FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
General Harrington had no power to comfort the poor creature at his
feet. More deeply moved than he had been for years, the strangeness of
his own feelings paralyzed his action. But the hand to which Lina clung
grew cold in her grasp, and over his face stole an expression of
sadness, the more touching because so foreign to its usual apathy.
"Father--oh, my heart breaks with the word--are you indeed my father?"
cried Lina, lifting her pale face upward and sweeping her hair back with
a desperate motion of the hand.
"Poor child--poor child!" muttered the old man compassionately.
"What can I do? what shall I do? It will kill me! It will kill us both.
Oh, Ralph, Ralph, if I had but died yesterday!" cried the poor girl,
attempting to rise, but falling back again with a fresh burst of grief.
The old man stood gazing to harden his heart--striving to compose the
unusual tremor of his nerves, but all in vain. Sorrow, regret, and
something almost like remorse smote him to the soul, for he had once
been a man of strong passions, and the ice of his selfishness again
broken up, the turbid waters rose and swelled in his bosom, with a power
that all the force of habit could not resist. He bent down and lifted
the girl from his feet, trembling slightly, and with a touch of pity in
his voice.
"It is useless and foolish to take any misfortune in this manner,
child."
"Child!" Lina shuddered at the word. She shrunk away from his hand,
arose without his help, and staggered backward with a feeling of
unutterable repulsion.
He saw the quiver of pain in her features, and his soul hardened once
more. She had not met the feeling of tenderness, so new, and, for the
moment, so exquisite to himself, and it withered away like a hot-house
blossom.
"This is a new and strange relation to us both," he said, seating
himself, and regarding her gravely. "Of course it involves many
important and painful questions. Up to this day you have been to Mrs.
Harrington and myself a daughter in everything but the name!"
Lina wrung her hands, wildly moaning: "That name! Oh, heavens! how can I
bear that name unless he should have given it to me. Now, now--just as
it sounded so sweet, it separates us for ever. This unholy name of
child!"
General Harrington moved in his chair with a gesture of annoyance, but
Lina, growing still more impassioned, came toward him, wringing her
small hands impetuously.
"You are my father--God forgive you! But there is yet another to curse
or bless me with her claims--where and whom is my mother? Is Mrs.
Harrington indeed the parent she has always seemed to me?"
The General waved his hand with a dissenting gesture.
"Do not question me upon a subject that must be painful to us both. This
is no time to answer you."
"No time, when you uproot every hope of my life and present a future
black with improbable things? Up to this day, that dear lady was enough.
I had no desire to ask about father or mother. They told me I was an
orphan's destiny, and overlooked by all the world, if the dear ones
under this roof only loved me. I had no other place on earth, and now,
what am I?--an impostor, cast upon the charity of the dear lady my birth
has wronged."
General Harrington arose, and advancing toward Lina, took her hands in
his. The poor little hands quivered like wounded birds in his clasp, and
she lifted her eyes with a piteous and pleading look that no human
heart could have withstood.
"Ah! you are trying me? It isn't true?" she said, with a gleam of hope
and hysterical sobs.
"No! it is all real, far too real, Lina! Do not deceive yourself. I
would not wound you thus for an aimless experiment. You are indeed my
child!"
"Your child, really--really your own child? Oh, I cannot understand it!
Ralph--my brother, Ralph!"
Lina started as if some new pang had struck her, and then drew away her
hands with a gesture of passionate grief.
"Ralph, my own brother, and older than I am, for he is older--oh, this
is terrible."
"You will see," said General Harrington, speaking in a composed voice,
that seemed like a mockery of her passionate accents--"you will see by
this how necessary it is that what I have told you should be kept secret
from my wife and child. Your peculiar relations with my son rendered it
imperative. I have intrusted you with a secret of terrible importance.
You can imagine what the consequences would be, were your relationship
to myself made known."
"I will not tell. Oh! thank God, I need not tell!" cried Lina wildly;
"but then, Ralph?--what will he think--how will he act? Ralph, Ralph--my
brother! Oh, if I had but died on the threshold of this room!"
"Be comforted," said the General, in his usual bland voice, for the
scene had begun to weary him. "You will soon get used to the new
position of things."
"But who will explain to Ralph? What can I say? how can I act? He will
not know."
"Ralph is a very young man. He will go into the world, and see more of
society. This is his first fancy--I will take care that he is more
occupied. The world is full of beautiful women."
Lina turned deadly pale. The cruel speech struck her to the soul.
The old man saw it, but worldly philosophy made him ruthless. "I will
crush the boy out of her heart," he said, inly, "to be rude here is to
be merciful."
"You must forget Ralph," he said, and his voice partook of the hardness
of his thoughts.
"I cannot forget," answered the girl, with a faint moan, "but I will
strive to remember that--that he is my brother!"
The last words came to her lips almost in a cry. She shuddered all over,
and the name of brother broke from her with a pang, as if her
heart-strings snapped with the utterance.
"Can I go away?" she said, at last, creeping like a wounded fawn slowly
to the door.
"Not yet," answered the old man. "You must first comprehend the great
necessity there is for composure and silence. Not a word of this must be
breathed under my roof now or ever. My own tranquillity and that of Mrs.
Harrington are at stake, to say nothing of your own. I have told you a
momentous secret. Let it be sacred."
"Oh! the terrible burden of this secret! Must I carry it for ever? Even
now I go out from your presence like a guilty thing, and yet I am not
guilty."
