University of Virginia Library

17. XVII.
CHECKMATED.

When Warren returned, Mrs. Clifford had not yet
risen. He entered the room and sat down beside her,
tenderly kissing her cheek. “You shall not see company
again this year, darling mother, if it's going to
make you so ill next day.” His tone was playful, but
there was deep anxiety in the look he bent upon her.

“It was not that, Warren,” she said, quietly.

“Not that?”

“No, the cause lay deeper. Warren, could you be
happy if we were separated? We have been together
now so many years—there would be so many memories
of sorrows we have shared—of pleasures we have
experienced; nay, would not every twilight of the
future echo with the evening hymns we have sung
together?”

“But why think of this, mother dearest, when
such a thing can never be?”

“Warren, do you love Grace Atherton?” She
fixed her dark eyes upon his face with a searching look.

“Surely I love her, she is my betrothed.”

“It would cost you more, then, to part with her,
than with your mother?”

“I cannot tell; in mercy do not ask me. It would
be death or madness to do either.”

“And yet answer me!”

“How can I? Grace is so sweet, so gentle, she
soothes me like pleasant music. You are different.
Your dark eyes thrill me, kindle up my soul. I have
known you longest—you are my mother.”

She twined her arm around his neck, and drew
his head down on the pillow beside her. “Then you
wouldn't leave me,” she said in a gentle whisper, “not
even if this dear Grace wished it?”

“Never! Have I not sworn I would never leave
nor forsake you? She could not wish it; if she did,
I would cast her from my heart.”

Juno thanked him in a low, tremulous tone, and
then she asked—“But, Warren, if you must give up
one of us two; if my husband were to forbid the nuptials,
and the marriage vows you plighted were to be
your eternal sentence of banishment from my presence,
what would you do then?”

“My duty, if God would help me to discover it.
It would be a fearful choice, between breaking the
young heart which has trusted me, and refusing obedience
to the guardians of a lifetime, parting with
you.”

“Think you that Grace Atherton, with her girl's

heart, could ever love you as I have loved?” Her
tone was one of intense passion; her warm lips were
against his cheek, and yet he dreamed not that it was
other than a mother's sanctified tenderness of which
she spoke.

He answered earnestly—“Oh, mother, try me no
farther. Such choice could never be. If it could,
God help me; but it is wrong to think of any thing so
terrible, so impossible.

“And yet, my own boy, it was this terrible fear
which made me ill. John Clifford likes not your fair
bride, and a few words he said made me down sick
with fear lest all this lay before you.”

“But surely, mother, you could influence him.”

“I will try,” she answered. Her face was lying
so that Warren could not look upon it, but at that
moment it wore the expression of a beautiful fiend.

During the week that followed before John Clifford's
return, Juno was lovelier than ever. Miss Margaretta
had departed for her own home, in absolute despair
of the success of her plans, and they were constantly
together. Warren seemed more and more to realize
how impossible it would be to live without her. Even
the absent Grace seldom came between them, save
when he would rouse himself to write to her, or pause
for a moment to read her words of purest love and
trust. For the time being, his mother seemed to unite
to her own proud beauty and unrivalled elegance, all

the sweet, unselfish purity which had most attracted
him in Grace. There was a shade of sadness in her
manners, which made them irresistibly charming.

At length Mr. Clifford came. Juno had laid her
plans skilfully. She met him at the door, and rested
her head on his breast as she had not done more than
once or twice in a life-time. He clasped her in his
arms. “I am so glad you have come,” she whispered,
“I have been so anxious, I have needed you so much.”
He threw off his outside wrappings and followed her
to her boudoir. She sat down beside him, and for a
moment there was silence. Then looking up she said,
as if with a sweet, wife-like trust, “You do love me,
John?”

“Love you, my own wife, my beautiful angel; if
you knew how gladly I would die for you.”

“I do know. It is a blessed thought that I will
have your love to comfort me when my heart is fit to
break.”

“Your heart! My own love, what is this great
sorrow?”

“Is it nothing to be left childless? If Warren
Clifford is Grace Atherton's husband, he cannot be
my son.”

“Why not? he can bring her home. There need
be no separation.”

