University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.
ALICE AND ADAH.

At Alice's request, Adah and Sam staid altogether at
Spring Bank, but Alice was the ruling power — Alice,
the one whom Chloe and Claib consulted; Alice to whom
Aunt Eunice looked for counsel, Alice, who remembered all
the doctor's directions, taking the entire charge of Hugh's
medicines herself — and Alice, who wrote to Mrs. Worthington,
apprising her of Hugh's illness. They hoped he
was not dangerous, she said, but he was very sick, and
Mrs. Worthington would do well to come at once. She
did not mention 'Lina, but the idea never crossed her
mind that a sister could stay away from choice when a
brother was so ill; and it was with unfeigned surprise
that she one morning saw Mrs. Worthington and Lulu
alighting at the gate, but no 'Lina with them.

“She was so happy at Saratoga,” Mrs. Worthington
said, when a little over the first flurry of her arrival.
“So happy, too, with Mrs. Richards that she could not
tear herself away, unless her mother should find Hugh
positively dangerous, in which case she should, of course,
come at once.”

This was the mother's charitable explanation, made
with a bitter sigh as she recalled 'Lina's heartless anger
when the letter was received, as if Hugh were to blame, as
indeed, 'Lina seemed to think he was.

“What business had he to come home so quick? It he'd
staid in New Orleans, he might not have had the fever.

Any way, she was'nt going home. Alice had said he was
not dangerous yet, so if her mother went, that was
enough;” and utterly forgetful of the many weary hours
and days when Hugh had watched by her, the heartless
girl had stifled every feeling of self reproach, and hurried
her mother off, entrusting to her care a note for Alice,
who, she felt, would wonder at her singular conduct.

Giving the note to Alice, Mrs. Worthington hastened to
her child, with whom Adah and Sam were sitting. He
had just awakened from a quiet sleep, and knew his mother
at once. Winding his arms around her, he kissed her
forehead and lips, and then his eyes wandered past her
towards the door through which she had entered, as if
in quest of some one else. His mother did not observe
the glance, or know for whom he was looking so wistfully
until the white lips whispered, “'Lina, mother, where is
she?”

It was strange for him to call her 'Lina. Indeed, the
mother could remember no other time when he had done
so, but he called her 'Lina now, speaking it tenderly, as if
her presence would be very welcome to him. There was a
hesitancy on the part of the mother, and then she said,
“'Lina staid in Saratoga. She is very happy there. She
will come if you grow worse. She sent her love.”

Poor Mrs. Worthington! She mentally asked forgiveness
for this fabrication. 'Lina had sent no love, and the
mother only said so because she must say something.
Wistfully, eagerly, Hugh's eyes sought her's for a moment,
and then filled with tears which dropped upon the pillow.

“Did you want 'Lina to come?” Mrs. Worthington
asked,

“Yes,” and Hugh's lip quivered like a grieved child.
“I'm going to die, and I wanted to tell her how sorry I
am for the harsh things I've said to her. I've been crazy
some, I guess, for nothing was clear in my mind — nothing

but the words “Forgive as ye would be forgiven.' They
were the last I ever read in that little Bible you never
saw. It's in my trunk, and when I'm gone you'll give it
to Miss Johnson. I think she's here; and you'll tell
'Lina I was sorry, and if — if — if she's ever sorry, tell
her I forgive her, and wanted her to come so much. I
thought, maybe, she'd kiss me; she never has since she was
a little child. If she comes before you put me out of
sight, ask her to kiss me in the coffin, because I was her
brother. I shall be sure to know it. Will you, mother?”

Mrs. Worthington could only sob as she pressed the
hands she held between her own and tried to quiet him.

Meantime Alice, in her own room, was reading 'Lina's
note, containing a most glowing description of the delightful
time she was having at Saratoga, and how hard it would
be to leave.

“I know dear Hugh is in good hands,” she wrote, “and
it is so pleasant here that I really do want to stay a little
longer. What a delightful lady that Mrs. Richards is —
not one bit stiff as I can see. I don't know what people
mean, to call her proud. She has promised, if mamma
will leave me here, to be my chaperon, and it's possible we
may visit New York together, so as to be there when the
Prince arrives. Won't that be grand? She talks so
much of you that sometimes I'm really jealous. Perhaps
I may go to Terrace Hill before I return, but I rather
hope not, it makes me fidgetty to think of meeting the
Misses Richards, though, of course, I know I shall like them,
particularly Anna.”

