Part 55 (1/2)
”My dear, uncontaminated innocent, don't you see that society, and mamma, and Erle Palma have all conspired to make an Isaac of me?
Bound hand and foot, I lie on the Moriah of fas.h.i.+onable life; but the grim fact stares me in the face, that no ram will be forthcoming when the slaughter begins! No relenting hand will stay the uplifted knife.
Diana will not s.n.a.t.c.h me into Tauris, and mamma cannot sail prosperously from the Aulis of Erle Palma's charity until I am sacrificed. Ah! the pitying tenderness of maternal love!”
She spoke with intolerable bitterness, and Regina put one arm around her.
”Olga, she loves you too well to doom you to lifelong misery. You always talk so mockingly, and say so many queer things you do not mean, that she does not realize your true sentiments. Show her your heart, your real feelings, and she will never consent to see you marry that man.”
”Do you believe that I successfully mask my heart? Not from mamma, not from Erle Palma. They know all its tortures, all its wild desperate struggles, and they are confident that after awhile I shall wear out my own opposition, and sullenly succ.u.mb to their wishes.
They have taken an inventory of Silas Congreve's worldly goods, and in exchange would gladly brand his name as t.i.tle-deed upon my brow.
To-night I have danced, laughed, chattered like a yellow parrot, ate, drank champagne, flattered, flirted, and fibbed, until I am wellnigh mad. It seems to me that a whole legion of demons lie in wait outside of your door to seize my s.h.i.+vering desolate soul.”
She shuddered, and pressed her fingers over her glittering eyes.
”Regina, you are a silly young thing, as ignorant of the ways of the world as an unfledged Java sparrow; but your heart is pure and true, and your affection is no adroitly set steel-trap, to spring unawares, and catch and cut me. From the day when you first came among us with your sweet childish face and holy eyes, as much out of place in this house as Abel's saintly countenance would be in Cana, I have watched and believed in you; and my wretched worldly heart began to put out fibres toward you, as those hyacinths there in your bulb-gla.s.ses grow roots. Will it be safe for me to confide in you? Can I trust you?”
”I think so.”
”Will you promise to keep secret whatever I may tell you?”
”Does it concern only yourself?”
”Only myself, and one other person whom you do not even know. If I venture to tell you anything, you must give me your solemn promise to betray me to no human being. I want your sympathy at least, for I feel desperate.”
Looking pityingly at her pale sorrowful face and quivering mouth, Regina drew closer to her.
”You may trust me. I will never betray you.”
”Not to mamma, not to your guardian? You promise?”
Her cold hand seized her companion's, and wistfully her hollow eyes searched the girl's face.
”I promise.”
”Would you help me to escape from the misery of this fine marriage?
Are you brave enough to meet your guardian's black frown and freezing censure?
”I hope I am brave enough to do right; and you certainly would not expect or desire me to do anything wrong.”
Olga threw her arms around Regina, and leaned her head on her shoulder. She seemed for a time shaken by some storm of sorrow that threatened to bear away all her habitual restraint, and Regina silently stroked her glossy red hair, waiting to hear some painful revelation.
”I think I never should have ventured to divulge my misery to you if you had not seen me yesterday, and abstained from all allusion to the matter when you saw that I boldly ignored it. Do you suspect the nature of my errand to East ---- Street?”
”I thought it possible that you were engaged in some charitable mission; at least I hoped so.”
”Charitable! Then you considered the feigned sickness a 'pious fraud,' and did not condemn me? If charity carried me there, it was solely charity to my suffering starving heart, which cried out for its idol. You have heard of Dirce and Damiens dragged by wild beasts? Theirs was a mere afternoon airing in comparison with the race I am driven by the lash of your guardian, the spur of mamma, and the frantic wails of my famished heart. I wish I could speak without bitterness, and mockery, and exaggeration, but it has grown to be a part of my nature, as features habituated to a mask insensibly a.s.sume to some extent its outlines. I will try to put aside my flippant hollow attempts at persiflage, which const.i.tute my worldly mannerism, and tell you in a few simple words. When I was about your age, I think my nature must have resembled yours, for many of your ideas and views of duty in this life remind me in a mournfully vague, tender way of my own early youth; and from that far distant time taunting reminiscences float down to me, whispers from my old self long, long dead. When I was seventeen, I went one June to spend some weeks with my Grandmother Neville, who was an invalid, and resided on the Hudson, near a very picturesque spot, which artists were in the habit of frequenting with their sketch-books. Allowed a degree of liberty which mamma never accorded me at home, I availed myself of the lax regimen of my grandmother, and roamed at will about the beautiful country adjacent. In one of these ill-fated excursions I encountered a young artist, who was spending a few days in the neighbourhood. I was a simple-hearted schoolgirl, untutored in worldly wisdom, and had always spent my vacations with grandmother, who was afflicted with no aristocratic whims and vagaries; who thought it not wholly unpardonable to be poor, and was so old-fas.h.i.+oned as to judge people from their merits, not by the amount of their income tax.
”Belmont Eggleston was then about twenty-five, very handsome, very talented, full of chivalric enthusiasm, and as refined and tender in sensibility as a woman. We met accidentally at a farmhouse, where a sudden shower drove us for shelter, and from that hour neither could forget the other. It was the old, old immemorial story--two fresh young souls united, two hearts exchanged, two lives for ever entangled. We walked and rode together, he taught me drawing, came now and then and spent the long summer afternoons, and grandmother liked and welcomed him; offered no obstacle to the strong current of love that ran like a golden stream for those few hallowed weeks, and afterward found only rapids and whirlpools. How deliriously happy I was! What a glory seems even now to linger about every tree and rock that we visited together! He told me he was very poor, and was enc.u.mbered with the care of an infirm mother and sister, and of a young brother who displayed great plastic skill, and gave promise of becoming renowned in sculpture, while Belmont was devoted to painting. He frankly explained his poverty, detailed his plans, expatiated with beautiful poetic fervour upon the hopes that gilded his future, and asked my sympathy and affection. While he was obscure he was unwilling to claim me, his love was too unselfish to transplant me from a sphere of luxury and affluence to one of pecuniary want; and he only desired that I would patiently wait until his genius won recognition. One star-lit night, standing on the bank of the river, with the perfume of jasmines stealing over us, I put my hand in his, and pledged my heart, my life for his. Nearly eight years have pa.s.sed since then, but no shadow of regret has ever crossed my mind for the solemn promise I gave; and, despite all I have suffered, were it in my power to cancel the past I would not!
Bitter waves have broken over me, but the memory of my lover, of his devotion, is sweeter, oh! sweeter than my hopes of heaven! G.o.d forgive me if it be sinful idolatry. It is the one golden link that held me back, that saves me now, from selling myself to Satan. In the midst of that rose-crowned June and July, in the height of my innocent happiness, mamma fell upon us, as a hawk swoops upon a dovecote, dividing a cooing pair. Disguising nothing, I freely told her all, and Belmont n.o.bly pleaded for permission to prove his worthiness. Grandmother was a powerful ally, and perhaps the result might have been different, and mamma would have ultimately been won over, had not Erle Palma's counsel been sought. That cold-blooded tyrant has been the one curse of my life. But for him, I should be to-day a happy, loving wife. Do you wonder that I hate him? How I have longed for the seven Apocalyptic vials of wrath! He and mamma conferred. An investigation concerning the Egglestons elicited the fatal fact that some branch of the family had once been accused of embezzlement, had been prosecuted by Erle Palma, and in defiance of his efforts to convict him had been acquitted. Mamma and your guardian possessed then, as now, only one criterion: