Madame DUBOURG’S was a grand brown stone building, with broad carved
balustrades, and stone vases of cactus. I had chosen the hour of twelve
for our visit, as the parlors would most likely then be free from
visitors, and we could see Lulie in quiet. When we alighted from our
carriage there was a large-armed Irish woman washing off the stone
steps, and a man in a paper cap standing on a high step-ladder, to
rub the plate glass windows. They were talking and laughing together,
but ceased as we got out, and looked at us and each other with some
surprise on their faces. The woman gathered up her cloth and water
bucket and disappeared through the area with an audible snicker, while
the man fell to rubbing the wide panes with renewed diligence. There
was a pretty silver knocker on the figured glass door, and as I let it
fall the door was thrown open by a footman, who had put on his gold
laced coat so hurriedly the collar was turned under, and from whose
moustache some fragments of cheese were still hanging. He favored us
with a prolonged stare of wonder, then presented a somewhat tarnished
gold salver for our cards. I laid one in it, on which was simply
written, ”An old friend,” and said: ”To see La Belle Louise.”
”You can’t see her,” he replied, with something of insolence in his
tone.
I restrained my first impulse of anger, and slipping a five dollar gold
piece in his hand, said quietly,
”Take my card up to her, and say nothing about a lady’s being with me.”
”I will, sir,” he said, with a low bow, his manner changing instantly
at the touch of the gold.
He ushered us through a wide hall, with mosaic floor, into a spacious
parlor, furnished in dark green velvet, and opening into another
of light green satin damask, and this, in turn, leading to a large
conservatory of rare plants and flowers. Though the furniture and
all the appointments were so magnificent, yet every thing bore the
defacement of reckless vice. The splendid Axminster carpets, though
partially protected by linen tracks, were soiled and worn by muddy
boots, the grand piano had its rosewood surface scratched and bruised,
the music books were torn and scattered, buhl quartette tables around
the room were covered with sloppings of wine, broken glasses, wet packs
of cards and dice, the embroidered flowers on the ottomans were frayed
into strings, and the gorgeous paintings on the walls were splotched
and blistered, and their gilded frames tarnished. We had walked through
both parlors to the conservatory and returned to the first, when we
heard a light foot-fall on the stairway, and Lulie came down into the
hall and stood for a moment looking through the side lights out into
the street, with the same look of wan despair upon her face. The next
instant she walked lightly into the room, twirling the tassel of her
morning robe over her forefinger. She advanced half across the room
before she saw us, and then her eyes opened as if in terror, a leaden
pallor spread over her face, as if life had fled, and pressing her hand
to her heart, with the tremulous wail, ”O God!” she sank down upon the
floor, her pallid cheek resting on the cushion of a _fauteuil_ that had
been overthrown, and her colorless lips uttering low moans, that were
piteous, indeed, to hear.
In a moment Carlotta was down on the floor beside her, lifting the poor
bowed head to her bosom, smoothing the brown hair from the fair brow
that was once so pure, and dropping the tears of her Christ-like pity
on the upturned face. The poor girl had no strength to stir, but only
put up her white hands feebly and murmured:
”Do not touch me; oh! do not touch me. God knows I am unworthy to
breathe the air you do. Leave me! Cast me off as all the world have
done,” and again she would make those gentle, piteous moans.
As soon as Carlotta could command her voice she bent down, and kissing
her forehead tenderly, said:
”Lulie, darling, we have come to save you.”
”To save me? Oh, no; it’s too late—too late!”
”Do not say so, dearest Lulie,” urged Carlotta; ”our carriage is at the
door. Do not wait a moment, but come with us and leave forever this pit
of perdition.”
”Would to God I could,” she said, shaking her head slowly, and speaking
in the same low tone; ”there was a time I might have gone, but not now,
not now.”
”But, Lulie, we are going away from this country to Cuba, where no one
has ever known you. No one is with us except mother, who is even now
waiting to receive you. We will forever bury the past, and look forward
only to a new life. Lulie, come with us, and be my darling sister in
our happy home.”
She raised herself from Carlotta, and, placing her hands over her face,
sat rocking herself back and forth, her very frame convulsed with the
agony of her struggle. When she lifted her face again her mind was made
up.
”It cannot be, Lottie,” she said, calling Carlotta’s name for the first
time. ”Heaven only knows how I appreciate your goodness and thank you
for it; but I cannot go with you; I cannot throw the shadow of my
presence on your household. The world has no forgiveness for my sin,
and no life of penitence or purity I might lead would ever wash away
the stain. I do not doubt your kindness; as God is my witness I believe
that you would love me, but, do what you would to forget and conceal
it, in your hearts I could never be anything but poor fallen Lulie—and
the consciousness that you all knew of my ruin would make your very
presence a torture to me.”
