University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

ONE afternoon, about ten days after the receipt of
Mr. Manning's letter, when Edna returned from
the parsonage, she found the family assembled
on the front verandah, and saw that the expected
visitor had arrived. As Mrs. Murray introduced her to
Mr. Allston, the latter rose, advanced a few steps, and held
out his hand. Edna was in the act of giving him hers,
when the heart-shaped diamond cluster on his finger flashed,
and one swift glance at his face and figure made her snatch
away her hand ere it touched his, and draw back with a
half-smothered exclamation.

He bit his lip, looked inquiringly around the circle,
smiled, and returning to his seat beside Estelle, resumed the
gay conversation in which he had been engaged.

Mrs. Murray was leaning over the iron balustrade, twining
a wreath of multiflora around one of the fluted columns,
and did not witness the brief pantomime; but when she
looked around she could not avoid remarking the unwonted
pallor and troubled expression of the girl's face.

“What is the matter, child? You look as if you were
either ill or dreadfully fatigued.”

“I am tired, thank you,” was the rather abstracted reply,
and she walked into the house and sat down before the
open window in the library.

The sun had just gone down behind a fleecy cloud-mountain
and kindled a volcano, from whose silver-rimmed crater
fiery rays of scarlet shot up, almost to the clear blue zenith;

while here and there, through clefts and vapory gorges, the
lurid lava light streamed down toward the horizon.

Vacantly her eyes rested on this sky-Hecla, and its splendor
passed away unheeded, for she was looking far beyond
the western gates of day, and saw a pool of blood—a ghastly
face turned up to the sky—a coffined corpse strewn with
white poppies and rosemary—a wan, dying woman, whose
waving hair braided the pillow with gold—a wide, deep
grave under the rustling chestnuts from whose green arches
rang the despairing wail of a broken heart:

“O Harry! my husband!”

Imagination travelling into the past, painted two sunny-haired,
prattling babes, suddenly smitten with orphanage,
and robed in mourning garments for parents whose fond,
watchful eyes were closed forever under wild clover and
trailing brambles. Absorbed in retrospection of that June
day, when she stood by the spring, and watched

she sat with her head resting against the window-facing,
and was not aware of Mr. Murray's entrance until his
harsh, querulous voice startled her.

“Edna Earl! what apology have you to offer for insulting
a relative and guest of mine under my roof?”

“None, sir.”

“What! How dare you treat with unparalleled rudeness
a visitor, whose claim upon the courtesy and hospitality
of this household is certainly more legitimate and
easily recognized than that of—”

He stopped and kicked out of his way a stool upon which
Edna's feet had been resting. She had risen, and they
stood face to face.

“I am waiting to hear the remainder of your sentence,
Mr. Murray.”

He uttered an oath and hurled his cigar through the
window.

“Why the d—l did you refuse to shake hands with Allston?

I intend to know the truth, and it may prove an
economy of trouble for you to speak it at once.”

“If you demand my reasons, you must not be offended at
the plainness of my language. Your cousin is a murderer,
and ought to be hung! I could not force myself to touch
a hand all smeared with blood.”

Mr. Murray leaned down and looked into her eyes.

“You are either delirious or utterly mistaken with reference
to the identity of the man. Clinton is no more guilty
of murder than you are, and I have been led to suppose
that you are rather too `pious' to attempt the rôle of Marguérite
de Brinvilliers or Joanna of Hainault! Cufic lore
has turned your brain; `too much learning hath made thee
mad.'”

“No, sir, it is no hallucination; there can be no mistake;
it is a horrible, awful fact, which I witnessed, which is
burned on my memory, and which will haunt my brain as
long as I live. I saw him shoot Mr. Dent, and heard all
that passed on that dreadful morning. He is doubly criminal—is
as much the murderer of Mrs. Dent as of her husband,
for the shock killed her. Oh! that I could forget her
look and scream of agony as she fainted over her husband's
coffin!”

A puzzled expression crossed Mr. Murray's face; then he
muttered:

“Dent? Dent? Ah! yes; that was the name of the man
whom Clinton killed in a duel. Pshaw! you have whipped
up a syllabub storm in a tea-cup! Allston only took `satisfaction'
for an insult offered publicly by Dent.”