She reached up, and twined her arm caressingly
about his neck. “But I don't like her,” she said,

coaxingly—“It would make me very unhappy to have
her here; and she don't like me, and wouldn't want to
stay here. She got very home-sick, the little time she
did stay. The result of the marriage would be that
Warren would live in Glenthorne. I am sure of it.”

“That would be a trial, certainly. You would be
very lonely now without his society, and I really need
him about my business.”

“It would be more than a trial, my husband; it
would kill me. I have only you and him in all the
world; how can I spare either?”

“You must not, but what can I do?”

“Forbid it!”

“But would that help the matter? Some young
men would marry all the quicker.”

“It would not be so with Warren. His notions
of duty are very high, and he would think it wrong to
leave us. You would only have to be firm. Tell him
if he weds her, he must never again enter our doors.
That he must part with us for ever or with her. Let
him think that you do not like her; that you would
feel disgraced by her humble origin. He would be
insane to go forth into the world portionless, with not
even a profession. Loving her he would not link her
to such a fate. For her own sake he would give her
up.”

“But would he not suffer terribly?”

“Trust that to me, my husband. I am too fond

a mother, to wish him made unhappy. Their love, as
yet, is not much beyond a mere fancy on either side.
They would suffer very little, not half so much as you
or I should grieve at parting with our boy. If worst
came to worst, and he did marry her, we could take
them back after a time. But there is not much danger
of this, only be resolute. Will you do this for my
sake?” The bewildered man had a half consciousness
that he was promising to commit a sin before high
Heaven, but he worshipped Juno. What could he say,
when she was lying, as he had never before held her,
in his arms, with those magnetic eyes burning into his
very soul? He bent his lips to hers with a passionate
fervor, and whispered the promise she had requested,
as he held her to his heart.

He was very persistent, naturally, and when he had
once undertaken an object, was seldom known to fail.
The next morning, Warren was summoned to a conference
in his study. Juno Clifford heard the door
close behind them, and sat in her boudoir the while,
in an agony of impatient expectation. It was nearly
a half hour after, when Warren rushed in, and threw
himself at her feet. “It has come,” he exclaimed—
“mother, I have got a blow.” He buried his face in
her lap, and his frame shook with those bursting sobs
which are so terrible when the storm of some passionate
grief o'ersweeps a manly nature. “Warren, darling,”
she whispered, laying her hand very tenderly

on his brown, clustering curls—“speak to me, my own
boy. You frighten me!”

He lifted his pale face, and struggled to speak
calmly. “You were right, my mother. Oh help me
not to be angry with him, not to forget how much I
owe him. He would separate us. He hates my gentle
Grace, and scorns the low descent, which he fancies
would disgrace his proud name. He has told me that
if I marry her I can be no child of his. I must go
forth from your dear presence for ever. Oh, he was
so cold and stern! Is there no hope?”

She folded him in her arms, and hid her face upon
his shoulder, and then she answered in trembling tones,
as if she were sharing all his suffering—“There is
none. I talked to him all last night, and when I cannot
soften him, surely no other can. He does not
think Grace Atherton truly loves you. He thinks
she is dazzled by your father's wealth, and he will
never forget the terrible misfortune of that Christmas
evening.”

“He has given me two weeks to decide. He says
he will not take my answer before. But what can I
say? Dare I hope I could win my gently-nurtured
Grace to be a poor man's wife, one bitterly poor as I
shall be? And if she would, could I give you up,
whom I so idolize? Mother, help me.”

“I cannot. It will kill me if you leave me. My
heart returns but one answer, and yet I will try to

council you. What if you should write to Grace, and
ask her whether she would share your poverty, if you
left your parents for her sake.”

“I will, this moment.”

“There is no hurry. It cannot leave Boston now
until to-morrow.”

