Part 55 (2/2)
Therefore the agony that nothing else could allay, should seek to dull itself in vengeance, should hunt to the very death the shameless traitor? Should hurl blighting curses on the head of her who had brought this ruin on her home?
But G.o.d stayed the impotent wrath of man. He took the vengeance that alone is His, in His own hands; the curses that the outraged father called down on his erring child, cl.u.s.tered, a black and ghastly troop, around his own dying bed, and shut off the last ray of mercy. Before a hand could be raised to deal vengeance, death struck down the father, and but few days and nights of anguish and solicitude had pa.s.sed before his heir lay dead beside him, and the life of the boy who alone of all survived, lay trembling in the balance. For a long while it seemed uncertain whether G.o.d had not forgotten the race that had so long forgotten Him; whether He had not turned away His face, and they should all die and turn again to their dust; whether the memory of them should not be rooted off of the earth, and their name perish from among the children of men. For a long while, the boy lay between life and death, but when at last life conquered, and he came back to the changed and desolated world, it was with but little grat.i.tude for the boon that had been granted him, with almost a loathing of the life that had been spared to him.
It is not necessary to the purposes of my story nor will it further its elucidation, to repeat the history of the years that followed. It is sufficient that they were years of misanthropy and misery, almost of infidelity. Travel, change, society, neither attracted nor soothed him; the life he led it suited no one to join him in, and in the midst of the world he lived unmolested by it and regardless of it. At last--what need to tell when or how--there came an awakening; he saw the truth he had been so long shutting his eyes from, he saw G.o.d's mercy and his own sin, and rousing from his apathy he bent himself to the work that lay before him. We know what that work was, and how well he fulfilled it; from the misanthropic recluse, he became the Christian. I knew all this, and much more, that he did not tell me.
”The story has been too long already, I will leave you now,” said Mr.
Rutledge with a sudden change of voice; ”I have finished my office of _raconteur_, you have listened well; almost I could swear to having seen a tear glisten in your eye, almost I could take my oath you have not once thought of yourself and your young lady sensibilities, but have been absorbed to forgetfulness of them all by the story of one who is almost a stranger to you, quite a stranger, indeed, you said not long ago.”
”I did not mean that when I said it, Mr. Rutledge, I repented of it a minute afterward. And I want to say to you now--I am sorry from my heart for that, and the many other hypocrisies you know I have been guilty of.
You don't know all, you would despise me if you did; if you knew how cowardly I have been, and how deceitful. I have not meant it; I have said a hundred things that I have cried for afterward, that I never would have said if I had not been too proud and too angry to have controlled myself. But believe me, I am miserably sorry now. Will you forgive me?”
He leaned forward for a moment on the table, and shading his eyes with his hand, fixed them on my face. ”Forgive you?” he said in a low, clear tone, ”Forgive you? no--not yet--you must not ask it yet! When I have conquered _my_ pride and _my_ pa.s.sion, you may ask me to forgive you, but not now--not now!”
”Aunt Edith, do you want me?” I faltered, starting up. Mrs. Churchill moved from where she stood beside the doorway and entered the room.
”You have been absent a long while,” she said in a soft voice, ”we have been wondering where you were. Mr. Rutledge, how have you managed to amuse my listless and _distraite_ young niece so long? Have you been studying a map of France with her, or poring over a chart of the Atlantic? For such pursuits are all, I believe, that have any interest for her now.”
”Miss Emerson, who sent me to entertain the young lady, did not confine me to those topics,” he answered, rising, ”and I have ventured to go beyond them. She will pardon me, I know, if I have not succeeded in my attempts to interest her.” And Mr. Rutledge bowed and withdrew.
”I have a few words to say to you,” said Mrs. Churchill, with m.u.f.fled hatred in her low tones. ”You have withdrawn yourself from my confidence, and from my affections; but remember, you cannot withdraw yourself from my authority. It is perfectly useless for you to attempt to deceive me; from the first night you came under my roof, I have known you thoroughly. You are a care and a vexation to me daily; your coquetry, your vanity, your boldness, I have hitherto tried to see unmoved, knowing I was unable to influence you; but where influence fails, authority may step in. And authority, for your own sake, for the sake of the man you are engaged to, for my own dignity, I shall use to prevent the recurrence of such evenings as this.”