His tone was sneering and his lip curled, but a strange
pallor crept from chin to temples; and a savage glare in his
eyes, and a thickening scowl that bent his brows till they
met, told of the brewing of no slight tempest of passion.

“I know, sir, that custom, public opinion, sanctions—at
least tolerates that relic of barbarous ages—that blot upon
Christian civilization which, under the name of `dueling,'

I recognize as a crime; a heinous crime which I abhor and
detest above all other crimes! Sir, I call things by their
proper names, stripped of the glozing drapery of conventional
usage. You say `honorable satisfaction;' I say
murder! aggravated, unpardonable murder; murder without
even the poor palliation of the sudden heat of anger.
Cool, deliberate, wilful murder, that stabs the happiness of
wives and children, and for which it would seem that even
the infinite mercy of Almighty God could scarcely accord
forgiveness! Oh! save me from the presence of that man
who can derive `satisfaction' from the reflection that he
has laid Henry and Helen Dent in one grave, under the
quiet shadow of Lookout, and brought desolation and orphanage
to their two innocent, tender darlings! Shake
hands with Clinton Allston? I would sooner stretch out my
fingers to clasp those of Gardiner, reeking with the blood
of his victims, or those of Ravaillac! Ah! well might
Dante shudder in painting the chilling horrors of Caïna.”

The room was dusky with the shadow of coming night;
but the fading flush, low in the west, showed St. Elmo's face
colorless, rigid, repulsive in its wrathful defiance.

He bent forward, seized her hands, folded them together,
and grasping them in both his, crushed them against his
breast.

“Ha! I knew that hell and heaven were leagued to poison
your mind! That your childish conscience was frightened
by tales of horror, and your imagination harrowed up,
your heart lacerated by the cunning devices of that arch
maudlin old hypocrite! The seeds of clerical hate fell in
good ground, and I see a bountiful harvest nodding for my
sickle! Oh! you are more pliable than I had fancied! You
have been thoroughly trained down yonder at the parsonage.
But I will be—”

There was a trembling pant in his voice like that of some
wild creature driven from its jungle, hopeless of escape,
holding its hunters temporarily at bay, waiting for death.

The girl's hands ached in his unyielding grasp, and after
two ineffectual efforts to free them, a sigh of pain passed
her lips and she said proudly:

“No, sir; my detestation of that form of legalized murder,
politely called `dueling,' was not taught me at the
parsonage. I learned it in my early childhood, before I
ever saw Mr. Hammond; and though I doubt not he agrees
with me in my abhorrence of the custom, I have never
heard him mention the subject.”

“Hypocrite! hypocrite! Meek little wolf in lamb's
wool! Do you dream that you can deceive me? Do you
think me an idiot, to be cajoled by your low-spoken denials
of a fact which I know? A fact, to the truth of which I
will swear till every star falls!”

“Mr. Murray, I never deceived you, and I know that
however incensed you may be, however harsh and unjust,
I know that in your heart you do not doubt my truthfulness.
Why you invariably denounce Mr. Hammond when
you happen to be displeased with me, I can not conjecture;
but I tell you solemnly that he has never even indirectly
alluded to the question of `duelling' since I have known
him. Mr. Murray, I know you do entirely believe me
when I utter these words.”

A tinge of red leaped into his cheek, something that
would have been called hope in any other man's eyes looked
out shyly from under his heavy black lashes, and a
tremor shook off the sneering curl of his bloodless lips.

Drawing her so close to him that his hair touched her
forehead, he whispered:

“If I believe in you my—it is in defiance of judgment,
will, and experience, and some day you will make me pay
a most humiliating penalty for my momentary weakness.
To-night I trust you as implicitly as Samson did the smooth-lipped
Delilah; to-morrow I shall realize that, like him, I
richly deserve to be shorn for my silly credulity.”

He threw her hands rudely from him, turned hastily and
left the library.

