University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

And the sacrifice—Sarah Grattan had consented
to that self-sacrifice to which the immolation of the
Hindoo woman on the funeral pile of her dead lord
is as an hour's suffering to a life-long torture. She
lived to save her uncle; but for that she would have
died ere she could have consented to be the wife of
Bronson. O! what a life of unmitigated wretchedness
such a woman leads linked to such a man!
Hourly she blushes at his manner, appearance, and
character, when in society. Hourly, when alone
with him, how she shrinks from that wanton disregard
to her feelings, that downright brutality, which
even his moments of fondness exhibits; and if she
becomes a mother, what must her emotions be, bound
as she is by the strong tie of holy nature to her child,
to see reflected in his features and conduct the character
of such a father! Yet, alas! how many women
do we see daily in society who are such sufferers!
victims to parental authority at the shrine of
wealth! Martyrs who, with an upheld hope, endure
to the last, and tell not even unto a mother what they
endure! The pallid cheek, the wan temple, the
drooping eye, speak the fact for them to an observer,
while ninety-nine out of a hundred remark; “'tis
a pity Mrs. So-and-So has such delicate health.

What a fine house she has, everything that heart can
wish.” At that very time, too, to add to and heighten
the gloom of her loveless home, maybe with a Christian's
faith, she is praying for strength to overcome some
blighted affection from which she was torn to be
made a living sacrifice.

Sarah's uncle had scarcely left her apartment,
after extorting her promise to marry Bronson on the
morrow, when Aunt Agnes entered. She was in fact
met on the steps by Elwood, who had rushed down
stairs to call the servants to the assistance of his
neice. He jerked his hat over his eyes, told Agnes
that Sarah had fainted, and implored her to hasten
to her room.

It was with great difficulty that she succeeded in
restoring her charge to consciousness; when she had
done so, she insisted upon knowing from Sarah what
had troubled her.

“My dear aunty—I am sick—sick; I would I were
dead. God forgive me for saying so,” said Sarah,
reverently throwing her wan eyes upwards.

“My child,” said Agnes, “it is the sorrow of the
heart that ails you—I know it all. Your uncle has
told you Bronson's threat, and you have promised to
marry him.”

“Merciful Father, Aunt Agnes!” exclaimed Sarah,
starting from her pillow, “you will not betray my
uncle. Maybe I can learn to like—to like—”

“Child, child!” said Agnes, interrupting her, and
taking her hand, “speak not—from your kindness
and affection to those who do not deserve it at your
hands—speak not a falsehood. My beloved child! I
would willingly lay down this aged body in the grave
to serve you. How shall I do it; I was in the clump
of trees by the barn—I overheard their whole conversation.
Bronson is a more evil man than your
uncle. I expected this result; I would have stepped

forth to them, and threatened them both with the
law, but I feared they might make way with you, and
compel you, where you had no friends, to this marriage,
which must not be.”

Here Aunt Agnes recounted circumstantially to
Sarah the interview between her uncle and Bronson,
which, from the clump of trees near by, in which she
had stopped to rest herself on a visit to Sarah, she
had distinctly overheard. Sarah buried her head in
her pillow, and wept when Aunt Agnes told what
passed between them with regard to herself and
Sidney.

“Tell me, child,” said Aunt Agnes, when she had
concluded her narrative—“I speak frankly—is there
any affection existing between Sidney Fitzhurst and
yourself.”

“Not that I know of,” faltered Sarah.

“Not that you know of,” said Aunt Agnes, reproachfully;
“do you not know that you love him,
child?”

“Aunt Agnes, Aunt Agnes! what avails either the
question or the answer?—what avails it?”

“Child, does he not love you? Do you not know
it?”

“Know it—no, no! I thought he liked me once,
but—but—”

“But what, speak to me, child; I feel for you as
much as the mother that bare you could feel, were
she by your side.”

“He is to marry Miss Moreland.”

“And must it be,” said Agnes, half in soliloquy,
“even my fate to see those who were born for each
other separated, and by such cruel circumstances—
Where is Sidney, child?”

“He went on a visit with Miss Moreland to see
her friends—may be to Philadelphia—previous, I suppose,
to their marriage.”

“I am surprised at this—surprised!” exclaimed
Aunt Agnes; “I had other thoughts; but, child, you
must not be made a sacrifice to this Bronson.”

“Dear, Aunt Agnes, say no more about it. I would
not be made a sacrifice, but to save my uncle—I
have none to care for me but you; those whom I
thought cared for me are indifferent to me; my
life must be short and miserable, at least it is not in the
power of mortal now to make it otherwise. O! my
dear Aunt Agnes, pray for me, ask the great God of
his mercy to give me strength to bear my bitter
destiny.”

