THE WOUNDED EAGLE.
“Eagle, this is not thy sphere!
Warrior bird! what dost thou here?
Wherefore by the fountain’s brink
Dost thy royal pinion sink?
Wherefore on the violet’s bed
Lay’st thou thus thy drooping head?
Thou, that hold’st the blast in scorn—
Thou, that bear’st the wings of morn!
Lift thy glance! The fiery sun
Now his pride of place hath won!
And sweet sound hath filled the air,
For the mountain lark is there.
Looking on thine own bright skies—
Eagle! wilt thou not arise?”
HEMANS.
The spring and summer had passed, and autumn was at hand, yet Hagar had
received no letter, or message, or news of her husband. True, the
foreign mail was very irregular, interrupted, and uncertain, for those
were not the days of steamships, and Emily had not heard from her
brother for several months. Hagar bore the slow torture of suspense as
well as she could, occupying herself with the care of her three
children. She was abandoned to a life that would have been utter
solitude, but for the society of her children and the attendance of her
servants. At first coming home, she had regularly attended divine
service at the parish church; but seeing that her presence there merely
drew off the attention of the congregation from their ritual to gaze her
out of countenance, as though she had been a monster, and feeling,
besides, a difficulty in worshipping among a set of people, who, from
malice or thoughtlessness, had slandered and forsaken her, she
discontinued her attendance upon the preaching, thereby giving occasion
for fresh calumny. The hours not occupied with her family cares were
occasionally spent in the pursuits of her old and favorite pastimes, her
forest hunts with horse and hounds, or her fishing excursions in a light
skiff propelled by one oar. But she liked best her exhilarating woodland
sports with their lifegiving power. The resumption of these healthful
but half savage habits, gave additional offence to the conventional
autocrats of —— county. In her rides she seldom met any one, because her
excursions were confined to the Heath and woodlands of her own ruined
plantation; so seldom, that when it happened, the person who had seen
her would say, “I have met Hagar Withers,” in much the same tone that
you might exclaim, “I have encountered the sea-serpent.” And the hearer
would cry “Indeed! where?” with as much astonishment in the first case
as they might be supposed to feel in the last. It happened that the
first person who had met her in her riding costume was that princess of
propriety, Mrs. Gardiner Green, who, taking a hasty inventory of her
short, black, boyish looking curls clustering around her forehead and
under her little riding cap, and the rolling collar, steel buttons, and
coat-sleeves of her habit, had gone away and reported as follows: “She
has cut off her hair, and dresses like _a man_!” In her perfect
isolation, Hagar heard nothing of all this latter talk.
I said that God was a kind father and Nature a tender, nursing mother;
and that our Hagar was getting well under their care. And so it was. In
spite of all her past wrongs, griefs, and sufferings, in defiance of all
her present regrets, suspense, and anxieties, her spirits had rebounded
from their long pressure; health, strength, and life were tiding back.
The first of October found her form erect and robust, her limbs full and
rounded, her cheeks crimson, and her eye brilliant with high health; and
Hagar, in her returning joy, blessed her native air, woods, and waters;
praised nature, and worshipped God for her resurrection from the dead,
her restoration to the young exultant life of her glad childhood. And
what were her plans for the future, and what were her thoughts of her
husband? Perhaps wearied with the weight of the incessant thoughts, her
mind had thrown off the burden; perhaps rebounding from the long and
heavy pressure, her spirits had sprung away from the painful subject;
perhaps with the natural wildness of her character she had yielded
herself up with childish carelessness to the enjoyments of the present
moment. She was disturbed in the midst of her enjoyments by the arrival
of a letter bearing a foreign stamp. She found it lying on her plate
when she took her seat at the breakfast-table one morning. It had been
brought by Tarquinius from the Post Office late on the previous night,
after she had gone to rest. She snatched the letter hastily, and tearing
open its seal, read—why do Hagar’s cheeks flush, her eyes blaze with
indignation? The letter conveyed a gross and degrading charge, a
humiliating and cruel proposition, and a startling and alarming threat!
yet withal, so cautiously written, as were it produced in any court, it
would be difficult to convict the _writer_ of any more serious offence
than outraged affection and injured confidence. It ran thus:
“GENOA, July 15th, 182-.
