THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.
Miss Eliza Halstead was not a person at all likely to leave any stone
unturned which lay in the path of her love. She knew something of the
power which beauty has over a young heart, and feared Savage might seek
some explanation that would exculpate Anna Burns from the evil that she
had imputed to her—for so powerful is genuine innocence that even
prejudice feels its influence, let circumstances be ever so much against
it.
Scarcely had Savage left the house, when Miss Eliza put on her lilac
bonnet, with its crush-roses and point-lace. Carefully she smoothed the
strings, and puffed out the bows with her long fingers, leaving pink
shadows all around her face, almost as effective as the bloom of youth.
When she had sufficiently elaborated this portion of her toilet, she
wrapped a costly shawl around her, and stole softly out of the house,
resolved to keep her visit and its object a secret.
Mrs. Savage was at home; and would she walk directly up stairs.
Yes. Miss Eliza swept her trailing silks up the broad staircase,
settling her shawl as she went—for she was forever arranging and
rearranging her dress, in-doors and out. Twice she paused before a
mirror, impanneled in the wall, and examined the flow of her long skirt,
over both shoulders, before she entered the room in which Mrs. Savage
was waiting, with Miss Eliza’s card in her hand.
“What can she mean?” murmured the lady, reading over some writing in
pencil above the name. “Something to communicate of the utmost
importance to the honor of the family—but here she comes. My dear Miss
Halstead, I am delighted! How good of you to come. Sit down here; you
will find it more comfortable.”
No. Miss Eliza preferred to sit with her back to the light. It took her
some minutes to compose her drapery; but at last she settled down in the
crimson easy-chair, like some tropical bird in its nest, and was ready
for the occasion.
“Lovely weather, isn’t it?” observed Mrs. Savage, with her blandest
smile. “What a color the air has given you.”
“Yes,” answered Miss Eliza, tightening her glove. “My complexion is so
exquisitely sensitive, that a breath of air brings the bloom to my
cheeks.”
Mrs. Savage smiled a graceful acquiescence to this self-praise, and
hoped Miss Eliza would never feel, as she did, any lack of youthful
bloom.
“When the time comes,” Miss Eliza said, with a smile of conscious
superiority, “I must submit, like others. But, Mrs. Savage, I came on a
painful and humiliating errand; excuse me, if I am compelled to give you
pain; but, after your great kindness in throwing me into the same
picture with your son, I feel like a traitor till you know all.”
Mrs. Savage bent her stately head, and replied that she was listening
with attention.
“After that evening, which seemed to give a dawning hope of union
between the houses of Savage and Halstead, you will imagine, dear lady,
that my thoughts, hopes, prayers, were all hovering around your son.
Knowing well that our mutual passion had maternal sanction, I allowed
the pent-up feelings of a too ardent nature to gush forth, till I fear
your noble son saw too clearly into the state of my affections. I strove
to conceal the rush of tender emotions that awoke to the sound of his
very footstep; but there are souls so transparent, that a child can read
them. For a time, dear lady, all was hope, all was happiness; true as
the needle to the pole myself, I had profound confidence in your son.
For a time his conduct was all that the most devoted heart could
desire—I was his ideal, his love, his divinity. Though he was too
delicate to say all this, I felt it, madam, in the very core of this
heart.”
Here Miss Eliza pressed a fold of a shawl that covered her bosom, and
went on.
“Then came a frost—a killing frost! Oh! my dear madam—mother, may I not
call you? that girl—that creature—who received your bounty but to betray
it, has broken in upon my pure dream of happiness. Your son has, for
some time, left the refinements which circle around my home, and,
regardless of breaking the heart that has learned to adore him, has
given his time and his attentions to that creature.”
“What!” exclaimed Mrs. Savage, starting up from her elegant apathy, her
face flaming with passion, her plump hand clenched, “my son—my son,
Horace Savage, visiting Anna Burns! Miss Halstead, you are crazy with
jealousy; stung to death in your vanity, to say such things of him. Why,
he is proud as I am, honest as his father. I do not believe this!”
Eliza Halstead was rather pleased with this outbreak. She saw in it a
sure termination of the attachment which, in her belief, certainly
existed. That which she had failed to do, that haughty woman would
accomplish, she felt certain.
“You are severe, unkind, to doubt me so,” was her pathetic rejoinder. “I
have seen them together in the street.”
“That is nothing, of course; he would speak to her or any other person,
poor and dependent. A Savage is too proud for arrogance. If that is all
the proof you have, permit me to say that your absurd jealousy has
outrun all common sense.”
