University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

Asleep, comfortably, and for the time
unwakably asleep, lay Randolph Armitage
on the damp mossy turf of the forest, not a
scratch upon him from Sam Hicks's bullets,
all gone astray in the deceiving moonlight.

He was gathered up, borne to his horse,
set astride behind Quash, tightly bound to
him, and thus taken home. Transportation
of this sort being naturally slow, it was two
or three in the morning before Redhead Saxon
got clear of his responsibility, stealthily
depositing this senseless lump of humanity
in its usual place of storage, and then hurrying
away on guilty tiptoes after the fashion
of boon-companions who bring home drunkards.
All this time nothing could waken
Armitage; he would open his eyes under
shaking, and keep them open, but he still
slumbered on; he was a limp, inert, inconvenient
mass of stupor. The moderately
affectionate and immoderately lazy Quash
simply laid him on a sofa and covered him
with a shawl. Then, with the thoughtlessness
of discovery and of consequences characteristic
of slaves, at least when they are
negroes, he stretched himself on the bare
floor and went to sleep, without so much as
locking the door.

In this state the two were found at six in
the morning by Nellie Armitage, who could
not altogether repress anxiety to know
whether her husband was alive. She gave
him one glance, guessed with sufficient accuracy
how he had spent the night, turned
from him in quiet scorn, and awoke the
blackamoor with her foot.

“Where have you been with him?” she
asked.

“Hain't been nowhar,” responded Quash,
lying without a moment's thought and with
infantile awkwardness, as “niggers” do.

“How dare you tell me that? Leave the
room.”

As Quash crept out Kate Beaumont glided
in, asking, “Has he returned? Is he hurt?”

Mrs. Armitage, shaken by a night of
sleeplessness, lost control of herself in this
emergency; the weariness, the sorrow, the
shame, and the scorn that were in her face
turned at once into red-hot anger, demanding
utterance; and though she at first raised
her hand instinctively to check her sister's
advance, she immediately dropped it.

“Come on,” she said. “It is time to tell
the truth. I have hidden my misery long
enough. Come here and look at him. There
is a husband; that thing is a husband.
What do you think of it?”

Armitage lay perfectly quiet; indeed
there was a look about him as if nothing on
earth could move him; he was the image of
utter helplessness and clod-like insensibility.
One eye was partly open, but there was a
horrible glassiness and lifelessness in it, and
it was obvious that he saw nothing. His
face was colorless, except a faint tinting of
bluish and yellowish shades, as if it were the
countenance of a corpse. Yet in spite of this
shocking metamorphosis, his features were
so symmetrical that he was handsome still.

Kate, trembling from head to foot, stared
at him without speaking. She had never
before seen a man in the last stage of intoxication;
and in spite of what Nellie had
said, she did not fully comprehend his condition.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “What is the
matter with him? Is he — dying?”

“He is dead, — dead drunk,” replied the
wife.

“O no, Nellie!” implored Kate.

“To think how I have loved him!” Nellie
went on. “That man has had all the good,
all the best that was in my heart. He has
had it and trampled on it and wasted it till
it is gone. I can hate now, and I hate him.”

Kate joined her hands as if pleading with
her sister to be silent.

“No man ever had greater love; no man
ever despised greater love,” continued Nellie.
“I have seen the time when I could
kneel and kiss the figures of the carpet
which his feet had rested upon. I worshipped
him; even after I began to find out
what he was, I worshipped him; I passed
years in forgiving and worshipping. Once,
when he came home drunk, yes, when he
came home to abuse me, I would watch over
him all night in his stupid sleep, and forgive
him the moment he spoke to me in the morning.
O, how handsome he was in my eyes!
He fascinated me. That was it; he was
beautiful; I could see nothing else. How I
did love him for his beauty! And now see
how I hate him and despise him. I can
take a mean and cowardly revenge on him.”

She suddenly advanced upon the senseless
man, and slapped his face with her open
hand.

“O, you woman, what are you doing?”
exclaimed Kate, seizing her and drawing
her away. “Nellie, I won't love you!”

“Yes, I am hateful,” replied Nellie. “Do
you know why? I can't tell you half the
reasons I have for being hateful. Look at
that scar,” pointing to a mark on her forehead.
“I have never revealed to any one
how I came to have that. He did it. He
struck me with his doubled fist, and that
gash was cut by the ring which I gave him.”

