University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

Within sight of the Hesper's sails, as she bore down
the bay next morning, Philippa started on a walk, in
the hope of finding something on the earth, or in the
air, to culminate or dissipate her mood. Charlotte Lang
also wandered forth aimlessly, and they met in a crossroad,
beyond the town, which was bordered on both
sides by a thicket, bursting into leaf, and alive with the
songs of birds. Charlotte was gathering violets along
the edge of the thicket when Philippa saw her.

“She can think of flowers,” Philippa observed.

“There comes Philippa Luce,” thought Charlotte,
bending close to the ground. Philippa stopped in the
path, like a soldier ordered to halt.

“What are you doing?” she called.

Charlotte turned, and held up a handful of violets;
her hair, blown about her face, her languid, wistful
eyes, the faint color rising in her cheeks—she was the
picture of a sad, lovely Innocence. “Will you have
them?” she asked, in a singularly melodious voice, with
a childish treble in its accent, slowly approaching. Philippa's
eyes so filled with dazzling beams that crashed
down from her brain, that for a moment Charlotte
looked a dark, vague shape, whose coming overpowered
her with hate and horror; but when she saw more
clearly, and saw the composure with which Charlotte
stood before her, an irritation like madness possessed
her.

“What do you mean?” she asked, harshly.

“You spoke to me, and I answered.”

“I would have died first,” said Philippa, incoherently,
and stamping her foot with a measured thud on the
ground. “Do you know the misery you have made?”

Charlotte looked at her earnestly: “You would have
died. I wanted to live.”

The maddening vision of a happiness which she had
had no part in, and could have no part in with Parke,
again rose before Philippa's mind.

The violets fell to the ground one by one.

“Could you `live' no other way than by going out
of your place? You are not his equal.”

“That is your way of thinking,” Charlotte answered
with a sullen frown. “He came after me, remember. I
never asked any thing of him. I never shall. Why
didn't you keep away from me?”

Philippa turned scarlet from the most womanly feeling
she ever had.

“But,” continued Charlotte, “I act according to his
wishes. He governs me.”

“Insensible, heartless, beastly African!”

Limpid tears dropped from Charlotte's eyes, as pure
as the fresh violets at her feet.

“Oh, where is he?” she moaned.

A sound of wheels made them look round, a chaise
was coming down the road, with Sarah in it, who was
returning from some business concerning the Dorcas Society:
the floor of the chaise was covered with bundles
of work, and Gilbert was driving it. His quick eye
caught sight of the girls, and he tried to pass before Sarah
could discover them.

“Is n't that Mrs. Lang's girl?” she asked. “What
can Philippa be speaking to her for?”

“I bleeve so,” he answered adroitly, tickling the horse
to make it jump, and it went by the girls on the leap.
“Peers to me that's Mr. Auster's boat, off the ledge
there; do you s'pose he is coming back from the Hesper,
marm? Do tell me if you see her sails yet, bearing
off the light? I see Mrs. Rogers about an hour ago;
her eyes were bunged up with crying.”

She stretched her head to follow the motion of the
boat, and Gilbert said to himself that they had had a
pretty close shave of it to ride by that danger.

Charlotte exchanged glances with Philippa when she
recognized Sarah, and an expression of painful dismay
passed over her face.

“I wish,” she cried, “that I might never set eyes on
any of you again.”

“Amen.”

“I wish he would take me, and go with me to the
everglades.”

“Wish to be dead,” said Philippa sternly.

“I won't,” she answered, with a pretty, petulant
shrug; “you needn't think it. I am strong enough to
bear every thing. But”—with an assumption of dignity
—“I forgive you, Miss Luce, for your wish. Why,
what is the chaise coming back for?”

Philippa surmised the fact that Gilbert had been sent
to bring her home. He reined the horse beside her with
so careless and contemptuous a disregard for Charlotte's
place in the path, that the wheels grazed her dress; she
was not mindful of his sneering face, for she was observing
the horse—an old friend. One more effectual word

Philippa longed to say, which, through Charlotte, might
pierce Parke like an arrow and cut like a sword; but
it was an emergency she had no weapons for. She
parted from her without even a last look.

“Dear me,” said Gilbert, shaken from his stolidity
and respectful reserve; “things have come to such a
pretty pass that I think we might as well shut up shop
to our house—give up the ghost and call it square. I
haven't got the leastest mite of ambition or courage left
in me. To this day Mrs. Auster hasn't found it out.
What's to be done? It must not go on so. Are they
going to be allowed to carry on so, Miss Philippa, and
the family not know it? God bless me, you know it.
I presume that gal was making complaint to you.”

“Hush, Gilbert,” said Philippa, much distressed.
“Wait; something will be done. You must not put
your mind upon it so.”

“Very well,” he answered, with dignity. “We are
all demeaning ourselves by going on in this way.”

It was as bitter a moment as she had endured. Gilbert
was right, but his making common cause with her
as a matter of principle, was most galling to her pride.
She felt that he had made himself the mouth-piece of the
sense and the rights of a moral community, and her soul
rebelled against it; she would, if possible, so isolate her
family from its influence and opinions, that even their
vices should not be meddled with.

