AGONY.
_The peace that others seek they find;
The heaviest storms not longest last;
Heaven grants even to the guilty mind,
An amnesty for what is past.
I only pray to know the worst,
And wish, as if my heart would burst._—WORDSWORTH.
As before, day after day passed slowly and sadly over the head of the
young forsaken wife. The golden month of October was declining towards
its close, and still she received no letter from her husband in answer
to her last impassioned appeal.
She wrote again and again; but with no better success. How he must have
steeled his breast against her to resist the pleading of her letters,
where every word seemed a tear of blood wrung from her crushed and
bleeding heart. But most likely he did not even trust himself to read
them.
In this agony of suspense, she must have either maddened or died, but
for the “little angel” she expected; for it is scarcely possible for the
mother of an unborn babe, even under the greatest trials and heaviest
sorrows, either to lose her reason, or break her heart. In making ready
for the little one, and in looking for its coming, she found an antidote
against despair.
But her moods, of course, varied with the state of her nerves. There
were times in which she hoped, when her hour should come, that both she
and her babe might be permitted to die, and go to their eternal rest.
“Where I shall never trouble him more; or, perhaps regret him, either,
though this is doubtful. Oh, Alick! Alick!” she would exclaim, with a
burst of tears and sobs.
But these miserable spells of despondency she always repented as sins.
And she, afterwards, prayed that her babe might live, and that she might
be forgiven, and spared and strengthened to raise it.
She was so young and inexperienced that she did not know when to count
upon the advent of the little stranger; but she felt sure that the time
could not be far off.
It was in the last days of October, that she received another letter
from her recreant husband. She was standing at the window of her
bed-chamber, watching for the arrival of Leo from the post-office, as
she had watched for so many days, when she saw the boy riding towards
the house.
She tapped on the glass panes to attract his attention; and he heard
her, and he pulled a letter from his pocket, and held it up to view as
he struck the spurs to his horse’s flanks and dashed rapidly up to the
door.
She rushed down to meet him, and snatched the letter.
“From Richmond, madam,” he said; “which I hope master is well, and is
coming home.”
“Yes, from Richmond,” she said, tearing the envelope open, and beginning
to run her eyes over it, as she went back to her room and sank into her
resting chair. For the poor young wife and expectant mother could not
now rush about and excite herself with impunity.
She sank, faint, dizzy and breathless, into her chair, and tried to read
her letter; but the words ran together, and the lines reeled before her
eyes; and some minutes passed before she was sufficiently recovered and
calmed to do so. And as she gathered the meaning of this most cruel of
all his heartless letters, her pale face grew paler still, her breath
came in short gasps, and her frame shook as with an ague fit.
Before she had quite finished reading it, she let it drop from her
hands, threw up her arms, and, with a piercing shriek, fell forward to
the floor.
And well she might.
This murderous letter Alexander had sent to his wronged wife as a _coup
de grace_.
In it he told her that humanity had induced him to prepare her, by a
long abstinence from her society, for the painful communication he was
about to make. He dared to hope that by this time she must have seen
that there was something wrong in their union, and some good cause other
than he had before stated for his keeping away from her. He said that
now he believed she was ready to learn, without a great shock, which he
had studied to spare her, the true cause of his parting from her. He
then went on to tell her that early in the month of March he had
discovered, to his own great astonishment, that their union was utterly
null, void, and illegal; that he could not find it in his heart at that
time to shock her with the fatal news; but he made up his mind to
prepare her for it by degrees, and finally to break it to her very
slowly. He begged to remind her that since the day upon which he had
made the discovery of the unlawfulness of their connection he had never
wronged her by intruding into her private apartments, or treating her
otherwise than with the reserve due to a lady and the affection owed to
a sister. He repeated that he had tried to spare her pain in the
breaking of this tie, the severance of which was as distressing to him
as it could possibly be to her. He assured her that, though duty forbade
him ever to see her face again, he should provide for her future
welfare, by securing to her the little estate upon which she lived. He
concluded by telling her, that as propriety required all possible
intercourse, even by writing, to cease between them, and as he himself
was about to leave town for the country, it would be useless for her to
reply to his letter.
It is to be noted that in this cruel communication he took care to say
no more than was absolutely necessary to quell and quiet her claims on
him. He did not even call her by name, but addressed her as “my poor
little friend.” He did not acknowledge the receipt of any of her
letters. And, worse than all, he failed to specify the cause of the
alleged illegality of their marriage—whether it had chanced in any
informality of the ceremony, which might be remedied by a second and
more careful solemnization of the rites; or whether it existed in the
shape of some insurmountable impediment that must forbid their union.
