University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.
BLACK HANNIBAL'S WHITE HEART.

EDITH half led, half carried her sobbing sister to
the parlor. Mrs. Allen, no longer languid, and
Laura from her exile, were already there, and gathered
with dismayed faces around the sofa where
she placed Zell.

“What has happened?” asked Mrs. Allen
tremblingly.

Edith's self-control, now that her enemies were
gone, gave way utterly, and sinking on the floor,
she swayed back and forth, sobbing even more hysterically
than Zell, and her mother and Laura, oppressed
with the sense of some new impending disaster,
caught the contagion of their bitter grief, and
wept and wrung their hands also.

The frightened maid stood in one door, with her
white questioning face, and old grey-haired Hannibal
in another with streaming eyes of honest sympathy.

“Speak, speak, what is the matter?” almost
shrieked Mrs. Allen.

Edith could not speak, but Zell sobbed, “I
—don't—know—Edith—seems to have—gone—
mad.”

At last, after the application of restoratives
Edith so far recovered herself to say brokenly,—

“We've been betrayed—they're— villains.
They never—meant—marriage at all.”

“That's false!” screamed Zell. “I won't believe
it of my lover, whatever may have been true
of your mean little Gus Elliot. He promised to
marry me, and you have spoiled everything by
your mad folly. I'll never forgive you.”—When
Zell's wild fury would have ceased, cannot be said,
but a new voice startled and awed them in silence.
In the storm of sorrow and passion that raged within,
the outer storm had risen unnoted, but now an
awful peal of thunder broke over their heads and
rolled away among the hills in deep reverberations.
Another and louder crash soon followed, and a solemn
expectant silence fell upon them akin to that
when the noisy passionate world will suddenly
cease its clamor as the trump of God proclaims
the end.

“Merciful heaven, we shall be struck,” said Mrs.
Allen shudderingly.

“What's the use of living?” said Zell in a hard
reckless tone.

“What is there to live for?” sighed Edith,
deep in her heart. “There are none to be trusted
—not one.”

Instead of congratulations received with blushing
happiness, and solitaire engagement rings, thus
is shown the first result of Mrs. Allen's policy, and
society's injunction,—

“Keep your hands white, my dears.”

The storm passed away, and they crept off to
such poor rest as they could get, too miserable to
speak, and too worn to renew the threatened quarrel
that a voice from heaven seemingly had interrupted.

The next morning they gathered at a late breakfast
table with haggard faces and swollen eyes.
Zell looked hard and sullen, Edith's face was so
determined in its expression as to be stern. Mrs.
Allen lamented feebly and indefinitely, Laura only
appeared more settled in her apathy, and with Zell
and Edith, was utterly silent through the forlorn
meal.

After it was over, Zell went up to her room and
Edith followed her. Zell had not spoken to her
sister since the thunder peal had suddenly checked
her bitter words. Edith dreaded the alienation
she saw in Zell's face, and felt wronged by it,
knowing that she had only acted as truest friend
and protector. But in order still to shield her
sister she must secure her confidence, or else the
danger averted the past evening, would threaten
as grimly as ever. She also realized how essential
Zell's help would be in the struggle for bread on
which they must enter, and wished to obtain her
hearty coöperation in some plan of work. She saw
that labor now was inevitable, and must be commenced
immediately. From Laura she hoped
little. She seemed so lacking in force mentally and
physically, since their troubles began, that she

feared nothing could arouse her. She threatened
to soon become an invalid like her mother. The
thought of help from the latter, did not even occur
to her.

Edith had not slept, and as the chaos and bitterness
of the past evening's experience passed
away, her practical mind began to concentrate itself
on the problem of support. Her disappointment
had not been so severe as that of Zell, by any
means, and so she was in a condition to rally much
sooner. She had never much more than liked Elliot,
and now the very thought of him was nauseating,
and though labor and want might be hard indeed,
and regret for all they had lost keen, still
she was spared the bitterer pain of a hopeless love.

But it was just this that Zell feared, and though
she repeated to herself over and over again Van
Dam's last words, “I will never give you up,” she
feared that he would, or what would be equally
painful, she would be compelled to give him up, for
she could not disguise it from herself that her confidence
had been shaken.

But sincere love is slow to believe evil of its object.
If Van Dam had shown preference for another,
Zell's jealousy and anger would have known no
bounds, but this he had never done, and she could
not bring herself to believe that the man whom she
had known since childhood, who had always treated
her with uniform kindness and most flattering
attention, who had partaken of their hospitality so
often and intimately that he almost seemed like

one of the family, meditated the basest evil against
her.