Kate sat down, covered her face with her
hands, and sobbed violently.

“It was not the only time,” pursued Nellie.
“He had struck me before, and he has
struck me since. And there have been
other insults; I would not have thought
that I could have taken them; but from
him I have learned to take them. O, if my
father and brothers knew! They guess,
but they don't know.”

“They would kill him, Nellie,” whispered
Kate, looking up piteously, as if pleading
for the man's life.

“I know it. But that is not all. I have
become so savage, that it seems to me I

would not mind that. What I care for is
exposure. If they should shoot him, people
would learn why. It would be known that
I had failed; that Nellie Beaumont could
not live with her husband; that she could
not lie on her bed after making it; that she
had failed as a wife and a woman.”

“Is there no such thing as separation?”
asked Kate. She said it hesitatingly and
with a sense of culpability, for the idea of
breaking the marriage bond was shocking
to her.

“There is. But who would have the
children? Do you suppose I want to leave
them here to grow up drunkards? As long
as I am with them, they do not taste a drop
of the poison which makes a beast of their
father. I don't know whether I could have
both the children. Besides, separation is
exposure; the courts would have to know
everything; the public would know and
babble; the Beaumonts would know. I
shall stay and fight it out here until I can
fight no longer. But I wanted some one's
sympathy. I wanted at least to tell my
own sister how miserable I am.”

She stopped, fell on her knees, laid her
head in the girl's lap, and broke out in violent
crying.

After a minute she rose, lifted Kate to
her feet, embraced her passionately, and
said in a voice which had suddenly become
calm, “This is my first cry in two years.
My heart feels a little less like breaking.
Let us go.”

“Do you suppose he has heard?” asked
the younger woman, glancing at Armitage.

“Heard?” answered Nellie with a hard
laugh. “He could n't hear the last trump,
if it should be blown in this room. Is n't
he horrible — and handsome? My darling,
that is an Armitage. Don't marry one of
them. Promise me. You won't?”

“Never,” answered Kate.

“I must tell you a great deal,” continued
Nellie, when she had reached her own
room. “My heart is open and I must let it
run.”

During a large part of the day she talked
about her husband, detailing with painful
minuteness the outrages of his periods of
orgie; how he had upset tables, thrown food
out of the windows, broken dishes, furniture,
mirrors, beaten the servants and children;
how he had fallen down and slept all night
in his dooryard, or been brought home half
dead from accidents or fights.

“Sometimes it is ridiculous,” she said.
“I have actually laughed to see him lying
among the ruins of chairs and crockery. It
seemed so absurd that any human being
could become demented enough to beat and
belabor inanimate things till he gasped with
fatigue and wore himself out, that I could
not help laughing. Of course I had lost all
respect for him then, and all affection.
How could I keep either? The man was
more like a crazy monkey than like a human
being. His pranks surpass all description.
There are things that I cannot tell you of,
for very shame. I did hope, when I brought
you here, that, for your sake and out of fear
of our family, he would control himself.
But he is irreclaimable. He is contemptible.
He is horrible.”

“Nellie, you have a way of talking that
makes my blood run cold,” said Kate. “If
you stay here, will you not be over-tempted
some day, and do something wrong?”

“I shall never commit a crime,” replied
Mrs. Armitage. “I am a lady. I would
not disgrace myself and my family by even
considering such a thing as poisoning. Is
that what you fear? You may be tranquil.”

“How dreadful it is even to think of such
things! I never thought before that anything
in life could be so dreadful.”

“Well, we will say no more about it to-day,”
sighed Nellie. “I will try never to
speak of this subject to you again. Hereafter
I can bear my troubles better. Some
one knows, some one sympathizes.”

There was an embrace, and a mingling
of tears between the two sisters, followed by
a long and sad silence.

“Some one has come,” was Nellie's next
remark. “I heard a carriage drive up to
the door. It is probably Bent Armitage.
Scarcely any one else stops here.”

“I am so glad,” said Kate. “Won't he
help us? Won't he have some influence?”

