JAMES HARRINGTON'S GREAT STRUGGLE.
General Harrington arose, slowly, for his limbs trembled with intense
rage, and it was with difficulty that he stood up.
"We know each other!" he said, shaking his finger at the younger
Harrington, and drawing closer and closer, till it almost touched his
face. "You have been the traitor in my household--plundered my closest
secrets--alienated my wife; talk of dishonor, sir, what was mine
compared to yours?"
But James Harrington had regained all his strength, and stood up firmly
before the infuriated old man.
"I have said before, that from the hour this lady became your wife, the
place of my sainted mother enshrined her. As I would have studied that
mother's happiness, I gave myself and all that I possessed to her
welfare and yours. My own tastes were simple, and I had no hopes. The
larger portion of my income, you have always controlled."
"And always will command, or this woman's name shall become a by-word
from Maine to Georgia!" exclaimed the General, resuming some control
over his rage. "We comprehend each other now, and can talk plainly. You
have learned some of my secrets, and shall know more. I have other debts
of honor, and no ward's fortune to pay them with: her reputation or
mine is at stake--one must save the other."
"I do not understand you, sir."
"You can very well comprehend that the contents of this precious book,
will render anything like affection for Mrs. Harrington impossible to
me. Indeed, the unhappy position in which your mother's death left me,
not only penniless, but frightfully involved, enforced this second
marriage. I can afford to forgive an outrage on affections that never
existed. So while the lady's faithlessness does not affect my interests
or my honor, I can endure it with self-complacency."
"I am shocked--astonished, sir, to hear you speak in this way!" said
James, indignantly.
The old man smiled.
"You are a dreamer, sir, which I am not. Scenes and excitements are my
abhorrence; we hold unpleasant relations toward each other. You are my
step-son. The only child of my very distant cousin, a Harrington like
myself, to whom, but for your birth, I was the direct heir. The
property, a vast one, which might have been justly divided, fell to his
widow, your mother, by will. I married the lady, thus, as any sensible
man would have supposed, ensuring the inheritance which should have been
mine, and which undoubtedly would have been mine, but the lady took it
into her head to get jealous one fine day"----
"Stop, sir!" said James Harrington. "I guessed too well the cause of her
death--the bitter sorrow which haunted my mother to her grave. She died
a broken-hearted woman; do not take her name irreverently into your
lips, or I shall forget myself."
"You _are_ forgetting yourself, sir!" answered the General, waving his
hand with gentle deprecation. "This is neither time nor place for
heroics. I did but attempt to impress you with the fact, that your
mother's unjust will had caused all this domestic turmoil. You took the
property from me--I won the lady from you. Let us look upon the thing
like sensible men, and make restitution."
"Restitution, sir! Restitution of a wasted life!"
"Do be composed--I am tired of storms. You love the lady--I do not. I
want money--you care nothing for it."
"Well, sir, well?"
"Really, it is difficult coming to the point, while you look so excited;
but, if you will listen tranquilly, all this may be settled."
James sat down, with one hand pressed to his forehead.
"Go on, sir. I am listening."
"It is but just, as I said before, that you disburse the bulk of a
property which originally came from the Harrington family. Give me a
deed, conveying two-thirds of that property to my unrestricted control
during life--I have no ambition to make wills--and the secrets of this
book are safe. The west is broad, and most conveniently accommodating
when marriage ties become irksome. Mabel can take that direction for her
summer travels, while I remain here. In three months the fashionable
world may thank us for a week's gossip, which I can very well endure.
The world is large--there is California, Australia, or Europe--her
second marriage in any of these countries would never be heard of."
James Harrington started up, shaking from head to foot; and so white,
that the General half-rose, tempted to flee his presence.
"Tempter, hoary-headed fiend, how dare you!" broke from his white lips.
The old man faltered a little as he went on, and an anxious restlessness
of the eye betrayed more emotion than he cared to make apparent.
"I neither tempt nor persuade. We have done each other great injury;
this lady has been the cause, and in some sort the victim. After
reading that book, it is impossible for this household to contain us
all. I will not submit to be turned out a beggar, nor to live an hour
longer on your munificence. The plan I offer is the only one that can be
peaceably acted upon."
"And the lady, Mrs. Harrington, does she know this?"
"Not a syllable. I have no fancy for hysterics, protestations, or
fainting fits. The _rôle_ of an injured husband, is not to my taste; and
I should prefer that she base her complaints on my indifference,
abandonment, infidelity, or whatever faults of that nature she pleases.
I will take a trip to Paris, if that promises to facilitate matters."
"And, if I refuse?"
"Then the lady shall be quietly waited upon by my lawyer, and invited to
leave my house. This book will not only be placed in evidence against
her, but every line it contains shall be duplicated by thousands, and
spread far and wide."
"Give me time--give me air. I cannot think or breathe!" answered James,
struggling with himself amid a whirl of contending feelings, like a
drowning man engulphed by a flood. "A few minutes, and I will speak
again."
He arose, and walked unsteadily towards the library window, threw it
open, and stepped out upon the balcony. There he strove to look the
difficulty before him in the face--to meet the terrible temptation with
courage. He dared not turn his thoughts, even for a moment, toward the
possibility of the proposed divorce, but crushed it back resolutely, as
if it had been a serpent attempting to charm his soul away. If a glow of
delight had touched his heart with the first certainty of Mabel's love,
it was gone now, quenched by a consciousness of the terrible dangers
that were closing around her.
It was a bitter cold morning; all around him the earth lay sheeted with
deep snow. The river was frozen over from shore to shore. Not a green
thing was near, save the spruces and pines upon the shrouded lawn, and
they drooped and moaned under a burden of cold whiteness, which the wind
might disturb but fail to sweep away. The balcony was littered with
slender icicles which had fallen from the gables above, and flashed out
like shattered jewels from his impetuous footsteps as he trod them down,
walking to and fro in the wild excitement that seized upon him. At
another time he must have shuddered beneath the sharp wind that filled
his hair and clothes with frost. But now, the fever in his blood burned
too hotly not to feel the biting cold as a relief.
He leaned against a pillar of the balcony, shocked to the soul, and yet
so indignant that the frozen particles that filled the air, flashed
athwart his eyes like sparks of fire. The hand with which he strove to
force back the painful rush of thought from his forehead, fell upon it
like ice, but in a moment that too was burning. He tore off his cravat,
and in vain exposed his bosom to the frost. He gathered handfuls of snow
from where it had lodged in ridges on the stone balustrade, and pressed
them to his forehead, hoping thus to slake the fever of his wild
thoughts. A little time, and this fierce struggle must have killed him;
for, not to have found some means of saving Mabel Harrington from the
dangers that encompassed her, would have been a thousand deaths to him.
Oh! how his bad angel toiled and struggled to fix that divorce upon his
mind, as the best and only means of saving her. But the heart that
swelled so tumultuously in his bosom, was honest and unselfish. He took
hold of the temptation, firmly wrestled with, and hurled it aside,
facing the right with heroic courage.
At last, his restless footsteps ceased; some new idea contracted his
features, sweeping all the fire away. Slowly and steadily, like the
beams of a star, thought followed thought, till his face grew luminous
with generous resolution. The red fever had burned itself out on his
forehead, leaving it pale and calm, while across his lips stole an
expression so much more beautiful than a smile, that I cannot impress it
upon the reader.