Not a word was there in this letter of the doctor, but
Alice understood it all the same. He was the attraction
which kept the selfish girl from her brother's side. “May
she be happy with him,” was Alice's mental comment,
shuddering as she recalled the time when she was pleased
with the handsome doctor, and silently thanking God who
had saved her from much sorrow.

Just then Adah came in, and sitting down by the window
seemed to be looking at something far away, something,
which brought to her face the sad hopeless expression,
which Alice had often observed before. Drawing near
to her Alice said softly, “Of what are you thinking,
Adah?”

There were no reserves now between the two girls, and
laying her head in Alice's lap, Adah sobbed, “I'm thinking
of Willie's father. Will he never come back? Can
it be he meant to deceive me, Miss Johnson?” and Adah
lifted up her head, disclosing a face which Alice scarcely
recognized, for the strange expression there. “Miss Johnson,
if I knew that George deliberately planned my ruin
under the guise of a mock marriage, and then when it
suited him deserted me as a toy of which he was tired, I
should hate him!”

She hissed the words between her shut teeth, and Alice
involuntarily shuddered at the hard, relentless look, which
only a deceived, deserted woman can wear. She did not
dream that Adah, who had seemed so gentle, so good, could
put on such a look, and she gazed at her in astonishment,
as in clear, determined tones she repeated the words,
“Yes, I should hate him!”

“I know it's wrong,” she continued, “and I've asked
God many a time to take the feeling away, but it's in me
yet, and sometimes, when I get to thinking of the time
before he came, when I was a happy, innocent school-girl,
without a care for anything, my heart turns into stone,
and the prayer I would say will not come. Miss Johnson,
you don't know what it is to love with your whole soul
one who, to all appearance, was worthy of your love, and
who, the world would say, was above you in position —
to trust him implicitly, to worship the very earth he trod,
to feel 'twas Heaven where he was, to have no shadow of
suspicion, to believe yourself his lawful wife, and then
some dreadful morning wake up and find him gone, you

know not where — to wait and watch through weary
weeks and months of agonizing pain, and then to hear at
last, in his own handwriting, that you were not a wife,
that the whole was a mockery, a marriage of convenience,
which circumstances rendered it necessary for him to
break, that his proud family would not receive you, that
though he loved you still, his bride must be rich to please
his aristocratic mother, and then to end with the hope
thrown out that sometime he might come back and make
you truly his. But for that I should have died, and, as it
was, I felt my heart-strings snapping, one by one, felt the
blood freezing in my veins, felt that I was going mad. I
frighten you, Miss Johnson,” she said, as she saw how
Alice shrunk away from the dark eyes in which there
was a fierce, resentful gleam, unlike sweet Adah Hastings.
“I used to frighten myself when I saw in my eyes the demon
which whispered suicide.”

“Oh, Adah, Mrs. Hastings,” and Alice involuntarily
wound her arm around the young girl-woman as if to
shield her from sin. “You could not have dreamed of
that!”

“I did,” and Adah spoke sadly now. “I forgot God
awhile, and He left me to myself, but followed me still,
going with me all through those crowded streets,
close at my side, though I did not know it, and holding
me back at the last moment, when the tempter was about
to triumph, and the river rolling at my feet looked so invitingly
to poor, half crazed me, He put other thoughts
in my head, and where I went to throw my life away, I
knelt down and prayed. It was kind in God to save me,
and I've tried to love Him better since, to thank Him for
His great goodness in leading me to Hugh, as He surely
did; but there's something savage in my nature, which
has not been all subdued, and sometimes I'm rebellious,
just as you see me now, and my heart, which at first was
full of love for George, goes out against him for his base
treachery.”

“And yet you love him still?” Alice said, inquiringly,
as she smoothed the beautiful brown hair.

“I suppose I do. A kind word from him would bring
me back, but will it ever be spoken? Shall we ever meet
again?”

She was silent a moment, and then Alice said, “I do
not seek your confidence unless you are willing to give it.
As you have told me your story in part, will you tell me
the whole?”

