University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

Two or three hours after the departure of the fugitives
passed quietly over — quietly, that is, as to events; but
Mrs. Darley had been so agitated and tired with the
excitement of the morning that she could not get over it,
and Dora was far more alarmed than she confessed at
the alternate fever and deathly faintness that her mother
vainly tried to conceal. Whatever the child could do
was done, although with few words; nor did the little
housemaid neglect to prepare dinner for her father at the
usual time, although she secretly feared his return home
in a temper ill suited to a pleasant repast.

A little after noon, the sound of hurried feet was heard
outside the door, and Mr. Darley entered with rude
violence, followed by Sykes and another man of the
same stamp.

Mrs. Darley closed her eyes, and turned very pale.
Dora went to her side, and taking her hand, turned a
keen, defiant gaze upon the strangers. At her father
she did not glance.

“Mary, what man came here this morning about eight
o'clock?” asked Darley, sternly.

His wife made no answer, nor did she unclose her eyes.

“Mother is very sick indeed to-day, father. She isn't
able to talk at all,” said Dora, firmly.

“Well, you're not sick, Miss Pert. Answer for her.”

“I can't. It disturbs her to hear talking. Do go
away, father, and take these men. Poor mother!”

“Just tell me this, Dora. Did a man come here this
morning?” persisted Darley, impatiently, although he
lowered his voice, and cast an anxious glance at his
wife's deathly face.

“A man? There's no one about, father, but mother
and me. There's no man here.”

“Well, but there has been. I see a feller come in
'long o' yer old nigger. I see him myself,” broke in
Joe Sykes, pushing himself forward.

Dora glanced scornfully at the speaker, and made no
reply.

“Come, Do, tell me if such a man came, and who he
was, and where he's gone, and then we won't plague
you and mother any more,” said Darley, in the coaxing
tone that long experience had taught him was the easiest
method of reaching his daughter's heart.

“There was a man came to the door, and asked for
something to eat, this morning, father. I gave him
something, and he went away. I don't know where he's
gone, or who he was, and I can't tell anything more
about him. Now, please, father, will you take these men
away, and let poor mother rest?”

“She don't know anything about him,” said Darley,
turning to his companions. “I didn't suppose she did in
the first place. Come, let's quit.”

“Well, that old nigger knows ef the gal don't,” persisted
Sykes. “He wouldn't ha' been so sarcy to me ef
he hadn't know'd somethin' more'n he let on. Let's go
see what he has to say 'bout it.”

“All right. You may talk to him as ha'sh as you're
a mind to,” said Mr. Darley, leading the way to the
door, and evidently glad to relieve his wife and daughter
of the annoyance of the examination by shifting it to
shoulders so well used to burdens as those of poor Picter.

Left alone, Mrs. Darley broke into a fit of convulsive
weeping, and Dora vainly tried to comfort her.

While she was still bending over the couch, the kitchen
door was again opened, and Darley's voice harshly inquired,
—

“Where's Picter, Dora?”

“I don't know where he is, father.”

“Haven't you sent him away?”

“No, father, I have not.”

“Well, haven't you, Mary? What in the world are
you crying so about?”

“O, father, mother is very sick indeed. How can
you worry her so?”

Half angry, half ashamed, Mr. Darley drew back his
head, muttering inaudibly some remark about a “saucy
young one,” and went back to his companions.

After a short consultation all three rode away together,
and Dora at last had the pleasure of seeing her mother
drop into a troubled sleep.

This lasted until about four o'clock, when Mr. Darley
returned alone, but in a much more violent mood than
he had been at noon. He had been drinking pretty
freely with his companions, who had not spared some
taunts as to his being afraid of his wife and daughter,
and intimations that Mrs. Darley knew very well where
the Yankee officer was, and might be made to tell if her
husband could muster sufficient spirit to insist upon it.

More than this, Mr. Darley had become anxious regarding
Picter's prolonged absence, knowing, as he did,
his wife's wish to give the slave his freedom; and he had
returned home determined to learn the exact truth as to
the occurrences of the morning.

The invalid, suddenly aroused from sleep, was naturally
nervous and bewildered; and Mr. Darley, finding
her answers still less satisfactory than in the morning,
soon became very angry and abusive. Not satisfied with
what could be said upon the subject in hand, he went
back to various matters of disagreement between himself
and his wife in former times, principally connected with
the abolitionist sentiments that Mrs. Darley had occasionally
expressed, and the horror she had not concealed at
certain cruelties and excesses among Mr. Darley's chosen
friends and associates.

The consequence of this violence was, that the sick
woman became terribly agitated, and was finally seized
with nervous spasms, that seemed likely to end her life at
once. The sight of her sufferings, and Dora's indignant
expostulations, at last aroused a feeling of shame and
remorse in the husband's nature, and he hurried away to
send the doctor, and to bring Mrs. Wilson, a married
sister of his own, who lived at a distance of two miles.

Before they arrived, however, the invalid had grown
so much calmer, under Dora's eager but judicious care,
that the doctor, after attentively examining her condition,
merely prescribed a composing draught, and hurried
away to another patient. As Mr. Darley attended him to
the door, however, the gruff old physician briefly said, —

“That woman'll die any minute — go right out like a
candle. All you can do for her is to keep her quiet and
comfortable. Don't agitate her about anything.”

Mr. Darley stood on the doorstep, looking after the
doctor's sulky, with a very uncomfortable feeling about
his throat. He was really as fond of his wife as a selfish
and depraved man could be; he had, indeed, been passionately
in love with her when he tempted her to run away
from her father's house with him, and the doctor's warning
sounded to him very much like a reproach.

Presently he went quietly into the house, and sat down
by the fire, with his head leaning on his hand. Dora,
looking keenly at him as she went in and out of the

bedroom, pitied her father, and yet could not but be
glad at the thought that while thus preoccupied, he
would not be likely to ask any more questions about
Picter.

Mrs. Wilson, a sharp, bustling, managing sort of woman,
so soon as she arrived, took possession of the invalid,
and ordered everything about her in her own fashion.
Sometimes these fashions were not Dora's; and in these
cases the child quietly pursued her own way, in spite of
her aunt's peremptory advice to the contrary.

“Mother likes it this way,” was her simple reply
when her aunt crossly inquired why she had altered the
arrangement of the window curtains that Mrs. Wilson
had carefully pinned together, and that Dora now looped
back to admit the soft western light.

“Little girls shouldn't think they know more than
them that's older than they be,” said Mrs. Wilson,
frowning.

“But I do know more about mother, because I'm more
used to her than any one else is,” said Dora, simply.

“Dora, child,” said Mrs. Darley, feebly, “you've
been in the house all day. Go now and take a little run
while aunt sits with me. Go meet Tom.”

“I'd rather stay with you, mother.”

“No, Dora; I want you to go. I really do.”

“Well, then, I will,” said the child; and putting a little
shawl about her, she stole softly out at the back door.