GENERAL HARRINGTON'S TEMPTATION.
Zillah drew a deep breath, and raised herself up, like a panther which a
ball has grazed. A wild illumination shot over her face, and seizing the
General's hands, she kissed them passionately.
"Foolish creature," said the General, soothed in the depths of his
vanity by this devotion.
"You did love me," she said, with a wistful look; "you did love me?"
"Yes--yes."
"And, it is all over?"
He looked down into her face. No girl of sixteen, in her first love
quarrel, ever wore a look so full of anxiety, so tremulous with hope and
doubt.
"Oh, I cannot say that, Zillah. There is something piquant, even
picturesque, about you, that one does not readily forget, or ever
dislike; besides, real earnest love is better worth having, after the
domestic treason which I have just discovered."
Again the woman's eyes blazed forth their sudden joy. She arose from his
feet, restless and eager.
"She has wronged you--she has embittered my life. I was your slave--let
her become so. Then shall we both have vengeance!"
"And beggary with it," answered the General, bitterly. "No, no, Zillah,
I am not so fond of vengeance as that; besides, hers is only a sin of
feeling, and she seems to have suffered for it."
The woman turned white, till the dusky shadows under her eyes seemed
black by contrast.
"A sin of feeling!" she almost shrieked, seizing the vellum book, and
turning over the crushed leaves rapidly with her trembling hands. "You
have not read all. You have only glanced at passages, perhaps!"
"And they have been sufficiently unpleasant. I do not care to search
farther!"
Zillah still turned over the leaves, tearing them more than once in her
rude haste. Her fierce eyes glanced from passage to passage. At length,
like a hawk pouncing upon its prey, she opened the book wide, and
pressed her hand hard upon a page which seemed more hastily written than
the rest, for it was blotted and broken up, evidently full of
exclamations and bursts of passionate thought.
"Read that!" said the woman, pressing her finger upon the page till the
blood was strained back to the wrist, leaving the hand pallid as marble.
"Read that!"
The General took up the journal, and read. Again that expression of
white rage crept over his face, and a smile rose up to his mouth,
coiling around it like a viper.
"Yes," he said, hoarsely. "This means something. It is her own
confession."
"It is enough to crush her forever!" cried the woman.
"Yes, yes, that society may laugh at me as a dupe; vengeance is sweet,
but I cannot afford it. To assail her, would be to arm him against me."
"And you will submit to this wrong?" cried the woman, while her eyes
flashed fire and her lips writhed in scorn.
"Submit, no--my fiery Zillah; but the richest enjoyments of life should
be tasted daintily--a noisy revenge is not to my taste."
"But you will live with this woman yet?"
The General smiled meaningly.
"She will, perhaps, remain under my roof."
"And you will not take away the name she has disgraced?" persisted
Zillah, pale with suspense.
"You are a little too fast there, my friend. A name is never dishonored
by anything kept secret within the bosom of a family. Disgrace is the
scorn of society, and how can the world scorn that which it does not
know?"
"But it shall know. I will myself proclaim this infamy!" cried the
woman, clenching her hand, and shaking from head to foot with internal
rage.
The General cast on her a look half-surprised, half-amused.
"Ah, Zillah, and who on earth of our world can you know, or--if that
were possible--what would your word be against the life of a woman so
universally admired and beloved, as my wife has been?"
"But, I will prove what I say by that book."
"Which is just now in my possession, where it is likely to remain. Be
content, beautiful Zillah. The fate of Mabel Harrington rests with me. I
shall not trust her to your jealous rage."
"To my jealous rage!" repeated Zillah, hardening down in her passion
till she seemed turning to marble from a single effort of will. "I
thought of your honor, not of my own wrongs. I struggle against contempt
for the man whom I have so long and so miserably loved."
"Contempt, Zillah?"
"Yes, sir, contempt. Even your slave has a right to despise the man who
connives at his own dishonor."
"Woman, are you mad!--but no matter. I am too weary for much anger. You
should have remembered of old that I hate scenes. This has been gotten
up with too much intensity. I am tired of it."
