University of Virginia Library

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.
AUNT HULDAH RATHER FEEBLE.

The condition of old Mrs. Murray at this
time was such as to incline us to repent of
having permitted disparagement of her husband
for the fastidious care which he lavished
upon her.

The thread by which life held to that
aged and attenuated body was, it now appeared,
very fragile. An excitement which
would have been transitory with most persons,
and a cause of irritation and humiliation
which did not seem to concern her very
conspicuously, were enough to draw upon
her vitality alarmingly. The little cry and
the long swoon with which she recoiled from
the quarrel between her husband and her
favorite were the first overt symptoms of a
grave illness.

It was not an acute attack, for there could
be no vigor or violence about that frail tenement,
not even in the ruin which crumbled
its time-worn walls. It was mere nerveless,
almost pulseless, prostration; it was such a
sickness as one might attribute to a ghost.
She reposed, white and quiet, sleeping or
dozing much of the time, looking at the
figures on the wall-paper when awake, answering
in monosyllables if spoken to, sometimes
smiling mechanically. Body and mind
seemed to be lying in placid, torpid wreck
together. She reminded one irresistibly of
the phrases, a living death, a body of death.
If she had dropped into pale, dry dust, and
become subject to the gentle motions of the
sick-room air, the fact would hardly have
appeared in the nature of a change, nor
caused much surprise to the spectator.

Mrs. Warden called upon her, gazed at her
with an astonishment which she could not
conceal, and went away in a state of solemn
bewilderment, like one who has seen something
unearthly.

“Upon my word, she ought to be buried,”

she said to Josie. “Talk of leanness! It
is not emaciation; it is being a skeleton.”

“It is my belief that she was born a
skeleton,” replied our still imbittered hereine.
“There never was flesh enough on her
to make a mummy of.”

At this time, although Mrs. Warden had
had Josie with her for nearly a week, she
did not know the real history of her exodus
out of the Murray house, nor so much as suspect
that there had been a serious quarrel.

The rector had as yet said nothing concerning
the matter to any one outside of
his family. He might be cracked about his
wife, and absurdly excitable as to the supremacy
of theology over science, but on all
other subjects he had good sense, and the
delicate good sense of a gentleman. He
would make no scandal about the adventuress
whom he had exorcised; he would not
expose her misdeeds to people who did not
bear his name; in the common phrase, he
washed his dirty linen at home. Moreover,
looking upon Josie as the cause of his dear
wife's illness, he was just now overflowing
with wrath against her; and he knew that,
should he once commence denouncing such a
miscreant, he would not be able to keep himself
within bounds of wisdom or decorum.

So not a word did he lisp of her evil doings
to any one but his brother.

Finally he was laboriously occupied, he
was completely absorbed, by his precious invalid.
Even the origin of her sickness was
of light consequence, in his estimation, compared
with what might be the result of it.
His distress and solicitude were full of pathos,
and almost towered to the height of
the tragic. It was impossible for a righthearted
person to laugh at him now, except
as one may laugh in acute personal suffering,
with a hysterical paroxysm of humor, a
smile on the lip and a tear in the eye. To
stand by the sick-bed, and hear, as it were,
the throbbings of this dismayed watcher,
was perhaps more sobering than to stand
by the gaping finality of a grave amidst the
sobs of mourners.

The rector's care of his wife, considered
in itself and without regard to his duties
toward others, was admirable. For her sake
he neglected every thing, his own comfort
and welfare—yes, and all alien comfort and
welfare. He forgot his meals and renounced
his rest; he hired a young clergyman, at his
own expense, to attend to his pastoral duties;
he did nothing but watch and guard
that adored incarnation of helplessness. He
kept the whole house in a whisper; he was
angry with the servants if they went to bed
early or got up late; he lifted up his eyes
when a burst of laughter was heard in the
far-away kitchen.

How could any one but a monster be at
ease or be joyous while his Huldah suffered?
It was pitiable to see him trying to drop
medicine with his trembling fingers, or shuffling
about the house on his swollen feet to
bring hot water the sooner. Sometimes, just
for a moment, he thought of Josie kindly
and wished her back again, so intelligent
and alert was she, so light of foot and sure
of hand, so able to help in this great crisis.

But he never uttered the thought, nor
mentioned her in any manner. He admitted
now that he should not have divulged her
misdeeds to his wife, nor fought his necessary
and holy battle with her in that venerable
presence. It seemed to him a perfectly
rational and probable supposition that if he
should once breathe the word Josie in the
hearing of Huldah, she would have a paroxysm
and die.

At last, to his amazement and fright, the
sick woman herself spoke of the outcast.

“Where did she go?” Mrs. Murray asked,
in a feeble voice, her skinny forehead puckered
with some eager desire, or fear, or other
emotion, perhaps not altogether definite to
herself.

“I believe she is staying with Mrs. Warden,”
answered the husband, without adding
either a good word or an ill one, so fearful
was he of giving annoyance and causing excitement.

