MABEL HARRINGTON AND HER SON.
Ben Benson was never at home now; he went into the woods daily to snare
partridges, and set box-traps for rabbits, he said; and the inmates of
General Harrington's mansion were too sad and disheartened even for
smiles, at the idea of rabbits or partridges on New York island. Indeed,
the old fellow was too unhappy for his usual avocations. He would not
force himself to sit down at his nets, or touch the carpenter's tools
with which the boat-house was garnished. A strange belief haunted him
night and day, that Lina was somewhere in the wood, frozen to death, and
buried in the snow drifts--or worse, perhaps, had fallen through some
air-hole in the ice, and perished, calling in vain for help! The idea
that she had deliberately left her home, never found a place in his
belief for an instant.
Sometimes, in these wanderings, the old seaman saw Mabel Harrington
taking her own solitary way through the woods, but he had no wish to
address her; and, if she passed near him, would shrink behind some tree,
or pretend to be busy with his traps; for the mere sight of her face,
rigid and stern with a continued strain of thought, was enough to strike
him mute.
Thus it was that Mabel appeared to her family now. The strength and the
sunshine had departed from beneath that roof, and a dull, heavy
depression lay everywhere about her. General Harrington rather made the
old mansion a convenience than a home; half his time was spent at the
club-house. He had of late taken rooms at one of those aristocratic
up-town hotels, so foreign in all their appointments, that they might as
well be in the Boulevards of Paris as in New York, and often remained in
them all night; thus, without any apparent abandonment of his wife, he
in reality made the separation between them more complete than it had
yet been.
Did Mabel never inquire of herself the reason of all this? Alas! it is
difficult to say what anxiety or idea fixed itself uppermost in that
disturbed mind. The period was one of continued and heavy depression
with her. She had ceased to struggle with her own heart, or with the
dead, heavy weight of misery that settled each hour colder and more
drearily about her life. She took no interest in the household, but left
everything to the management of Agnes Barker. The very presence of the
young woman was oppressive to her, yet so drearily had her high spirit
yielded itself to the one numbing thought of James Harrington's absence,
that she had no power even to repel this repulsion, much less cast its
object off.
For a time, Ralph had broken up the monotony of this dead life, with his
wild conjectures and bitter complaints. He spoke of his half-brother in
wrath the more stern and deep, that his love for him had once been so
full of tenderness. He was like a man whose old religious faith being
once uprooted, believes that no other can exist, and that the Deity is
unstable. In his wrath against this brother--in his weak distrust of
Lina, the young man had recklessly cast away the brightest jewel of his
nature, because they appeared faithless; he believed that all humanity
was frail. Alas! when such gems of the soul drop away in youth, it is
only with hard experience and keen suffering that they can be gathered
back from the depths of life again.
But, during the last few days, Ralph had seen little of his mother. His
interview with Lina, and his promise of silence, had effected this. The
dead certainty that fell upon him of her utter unworthiness, had buried
all the fiery passions of his heart into a smouldering desire for
revenge on the man who had smitten her down from the altar of his
esteem. Formerly he had raved, and argued, and out-run his own belief of
her faithlessness--hoping, poor fellow, that out of all this storm some
proof would be wrung that his suspicions wronged her. His mother's sweet
attempts at defence--her broken-hearted efforts to explain away the
disgraceful appearances that hung around the departure of Harrington and
her protégé at the same time, only exasperated him. He wanted her to
condemn his suspicions--contradict, trample on them. He would have
gloried in any injustice against himself, if she had only stood up
stoutly against his bitter suspicions. But Mabel was too truthful for
this. The proud heart recoiled in her bosom, as from a blow, at every
harsh word against either Harrington or her adopted daughter. The strong
sense of justice, which was her finest attribute, kept her from those
impetuous bursts of defence, which a single gleam of doubt would have
brought vividly to her lips.
Mabel did not for an instant believe in the coarse interpretation which
others might have given to the elopement; had that been possible, the
keenest of her pain might have been dulled by contempt. No, no! The
worst that she thought was that Harrington, for some inexplicable
reason, had withdrawn Lina from her home to marry her in private; but
this was enough. It had broken up that confidence, unexpressed, but
always a holy principle in both, which had so long held those two souls
together, spite of everything that ought to have kept them apart, and
did keep them apart, completely as the most rigid moralist could have
demanded.
But we suffer as often for our feelings as our actions; and, in the bare
fact that a woman like Mabel Harrington--so capable of deep feeling, so
rich in all those higher qualities that ripen to perfection only in the
warm atmosphere of love--had married a man whom she never could love,
lay a bitter reason for her unhappiness; the one sin that had woven its
iron thread through what seemed to others the golden coil of her life.
Mabel saw all this; for years the knowledge of her own rash act had
coiled the snake around her heart, which was eating away its life, had
been the shadow around her footsteps which nothing could sweep away, not
even her own will. She was a slave, the slave of her own deadly sin; for
a deadly sin it is which links two unloving hearts together, even in so
brief a period of eternity as this world. And Mabel was too good, too
great, too kindly of heart to be the bond slave of one sin forever and
ever, to feel her soul eternally dragged back by the chain and ball
which she had fastened to it in one rash moment of her early youth. Had
she been otherwise, some thought of escape would have presented itself
to a mind so full of strength and vivid imagination as hers. On every
hand the law, and society itself, held out temptations, and pointed to
the way by which she might cast off her bonds, and, as thousands do,
escape the penalty of one rash act by a cowardly defiance of the laws
of God, under the mean shelter of human legislation.
In a country where venal statesmen make "marriage vows as false as
dicers' oaths," by reducing a solemn sacrament into a miserable compact,
Mabel Harrington might have escaped the evil of her own act, and taken a
dastardly refuge in the law, but the thought had never entered her mind.
It is a hard penalty for sins, which the world will not recognize as
such, when every hour calls for some atonement--when each household step
is made heavy by loveless thoughts; Mabel was conscious of her own
wrong, and even these small doling atonements never regarded by the
world, yet which tell so fearfully on the life, had been patiently
performed. She had given way to no sentimental repinings--nor striven to
cast the blame upon others that justly belonged to herself; but, like a
brave true-hearted woman, had always been willing to gather up the
night-shade her own hands had planted, with the flowers that God had
still left in her path, without appealing to the world for sympathy or
approval.
This had been Mabel Harrington's life--a coarse woman would, perhaps,
have contented herself with its material comforts, and, without loving,
ceased to desire the capacities of love; the world is full of such. A
wicked woman would have skulked out of her fate through the oily-hinged
portals of the law--a feeble woman would have pined herself to death;
but Mabel was none of these, else my pen would not love to dwell upon
her character, as it does now. She had gone through her life honestly,
cultivating all her good feelings with genial hopefulness, seizing upon
the bad with a firm will, and crowding them back into the darkness,
where they had little chance to grow.
But, sin is like the houseleek planted upon a mossy roof,--after one
fibre has taken root, you find the tough heads springing up everywhere,
fruitful of harsh, thorny-edged leaves, and nothing else. You work
diligently, tear them up by the roots, trample them to pieces, and, when
you think the evil of that first planting is altogether eradicated, up
from the heart of some moss-flower, or creeping out from the curved edge
of the eaves, comes a fresh crop; and you know that the one fibre is
spreading and entangling itself constantly with a hold that you little
dreamed of in the outset.
Mabel had planted her one houseleek, and it was with faithful exertion
she kept it from covering her whole nature. At times it seemed that
every beautiful thing of life would be eaten up and choked to death in
this one tough growth, and at this period of her life, Mabel felt like
sitting down in apathy, while she watched the evil thing thrive.