下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
That afternoon, as Emma was sitting in her own room, she was startled by the unexpected presence of Hermione. As they were not in the habit of intruding upon each other above stairs, Emma rose in some surprise. But Hermione motioning her back into her chair, fell at her feet in sudden abandon, and, laying her head in her sister's lay, gave way to one deep sob. Emma, too much astonished to move at this unexpected humiliation of one who had never before bent her imperious head in that household, looked at the rich black locks scattered over her knees with wonder if not with awe.
"Hermione!" she whispered, "Hermione! do not kneel to me, unless it be with joy."
But the elder sister, clasping her convulsively around the waist, murmured:
"Let me be humble for a moment; let me show that I have something in me besides pride, reckless endurance, and determined will. I have not shown it enough in the past. I have kept my sufferings to myself, and my remorse to myself, and alas! also all my stern recognition of your love and unparalleled devotion. I have felt your goodness, oh, I have felt it, so much so, at times, that I thought I could not live, ought not to live, just because of what I have done to you ; but I never said anything, could not say anything! Yet all the remorse I experienced was nothing to what I experience now that I know I was not even loved——"
"Hush," broke in Emma, "let those days be forgotten. I only felt that you ought to know the truth, because sweeter prospects are before you, and——"
"I understand," murmured Hermione, "you are always the great-hearted, unselfishly minded sister. I believe you would actually rejoice to see me happy now, even if it did not release you from the position you have assumed. But it shall release you; you shall not suffer any longer on my account. Even if it is only to give you the opportunity of—of meeting with Dr. Sellick, you shall go out of this house to-day. Do you hear me, Emma, to-day ?"
But the ever-gentle, ever-docile Emma rose up at this, quite pale in her resolution. "Till you put foot out of the gate I remain this side of it," said she. "Nothing can ever alter my determination in this regard."
And Hermione, surveying her with slowly filling eyes, became convinced that it would be useless to argue this point, though she made an effort to do so by saying with a noble disregard of her own womanly shame which in its turn caused Emma's eyes to fill:
"Dr. Sellick has suffered a great wrong, I judge; don't you think you owe something to him?"
But Emma shook her head, though she could not prevent a certain wistful look from creeping into her face. "Not what I owe to you," said she, and then flushed with distress lest her sister should misjudge the meaning of her words.
But Hermione was in a rarely generous mood. "But I release you from any promise you have made or any obligations you may consider yourself to be under. Great heaven! do you think I would hold you to them now ?"
"I hold myself," cried Emma. "You cannot release me,—except," she added, with gentle intimation, "by releasing yourself."
"I cannot release myself," moaned Hermione. "If we all perish I cannot release myself. I am a prisoner to this house, but you——"
"We are sister prisoners," interpolated Emma, softly. Then with a sudden smile, "I was in hopes that he who led you to break one resolution might induce you to break another."
But Hermione, flushing with something of her old fire, cried out warmly: "In going out of the house I broke a promise made to myself, but in leaving the grounds I should—oh, I cannot tell you what I should do; not even you know the full bitterness of my life! It is a secret, locked in this shrinking, tortured heart, which it almost breaks, but does not quite, or I should not linger in this dreadful world to be a cause of woe to those I cherish most."
"You think you know what has set a seal on my lips, the gloom on my brow, the death in my heart; but you do not, Emma. You know much, but not the fatal grief, the irrepressible misery. But you shall know, and know soon. I have promised to write out the whole history of my life for Mr. Etheridge, and when he has read it you shall read it too. Perhaps when you learn what the real horror of this house has been, you may appreciate the force of will-power which it has taken for me to remain in it."
Emma, who had never suspected anything in the past beyond what she herself knew, grew white with fresh dismay. But Hermione, seeing it, kissed her, and, speaking more lightly, said: "You kept back one vital secret from me in consideration of what you thought the limit of my endurance. I have done the same for you under the same consideration. Now we will equalize matters, and perhaps—who knows?—happier days may come, if Mr. Etheridge is not too much startled by the revelations I have to make him, and if Dr. Sellick—do not shrink, Emma—learns some magnanimity from his friend and will accept the explanations I shall think it my duty to offer him."
But at this suggestion, so unlike any that had ever come from Hermione's lips before, the younger sister first stared, and then flung her arms around the speaker, with cries of soft deprecation and shame.