“With Mrs. Warden?” repeated the old
lady. “Why don't Mrs. Warden come here?
What does she keep away for?”

Mrs. Warden, as we know, had already
dropped in, but Mrs. Murray had either not
noticed her presence or had forgotten it. She
was now, after much deliberation and a long
discussion with the medical man, sent for by
the rector. So that swarthy and somewhat
haggard face, with its excitable black eyes
and unsteady expression, was soon bending
over the sick-bed.

“You don't call here now,” said the invalid,
with a disquieted, peevish glance, very
pathetic, as coming from such feebleness.

“My dear Mrs. Murray, I call oftener than
usual,” palavered Mrs. Warden, smiling away
with all her teeth, and overdoing it aggravatingly.
“I have been here twice this week.
I am always at your service.”

“I thank you,” replied the punctilious
old lady, incapable of neglecting the minor
forms of civility, though she were at her final
gasp. “Is she staying at your house?”

“She — who? — Belle?” answered Mrs.
Warden, who had by this time guessed out
the fact of a family quarrel, though as yet
ignorant of its cause and virulence. “Yes,
Belle is with me.”

“I mean Josephine Murray,” said Mrs.
Murray, in the petulant tone of a weakness
amounting to pain.

“Oh yes! she is with me,” acknowledged
the visitor, with a pretense at sudden recollection.
“She is staying with me for a few
days.”

“I thought she was going to leave Washington,”

sighed the sick woman, in a tone of
disappointment.

“Not at once; very soon, I suppose,” was
the conciliatory response. Whatever would
be likely to be pleasant this diplomatist was
ready to state without hesitation or scruple.

“When is she going?”

“I don't know precisely. She has not
fixed any day in particular.”

The sufferer's countenance fell at once,
and assumed a look of despairing languor.
She had turned against Josie; she regarded
her as a dishonor to the family and a disturber
of its peace; and, what was even
more influential with her, she identified her
own illness with the young woman's misconduct.
The one strong desire of her soul,
aside from the mere instinctive longing after
health and life, was that Josie should
leave Washington, and never be heard of
there more.

The rector, who was watching his wife
intently, and who noted with terror her
lapse into ghastly weakness, now said, eagerly,
“Huldah! don't fatigue yourself.”

Then he cast at Mrs. Warden a supplicating
glance, which caused her to depart without
a word further.

“She is staying here!” groaned the sick
woman, as soon as the room was clear. “She
is staying here. I knew she would. I told
you so. She will stay here and disgrace us.”

Then came a burst of sobbing, which
convulsed her venerable face and shook her
fragile figure until her husband wept with
fright. He ran for restoratives, screamed
loudly for the nurse, and rang up all the
servants.

But no soothing or stimulus could arrest
the agitation, though a buffet might have
destroyed the vitality which fed it. It only
ceased when it had run through paroxysm
after paroxysm of hysterics into the deathlike
peace of a swoon. She recovered her
consciousness at last; there was still life in
the feeble old body.

But the rector now believed that life could
not remain in it long, unless Josie were driven
from Washington. In his brief dialogues
on the subject with his brother he was venomous
against our pretty and clever heroine.
He called her “that woman,” “that
creature,” “that sly little serpent,” “that
murderess.” He compared her to Aspasia,
Cleopatra, Messalina, Marozia, Lucretia Borgia,
Joan of Naples, the Marchioness of Brinvilliers,
and other females whose renown is
not altogether agreeable.

“She has poisoned Huldah,” he asserted.
“She might just as well have mixed arsenic
in her cup. And she meant it.”

“Oh no, John! Not quite that,” protested
the rational old colonel. “She is a selfish,
dishonest, deceiving little puss. She wants
to grab a fortune, and would about as lief
get it by swindling and perjury as in any
other way. But there is no malignity in
her, I take it. She has done Huldah great
harm, no doubt; but it is unlikely that she
should mean it.”

“Oh, you don't know her!” declared the
rector, as if he knew her, or could fully know
her. “When you have studied human nature
as carefully as I have, Julian, you will
be able to understand these wicked wretches,
these children of this world and Satan,”
went on this innocent, this man of mere
emotion and affection, this most unphilosophic
and unjudicial spirit. “She does
wickedness and loves it. She will kill my
wife and break my heart, and rejoice over it.”

“No, not rejoice, I fancy,” the colonel persisted
in doubting. “I don't believe she
means to tie you to the torture-post and
jump around you. She is not an intentional
Apache. You forget how people (especially
women,” added the old bachelor, parenthetically)
“look at things entirely from
their personal point of view; how they judge
questions by their feelings, which, of course,
means not by other people's feelings; how
they snatch at whatever they want, without
a thought of their fellow-creatures.
For instance, I am in the cars, and I want
my window open for the sake of air, and the
man behind me catches a horrible cold in
consequence; and yet I don't mean it. In
fact, when he asks me to close the window,
I am disposed to consider it hard in him, and
to look upon him as a selfish fellow. Now, I
dare say that Josie, so far from thinking
herself cruel, regards us as cruel. Possibly
enough she is crying at this very minute
over our supposed unfriendliness in trying
to head off her claim and in breaking with
her.”