“I know, but I must do something. I shall feel
better to have it written.” He drew a writing desk
toward him, and wrote for a time with nervous energy.
Then he tossed the half-filled sheet to his mother.
She looked over its contents. They were very contradictory.
One paragraph would be filled with the passionate
outpourings of his love for Grace; the next
would picture vividly the clinging tenderness which
bound him to his mother. Then there would be a
startling prophecy of the poverty with which he so
dreaded to darken her young life, concluding, perhaps,
with a question whether they might not be wildly happy
yet, with such deep love as theirs; whether any thing
of suffering or penury would not be better than a separation
which would go nigh to crush the life out of
those two young hearts? And at the close he said—

“Grace, I know not what I have written. I leave
it all in your hands. Decide as you will. You know
I love you. I have sworn before Heaven to love you
always. Will you be my wife? If yes, I will go out
from my father's house for your sake; and you shall
be my world, but it will be a humble lot. We shall

both suffer much. It is for you to say whether your
love shall be strong enough to lighten it. Write to
me. I shall be wretched until I know my fate.”

Juno smiled faintly as she finished its perusal.
Triumphantly she whispered to herself—“She will
know at least that his heart has more than one idol.”
There was in it little of that exclusive devotion which
could win a woman like Grace Atherton to consent to
burthen him with poverty for her sake. She almost
trembled lest he should not send it, for she foresaw with
all its contradictions and inconsistencies it would be a
valuable aid to her own plans. “Seal it now,” she said,
as she handed it back to him. “It is all right. She
will say yes, if she loves you, and I—” She paused,
and Warren turned away. He had not courage to meet
the pleading agony in those lustrous eyes. The letter
was sealed, and that night, when all the rest of the
house were sleeping, Juno Clifford left her husband's
side, and folding a shawl about her, sought her boudoir.
Then she lit a little silver lamp, and sitting
down at her own table, indited a letter to Grace Atherton's
parents. She communicated her husband's
conversation with Warren. She spoke deprecatingly
of the sinful pride which made him unwilling to welcome
Grace Atherton as his daughter. Humbly she
begged them to forgive her the ungracious task she
had imposed upon herself. Very sweetly she spoke of
her own love for Grace, and then there was a perfect

torrent of wild, passionate pleading, that they would
pity the mother's heart, which clung so to her son.
She told them she was writing, when all other eyes
were closed, to pray them to have mercy, not to permit
her son to be taken from her, or she should go
mad, or die. Would they use their influence with
Grace; only persuade her to wait. It would all come
right sometime. Mr. Clifford might change his mind
by and by, or something might happen to bring them
together. But if Warren left them now, and married
in direct opposition to his father's will, there would be
no hope of forgiveness. She would trust them, she
said, to keep her letter secret. She would not have it
reach her husband's ears, or Warren's, but she could
not refrain from writing. Sitting there alone, in the
desolate midnight, she was weeping over the sheet, to
think what life would be, if he, her only one, were
taken from her. When she had written the last sentence,
she held it up to the light, and read it over. It
was very skilfully worded to produce the desired
effect. It could not fail to touch a parent's heart,
and it pictured vividly the destitution which would
be their daughter's if she became Warren's wife
against his father's will. A mocking smile sat upon
her face, as she sealed it, and wrote the superscription.
Then she proceeded with noiseless footstep to the sleeping
apartment of the quadroon. “Jane,” she said,
flashing the lamp in her eyes so as to awaken her,
“Can you do an errand for me at daybreak?”

The girl was fully aroused in a moment. “Yes,
madam,” she replied, unhesitatingly.

“You know where the post-office is?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I want to send this letter. It is very important
it should go to-morrow, and that it should be
kept secret from Warren and Mr. Clifford. I am
setting you a hard task, but I can trust no one else.
Will you undertake to put this in the morning mail?”

“I will. It shall be there, surely and secretly.”

“Very well, I am sure that I can trust you.” She
turned and left the room. She did not hear the passionate
murmur that followed her—“I would die for
you, oh my mistress! I would steep my soul in the
rivers of death, for one such caress as you bestow on
your pet greyhound!” Nothing was more singular
about Juno's character, than her power of inspiring
attachment; and perhaps by none was she so madly
worshipped as by her quadroon servant. With all
the tropical fervor of her mixed blood, the girl adored
the beautiful being whom, from childhood, she had
been taught to obey and reverence. Her mother was
dead, her brothers and sisters sold into hopeless
slavery, and she clung to her mistress with a passionate
devotion, compounded of all the good and evil in
her nature. There was not a crime so black, she