“Madam!” exclaimed Miss Eliza—and the angry red outflamed the permanent
color on her cheek—“Madam, I have seen him enter the low house where she
lives, not once, but half a dozen times. I have seen him walking, block
after block, with her down such streets as you never entered in your
life.”
“But you were there, it seems.”
“A woman’s heart will take her anywhere when she suspects the object of
her love.”
“Miss Halstead—but it is useless arguing with you, utterly useless;
there is no fool like an old fool!”
This very trite adage was muttered under the lady’s breath; but Miss
Eliza had sharp ears, and caught the word fool.
“What did you say, madam?” she demanded, sharply.
“Oh, nothing! only that I was an old fool, to believe any thing alleged
against my son.”
“Believe what you like, think what you like,” answered the spinster, who
was not so easily deceived; “I have done my duty—a painful, sad duty.
All that I ask of you, his mother, is silence—secrecy; profound secrecy
as to my part in the affair. Owing all loyalty to him, I have come here
to betray him to his own mother. It breaks my heart; do not, I pray you,
madam, add one pang to those which rend it now. Remember the relations
which may one day unite us, and be faithful to the trust I have reposed
in you.”
Mrs. Savage was by this time pacing up and down her sumptuous
sitting-room, trampling upon the flowers in its map-like carpet as a
tigress treads upon the grass of its jungle. She was dreadfully annoyed;
all the pride and unbounded affection which she had lavished on her son,
rose in revolt against the tidings Miss Eliza had brought her. Now that
her suspicions were aroused, she remembered many little circumstances
calculated to confirm Miss Eliza’s statement. As this belief grew strong
upon her, the color left her face, and she sat down in her chair, stern
and cold, doubting, unbelieving.
“You are sure of this thing?” she said, speaking in a slow, still voice.
“This is no phantasy of a jealous imagination?”
Miss Eliza drew close to the woman whom she had come deliberately to
wound, and took her hand. She dearly loved to create a sensation of any
kind, and took the pallor and distress in that proud face as a personal
compliment.
“Do not distress yourself, sweet friend, my almost mother; but have
faith, as I do, in the immutable truth of love. He may wander away from
me; he may have one of those fleeting fancies for another which
sometimes disturb the most faithful heart, but in the end he will
return; he will be mine—all mine!”
A smile quivered around Mrs. Savage’s mouth, spite of her distress; but
it passed away, leaving a stern expression there. The evil was too
serious not to sweep away all sense of ridicule in her mind.
“Now tell me quietly, and in as few words as possible, exactly what you
have seen or know about this affair. Excuse me if I have seemed rude;
but you took me by surprise. Now let me know the whole.”
“I have told you all, sweet friend—that is, all as regards your son; but
as for that artful young person, Burns, really, as a young girl, hedged
in from such knowledge by all sorts of refinement, I cannot tell you,
without burning blushes, how unworthy she is.”
Mrs. Savage half started from her chair.
“You surprise, you astonish me,” she said. “If ever innocence was
depicted in a face, I thought it was in hers.”
“She is artful enough to deceive you. She has deceived your son. Even
Georgiana will believe nothing against her.”
“If she is what you say, there is little danger for Horace; there is too
much refinement and discrimination in his character for a deception of
that kind to last long with him,” said the mother.
Miss Eliza instantly took the alarm. She saw that Mrs. Savage had too
much faith in her son’s principles for any fear of a person who could
shock them, and with crafty adroitness sought to undo the impression she
had made.
“Perhaps I have gone too far,” she said, retreating gracefully. “My own
love of truth is so profound, that the least deviation seems to me like
a crime. She professes to be every thing that is meek and good, yet I
cannot believe in it. Without some falsehood, some deception, she could
not have won such influence over a heart that is, in reality, all mine,
as those who saw him kneeling at my feet that night must have felt.”
“Let that pass,” broke in Mrs. Savage, with a gesture of impatience.
“You really know nothing against this girl, except that she is beautiful
and lovely?”
“I never said she was beautiful,” cried Miss Eliza. “Never!”
“But I know that she is, and, to all appearance, a modest, well-bred
girl. Seeing all this, I was an idiot to introduce her as I did.”
“I thought so all the time,” said Miss Eliza, demurely. “Not that I
think of her as beautiful or well-bred—far from it; but those artful
young creatures do fascinate men some way quite unaccountably. I cannot
bear to think of it.”
“You are sure that he visits her house?”
“Sure as I am of my own life.”
“And that he walks with her in the street?”