Edna sat down and covered her face with her bruised
and benumbed fingers, but she could not shut out the sight
of something that astonished and frightened her—of something
that made her shudder from head to foot, and crouch
down in her chair cowed and humiliated. Hitherto she had
fancied that she thoroughly understood and sternly governed
her heart—that conscience and reason ruled it; but within
the past hour it had suddenly risen in dangerous rebellion,
thrown off its allegiance to all things else, and insolently
proclaimed St. Elmo Murray its king. She could not analyze
her new feelings, they would not obey the summons to
the tribunal of her outraged self-respect; and with bitter
shame and reproach and abject contrition, she realized that
she had begun to love the sinful, blasphemous man who had
insulted her revered grandfather, and who barely tolerated
her presence in his house.

This danger had never once occurred to her, for she had
always believed that love could only exist where high esteem
and unbounded reverence prepared the soil; and she
was well aware that this man's character had from the first
hour of their acquaintance excited her aversion and dread.
Ten days before she had positively disliked and feared him;
now, to her amazement, she found him throned in her
heart, defying ejection. The sudden revulsion bewildered
and mortified her, and she resolved to crush out the feeling
at once, cost what it might. When Mrs. Murray had asked
if she loved any one else better than Mr. Leigh, she thought,
nay she knew, she answered truly in the negative. But
now when she attempted to compare the two men, such a
strange, yearning tenderness pleaded for St. Elmo, and palliated
his grave faults, that the girl's self-accusing severity
wrung a groan from the very depths of her soul.

When the sad discovery was first made, conscience lifted
its hands in horror, because of the man's reckless wickedness;
but after a little while a still louder clamor was
raised by womanly pride, which bled at the thought of tolerating

a love unsought, unvalued; and with this fierce
rush of reënforcements to aid conscience, the insurgent
heart seemed destined to summary subjugation. Until this
hour, although conscious of many faults, she had not supposed
that there was any thing especially contemptible in
her character; but now the feeling of self-abasement was
unutterably galling. She despised herself most cordially,
and the consistent dignity of life which she had striven to
attain appeared hopelessly shattered.

While the battle of reason versus love was at its height,
Mrs. Murray put her head in the room and asked:

“Edna! Where are you, Edna?”

“Here I am.”

“Why are you sitting in the dark? I have searched the
house for you.”

She groped her way across the room, lighted the gas, and
came to the window.

“What is the matter, child? Are you sick?”

“I think something must be the matter, for I do not feel
at all like myself,” stammered the orphan, as she hid her
face on the window-sill.

“Does your head ache?”

“No, ma'am.”

She might have said very truly that her heart did.

“Give me your hand, let me feel your pulse. It is very
quick, but shows nervous excitement rather than fever
Child, let me see your tongue, I hear there are some typhoid
cases in the neighborhood. Why, how hot your cheeks
are!”

“Yes, I will go up and bathe them, and perhaps I shall
feel better.”

“I wish you would come into the parlor as soon as you
can, for Estelle says Clinton thought you were very rude
to him; and though I apologized on the score of indisposition,
I prefer that you should make your appearance this
evening. Stop, you have dropped your handkerchief.”

Edna stooped to pick it up, saw Mr. Murray's name
printed in one corner, and her first impulse was to thrust
it into her pocket; but instantly she held it toward his
mother.

“It is not mine, but your son's. He was here about an
hour ago and must have dropped it.”

“I thought he had gone out over the grounds with Clinton.
What brought him here?”

“He came to scold me for not shaking hands with his
cousin.”

“Indeed! you must have been singularly rude if he
noticed any want of courtesy. Change your dress and come
down.”

It was in vain that Edna bathed her hot face and pressed
her cold hands to her cheeks. She felt as if all curious eyes
read her troubled heart. She was ashamed to meet the
family—above all things to see Mr. Murray. Heretofore
she had shunned him from dislike; now she wished to avoid
him because she began to feel that she loved him, and because
she dreaded that his inquisitorial eyes would discover
the contemptible, and, in her estimation, unwomanly weakness.

Taking the basket which contained her sewing utensils
and a piece of light needle-work, she went into the parlor
and seated herself near the centre-table, over which swung
the chandelier.

Mr. Murray and his mother were sitting on a sofa, the
former engaged in cutting the leaves of a new book, and
Estelle Harding was describing in glowing terms a scene
in “Phèdre,” which owed its charm she thought to Rachel's
marvellous acting. As she repeated the soliloquy beginning,

Edna felt as if her own great weakness were known to
the world, and she bent her face close to her basket and
tumbled the contents into inextricable confusion.