“Child, the ways of God are just, though inscrutable
to us. My poor, poor, Sarah,” she continued,
parting the hair from the pale brow of the sufferer;
“when I have held you in these arms a little infant;
how many scenes of happiness have I painted for you;
how full of sunshine I made your pathway of life, and
does it end in this—it must not be; my faith is, that
the righteous even here shall escape the snare of the
sinner; but, child, I must leave you—I will be back
to-night.”

“Aunt Agnes,” said Sarah, with firmness, “do
nothing in your love for me to injure my uncle. I
have nothing to live for: a few weeks ago I thought
the world all brightness before me—but now I have
nothing to live for. My frail frame cannot hold out
this struggle long—let me save my uncle and die. I
am most miserable. The pang here,” said she,
putting her hand on her heart, “my marriage with
Mr. Bronson can neither increase nor cure. May be
I shall feel some relief in marrying him, from the conviction
that I have saved my uncle.”

Aunt Agnes gazed on her charge with melancholy
earnestness, and, repeating that she would be back by
night, she left the chamber and the house.

With a step, to which the energy of her purposes
gave an elasticity and firmness beyond her years,
Aunt Agnes hastened to Springdale, and to the store
of Bronson. She found that individual in, behind his
counter, dealing flattery on a bumpkin customer by
wholesale, for the purpose of getting a retail profit of
a sixpence out of him in the sale of a bit of ribbon
for his sweetheart. Bronson knew that his customer
was to be married, and his own approaching nuptials
made him eloquent in praise of the articles which
were intended for the bride.

Bronson's clerk was not in, and Aunt Agnes took
a seat, and observed Bronson with a searching eye
until the customer was served and had departed; she
then, in reply to his question of what she would have,
asked:

“Mr. Bronson, are you to marry Sarah?”

“Sarah!” re-echoed Bronson, rubbing his hands,
and taking the old woman's visit for one of congratulation,
with the intention of coaxing a present out of
him, he continued: “I think, Mistress Agnes, that
you might have said—it would have been more respectful—Miss
Grattan. Yes, it's my intention to
make her Mrs. Bronson. These are horrible times—
not times for a man to get married—profits all swamped
in losses—but her uncle insisted upon it—and, I suppose—ha!
ha! you were young once, Mistress
Agnes—you understand these matters. I suppose
the truth was she prompted him.”

“She prompted him!” said Agnes, scarcely able
to control her indignation, “but what, Mr. Bronson,
if she did not prompt him?”

“That, Mistress Agnes, I shall not readily believe.
What did you come here for, old woman?” replied
Bronson, regarding her sternly.

“To appeal to you as a man; and to tell you that

your marriage with Sarah would be the death of
her.”

“The death of her! ladies don't die so easily, old
woman. You're here—I see it—you're here from
that young aristocrat, Sidney Fitzhurst—that sabbath-breaker
and race-ground lounger. He, nor no power
on earth or elsewhere—the Lord forgive me, I mean
out of heaven—can prevent my marrying her. So,
go back and tell him it won't do. Fine feathers make
fine birds, but fine birds don't always have the best
nests. Ha! ha! tell him that, old woman. I have
seen Elwood—he has seen his neice—she fixed upon
to-morrow morning nine o'clock. I should have set
the evening, and had a brilliant party of it—but her
coyness preferred private marriage.”

“A private marriage!” exclaimed Aunt Agnes,
rising to her feet; “I'll bear it no longer—you foul
disgrace to humanity, do you know that I know the
whole plot between you and Elwood to sacrifice my
Sarah. You think, or you pretend to think, that you
can give him to the gibbet for the slaying of Jessee.
I believe that I can marry you, not privately, but
publicly, to the penitentiary.”

“Me!” exclaimed Bronson, in great terror. “Mistress
Agnes—I don't understand you, my dear Madam—you
jest.”

“There is no jest about in it, sir. I overheard the
whole conversation behind the barn between you
and Mr. Elwood: the threats you used to make him
compel Sarah Grattan to marry you. The whole of
it—every word. If he is a murderer, you are the
secreter of a murderer; for money, extorted money.
More than that; my house is by the old mill—lonely,
but in that lonely place there has been transactions
with counterfeiters, if I mistake not. I have come
to play the game with you, which you played with

Mr. Elwood. My silence is purchased upon the promise
that you see Sarah Grattan no more.”