There was no vindictiveness now in Adah's face, and
the soft brown eyes drooped mournfully beneath the heavy
lashes as she told the story of her wrongs. Told of
a young girl at Madam Dupont's school, of the elegant
stranger present at one examination, and who watched
her with unfeigned interest as she worked out upon the
board a most difficult problem in Euclid, standing so near
to her that once when she accidentally dropped her crayon
he picked it up and offered it to her with a few whispered
words of commendation for her skill in mathematics. Of
a chance meeting in the street. Of walks and rides, and
blissful interviews at her own cozy little room in the
boarding-house, where she had lived for years. Of marriage
proposed at last, and sanctioned by her guardian.
Of the necessity urged upon her why it should be kept a
secret until the proud relatives were reconciled. Of going
one night with her lover, her guardian and another witness,
far out into the suburbs of the city to the house of
a justice, who made her George's wife. Of her guardian's
sudden departure, she knew not whither. Of a removal
to another boarding-house more obscure, and in a part of
the city where she never met again with any whom she
had known before. Of months of perfect happiness.
Of the hope growing within her that she was gradually
leading George to God. Of letters from home which made
him blue, and which she never saw. Of his leaving her at
last without a word or sign that he was going or had grown

weary of her. Of the terrible suspense, the cruel letter,
the attempt to take her life, of Willie's birth, of her being
turned from the house as a disreputable character, and
coming at last to Spring Bank in quest of Hugh, and of
the gradual dying out, as she sometimes feared, of her love
for George Hastings.

“And Hugh?” Alice said, when Adah paused. “Why
did you come to him? Had you known him before?”

“Hugh was that other witness. I never saw him till
that night, neither, I think, did George. My guardian
planned the whole.”

“Hugh Worthington is not the man I took him for,”
and Alice spoke bitterly, a look of horror on her face which
Adah quickly detected.

“You mistake him,” she cried eagerly. “He is all you
imagine him to be, the noblest, truest man, and the best
friend I ever had. My guardian possessed a most singular
power over all young men, and Hugh was fresh from the
country. I don't know where or how they met, but at a
hotel, I think. He did not know it was a farce. He went
in perfect good faith, although he says since that it did
once occur to him that something might be wrong.

“And your guardian,” interrupted Alice, “is it not
strange that he should have acted so cruel a part, particularly
if, as you sometimes fancied, he was your father?”

“Yes, that's the strangest part of all. I cannot understand
it, or where he is, though I sometimes imagined he
must be dead, or in prison,” and Adah thought of what
Sam had said concerning Sullivan, the negro stealer.

“What do you mean; why should he be in prison?”
Alice asked in some surprise, and Adah replied by telling
her what Sam had said, and the reason she had for thinking
Sullivan and her guardian, Redfield, one and the
same.

Just then Willie's voice was heard in the hall, and hastening
to the door Alice admitted him into the room.

Taking him in her lap she kissed his rosy cheek, and pushing
back his soft curls said to Adah, “Do you know I
think he looks like Hugh?”

“Yes,” and Adah spoke sadly. “I know he does, and
I am sorry for Hugh's sake, as it must annoy him. Neither
can I account for it, for I am certainly nothing to
Hugh. But there's another look in Willie's face, his father's.
Oh, Miss Johnson, George was handsome, and 'twas
his face which first attracted me.”

“Can you describe him, or will it be too painful?” Alice
asked, and forcing back her tears, Adah told how
George Hastings looked, while Alice's hands worked nervously
together, and her heart beat almost audibly, for,
save the absence of moustache and whiskers, which might
have been grown since, Adah was describing Dr. Richards.

“And you've never seen him since, nor heard from him,
nor guessed where his mother lived?”

“Never, and when only the wrong is remembered, I
think I never care to see or hear from him again; but
when the love I bore him comes surging back, as it sometimes
does, I'd crawl to the end of the world for one more
tender look from him. I'd lay his boy at his feet and die
there myself so willingly. I used to form all sorts of castles
about his coming after me, but they are all blown
down, and I've learned to look the future in the face, to
know that I must meet it alone. I wish there was something
I could do to relieve Hugh of the expense I am to
him. I did not know till after I was sick last spring how
very poor he was, and how many self-denials he had to
make for his family. I heard his mother talking with
Aunt Eunice when they thought I was asleep, and it
almost broke my heart. He goes without decent clothes,
without a fire in his room on wintry nights, goes without
every thing, and then 'Lina calls him mean and stingy.
The noble, self-denying Hugh! I would almost die for

him; and I ask God every day to bring him some good
fortune at last.”

“I never knew that Mr. Worthington was so straightened
said Alice. Was Rocket sold to Col. Tiffton for
debt?”