Parke came home that day with the dash and flavor
of travel about him. At the tea-table he gave a lively
account of his meeting with a college chum who had
just returned from Germany. His recapitulation of the
stories of German life was so entertaining, he so thoroughly

entered into their spirit, that Philippa felt as if
the old atmosphere was obliterated. He was a spectacle
to Elsa, who every moment, since her interview with Mrs.
Rogers, considered herself as walking over a volcano.
“There's something more than human in him,” she
thought; “nothing will beat him down.”

“I wish we could stay in Germany,” said Philippa
absently.

“By the way,” exclaimed Sarah, “what were you
saying to Charlotte Lang this morning?”

Philippa made no answer, but fixed her eyes upon
Parke, who suddenly felt in his pocket for his handkerchief.
Elsa glided from the room without a sound, and
stationed herself before the door to prevent ingress.

“The time has come—I saw it in Philippa's eyes, and
now Master Parke is going to walk on the edge of the
burning ploughshare.” She spoke, unconsciously tucking
up her wristbands, as if she contemplated being
called upon to participate in the mêlée when it should
be at its height.

An ominous silence prevailed at the table. Sarah, astonished
at Philippa's not replying to her, looked up,
and, following the direction of her gaze, saw that in
Parke's face and manner which startled and perplexed
her; but Jason, looking from one to the other, divined
some evil he would rather not know of; he rose, and
opened the door to find Elsa pacing to and fro before it
like a sentinel. She waved him back, and pushed the
door against him so resolutely that he turned and
dropped into a chair beside it. Philippa's eyes were still
fixed on Parke with a growing light, which, to him,
seemed to spread over all the room; but he bore her

gaze like a man, and it clinched the purpose he had
brooded over.

“Mother,” he said, at last, “what could Philippa have
to say to her? Imagine?”

“Tell me, my son, I can't,” she entreated, in a stifled
voice, for she felt appalled at Philippa's face.

“It is probable that she reproached her; the virtuous
woman, you know, is not only so for herself, but for the
whole sex.”

“Charlotte Lang is—what then?” asked Sarah, her
nostrils white and rigid.

“What she is, mother, I have made her; and, as her
cup of disgrace is full, so is mine, and I shall drink
it.”

Jason sprang from his chair, with a deep oath, and
stood beside him like a tower.

“To the dregs, sir,” he said.

“You understand me. Would you like to strike
me?”

“It is too late,” he answered, regarding Philippa
mournfully; but she would not meet his eyes, and turned
her head from him.

“What's too late?” snapped Sarah.

Parke put a cigar in his mouth without lighting it,
and twisted it apart, and, after a moment, said: “I do
not pretend to give an account of myself. I do not
know what I expected to do in the beginning of this
business; so far, perhaps, I have done just as other men
do; but, mother, I am going to marry Charlotte Lang.
Not a word against it. You may call it dregs, or honor,
or obstinacy, or love. It must be.”

Sarah literally obeyed him; her composure was so

strange that Parke lost his presence of mind. He
walked up and down the room, and sobbed like a
woman, and her eyes followed him, rolling in her head,
as if that had been turned to stone. He threw himself
on his knees before her, and buried his face in the folds
of her dress.

“Don't,” she said, in the voice of one waking from a
dream; “lift up your face, I am your mother—not Philippa,
not Jason—I forgive you.”

“No, mother, I do not ask that; but I have killed
you.”

“Philippa,” she cried, angrily, “have you no feeling?
What passes through your mind?”

“Sarah,” said Jason, in a voice of thunder, “let my
daughter alone.”

“Eh,” she uttered, with a smile at Parke, as if there
had just been effected a tacit bargain, which divided him
and Philippa with Jason and herself—Parke was hers!

Philippa did not heed what was passing. She was
trying to analyze her own personality, which seemed to
be so worthless a thing to others, and of so much value
to herself, that out of it she had built a great, strong edifice,
which had just fallen into a ruin. Parke raised his
tear-stained face, and again Sarah addressed Philippa.

“Go to Mrs. Rogers for me, will you, and ask her if
she will come over to-morrow? She must be lonesome
without Sam. Go quick!” she ordered, with rising irritation;
“it is late.”

Philippa rose slowly, and left the room. Jason went
out by another door immediately, and confronted Elsa.

“Well?” she said.

“How long have you known this?”

“A few days. Money will settle it.”

“No.”

“What will, you foolish man?”

“He is going to marry her.”

“Cat's-foot, Jason; you are as mad as a March hare
to let him do it. Make him wait a while, and he will
give it up; he is remorseful, now, and frightened.”

“Not frightened; he is brave, Elsa.”

“You can't affirm that you believe he ought to marry
her!”

“Don't ask me, I don't know. Keep your eye on
Sarah; she has had an awful blow.”

“Yes, the hardest one.”

Breaking away from her, he wandered far away that
night, and the burden of his thoughts was: “It was the
deed of my own son; but, of all men, I should forgive
him.”