 | I. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
1. I.
For the first time in her life Lucy Brothertoft
failed to kiss her mother on the morning of the
dinner to Sir Henry Clinton.
A great pang went to the guilty woman's
heart.
She perceived that her daughter knew her at
last.
Ah, miserable woman! She did not dare turn
her great black eyes reproachfully upon Lucy,
and demand the omitted caress.
She did not dare say tenderly, “What, my
daughter, are you forgetting me?”
She did not dare go forward and press her
own unworthy lips to those virgin lips.
For one instant a great tumult of love and
remorse stirred within her. She longed to fling
herself on her knees before her daughter, to
bury her face in Lucy's lap, and there, with
tears and agony, cry out: —
“O my child! pity me, do not hate me, for
the lie I have been. Ah! you do not know the
misery of wearing an undetected falsehood in
hypocrisy. You do not know how miserably
base it is to be loved for what you are not, —
to be trusted as a true and loyal heart, when
every moment of such false pretence is another
film of falsehood over the deep-seated lie. You
cannot know how we tacit liars long for betrayal,
while we shrink and shudder when it
approaches!
“And you, my gentle daughter, have been my
vengeance. Listen to me now! The old pride
breaks. The old horror passes. I confess. Before
you, the very image of my husband in his
young and hopeful days, I confess my shameful
sin. I have been a foul wife and a false mother.
Do not scorn me, Lucy. I have suffered, and
shall suffer till I die.
“Ah! thank Heaven, my child, that you do
not feel and cannot divine half my degradation.
My agony you see, — let it be the lesson of your
life! Here I hide my face, and dare to recall
that brave and noble lover, your father. So
gentle he was, so tender, so utterly trustful!
And I was mean enough to think he triumphed
over me because his soul was fine, and mine was
coarse. So I took my coarse revenge.
“O fool, fool! that I could not comprehend
that pure and lofty nature. O base! that I
must grovel and rank myself with the base. O
for the unwomanly sneers, for the studied
insults, by which I bore him down, and broke
at last that high, chivalric heart. It seems to
me that I was not sane, but mad all those miserable
years.
“But now, my daughter, see me weep! I
repent. My soul repents and loathes this guilty
woman here. I have spoken, I have told you
fully what I am. I look up. I see your father's
patient, pitying glance upon your face. Speak,
with his voice, and say I may be slowly pardoned,
if my penitence endures. And kiss me, Lucy!
not my tainted lips; but kiss my forehead with
a kiss of peace!”
Such a wild agony of love and remorse stirred
within this wretched woman's heart.
But she battled it down, down, down.
The virago in her struck the woman to the
earth, and throttled her. No yielding. No
tears. No repentance. She scorned the medicine
of shame.
Lucy's presence cowed her. She did not
dare look at that gentle, earnest face, except
covertly, and as an assassin looks.
The Furies, her old companions, thickened
about her, like a mist pregnant with forms.
There was a whispering in the air. Did others
see those shadowy images? Did others hear
emphatic. “Stab the meek-faced girl! Be rid
of this spy! Shall she sit there and shame
you?” — so the Furies whispered and shouted.
And the woman replied within herself: “Am
I not stabbing her? See, here is my hired
bravo, my future son-in-law, the very Honorable
Major Kerr, — le bel homme! He will give
the puny thing troubles of her own to mind.
We will see whether she is always to stay so
meek and patient. We will see whether these
Brothertofts are so much better than other
people. She has learnt to suspect me at last.
I knew the time would come, and I have made
ready for it. Day after to-morrow they are to
be married, and then I shall be rid of Miss
Monitress.”
With such passions at work, breakfast at
Brothertoft, on the morning of Putnam's Council,
and the dinner to Clinton, was not a very
cheerful meal. Mother and daughter were silent.
Kerr took his cue, and played knife and fork.
| I. Edwin Brothertoft | |