“Gus Elliot is capable of any meanness, but
Edith was mistaken about my friend. And yet
Edith has so insulted him, that I fear he will
never come to the house again,” she said with deep
resentment. “If I had declined a private marriage,
I am sure he would have married me openly.”

Therefore when Edith entered their little room
Zell's face was averted and there was every evidence
of estrangement. Edith meant to be kind
and considerate, and patiently show the reasons
for her action.

She sat down and took her sister's cold impassive
hand, saying,—

“Zell, did I not help you dress in this very place
last evening? Did I not wait against my judgment
till Mr. Van Dam came? These things prove to
you that I would not put a straw between you and
a true lover. Surely we have trouble enough without
adding the bitter one of division and estrangement.
If we don't stand by each other now what
will become of us?”

“What right had you to misjudge Mr. Van
Dam by such a mean little scamp as Gus Elliot?
Why did you not give him a chance to explain
himself?”

“Oh Zell, Zell, how can you be so blinded?
Did he not ask you to go away with him in the
night—to elope, and then submit to a secret marriage
in New York?”

“Well, he told me there were good reasons that
made such a course necessary at present.”

“Are you George Allen's daughter that you
could even listen to such a proposal? When you
lived on Fifth Avenue would he have dared to have
even faintly suggested such a thing? Can he be a
true lover who insults you to begin with, and instead
of showing manly delicacy and desire to
shield, in view of your misfortunes, demands not
only hard but indecent conditions? Even if he
purposed to marry you, what right has he to require
of you such indelicate action as would make
your name a byword and hissing among all your
old acquaintances, and a lasting stain to your family?
They would not receive you with respect again,
though some might tolerate you and point you out
as the girl so desperate for a husband, that you
submitted to the grossest indignity to get one.”

Zell hung her head in shame and anger under
Edith's inexorable logic, but the anger was now
turning against Van Dam. Edith continued,—

“A lady should be sought and won. It is for
her to set the place and time of the wedding, and
dictate the conditions. It is for her to say who
shall be present and who absent, and woman, to
whom a spotless name is everything, has the right,
which even savage tribes recognize, to shield herself
from the faintest imputation of immodesty by
compelling her suitor to comply with the established
custom and etiquette which are her safeguards.
The daughter of a poor laborer would

demand all this as a matter of course, and shall the
beautiful Zell Allen, who has had scores of admirers,
have all this reversed in her case, and be compelled
to skulk away from the home in which she
should be openly married, to hunt up a man at
night who has made the pitiful promise that he
will marry her somewhere or sometime or other,
on condition that no one shall know it till he is
ready? Mark it well, the man who so insults a
lady and all her family, never meant to marry her,
or else he is so coarse and brutal in all his instincts,
that no decent woman ought to marry him.”

“Say no more,” said Zell in a low tone, “I
fear you are right, though I would rather die than
believe it. O, Edith, Edith!” she cried in sudden
passionate grief. “My heart is broken. I loved
him so. I could have been so happy.”

Edith took her in her arms and they cried
together. At last Zell said languidly:

“What can we do?”

“We must go to work like other poor people.
If we had only done so at first and saved every
dollar we had left, we would not now be in our
present deeply embarrassed condition. And yet
Zell, if you, with your vigor and strength, will
only stand by me, and help your best, we will see
bright days yet. There must be some way by
which two girls can make a livelihood here in
Pushton, as elsewhere. We have at least a shelter,
and I have great hopes of the garden.”

“I don't like a garden. I fear I couldn't do

much there. And it seems like man's work too.
I fear I shall be too wretched and ignorant to do
anything.”

“Not at all. Youth, health, and time, against
all the troubles of the world. (This was the best
creed poor Edith then had.) Now,” she continued,
encouragingly, “You like housework. Of
course we must dismiss our servants, and if you
did the work of the house with Laura, so that I
had all my time for something else, it would be a
great saving and help.”

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! that we should ever
come to this!” said Zell despairingly.

“We must come to it, and must face the
truth.”

“Well, of course, I'll try,” said Zell with something
of Laura's apathy. Then with a sudden burst
of passion she clenched her little hands and cried:

“I hate him, the cold-hearted wretch, to treat
his poor little Zell so shamefully!” and she paced
up and down the room with inflamed eyes and
cheeks. Then in equally sudden revulsion she
threw herself down on the floor with her head in
her sister's lap, and murmured, “God forgive me,
I love him still—I love him with my whole heart,”
and sobbed till all her strength was gone.