To-night Estelle seemed in unusually fine spirits, and talked
on rapidly, till St. Elmo suddenly appeared to become
aware of the import of her words, and in a few trenchant
sentences he refuted the criticism on Phèdre, advising his
cousin to confine her comments to dramas with which she
was better acquainted.

His tone and manner surprised Mr. Allston, who remarked:

“Were I Czar, I would issue a ukase, chaining you to the
steepest rock on the crest of Mount Byelucha till you learned
the courtesy due to lady disputants. Upon my word,
St. Elmo, you assault Miss Estelle with as much élan as if
you were carrying a redoubt. One would suppose that you
had been in good society long enough to discover that the
fortiter in re style is not allowable in discussions with
ladies.”

“When women put on boxing-gloves and show their faces
in the ring, they challenge rough handling, and are rarely
disappointed. I am sick of sciolism, especially that phase
where it crops out in shallow criticism, and every day something
recalls the reprimand of Apelles to the shoemaker. If
a worthy and able literary tribunal and critical code could
be established, it would be well to revive an ancient Locrian
custom, which required that the originators of new laws or
propositions should be brought before the assembled wisdom,
with halters round their necks, ready for speedy execution
if the innovation proved, on examination, to be utterly
unsound or puerile. Ah! what a wholesale hanging of
sciolists would gladden my eyes!”

Mr. Murray bowed to his cousin as he spoke, and rising,
took his favorite position on the rug.

“Really, Aunt Ellen, I would advise you to have him
re-christened, under the name of Timon,” said Mr. Allston.

“No, no. I decidedly object to any such gratification of

his would-be classic freaks; and, as he is evidently aping
Timon, though, unfortunately, nature denied him the Attic
salt requisite to flavor the character, I would suggest, as a
more suitable sobriquet, that bestowed on Louis X., `Le
Hutin'—freely translated, `The Quarrelsome!' What say
you, St. Elmo?”

Estelle walked up to her cousin and stood at his side.

“That it is very bad policy to borrow one's boxing-gloves;
and I happened to overhear Edna Earl when she
made that same suggestion to Gordon Leigh, with reference
to my amiable temperament. However, there is a maxim
which will cover your retreat, and which you can conscientiously
utter with much emphasis, if your memory is only
as good in repeating all the things you may have heard.
Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt! Shall I translate?”

She laughed lightly, and answered:

“So much for eavesdropping! Of all the gentlemen of
my acquaintance, I should fancy you were the very last
who could afford to indulge in that amusement.”

“Miss Estelle, is this your first, second, or third Punic
war? You and St. Elmo, or rather, my cousin `The Quarrelsome,'
seem to wage it in genuine Carthaginian style.”

“I never signed a treaty, sir, and, consequently, keep no
records.”

“Clinton, there is a chronic casus belli between us, the
original spring of which antedates my memory. But at
present Estelle is directing all her genius and energy to
effect, for my individual benefit, a practical reënactment of
the old Papia Poppæa, which Augustus hurled at the
heads of all peaceful, happy bachelordom!”

For the first time during the conversation Edna glanced
up at Estelle, for, much as she disliked her, she regretted
this thrust; but her pity was utterly wasted, and she was
surprised to find her countenance calm and smiling.

Mr. Allston shrugged his shoulders, and Mrs. Murray
exclaimed:

“I sound a truce! For heaven's sake, St. Elmo, lock up
your learning with your mummies, and when you will say
barbarous things, use language that will enable us to understand
that we are being snubbed. Now who do you suppose
comprehends `Papia Poppæa'? You are insufferably
pedantic!”

“My dear mother, do you remember ever to have read
or heard the celebrated reply of a certain urbane lexicographer
to the rashly ambitious individual who attempted
to find fault with his dictionary? Permit me, most respectfully,
to offer it for your consideration.! `I am bound to
furnish good definitions, but not brains to comprehend
them.'”

“I thought you told me you had spent some time in
China?” said Miss Harding.

“So I did, and learned to read the `Liki.'”

“I was laboring under the misapprehension that even
strangers visiting that country caught the contagion of
filial respect, of reverence for parents, which is there inculcated
by law.”

