshine pouring its silvery warmth through the
library window, but she did not venture to speak.
"Go," said General Harrington, in a suppressed voice, "go find your
pupil, and say that I wish to speak with her a moment."
"Miss Lina--is it Miss Lina I am to call?" stammered Agnes, taken by
surprise.
"It is Miss Lina that I wish to see; have the goodness to call her."
The courteous but peremptory voice in which this was said, left Agnes no
excuse for delay; and, though racked with curiosity, she was obliged to
depart on her errand.
The General sat down the moment he was alone--and shrouding his
forehead, lost himself in painful thought.
The door opened, and Lina came in, smiling like a sunbeam, and rosy with
assured happiness. "Did you send for me, General?" she said, drawing
close the chair in which the old man sat. "Is there something I can do
that will give you pleasure. I hope so!"
The General looked up; his eyes were heavy--his face bore an expression
she had never witnessed in it till then. He looked on her a moment, and
she saw the mist melting away from his glance, and it seemed to her that
his proud lip began to quiver.
"Have I offended you?" inquired Lina, with gentle regret. "What have I
done?"
The old man arose, and laying a hand on each of her shoulders, bore
heavily upon her, as he perused her face with an earnestness that made
her tremble. He lifted one hand at last, and sweeping the heavy curls
back from her brow, gazed sadly and earnestly down into her eyes. Those
soft blue eyes, that filled with tears beneath the sad pathos of his
gaze.
"Lina!" His hand began to tremble among her curls. He bent his forehead
down, and rested it on her shoulders sighing heavily.
"Tell me--do tell me what I have done," said the gentle girl, weeping;
"or, is it Ralph? Oh, sir, he cannot have intended to wound you!"
"Ralph!" exclaimed the General, starting up, with a flush of the brow.
"Do not speak of him; never let me hear his name on your lips again!"
"What? Ralph--never speak of Ralph? You do not mean it. Indeed, I am
quite sure, you do not mean it. Not speak of Ralph? Dear General, if he
has done anything wrong, let me run for him at once, and he will beg
your pardon--oh, how willingly! Not speak of Ralph? Ah, you are teasing
me, General, because you know--that is, you guess--it would break my
heart not to think of him every minute of my life."
"Silence, girl; I must not hear this," said the old man, dashing his
hand aside with a violence that scattered Lina's hair all over her
shoulders.
"General," said Lina, lifting up her eyes, all brimming with tears, and
regarding him with the look of a grieved cherub: "don't terrify me so.
What have I done? What has Ralph done? For the whole world we would not
displease you, after all your kindness. Indeed, indeed we are too happy
for anything evil to come within our thoughts."
"And you are happy, girl?"
"Very, very happy. It seems to me that all the earth has blossomed
afresh. I thought this morning, that the sunshine never was so bright as
it is to-day, and what few leaves are left on the branches, seem more
beautiful than roses in full flower. Dear, dear General, it is something
to have made two young creatures so happy! I thought last night, for
life seemed so sweet that I could not waste it in slumber--and when the
moonbeams came stealing in around me, making the curtains luminous, like
summer clouds--I thought that you must have such heavenly dreams and
grateful prayers to God, for giving you power--so like his own--that of
filling young souls with this beautiful, beautiful joy!"
"Ah!" said the General, with a deep sigh; "all this must change, my poor
child. I thought yours was but a pretty love-dream, that would pass over
in a week."
"Oh, do not say that--do not say your consent was not real--that you
have trilled with two young creatures, who honestly left their hearts
all helpless in your hands."
"Peace, peace," said the old man, standing upright, and speaking with an
effort. "I have not trifled with you. I did hope that all this might
pass off as such love-dreams usually do; but, I have promised nothing
which should not have been accomplished, had not a destiny stronger than
my will, or your love, intervened. Lina, you can never be married to my
son!"
Lina looked in his face--it was pale and troubled; his eyes fell beneath
the intensity of her gaze--his proud shoulders stooped--he did not seem
so tall as he was, by some inches. The deathly white of her face, the
violet lips parted and speechless, the wild agony of those eyes, made
him tremble from head to foot.
"Why? oh, why!" at last broke from her lips.
"Because," said the old man, drawing himself up, and speaking with a
hoarse effort; "because, God forgive me, you are my own daughter!"
She was looking in his face. A sob broke upon her pale lips--the
strength left her limbs--and she fell down before him, shrouding her
agony with both hands.