Edith sighed deeply. “Can she ever be depended
on?” she thought. At last she lifted the
languid form on the bed, threw over her an afghan
and bathed her head with cologne till the
poor child fell asleep.

Then she went down to Laura and her mother,
to whom she explained more fully the events of
last evening. Laura only muttered, “shameful,”
but Mrs. Allen whined, “She could not understand
it. Girls didn't know how to manage any longer.
There must be some misunderstanding, for no
young men in the city could have meant to offer
such an insult to an old and respectable family as
theirs. She never heard of such a thing. If she
could only have been present—”

“Hush, mother,” said Edith almost sternly.
“It's all past now. I should gladly believe that
when you were a young lady, such poor villains
were not in good society. Moreover, such offers
are not made to young ladies living on the Avenue.
This is more properly a case for shooting than
management. I have no patience to talk any
more about it. We must now try to conform to
our altered circumstances, and at least maintain
our self-respect, and secure the comforts of life if
possible. But we must now practice the closest
economy. Laura, you will have to be mother's
maid, for of course we can keep no servants. I
have a little money left, and will pay your maid
to-day and let her go.”

“I don't see how I can get along without her,”
said Mrs. Allen helplessly.

“You must,” said Edith firmly. “We have no
money to pay her any longer, and your daughters
will try to supply her place.”

Mrs. Allen did not formally abdicate her natural

position as head of the family, but in the hour of
almost shipwreck, Edith took the helm out of the
feeble hands. But the young girl had little to
guide her, no knowledge and experience worth
mentioning, and the sea was rough and beset with
dangers.

The maid had no regrets at departure, and
went away with something of the satisfaction of a
rat leaving a sinking ship. But with old Hannibal
it was a different affair.

“You aint gwine to send me away too, is you,
Miss Edie?” said he, with the accent of dismay.

“My good old friend,” said Edith feelingly,
“the only friend I'm sure of in this great world
full of people, I fear I must. We can't afford to
even pay you half what you are worth any longer.”

“I'se sure I doesn't eat such a mighty lot,”
Hannibal sniffled out.

“Oh, I hope we won't reach starvation point,”
said Edith, smiling in spite of her sore heart. “But
Hannibal, you are a valuable servant, besides, there
are plenty of rich upstarts who would give you
anything you would ask, just to have you come
and give an old and aristocratic air to their freshly-gilded
mansions.”

“Miss Edie, you doesn't know nothin 'tall about
my feelins. What's money to ole Hannibal! I'se
lived among de millionaires and knows all about
money. It only buys half of 'em a heap of trouble
and doesn't keep dare hearts from gettin sore.
When Massa Allen was a livin', he paid me big,

and guve me all de money I wanted, and if he, at
last, lost my money which he keep, it's no more'n
he did with his own. And now, Miss Edie, I toted
you and you'se sisters round on my shoulder when
you'se was babies, and I haint got nothin' left but
you, no friends, no nothin'; and if you send me
away, it's like goin' out into de wilderness. What
'ud I do in some strange man's big house, when
my heart's here in de little house? My heart is
all ole Hannibal has left, if 'tis black, and if you
send me away you'se break it. I'd a heap rather
stay here in Bushtown and starve to death with
you alls, dan live in de grandest house on de
Avenue.”

“Oh, Hannibal,” said Edith, putting her hand
on the old man's shoulder, and looking at him with
her large eyes dimmed with grateful tears, “you
don't know how much good you have done me. I
have felt that there were none to trust—not one,
but you are as true as steel. Your heart isn't
black, as I told you before, it's whiter than mine.
Oh, that other men were like you!”

“Bress you, Miss Edie, I isn't a man, I'se only
a nigger.”

“You are my true and trusted friend,” said
Edith, “and you shall be one of the family as long
as you wish to stay with us.”

“Now bress you, Miss Edie, you'se an angel for
sayin' dat. Don't be afeard, I'se good for sumpen
yet, if I be old. I once work for fear in de South;
den I work for money, and now I'se gwine to work

for lub, and it 'pears I can feel my ole jints limber
up at de thought. It 'pears like dat lub is de only
ting dat can make one young agin. Neber you
fear, Miss Edie, we'll pull through, and I'se see you
a grand lady yet. A true lady you'se allers be,
even if you went out to scrub.”

“Perhaps I'll have to, Hannibal. I know how
to do that about as well as anything else that people
are willing to pay for.”