“He has influence when none is wanted.
At such times as this no one has any influence,
at least none for any good end. But
Bentley will try to make things easy for us.
He is not hard-hearted, and he never becomes
a madman in my presence, although
he is taking the same road with his brother.
It is in the blood to go that way.”

“I wish nothing unpleasant had passed
between him and myself,” said Kate, coloring
slightly.

“Don't care for that,” returned Nellie,
proudly. “You were right in avoiding him,
and he knows it. He knows that no Armitage
has any claim on any Beaumont. My
only wonder is, that he dared court you
when he knew what his brother had done
to me. If he begins again, tell me of it. I
won't have it, certainly not here. I am mistress
in this house, so far as he is concerned.
Remember now; we ask no manner of
favors of him; he is just a guest and nothing
more.”

There was a little glancing into mirrors,
a little arranging of curls and shaking out
of dresses; there was the sacrifice to becomingness
which woman rarely neglects to pay,
however unhappy she may be and indifferent
to the eyes that are to pass judgment

upon her; then they went down to receive
their visitor. Bent Armitage was walking
the parlor, staring abstractedly at the old
faded engravings which he had seen a thousand
times, his “clapper,” as he called his
partially paralyzed foot, slapping the floor
in its usual style, and his queer smile curling
up into his dark cheek as a confession
of embarrassment. Remembering Nellie's
interference between him and her sister, he
feared that he should be received as an
intruder, and he was ill at ease. He was
even humble to an extent which was pathetic;
he had laid aside all his self-respect
in coming here. “Let me look at her a
moment,” his face seemed to plead; “then
turn me away forever, if you must; at least
I shall have seen her.”

“I hope I am not indiscreet,” he said
meekly, as he kissed the cheek of his sister-in-law
and shook hands with Kate. “I am
just up in these diggings from a grand tour
as far as Charleston,” he went on, talking
slang to gain courage. “I heard at Brownville
that you were both here, and I thought
I might venture to rein up for a minute.”

“We are glad to see you,” replied Kate;
and Nellie added, “You must stay a few
days.”

Bentley brightened a little; loving hopes
rose out of their graves.

“We may need your assistance,” Nellie
explained quietly.

His countenance fell at once. He understood
that his brother was making trouble;
that was the reason why he was wanted, or
endured. But, although the revelation was
a painful one to him, he did not turn sullen
under it. Impelled by a fine movement of
soul, he resolved to serve these women, who
demanded service without offering reward
or scarcely thanks. In spite of his slang,
his back-country roughness of manner, his
willingness to shed blood on occasion, and
his hereditary tendency to strong drink,
there was a foundation of good and warm
feeling in Bentley. He was not such a detestable
egotist as his brother; he was capable
of a love other and stronger than the
love of self.

“I will stay as long as I can be of use,”
he said. “Shall I hitch up in the old spot?”

“I would rather you should take the room
next to Randolph's,” replied Nellie.

“Just as handy,” assented Bentley, at the
same time thinking, “So I am to be his
keeper.”

“How are things at Hartland, Miss Beaumont?”
he now inquired. “Everybody
chirk there?”

“All well, thank you,” Kate said. “At
least so my last letters told me.”

“The fight with the Philistines keeps up,
I suppose.”

“With the — the McAlisters? I suppose
so,” answered the girl, her face coloring
perceptibly.

She was almost angry with him for speaking
so carelessly of the feud and so irreverently
of the McAlisters. Bentley perceived
that he had made a mistake, and for a
moment looked absolutely frightened as well
as embarrassed, so anxious was he to stand
well with this girl. As to being sorry for
the renewal of the quarrel between the
Beaumonts and their neighbors, he could
not of course reach that state of grace; in
fact, he could not but rejoice in the event,
inasmuch as it had relieved him of one whom
he knew to be a preferred rival, and made
the winning of Kate seem possible. It was
this new hope, to a certain extent, which
had brought him to Saxonburg.

“Well, I 'll go to my nest and arrange
my feathers,” he remarked, presently, shuffling
and slapping his way up stairs.

Before attending to his toilet, he stepped
into his brother's room. No one was there
but Quash, lazily setting things to rights.

“Hi, Mars Bent,” chuckled the darky.
“I 'se mighty glad for to see you, Mars
Bent. You 's jess come in good time.
Wah, wah, wah. You 's wanted, Mars
Bent.”