“Among Chinese maxims is one to this effect: `All persons
are alike, and the only difference is in the education.'
Now, as you and I were raised in the same nursery, what
becomes of your veneration for Chinese canons?”

“I think, sir, that it is a very great misfortune for those
who have to associate with you now that you were not
raised in Sparta, where it was every body's privilege to
whip their neighbor's vicious, spoiled children! Such a
regimen would doubtless have converted you into an amiable,
or at least endurable member of society.”

“That is problematical, my fair cousin, for if my provocative
playmate had accompanied me, I'll be sworn but I
think the supply of Spartan birch would have utterly failed
to sweeten my temper. I should have shared the fate of
those unfortunate boys who were whipped to death in Lacedæmon,
in honor of Diana; said whipping-festival (I here

remark parenthetically, for my mother's enjoyment) being
known in classic parlance as Diamastigosis!”

His mother answered laughingly:

“Estelle is quite right; you contrived to grow up without
the necessary and healthful quota of sound whipping
which you richly deserved.”

Mr. Murray did not seem to hear her words; he was
looking down intently, smilingly into his cousin's handsome
face, and, passing his arm around her waist, drew her close
to his side. He murmured something that made her throw
her head quickly back against his shoulder and look up at
him.

“If such is the end of all your quarrels, it offers a premium
for unamiability,” said Mr. Allston, who had been
studying Edna's face, and now turned again to his cousin.
Curling the end of his moustache, he continued:

“St. Elmo, you have travelled more extensively than any
one I know, and under peculiarly favorable circumstances.
Of all the spots you have visited, which would you pronounce
the most desirable for a permanent residence?”

“Have you an idea of expatriating yourself—of `quitting
your country for your country's good'?”

“One never knows what contingencies may arise, and I
should like to avail myself of your knowledge; for I feel
assured only very charming places would have detained
you long.”

“Then, were I at liberty to select a home, tranquil,
blessed beyond all expression, I should certainly lose no time
in domesticating myself in the Peninsula of Mount Athos.”

“Ah! yes; the scenery all along that coast is described
as surprisingly beautiful and picturesque.”

“O bah! the scenery is quite as grand in fifty other
places. Its peculiar attraction consists in something far
more precious.”

“To what do you refer?”

“Its marvelous and bewildering charm is to be found

entirely in the fact that, since the days of Constantine, no
woman has set foot on its peaceful soil; and the happy
dwellers in that sole remaining earthly Eden are so vigi
lant, dreading the entrance of another Eve, that no female
animal is permitted to intrude upon the sacred precincts!
The embargo extends even to cats, cows, dogs, lest the innate
female proclivity to make mischief should be found
dangerous in the brute creation. Constantine lived in the
latter part of the third and beginning of the fourth century.
Think of the divine repose, the unapproachable beatification
of residing in a land where no woman has even peeped
for fifteen hundred years!”

“May all good angels help me to steer as far as possible
from such a nest of cynics! I would sooner confront an
army of Amazons headed by Penthesilea herself, than trust
myself among a people unhumanized and uncivilized by the
refining influence and companionship of women! St. Elmo,
you are the most abominable misogamist I ever met, and
you deserve to fall into the clutches of those `eight mighty
daughters of the plow,' to which Tennyson's Princess
consigned the Prince. Most heartily I pity you!”

“For shame, St. Elmo! A stranger listening to your
gallant diatribe, would inevitably conclude that your mother
was as unnatural and unamiable as Lord Byron's; and that
I, your most devoted, meek, and loving cousin, was quite
as angelic as Miss Edgeworth's Modern Griselda!”

Affecting great indignation, Estelle attempted to quit his
side; but, tightening his arm, Mr. Murray bowed and resumed:

“Had your imaginary stranger ever heard of the science
of logic, or even dreamed of Whately or Mill, the conclusion
would, as you say, be inevitable. More fortunate than
Rasselas, I found a happy spot where the names of women
are never called, where the myths of Até and Pandora are
forgotten, and where the only females that have successfully
run the rigid blockade are the tormenting fleas, that wage

a ceaseless war with the unoffending men, and justify their
nervous horror lest any other creature of the same sex
should smuggle herself into their blissful retreat. I have
seen crowned heads, statesmen, great military chieftains,
and geniuses, whose names are destined to immortality;
but standing here, reviewing my certainly extended acquaintance,
I swear I envy above all others that handsome
monk whom Curzon found at Simopetra, who had never
seen a woman! He was transplanted to the Holy Mountain
while a mere infant, and though assured he had had a
mother, he accepted the statement with the same blind faith,
which was required for some of the religious dogmas he was
called on to swallow. I have frequently wondered whether
the ghost of poor Socrates would not be allowed, in consideration
of his past sufferings and trials, to wander forever
in that peaceful realm where even female ghosts are
tabooed.”