would not have stained her soul with its deadliest dye
at that mistress's bidding, and yet Heaven's own angels
were not purer than Juno Clifford might have
made her, had she so willed. It was a human soul
committed to her keeping, for which she would be
called to answer, when “the judgment was set, and
the books opened.” Quietly, now that her task was
done, Juno Clifford lay down by her husband's side.
Well she knew want of rest would impair the fresh
beauty she more than ever prized: and so she clasped
those tiny hands upon her breast, and composed herself
to sleep as calmly as if no evil thought had ever
thrilled the heart which beat beneath. It was four
days ere Grace Atherton's answer came—

“I love you,” thus she wrote, after a few words of
kindly greeting.

“I love you; I should belie my own heart, were I
not to tell you that; but I cannot decide for you. The
task you have imposed is too heavy. Had you been
utterly penniless when you sought my love, I should
have put my hand in yours, with a trust just as unfaltering;
therefore I would not hesitate to share poverty
with you now. I have never yet been rich, and a
life of constant exertion has no terrors for me. I am
young and active; I can work. But is it right?
That is the question I have been asking myself all this
weary night. You owe every thing to your parents;
could I hope God's blessing if I took you from them,

if I induced you to disobey them? There is yet another
question. What is simple Grace Atherton, that
her quiet presence and her loving heart could atone to
you for all you must give up? You have been surrounded
with every thing glorious and beautiful in art
and nature. The home we could make for ourselves
must be a very humble one. You would miss the luxury
which has grown to be almost a necessity of your existence.
And then your mother. Oh, Warren, I can
feel how, as week after week passed away and you
could not see her, you would pine for her voice, her
step, or the very touch of her fingers upon your hair.
There would be the long twilights, when you could
sing with her no longer,—the home-comings, when you
would pause vainly for her welcome. With her you
share the memories of a lifetime's tenderness. With
me it is only one dream of love,—very bright indeed,
but briefer, and it may be easier to forget. You
shall decide, I will never blame you. Sometimes I
think it is your duty to stay with them to whom you
owe most. Let your own heart answer. If that
should utter a cry which only my voice can answer;
if without me life will indeed be desolate, then come
hither and claim your bride.”

“Do you not see it all?” asked Juno, folding it
up, after he had given it to her to peruse. “She
does not like to give you up in so many words, rather
than share your poverty, so she just intimates that

your duty ought to keep you here, and sets before you
very vividly the terrors of a life of poverty.”

Warren took the note from her hand. “I am not
sure,” he said, “that you have understood her. It
seems to me that she is hoping I shall turn to her,
only she wants me to see beforehand, what I will
have to regret afterwards, and she is afraid of influencing
me to do wrong.”

“Well, how will you answer?”

“Not at all, until the last moment. I shall try to
soften my father's heart. If I fail, I can but strive
to see which way duty lies. It is a fearful struggle.”

“It will kill me if you leave me; I will not try
to live.”

“And will it not break poor Grace Atherton's
young heart, and wreck the whole future of her life,
if I prove recreant to the vow which I swore, to
cherish her for ever?”

Morning after morning during the miserable ten
days that followed, Warren was awakened at early
dawn by a restless step keeping a ceaseless vigil before
his door. The first time this happened, he was
fairly startled, for no one in the house arose so early.
He threw on a dressing-gown and opened the door.
It was Juno. Her thin, white robes alone protected
her against the cold; her black, dishevelled hair fell
nearly to her feet, and she was walking to and fro, her
hands tightly clasped, and her face bathed in tears.

He was frightened lest the madness she threatened
had overtaken her. He sprang to her side. “Mother,”
he cried, “indeed you are beside yourself, here in this
cold passage with these thin robes. You will die.”

“I hope so.” Her tone was fearfully calm. “I
am not mad, I am only wretched; I want to die since
I foresee that you will leave me. Oh, Warren, was
it for this I so cherished you? Have you decided?”

“No, mother. I must not decide until the very
last. There is a path of duty somewhere; I must have
time to find it.”