“If you 's so mighty glad to see me,
brush my boots,” returned Bentley, seating
himself.

“Yes, Mars Bent,” said Quash, getting
out his brushes cheerfully, quite sure of a
dime, or perhaps a quarter.

“Whar 's Mars Ranney?” continued
Bentley, imitating the negro dialect and
pronunciation, as he loved to do.

“He jess done gone down sta'rs; dunno
whar.”

“Is he on a bender?”

“Yes, marsr.”

“Big one?”

“Well, nuffin pertickler; nuffin great, so
fur.”

“From fair to middlin', eh?”

“Yes, marsr.”

“Could n't you hide his whiskey?”

“Would n't dast do it, Mars Bent,” replied
Quash, looking up earnestly. “Lordy,
Mars Bent, you knows how he kerries on.
He 'd jess bust my head.”

“I s'pose so,” growled Bentley. “Well,
what of it? You ought to have your
head bust, Quash. You are a rascal.”

Quash merely sniggered and continued to
polish away, sure of his dime. The boots
were just done when a loud crash of furniture
was heard down stairs, followed by a
wrathful shouting.

“Thar he goes,” observed Quash. “Smashin'
things like he allays doos.”

“Here 's your quarter,” said Bentley, rising
hastily. “If you 'll break his whiskey-jug,
I 'll give you two dollars.”

Hastening down to the parlor, he discovered
Randolph dancing on the fragments of
a delicate work-table, a present to Nellie
from her brother Vincent.

“Halloo!” shouted the drunkard. “Is
nobody coming? What am I left alone
for?”

Just then Kate Beaumont entered the
room; she was very pale, and her soft eyes
were dilated with amazement and horror;
but she advanced calmly to the maniac and
said, “Randolph, what do you want?”

At first he simply glared at her; he
seemed to be ready to strike her. Bentley
Armitage picked up a leg of the table and
came close to his brother, perfectly resolved
to knock him down if he raised a hand upon
Kate.

“Go away,” said Randolph, hoarsely.
“I did n't call for you. I wanted Nell.”

Bentley made a sign of the head to the
young lady, and in obedience to it she retired
without a word further.

“Oho,” exclaimed Randolph, discovering
his brother and turning short upon him.
“So you are here. What the — do you
want?”

“I 've come to bear a hand generally,”
returned Bentley, endeavoring to smile, but
anticipating a difficulty, and showing it in
his face.

“You bear a hand somewhere else,”
screamed Randolph, all at once beside himself
with an insane rage, approaching to delirium
tremens. “You bear a hand out of
this house. You leave. It 's my house.
You 've had your share. We divided, did
n't we? You took the Pickens land, did n't
you? You 've no claim here. You travel.
Take your traps and travel. By the Lord,
I am master here. I won't be overcrowded
by anybody. Lay down that club. Leave
it, and leave here.”

“Come, come, Randolph,” expostulated
Bentley. “There 's no sense in this, and I
don't deserve it. I 've come to make myself
agreeable and bear a hand at anything
you like.”

“I 've no use for you, I tell you I 've no
use for you,” Randolph went on screaming,
utterly out of his senses. “You just hump
yourself and get to your own district. You
travel, or I 'll —”

Here he caught up a glass lamp and
hurled it at his brother's head, the missile
narrowly missing its mark and smashing
against the wall. Then he made a charge.
The younger man struck, but unwillingly
and faintly: his blow only exasperated the
assailant. Bentley, far less muscular than
Randolph, and lame besides, was thrown
and badly hammered. This horrible scene
was ended by the entrance of Mrs. Armitage
and several of the house-servants, who
with great difficulty dragged the drunken
maniac off his victim and pushed him out
of the room.

“You must go,” said Nellie to Bentley,
when they two were alone.

“Ah, if he was n't my brother!” exclaimed
the young man, furious from his
conflict, “I would finish him.”

“But he is your brother, and you can
do no good here, at least not now. You
will have to go.”

“What, and leave you with that madman!
Leave her with him!”

“We can manage him better than you.
Seeing another man here only makes him
want to fight. We shall be better off
without you.”

“I never was called on to do so mean a
thing before,” said Bentley.

“I don't wish to charge you with being
capable of meanness. Besides, it won't be
mean to do this when I insist upon it.”