“Nonsense! She can not be so blinded.
I have treated her with every kindness, and
this is her return. You are always making
excuses for Satan, Julian, and trying to show
that he doesn't mean to do harm, or hasn't
done any. But I know what I know! I have
nourished a serpent in my bosom. I have
been stung by the pang of ingratitude.”

The colonel fell silent for a moment. He
was aware that his brother had not spent
three hundred dollars on this serpent, and
that she had worked pretty smartly for her
wages in the way of services and attentions,
so that the charge of ingratitude was not
very solidly supported. But he guessed that,
if he should say this, it would only add to
the fragile man's excitement; and what he
wanted was to soothe him and keep him
from falling sick, or perhaps going mad, over
his troubles.

“I am sorry she is at Mrs. Warden's,” he
said at last, remembering his favorite Belle,
and fearing lest she should get no good from
Josie.

“I am sorry she is anywhere,” snapped the
tender-hearted rector.

“I wish we could get her away from
there.”

“I will tell Mrs. Warden that she must
turn her out and send her from Washington,
or forfeit our acquaintance.”

“You can't do that, you know. You can't
cut your parishioners because they entertain
your relatives.”

“No — I suppose I can't,” groaned the
Reverend Murray, feeling that the clerical
bands were indeed heavy ones.

“The main thing is to induce Josie to give
up her claim and clear out,” continued the
colonel.

Just then he was interrupted by the entrance
of Sarah, who handed the rector a
scented envelope—an envelope redolent of
Josie.

It must be understood that Mrs. Warden
had ventured to remonstrate with our heroine
on the subject of her quarrel, and had
obtained from her a statement of the case,
which contained a considerable amount of
truth. Softened as the tale was, it was extremely
disagreeable news to Mrs. Warden.
She did not want to be at variance with the
Reverend Murray, whose mere acquaintance
was a social help to her, nor with Colonel
Murray, who was not only respectable, but
marriageable. So she put Josie up to making
an effort toward reconciliation; and the
result was the perfumed epistle now in the
hands of Huldah's husband.

“Read this!” exclaimed the rector, trembling
with indignation, with sub-acute rheumatism,
and with nervous prostration. “See
how a serpent can write!”

The colonel put on his gold-bowed spectacles,
and went carefully through the manuscript
twice.

“It is a very remarkable letter,” he said,
lifting his tranquil eyes with an expression
of wonder, if not of admiration. “I would
not have supposed that any human being of
twenty-two years of age could, under the
circumstances, have written such a calm, judicious,
self-respectful, and yet conciliatory
letter as that. She doesn't re-open the
quarrel, and she doesn't defend herself. It
is dignified and expressive. She is a most
talented young woman when she stops to
think. She is fit to be at the head of a
bureau.”

“She is a monstrous hypocrite,” affirmed
the clergyman, disposed by nature and by
the habits of his profession to look at the
moral rather than the intellectual aspect of
things and of people.

“She is an incarnation of misapplied ability,”
answered the colonel, still shaking his
wondering head over the letter. “What
couldn't she do if she were good? She
might run the whole Murray family. We
should be glad to let her run it.”

“Thank God that the wicked have no power
over it!” exclaimed the rector. “Thank
God that he has not made us like those who
put on willingly the yoke of sinners!”

“Yes, thank God for that!” assented the old
soldier, with obvious feeling. “We have
been helped, John, by our circumstances.
We belong to honorable professions. I often
think that matters could not have gone very
badly in those old-time societies which were
ruled by soldiers and priests. But what do
you propose to do about this letter? Are
you going to let Huldah see the girl? If
she could bear it, it might help.”

“Never!” the rector burst forth, volcanically,
ready to emit flames and pour out
lava—a very tremulous old Stromboli, by-the-way.
“The mere sight of that serpent
would kill Huldah. I wouldn't risk it for
millions.”

“But the thought of Josie's staying in
Washington hurts Huldah, you say.”

“It is the sole cause of her sickness,” asserted
Parson Murray, in his inflamed, wholesale,
hyberbolical fashion, forgetting that his
wife was nearly eighty.

“We talked a while ago of giving the girl
something to make her drop this claim, and
be all that is nice. Perhaps it was a mistake
not to do it then. Hadn't we better do
it now?”

“And help her in her intrigues, and reward
her for her wickedness!”

“And get her to go away,” said the colonel.

“And then come back again.”

“We might make it an income on trusteed
property, the income to cease if she returns
here, or if she pushes her claim.”

“Yes,” said the rector, struck by the practical
wisdom of the idea, though much
averse to bargaining with sin.

So, after some further discussion and denunciation,
the colonel was commissioned to
call on Josie, and “see what she would take
to clear out,” as the veteran plainly expressed
it.