Nor did he venture to allude to his former betrothal and his approaching
wedding with his cousin Anna. Indeed, all proper names of persons and
places seemed studiously left out. The writing also, was in a disguised
hand, and without date or signature.
Altogether it was a careful work of a cautious man, who would have been
an astute villain and a successful schemer if he had not, in the
blindness of his selfishness, overreached even himself.
It bore no internal signs of the writer or of the person to whom it was
written. It might have been sent by another man to another woman. It
could never be successfully produced in evidence against any one in any
court.
But if he took this precaution with the idea that his deeply wronged
wife could ever drag her domestic sorrows before a public tribunal, and
expose his private letters for her own vindication, he had studied her
character to very little purpose.
The blow he had dealt had well nigh proved her death stroke. It struck
her to the floor. Her cry and her fall aroused her servants, who came
running to her room in haste. They found her stretched in a swoon on the
carpet, with the open letter beside her.
“Master’s dead now, for sure!” exclaimed Leo, in consternation.
“And no harm done if he is!” cried Pina, who had, with her woman’s wit,
long ago detected the bad faith.
“But it’s killed mist’ess!” groaned the boy.
“It hain’t! it’s only overcome her like! Help me to get her up, and
don’t stand there blubbering!” said the girl.
Between them they tenderly lifted their mistress and laid her on her
bed.
“Now, Leo, you go out and stop in the passage, so as to be in calling
distance if I want anything. And leave me alone with my madam. I’ve seen
her in these here fainty fits before, and I know what to do with her.
Come, now!” impatiently exclaimed Pina, seeing that her brother still
lingered, “be off with you, will you? It ain’t no ways proper for you to
be looking on while I’m unloosening of her clothes!”
This hint drove the boy in haste from the room.
Pina proceeded to undress her mistress, turning her about very gently on
the bed, until she had freed all her fastenings so as to give her lungs
the fullest play. Then she applied the usual potent stimulants, and
after much patient effort, she had the pleasure of seeing the little
lady open her eyes.
But Drusilla recovered her senses only to fall into the most violent
paroxysms of grief and despair. Convulsive sobs shook her whole frame;
bitter groans burst from her lips; tears gushed in torrents from her
eyes. As her passion of grief arose, she wrung her hands, and writhed,
and threw herself from side to side, moaning piteously. Then in her
frenzy of despair, she sprang up and began walking about the room,
striking her hands together, and uttering piercing cries.
In truth, hers was not a mute grief. Your “silent sorrow” belongs to a
little later period of life, when years have taught the sufferer such
resignation that she will “die and make no sign.” But on this stricken
young wife a blow had fallen, heavy enough to crush the strongest woman,
while she was yet little more than a child. And she felt it with all a
child’s intense sensibility, and she grieved with a child’s excessive
vehemence.
Vainly her maid tried to restrain her or to comfort her, Pina followed
her mistress up and down the room, weeping for company, and pleading
with her—
“Oh, mist’ess darling, don’t take on so dreadful! Don’t mist’ess, that’s
a dear! Oh, what has happened? Tell your true servant, who never left
you but only once, and never will do so wicked an act again, never, if
there’s twenty robbers in the house. Oh, mist’ess, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, girl, girl, he has left me, he has left me forever,” cried the poor
young wife, with another gush of tears.
And it showed how utterly abject and self-abandoned she was in her
profound and terrible sorrow, when she could forget her dignity, and
make complaint in the presence of her youthful servant.
“He has left me, Pina! Oh, he has left me forever!” she repeated,
wringing her hands and sobbing violently. “He has gone, he has gone for
good!”
“Blest if I don’t think it _is_ for good! and a good riddance of
uncommon bad rubbish!” grumbled the girl in a low voice; but she did not
dare to let her words be heard.
“Oh, what shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?” cried the wretched wife,
walking wildly about the room and wringing her hands. “He has left me
forever! forever and ever!”
“Don’t you believe one word of that, ma’am, now, don’t, that’s a dear
lady! Lors, he wouldn’t have the heart! he couldn’t stay away from you
forever, no, not if he was to try to ever so hard,” said Pina,
soothingly, as she followed her mistress.
“But he says so himself! he says so!” exclaimed Drusilla, with a
passionate burst of weeping.