"I see, I see!" replied the woman, resuming her slave-like submission.
"You are tired, with no one to care about it. Let me serve you once
more."
Zillah went to a marble console in another part of the room, poured out
a glass of wine, and, sinking gently at his feet, presented it after the
Oriental fashion which he had taught her years before.
He took the wine and drank it off, dropping his hand carelessly upon her
shoulder as he returned the glass. The woman sat gazing into his face,
her brow knitted, and her eyes full of thought.
"Then you shrink from a public exposure in this matter?" she said at
last, bending her head on one side and touching his hand with her lips,
which fell upon it cold as ice, so deep was the craft and so cruel was
the passion that prompted this caress.
"I shrink from purchasing revenge at the cost of everything that renders
life worth having. Once for all, Zillah, to quarrel with James
Harrington is to give up all that I enjoy. Of my wife's fortune, nothing
but this old mansion, and some fragments of real estate, remain. My
first wife, as you know, left every dollar of her property to James,
else the marriage which has created all this turmoil would never have
taken place. Up to this hour, the young man has given me almost the
entire control of his income. Mrs. Harrington has no idea that her
property has not always supplied our income. To assail them, is to
expose my own losses at the gambling-table--both while I was her
guardian and her husband--I only wish the accursed book had never
reached my hands. So long as she was acknowledged the most correct and
splendid woman in society, what was her heart and its secrets to me? I
tell you, I am tied to silence in this matter, and your interference can
but annoy me."
"Not if I point out the way by which the vengeance you pant for may
enrich yourself," said the woman, arousing from her thoughtfulness.
"Oh, that would be a discovery, indeed."
"James Harrington loves the lady."
"I am not so sure of that; but, suppose it so, what then?"
"Legal separations are easy in this country. Let her go to one of those
States where incompatibility of temper, absence, or caprice, is deemed
sufficient reason for divorce. This will be generous, and they must be
grateful for a forbearance that she has no right to expect. Half his
fortune--nay, the whole of it--will be little to ask in return."
"Woman, has a fiend or angel put this thought into your head?"
"Both; if love is an angel, and hate a fiend."
"And, what can you expect from this?"
"Nothing!"
"Nothing! This is not true, Zillah!"
"Is it hoping much, when I only wish to be a slave again?"
"My poor Zillah; and did you, indeed, care for me so much?"
The woman fell down upon her knees, buried her face between both hands,
and burst into a passion of tears.
The General was annoyed; there was something too much like a scene in
the attitude and tears of his former slave. He leaned back in his chair,
regarding her with a glance of cynical impatience. She caught the look,
as her hands fell apart; and the hot blood that rushed over her face
seemed to burn up her tears. She broke into a smile, and arose, sweeping
a hand across her eyes fiercely, as if to punish them for weeping.
"There, there, I will go now. It is a long time since I have been so
foolish."
General Harrington smiled; the flush of her face and the brilliant mist
which tears had left in her eyes, reminded him of past years, when he
had, from mere wantonness, provoked those passionate outbursts, in order
to kindle up the beauty of her face.
"But you have forgotten to say how you obtained entrance into my private
apartments. I trust no one saw you come in."
"No one that could recognize me. I became too well acquainted with the
house when we stopped here with my old mistress, on our way to Europe,
for any need of a door. The balconies are too near the ground for that."
"And how long had you been waiting in my bed-chamber, then?" continued
the General, pleased with the prompt return of her cheerfulness.
"All the time that you were reading. I only sought to look on you again
from a distance, and would have escaped without disturbing you, had it
been possible."
The General smiled complacently. After the outrage suffered by his
self-love, this devotion soothed him greatly.
"My poor Zillah!" he said, with a sort of compassion in his voice, "poor
Zillah!"
She did not answer him, and when he turned a moment after to learn the
cause, her place was empty. Like some gorgeous wild bird, she had
lighted at his feet a moment, and flown away. But the vellum-book was in
his hands, and her wicked counsel lay folded close among the evil things
in his heart.