"No one was talking of guilt, I imagine," answered the General, with a
slight flush of the forehead. "The whole thing is certainly an
annoyance, and in one sense, a misfortune, perhaps. But guilt is an
unfeminine word, and I regret that you could have used it."
Lina wrung her hands in desperation.
"I could not help it. This misery has found me so unprepared."
"Misery! Indeed, young lady, it seems to me that few women would
consider it so great an evil to have the blood of a Harrington in her
veins," said the General, stung in the inner depths of his vanity by her
words, and losing all pity in his wounded self-love.
"But I am a Harrington without a name--a daughter without parent--a
beggar upon the charity of one to whom my existence is an insult! Would
you have me grateful for this?" cried Lina, with all the grief and fire
of her young nature in arms against the cold-blooded composure of the
man who so quietly called her child.
"I would have you prudent, silent, and at all events, more lady-like in
your expressions; with well-bred people, a scene is always revolting,
and it pains me that a daughter of mine can be led into the intemperance
of action and speech that has marked this interview."
The General glanced with a look of cool criticism at the excited girl as
he spoke. Her pale, tearful face, the dishevelled masses of hair falling
upon her shoulders, and the almost crouching attitude that a sudden
sense of shame had left her in, outraged his fastidious taste, and the
old habits of a life swept over his new-born tenderness. Feeling, if not
elegantly expressed, always shocked the old gentleman, and for the
moment, shame and tears had swept Lina's beauty all away. She might have
been picturesque to an artist, but General Harrington was not an
artist--only a fastidious, selfish old man, whose eyes always led what
little of heart he possessed.
"Can I go, sir? I am faint--the room is growing dark. I wish, sir,
I--I"----
The poor girl attempted to move toward the door, as she uttered this
broken protestation; but the sight utterly left her eyes--and, instead
of the entrance, she tottered toward the General, with her hands
extended as if to catch at some support, and fell forward, resting her
poor white face upon the folds of his Oriental dressing gown that fell
around his feet.
"This is very embarrassing," muttered the General, jerking the gorgeous
folds of his gown from beneath the head of his child, and scattering her
hair, in a thousand glossy tresses, over the floor. "What is to be done
now? I suppose the religious people would call this sowing dragon's
teeth with a vengeance. I wish the girl had more coolness; there is no
managing events against weak nerves and hysterics--but she must be
soothed; at this rate, we shall have the whole house in commotion. Lina,
my child, make an effort to be calm. Look up, I am not angry with you!"
The old man was so encased and wrapped in self-love, that he really
believed his own severe words had alone dashed the strength from those
young limbs, and that a little gentle encouragement would make all right
again. So, stooping downward, he laid his soft, white hand, upon Lina's
head, as the last words were uttered; and, when this failed, made an
effort to lift her from the floor. But the leaden weight of utter
insensibility rendered more effort necessary, and, at last really
frightened, he arose and lifted the insensible girl in his arms.
That moment, as her pale face lay upon his bosom, and her loosened hair
fell in floods over his arm, the door softly opened, and Agnes Barker
looked in.
"Did you ring, General? I heard a bell ring somewhere."
"No, I did not ring, young lady," answered General Harrington, sharply,
"but this young lady has been over-fatigued someway, or was taken
suddenly ill as I was speaking of her studies."
A faint smile crept over Agnes' lips, but she checked it in an instant,
and moved forward with an air of gentle interest.
"She has studied very hard of late, no wonder her strength gave way,"
suggested Agnes, softly smoothing the hair back from Lina's forehead.
There seemed to be fascination in the movement of those treacherous
fingers, for they had scarcely touched her brow, when Lina started to
life with a shudder, as if the rattlesnake of the hill had sprung upon
her unawares.
Casting one wild look upon the female, and another upon the General, she
drew from his arm, with a sensation of loathing that made her faint
again.
"Let me go to my room--I must be alone!" she said, with a hand pressed
upon either temple. "The air of this place drives me frantic: so
close--so dreary--so--so"----
She moved away wavering in her walk, but making feeble motions with her
hand, as if to repel all assistance. Thus faint, pale, and almost
broken-hearted, the poor girl stole away, to weep over her new-born
shame.
"She seems very ill," said Agnes, softly, "very ill!"
"You have allowed her studies to prey upon her health," said General
Harrington, seating himself and fixing his cold, clear eyes on the face
of his questioner. "I must hereafter more directly superintend her
education in person. You will have the goodness to inform Mrs.
Harrington of this sudden indisposition."
Agnes changed color. The self-poise of this old man of the world,
baffled even her eager curiosity. She had expected that he would desire
her to keep the whole scene secret; and when he quietly told her to
reveal it to his wife, and took a resenting tone, as if she had herself
been the person in fault, her astonishment was extreme. The General saw
his advantage, and improved upon it. After softly folding the skirts of
his dressing-gown over his knees, and smoothing the silk with his palm,
he took up a volume from the table, and adjusted the gold glasses to his
eyes with more than usual deliberation. Agnes looked at him steadily,
baffled, but not deceived, till his thoughts seemed completely buried in
the volume. As she gazed, the evil of her half-smothered passion broke
out in her glance; and, as the General languidly raised his eyes from
the book, they met hers.
"Is there anything you wait for?" he inquired, meeting that fierce gaze
with his cold eyes. "Ah, I had forgotten, my people may drive the
carriage round--please say as much."
Agnes left the room, biting her lips till they glowed again, and with
her hand clenched in impatient fury. As she closed the door, General
Harrington laid down his book with an impatient gesture.