”The authority you hold, Aunt Edith,” I returned with a steadiness of tone and manner she was quite unprepared for, ”the authority you hold over me, I beg to remind you, is very limited. Don't fancy I am unacquainted with the circ.u.mstances that have placed me in your care. I know every word of my mother's will, I have known it from a child. My fortune is placed at my own disposal after I am eighteen; till then I am recommended--_recommended_, Aunt Edith, to your care, and naturally devolve on you, but I know that I am free: I know that after next December I am my own mistress, and till that time, no one has any right but that of seniority and affection to dictate to me. So we understand each other, Aunt Edith, you say rightly, and why waste words? You cannot influence me; you have lost the only power you ever had over me. I came to you an affectionate, trusting child; you did not care to win my affection, you took no pains to make me trust in you. I threatened unconsciously to interfere in the plans you had for Josephine, and you, without a scruple, sacrificed me to her: you sacrificed my happiness, my peace, to the ambition you had for her; you have misled, thwarted, tortured me to make the path clear for her; you have done what in the sight of heaven will one day be a millstone round your neck to sink you to perdition! Oh! if I had but seen it all as clearly a few short weeks ago, as now I see it, you would not have had your triumph as near as you think you have it now! But because I was a foolish, trusting child, it was not hard to deceive me; because I looked to you for direction, you had the power to mislead me; because I had strong feelings it was all the easier to ensnare me. Let me say what I have to say now; this is our reckoning--I never want to have another explanation; we have understood each other perfectly since we came to Rutledge, this plain talk we scarcely needed, and let us end it. As long as I can endure to stay with you, just so long will I stay, and not a moment beyond it. As long as I must stay, you must bear the vexation and the trial of my presence, but you may be sure, your release will not be very distant. I am not bound to you nor to your children by one tie of grat.i.tude or affection, and those that restrain me of custom and convenience, don't cost much in the snapping!”
”All this tirade has wandered very far of the mark. I began to give you a caution and a command which my duty required me to give, and your duty required you to heed; and you fly angrily off on some unmeaning invectives which are very harmless because of their unmeaningness; if it were not the case, I should call you sternly to account for your words, and make you retract them.”
”Unmeaning or not, Aunt Edith, they are sown in your memory, and nothing can root them out. They will bear bitter fruit some day, I promise you.
They will yield a rich harvest, when the early growths of ambition and worldliness have died down, and left you only the withered husks and stalks of remorse and regret to satisfy your hunger withal. And now unless you want to publish this, will you go into the parlor and let me follow you?”
”I have something more to say to you”----
”There comes Miss Emerson; if it is anything that will bear being said before her, pray continue.”
”Ah! Is it not delightful!” cried our pretty hostess. ”Mr. Rutledge and the other gentlemen have been out, holding a post-mortem examination of the storm, and they have decided that it has left so black a state of heavens and so wet a state of roads that it is impossible to think of your going home to-night, so you will have to stay till to-morrow, _bongre malgre_. And I am so charmed. Ah! _you_ are not, though, I see plainly enough, you want to go back to that tiresome Rutledge. What can it be, Mrs. Churchill? What is the matter with her. Though to be sure, the pale cheeks are gone now; I think I prescribed well. Mr. Rutledge must have said something very exciting all the while he was in here, to have given you such a bright color and such flas.h.i.+ng eyes.”
”A very little excitement brings that result, Miss Emerson. She has not learned much self-possession or self-control yet; we must excuse her.”
”Oh! by all means. I am only glad she looks brighter than when I left her. But will you come into the parlor? Miss Josephine is going to give us one more song before we go to our rooms.”
Josephine's song was gay and brilliant, her voice was rich and full, but they failed to drive the dreary echo of Victor's last words out of my mind, that deepened and strengthened as the night advanced: ”You shall be freed! Be sure you shall be freed!” The lights shone clear and soft on the gay groups that peopled the rooms around me; but instead of them, I seemed to see, far nearer and more distinct, the deserted chamber at Rutledge, where the guilt of the Past and the crime of the Present, kept awful watch together.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI.
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