“HAGAR:—I have just received your letter, with its strange
communications—_confessions_, I should rather call them; had such a
blow fallen on me a year ago, when I did not know you so well, when I
esteemed and loved you, it would have gone nigh to destroy me! even
now when I can esteem you no longer, it has given me the deepest pain,
more for your sake than for my own, and more upon our children’s
account than either. Hagar, was it that Satan, after having tempted
you to evil, abandoned you to idiocy; was it fatuity? or, was it the
goading of a wounded conscience that drove you to make these shameful
revelations to me? Or, as is most likely, did you hope by being the
_first_ to tell me of what was inevitable, that with or without your
communications, I must soon hear, and by giving your own version of
the doings at the Rialto, you could thus blind me as to the _real_
state of the case? If you thought so, Hagar, you yourself were the
victim of gross self-deception. I will not reproach while judging and
condemning you, Hagar; that were vain and unworthy, but before
pronouncing sentence, I will sum up the evidence of your guilt as
given in your own unconscious confession, and out of your own mouth
condemn you, for, however you may attempt to glaze over the facts,
they stand thus: No sooner has your husband quitted his home, upon his
official duties, than lo! his place in your house is filled by the
lover of your girlhood, Lieutenant May, who, without delay, hastens
over five hundred miles of sea and land to join you: he remains with
you domesticated under your roof for weeks, and until the house is
sold over your heads, while every respectable female servant quits the
premises. He takes you from the neighborhood where I had left you, and
where I expected when I should return to find you, and carries you off
to Maryland. On the night of your arrival, under favor of the storm,
you pass the night alone together in the old fishing-house, within an
eighth of a mile of Heath Hall, which you might have reached in ten
minutes. Then your neighbors, shocked and justly indignant at the
audacious effrontery of this shameless disregard of public sentiment,
have very properly abandoned you.
“Now, then, Hagar, hear me! Since your betrayal of these disgraceful
circumstances to my knowledge, I feel a re-union between us to be
impossible. _You_ must see and feel this also—nay, you yourself could
not desire it. Our marriage must be annulled. _I_ could do it by
widely exposing your guilt, and bringing you to open shame. I am
unwilling to take this course, unless by rejecting the only
alternative that I have to offer, you leave me no other. This
alternative will veil your guilt from the general eye—it is a self
immolating proposition on my part, as I prefer to suffer in myself the
unmerited condemnation of society, rather than have the mother of my
children, however well she may deserve the fate, consigned to
ignominy. My proposition, in a word, is _this_—that _you yourself_
annul our marriage—that you divorce _me_—you can do it upon the plea
of my desertion of you—suppose that plea was false when I left the
country, it is true _now_ that I have detected your infidelity—urge
that plea—your suit will not be rejected, for the reason that I shall
not oppose it—_Do_ it, Hagar! and in return, after it _is_ done, I
will bind myself to leave you in quiet possession of your home and
children for the remainder of our lives—_Refuse_ to do it, Hagar! and
I will return to the United States, and with the terrible array of
circumstances that can be marshalled against you, I will overwhelm
you, divorce and degrade you, and when that is effected, remove my
children from the care of a dishonored woman, whom private experience,
public sentiment, legal justice, and legislative wisdom shall have
alike condemned, as unworthy of their charge. I await your reply,
Hagar.
R. W.”
I wish you could have seen Hagar as she read this letter—how much more
courageous she was in the endurance than in the anticipation of this
evil. You would have felt how strong she had grown in her sorrows, how
nobly she had struggled, and how grandly she had soared above them. How,
after the first start and flash of indignation, she had read the letter
through, and holding it open on her lap, looked straight before her with
that air of calm superiority, of grave rebuke, with which one regards
the ravings of intoxication.
“I will not reply to this just yet,” said Hagar, to herself—and folding
the letter, she put it in her pocket and fell into a reverie. It was
during this reverie that Hagar was inspired with a resolution, and
formed a highly important plan, which, in a few weeks, she prepared to
carry into effect.