"You shall not," she murmured. "Not if I lose him shall he ever know why that cruel letter was written. It is enough—it shall be enough—that he was dismissed then . If he loves me he will try his fate again. But I do not think he does love me, and it would be better for him that he did not. Would he ever marry a woman who, not even at his entreaty, could be induced to cross the limits of her home?"
"Mr. Etheridge should not do it either; but he is so generous—perhaps so hopeful! He may not be as much so when he has read what I have to write."
"I think he will," said Emma, and then paused, remembering that she did not know all that her sister had to relate.
"He would be a man in a thousand then," whispered the once haughty Hermione. "A man to worship, to sacrifice all and everything to, that it was in one's power to sacrifice."
"He will do what is right," quoth Emma.
Hermione sighed. Was she afraid of the right?
Meantime, in the poplar-walk below, another talk was being held, which, if these young girls could have heard it, might have made them feel even more bitterly than before, what heavy clouds lay upon any prospect of joy which they might secretly cherish. Doris, who was a woman of many thoughts, and who just now found full scope for all her ideas in the unhappy position of her two dear young ladies, had gone into the open air to pick currants and commune with herself as to what more could be done to bring them into a proper recognition of their folly in clinging to a habit or determination which seemed likely to plunge them into such difficulties.
The currant bushes were at the farther end of the garden near the termination of the poplar-walk, and when, in one of the pauses of her picking, she chanced to look up, she saw advancing towards her down that walk the thin, wiry figure of the old man who had taken luncheon with the young ladies, and whom they called, in very peculiar tones, she thought, Mr. Huckins. He was looking from right to left as he came, and his air was one of contemplation or that of a person who was taking in the beauties of a scene new to him and not wholly unpleasant.
When he reached the spot where Doris stood eying him with some curiosity and not a little distrust, he paused, looked about him, and perceiving her, affected some surprise, and stepped briskly to where she was.
"Picking currants?" he observed. "Let me help you. I used to do such things when a boy."
Astonished, and not a little gratified at what she chose to consider his condescension, Doris smiled. It was a rare thing now for a man to be seen in this lonesome old place, and such companionship was not altogether disagreeable to Mistress Doris.
Huckins rubbed his hands together in satisfaction at this smile, and sidled up to the simpering spinster with a very propitiatory air.
"How nice this all is," he remarked. "So rural, so peaceful, and so pleasant. I come from a place where there is no fruit, nor flowers, nor young ladies. You must be happy here." And he gave her a look which she thought very insinuating.
"Oh, I am happy enough," she conceded, "because I am bound to be happy wherever the young ladies are. But I could wish that things were different too." And she thought herself very discreet that she had not spoken more clearly.
"Things?" he repeated softly.
"Yes, my young ladies have odd ideas; I thought you knew."
He drew nearer to her side, very much nearer, and dropped the currants he had plucked gently into her pail.
"I know they have a fixed antipathy to going out, but they will get over that."
"Do you think so?" she asked eagerly.
"Don't you ?" he queried, with an innocent look of surprise. He was improving in his dissimulation, or else he succeeded better with those of whom he had no fear.
"I don't know what to think. Are you an old friend of theirs?" she inquired. "You must be, to lunch with them."
"I never saw them before to-day," he returned, "yet I am an old friend. Reason that out," he leered.
"You like to puzzle folks," she observed, picking very busily but smiling all the while. "Do you give answers with your puzzles?"
"Not to such sharp wits as yours. But how beautiful Miss Cavanagh is. Has she always had that scar?"
"Ever since I knew her."
"Pity she should have such a blemish. You like her, don't you, very much?"
"I love her."
"And her sister—such a sweet girl!"
"I love them both."
"That is right. I should be sorry to have any one about them who did not love them. I love them, or soon shall, very much."
"Are you," Doris inquired, with great inquisitiveness, "going to remain in Marston any time?"
"I cannot say," sighed the old man; "I should like to. I should be very happy here, but I am afraid the young ladies do not like me well enough."
Doris had cherished some such idea herself an hour ago, and had not wondered at it then, but now her feelings seemed changed.
"Was it to see them you came to Marston?" said she.
"Merely to see them," he replied.
She was puzzled, but more eager than puzzled, so anxious was she to find some one who could control their eccentricities.
"They will treat you politely," she assured him. "They are peculiar girls, but they are always polite."
"I am afraid I shall not be satisfied with politeness," he insinuated. "I want them to love me, to confide in me. I want to be their friend in fact as I have so long been in fancy."