“Well, he says so, and maybe he thinks so, but he can’t do it. It’s only
because some wicked woman has got the whip hand of him now. But lor
bless you, _that_ can’t last. All men is fools, ma’am. I know that much,
if I don’t know any more. But lor! the foolishest of ’em knows gold from
brass, and is sure to come back to the old love and the true love, for
their _own_ interests. Goodness knows they never does anything for ours!
He’ll come back, ma’am! Bad pennies always does.”
“Oh,” moaned Drusilla, “how low I have fallen! how low, to say what I
have said, and to hear what I have heard! Pina, my girl, hush. You must
not speak of your master in this manner, especially in my presence. It
is untrue of him and disrespectful to us both,” she added, as calmly as
she could force herself to speak, as she dropped into her resting chair.
This was but a short lull in the storm of her grief; for presently, the
keen sense of her husband’s desertion and her own desolation, pierced
her heart, and she fell into a fresh paroxysm of sobs and tears, and
leaving her chair, walked distractedly about the room, raving and
wringing her hands as before.
Pina went to her and threw her arms around her, saying:
“Oh, mist’ess, mist’ess, don’t do so! You’ll kill yourself and kill your
child!”
“Better I were dead! better my child should never be born!” cried the
frantic woman, abandoning herself to the wildest excesses of despair.
“Oh, mist’ess, don’t say so! and don’t rave so! If you have no pity for
yourself, have some for the poor little blind and breathless baby that
depends on you for its life; and don’t kill it before it has even a soul
to be saved!” pleaded Pina, touching the most sensitive chord in the
mother’s heart and in the Christian conscience.
“Give me something! Give me something to benumb this keen pang, then.
Give me opium! Give me anything that will dull my heart and brain
without doing harm,” she demanded, sitting down in her chair, and making
a great effort to control the violence of her emotions.
Pina mixed a composing draught of tincture of valerian and water and
brought it to her mistress.
Drusilla drank it, and its effect upon her sensitive system was
instantaneous and powerful. Though her eyes still streamed with tears,
the convulsive heavings of her bosom subsided, and she became
comparatively calm.
“Now, mist’ess, darlin’, you just let me help you to bed and you lay
still and keep quiet. And I will darken the room and sit by you. And may
be you will go to sleep and then you will be better.”
And Drusilla, docile as a child now, suffered her maid to put her to
bed.
While the girl was smoothing the white counterpane and making everything
tidy about the dainty couch, Drusilla suddenly put her hand to her
throat and with a frightened look cried out:
“Where—where is—?”
“Oh, you mean the little black silk bag, ma’am, that was tied around you
neck?” inquired Pina.
“Yes! yes! where is it?”
“I took it off when I undressed you, while you were in your fainty fit.”
“Where did you put it?”
“In your upper bureau drawer, ma’am, where it is quite safe.”
“Oh, Pina, bring it back to me directly.”
The girl obeyed.
“Is it a relic, ma’am?” inquired Pina.
“Yes,” answered her mistress. And so it was, though not of the sort Pina
was thinking of.
“Oh, I beg pardon—I didn’t know, ma’am.”
“And now, Pina, no matter how ill I may become, you must never let this
be removed from my bosom again. It is more precious to me than anything
I have in the world except my Bible and my wedding-ring,” said Drusilla,
as she fastened the treasure around her neck.
“Indeed, ma’am! Then I will be very careful not to have it removed. Now
try to compose yourself, ma’am,” said Pina, as she proceeded to close
the shutters and draw the curtains to darken the room.
Drusilla complied with this good advice, and folding her hands as if in
prayer, lay very quietly.
Pina went to the chamber door and spoke to Leo, who had remained on duty
in the passage for some hours. She told him that their mistress was now
better, and that he might go down stairs and look after his own affairs,
and that she would call him if his services should be needed.
Leo, glad to hear of the little lady’s improvement, glad also to be
relieved from duty, hurried down into the kitchen to look for something
to eat, of which he stood greatly in need, not having broken his fast
since he went to the post-office in the morning.
Pina took her place by her mistress’s bed, and patiently watched there.
Night deepened; but the girl lighted no lamp, finding the subdued glow
of the low wood-fire on the hearth sufficient to see by.
Drusilla lay so motionless that Pina thought she slept. But by bending
down and looking attentively at the supposed sleeper, the watcher saw
that her lips were moving as in silent prayer. And soon deep sighs arose
from the sufferer’s bosom, and large tears rolled down her face. She was
awake and weeping.
Pina silently arose and mixed another dose of the beneficial composing
draught, and brought it to the bedside.
Drusilla drank it. And soon after she fell asleep. And the youthful
watcher, with her heavy head dropped upon the side of the bed, also
slept well.