“Well,” assented the young man, unwillingly
and sullenly. “But I won't go farther
than Rullet's tavern, on the road to
Brownville, you know, five miles from here.
If you need me, you can send a nigger, and
I 'll put over.”

“Very good,” said Nellie. “You will
have to take your Brownville carriage back.
You can slip through the garden and meet
it below the house. Quash will look to
your baggage.”

“I never saw him so bad before,” muttered
Bentley, meaning his brother.

“He gets worse every time. His constitution
is breaking down. His nerves are
not what they used to be.”

“Be sure you send for me slap off, if
there is any serious trouble,” were the farewell
words of Bentley.

Randolph Armitage, totally forgetting his
brother's visit, spent the rest of the afternoon
in his room, drinking, singing, breaking
such furniture as he could break, and at
last going to sleep among the ruins. The
women remained together, talking rarely
and sadly, the younger sometimes crying,
the elder never.

“I wonder at you,” said Kate once. “I
never imagined that a woman could have
such fortitude.”

“Fortitude!” returned Nellie. “I am
intelligent enough to know that it is not the
fortitude that you mean. It is mere hardened
callousness and want of feeling. I
ceased some time ago to be a woman. I
am a species of brute.”

This eminently true and simple and
clear-headed person showed herself great
by refusing to claim a greatness which did
not belong to her.

“If ever I am tried as you have been,
perhaps I shall become as noble as you are,”
was the answer of Kate, faithfully admiring
her sister.

When bedtime came the younger woman
said, “I shall stay with you to-night.”

“You can't,” replied Mrs. Armitage.
“My husband has a right to come to my
room at any time.”

“Ah!” murmured Kate, recoiling at
once before the authority of marriage.

“You are not afraid for yourself, are
you?” asked Nellie.

“I had not thought of that,” answered the
girl. “Besides, my door bolts and locks.”

“Good night,” said Nellie, with a kiss.
“You are a great comfort to me. I am
glad that you know everything; I am glad
that I told you everything, though I did it
in a fit of madness, and it was wrong. I
bear things the better because you know
them. I was growing savage and wicked
with lack of sympathy. Thank you for
your sympathy, darling. Good night.”

Kate went to her room, fastened her
door with lock and bolt, then deliberately
unfastened it and left it ajar, fearing a little
for herself, but far more for her sister. She
was worn out; it seemed to her that the
day had been years long; that she had
stepped from youth to middle age since
morning. Could it be that the degrading
and miserable tragedy which she had looked
upon was marriage? What might be her
own future, even should the feud once more
be allayed, and life promise as fairly as it
had done weeks before? Even should she,
by some incredible chance, become the wife
of the man whom she preferred and trusted
above all other men, what then? Would
the end of her once fair hopes be like the
end of the once fair hopes of Nellie? Her
mind ran all towards evil foreboding; the
future seemed a wilderness, complex, pathless,
and sombre; merely to think of it was
a weariness and sorrow. Yet she was so
exhausted with the unrest of the previous
night and the emotions of the day, that,
even while saying to herself that she should
never sleep, she lost her consciousness.

After a time some noise partially roused
her; it was painful to lose her hold on
slumber, and she strove not to awake; but
the noise persisted, and so alarmingly that
of a sudden she started up in her full senses.
It was clear to her now that she heard the
voice of Randolph in loud altercation with
his wife; and, hastily slipping on a dressing-gown,
she glided down a dark passage to
the door of Nellie's room. The door was
ajar, and there was a faint light within as
of a candle, but she was so placed that she
could not see the speakers. The conversation,
however, was but too audible.

“Will you tell me —?” demanded the
husband, in a hoarse, thick utterance.

“No, I will not, Randolph,” answered
Nellie, in that monotone of hers which
meant unshakable persistence.

“Then, by heavens —! Look here, you
obstinate fool; don't you know what I 'll do
to you? Don't you know?”

“I know, Randolph,” said Nellie. “I
don't care for your threats.”

The answer to this speech was a sound as
of a struggle. Kate hesitated no longer;
she stepped swiftly into the room. By the
flicker of a candle dying in its socket she
saw Randolph holding his wife down on the
pillow with one hand, while with the other
he brandished a long knife.