“Yes, for 'Lina's debts, contracted at Harney's and for
my sick bills, too. I've cried the hardest over that, for I
know how Hugh loved that horse, but the worst of it is
that Col. Tiffton has in some way become indebted to
Harney for an immense sum of money. I don't understand
it, but the colonel signed a note for ten thousand
dollars with somebody and for somebody, both of which
somebodys have failed, and the colonel has to pay. It
will take his home, they say, and his personal property,
including Rocket, whom Harney is determined to secure.
I've heard of his boasting that Hugh should yet be compelled
to see him galloping down the pike upon his idol.”

“He never shall!” and Alice spoke under her breath,
asking further questions concerning the sale of Colonel
Tiffton's house, and how much Mosside was worth.

Adah could not tell. She only knew that Rocket was
pawned for five hundred dollars. “Once I insanely hoped
that I might help redeem him — that God would find a
work for me to do — and my heart was so happy for a
moment.”

“What did you think of doing?” Alice asked, glancing
at the delicate young girl, who looked so unaccustomed
to toil of any kind.

“I thought to be a governess or waiting-maid,” and
Adah's lip began to quiver as she told how, before coming
to Spring Bank, she had advertised for such a situation;
how she had waited and watched for an answer, and how
at last it came, or at least the words seemed addressed to
her, and she had thought to answer it, but had been discouraged
by 'Lina.

“Do you remember the address?” and Alice waited curiously
for the answer.

“Yes, `A. E. R, Snowdon.' You came from Snowdon,
Miss Johnson, and I've wanted so much to ask if you
knew `A. E. R.,'

Alice was confounded. Surely the leadings of Providence
were too plainly evident to be unnoticed. There
was a reason why Adah Hastings must go to Anna Richards,
and Alice hastened to explain who the Richards family
were.

“Oh, I can't go there. They are too proud. They
would hate me for Willie, and ask me for his father,” Adah
cried, the tears breaking through the fingers she pressed
before her eyes.

Very gently Alice talked to her of Anna, so lovely in
disposition, so beautiful in her mature womanhood.
Adah would be happy with her, she said, and Anna would
be a second mother to her child. She did not hint of her
suspicions that at Terrace Hill Adah would find George
for fear she might be mistaken, but she talked of Snowdon
and Anna Richards, whom Adah was sure to like.

“I'm so glad for your sake that it has come round at
last,” she said. “Will you write to her to-day, or shall I
for you? Perhaps I had better.”

“No, no, oh, no — and Adah's voice trembled, for she
shrank nervously from the thought of meeting the Richards
family.

If 'Lina liked the old lady, she certainly could not, and
the very thought of these elder sisters, in all their primness,
dismayed and disheartened her.

“There's a young man, is there not — a Dr. Richards?”
she asked.

“Yes; but he is not often at home. He need be no bugbear.
He is practicing in New York, when practicing at
all. At present he is at Saratoga.”

Adah looked up quickly, guessing, in a moment, what
was keeping 'Lina there, and feeling more averse than
ever to Terrace Hill.

Gradually, however, as Alice continued to talk of Anna,
her feelings changed and she said at last, “I will go to
Miss Richards, but not till Hugh is better, not till he
knows and approves. Do you think it will be long before
he regains his reason!”

Alice could not tell. She hoped for the best, and
thought with Adah that she ought to stay until he could
be consulted.

“Do you correspond with Miss Richards?” Adah suddenly
asked, after a long reverie.

“No, she dreads writing letters above all things else,
while I am a wretchedly negligent correspondent. I will
send a note of introduction by you, though.”

“Please don't and Adah spoke pleadingly, “I should
have to give it if you did, and I'd rather go by myself.
I know it would be better to have your influence, but it
is a fancy of mine not to say that I ever knew you or any
one at Spring Bank. I imagine this Dr. likes 'Lina, and
they might question me of her. I could not say much
that was good, and I should not like to say bad things
of Hugh's sister. Then, too, Miss Richards never need
know of my past life unless I choose to let her, as I
should have to do in telling her how I came at Spring
Bank.”

Alice could understand Adah's motives in part, and
feeling sure that whatever she might say would be the
truth, she did not press the matter, but suffered her to
proceed in her own way. Now it was settled that Adah
should go, she felt a restless, impatient desire to be gone,
questioning the doctor closely with regard to Hugh, who,
it seemed to her, would never waken from the state of
unconsciousness into which he had fallen, and from which
he only rallied for an instant, just long enough to recognize
his mother, but never Alice or herself, both of whom
watched over him day and night, waiting anxiously for
the first symptom which should herald his return to reason.