"You are some relative of theirs," she now asserted, "or you knew their father well or their mother."
"I wouldn't say no," he replied,—but to which of these three intimations, he evidently did not think it worth while to say.
"Then," she declared, "you are the man I want. Mr. Etheridge—that is the lawyer from New York who has lately been coming here—does not seem to have much confidence in himself or me. But you look as if you might do something or suggest something. I mean about getting the young ladies to give up their whims."
"Has this Mr.—Mr. Etheridge, did you call him?—been doing their business long?"
"I never saw him here till a month ago."
"Ah! a month ago! And do they like him? Do they seem inclined to take his advice? Does he press it upon them?"
"I wish I knew. I am only a poor servant, remember, though my bringing up was as good almost as theirs. They are kind to me, but I do not sit down in the parlor; if I did, I might know something of what is going on. I can only judge, you see, by looks."
"And the looks? Come, I have a great interest in the young ladies—almost as great as yours. What do their looks say?—I mean since this young man came to visit them? He is a young man, didn't you say?"
"Yes, he is young, and so good-looking. I have thought—now don't spill the currants, just as we have filled the pail—that he was a little sweet on Miss Hermione, and that that was why he came here so often, and not because he had business."
"You have?" twitted the old man, almost dancing about her in his sudden excitement. "Well, well, that must be seen to. A wedding, eh, a wedding? That's what you think is coming?" And Doris could not tell whether it was pleasure or alarm that gave so queer a look to his eyes.
"I cannot say—I wish I could," she fervently cried; "then I might hope to see a change here; then we might expect to see these two sweet young ladies doing like other folks and making life pleasant for themselves and every one about them. But Miss Hermione is a girl who would be very capable of saying no to a young man if he stood in the way of any resolve she had taken. I don't calculate much on her being influenced by love, or I would never have bothered you with my troubles. It is fear that must control her, or——" Doris paused and looked at him knowingly—"or she must be lured out of the house by some cunning device."
Huckins, who had been feeling his way up to this point, brightened as he noticed the slyness of the smile with which she emphasized this insinuation, and from this moment felt more assured. But he said nothing as yet to show how he was affected by her words. There was another little matter he wanted settled first.
"Do you know," he asked, "why she, and her sister, too, I believe, have taken this peculiar freak? Have they ever told you, or have you ever—" how close his head got to hers, and how he nodded and peered—"surprised their secret?"
Doris shook her head. "All a mystery," she whispered, and began picking currants again, that operation having stopped as they got more earnest.
"But it isn't a mystery," he laughed, "why you want to get them out of the house just now . I know your reason for that, and think you will succeed without any device of love or cunning."
"I don't understand you," she protested, puckering her black brows and growing very energetic. "I don't want to do it now any more than I have for the last twelve months. Only I am getting desperate. I am not one who can want a thing and be patient. I want Miss Hermione Cavanagh and her sister to laugh and be gay like other girls, and till they give up all this nonsense of self-seclusion they never will; and so I say to myself that any measures are justifiable that lead to that end. Don't you think I am right?"
He smiled warily and took her pail of currants from her hand.
"I think you are the brightest woman and have one of the clearest heads I ever knew. I don't remember when I have seen a woman who pleased me so well. Shall we be friends? I am only a solitary bachelor, travelling hither and thither because I do not know how else to spend my money; but I am willing to work for your ends if you are willing to work for mine."
"And what are they?" she simpered, looking very much delighted. Doris was not without ambition, and from this moment not without her hopes.
"To make these young ladies trust me so that I may visit them off and on while I remain in this place. I thought it was pleasant here before, but now ——" The old fellow finished with a look and a sigh, and Doris' subjugation was complete.
Yet she did not let him at this time any further into her plans, possibly because she had not formed any. She only talked on more and more about her love for the young ladies, and her wonder over their conduct, and he, listening for any chance word which might help him in his own perplexity, walked back at her side, till they arrived in sight of the house, when he gave her the pail and slunk back to come on later alone. But a seed was sown at that interview which was destined to bear strange fruit; and it is hard telling which felt the most satisfaction at the understood compact between them—the hard, selfish, and scheming miser, or the weak and obstinate serving-woman, who excused to herself the duplicity of her conduct by the plea, true enough as far as it went, that she was prompted by love for those she served, and a desire to see the two women she admired as bright and happy as their youth and beauty demanded.