“There is some terrible retribution in store for your
libels on our sex! How I do long to meet some woman
brave and wily enough to marry and tame you, my chivalric
cousin! to revenge the insults you have heaped upon
her sisterhood!”

“By fully establishing the correctness of my estimate of
their amiability? That were dire punishment indeed for
what you deem my heresies. If I could realize the possibility
of such a calamity, I should certainly bewail my fate
in the mournful words of that most astute of female wits,
who is reported to have exclaimed, in considering the angelic
idiosyncrasies of her gentle sisterhood, `The only
thought which can reconcile me to being a woman is that
I shall not have to marry one!'”

The expression with which Mr. Murray regarded Estelle
reminded Edna of the account given by a traveller of the
playful mood of a lion, who, having devoured one gazelle,
kept his paw on another, and amid occasional growls, teased
and toyed with his victim.

As the orphan sat bending over her work listening to the
conversation, she asked herself scornfully:

“What hallucination has seized me? The man is a
mocking devil, unworthy the respect or toleration of any
Christian woman. What redeeming trait can even my partial
eyes discover in his distorted, sinful nature? Not one.
No, not one!”

She was rejoiced when he uttered a sarcasm or an opinion
that shocked her, for she hoped that his irony would
cauterize what she considered a cancerous spot in her heart.

“Edna, as you are not well, I advise you to put aside
that embroidery, which must try your eyes very severely,”
said Mrs. Murray.

She folded up the piece of cambric and was putting it in
her basket, when Mr. Allston asked with more effrontery
than the orphan was prepared for:

“Miss Earl, have I not seen you before to-day?”

“Yes, sir.”

“May I ask where?”

“In a chestnut grove, where you shot Mr. Dent.”

“Indeed! Did you witness that affair? It happened
many years ago.”

There was not a shadow of pain or regret in his countenance
or tone, and rising, Edna said with unmistakable
emphasis:

“I saw all that occurred, and may God preserve me from
ever witnessing another murder so revolting!”

In the silence that ensued she turned toward Mrs. Murray,
bowed, and said as she quitted the parlor:

“Mrs. Murray, as I am not very well, you will please
excuse my retiring early.”

“Just what you deserve for bringing the subject on tapis.
I warned you not to allude to it.” As St. Elmo muttered
these words he pushed Estelle from him, and nodded to Mr.
Allston, who seemed as nearly nonplused as his habitual
impudence rendered possible.

Thoroughly dissatisfied with herself, and too restless to
sleep, the orphan passed the weary hours of night in endeavoring
to complete a chapter on Buddhism, which she
had commenced some days before; and the birds were
chirping their reveille, and the sky blanched and reddened
ere she laid down her pen and locked up her MS. Throwing
open the blinds of the eastern window she stood for
some time looking out, gathering strength from the holy
calm of the dewy morning, resolving to watch her own heart
ceaselessly, to crush promptly the strange feeling she had
found there, and to devote herself unreservedly to her
studies. At that moment the sound of horse's hoofs on the
stony walk attracted her attention, and she saw Mr. Murray
riding from the stables. As he passed her window he
glanced up, their eyes met, and he lifted his hat and rode
on. Were those the same sinister, sneering features she
had looked at the evening before? His face was paler,
sterner, and sadder than she had ever seen it, and covering
her own with her hands she murmured:

“God help me to resist that man's wicked magnetism!
O Grandpa! are you looking down on your poor little
Pearl? Will you forgive me for allowing myself ever to
have thought kindly and tenderly of this strange temptation
which Satan has sent to draw my heart away from my
God and my duty? Ah Grandpa! I will crush it—I will
conquer it! I will not yield!”