A STORMY PARTING.
Zillah drew her tall form to its full height.
"Dreaming!" she said. "No. This is the time for us to act; no, not
us--you shall have nothing of this but the advantage. You are my child,
his child, and I love you; therefore, let all the risk, and sin, and
pain be mine. You shall have nothing but the power and the gold. Listen,
girl, you should not marry James Harrington, now, though he wished it;
he is no match for you--he is penniless as this boy Ralph, your
half-brother. Do not shrink and look at me so wildly, but learn to hear
the truth. This boy is your brother, and his son; for that reason he
must not want, when you and I have our rights; out of the property which
was once James Harrington's, we must persuade the General to give the
young man a few thousands; as for James, let him remain the beggar his
romantic folly has left him.
"Agnes, your father, General Harrington--your father! impress the word
on your soul, child--your father is now master of everything; while he
lives, James Harrington is penniless. To-morrow, we shall reign in Mabel
Harrington's house. You look surprised, you ask me how all this has
been brought about. Listen: you remember the vellum book which you stole
for me, out of her escritoire. Well, it contained many secrets, but not
the one I wanted most--not enough to make Mabel Harrington an outcast. I
lived with her in her youth, and knew how much she loved this priestly
Harrington--and, when his mother died, hoped that he would marry her;
but she was too wealthy. The General wanted her money, and, in defiance
of my anger and my tears, made her his wife. I rebelled, threatened,
grew mad, and to save himself, this man, whom I loved better than my own
soul, persuaded me back to the plantation, and sold me! You turn pale,
even you look shocked. For a time, I could have torn him to atoms, like
a tiger when food is scarce; for the love that had been so deep and
fiery, turned to hate: but wrong does not uproot a passion like mine. He
had sold me into a double bondage--his child was the slave of another
man; yet every wish of my soul struggled to his feet again--in that I
_was_ a slave.
"Yes, bend your eyes upon me, and curve your lips with that unspoken
taunt; at least, I was not the slave of a boy! Sit still, sit still, I
say! it is no use flinging your tiger glances at me; I have no time for
quarreling. While I was his slave, General Harrington's liberality had
no bounds, and, dreading the time when it might cease, I hoarded a large
sum of money, more than enough to buy myself a dozen times over. I was
about to enter into a bargain with my new master for myself and child,
when he died, setting us free by his will.
"I waited, worked, saved, adding gold to gold, till years came between
me and the man who had owned and sold me; dulling the influence of that
woman, and turning my passion into a power.
"At first, I intended to introduce you into this house, and marry you to
James Harrington--thus ensuring a high position to my child, depriving
Mabel of a protector, and sweeping away General Harrington's sources of
wealth at the same time. Then, while stripped of the luxuries he loves
so well, my hoarded gold would have paved my way back to his favor; but
you, ever perverse, ever disobedient, became infatuated with this boy,
Mabel Harrington's son, and thus defeated a plan that this brain had
been weaving for years. You had stolen the book, that was something; but
your perverse fancy rendered new complications necessary, and, to keep
you quiet, I was compelled to cumber myself with that poor girl, to lie,
and almost betray myself.
"Be quiet, and listen. The book was incomplete, but I had studied Mabel
Harrington's writing well in my youth; she had left blank pages here and
there in her journal; _I_ filled them up; he read them; all would have
gone well--she would have been degraded, turned out of doors, but for
the mad generosity of James Harrington. I listened, and saw that all was
lost; that the journal would be given up to him, and the falsehood of
those pages made known. I tore them out, and with them other pages that
have since served a good purpose. Listen, still, for I have no time.
To-day, James Harrington came to the house in my absence, and had a
conversation with Lina; what it was, I do not know, but it may put us in
this woman's power. Before morning, this battle must be over."
"Great heavens!" exclaimed Agnes, with a fresh burst of passion, so
absorbed by her own thoughts that she disregarded the purport of
Zillah's words. "_His_ child, _his_ sister, and the tool of a slave,--a
noble burden this, to carry on through life!"