“Well, well, go back to your bed. I can bear it
alone, only do not send me off. I must stay here. I
will not go. My child, my idol, if another has won
you from me, I will be with you while I may. Even
in your hours of sleep will I linger near you, and remember,
when you go, you take my heart and my life
with you.”

Morning after morning would that light step waken
him from his troubled sleep—morning after morning
he watched her in her despairing beauty, and listened
over again to the same pleading tones, the same wild
prayers. She had never seemed so lovely, as when,
laying aside all pride, all conventional constraint
and frivolity, she abandoned herself to her passionate
woman's love and grief. He could not be insensible to
such devotion. Was it strange if he grew to believe
that the mother was dearer than the bride, to think that

this woman, so glorious in her pride, and passion, and
despair, loved him more deeply than the young heart
whose earliest love-beat had syllabled his name?

John Clifford had never been so happy as during
this time of trial. Juno had easily persuaded him to
believe that Warren's grief would be but of short duration,
and fearful lest he should be induced, in spite
of all, to accord his consent to the marriage, she
maintained her ascendency by caresses so rare and
precious, that they thrilled him with a fever of delight.
Vainly, in the course of every day, Warren
tried to soften the sternness of his resolution, and
every day received a more decided negative.

It was the last day of the appointed fortnight.
Warren met his mother at the door of Mr. Clifford's
study. She gave him a look of searching inquiry.
“Do you go to tell him your decision?” she whispered.

“No, to make one more attempt to soften his
heart.”

Passionate were the pleadings he offered in his
anguish, but John Clifford was steeled against them.
His wife's kisses still lingered on his lips, and he
must keep the compact they had sealed. She still
stood near the door when Warren came forth. With
an imploring gesture she laid her hand upon his arm.
“Has he consented?” she exclaimed, eagerly.

“No,” was the bitter reply, “he has shown no
mercy. I have humbled myself in vain.”

She threw herself on the floor at his feet, she
clasped his knees, she plead with him not to leave
her, to let her live. For a moment he lifted her in
his arms. “Mother,” he said, almost sternly, “this
is wrong. Be calm. You should leave this matter
to God and to my conscience.” He led her to the
boudoir, and throwing open the door passed from her
presence. The hour that elapsed before his return,
swept over her like an age of torture.

At length he came. There were no traces of
emotion on his face, save that it was pale as marble.
He threw an unsealed letter into her lap. “There,
mother,” he said, slowly, “that is your work. You
have triumphed. Seal it, and send it. I do not
want it ever again mentioned in my presence.”

She raised her eyes, but she was again alone.
She opened the letter and read it slowly out loud.

Proud and strong as was his manly heart, the letter
was in many places blistered with his tears. Juno
read it very calmly, with a mocking smile of triumph
on her lips. Then she refolded it, and sealed it with
the nicest care. Ringing for her footman, she ordered
it taken to the office, and then adjusting her dress sat
down to wait for Warren. All that evening she
waited in vain. Twenty times during the night she
knocked on his door and pleaded for admission, but
received no answer; only through all the night she
could hear his heavy sighs, and the quick, firm step
pacing restlessly to and fro.

It was late in the afternoon, when Mr. Atherton
entered the parlor at Glenthorne Cottage, with
Warren's letter in his hand. Grace sprang to meet
him, and broke the seal. Then sinking into a chair she
exclaimed, “Mamma, please read it, I cannot. Read
it all out loud, every word.” She was obeyed. She
listened calmly to the close, but her face grew deathly
pale and her whole figure rigid, with the effort to
suppress her emotion. When the last word was read,
the single cry, “Lost!” burst from her lips, in a low,
prolonged wail, and she fell senseless upon the floor.

Tenderly her gray-haired father raised her in his arms,
and bore her to the bed from which her young head
was not lifted for many a week. With the child of
their old age, their only one, lying pale and still and
suffering before them, it was a hard lesson to forgive;
but old Russel Atherton was a Christian, even in his
sorrows, and together with the prayers for her recovery,
he put up a petition that God would deal gently with
him who had brought that bright head to the very
brink of the grave, and kneeling at the bed's foot, the
sorrowing mother whispered her low Amen.

And so Juno Clifford triumphed, and the sweet
child Grace, poor, innocent little player, was check-mated
in the great game of life.