“I have seen him join her not a block from your own door, and never
leave her till she reached that which leads to her rooms in the garret
of a tenement-house where she now resides.”
“Where is this house?”
Miss Eliza reluctantly gave the street and number where Anna Burns
lived.
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Savage; “you have done me a great service. I will
think what steps had best be taken in the matter.”
“And you will keep my visit a secret? Situated as we are, he might think
it indelicate for me to interfere.”
“I will not mention your name in the matter,” answered Mrs. Savage,
wearily.
Miss Eliza arose, shook out the drapery of her dress, kissed Mrs. Savage
with elaborate affection, and left the room, well satisfied with the
work she had done.
Mrs. Savage was a proud, impetuous woman, well calculated for a leader
in social life, and in all respects the mistress of her own house. Such
women are usually ardent in their attachments; willing to die for those
they love; ready to turn the world over in their behalf; but well
disposed to regulate and control the happiness they are so earnest in
securing.
There was no being in the world to whom young Savage was so much
attached as his mother. There was something chivalric in his admiration
of her talent, and in the loving pride that he felt in her womanliness.
He saw her by the graceful force of a superior will governing other
women, and charming strong men into her service. He knew that she was
grand in her magnanimity when it was once aroused; but sometimes more
disposed to be generous than just, when the tide of her strong
prejudices set in against the truth. She was, indeed, a woman of whom
any son might well have been proud—full of faults, and rich in
magnificent virtues. For the world he would not have given this woman
pain; for he, above all others, knew what a cruel thing pain was to her.
For this reason he had, perhaps, unconsciously kept his knowledge of
Anna Burns a secret from her until quite assured that this feeling,
which seemed so like love, was an enduring passion; he would not disturb
his mother by confessing it. There was nothing like domestic treason in
this. The young man was not quite sure of himself. Refined, fastidious,
and over-educated as he was, the feelings which sprang up in his heart
regarding this girl were a wonder to his own mind. They were so opposed
to all his relations in life that he could not believe in them; yet they
were there strong as his life.
About the time that he learned of Ward’s residence in the same house
with Anna Burns, he had resolved to open his heart to his mother, and
tell her all. Savage had at this time resolved to make Anna Burns his
wife. The first step he took in that direction was to seek Georgiana
Halstead, and ask her aid in removing the object of his love to a less
revolting home, and in surrounding her with associates kindred to her
character rather than her position. This done, he fully intended to make
that proud mother his next confidant.
A single hour had swept all these honorable projects from his mind. He
had listened with scornful incredulity to the charges made against the
lady of his love by Miss Eliza. But his own eyes were not to be
disbelieved; the evidence of that roughly honest landlady had been
complete. He had been about to sacrifice himself to an artful,
unprincipled girl, who could share love, true and generous as his, with
a creature like that Ward. He had seen them together; he had seen her
hand in his. He knew that they dwelt under the same squalid roof. It was
enough. Never, in this world, would he mention that girl’s name to his
mother. She had wronged him too cruelly.
Savage, stung to the soul with these feelings, sent a note to his mother
that he was going into the country for a few days—and went away, in what
direction he neither knew nor cared. He had been humiliated, wounded in
his love and in his pride beyond bearing; so much as he had been willing
to give up for the sake of that girl’s love—and she knew it. The
infatuation must have been coarse and deep which could have led her from
the prospects his love would have secured, to the evil fortunes of that
gambler.
Mrs. Savage received her son’s note just after Eliza Halstead left the
house. She was glad to know that he had left town. In her present state
of feeling she could not have met him with the equanimity which her
pride demanded. While he was gone, she would see this girl, and sweep
away the temptation that had beset him, if eloquence or money could do
it.
It was honorable to the mother, and most honorable to the son, that Mrs.
Savage never once imputed a dishonorable thought to the visits that had
been described to her—proud, generous women like her are not apt to
think the worst of human nature. She would have felt as much degraded by
an immoral or dishonorable act in her son, as if it had fastened upon
her own person.
“If I do not prevent it, he will marry this girl,” she said; “and I,
fool that I was, have cast her in his way. There is poor Georgiana
wronged and deserted. Not that he ever said much to her; but I had so
set my heart on it, that every word I said to the dear child was a
promise. Heaven bless that vicious old maid for warning me in time! What
a character she is—how silkily she kept down the venom of her tongue. I
wonder Halstead can endure her in the house.”
Thus Mrs. Savage wandered in her thoughts as she closed her son’s note.