She arose and walked toward the door, pale as death, and with her teeth
clenched.
"Where are you going?" inquired Zillah.
"Into the cold, where I can breathe. Do not speak. Let me go!"
"But not down stairs--not into her room!"
"I tell you," answered the girl, hoarse with passion, "I tell you that
it is air, space, a storm, a whirlwind that I want; nothing else will
give back the breath to my lungs!"
She went out fiercely, like the tempest her evil heart evoked.
For an instant the woman Zillah stood still, looking after her; then she
rushed to the door, and called out in a loud whisper,
"Agnes, Agnes, come back!"
But the call was too late. Like a black shadow, Agnes Barker had passed
out of the house.
Zillah reëntered the room, looking so white that you would not have
known the face again. She turned the gas full upon her, and, taking a
bowl from the cabinet, poured some colored liquid into it. She placed
the bowl upon the floor, and, kneeling by it, began to lave her hands,
neck, and face in the liquid, leaving them of a nutty darkness. Then she
opened the window, flung out the dye she had used, and proceeded to put
on a front of woolly hair, tangled with grey, over which a Madras
'kerchief was carefully folded. One by one she removed her rich
garments, and directly stood out in dress, gait, and action, the colored
chambermaid who had for months infested Mabel Harrington's home.
The woman went out from the room, locking the door after her. She must
have been very pale, though the color upon her face revealed no trace of
this white terror; but her limbs shook, her knees knocked together, and
her wild eyes grew fearful as she paused in the hall, looking up and
down, to see if it was empty, before she moved away.
The moment Zillah left her chamber door, all became dark in the hall,
for she concealed the light in passing, and moved away as her daughter
had done, still and black, like a retreating cloud.
When Zillah's face was again revealed, it was far down in the coal
vaults under the house. She was upon her knees, filling a small iron
furnace with lumps of charcoal, which she dropped one by one on a
handful of embers that glowed in the bottom, as she had found them after
late use in the laundry. As she dropped the coal, Zillah looked
fearfully about from time to time; and once, when a mouse scampered
across the floor close by her, she started up with a smothered shriek;
but, even in her terror, blew out the lamp, which rattled in the
darkness some moments after, notwithstanding the efforts that she made
to still her shaking hands.
At last she struck a match, and kindled the light once more, and fell to
work again. A minute sufficed to heap the little furnace, and a faint
crackling at the bottom gave proof that the living embers underneath
were taking effect. When satisfied of this, she put out her lamp, took
up the furnace, and, though it was still hot from recent use, placed one
hand over the draft, that the fire might not ignite too rapidly, and
crept out of the cellar. Any person awake in the house, might have
traced the dark progress of this woman by a faint crackle, and the
sparks that shot now and then up through the black mass of coal, which
was kindling so fast, that the hand which she still kept upon the draft
was almost blistered.
She moved along the hall, noiselessly and rapid as death. The sparks
that leaped up from the furnace, gave all the light she had, and more
than she desired; for many a time before had she threaded the same
passage, rehearsing the terrible deed she was enacting. She paused
directly in front of Mabel Harrington's boudoir, and laid her hand upon
the latch without a moment's search, as if it had been broad daylight.
She did not pause in the boudoir, but stole through, shuddering beneath
the pale light of that alabaster lamp, as if it had distilled poison
over her.
There was no stir in the chamber when she entered it. The low regular
breathing of some one asleep upon the bed which stood entirely in
shadow, was all the sound that reached her when she paused to listen.
From without she could hear nothing, not even the sharp whisperings of
the wind; for that day her own hands had calked the windows with
singular care, and besides that, rich curtains muffled them from floor
to ceiling.
Zillah dared not look toward the bed, but with the stealthy movements of
a panther she crept to the fire-place sealed up with a marble slab, and
placing the furnace on the hearth, slunk away from the chamber and
through the boudoir, closing both doors cautiously behind her.
After that, she staggered away into the darkness.