“Take a seat, my good madam, take a seat,” said
Bronson, in desperate alarm.

“No; I have other duties to perform, and this one
is first and peremptory. Make the promise, or I go
instantaneously before a squire, and make oath to all
I know.”

“What do you know? what do you know?” said
Bronson. “Let's walk down through the village to
the common. I'll lock my door and go with you.”

“Unnecessary trouble, Mr. Bronson; I would not
trust my life there with you. Do you promise that,
to-morrow you will not go near Sarah Grattan, nor
speak to her of marriage again? Man, I am not to
be trifled with, and have other business.”

“I—I—my dear madam, I will; but stop a moment.”

“See that you keep your promise, then,” said Agnes.
“I shall not stop another moment.”

So speaking, Aunt Agnes left Bronson to his own
reflections; and before he could get round his counter
to gaze after her, with the uncertainty of a guilty
mind as to what his purpose was, she had disappeared
behind a corner dwelling, on her way to
Holly.

Fanny had but a few hours before received Pinckney's
communication. She was stung to the quick,
to think that Pinckney attributed her dismissal of
him to his imputed loss of fortune; while the conviction
that she had acted too hastily, and the reproaches
of her own wounded affections, were daily growing
stronger from the hour she hurried off her servant to
the post-office from Langdale's.

“What,” said she, in this frame of mind, “what
had his writing to Miss Atherton, a long time ago,

when he was so young, to do with his affection for
me? It had nothing to do with his heart, or his
character—nothing to do with the love I bear him,
which I cannot—I cannot conquer. Petted, and
petted all my life—to what wretchedness it has
brought me. And then to think that he should
attribute my conduct to his loss of fortune. He had
nothing else to attribute it to—nothing else. I am degraded
in his estimation—for ever degraded. What
slaves this self-will makes of us. Here's father, and
aunt too, asking me so many torturing questions
about Howard—about Mr. Pinckney—it's Howard
no longer. I wish I could let him know—though we
should never meet again on earth—I wish I could let
him know that his loss of fortune had nothing to do
with it. How meanly he must think of me; and
what else can he think.”

Pompey interrupted the sad reflections of his young
mistress, by announcing to her that Aunt Agnes had
called to see her.

“Bring her up into my chamber, Pompey,” said
Fanny, rising from a low stool, on which she had
been seated, and mechanically adjusting her hair
and dress.

“Child,” said Aunt Agnes, entering the room, and
taking Fanny's hand; “you look pale, too; what
has come over you girls?”

“Pale! do I?” said Fanny, starting; “I'm very well
—no, I'm not very well. Aunty, I have been thinking
of Jane Lovell's story, and it makes me sad.”

“What should make you think of that, child?”

“I know not. We can't account for our thoughts
always,” replied Fanny.

“Your lover's away; that's it, child,” rejoined
Agnes. “And now I'll give you a piece of advice:
avoid the first impulse of wounded feeling, which may

lead you to mistrust either the affection or the conduct
of your lover or your husband. It may estrange
you from each other before you know it. And, dear,
act always with confidence and frankness towards
those, and, especially, towards him you love. The
little deceptions—harmless coquetry, as it is called—
which women sometimes practice towards their
lovers, has made many a love story a sad one.”

“Aunty,” exclaimed Fanny, in a surprised tone,
“why do you particularly give me such advice?”

“Because, child, I have observed your character,
and think it necessary.”

“Not the last part. I wish my dearest, dearest brother
would come home,” replied Fanny; “I can sit on
his knee, and tell him everything—all my troubles.”

“It was he that I wished to see,” said Aunt Agnes,
“when will he be here?”

“We expect him every moment: he has been detained
longer than he anticipated. That puts me in
mind of a letter that I should attend to—really I have
neglected his requests. Aunty, you stay. O! how
is Sarah?”

“Sad, child; sad: why don't you call and see
her?”

“I have been sad myself: and I thought, as I had
been in town sometime, that Sarah should call and
see me first. It was foolish in me, but—”

“Well, child, it was foolish, as you say—call and
see her to-morrow, and I will see you both there. It
is getting dark, and I must go.”

“No, aunty; stay all night.”

“I cannot, my dear, I promised Sarah to be back.
To-morrow, remember, my child.”

“I will. Do, aunty, send Pompey to me.”

So speaking, Fanny shook hands with the old woman,
and she withdrew.

Pompey made his appearance; and, writing a
hasty note to Sarah, she enclosed within it a letter,
and bade Pompey mount a horse, instantly, and bear
it to Mr. Elwood's.