She had received a hard blow, but women like her do not spend much time
in recrimination when work is to be done.
“I will go at once,” she thought. “This may be nothing serious, after
all; Horace is so generous, and he knew of their poverty. This may only
be one of his private charities, which the old maid has tortured into a
love romance.”
Mrs. Savage followed out these thoughts by ringing for her maid, and
ordering her shawl and bonnet to be brought down; but the girl had
hardly left the room when a servant came from the hall, and inquired if
Mrs. Savage could spare a minute to the young person who came so often
about the fine sewing?
“Let her come up—let her come up,” answered the lady, in eager haste.
“Mary, you need not get the things; I shall not go out just now.”
Anna Burns came into the room softly as a tear falls. She was pale, and
a sad sweetness made her face touchingly lovely.
“I have brought the work home,” she said, laying a roll of embroidered
muslin on the table, and leaning against the marble for support.
“And—and I have come to say that grandmother does not think it best that
I should take any more.”
Anna’s voice shook, and the woman who listened knew that it trembled
through suppressed tears.
“Why do you give up work?” she inquired, with unconscious sympathy in
her voice.
“I—I——Because grandmother thinks it best. Carrying home the work takes
me a good deal into the street, and she does not think that good for
me.”
“Your grandmother is a prudent woman. But how are you to live without
work?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I can find something to do that wont take me away
from home just at present, at least.”
Mrs. Savage took up the roll of work and began to examine it. Woman of
the world as she was, something gentle and good about that girl
prevented her speaking out as she had proposed do. The sad, wistful look
turned upon her bespoke too much sorrow for ungentle handling.
“Sit down,” she said, gently, as if she had been addressing a naughty
child, “I wish to speak with you.”
Anna sat down with a frightened look, and trembling a little as the lady
could see.
“You know my son, Anna Burns?”
“Yes; yes, madam, a little—that is, I did.”
“He has been to your house?”
“To our rooms you mean, lady? Yes, he has been there.”
“More than once?”
“Oh, yes! more than once. We—we did not think there was any harm in it.”
Anna’s eyes were filling with tears; her lips quivered like those of a
grieved child just before it bursts into a cry.
“Did he help you——”
“Madam!”
“Did he give you money? Was it for that he came?”
“Money? Oh! he would not do that. Grandmother is a lady; and no one ever
offers her money, most of all, Mr. Savage.”
There was no deception here. Those eyes were lifted to the proud woman’s
questioning, clearly and purely as the stars of heaven shine on earth.
Mrs. Savage hesitated and looked down, there was too much of the woman
in her heart not to shrink from the task she had imposed on herself.
At last she took the girl’s hand in her own, and felt that it trembled
there like a frightened bird.
“Anna Burns, has my son ever said that he loved you?”
Anna struggled to free her hand.
“Oh, madam! Oh, lady! this is punishing me too much!”
“Answer me, Anna, I mean nothing unkind; but I must know. Has my son
ever said that he loved you?”
Anna sat upright. Her face had been scarlet a moment before; now it was
white as snow.
“Yes,” she said, with gentle firmness. “He has said that he loved me
more than once.”
“And you believed him?”
“Believed him? Oh, yes!”
“One question more, Anna. Do you love him?”
“Lady, I am a very young girl, and hardly know what love is. But I hope
God will forgive me if it is wrong to think so often and so much of Mr.
Savage!”
“This is very sad,” murmured the lady; and she held the little hand in
hers closer when she spoke again.
“Has he ever said any thing about marrying you, Anna?”
“I think so. It seemed to me that it was what he meant; but that was
before—”
“Before what, Anna?”
“I don’t know. I would rather not talk any more about it, madam, if you
please.”
“Anna, let me talk seriously with you. There is a great distinction
between you and my son.”
“I know it—I know it. Grandmother said exactly those words.”
“He cannot marry you.”
“Oh! madam.”
“You must save him from the ruin such a step would bring upon him.”
“Ruin?”
“Yes, ruin! I, his mother, never would consent. He would lose his high
place in society. He would regret the step within a month after it was
taken.”
Anna grew paler and paler, the quivering of her lips became convulsive.
“That is the reason—that is why he would not speak to me. Oh! madam, my
heart is breaking.”
“Better the pain now than when it is too late, child. Give him up—give
him up, and I will see that neither you nor yours shall ever want.”
“It is too late—too late, lady. He has given me up. I understand it all
now. Let me go home. I am faint—so, so fain——”
The sentence died out in a murmur on those white lips. Anna had fainted
at the proud woman’s feet.