University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
THE DECISION.

Colonel Harwood, after having made a full revelation of the
subject which had brought him to seek the interview with his
daughter, remained silently watching her face as she walked quickly
up and down the room. He could not tell how she received his
words, whether her flashing eyes were for himself, or caused by
Satchell's audacity.

At length she sat down by him. Her features were stern, and
their rigid expression contrasted strangely with their delicate contour.

“Sir —,” she said in a tone that startled him, for the voice
did not seem to be hers. Other words she tried to articulate, but a
shower of tears burst from her eyes, and dropping her face upon her
father's hand she wept like a child. He could not witness such
powerful emotion unmoved; his chest heaved convulsively, and he
seemed overcome; his strong frame was shaken like an aspen leaf
in the breeze.

“Look up, my child! look up, dear niece,” he said. “Do not
break my heart. I recall all that I have said; I will let him do his
worst; I will bear my own shame and not involve your happiness.
You shall not wreck yourself for me. Come, I will go to him! I
will defy him!”

“No, no!” she cried' grasping his arm and pressing him back
into his chair; “no, it will not do. You must not let this infamy
fall upon you; nay, it is life and death, sir. I will do as you command.
Send him hither.”

“No; you speak as if you were ready to die with the idea of
being united to this man.”

“I have made up my mind what I will do; send him hither,”
she said, scarcely stirring her lips; for her voice seemed to come
from her very soul.

“You know that it depends on yourself, my dear Caroline. I
have done my part. The papers he will place in my possession
within this hour. There is no doubt that he will call to see you.”

“Send him; I do not fear to meet him,” she said, with a calmness
that amazed him.

“You do not think of consenting to wed him!” he exclaimed,
with surprise.

“Will he be content with less, sir, do you hope? Was it not the
condition?”

“Not exactly the condition. He said that if I gave my consent
and told you that I had given him my consent, it was enough; the
correspondence should be delivered into my hands. I know not

why he made such singular conditions; it surprised me, and I believed
he must have seen you, and got some hope from you that
made him sanguine of success.”

“Hope from me?”

“You do not understand my idea, Caroline. I feared from his
seeming confidence that he should have no difficulty with you if he
got my consent and influence; that he might have in some way
possessed a power over you, as he has over me. He is a singular,
a dangerous man; and he seems to come at the knowledge of things
in a way perfectly unaccountable. I therefore feared he might know
that you dared not refuse him, having you in his power.”

“Heaven forbid! You make me horrified, sir! He has no
power over me. I have never done any thing that could give him
power over me. He can have no such mysterious influence as you
suspect.”

“It is very extraordinary, more and more so. I do not understand
him. One thing is very clear, he would not say he would
surrender the papers without feeling confident that the condition he
named would be feasible. He would not surrender them upon an
uncertainty.”

“He has not yet given them up?”

“No.”

“Nor do I think he will till I give him my consent.”

“He solemnly promised to do so, so soon as I returned to the office
and told him that I had seen and told you that on your marrying
him hung my life and honor.”

“And will he take your word?”

“Yes,” answered Colonel Harwood, coloring quickly.

“Do you know that he will?”

“I believe when he says a thing he will do it,” he responded,
conscious that Satchell still would hold a rein over him, should he
deceive him, in the secret he possessed of his daughter's illegitimate
birth.

“It may be so. My dear uncle, what you expect of me is a
sacrifice that is greater than that of my life. But how can I refuse
to save you even at the sacrifice of myself? To you I owe all my
nurture, my education, my enjoyments and privileges; to you I
owe all but life, and had you been my father you could not have
been more kind to me. I feel called upon to surrender all I am to
save you, for what I am I owe to you. But perhaps this dreadful
sacrifice need not take place. I wish to see this man; I do not fear
him. There is nothing in an evil man for the innocent to fear.
Say not a word. Your danger is imminent; I will save you.”

“Kind, good, noble creature! I seem to be a demon in your presence.
I cannot consent; I will go to his office; I shall find him
alone; I will seize him by the throat; I will tear the papers from
his heart, if he should have hid them there; I will take his life!
It is better he should die than you be sacrificed to a man you can
never love,—nay, must despise and scorn, and to bear whose name
would be infamy.”

“Hist, my dear uncle; be calm, I beseech you; do not act rashly;
do not add to treason murder. Nothing can save you but my
sacrifice, or, what I trust most to, my influence with that fearful
man. I pray you, compose yourself. I do not condemn you for
coming to me at this crisis. It is not your fault that he made me
the instrument of the condition he named; your error, alas! is of
older date; it lay in your treason at the outset. Thus, you see,
my dear uncle, how wrong done at some former period mars, like a
crack in a vase, the whole symmetry of life.”

“I feel it, my dear Caroline—I feel the truth of it in my inmost
heart.”

“Leave the matter now with me. When shall I see this man?”

“To-day; but I will let you know in half an hour. Will you
see him here and alone?”

“Yes. I do not fear him.”

“Poor, dear, noble child of my heart! How can I, knowing this
evil man, expose you to his presence!”

“There is no alternative, my dear uncle,” she said, with sad
firmness, rising up. “Do not lengthen the time. The sooner I
see him the sooner your mind and my own will be relieved; for I
have the deepest curiosity, if I may call the feeling I experience by
so light a term, to know on what he has based his confidence respecting
me.”

“I will send you word as soon as I see him when he will come.”

“And also whether you have received those fatal papers from
him; but I fear that you will find, sir, that this event will depend
upon the issue of his interview with me.”

“Were this Mr. Satchell a few years younger, and were he not
the notoriously infamous character that he is, it would not be so
great a sacrifice to a young girl to wed him, as he is a man of superior
talents, and has property.”