”But, Lulie,” persisted Carlotta, ”this sensitiveness would after
a while pass off, and our very kindness would beguile you of your
remorse. And even if you suffer, I should think any change would be
better than this life of shameless iniquity, so utterly opposed to the
refinement and delicacy I believe still linger in your breast.”
”Oh, Lottie, do not chide me. You, whose heart is pure, who have never
known the wild reckless abandonment of all that is virtuous, all that
is good, cannot understand the terrible remorse that drives me into
vice, whose constancy will prevent reflection—aye, reflection. An
eternity of hell is compassed in one hour of my retrospect. I cannot
be alone; solitude would drive me mad. One thought alone has brought
relief—relief mingled with horror—the thought of death! Oft in the
night has it come to my sleepless pillow and whispered to me ‘Die!’
and yet, when I poured the poison in the glass, my trembling hand has
dropped it from my lips. But the crisis has come,” she said, fiercely,
striking her hands together and wringing them till her jewelled rings
cut into the flesh. ”I will not shrink again. I _will_ die!” and
clasping her hands across her head, she gazed at me with such intense
anguish and despair in her hollow eyes, I shrank from her face.
”Lulie, Lulie, dearest, do not speak so,” said Carlotta, again putting
her arms around her and trying to soothe her. ”You cannot surely
contemplate self-destruction. Think, Lulie, what an awful thing it is
to die. There, darling,” she continued, as Lulie’s head drooped on her
shoulder, ”you were speaking wildly just now, you did not mean what you
said. Come, the carriage is waiting. You _must_ go with us; we cannot
leave you here.”
But Lulie only shook her head firmly and remained silent.
After a rather long pause Carlotta spoke again, in a low impressive
voice:
”Lulie, hear my last appeal. For the sake of the long ago, when we were
innocent happy children, and our hearts were bound with ties of love
which have never yet been broken; for the sake of those dear old days,
I beseech, I implore you to leave these unworthy associations, and seek
with us a better life. Aye, Lulie, for the sake of your dead mother, I
beg you to come. If a heart can be sad in Heaven, hers is bleeding now
to see you thus; her precious little Lulie in such a place as this! Oh!
will you not make her happy again?”
The fountains of her heart were now broken up, and with long shuddering
sobs she lay weeping on Carlotta’s neck.
I had not spoken yet, but had left all to Carlotta’s tact and skill. I
now knelt down by Lulie and took her hand, while my broken voice and
tearful eyes attested the sincerity of all I said:
”Dear little playmate, by the memory of our childhood’s love, by the
thousand scenes and incidents that endeared us to each other—our
nursery games, Miss Hester’s school, the little parties when you first
ventured to take my arm—by your first rejection of my love as we grew
older, but above all, by the confidence you placed in me under the
old oak at Chapel Hill, I implore you to trust us now and to put your
future into our hands.”
”Oh, spare me! spare me!” she cried, sobbing afresh, ”for humanity’s
sake spare me! If you would not kill me, do not tell me of my joyous,
sinless childhood. It is gone forever from me. Oh, my wrecked and
ruined character! Oh, my blighted, broken heart! Mother! _mother!_
MOTHER! God grant you may be blind in Heaven, that you may not see your
poor, polluted child on earth. Lottie, do not torture me more; ‘tis
useless to persuade me; I cannot go. Leave me to my fate. If you are
willing, put both arms round my neck once more and kiss me farewell.
John, my noble, true-hearted friend, Good-bye!”
Carlotta strained her again and again to her bosom, then, seeing she
was not to be shaken from her purpose, we slowly and sorrowfully left
the room. At the door Carlotta’s feelings overcame her, and resolving
to make one more trial, she went back, and embracing her again, said:
”Lulie, I cannot leave you so. By the Blood of dear Jesus, by the Cross
of our Redeemer, I beseech you to go with us to our home.”
Poor Lulie caught her hand and pressed her tear-wet cheek and lips upon
it, then pushed her from her side, not rudely but sadly, with despair
in her very touch.
And so we left her sitting on the floor, with her head buried in her
folded arms upon an ottoman. We were so troubled to leave her as we
found her, that we wrote a long note and sent it up to Madame Dubourg’s
that evening from the hotel. The waiter soon returned with our note
unopened, but on it, scribbled with a pencil:
”Dear friends, forget me!
LULIE.”
Next morning, as we stood on the deck of the steamer for Havana,
inhaling the breeze and enjoying the scene, while the giant wheels
were throbbing us out into the ocean, we little thought that in the
great city behind us, up in a room with perfumed and silken hangings,
an overburdened heart, slower and slower, was throbbing, throbbing,
throbbing a soul out into eternity.