“That is, if he were any other person than Mr. Satchell, he
wouldn't be Mr. Satchell, uncle.”

“You have explained my words very sensibly. As he is, for he
is near fifty, rude in his manners and coarse in his person, you
could only look upon him with repulsion, though he bore an honest
name among men. But were he an Adonis in person, I do not suppose,
my sweet girl, that you would love him, if you still recollect
Edward Manning.”

“Recollect Edward Manning, sir!” she repeated, deeply confused,
and looking as if suddenly grief-stricken by his words. “O,
how can the heart forget! No, sir, I can never forget him; I can
never cease to love him, though wedded to another. To me he is
still the same. I shall cease to love him when my heart ceases to
beat; I shall forget him when memory and the spirit and the soul
die.”

“I am sorry for you, Caroline. I have felt deeply your disappointment
since by accident I discovered that he was the object of
your attachment.”

“Attachment! it is a cold word, sir; passion!” she cried, with

animation almost wildly eloquent, “deep, heart-burning passion, is
the word to express what I felt—nay, what I feel! He is married,
—more's the pity!” she said, touchingly. “If there is a woman I
love because she loves him, yet hate because he loves her, it is his
beautiful wife. Oh, dear uncle, in alluding to him you have struck
a chord that for weeks I have dared not stir, even in the loneliness
of my chamber, lest its broken notes should drive me wild. I have
tried hard to keep my heart down and teach it to submit. Go, sir!
I must be alone; I have need to compose my spirits.”

“Forgive me, Caroline?”

“Yes, I forgive. Do not stay; leave me to myself, dear uncle,”
she cried passionately.

He hesitated whether it were safe to do so, she seemed so
strangely excited. But she waved her hand nervously and rapidly
for him to depart. He closed the door, and descended the stairs
with a slow step and a heavy heart, listening as he went, expecting
each moment to hear a shriek of anguish from the room.

“Poor girl! as if I had not torn her heart enough,” he said sadly,
“but I must allude to her unfortunate attachment to Edward Manning,
and open again the fountains of her grief. But she will soon
be calm, she has such wonderful self-possession. I will now hasten
on my errand. Is it possible that I am at last so near the possession
of those long wished for papers, that hang, like the sword of Diogenes,
above my head!” he exclaimed, as he hurried to the street-gate,
his bosom glowing with that selfish joy which irresistibly at
such a time would be experienced by the most disinterested. For
a few moments, in the contemplation of his own happy success, he
forgot the sacrifice at which he was about to obtain it. Such is
human nature. The noblest emotions of gratitude ultimately resolve
themselves into a man's own proprium, and lose their individuality
in his.

But ere Colonel Harwood reached the alley in which Satchell's
office stood, his thoughts were again upon his daughter; and more
than once his step faltered, and he half-turned, as if resolved not to
put her to the trial. But when he reflected how all else depended
upon it and that it must be done, he moved onward again. As he
came into the alley the clock of the Old South struck twelve.

“It is just the hour I appointed to meet him,” he exclaimed,
hastening up the alley, his heart throbbing with mingled hope and
fear, as the probability of getting or not getting his papers rose and
fell in his agitated mind.

As he came to the door, in his absence of mind he stepped into a
pool of soft mud and water which was directly under the window
of Handy, the boot black's room. Whether Handy kept that particular
puddle of water there for the purpose of muddying the boots
of gentlemen who were passing, (as the alley was a great thoroughfare,)
and thus get custom, is a question that we will not answer,
as we do not wish to record any thing against Handy, that would
lessen the consideration the discriminating reader may have already
entertained for him. The fact is, however, that every day, during

the dryest weather particularly, this little dirty puddle was there;
and upon an average seven gentlemen per diem irretrievably soiled
their boots therein, and Handy being at home, after the example of
surgeons who are ever ready at hand when side-walks are slippery,
got the polishing of them. This little pond was a source of great
revenue to Handy, much more so indeed than the Frog Pond ever
promises to be to the Corporation.

“Massa, you hab muddy you boot,” cried Handy, to Colonel
Harwood; and springing forward with his brush in his hand, the
sable African caught the Colonel by the ancle and held him fast,
while he began to rub his boot with the most praise worthy zeal.

The Colonel, however was in no mood at such a time to be detained;
so unceremoniously overthrowing the astonished Handy
with a thrust of his foot, he hastened into the entry and up the
tottering stair-way to Satchell's office.

“That am a berry independum gemman, Kaleb,” said Handy,
picking himself up and then gathering his brushes from the ground.
“He 'pear berry much in a hurry.”

“You lose you sixpence dat time, neighbor Handy,,' said Kaleb
the cobler, who sat with his door open upon his bench hammering
out a piece of sole leather upon his lap-stone. “If I was the gentlemen
that step in your puddle there, I would give you a rap over
the head.”

“You ain't no gen'leman, Master Kaleb Kemp, and derefore you
don't do 'em,” answered Handy, with ineffable dignity.

“If I was the town I would make you pay taxes on your duckpond,”
continued Kaleb, good naturedly.

“Don't you say nothin', Mas' Kaleb. Don't I bring you custom?
How many boot you tink I rip when I clean 'em, and recommen'
gen'lemen to paternise you.”

“It is very true, Handy,” responded the little cobbler, laughing,
and giving a rap, a-tap, rap upon his sole-leather. “How is your
Rosy since you saw her last, Handy?”

“She berry well, Mr. Kemp. How am you' lady?” interrogated
Handy, in his turn. And the two gentlemen then proceeded to
converse upon the respective merits of calf-skin and morrocco for
boots.